Chronology of Major Productions 

• The Performance Art Trap, 2007 
• Assembly, 2007/08/09
  
• Experiment #3: The Shattered Soul
• Experiment #2: The Fractured Mind, 2006
• Experiment #1: The Abandoned Body, 2005
• Final Viewing, 2005
• Half a Tank, 2003/04
• Silent Summer Nights, Annual
• SexMachine, 2003
• Sniffy the Rat Bus Tour, 2001/03
• The Swedish Play, 2002
• Bewildered, 2001
• Box², 2000/02
• Box, 1999
• All Flesh is Grass, 1998
• Absolute Indifference, 1997
• Pleased to Meet Me, 1997
• The Blind Musician, 1996/97
• An Irrational Man, 1995
• Instruments of Torture, 1994
• The Surveyor, 1993
• Artifact, 1992
• Proper Identification, 1992
• Mercedes, 1991
• Self-Accusation, 1990
• The Other Peter Pan, 1988

The Performance Art Trap

June 22nd 2007 during
 FUSE at the Vancouver Art Gallery. 

Radix returned to the VAG for another edition of FUSE.  Taking a page from similar events in Paris and Toronto, the VAG opened its doors all night for the first time ever on the shortest night of the year.  "Sleepy Vancouver" turned out to be not so sleepy as thousands took the dare and partied til the wee hours.
The Performance Art Traps offered metaphors for the trappings of life.  The traps were giant custom-built cardboard boxes, 6 feet high and 8 feet long, propped up with a stick like a rudimentary rabbit trap.  The 'bait' was a performer inside, with an empty chair for the 'catch' to sit in.  With the victim seated a nearby security guard, dressed identically to VAG security, pulled the stick and "whump!" the trap was released! 
Created and Performed by
Thomas Anfield
Susan Elliott
Jesse Garlick
Katy Harris-McLeod
Clay Hastings
Jacques Lalonde
Sean Lang
Andrew Laurenson
Billy Marchenski
Emelia Symington Fedy
Paul Ternes
Robyn Volk

Assembly

Assembly is a an artistic exploration into the themes of wholeness and fragmentation, gathered around contemporary notions of the body, mind, and soul. The work began with Experiment #1: The Abandoned Body, presented during LIVE: Vancouver's Performance Art Biennial in November 2005, and was followed by Experiment #2: The Fractured Mind  at the Vancouver Art Gallery's FUSE March 2006, and Experiment #3: The Shattered Soul, presented as part of  HIVE November 2006. The three parts were then brought together to form Assembly,  which premiered March 2007 at the Pacific Palisades Hotel.  The show was adapted for the stage and presented at Montreal's Theatre Lachapelle in February 2008, and will return to Vancouver February 4 - 9, 2009 at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

Assembly is a surreal self-improvement seminar that confronts the desire for unity in an increasingly divided world.  Four seminar leaders share the secret to becoming whole as they gradually fall apart.  Bizarre breakout sessions offer equal parts tongue-in-cheek parody and absurdist drama, as we unlock our deepest desires and try to remember what getting together is all about.

Winner of the Vancouver Sun Critics' Choice Award for Innovation
at the 2007 Jessie Richardson Awards

and

One of Vancouver's best live shows in 2007
The Georgia Straight

A collective creation, featuring:
Katy Harris-McLeod
Andrew Laurenson
Billy Marchenski
Emelia Symington Fedy

Paul Ternes, Direction
Andrew Laurenson, Direction, Video Design
Andreas Kahre, Scenography, Graphic Design
Stefan Smulovitz, Sound Design
Sean Lang, Video Design, Photography
Robyn Volk, Costume Design
Rachel Peake, Lighting
Janet Baxter, Photography
Justine Fafard, Production Management
Andrew Templeton, Publicity
Kaja Tvedten, Volunteer Coordinator

Montreal version directed by Alex Ferguson
Lighting Design by Itai Erdal

 

Thank you to our many volunteers who assisted so greatly.  And to the staff and management of the  Pacific Palisades Hotel.

Experiment #3: The Shattered Soul

Presented as part of  HIVE, November 9 - 11, 2006 at The Chapel.

This performance installation took place in the cloak room of an old funeral home during an evening of short theatrical installations by 10 of Vancouver's most adventurous theatre companies (and one from Victoria!). HIVE was a unique and unprecedented collaboration between these eleven producing companies joining together in a spirit of community, innovation, and celebration.

Exp #3: The Shattered Soul was an emotionally charged encounter designed for one audience member at a time. After putting on a pair of wireless headphones, you are confronted with a man's voice inviting you to come inside. You enter a room occupied by a coffin. The voice attempts to explain himself. He desperately tries to tell you what this is all about, but is unable to do so, and instead lists off all the things this is not about. This is not about death, or the fear of death, or loss, or grief, or anything else he can think of for that matter. He invites you closer to smell the flowers. Inside the wreath of lillies is a view finder hidden from view. Looking in you see life flashing before your eyes, and a man's face appears out of the void. His eyes gaze deeply into your own. You share a moment together in silence.  He smiles, and thanks you for coming.

Created by Andreas Kahre, Andrew Laurenson, Billy Marchenski, Elliot Neck, and Paul Ternes

Performed by Billy Marchenski

Directed by Paul Ternes
Production Team:
Andreas Kahre, Co-Creator and Graphic Design
Stefan Smulovitz, Sound Design
Andrew Laurenson and Sean Lang, Video Design
Elliot Neck, Camera Obscura and Coffin Construction

Experiment #2: The Fractured Mind

Presented during FUSE at the Vancouver Art Gallery, March 24, 2006.

Four “teams” of three performers each roved through the gallery space, representing our divided selves. A ‘severed’ head was featured in a rolling display case, dragged by an exhausted, mute and blindfolded figure. An imposing security guard stood by, (dressed identically to the VAG security staff) occasionally whispering something in the figure’s ear. Each display case had a laptop computer inside, enabling the performer to play pre-recorded audio or speak through a live audio program designed by Stefan Smulovitz. The result was a distorted audio collage of the often confusing internal soundtrack of contemporary life.

Each team took a 45-minute “tour” through the gallery before uniting in the rotunda for a performance that synthesized audio, video, and movement. Three of the boxes were placed side-by-side, while a fourth contained a video projector that showed images on the other three. The images showed elements that might lead to fragmentation of one’s mind: an overabundance of numbers and information, television and radio signals, prescription pills,and in a subtle ode to Brian Jungen’s white whale sculptures, segments of the 1956 film version of Moby Dick — the great tale of one man’s obsessive desire to control nature. With the video playing, the bodies were finally released of their boxly burden to climb the stairs of the rotunda in search of ascendancy, hampered by the Security Guards on their journey. At the top of the stairs the bodies enter into a momentary blissful waltz with the guards, only to be cast back down to resume their futile Sisyphean task.

Marie Lopes, Adult Programs Coordinator at the Vancouver Art Gallery, said “The Fractured Mind was a model of interdisciplinarity in the arts; theatrically and visually stunning, intellectually provocative and conceptually rigorous.We have been inundated with positive feedback from a very enthusiastic audience since your performance!”

Experiment #2: The Fractured Mind (quicktime video, 2:40 minutes)

Created by Andreas Kahre, Andrew Laurenson, and Paul Ternes with the performers.

Performed by Thomas Anfield, Kevin Bergsma, Katy Harris-McLeod, Sean Lang, Andrew Laurenson, Billy Marchenski, Dan Paterson, Tanya Podlozniuk, Paul Ternes, Andy Thompson,  Monica Trejbal, Bessie Wapp,

Directed by Andrew Laurenson and Paul Ternes

Production Team:
Andreas Kahre, Co-Creator and Graphic Design
Stefan Smulovitz, Sound Design
Andrew Laurenson and Sean Lang, Video Design
Elliot Neck, Display Case Design
Robyn Volk, Costume Design

Experiment #1:The Abandoned Body

Presented during LIVE: Vancouver's Performance Art Biennial, 2005.

The public anatomies
of the 15th century revealed an entirely new way of looking at the human body – the body as corpse. Previously, the body was a mysterious vessel, not to be desecrated by human hands. These events pre-dated early theatre, crowds gathered and tickets were sold to feed a public fascination for spectacle and knowledge.

According to author Robert D.

Romanyshyn in his book Technology as Symptom and Dream: “The corpse is an image of the abandoned body and a way of imagining the body as abandoned. It is a vision of the body, a specific way of looking at the body. It is a perspective, which, in focusing on the body itself as a spectacle for observation, isolates the body from its living context or situation and fragments the body which it sees.” For Experiment #1, Radix will use Romanyshyn’s text as a point of departure to create a performance installation that looks at how our understanding of the body as anatomical object separates us from the lived, personal experiences of the bodies we inhabit.

“The body… as corpse upon the stage of the dissecting table is as much a piece of created fiction as it is discovered fact. The body observed on the stage of the dissecting table belongs as much to the realm of art as it does to science.” (Romanyshyn)

Directed by:
Andrew Laurenson & Paul Ternes

Created by: Katy Harris-McLeod, Andreas Kahre, Andrew Laurenson, and Paul Ternes

Performed by:
Katy Harris-McLeod, Tanya Marquardt, Andrew Laurenson, Paul Ternes

Production Team:
Andreas Kahre and Elliot Neck, Set Design
Elliot Neck, Lighting Design
Andreas Kahre, Graphic Design
Stefan Smulovitz, Sound Design
Andrew Laurenson and Sean Lang, Video Design

Experiment #1: The Abandoned Body (quicktime video, 3:57 minutes)

Final Viewing

Final Viewing begins at a wake, where audience members gather with philanthropist Dan Goodman (Andrew Laurenson) to commemorate John Doe (Paul Ternes), who one year prior sacrificed his life pushing Goodman out of the way of a speeding taxicab. Now, to honour his anonymous saviour, Goodman has created "The International Centre for Active Goodness," to reward and publicize extraordinary deeds. After a drink and sing-a-long at the wake (in the Lamplighter Hotel pub), audience members travel down the street to an office building for a tour of the International Centre. The tour soon derails, and we find ourselves inside Goodman's mind, travelling through the haunted corridors of the Centre, which speak of Dan's memories and his dying wishes: if only someone had pushed him out of the way of that speeding taxicab, if only someone had performed an act of goodness...

Final Viewing was presented to critical acclaim in Vancouver as a satellite show at the 2005 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, and toured to standing ovations in Quebec City during Recto-Verso's Mois Multi Festival.

Directed by Heidi Taylor
Created by Andrew Laurenson, Paul Ternes and Heidi Taylor, with Stefan Smulovitz (Sound Design)
Video Design: Sean Lang
Stage Design and Management: Adam Stokes
Photos by Janet Baxter

Half a Tank

Part drive-in theatre, part live radio show, Half a Tank is a spectacular meditation on our relationship with the automobile. The show takes place in a large parking lot, with audience members seated inside their cars, parked in a large circle facing inward. (Those without cars are encouraged to car-pool or car share on-site.) Inside the circle a 1978 Dodge Diplomat rotates endlessly, with expert driver Cameron Shaft (Sean Lang) at the wheel.

Audience members listen to their car radios as radio station CKAR is on location to cover an historic occassion: the Diplomat is about to pass 500,000 miles on the odometer. CKAR's Bob Piston hosts a celebration of the life of the Diplomat, originally owned by Tommy Dankson of Enderby, B.C., with a collection of stories, samples and songs created and presented by Andreas Kahre, Andrew Laurenson, Ron Samworth and Paul Ternes. The event also features the Good Lookin' Roller Team who provide exciting choreography and window service to patrons, the Pit Crew who keep windows clean and ensure our supply of gas, with additional appearances from Pedal Power, Thomas Anfield and other special guests.

Half a Tank was critically acclaimed in Vancouver and Toronto, and achieved national coverage with a preview story that was picked up by several newspapers across the country. The show was a suprising hit with families, offering entertainment for all ages (the kids had permission to honk the car horn all night.) The show reflects our dysfunctional relationship with the automobile: we love our cars but they are killing us. Half a Tank culminates in a lavish ceremony as the Diplomat dies and is towed away to 'the next lot,' crammed with a teeming mass of humanity. The audience is left to ponder a flaming oil drum as the show comes to an end. (Photos by Janet Baxter)

Watch a Quicktime .mov document of HALF A TANK

Present the Half a Tank show in YOUR TOWN

Silent Summer Nights

Flash is required to view this animation: Free Download Celebrate the End of Summer in Style

Do a little something different on Labour Day weekend – saunter into Commercial Drive’s Grandview Park for Silent Summer Nights, three fantastic evenings of the best in silent (and not so silent) film. Park your blanket under the stars and enjoy outdoor films with original live musical accompaniment by Stefan Smulovitz’s brilliant Eye of Newt ensemble, and invited guests. A Labour Day classic.

SexMachine

SexMachine was inspired by Wilhelm Reich, one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. A pioneer of body centred psychotherapy, Reich studied the inextricable link between our physical and mental health. His early studies into the nature of the orgasm led to his later claim of having discovered cosmic life energy that he called 'orgone.' This energy was common knowledge to healing traditions of the East, known by various names such as chi or prana, but to the North American medical establishment his claim was heresy.

Created by the Radix collective, SexMachine looked at the themes surrounding the life and work of this "mad scientist" to examine some of our contemporary attitudes towards sex, power, and freedom of expression.

This site-specific show was set in the beautifully restored Shelly Building at 119 West Pender. Upon arrival, audience members were treated as though they were coming to a sex clinic for a tour and possible treatment. They were met by 'staff' dressed in lab coats, asked to remove their shoes and wear hygenic surgical socks, and given a 'treatment' on a 60's era hip-shaking belt machine. From there they were led through a series of performance installations in several of the offices on that floor, enveloping them in a surreal atmosphere of poetically charged and viscerally stimulating imagery.

Watch a Quicktime .mov document of SEXMACHINE

Created by Alison Dowsett, Noah Drew, Emma Howes, Andrew Laurenson, Billy Marchenski, Tanya Marquardt, John Popkin, Paul Ternes & Sarah Wendt.

Sniffy the Rat Bus Tour

For a little while, the world cared about a rat!

Watch 22 Short Films about Sniffy the Rat

Take the tour that everyone's talking about! Now you can travel on a luxury tour bus for an in-depth examination of the story behind Vancouver's most famous rodent. Was it art, or was it simply insane?

In 1990, Vancouver performance artist Rick Gibson declared he was going to crush a live rat named Sniffy onto a piece of canvas in a free public performance. The announcement spread like wildfire and made headlines around the world!

Find out how Rick Gibson managed to escape the clutches of an angry mob! See the sites where the Sniffy story happened, watch the video, meet the people! In-depth interviews, fascinating unknown facts, plenty of photo opportunities! Is Sniffy still alive? Is it true that Sniffy moved to Port Coquitlam? Learn about Sniffy's dramatic rescue and his ultimate fate.

A stunning display of human compassion and stupidity - all at once!

- Purchase Authentic Sniffy the Rat t-shirts and fridge magnets!
- Watch the Sniffy the Rat Bus Tour documentary video.
- Watch the archived CBC TV news report. (originally broadcast Jan. 6, 1990)
- Watch a Quicktime .mov document of The Sniffy Bus Tour

( *Tenth Anniversary Tour Co-pro with I Smell A Rat Productions)

The Swedish Play

The Swedish Play is a journey into desire and the poetry of object relations constructed around a roving performance staged inside IKEA. Part radio play, part guided tour, part scientific experiment and part Greek tragedy, The Swedish Play explores the collective dreams that lie beneath the surfaces of BILLY and OELLFASS, in a journey of memory and seduction. Using a cinematic aesthetic and strategy, the performance opens to the senses a realm that usually lies hidden, and helps us trace the interlocking paths of pleasure, longing, and desire that converge at IKEA.

The Swedish Play is an experiment in 'invisible theatre.' Performers and audience members travel through the store along with regular shoppers who generally have no idea that a performance is taking place right before their very eyes. In fact, the shoppers themselves are often the performers without even realizing it. A low-powered FM signal is transmitted inside the store "narrowcasting" the performance's soundtrack. The audience, equipped with tiny radio receivers, listen to 'inner' voices and soundscapes while encountering scenes and objects that secretly course through the veins of the store. Like nanoprobes, the audience members journey deep into the vast realm of sense data, social model and collective dream that is IKEA.

Watch a Quicktime .mov short document of The Swedish Play

Conceived by Andreas Kahre and developed with the Radix Collective.

Featuring (in alphabetical order): Nneka Croal, Allison Dowsett, Tara Fynn, Katy Harris-McLeod, Clay Hastings, Andrew Laurenson, Heather Lindsay, Jennifer McLeish-Lewis, Billy Marchenski, Tanya Marquardt, Dan Patterson, Laura Quigley, Gosia Santor, K.T. Shores, Kate Siddall, Brahm Taylor, Paul Ternes, Vic Ustare, Bessie Wapp, & Sarah Wendt.

Bewildered

Exploring the question "Having been tamed, is there anything wild still left in us?" Bewildered set out to examine untamed regions of the psyche: hidden obsessions, uncontrollable urges, acts of violence, insanity and suicide. Staged in a rarely used, split-level underground parking garage beneath the ballroom of an old dance hall, the peformance began with the audience descending into the dark underground space of the lowest parkade. As lights were turned on and off by the performers, different corners of this spooky basement appeared in and out of the darkness where eerie scenes were played out amongst the abandoned furniture and rusty appliances stored there. After climbing the stairs to the next level, an empty garage with a haunting echo, the audience listened to the gentle singing of one character until the garage door flew open and the man's song was cut short by the terrifying entrance of a speeding truck trying to run him down. The performance culminated on the next floor up where the audience took up a position on a balcony overlooking the ballroom. Complete with disco ball and dry ice, the ballroom performance included a spectacular video projection of hundreds of crows amassing in the sky while a 20-foot tall dark angel sang to a bewildered tap-dancer.

Winner of the Vancouver Sun Critics' Choice Award for Innovation at the 2002 Jessie Richardson Awards.

Watch a Quicktime .mov document of Bewildered

A Radix collective creation
Directed by Sherry J Yoon
Performed by Tasha Faye Evans, Brahm Taylor and Paul Ternes
With Lighting, Set Design, & Dramaturgy by Jay Dodge
Video by Andrew Laurenson

Box²

A further development of the themes and ideas behind Box, Box2 returned to the the Templeton diner to offer up a whole new menu, well mostly. This new production included a video segment that followed the busboy down Granville Street and into a XXX shop video booth where he gets transported 'outside the box' into a strange and distant forest before returning to the diner forever altered. Box2 was nominated for six Jessie Richardson Awards for excellence in Vancouver Theatre, including Best Production and Best Original Play,ultimately winning for Significant Artistic Achievement for Video, as well as for Best Actress (Kendra Fanconi). Box2 also successfully toured to Victoria, and most recently was presented at The Stem Diner during the inaugural Free Fall Festival in Toronto, October, 2002.

Created and performed by Kendra Fanconi, Andrew Laurenson and Paul Ternes. Directed by Craig Hall.

Box

The creation of Box began as an exploration of feelings of uncertainty about the future, contextualized by the awareness of the end of this millennium (the familiar) and the beginning of the next (the unknown).

The concept concretized in the image of a box inspired by Erwin Schroedinger's infamous thought experiment, in which a cat is placed inside a box that at some random moment releases a poisonous gas. According to quantum physics, since we cannot see the cat to determine if it is alive or dead the cat enters a kind of limbo, both alive and dead simultaneously, until the box is opened up to check. Originally, Radix imagined performers inside boxes, but the limitations of this idea sent the collective looking on the outside. They visited Vancouver's Templeton Diner and had a 'eureka' moment when their eccentric waitress delivered an on-going monologue about her life while serving customers. This was the box they were looking for. The company was trained as staff and operated the diner normally; many unsuspecting patrons were surprised when a performance emerged before them. Soon the entire diner was turned upside-down with lights, video projections, movement and song. One unsuspecting patron was so impressed by the production he funded a re-mount of the show for the 1999 Vancouver Fringe festival.

- Watch a Quicktime .mov document of Box
- Watch a local television report about site specific theatre including Radix Theatre's presentation of Box

Created by Tasha Faye Evans, Kendra Fanconi, Andreas Kahre, Andrew Laurenson, Stephen O'Connell, and Paul Ternes
Performed by Tasha Faye Evans, Kendra Fanconi, Andrew Laurenson, and Paul Ternes
Directed by Andreas Kahre & Stephen O'Connell
Lighting design by George Scott

All Flesh is Grass

A field trip into the vegetable mind, All Flesh is Grass was an outdoor adventure drama that took its audience on an archeo-cultural dig for hope among the ruins of history. The stage was an empty lot just north of the city's train station, a six acre field grown over with weeds, tall grasses, and wild flowers. Gathering at the station just before sunset, the audience was asked to grab hold of a long rope and then follow their group leader across the train station parking lot and through a hole in the fence surrounding the empty lot. Here they encountered three lost souls trying to make their way through this absurdist urban wasteland with agricultural promise. Along the way they discover a surreal landscape complete with buried treasure, a bathtub full of love letters, and a garden of human-plant hybrids swaying in the dusk breeze.

Created and Performed by Kendra Fanconi, Andrew Laurenson and Paul Ternes With supporting cast members Hope Corbin, Tasha Faye Evans, Caroline Farquhar, Tanya Woloshen, Monica Trejbal, & David Flewelling.

Watch a Quicktime .mov document of All Flesh is Grass

Absolute Indifference

The performance began in the crosswalk at the corner of Hamilton and Georgia, with a movement piece timed to the changing lights. A large and diverse audience was snared by the spectacle, people coming out of shows from The Vancouver Playhouse, The Ford Centre for Performing Arts, and The Monster Truck Show at B.C. Place. The audience was then led around the perimeter of the Vancouver Public Library for an inspired performance on memory and history, featuring monologues, playlets, movement sequences, 8mm film and slides, culminating in a giant three-projector 16 mm film loop.

The event was covered by CBC Television in a feature story on Broadcast One.

Created and performed by Elizabeth Burr, Andrew Laurenson, Stephen O'Connell, Lucy Simic, and Tamara Ulisko

The Blind Musician

The Blind Musician was an interdisciplinary performance that used a hybrid of media to examine power relationships in ordinary experiences contributing to social injustice. Drawing on terrorism as a staring point, the company explored the correlations between extreme acts of violence and personal responsibility, in the hopes of constructing a deeper illustration of the flattened documentation of violence that permeates history.

So far the only Radix production presented inside a traditional venue, The Blind Musician was a “performance installation” at The Firehall Arts Centre. The stage was covered in fresh lawn turf, a linoleum floor was installed among the seating, and several window frames hung around the space, catching looping film images from a dozen film projectors. Performers hung from the ceiling by nooses, the audience had to walk past them, on the grass, to get to their seats.

The Blind Musician was first presented in 1996 as a studio piece in the Firehall Arts Centre’s Dancing on the Edge Festival, and then re-mounted in 1997 during the Firehall’s regular season. Firehall Artistic Director Donna Spencer was a key contributor to the success of Radix, booking them every year for the Edge from 1992 to 1999. The regular booking inspired the company to continue to create new work.

In an odd twist, text from The Blind Musician re-surfaced in 2002 when an organization in Omaha, Nebraska published Molecules, a monologue written by Andrew Laurenson, in their anthology of alternative responses to terrorism.

Created and performed by Tara Cheyenne, Andrew Laurenson, Jud Martell, Stephen O'Connell, Lucy Simic, and Sara Whitford. With support from Elizabeth Burr, Jeff Corness and George Scott.

Instruments of Torture

Made with Radix's first Canada Council grant under the Explorations Program, Instruments of Torture examined issues of addiction, desire, and revolution in an increasingly technologically-driven society. Set beneath the Burrard Bridge, audiences swelled for this production to approximately 200 people by the end of the run. Admission was a donation to the food bank.

The foundations of Radix's inter-disciplinary aesthetic were laid during this production, as the group set out to re-assess rehearsal techniques "to combine dance, theatre and music in an organic way by examining the relationship between their fundamentals: movement, text, and melody."

Created and performed by Elizabeth Burr, Stephen O'Connell, Angus Whyte, Sarah Whitford, Richard Windeyer, Jud Martell, Laura Crema, Elaine Avila

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