Jul 16, 2024
Gabrielle chats with Sherry J. Yoon and Jay Dodge, Artistic Directors of Boca del Lupo, about their early productions at the PuSh Festival from 2006, and how they’ve witnessed change over the years.
Show Notes
Gabrielle Martin, Sherry and Jay discuss:
Collaboration as a core tenet of creativity
Collision and confluence of difference
Norman Armour’s early influence and guidance of the work
How Vancouver’s performing arts scene was dynamic at the time and has evolved since
How Boca del Lupo’s 2006 show, “The Perfectionist”, was envisioned and created
The artistic impetus for Boca’s later shows, such as “My Dad, My Dog”
The power and importance of international collaboration
How has the artistic practice evolved over the years, and what has remained consistent?
What is the right container or shape for the content you want to show?
How has the cultural context of PuSh changed over the years?
What makes the PuSh Festival about relationships, not just transactions?
About Boca del Lupo
Led by Artistic Directors Sherry J. Yoon and Jay Dodge.
Sherry J. Yoon is a co-creator and director of the company’s original productions and Jay Dodge’s writing, performances and designs are central in Boca del Lupo’s shows. During the tenure of the pair, the company has received numerous awards including Jessies for Outstanding Design, Outstanding Production, Significant Artistic Achievement and Outstanding Performance; the Critic’s Choice Award for Innovation; and the Alcan Performing Arts Award.
For Boca del Lupo, collaboration is the core tenet of our creativity. Working across cultures and disciplines our productions are energized by the collision and confluence of difference. Since our inception in 1996, our artistic focus has been one that explores cultural hybridity and interdisciplinary through consciously convening artists from diverse backgrounds and giving them voice within the work through our established processes. We also have a well-established track record in touring, a strong level of engagement with our professional arts services organizations and meaningful outreach into the community. We proudly take our place as a theatre company that relentlessly expands creative possibilities through unprecedented innovations and partnerships with a repertoire that includes 60 original creations and unique presentations.
Boca del Lupo has a foundation in theatre but has evolved into a multi-disciplinary company often partnering with artists and organization that are beyond the conventional boundaries of our form and our sector.
About Sherry J Yoon
Sherry J. Yoon, Artistic Director of Boca del Lupo, is a theatre creator and director with a passion for creating new performances through collaborative pursuits. With Boca del Lupo, Sherry has co-created more than 35 productions, including: Fall Away Home, an intergenerational site-specific production in the forest of Stanley Park; Photog, a large-scale show that toured across Canada and was created with interviews from prominent conflict photographers; and You Are It, as part of the Silver commissions from the Arts Club Theatre that investigates the complex dynamics between female friendships. During Sherry’s tenure, the company has received numerous awards, including the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, and Jessie Awards for Outstanding Production, Design, Actor, Ensemble, as well as the Critic’s Choice Innovation Award. Her productions have toured festivals and venues across Canada, Europe and Mexico. She co-created an online exhibition of Expedition, an iterative collaboration between Boca del Lupo and the Performance Corporation, and working on Net Zero, an interactive theatre installation about climate change that involves the audience charging a battery with a stationary bicycle. She is also a freelance director who has worked at the Richmond Gateway Theatre, Bard on the Beach, the Vancouver International Children’s Festival and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa Canada.
About Jay Dodge
The Artistic Producer of Boca del Lupo since 2001, Jay Dodge was also part of the founding collective in 1996. During his tenure, the company has won the peer-assessed Alcan Performing Arts Award, and several Jesse Richardson Theatre Awards including seven nominations for the Critic’s Choice Award for Innovation and the Patrick O’Neill Award for best anthology with Plays2Perform@Home. Jay is a passionate set and video designer with Jessie Richardson Awards in both of those categories as well as a published playwright including a contribution to Boca del Lupo’s Red Phone project. His artistry is one of innovation and daring and his one man show, PHOTOG. featured interactive video, stunt rigging and verbatim text, touring to World Stage, Prismatic, Festival Trans Amerique and PuSh. Currently serving on the national board of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, Jay also has special interest in creative space making including as co-founder of celebrated colocation space PL1422, co-founder of the Granville Island Theatre District, and as project consultant for Video In/Video Out and Left of Main.
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 have helped to shape 20
years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival
programming.
Gabrielle Martin 00:21
Today's episode highlights the 2006 Push Festival in conversation
with Sherry J. Yoon and J. Dodge on Boca de Lupos, The
Perfectionist, and more. Sherry J. Yoon is a co -creator and
director of the company's original productions, and J.
Gabrielle Martin 00:35
Dodge's writing, performances, and designs are central in Boca de
Lupos' shows. During the tenure of the pair, the company has
received numerous awards, including Jesse's for Outstanding Design,
Outstanding Production, Significant Artistic Achievement, and
Outstanding Performance, the Critics' Choice Award for Innovation,
and the Alcan Performing Arts Award.
Gabrielle Martin 00:55
For Boca de Lupos, collaboration is the core tenet of creativity,
working across cultures and disciplines, their productions are
energized by the collision and confluence of difference. Since
their inception in 1996, their artistic focus has been one that
explores cultural hybridity and interdisciplinarity.
Gabrielle Martin 01:11
Here's my conversation with J. and Sherry.
Gabrielle Martin 01:17
I wanted to start by acknowledging that we're on the stolen
ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples,
Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh, and on this land we're
also currently in what's known as downtown, very close to the push
offices.
Gabrielle Martin 01:33
Thanks for coming into our neighborhood. My pleasure. And so, yeah,
we'll just start at the beginning. How did, well, first I'll just
say that in 2006, that was the first time Push presented the work
at Boca del Luco, that was the second official festival, and Push
presented The Perfectionist.
Gabrielle Martin 01:53
So maybe you can take us back to how your relationship with Push
started and talk a bit about The Perfectionist and also how that
related to where you were at as a company back in 2006.
Sherry J. Yoon 02:06
It's definitely a relationship with Norman.
Jay Dodge 02:08
Yeah, yeah.
Jay Dodge 02:09
Maybe I can talk a little bit about like our relationship and you
can talk a little bit about the perfectionist. Sure. What do you
think? Sure. Does that sound good? Yeah. All right. Well, I guess
we go way back with Norman, you know, I think I think we probably
like we marched over to the Rumble office at that time to ask for
their documents of incorporation so that we could model those for
our own.
Jay Dodge 02:34
So, you know, we had it was like, you know, so it kind of goes it's
fundamental and it was of course, we all kind of knew each other
back in the in the mid 90s when there was a lot of companies, I
guess, kind of coming coming to into whatever into their own and
and it really kind of even I think it even goes back to before push
which is there was that there was the C7 series which was like kind
of a joint marketing initiative between a whole bunch of theater
companies in town I think there may be been as many as 11 or so and
and that's where we really started to collaborate.
Jay Dodge 03:04
I feel like in that environment was this a spirit of collaboration
between the companies that was really, you know, it was really
about letting down our guard and realizing that we're better
together.
Jay Dodge 03:15
You know, even at times when some people would be like secretive
about what they were going to do or whatever have it there's still
this idea that hey, if we work together at least on certain things
it's it's gonna be better for the community.
Jay Dodge 03:25
It's gonna be better for the scene. I think I don't know but kept
me in Vancouver as opposed to going to another town. It's because
it felt like it really could be part of making a scene and a scene
that felt like you didn't have to bust into it, but you could be a
part of creating it.
Jay Dodge 03:41
So I think coming out of, you know, C7 and that whole scene and the
and the companies that were a part of that which included some
older companies like Pi and then some newer ones like us Electric
Company, you know, and New World it really created a spirit of
collaboration and that's how we got involved in Push because at the
time and I think this probably, I mean you may be a better judge
but probably carries through to the culture of Push to this
day,
Jay Dodge 04:05
which in those early days of Push it was really partnerships. Like
we did, we were being presented by, we were doing it in partnership
with which kind of meant that, you know, Push gave us this
visibility for the work and brought presenters to it but then we
were really self -presenting in every other sense of the word and
that was, I don't know, I thought that was pretty cool and it was
kind of a,
Jay Dodge 04:28
I don't know if it was a unique model at the time because
Gabrielle Martin 04:31
Well, I imagine you were that much more invested in the production
and presentation of our process.
Jay Dodge 04:37
Yeah, it was part of that spirit of we all got that we were, you
know, push was going to benefit from the community co -presenting
with them and we were going to benefit from being part of like a
more visible kind of scene and the perfectionist was a very cool
work to do that with.
Jay Dodge 04:51
It was one of only maybe two shows you and I have acted in
together.
Sherry J. Yoon 04:55
And so it was like a development that we had around a seat of an
idea and a concept really around perfectionism. The notions that we
have and these ideas that we have around it, but really when we dig
down into it what it exactly is.
Sherry J. Yoon 05:08
And so it was really a physical embodiment of an idea that came
around a fairly nonverbal piece. So there was text in it too. We
took the concept of perfectionism and flipped it on its head. And
so whatever associations we had with it or that the general public
had with it, we embodied it and physicalized it.
Sherry J. Yoon 05:30
So a lot of it was visual, movement -based, some rigging, and then
a big partner was the animation in it. In fact we were flying in
it. We were flying in it, yeah. He did aerial circles? Yeah. But
just like, but...
Gabrielle Martin 05:45
And we were like, what? You're like, yeah, we did it all.
No!
Sherry J. Yoon 05:48
it was static and it was just to give the sense of suspension and
falling so for example there'd be an image where I'd be in the
swivel harness less comfortable back then though is it how
comfortable is it still now right so I mean this little harness
like planked out as if I was flying but I would barely be off the
ground so I'd be standing and then in swivel Jay would be
underneath with an animation when we falling behind so it looked
like we were flying even though we're just just there
Gabrielle Martin 06:18
of that animation like in 2006 that was a very labor intensive
process.
Sherry J. Yoon 06:22
Yes, yes, two minutes is like two weeks or a month. It took a
really long time and Jay White had adopted a style and was animator
in residence with us for a year Which was I think I'm pretty sure
The first funded like animator for a theater company.
Sherry J. Yoon 06:40
I mean don't quote me on that because I don't know about Quebec But
it was unusual That's something that people had commented and
because of how different it was and what we were trying to do They
they want to support it and see where it was going So and we're
talking a little bit about the challenges of the projection itself
With the video projectors weren't as facile as they are
now.
Jay Dodge 07:03
I mean, I think with computer animation, even though the style that
we were working in wasn't really obviously computer animated, but
the idea of computer animation and being able to not be working
from cells anymore was kind of similar, I suppose, with video
projectors back then.
Jay Dodge 07:16
They were just in the early stages of having commercially available
video projectors, and so we had to do things like... Smoked the
mirrors. Smoked, literally. We had a massive, massive mirror, like
10 feet by 8 feet that we had to bounce it off of in order to get a
big enough image that would fill the rear projection screen that we
were working on.
Jay Dodge 07:34
Like I was saying before, at the time, it was like we were a part
of a community that was... I mean, I think Vancouver is still a
pretty tight -knit community a lot of the times, but we were
working really closely together all of the time back then, and so I
think, you know, really...
Jay Dodge 07:49
And this is actually to the credit of Push and Norman over the
years. I think it was relational, you know? So before we knew what
the work was, we knew who we were as artists. We had a sense of the
curatorial aesthetic that Norman was really in the early stages of
him developing that, I think, probably at the time, and we knew
there was going to be alignment there before we knew what the show
was going to be,
Jay Dodge 08:14
you know? Which had to do with...
Gabrielle Martin 08:15
with your practice. Which had to.
Jay Dodge 08:17
with our practice and the trajectory of that and you know because
really I mean it was about perfectionism and it was about like
pathological perfectionism so I think that is like I think having I
think that was as much as anything because when we were making I
mean even still to a degree I mean when we were making shows back
then yeah we had a pretty like our process was well defined and
kind of intense and but because you know we weren't on operating or
anything like that we would we would push all our resources to the
probably about six months leading up to the show so we might have a
title and a concept and our collaborators but we would spend those
three months six months full -time creating the show up until the
presentation where we'd be in the studio all day every day but it's
not like we had a it's not like we had a show to that Norman could
see before it was all based on the relationship.
Jay Dodge 09:09
Nobody knew about our practice and the rigor and
Sherry J. Yoon 09:12
and the commitment, really.
Jay Dodge 09:14
We had two live musicians on stage, which is Jelisa Pankinay and
Steve Charles, which have both gone on to like...
Sherry J. Yoon 09:21
Oh, yeah, yeah with Jaleesa and Steve. Oh my god, so Steve's first
gig and now he's you know musical theater guy Yeah, so like
anybody
Jay Dodge 09:29
that knows the Vancouver's theater scene would be familiar with
those names. Jaleesa's a composer in theater and in film and
animation and Steve's been on most stages in the city now. I think
we were his first theater gig.
Sherry J. Yoon 09:43
I forgot about that I mean it's already
Jay Dodge 09:45
accomplished musician of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gabrielle Martin 09:47
And so after the perfectionist first presented my dad my dog in
2008 and was that you know after the perfectionist was Norman just
excited to kind of welcome the next project of yours or did you
pitch it at some point?
Sherry J. Yoon 10:05
Well, we actually did some interesting pitching with that
particular piece. I think I've initially pushed and then at FTA,
right?
Jay Dodge 10:13
You're talking about my dad, my dog? Yes. Yeah, we did, but that
was like, but Norman was on board first, like Push was on board.
After the perfectionist, I think we were just cresting into the
cultural Olympiad.
Jay Dodge 10:24
That's right. Which was basically a time frame of where there was
some money available to do things like commissions and things.
That's right. And Norman... That was a big deal. Again, kind
of...
Gabrielle Martin 10:35
push was involved as a co -commissioner.
Jay Dodge 10:37
They commissioned, push commissioned, my dad, my dog. Oh wow.
Norman basically said, what do you want to do? And this idea had
been sort of brewing in Sherry's mind. That's right. And so we
said...
Sherry J. Yoon 10:50
So again, building on what we did with J. White, back then there
weren't a lot of images of North Korea, so now you can see things
on the internet and things are in the news, but there was nothing.
And along it was through an American lens, and so we came across a
book from a French photographer that was, he'd captured the images
of North Korea in a way I'd never quite seen, so I thought this
would be a lot of the images be used in partials,
Sherry J. Yoon 11:22
but a lot of it be redrawn live and used as a backdrop with J.
White, also involving live feed and miniatures. So we're now taking
some animation, some drawing, live feed, and then miniatures as
well to kind of create a, to piece together a world that we, none
of us had access to at all.
Sherry J. Yoon 11:42
And so the premise was this idea that if I, if my family had
stayed, half my family's from North Korea, but not really because
we came over before the war happened, but if my family had stayed,
what, what kind of person it would have been like in North
Korea.
Sherry J. Yoon 11:56
So it's this idea that could have happened, but all really housed
in a fiction and creating a world that's real, but something that
has to be fictionalized because no one had really seen much back
then.
Jay Dodge 12:06
Yeah, so this was, and Sherry performed in this as well. I did,
yes. I directed it. Yes. I've sworn off directing sense. It's not
what you're saying. I'm joking, I'm joking. But, um, and then Billy
Martensky was in it and James Fagan Tate.
Jay Dodge 12:22
Yeah. And, um, and it also, the other part of the premise really
was that, was, was Sherry imagining that our dog had, her father
had been reincarnated as our first dog. Which is not...
Sherry J. Yoon 12:35
an okay thing because I think I wonder how my family were Buddhists
are now all there are now all Christians and they say generally
it's influenced through schools but to be reincarnated as a dog is
not an awesome thing so it's an interesting idea that I had in my
head that I carried and then once I verbalized I realized how kind
of funny it sounded and then yeah these two worlds kind of collided
and so there was an animated dog so that would be I guess the other
scene partner where I'm trying to have a relationship with a very
flat image on the screen as if it was live so a lot of things going
on
Gabrielle Martin 13:13
So the digital mediums were present in both of these works, and how
were there some, was there a through line with experimentation with
the form and the forms you were using in Perfectionist and My Dad,
My Dog and La Maréa?
Gabrielle Martin 13:30
Maybe you can talk about that. So La Maréa, which is a project with
Maryanno, Maryanno of Kedizati, in 2011. Where did that come from?
What was your role in that? Were there thematic through lines with
these earlier pieces?
Jay Dodge 13:47
Well I think, maybe I'll take a first crack at answering that.
Sure, because I was on
Sherry J. Yoon 13:50
mat leave and it was a massive undertaking and so I was just like
oh I should go mat leave more often like a lot of big projects get
done
Jay Dodge 14:00
So, I'll let you... Yeah, because I would say there's different
trajectories. I think, you know, Sherry and I have talked about
this and we feel like there's, the way that we see it is that there
is a consistent kind of trajectory and through line in our work,
even though it's manifested in many different ways.
Jay Dodge 14:14
And like perfectionist, my dad, my dog, and probably over kind of
towards FOTOG, this idea of integrating a bunch of different things
like technology or rigging and also really stripping back and
exposing the fabrication of the image as part of making the image
and delighting in that.
Jay Dodge 14:32
And then even though it's kind of the same, it's a little bit
different. We had a trajectory of work that involved site specific,
which is also a part of the community in Vancouver. We weren't,
certainly weren't the only ones doing it, but we had kind of our
take on it.
Jay Dodge 14:43
We did these large scale shows in Stanley Park, underneath the
Burrard Street Bridge and... In the trees. Yeah, in the trees, you
know, rigging from bridges and doing all sorts of kind of outdoor
stuff.
Jay Dodge 14:56
And I think La Maria, why we were interested in it was, it kind of
brought together those two worlds that were, I don't know if they
were divergent, but they're kind of like parallel trajectories. And
so, Mariano's vision for this piece was around taking over the
entire block of the city street.
Jay Dodge 15:16
Gas down, the one that zero hundred block. Yeah, so we were in John
Fluhog, we were in like, all these, we took over like, I think
seven stores plus like two locations on the street. There was like
track, like track that would be for film, but they had large, huge
video monitors running along it.
Jay Dodge 15:32
There was projections at every site.
Sherry J. Yoon 15:35
They organized all the street lights to be shut down for the two
hours it was running.
Jay Dodge 15:40
We worked with the city and then we also worked with like William
F. White, which is a big lighting company in town because we had to
bring in generators and like 10k for Nels at either end. And it all
had to be coordinated on an eight, eight or nine.
Jay Dodge 15:51
I can't remember the number, but eight or nine minute. Every scene
was exactly the same length. And we worked with, like, I think
three of the schools, the downtown east side.
Gabrielle Martin 16:00
Those being SFU's, that's what they are.
Sherry J. Yoon 16:02
UBC Studio 58.
Gabrielle Martin 16:04
So just take us back a little bit. This is an international
collaboration. How did you get connected with it?
Northern.
Jay Dodge 16:12
That's your normal. Yeah.
Gabrielle Martin 16:14
So you just said, hey, you two. Hey, do you want to do the St.
Paul's Club?
Sherry J. Yoon 16:17
like sure if it's impossible that's more or less how and why
much
Gabrielle Martin 16:22
Why were you the right fit with that company?
Sherry J. Yoon 16:25
Aww, because we're crazy like that. It's just like, listen, it took
longer. It looked, it took like several hours longer to set up than
to actually run. And these guys were running it in one of the
coldest winters we ever had.
Sherry J. Yoon 16:41
And every single person was smiling. We had like technicians taking
home goldfish and birds home at night. Because they would be, no,
it's a cra- it was crazy. There was furniture like they would have
to go in and out and set up in the front.
Sherry J. Yoon 16:56
There was furniture that like the armchairs were like $5 ,000. Like
people had to be careful.
Jay Dodge 17:01
And we had to set up and strike every night, every night.
Gabrielle Martin 17:04
And so all the stores were involved in being part of the
set.
Sherry J. Yoon 17:08
yeah or allowing the shows to happen in their windows and in the
night time when they're shut down and you've seen the stores in
Gaston like I mean yeah it was a thing it was a thing I'd have the
baby walking around going this is and people were just smiling
taking the goldfish so they didn't freeze overnight and the birdies
and because they were all some of them were like domestic scenes
even though like it'd be like a not a situation like that if we
turn the flu bug with it was a library
Gabrielle Martin 17:41
This was a processional kind of
Sherry J. Yoon 17:45
You'd get a map, you'd get a big, so they were back in the day,
printed these massive newsprint, broadsheet maps, and then you can
go and see the world in whatever order you wanted, but once the
music stopped, and once the lights turned off, you had to be in
front of a storefront, and then you'd experience that and go like
that, so it's quite an orchestration.
Jay Dodge 18:08
about 2 ,000 people a night and it was some people
Sherry J. Yoon 18:11
left, I remember Marcus saying he ran into random people in Hawaii
later on say they went to the push festival thinking La Maria was
the whole festival because it was so ambitious, is ambitious like
it was a and everyone was smiling I just again everyone was so
happy so I don't know what kind of magic or what you were putting
in the water
Gabrielle Martin 18:33
you to solicit these stores or like hit them the project
engine
Jay Dodge 18:38
I was going to say, we always, you know, we have our, you know,
Sherry and I have obviously been central to the company the whole
way through, but we've obviously been fortunate to work with other
incredible people.
Jay Dodge 18:47
And yeah, like, just before that, we had done another kind of
international, I guess, co -production with a company called Blue
Mouth out of kind of New York, Toronto, and they, we did Dance
Marathon.
Jay Dodge 18:59
And this, actually, this kind of brings up, I think one of the
reasons why we were able to pull off La Maria, if I can meander a
little bit, was because we had started PL1422, which was like a
shared production facility, Progress Lab, and kind of comes out of
that, I think that same spirit of collaboration.
Sherry J. Yoon 19:15
I'm going to say one more anecdotal thing because it's funny. These
guys, can I, oh no, not the director, but just like F .T .A.
because they had done it the year before. So they called them to
just get a little bit of, you know, we, not me, called to get, um,
uh...
Sherry J. Yoon 19:30
Just some advice and they just said good luck. They're like, oh,
okay, okay, no.
Jay Dodge 19:37
But yeah
Jay Dodge 19:39
Yes and so this is sort of the long way around to say that like
part of the reason why I think we could we're able to pull off that
project was because we had this kind of facility with technology
but also it had an experience doing large -scale outdoor
work.
Jay Dodge 19:50
That's right. Combined also we had PL -1422 which was you know a
production facility that could kind of pull it off in the city at
the time probably one of the few and then and then we had like kind
of a good team we didn't have you know Sherry was on mat leave but
back to Dance Marathon one of the great things about PL and this
community I think is that is that even though you're in a small
independent company you're not alone and we lost somebody we lost a
like not they didn't die but we lost a we lost our general manager
essentially at the time at very short notice before Dance Marathon
and then I went upstairs because Sherry was on mat leave and you
know I was basically almost crying and I think it went up to to New
World and they said well do you know Kenji he just worked with us
on this thing this is Kenji Mehta who you know GBPTA and other
things he's you know a man about town here for sure that most
people know and within about three hours Kenji was our new producer
on the project and you know Dance Marathon went off without a hitch
and then he stayed working with us through La Maria and of course
he has great business acumen and helped land all those partnerships
with the stores well we focused on the actors and the building the
sets and all that
Gabrielle Martin 21:11
That was at the beginning of international collaborations, because
I know you're working on one right now, the business is still part
of your practice. Was that the first?
Sherry J. Yoon 21:21
You know, our first is with Mexico, the suicide in the El Can
Project. Super with a company called Diatro San Benquito, who, one
of their main members, is in our community now. Candé, Andrade. So
he came up and now lives in Canada from that collaboration with the
theatre company he was working with in Mexico at the
time.
Jay Dodge 21:44
Yeah, so that was in, but I think we won the Alcan Award for the
Performing Arts, which was a thing for a while here, right, in
2002, for a project that went up in 2004, and that was our first
international co -production.
Jay Dodge 21:57
Yeah, we had Kante, and Kante married Camille.
Sherry J. Yoon 22:03
We brought down to Mexico.
Jay Dodge 22:05
And also Jay White married Alicia, who was like, she was the penis
on My Doubt, My Doubt, and he was the animator, so... Also, Matt's
gonna say his name.
Sherry J. Yoon 22:13
If you need a husband or wife, come work with us, it could happen
for you.
Gabrielle Martin 22:20
Alright, so after La Maria, push -presented FOTOG, an imaginary
look at the uncompromising life of Thomas Smith in 2013. And then
we were a co -commissioner on REDPHONE in 2023. And I know Boca del
Lupo is prolific in terms of all the projects that you've done and
continue to do.
Gabrielle Martin 22:41
I would love to hear how you feel that your practices evolve from
the perfectionist or earlier, as we've heard you talk about these
international collaborations that are already happening before
that, until present day.
Sherry J. Yoon 22:54
Well, it's interesting, I think, because we started from so much
rigor and so much form when it comes to play -building. It was
really process -based and a lot of it was imagistic. We would
follow multiple narratives, there's what was written, there's also
what was physicalized.
Sherry J. Yoon 23:13
For example, in photog we had what was happening, as in the
storyline, but also what the visual narrative was through the
photographs from real conflict photographers. And I think the one
thing that's been consistent is different ways of collaboration and
in all the ways that that manifests.
Sherry J. Yoon 23:30
Because we have, we came from such a strict and rigorous form, from
then any kind of collaboration or any kind of collaborator we've
had on board, we've been able to adapt, change, grow, articulate
with somebody else, either within our community, be it artists or
people outside of our community.
Sherry J. Yoon 23:52
Like rock climbers or scuba divers and we're able to just kind of
hold a space where we're housing fiction and creation with the
different kinds of collaborators, I would say.
Jay Dodge 24:06
I was just going to say, I think, like, reflecting on how Sherry's
talking about, if there is a, like, I don't know, like, high -level
trajectory to the work that we've done, it's about, I think,
looking at the form that the work creates absolutely in parallel
with the content.
Jay Dodge 24:26
So never assuming that, like, any space is neutral, even if it's in
the theatre. Looking at, yeah, what is the content, and then what
is the right place for this content, or right shape, or holding,
and if it doesn't exist, then make it, or go out into the world and
find it.
Jay Dodge 24:47
Because I think that can be true of, like, whether, like, you know,
we just worked on an anthology of plays for young people, which I
think we had the same approach to as something like La Maria, or
Photog, which is, you know, what is this, this anthology of plays
as an object, and what does that object need to look like, what
does it need to do, who's going to hold it, and how are they going
to use it,
Jay Dodge 25:08
is kind of similar to, you know, something like Red Phone, where
it's like, what's the, we want to have these, an intimate
conversation, where do those take place, and then building the
space where they take place, around and in concert with the actual
conversations that are happening.
Jay Dodge 25:28
Like, when we first did Red Phone, we prototyped it, just, you
know, just with a computer and a phone, between two tables, and
they were like, okay, there's something here, you know, we, and
then we listened to those conversations in different ways, and then
eventually we landed on building the cabinets that we did, and
like, you know, and having like a cord and phone, and all those
things, but they were never a foregone conclusion,
Jay Dodge 25:50
so, yeah, I think that's kind of it, like form and content, and
really trying to be rigorous about holding them with equal
weight.
Sherry J. Yoon 25:57
And really, because it's all new work, we're always thinking about
the audience because we could do that, right? We can think about,
you know, what is it going to look? What's it going to feel like?
How do we leave them feeling, you know, as well as the
message?
Sherry J. Yoon 26:10
Of course. But that's that's the beauty of new work. You don't
really sit in that room alone when you're making it.
Gabrielle Martin 26:16
And because you've been present and presented at PUSH, present with
and presented at PUSH since the beginning, I'm curious your
perspective on the cultural context and significance of PUSH
locally for your work.
Sherry J. Yoon 26:32
Well it was big for international. I think you know when people
think of international in Canada they often think of Quebec. You
don't really think about the rest of Canada and I think that we
need the relationships.
Sherry J. Yoon 26:43
We need to see the work. We need to be in touch with the artists.
All our work needs to go out. The people want to tour
internationally. Nationally I think it's a really important vehicle
for all those things.
Jay Dodge 26:56
Yeah, and I think what I've appreciated about Push over the years,
you know, beyond, you know, it's certainly been instrumental to
some of the connections that we've made, nationally and
internationally, as well as, you know, the kind of trajectory and
some of the success we had can definitely be contributed to working
with Push.
Jay Dodge 27:15
Yeah, absolutely. But it's also the, like, it's also, I think, kind
of like the spirit of relationality, if that's a word, you know,
that for me, the spirit of Push was always, it's something that
resonated with, I think, with me and with us from the
beginning.
Jay Dodge 27:31
But I think it's also really important to the city is that Push is
known, I think, within the city and within the country and probably
around the world as a place where it's like, it's a festival that
people want to come to because it's not just simply about, like,
it's not just transactional, it's relational, and you're coming
into a community and you're getting to interact and meet and
share.
Jay Dodge 27:53
And I think that's an approach that we certainly take with all of
our international work. Like, we don't just look to tour to around
the world, we look to find artists in different parts of the world
that we want to collaborate with, that we want to spend time
with.
Jay Dodge 28:06
And I feel like, you know, those values and Push's values have
always been aligned, and I think they've came up together, you
know.
Sherry J. Yoon 28:16
Yeah, it's impacted and created the community that we live in,
which is pretty awesome when it comes to those kinds of
relationships.
Ben Charland 28:24
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 28:40
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 28:59
And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take
a moment to leave a review.