Ep. 24 - The Ethos of Coexistence (2010)

PuSh Play

Gabrielle Martin chats with Maiko Yamamoto and James Long, co-founders of Vancouver’s Theatre Replacement.

Show Notes

Gabrielle, Maiko and James discuss:

• How did Norman Armour supported the company, which started the same year that PuSh started its first series in 2003?

• How did Theatre Replacement emerge from Boca del Lupo?

• What are “Chamber Works”?

• How did crossing disciplines become key to the early work?

• How did finding a bunch of photo albums in a back alley lead to the creation of new work (Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut), and potentially stop it with a lawsuit?

• How amorphous nostalgia and memory can be

• How using found material in theatre has changed over the years

• How do you frame practice when you follow impulse creatively?

• How does art intersect with the city?

• Do you still have nerves before a premiere?

• How has Theatre Replacement grown beyond the two co-founders?

• The ideas that were interesting at the beginning remain so

• How will things evolve over the next 5-10 years in the city?

About Maiko Yamamoto

Maiko Yamamoto is a Vancouver-based artist who creates new, experimental and intercultural works of performance. Many of these works are built through a career-long practice of collaboration and include theatre projects, public art works, and performance installations.

In 2003, Maiko co-founded the Vancouver-based performance company, Theatre Replacement. For TR she has created over 20 new works, many of which have toured to festivals and venues around the world. These include: BIOBOXES: Artifiacting Human Experience, Yu-Fo, Train, Sexual Practices of the Japanese, Dress me up in your love, Town Choir, MINE and Best Life. She also curates and produces HOLD ON LET GO (formerly PushOFF), and in 2018 began a new project-based artist residency program for experimental makers, COLLIDER.

In addition, Maiko teaches performance and mentors artists for a range of different companies and organizations, both in Canada and abroad. She has helped artists to develop new work through programs like MAKE, a residency initiative spearheaded by 4 arts organizations in Ireland, the National Theatre School of Canada’s Acting Program, Action Hero’s You Can Be My Wingman residency, and why not theatre’s ThisGen Fellowship. She also occasionally works as a curator and writes about performance for a variety of publications.

She holds a BFA in Theatre from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and a Masters of Applied Arts in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She’s currently working on a new work with longtime collaborator and friend, Veda Hille.

Find out more about Maiko at: thelocalbubble.org

About James Long

James Long is a director, actor, writer and teacher whose creative practice occurs in a wide variety of interdisciplinary and collaborative contexts, including as a co-founding Artistic Director of Theatre Replacement (2003-2022) and as an independent artist working in live performance, community engaged practice and public art.

James’s work has been presented across North America, Europe and Asia and includes Weetube, Footnote Number 12, Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut, Town Criers, BioBoxes: Artifacting Human Experience, King Arthur’s Knight, How to Disappear Completely, Morko, Winners and Losers and others. In 2019, he and Maiko Yamamoto were awarded the Siminovitch prize for their work at Theatre Replacement and as freelance artists, and in 2016 he and Marcus Youssef were nominated for a Governor General’s Award for playwriting for Winners and Losers.

Long graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Theatre Program in 2000 and received a Master’s in Urban Studies in 2018. He serves as the president of the organization that stewards Vancouver’s Russian Hall, a multi-purpose performance and gathering space, and is an assistant professor in Theatre and Performance at SFU’s School of Contemporary Arts.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02 Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who've helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.

Gabrielle Martin 00:22 This conversation highlights theater replacement with Maiko Yamamoto and James Long, and is anchored around the 2010 Push Festival. Theater replacement's work is grounded in the creation of original, experimental, and intercultural works of performance.

Gabrielle Martin 00:36 Since their beginnings, they've held fast to an ethos of coexistence, and this idea still runs through everything they do. Their new works are built through highly collaborative processes over extended working periods and foreground diverse artists.

Gabrielle Martin 00:51 Theater replacement's artistic director is Maiko Yamamoto, a leader in the Vancouver and National Art scenes and known internationally for her work, Maiko has created over 25 new works for theater replacement, drawing upon her love of formal inventiveness and exploration, conceptual play, creative research, artist -centered processes, and experimental and multidisciplinary practice.

Gabrielle Martin 01:13 Yamamoto often collaborates with intergenerational artists, individuals and family members in making work that searches for playful, immediate, and authentic ways of bringing audiences and performances together.

Gabrielle Martin 01:25 James Long is a director, actor, writer, and teacher whose creative practice occurs in a wide variety of interdisciplinary and collaborative contexts, including as a co -founding artistic director of theater replacement from 2003 to 2022, and as an independent artist working in live performance, community -engaged practice, and public art.

Gabrielle Martin 01:45 In 2022, he joined SFU's School for Contemporary Arts, Theatre, and Performance program as full -time faculty to co -develop a new direction for its curriculum while also continuing to make and tour new works of performance.

Gabrielle Martin 01:59 Here's my conversation with Maiko and James. I will just share with our public where we are right now. We are on the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Wautu.

Gabrielle Martin 02:18 We're also on that land, on Commercial Drive, what is currently now Commercial Drive, which is where the theater replacement office is located or close by. Very close by. So let's go back to the beginning.

Gabrielle Martin 02:37 Before Clark and I somewhere in Connecticut, in 2005, push presented the Empty Orchestra. In 2006, sexual practices of the Japanese. In 2007, bio boxes, artifacting the human experience. So can you just talk to us about how the relationship with push started and those early projects may be starting with the Empty Orchestra?

Maiko Yamamoto 03:01 Well, I mean, it was really through Norman and through knowing Norman. I interned at Rump Bowl when Norman was the artistic director there. And it was just around the time that he was starting to think about Push and talk about Push with Katrina.

Maiko Yamamoto 03:18 And so I kind of we formed a relationship there and then and then stay connected with him and then you met probably around the same time. And we had talked to him when we started to talk about theater placement and starting this company.

Maiko Yamamoto 03:34 And he just really he just took a he took a gamble on us. And Empty Orchestra was the first show that we ever did as a company. And I don't think Norman had seen it because we hadn't made it yet. No, but yeah, but he had he had he knew Darren O 'Donnell who came in to direct the piece.

Maiko Yamamoto 03:51 And of course, he knew Adrian Wong, who was kind of our gal Friday on the project. She stage managed it, but she also did the costumes and she did everything. And so he had just started Push and he he started to do satellite presentations.

Maiko Yamamoto 04:08 So because we were a young local company, he kind of, yeah, he supported us and put us in the festival.

Gabrielle Martin 04:16 2005, when was that in relation to when you started the company?

Maiko Yamamoto 04:20 We started the company the same year that push started. So that's like series. Yeah, that's right Okay, so that's why you're the next year is the 20th festival and we're in our 20th year, too So it's kind of like hitting that same age Yeah, so 2003 we started 2003 yeah, that's when we officially were incorporated

James Long 04:42 many years called ourselves pushed babies because we were born at the same time and certainly enjoyed that relationship.

Maiko Yamamoto 04:49 And clearly we were, because when you were saying that list, I didn't remember that those three years were at the push fest.

James Long 05:00 I think there's something that Norman too, because of his drive and his energy and his focus on building this festival, I think he found something similar in us because we were starting at the same time.

James Long 05:11 He was obviously our senior artist and a huge mentor to both of us, but we had that same energy and excitement and creativity to make something happen with our company, so it aligned really well.

Gabrielle Martin 05:24 And for the empty orchestra, did Norman just give you a carte blanche? Did you end up pitching him the idea? Do you remember how that became part of the foot festival? It's hard to remember.

Maiko Yamamoto 05:37 So now I know he was always asking, what are you up to, what are you thinking about? And so we had told him that we were starting the company A, which he thought was really exciting and made sense. And he was, actually now it's all coming back to me, he was really critical in giving us advice around what to do in starting this new company.

Maiko Yamamoto 05:55 Because we had been part of another company, Boca del Upo, previously, and then we started this new company. And so he was offering his words of wisdom and advice. And, you know, we were kind of focused on one and two person shows, that was our whole jam when we first started.

Maiko Yamamoto 06:12 And so he said, call them Chamberworks. Chamberworks. Chamberworks. Chamberworks.

James Long 06:17 To become part of our mandate, we put chamber works in the mandate.

Maiko Yamamoto 06:20 We had one and two person shows as part of the mandate, but they were, yeah, so it was like that. He was very poetic with his advice and so Empty Orchestra was the first chamber work that we presented and I think he just, we told him about it, we told him about the artists that were going to be involved and he just said yes right away.

Gabrielle Martin 06:40 What was that initial idea that you, what was the initial idea behind the empty orchestra?

Maiko Yamamoto 06:46 We were making a show about the end of the world, and the frozen world, and karaoke. And I think we told him about the people. So it was Darren O 'Donnell right when he was kind of, you know, establishing himself.

Maiko Yamamoto 07:01 And so Adrian Wong and we had made a hilly. So he couldn't really say no. But yeah, we had, he knew how we made work, which is just to get in a room with people and throw a bunch of ideas together. So we had some loose notions, but I think mostly he was really interested in the people and the energy that we were sort of bringing forward and yeah, and came on board.

James Long 07:23 And it was a panicked state of making in the end, because we had our ideas, we got Norman excited about it, we made something with Beta kind of peripheral to it. You and I were working a lot in the studio making something, brought Darren Donnell out, if you remember this moment, and showed Darren our first 40 minutes or so of the show we had in Darwin.

Maiko Yamamoto 07:41 He was, to use his words, he was underwhelmed.

James Long 07:44 underwhelmed, and we're like, oh, so what does that mean, Darren? We're three weeks still opening, and Dan said, well, I guess we'll just start again. So we were able to cobble some pieces together and keep them, but it really was just a build from panic, scratch moment with Darren, which was pretty exciting, because Darren's an amazing artist, an amazing writer, an amazing creator, so we worked with him,

James Long 08:02 learned a lot, and I remember thinking to myself, is it too late to take down the poster?

Maiko Yamamoto 08:09 You did ask that several times.

James Long 08:10 That's the poster's up, and I was like, this isn't a good idea.

Maiko Yamamoto 08:13 But I think, too, it started us on this path of like when you work with people who have different opinions than you or different ideas or aesthetics, that it actually, that kind of challenge creates better material.

Maiko Yamamoto 08:28 So the material that we, being very simpatico at that time and just wanting to like make this company and do this stuff and encouraging to each other and supportive, we're bringing, didn't have that kind of tension, but as soon as you pulled Darren in the room, that tension existed and it did bring out some really great material.

Maiko Yamamoto 08:44 And Adrian wrote on the project, too, he had, yeah, everybody was kind of throwing their or in.

James Long 08:50 because we had to. We only had three weeks, so we had to get it together. And it did create a bit of an ethos for the company, like Michael was saying. From that point on, this idea of collaborating with artists from other disciplines or cross -disciplines became pretty key to the work we're making.

Gabrielle Martin 09:03 and clearly it was successful or at least enough to be invited back the next year.

Maiko Yamamoto 09:09 It was young. Darren described it at the time when he was trying to give us our pep talk before we opening night when, you know, Jamie was probably still asking if the posters were... Just take the posters down and go home?

Maiko Yamamoto 09:22 He sort of described it as a really well -baked cake, you know, like it had some sweet simit, it had some interesting parts, some interesting textures, some icing, and it was all sort of put together.

James Long 09:34 And to follow through on that metaphor, Etair Dal did the lights as well, so he would have had been the nice candles on top. He did.

Maiko Yamamoto 09:40 He did but even then like the the interesting artistic conversation in the room between Darren and Itai was you know There was a moment where Darren just wanted blackness. I remember that he just wanted it to be in blackness and Itai

James Long 09:53 This did make sense to him.

Maiko Yamamoto 09:54 he just couldn't change his lighting design of rain. He was like, what do you mean? Black darkness, they're not gonna be able to see. And so in the end, it really created probably one of the most beautiful moments of the show, which was just a tiny glint of a side light, a shin, that would just like catch the reflection of the eye of the performer.

Maiko Yamamoto 10:14 But that was it, otherwise it was very dark.

James Long 10:18 As significant, I think, in the trajectory of the company was that we showed the work. There was a guy there named James Tyson from Cardiff, who ran chapter of the Chapter Arts Centre. He saw the work and he was turned by the work.

James Long 10:31 It wasn't his kind of work as we found out afterwards when we made something with him. But he was excited by the work and he was kind of coming looking for Canadian collaborators. So Norm was able to facilitate that relationship between James and us and then we ended up going to Cardiff and making a new work over there, which started the international side of theatre replacement, which was huge because there wasn't a lot of international touring of companies inside of Vancouver going elsewhere.

James Long 10:55 So that was as significant, I think, as presenting in Push was a relationship that Push built for this company with the rest of the world.

Gabrielle Martin 11:05 from that first year that's impressive that international presenters industry folks were attending in 2005.

Maiko Yamamoto 11:12 I think also back then you just I mean we talked about this all the time but people were like how did you become an international company and we were like we just went we literally went once somewhere and then suddenly that started you know so back then I think it was easier to sort of make pathways that way yeah because we just did it once and then that just sort of started us on a on a momentum to be able to tour and do partnerships internationally

Gabrielle Martin 11:39 Clark and I are somewhere in Connecticut. Was that a premiere? At Push in 2008? It was a premiere. Was that a project that you also brought in? A director from Tomorrow Else? Or an artistic collaborator from Elsewhere?

James Long 11:54 That was a repeat relationship with Craig Hall. Craig Hall ended up taking over Rumble from Norman, which was kind of bookended prior to that. His broiler, which was a project that was in motion when theater placement was being founded.

Maiko Yamamoto 12:07 It was a second show

James Long 12:09 Craig Hall and I were making a show called Broiler that was part of Young and the Restless, which was Rumble's little mini festival thing that that Norman had set up when he was at Rumble. But Craig Hall was the director on that project and that's, so Norman was aware of it from its beginnings and it has a really fraught story.

James Long 12:29 I don't know if you know the story behind Craig, but I'll keep it pretty tight because it's kind of epic. Basically wanted to make a show with Craig about cannibalism while I was writing The Grant, found a bunch of photo albums in an alley behind my house on East Port T and said, oh this is really interesting.

James Long 12:45 These photo albums are beautiful. I brought Craig over and we sifted through them and said this is really exciting and it's kind of like we're now consuming other people's memories. This makes sense to cannibalism.

James Long 12:52 Let's write this into the Cannon Council Grant. So we wrote that grant and started making the show and originally the show is just going to be about this idea of photographs and how we can, just about how amorphous a photograph is and how amorphous nostalgia is and we're using it sort of this opportunity to explore semiotics in photography.

James Long 13:14 We showed a little version of it to some friends who were kind of bored by it, this idea of me just talking about myself in front of other people's photographs and they said you should really try to find the people who own these photographs and do a bit of a docu -thing and be really exciting.

James Long 13:27 So we did that and after finding them we're faced with a lawsuit about shutting the whole show down about four weeks before the show opened. So a clear memory of that piece in 2000, Christmas of 2007 was Norman coming over to Craig Hall's house on Christmas Eve when they sent the letter and telling Norman I don't think the show is going to happen.

James Long 13:50 Can we take down the posters? Because it might be a good idea to take down the posters because there's a show now and they say we can't use any of the photographs, which then sparked another total manic rewriting process and resulted in a show that we put up and was fine.

James Long 14:08 I don't know if it was quite a good well -baked cake at that point. It was just too epic and spacious and frantic and awe -inspiring.

Gabrielle Martin 14:16 Heav it.

James Long 14:17 It was a great pivot.

Gabrielle Martin 14:18 if people knew the back story.

James Long 14:20 They did and then we subsequently toured Toronto and then Regina and then I think Norman programmed it again, one because he actually liked the work and he liked us, but also because he had seen what happened after two years of continued development on the piece and a bit of a calming, a breath outside of lawsuit territory because we were able, we did a bunch of things to it that made it lawsuit proof and so that's how we ended up doing it again in 2010.

Maiko Yamamoto 14:45 And in the end you did speak to some members of the family who were not opposed, who were not on the team lawsuit.

James Long 14:53 that were deceased, Clark and Ruby.

Maiko Yamamoto 14:56 to Christina Lake didn't you meet with somebody there who then gave

James Long 14:59 Well, that was where it all kind of went sideways, because we went to Christina Lake to engage with it. We knew that these six photo albums were from Christina Lake, a lot of them. Let's just take photographs around Christina Lake and experiment with this idea of the photograph and how we can hold onto the photograph in our own memories.

James Long 15:15 And Camille Jean -Grasse said, well, you should just go knock on that person's door and say what we're doing and see if they know the people. And they said, oh, we do know the people, let me just make a phone call.

James Long 15:23 I'm like, no, no, no, no, don't make a phone call. And they made the phone call, and then we spoke to the woman who lived outside of Christina Lake near a trail or something. And she was very welcoming, but then it was her son that phoned us afterwards.

James Long 15:39 I got the lawyers on it.

Gabrielle Martin 15:41 how far into the process you were.

James Long 15:43 deep into the process. The show was gonna go up in February, this was in October, we went to Christina Lake to just kind of explode the project a little bit before the final development period.

Gabrielle Martin 15:51 and explode it, you did.

James Long 15:53 and we exploded it and it was really kind of an eye -opener because we were using with this kind of conceptual frame of the photograph and then once we actually met the people we realized no these are real people inside these photographs and so what we ended up doing and it was a nice turn inside the work I think was we ended up taking all their photographs out keeping a lot of the text the same but then placing my own photographs inside of it and telling the same story and then revealing that at the end that we can because of the shape of the photographs and the Kodachrome sort of coloring the nostalgia piece remained the same and the attachment to the past remained the same but the narrative suddenly became multi -layered and it was much more true to the original idea of the show than where we had gotten to writing narrative on it.

Maiko Yamamoto 16:40 title came from like in the envelopes or envelopes in the photo albums there were like written things underneath some of the photos and one of them said Clark and I somewhere beautiful

James Long 16:53 such a beautiful piece of text for a title for a show that really has no solid grounding.

Gabrielle Martin 17:00 And did you take away a lesson with regard to process, with, you know, with regard to ethics and inspiration, or around not asking permission, or...

Maiko Yamamoto 17:10 I mean, I think you wouldn't make that show in 2024, or if you did, you would go about it in a different way.

James Long 17:16 I don't know. It's interesting how to appropriate someone else's property to tell your own story. I think the questions are still really valuable and true to this moment, but yes, there were subsequent projects, something that were forms and ethics and all these other considerations.

Maiko Yamamoto 17:35 Found Material is so different now than it was back then when we were, and there was a lot of verbatim and documentary theater that, you know, certainly those were the fields in which we were playing in, where, you know, you kind of boldly did things.

Maiko Yamamoto 17:50 There wasn't that significant of a, you know, there wasn't that kind of idea of care ethics yet. No. So, I think it's different now when you use people's, when you use Found Material or you use people's stories.

Maiko Yamamoto 18:04 I think there's lots of conversations around how to use them.

Gabrielle Martin 18:08 So in between the presentations of Clark and I somewhere in Connecticut, Push also presented the night that follows day in 2009, and this was a special project. My understanding is that this is also an iconic piece for theater replacement.

Maiko Yamamoto 18:24 Well, it was a really cool example of this thing that I think Norman was so good at, which was forming partnerships between an international organization or an international artist and Vancouver artists to sort of create, well, I think in a lot of ways it was about fostering and nurturing our work here and putting our work in conversation with the international scene, but it was a tri -pro between PUSH on the boards in Seattle and theatre replacements and it was a script by Tim Echols who had worked with a company in Ghent called Victoria who had set up this,

Maiko Yamamoto 19:00 they were doing a series of works where they were making shows for adults but with kids that were centering around, you know, children's experiences inside of it and so this was one in a series and Norman just had this idea that he would love to see a Vancouver production of the work and so he got in touch with us and we said yes right away because we were big fans of Tim Echols and PUSH Entertainment and we started to work suddenly for the first time with a group of,

Maiko Yamamoto 19:30 I think it was 17 kids between the ages of 8 and 14 and it was a beautiful choral piece, spoke by children all about the things that adults say to kids and the lens of adulthood on childhood and yeah it was really, it was such, it felt like a really long process because I think working with kids is, it feels like you have to work in small bursts more often than not, you know, you can't work all day as we do,

Maiko Yamamoto 20:02 you can't do one of those really intense rehearsal periods so we had them on the weekends and in the evenings sometimes over an extended period of time and we took the tour, we took the show on tour to Seattle after the PUSH presentation so it did really feel like we had a lot of time for those youths.

Maiko Yamamoto 20:22 Yeah, it was a really beautiful and memorable experience for sure and very, I think, formative for us and we're still connected to a lot of these kids.

Gabrielle Martin 20:33 And was this your first time working with amateur artists or non -professionals?

Maiko Yamamoto 20:38 Yeah, I just texted her. No.

James Long 20:40 2009? No, I guess? Like, non -actors? Like, Biobox is flirted with working with people who weren't normally on stage. Um, the other ones, I guess everyone had been on stage in the shows.

Maiko Yamamoto 20:55 Yeah, I think it was like maybe not the first time we considered non -professionals to be collaborators, but it was the first time we were really putting them on stage.

James Long 21:05 But these guys were experts, they're little kids, right? And they're saying, you tell me this, you tell me that, you tell me this, and they're amazing. Like, they're way better than any kind of, I don't want to diss any of the training institutes for young children actors.

James Long 21:15 But these kids were just sitting up there, they learned the lines, and then we worked with them a lot just to be honest and tell it with some punch. And they were beautiful, and there was some really kind of sentimental bits inside of it, and they spoke those texts, we had some movement sections where it just, run around, but make sure you run over there, and then run over there, and run over there,

James Long 21:29 and then do whatever you want. And they were amazing, they're stellar actors. I saw Luke the other day, Luke who sings with Vancouver, or sang with Vancouver Choir, now teaches my daughter the choir at her high school, which just also put that in perspective of how long that is 15 years ago when that show went up.

Maiko Yamamoto 21:47 And I was just emailed by one of the kids, Elena Kirby, about working on a project.

Gabrielle Martin 21:55 Obviously, the roots of your company go deep and the kind of fruits of that community -engaged process goes into the present, which is kind of where I want to go next. I mean, I know that you have continued to work with non -professional artists, at least with the similar work that his concept toured.

Gabrielle Martin 22:16 So I'm curious about some of the themes and where your artistic practices evolved, as theater replacement, individually, but just also to kind of give some context into how those projects have been framed in push over the years.

Gabrielle Martin 22:35 After that 2010 presentation of Clark and I, there was 100% Vancouver, which was a co -production or co -presentation with SFE cultural programs.

James Long 22:47 Yes.

Gabrielle Martin 22:48 collaboration in 2011, Winners and Losers with New World in 2013, Town Choir in 2017, Little Volcano with Beta Hilly in 2020, and footnote number 12 in 2020. And do you mind if I sit here in 2022? So across all of those projects, as a company and individually, would you reflect on some of the through lines and evolution of your practice?

James Long 23:24 Wow, how'd it even begin? You know, framing practice has always been, I think, certainly interesting and an ongoing thing for me because it's kind of hard to do, especially when I follow impulse a lot of the time and also difficult for theater replacement because as we continue to develop as artists, as we continue to develop, we found ourselves also finding other things interesting inside of our individual practices as opposed to always intertwining our work.

James Long 23:52 When I articulate and look at what I'm doing right now, particularly as research faculty at SFU, because things have changed, I'm no longer at theater replacements as a co -founder or a co -artistic director, the large majority of my work is teaching and research and service for the university, that is Simon Fraser.

James Long 24:11 And it's really focused on methods of collaboration and methods of collaboration with artists from other disciplines, but also artists and individuals and citizens outside of normal disciplines. So how does art intersect with the city?

James Long 24:28 It was one of my big focuses now with the work I do. Do you mind if I sit here? It was really about the Russian Hall. The Russian Hall was the protagonist of that show. We filled it with actors, actually actors, the probably most actorly show I've done in a very long time with the people that were on stage, but the real protagonist, the real focus was on that building and the function of that building and the function of these buildings inside of Vancouver,

James Long 24:51 particularly buildings that were culturally specific and now are being repurposed or gentrified for artistic purposes. So that was a collaboration with that structure, I think, and with the architecture of that place.

James Long 25:03 So that's how I think the framing of my practice sits now. And if I bounce it back into the past, I can make connections all the way through the work of theater replacement did from the very beginning, whether it was working, Mike and I working together or bringing Darren into work with us or Vader or Sarah Chase, or it just goes on and on and on and many, many different artists that we've worked with.

James Long 25:24 It's always been an active negotiation and conversation about practice.

Gabrielle Martin 25:28 Do you still sometimes have some nerves before Premier where you wish you could take down a poster or have you managed to get comfortable with that disconnect?

James Long 25:38 I haven't had a crushingly uncomfortable premiere in a long time, I don't think. It could be that I just don't invest in that kind of energy anymore because I'm too old and too tired to really freak out about those things.

James Long 25:51 And also the knowledge, and it's something I tell students all the time when they're really freaked out, this is not the last thing you're ever going to make. Just go do a good job, do the best you can, survive, use it as research for the next thing.

James Long 26:03 So no, that anxiety doesn't exist, but that could also be a gap, maybe I'm not taking enough risks anymore, maybe I'm getting complacent. So I'll try to freak myself out in the future, I promise.

Gabrielle Martin 26:16 And you're working, do you mind if I sit here? It was an ensemble work, so this, like, working with one or two actors, which was so key to the earlier work, that kind of frame that has shifted.

Maiko Yamamoto 26:33 or is it still a key interest? I think it's really shifted. It shifted as soon as Jamie and I started to explore curiosities and open up processes to other actors and that really shifted. And we just changed our bylaws officially because it's not true anymore.

Maiko Yamamoto 26:50 We started to make bigger shows and if anything it is about, theater placement has become a company that is beyond the two co -founders now. And my work has really been about opening up a company to other art opportunities, to work with other artists or to bring other communities together.

Maiko Yamamoto 27:09 And it's kind of the opposite because my, because I'm the only AD there now, it's my whole artistic practice. It's become everything and things like programming have become more interesting. So it's about, yeah, creating rooms where people can be at their best and be really creative and then also finding time where I can do that for myself as well.

Maiko Yamamoto 27:34 So yeah, things have really, things have changed. We've gone through a big transition, but I would say the things that are still interesting to theater placement when we started, the ideas of coexistence, forefronting collaboration, making works that draw people's different perspectives, histories, experiences together, that's still a big priority and we're doing that in everything that we do.

Gabrielle Martin 27:57 And because you've been there from the very first festival, and even before that, in the conformance series, before Push became a festival, I'm curious to know your perspective on the cultural context that Push existed in, exists in, and the significance of that for your own practice.

Maiko Yamamoto 28:20 I mean, I think Push has always been a really important and vital gateway for artists here to have connection with the rest of the world and, you know, it's done a huge service in terms of, you know, fostering artistic practice here, changing the way that we make work and really building this community into a really special artistic community.

Maiko Yamamoto 28:43 I was talking to somebody the other day saying, it's very unique here, you know, and I think, you know, the pandemic was hard and we lost some of that focus and connection, but I think it's to recognize it kind of grew up in a really cool way and everybody's kind of involved in getting it to a, you know, keeping it unique and keeping it interesting.

Maiko Yamamoto 29:06 And I think the one thing that Vancouver artists do really well and what our city seems to do really well is to grow artists that are very good at doing multiple things. I don't know, maybe that's a bit of a, maybe that's also hard because you have artists that are also producers that, you know, wear multiple hats, but I actually think it's a real strength of right now.

Maiko Yamamoto 29:26 And so it's interesting to be in this moment in the artistic community here where people are doing multiple things and I suppose the turn to digital and the, you know, that all fostered that too. A lot of people are making films now or podcasts or making albums or what have you, but it's really cool to recognize that the artists here do a lot of different things and sometimes have moments where they can bring those together in service of making something really cool.

Maiko Yamamoto 29:55 So I think it's always been a really unique community and push has been huge in kind of opening the world up to Vancouver artists and the community here.

James Long 30:05 Vancouver is an interesting moment in Vancouver because I don't want to talk about real estate and the realities of trying to live in the city for artists, which is just a given now. Everybody is aware of those things.

James Long 30:16 And I look at what push came out of, and it was a moment of real community cohesion inside the city. Certainly in the theater realm of the performing arts, I can't speak to the dance realm as much because I've never been part of the dance world.

James Long 30:32 Vancouver is tricky. And the aughts, which I believe what we call them, the zeros, was a moment of real cohesion inside of the theater community. There's Progress Lab, which is now a building, which is a consortium of seven or eight or nine or ten sometimes companies, saying how can we support each other?

James Long 30:49 How can we lend each other resources? How can we give each other space? How can we give each other feedback to make new work? That was really really important, and I think that's what helped build push at the same time as us.

James Long 30:59 We were all going to those festivals. We were meeting each other at that place and seeing work we were being presented in those places. We were sharing our rolodexes with each other, saying this show should be here, and we just were lucky enough to go to Germany.

James Long 31:11 You should talk to this guy because maybe you can go to Germany too and show your work. And I think the pandemic had an impact on that because we did fracture, and I think we are kind of fractured inside the city right now.

James Long 31:21 There's a lot of, there's an anxiety inside this city right now of change, and you can feel this change wanting to happen and happening, and it's stuttering and it's spinning. Where we were objects and agents of change and the aughts inside of a better funded moment, I think, and a more affordable moment inside this Vancouver.

James Long 31:42 How this now translates to this time and to this festival moving forward is going to be the biggest question. How do we support each other inside this work?

Maiko Yamamoto 31:52 it's certainly been less about international, it's just been less about international just because we have been kind of closed in and I think that it's always going to be super valuable to be in composition that's one of the things that theater replacement really tries to work for is to keep international connections alive but it arguably it's not about that as much anymore you know it's been really about regional and local and I think there are things happening like things like boombox and the birdhouse being really close and proximal there's a cool energy that's happening there I also feel like as someone who is of a certain generation sometimes I have to look really hard to sort of get into the conversations that are happening in the younger generation but there are some really exciting things that are starting I'm excited to see how things sort of evolve in the next five to ten years here in the city I think it's going to look really different but I think it's going to be really cool very exciting

Ben Charland 32:47 That was a special episode of Push Play, in honor of our 20th Push International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January 23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben Charland, and Tricia Knowles.

Ben Charland 33:03 A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca and follow us on social media at Push Festival.

Ben Charland 33:22 And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take a moment to leave a review.