Ep. 48 - Seeing Double (A Wake of Vultures)

PuSh Play

Gabrielle Martin chats with Nancy Tam, Daniel O’Shea, Conor Wylie of A Wake of Vultures. They are presenting two shows at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival: K Body and Mind and Walking at Night by Myself. Both will be at the Scotiabank Dance Centre as a double feature on February 1 and 2.

Show Notes

Gabrielle, Nancy, Daniel and Conor discuss:

• What is the glue that keeps the company moving together and working?

• Can that be explained with astrology?

• How do you create devised work and is it similar or different from convention?

• How do you play around with various layers of performance?

• What is your shared interest in detachment and “trippiness”?

• What rituals does your rehearsal practice have?

• What’s the role and benefits of shorthand?

• What makes these two works “sister pieces” to be presented together?

• What is the place of futurism and retro in your work?

• How did form affect the work and how did video impact the performance?

About A Wake of Vultures

Formed in 2013, A Wake of Vultures (WOV) is a project-based interdisciplinary performance company. WOV is a research, development, and producing vehicle for the works of its three members: Nancy Tam (music, sound design, theatre), Daniel O’Shea (film, theatre), and Conor Wylie (theatre). Switching between individual and collective project leadership, we connect with local, national, and international communities through collaboration and touring.

We began collaborating and bonding as friends over our shared fascination in social rituals, science fiction, anime, and questions of reality and perception. We follow our idiosyncratic curiosities, blending low-brow inspirations with high-concept ideas, creating bizarre convergences that propose hybrid visions of the future. Our work is marked by formal detachment, ritual, unstable perspectives, and a blend of retro and new technologies, taking diverse forms like audio walks, performative installations, and plays. WOV has been presented in Canada, the US, Germany, and Hong Kong.

Individually, we are freelance artists thriving inside Vancouver’s independent performance scene through fruitful and ongoing collaborations with Fight with a Stick, Theatre Replacement, Music on Main, Plastic Orchid Factory, MACHiNENOiSY, Radix Theatre, Justine Chambers, Rob Kitsos, Playwrights Theatre Centre, rice&beans theatre, Remy Siu, and many others. Each collaboration provides us with new methodologies, skills, and vocabularies to bring back to A Wake of Vultures.

In many ways, we three are hybrid people: we practice a variety of artistic disciplines; we come from a mix of settler backgrounds (Europe + Asia); we have differing relationships to gender and queerness. These notions of identity inform our work, but don’t define it. We prefer to live in the margins. It is natural to us that many of our collaborators come from marginalized or underrepresented communities, with regards to race, queerness, gender, and disability; we value collaborations with artists who are critical, interdisciplinary, and intercultural in their mindsets.

WOV is an ongoing, evolving collaboration bonded by an intense friendship: we eat together, dance together, work together.

Conor Wylie

Conor Wylie is a performer, writer, and director creating experimental theatre. He lives and works in Vancouver, BC, located on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples, including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) nations. Conor regularly collaborates with Theatre Replacement, where he is an artistic associate, as well as with many members of Vancouver’s esteemed Progress Lab consortium.

In recent years, science-fiction and videogame aesthetics have figured prominently in his works. He co-wrote and performed Visitors from Far Away to the State Machine with Hong Kong Exile, about two aliens on an erotic honeymoon to Earth, performed live on webcams and featuring animations inspired by several generations of videogame graphics. He also collaborated on Theatre Replacement’s MINE, a cinematic performance investigating mythical, pop-culture, and personal stories of mothers and sons, performed in the sandbox videogame Minecraft. His works have played across Canada at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, The Cultch, Music on Main, Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver), Uno Festival (Victoria), Summerworks (Toronto), and the Magnetic North Theatre Festival (Yukon), and toured around Iceland, the UK, and Hong Kong.

In 2017, he was selected for the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Theatre Artist by Marcus Youssef. In 2019, he was chosen as the Siminovitch Prize Protégé by his dear mentors James Long and Maiko Yamamoto. In 2022, he was named Best Director of a Canadian Feature by the Vancouver Asian Film Festival for his work on K BODY AND MIND.

Daniel O’Shea

Daniel O’Shea makes theatre, designs projections, and creates films, using technology and design as a keystone to support narrative and deepen dramaturgy. In his own works PKD Workshow (2013) and Are we not drawn onward to new era (2018), Daniel employs a low-fi DYI aesthetic, exposing the guts of the performance machinery in parallel to the convoluting the ideas spectating. In 2020 he completed his first feature length film collaboration centred around pre-extradition bill Hong Kong. His work focuses on states of presence, unbalancing audienceship and novel constructions of light through design and new media. Daniel’s artistic research has explored the ephemeral nature of a ‘self’, interruptions of technology on human processes, and the results cognitive dissonance.

Daniel’s work has been seen in Canada and internationally. Daniel is engaged with Vancouver’s thriving contemporary performance scene and often engages in crossover with indie film and the digital arts.

Nancy Tam

Nancy is a sound artist who works and lives as an uninvited guest on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her work fuses sound and performance as primary mediums for the collaborative devising of interdisciplinary performances. Nancy is a founding member of the interdisciplinary performance collective A Wake of Vultures as well as the Toronto-based Toy Piano Composers collective. As a performance maker, Nancy works closely with Fight With A Stick performance company, having devised and collaborated on the Critic’s Choice Award winning show Revolutions in 2017. Her compositions, performances, and collaborations have toured in Germany, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, the U.S. and throughout Canada. An excerpt of her latest multi-media composition Walking at Night by Myself will be touring to Hong Kong in April 2019.

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

00:01

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 today's episode highlights old school magic, sci-fi prayers, hybridity, and more.

00:18

I'm speaking with Dan, Connor, and Nancy, the artists behind Seeing Double, which is being presented at the Push Festival, February 1st and 2nd, 2025. Seeing Double plays tribute to spooky late night double features with two performances that push pulpy cinematic genres into uncharted conceptual territories.

00:38

Stripping the psychological horror genre down to its bare bones, walking at night by myself undermines the reliability of perception in an audiovisual blitz of surround sound and vivid optical illusion.

00:51

K-Body and Mind is a cyberpunk odyssey channeled through a multimedia experience that reflects on tech-assisted immortality. Nancy Tam experiments with form and practices, dramaturgy to create immersive sonic designs and environmental performances for onstage and on-screen media.

01:09

Her research triangulates between sound, space, and body to examine the uncanny valley of haptics. She was a featured artist at Prague Quadrennial, 2023 for the Canadian Exhibition. Daniel O'Shea makes theater, designs projections, and creates films using technology and design as a keystone to support narrative and deepen dramaturgy.

01:32

Daniel employs a low-fi DIY aesthetic exposing the guts of the performance machinery in parallel to convoluting the idea of spectating. Connor Wiley performs, writes, and directs experimental plays, films, and video games, employing devised and collaborative processes to create fresh and unusual worlds.

01:50

He uses the science fiction genre to explore cultural and societal stories of grief, hope, and transformation. Here is my conversation with Dan, Connor, and Nancy. I just heard that this is the first time you've been in the same room in months.

02:07

It's true. We've just been kind of off in our own little avenues and projects, so getting back together is like a lot of energy, a lot of catching up, a lot of silliness that's working its way out. This is how vultures, the creatures are, right?

02:30

Like they fly off their solo and then they flock when there's something to eat. We're here for the ride of the reunion, the reunion special. Back together at last, now to Dan and Connor. I will just acknowledge that we are all in this conversation on the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh.

02:58

I'm a settler here and it's my responsibility to continue thinking and educating myself on the history and the ongoing effects of colonization. And that looks like different things, different days. And today it's a reflection on inspired by Malcolm Ferdinand's Decolonial Ecologies, where he talks about this colonial and environmental double fracture of modernity.

03:22

So referring to how humans have institutionalized hierarchies of white humans over non-whites and humans over nature, allowing the extractivism of colonization and nature and the exploitation of nature.

03:32

And that the climate crisis really can't be addressed without connecting the environmental movement with the anti-colonial movement. Great book, recommend it. And it's definitely some important thinking shared within it.

03:47

So I'm going to jump right into some questions about wake of vultures for people who don't know. So wake of vultures is a project based interdisciplinary performance company formed in 2013. It's a research development and producing vehicle for the three of you who began bonding over a shared fascination in social rituals, science fiction, anime, and questions of reality and perception.

04:13

So to be together for over 10 years beyond shared fascinations, what is the secret? What is the glue? Is it like this perfect balance of astrological signs or something more pragmatic? The glue is actually just friendship and pleasure in each other and deep, kind of profound interest in each other and how we think and how we engage with the world.

04:41

And yeah, I think that more than anything has kind of seen us through the space in between projects and the hard times inside of projects and yeah, all the kind of bumpiness that can come with. creative partnerships.

05:00

I totally agree with that. And I think like, you know, sometimes when you think about artistic partnerships or working partnerships that are built in friendships or like romantic relationships and stuff like that, like that can also be a bit combustible, right?

05:14

It's not always, you know, conducive to a professional environment. But I think what we have going also is that we have treated this as a long term relationship, you know, like we've helped each other to account.

05:28

We've been, you know, we've taken time to, you know, take a retreat and really talk things through and get on the same page and not kind of like coast through. So it's taken a lot of, you know, work that comes from that like loving friendship.

05:43

Yeah, I think also, like, the bond and the friendship that we share seeps into our working relationship in such a way that organizationally, we each will take leadership in various ways, in macro and micro ways.

06:03

So, and by that, I mean like, macroly speaking, for example, like I led Walking at Night by Myself, Connor led K Body and Mind, and then, you know, Dan will lead another project. And it's not like a schedule thing.

06:20

And in fact, we kind of watch out for one another and go like, hey man, like, it's been kind of, you know, two out of three, like we've been doing a lot of leadership. Like, let's, let's like how, it's not so much like, now it's your turn to do something.

06:34

It's more like, how do we help like bring something together that then someone else can lead? And that kind of generosity is driven by love and friendship. And then in micro ways, like I think the ways that we drive the design led process is very much reliant on the trust that we have in each other and the respect that we have for the expertise in the room, where, you know, it's not like everyone needs to chime in all the time to make a decision.

07:09

You know, it's like, oh, this, like whatever, you know, maybe it's like a filmic thing or setting up a shot. It's like, I don't, I don't really need to say anything. Like I do trust like Dan and his eye and what he's got going on, you know?

07:24

And so there's a lot of that where I think perhaps sets us apart from what traditional or conventional ideas of devised theater or devised organization work that like I've always seen it as like a rolling triangle of leadership and rolling triangle is really like admitting to that there is hierarchies, but it is always evolving and it is always emergent and it is held by each other.

07:55

and how by the trust and love that we are able to keep that rolling going on. And just, there perhaps is an astrological component. Oh. Because. Finally. I think the real heart here. A mutual friend of ours is very knowledgeable in this kind of stuff.

08:21

And when he learned about our birthdays, he was like, Oh yeah, that totally makes sense. Because apparently each of us is like the young element of our like element family. You can really see how much I know.

08:43

Go on. So as a, as a cancer, I'm like a young water sign. And as this is a real test. Yeah. As an Aries. Connor is a young fire sign. Yes. And as a. No, Jesus. When's my birthday, Dan? As a Gemini, Gemini.

09:08

Yeah, obviously. So Gemini of you right there. Nancy is a young air sign. And so even though we are all different in our elements, we are kind of connected in this whatever it means to be a young. Thing, you know, that resonates.

09:30

Beautiful. We're just three young things. I would love to actually just circle back to what you said, Nancy, about design led process. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Sure. And like you'll chime in as well.

09:48

What I what I think is a design led process is informed by my experience with other companies as well. But within this constellation, my practice based in performance making with a huge component of it under the lens of sound design and and Daniel with his, you know, performance practice and composition practice like but under the lens of visual design and for Connor narrative design, it is really like thinking around like form and content working together rather than going like a straight route of like first we have a script and then we design for it.

10:37

So a lot of our processes will actually come from a different realized design elements such as sound design, such as projection design. And then we develop other elements around it, so that's what I mean by design-led process.

10:59

What are you guys? And sometimes it can be processes curious about a kind of effect in the audience or like a gag or a trick or some, yeah, some kind of phenomenon that we're interested in manifesting.

11:16

And then in exploring, okay, well, what are the ways that we can create this? Like, can we create this sonically? Can it happen through the staging? Can it happen through the narrative or the character or dialogue or something like that?

11:29

Finding all these ways to like, get at the same audience experience and then having, taking all of those and then forming a show and linking them together into, okay, how do we craft that experience?

11:43

So PKD work show function somewhere like that about, trying to structure the audience's perception of what layer of the show that they were engaging with, or walking definitely functions like that in terms of trying to activate a kind of perceptual landscape through all of these kind of tools and the design.

12:07

And the performance character of K-Body of Mine was very much like foundational before the narrative. And this kind of approach to take the structural elements and put them in first, and then trying to build a flesh around that kind of has led us to make, I don't know, what we think of it as like a different road to a show.

12:40

Dan, if you could give us just like a little synopsis or like a little background context on PKD Workshow since you mentioned it, like what is it? Oh, PKD Workshow was one of the first shows that we did together.

12:55

And the three of us, plus Sean. Yeah. Yeah. And that was interested in playing around with kind of layers of performance. So it had a kind of raw workshop layer put on top of it. And then as the workshop went on, it was revealed that actually a lot of things were rehearsed and a lot of things were prepared.

13:26

And so it played with, at what level am I really, at what level is the show being honest with me? And it was based around Philip K. Dick and his work, his science fiction work, and a lot of his like reality bending kind of pulpy DNA.

13:46

Yeah. I want to talk more about what, like, are there comments? So, your work is marked by formal detachment, ritual, and unstable perspectives, to name a few. Can you speak more to that? I think we all just have a kind of general aesthetic interest in trippiness, you know, in stuff that kind of bends your mind a bit.

14:10

And so, I guess that's the thing that I've been doing for many years in a lot of my projects, right? It's just like picking a kind of container that sort of maybe mischievously proposes that it's one thing, and then it inverts itself midway.

14:27

I think the unstable perspective, you know, that really speaks to PKD. I think it also speaks to K-body and mind, so does the formal detachment, in that the work itself is kind of a puzzle on the surface.

14:42

All the elements are kind of pulled apart. uh, you know, as you sort of like hear the sort of radio play, um, sound design and the voice acting, but then pair it with this kind of like disembodied robotic performance style.

14:59

Um, this detachment, um, causes you to kind of like fill in the blanks yourself, make a movie in your head. Um, and that was kind of inspired, you know, a long, a long time ago, the kind of formalism of Robert Wilson, um, or the minimalism of Richard Maxwell and the New York city players.

15:16

And I, and I know goes back further to, to Brecht and stuff like that too. So I think there's like some, some old school theater detachment that has always been interesting to me anyway. I don't know if there's more that you guys want to say about.

15:30

I think the, the ritual element in that, um, is often played out in how we exist in the rooms together when we're, we're making, um, there's, I don't know if it's a tendency or at this point, it's a conscious act, active, uh, drive, but we do tend to fall into rituals for any given project, whether it's, um, you know, arriving in a certain way or, um, you know, trying to manifest whatever values are feel appropriate for that project.

16:06

But, um, this, this sense of submitting to a kind of structure, a chosen, a chosen structure based on values and, and desired outcomes, it's like, um, yeah, I feel like we do become open to being what, what we need for to fulfill that, that ritual or that show, you know?

16:31

If I may elucidate a little bit though, like the ritual thing, right? Like this gets specific about it, right? Like there's all sorts of rituals that, you know, many, uh, rehearsal practices might have like a check-in or some kind of hunker at the end of the day to kind of let the day go and.

16:46

we kind of get interested in like making our own versions of that based on whatever thing we're working on. So in PKD work show, we had a little sci-fi prayer that we would do at the end of the day to kind of try to invoke the sort of spooky ghost of PKD in a way.

17:01

I'm remembering when we were making a short piece for Blink, which is an event that Leaky Heaven puts on every once in a while, you know, we had our notebooks full of like one minute performances that we were gonna do, you know, and we're like, okay, let's make a top five, you know, that would be a common ritual for people to do.

17:16

What's our top five here, you know? And then we were like, for fun, for ourselves. We were like, let's make a dark five also, you know? Like what are the five ones that would be really weird for us to do, you know, just as a thought experiment.

17:27

So, and then dark five has become like a, every once in a while and you're like, you need to get my bad ideas out. We'll just say it, move through it, find the next thing. So we kind of make these little custom rituals for ourselves and our processes, I think.

17:42

And I think like ritual too can be referred to in a philosophical like definition as well as like meaning making, right? Like you're imbuing a form with meaning. And I think like that word, you know, lends itself very well in theatrical practices and has been for a long, long, long, long, long time.

18:02

But I think for how it applies to us too is like, it's language making, it's vocabulary building, you know, we have all sorts of like having been friends and collaborators for like 10 plus years, like we just have so many short hands.

18:21

There have been like conversations where Dan and I will have by simply looking at each other. And we're like, okay, and like we don't realize and then people are like, well, but can you say it out loud?

18:33

Because we don't know what just happened. But like, you know, so the clarity of which are like, sometimes I'm that guy. And then sometimes this will happen. And then I'll be that guy, you know, and, and I think like the ritualizing of like, it can also be interpreted as, as just like building vocabulary and a language.

18:55

And I think that is probably experienced similarly with different groups that come together. And yeah, like, you know, trippiness or just like goofiness, I think there's also a lot of one upmanship of like, how do you like, spin a bit, you know, and usually those are the best, like gems that, you know, become part of or that, you know, has gone through so many iterations, then it loses goofiness,

19:28

but like, it be that little spark. And I think like, thinking around that, like, for, for walking, you know, one of those things, trying to break this, like, it's, in between of like a just like colored globes that are happening to like the rest of the show.

19:48

I'm like, okay, everybody, we're gonna, we're gonna just like make a joke in here. And then we found like a transition in between. So yeah, I think that like ritualizing or like meaning making slash like vocabulary building, it feels very much connected in the ways that we work.

20:09

Our work, I think looks like, will look pretty like, often looks pretty conceptually like serious, you know? Like, and we take it seriously, we build it seriously, but we also joke around and are really silly with each other.

20:24

Yeah, to make it. Walking at Night by Myself and Kay Body and Mind are two different company works that you have since realized are strange sisters and designed as a double feature. What makes these two works strange sisters?

20:38

Walking at Night by Myself as well as Kay Body and Mind feature. performers who are very similar in like the physical attributes, and then they are also dressed in like in the same uniform costumes. And this idea, this formal idea, as well as a design idea, actually came from K came from PKD workshop, which Daniel had brought up before.

21:10

And so I think like that has always been a through line. It feels like that's been like become like a company interest to to do like same, same, but different. Yeah, like some, some desire to have like a very dim room with people that look the same.

21:34

And you don't know who is who, or which is what, and, and how to like pin meaning or action or consequence on to either one that like the interchangeability of identity or something that I think works best on stage in person, because, you know, in film, you know, you can cut in between and you can have twins.

21:59

It's no, it's no problem, right? But there's just something trippy about seeing two people who look very similar and you can't quite pin down who's who it's like, oh, it's just an old school kind of magic trick.

22:10

And I mean, with K, that came from a place of like wanting to see if we can sort of separate your identity of who you are as a performer on stage from from who you're playing, which is like in a way an old clown kind of thing too.

22:26

But I think there's a certain trippiness that came out of the twinning in both of those shows that felt like they had resonance for each other. And then, you know, as is often the case for us, we like we because we love the long been and we love to like.

22:42

deep play and vocabulary building that like we've accrued like a great group of collaborators on this right and so um you know Jasmine Chen was in um because Walking Dead like multiple iterations of casts right you you Nancy was in it at one point and then Angie's always been in it and then once you wanted to step out of the work Jasmine stepped into the work so there was already a doubling of casting in between the two shows as well um and so it just felt like there's some interesting like identity conflation between the shows you know as you see Jasmine from one show to the next oh do you remember her as that last role into this new role um that feels like a resonance for me inside of those two works i think also like the all of these shows that we mentioned like really deal with like uh illusions as as a big part that drives the the work and um I think with walking,

23:42

I'm really, really trying to like go to the ends of that of like, okay, not only do you have like the two people who are dressed very similarly, now there is like illusions between or interactions of like the costumes and then also the projection, as well as you're in this, you know, immersive surround sound that also plays funny tricks on your ears as well and that whereas I think like, okay, it feels like you start off with like almost like two very different bodies or like two very different people because you also like see them both at the same time you see them like,

24:29

you know, like considering the rest of the show was like pretty bright light. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And then and then they start to come together, the identity starts to overlap, whereas like I think in walking is the opposite where you really propose, I really try to propose them as like one and the same and then through the length of the show that how do these characters or bodies individuate?

24:55

And so like, yeah, I just think like kind of the long game of asking these questions of like, who's who's who? When is this person themselves? When is it? When are they play? Are they playing? And when are they playing themselves?

25:14

Like those those questions become kind of eternally like fascinating in our work, just overall as our, you know, ongoing investigation. And there's like, there is, yeah, this duality, and this, the problematization of that duality, like walking at night by myself is the title.

25:35

And it features two, two people that look exactly the same. And so the question of like, which often comes up with people that see the show that they interpret like, okay, is this one person with two identity?

25:49

Is this two people walking together? Is one of them a shadow? Like all of these kind of questions in the way that Kay puts forward very straightforwardly that they're, you know, that sense of identity is split amongst all these bodies, and that one person can be another and that this, the whole collective project is about dispersing through the body and through these two bodies in this case.

26:21

So yeah, I think we just started to see all of the parallels and the casting and the thematic material and really thought something interesting could happen when both these play together and they start having a resonance with each other.

26:39

And we really wanted to find out like what is, was that kind of harmonic that these two create when they're back to back? Which will, and this scene double will premiere at Push 2025. That's right. Yeah, exciting.

26:54

I'm excited. Come experience the resonance. Let's also talk about the place of futurism and retro in your work, as terms that are referred to in how you describe key themes or aesthetic interests. This one, we're probably gonna be riffing quite a bit, but there's a big through line through all of our interests, which is like science fiction, speculative kind of fiction, a curiosity in the kind of near edge of what can be,

27:32

what is possible and kind of where things are going. In a way, it feels like we already live in the future with the kind of technological changes that we've kind of seen in our lifetime, but that kind of profound interest in what is possible.

27:54

As we work in that kind of like contemporary performance sphere and are incorporating technologies into our work, sometimes it feels like there's always a push to like use new software, use the newest tools, the like whatever's available to you.

28:07

And I definitely noticed with you, Dan, you're often like wiring things yourself, right? You're using old fluorescent tubes. We're doing a kind of like custom build thing that feels like there's so much interesting like design work that can be done using these old technologies in a different kind of way rather than always adopting the latest, which we do also, right?

28:31

We are using new technologies, but like just having this blend, I don't know, allows you to have like a certain. criticality or like allows you to like expose the machine as part of the work. Whereas sometimes, you know, it's just like a projector off stage is like meant to be kind of invisible.

28:48

And if you just, you know, viewing the product of what's happening, you know, like, I like that we often see the like, the guts of the machinery inside of it. It's another maybe detachment that happens, right?

28:58

When you see how it's made or whatever, that feels like, I don't know, at least distinctive about your visual aesthetic, your design aesthetic. This idea of futurism is like, it's so broad. And it also feels, I don't know, I've been just like, kind of thinking and reading Donna Haraway's work and thinking around like ideas like post humanist.

29:21

And like, obviously, we also encounter that and K body of mine. And yeah, I have like such complicated mixed meanings about the like, of the word because it feels like it's like, you know, some somewhere out there.

29:37

you know, whereas I think like the mix of like, as Connor said, like the technique and also the concept kind of like reveals like that all of our constructions conceptual and are practical or fallible and makes it more human actually and makes it more relatable and more of now.

29:56

And it's way more closely a reflection which, you know, sci-fi is a genre plays with anyhow. Like, you know, it puts a far off of the future. It puts it off world as a reflection of what is actually happening.

30:12

So I think in that way, both of these shows kind of do that and very abstracted maybe like somewhat distance ways. And then another thing that kind of I thought of is that for my own interests anyhow, I'm always really interested in like, or not, well, I don't know if it's interest, but this response to like, you know, everything has already been made, you know, this idea of like, there's nothing new anymore.

30:41

There's no originality anymore. Or like, you know, my response to it personally is just like, well, okay, well, if that is true, say if that is true, then like the newness is in the combination thereof.

30:56

And in the little Venn diagram piece where, you know, two old things are touching. So I think in the ways that we consider like the play between like retro or lo-fi or DIY and like, you know, heady concepts or futurism or post-modernism or post-humanism is actually just getting us to look at this like Venn diagram of different things that have already, that are existing.

31:29

Right, and I think that comes from, for myself anyway, it's like, have always, had to be this way, because I'm a sound artist, but I also am a theater maker. And I'm always borrowing grammar and methodologies and creation devices from both of these disciplines to making work.

31:56

So by just existing, it has to be a hybridity of these things. And to create, then, a new thing and a third, or a conceptual or philosophical third, which conceptually, walking at night by myself, really try to deal with that, but in a phenomenological way of how do you have one pattern and another pattern, just simply by existing together, create something new, something emergent and something spontaneous and almost,

32:34

yeah, like unrepeatable. That resonates for me inside of like, inside of K body and mind in that, you know, I don't think, yeah, I don't think I was trying to predict the future or, you know, or a future I'd it's a, you know, it's a very imagined world.

32:54

But, you know, it was a combination of it was the like excitement of trying to combine like, really, some of this like old school theatrical minimalism technique that I was like, I want to see if I could push that to the edge by like, doing it in a cyberpunk genre, right?

33:10

Like doing the matrix doing that ghost and ghost in the shell. These kinds of like super maximalist stories to really like push your imagination to the to the to the edge. Like that was the that was the jumping off point, right?

33:23

Was this like looking back. And I think, you know, as we went along, like, I remember a moment when we were working, we were, I was working with Leah Weinstein, who's the costume designer. And, you know, the first draft of the costumes, as I had kind of proposed, with these like sleek black costumes with these neon stripes had a real like Tron vibe, you know, and I was like, Oh, it like the show sounds cyberpunk,

33:54

and the story is cyberpunk. And now it looks cyberpunk. And somehow I was like, it's not, it's not right. It's not doing it because they're like, the sort of like neon cyberpunk aesthetic was already playing out in a super nostalgic way on Netflix or in you know, like altered carbon was had just sort of come out and like altered carbon is another show that I was like, Oh, you know, this is like actually a similar premise to what we have going on here,

34:18

except I really didn't like I really didn't like the approach of it. I didn't like the economics of it. I didn't like what it had to say about the future, you know, so that made me kind of go like, oh, I have to like actually disrupt the visuals and reach further back to imagine the future.

34:34

And so we ended up landing on a kind of kind of more Tarkovsky in. You're like a solaric. Exactly, yeah. Solaris vibe that was like cozier and softer. And I think that really played out in how it was filmed as well.

34:50

And the lighting and everything, the color palette that we chose, that there was like, yeah, a certain looking back. And what I guess felt like in those aesthetics, a kind of like optimism of the future that just felt so like lush and warm and we were going to be cozy, that ended up finding its way also into the story of the world as well too.

35:17

I didn't want to find this like, this cyberpunk dystopianism of living in these oppressive, realienating cities. It was like, and this, I mean, we live in, You know, some somewhat cyberpunk-y looking world now, you know, but it was like, oh, wait, no, what did these people who are living in this near future?

35:41

What do they actually dream of, you know, and can they actually try to actualize their ideal society? Not easily, you know, it's not it's not a utopia, you know, but like, what if we earnestly tried to make this better future?

36:01

Instead of, you know, creatively just, you know, saying, oh, yeah, no, corporations are going to control everything. And, you know, like, I had to pull myself, you know, out of the kind of nihilism or, you know, inevitability of.

36:18

Yeah. Yeah. Dream a little. Yeah, totally. And you referenced the film. So I wanted to chat about that a bit because cave body and mind had an iterative creation process created for the stage first, then turned into a film during the pandemic.

36:33

And now its final iteration integrates digital and live representation of the characters on the same stage. And so can you talk about what each layer of this development contributed with regard to or in terms of how form affected the dramaturgy of the work and what affect this integration of video and performance creates now?

36:53

Yeah, probably not succinctly. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, we, you know, we theater replacement supported this project in the beginning through through their Collider program, which is the sort of project based residency.

37:07

And so we made a 20 minute version, which is effectively the like the bones of like chapter one. And the whole intention was to make it a live show. But there was a moment after we had finished performing that version where we, you know, we didn't make documentation of it.

37:26

And and so we shot it and very like we were instantly kind of like, oh, while the like, the kind of like glitch aesthetics of how the performers are performing and how all these layers come together actually lends itself really well to being on screen.

37:42

And so I put it in the back of my hand that I was like, okay, one day after we're finished this, maybe I'll make a web series or something like that. And then the pandemic came and we, you know, could no longer do the live premiere that we were slated for.

37:55

And so it just became very clear right away that, okay, now we gotta, we gotta shoot it. And, you know, we had discussed like live streams and stuff like that. And, you know, I knew that, you know, having, you know, witnessed live streams happening all the time, the kind of like video and audio compression of the internet and stream, you know, it was like, it was not the way to represent the kind of like intricate design work that,

38:20

you know, underpinned the show. So, and, you know, it just so happened that I had an amazing sound designer and a filmmaker. already on the team that understood the dramaturgy from, you know, the inside out.

38:33

And so it just became very clear that it was like, okay, no, we'll film it. And then we'll release it for streaming. And, you know, as you were saying Nan earlier about, you know, just turning over, you know, trust to each other.

38:49

Really it was like, Dan put the whole shot list together. Dan really like directed the filming of the project. And so we had that online release. And then when it finally came time to bring it back live, I think part of the iteration was like, man, we did so much work on that film and it's awesome.

39:13

And I don't want to throw that away. It doesn't make sense anymore in the iterative process of this thing to just like to throw that away and take it all the way back to the stage. And that's when we kind of, I think came up with the notion of the hybrid, the hybrid viewing.

39:31

And, you know, the work is already such a puzzle of layers. You know, the choreography is telling you one story. The lights are telling you another story that the voice and the text are telling you something.

39:42

The sound is telling you something. And then having that extra layer of film and having the performers doubled in front of the film is just one more opportunity for us to like make this show feel like it's calibrating itself.

39:57

It's trying to, you know, it's trying to give you the unified vision. It's working towards it, but the machine is falling apart because it's been invaded by this entity. And so it just became one extra layer inside of it that, you know, could, you know, just an extra level of the puzzle for you to figure out.

40:17

And an extra kind of layered towards the final manifestation not to spoil everything, but the emergence and the, and the, realization of the kind of the nascent entity, right? Slowly going through these mediated layers until arriving in a body that's doing what it's saying, how it's moving, and how it's being present, which is so much of the kind of emotional through line for that character.

40:54

And I think part of it too is like when, like from the very, very, very beginning, like even just the script itself, it's like written in such a way that's way more like a TV script, like the dialogue is like way more to like a TV or like a movie script than it is like a play script.

41:20

Yeah, that's true. So like that in itself lends so like it just lands so well when we saw it, it was like Well, yeah, that works. And knowing that it was this kind of like a radio play, wanted to make the sound design and the composition of it, the scoring, to be very much like a driver of action.

41:48

And narrative. And what is actually happening is contained in the sound. You can just kind of trust the sound more than you can trust what you're seeing on stage, I think. Right, right. And so when we see that combination on screen, you can kind of just sit back and follow.

42:09

And then it's not, I don't know, I've watched it like countless times. And I often will just kind of go like, whoa, but they're not actually moving. You can kind of just get into this ride. And then I think part of the company, I don't know, maybe aesthetic, maybe just like value is like, we like things to be very tight.

42:40

We like to be extremely precise. And we like to be really good at doing that. And when we were preparing for the live iteration and then for the filming, the two actors are acting live. I'm playing all of the sounds that you hear live.

43:05

And part of it was just like, well, I mean, yeah, we can show the film, but there is a kind of tightness that you only get when the stakes are higher, when you can see it happening. So that was kind of like part of the allure, I think, for us to go like, oh, how do we do that?

43:28

get it together. You know, um, and I don't know, I feel like with for us, it's like if there is a hard puzzle, it will probably try the ends of the earth to do it. I love what you said about this too, because I remember, you know, when we shot the when we shot the film, right, we shot runs of it, and then we shot took special individual shots of things, but like the bare bones of it are runs of the episodes,

43:54

you know. And it's like people don't know that when they watch the when they watch it on screen, right, they just assume that it's been shot like a TV show would usually be shot, right. And so you kind of like in the over the course of the performance, get to ask that question and have it answered, you know, you're like, is this how did they shoot this, you know, and then it's like, and then as they,

44:14

you know, as the farmers get more and more intricate into it, you're like, oh, oh, they can actually do it. Like they get really happens in front of you, you know, and it's a really interesting thing of like, watching these two people on the screen for as long as you do, and then seeing them in person, in front of you, there's just something kind of electric that happens about that, you know?

44:38

Yeah. Especially in that chapter two, where it is working with a kind of VHS logic. Yeah, right, right, right, yeah. Of the rewind and of the replay. And so, yeah, the logic of playing back a surveillance video on bodies actually moving through space in a forward in time, right?

45:03

Just makes that land even more about how they are subject to this kind of the force of the show or the pressure of the show to figure out what's going on and troubleshoot. And I think this relates to the earlier question of like, how is this like Strings Sisters or like, and why is it a double feature?

45:27

Because we like, we love cinema and we just love, we love watching TV and we love anime. And so both of these shows are kind of inspired by filmic genres and filmic tropes. Yeah, just like also another way that it lends itself to being a hybrid or like how, you know, something like kind of this mixing and muxing of on screen and on stage media.

45:57

Thank you. Well, I'm excited, obviously. Thanks, Gabriel. We're excited to be here too. But yeah, I really am grateful for you sharing and bringing us a little bit deeper into your process, your approach, how you work together and just, you know, dropping in some references that are really intriguing for those who haven't seen the work.

46:21

Get your popcorn in, come to the theater and get scared. Yeah, you're gonna get scared. It's been such a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was Gabriel Martin's conversation with Nancy Tam, Daniel O'Shea, and Connor Wiley of Awake of Vultures.

46:43

Awake of Vultures will present a double feature at the PUSH International Performing Arts Festival supported by Do 604, K Body and Mind, and Walking at Night by Myself. You can take in both shows on the same night for a discount or purchase a single ticket to either work.

47:01

Both performances will be at the Scotiabank Dance Centre on February 1st and 2nd. I'm Ben Charland and I produce this podcast alongside the wonderful Trisha Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

47:14

New episodes of PUSH Play are released every Tuesday and Friday wherever you get your podcasts. For more information on the 2025 festival and to discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theater, dance, music, and multimedia performances, visit pushfestival.ca.

47:32

And on the next push play... I needed to be two or three simultaneously in the space. And then so I then I was like, wow, then pushing that idea besides and trying again to come back to create a solo.

47:46

And it was really persistent for weeks that I could not start a creation because I needed to be more than one.