Aug 13, 2024
Gabrielle Martin chats with Maiko Yamamoto and James Long, co-founders of Vancouver’s Theatre Replacement.
Show Notes
Gabrielle, Maiko and James discuss:
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How did Norman Armour supported the company, which started the same year that PuSh started its first series in 2003?
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How did Theatre Replacement emerge from Boca del Lupo?
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What are “Chamber Works”?
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How did crossing disciplines become key to the early work?
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How did finding a bunch of photo albums in a back alley lead to the creation of new work (Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut), and potentially stop it with a lawsuit?
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How amorphous nostalgia and memory can be
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How using found material in theatre has changed over the years
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How do you frame practice when you follow impulse creatively?
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How does art intersect with the city?
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Do you still have nerves before a premiere?
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How has Theatre Replacement grown beyond the two co-founders?
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The ideas that were interesting at the beginning remain so
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How will things evolve over the next 5-10 years in the city?
About Maiko Yamamoto
Maiko Yamamoto is a Vancouver-based artist who creates new, experimental and intercultural works of performance. Many of these works are built through a career-long practice of collaboration and include theatre projects, public art works, and performance installations.
In 2003, Maiko co-founded the Vancouver-based performance company, Theatre Replacement. For TR she has created over 20 new works, many of which have toured to festivals and venues around the world. These include: BIOBOXES: Artifiacting Human Experience, Yu-Fo, Train, Sexual Practices of the Japanese, Dress me up in your love, Town Choir, MINE and Best Life. She also curates and produces HOLD ON LET GO (formerly PushOFF), and in 2018 began a new project-based artist residency program for experimental makers, COLLIDER.
In addition, Maiko teaches performance and mentors artists for a range of different companies and organizations, both in Canada and abroad. She has helped artists to develop new work through programs like MAKE, a residency initiative spearheaded by 4 arts organizations in Ireland, the National Theatre School of Canada’s Acting Program, Action Hero’s You Can Be My Wingman residency, and why not theatre’s ThisGen Fellowship. She also occasionally works as a curator and writes about performance for a variety of publications.
She holds a BFA in Theatre from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and a Masters of Applied Arts in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She’s currently working on a new work with longtime collaborator and friend, Veda Hille.
Find out more about Maiko at: thelocalbubble.org
About James Long
James Long is a director, actor, writer and teacher whose creative practice occurs in a wide variety of interdisciplinary and collaborative contexts, including as a co-founding Artistic Director of Theatre Replacement (2003-2022) and as an independent artist working in live performance, community engaged practice and public art.
James’s work has been presented across North America, Europe and Asia and includes Weetube, Footnote Number 12, Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut, Town Criers, BioBoxes: Artifacting Human Experience, King Arthur’s Knight, How to Disappear Completely, Morko, Winners and Losers and others. In 2019, he and Maiko Yamamoto were awarded the Siminovitch prize for their work at Theatre Replacement and as freelance artists, and in 2016 he and Marcus Youssef were nominated for a Governor General’s Award for playwriting for Winners and Losers.
Long graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Theatre Program in 2000 and received a Master’s in Urban Studies in 2018. He serves as the president of the organization that stewards Vancouver’s Russian Hall, a multi-purpose performance and gathering space, and is an assistant professor in Theatre and Performance at SFU’s School of Contemporary Arts.
Land Acknowledgement
This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.
It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.
Show Transcript
Gabrielle Martin 00:02
Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring
conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing
with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming,
and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the
legacy of Push and talking to creators who've helped shape 20 years
of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival
programming.
Gabrielle Martin 00:22
This conversation highlights theater replacement with Maiko
Yamamoto and James Long, and is anchored around the 2010 Push
Festival. Theater replacement's work is grounded in the creation of
original, experimental, and intercultural works of
performance.
Gabrielle Martin 00:36
Since their beginnings, they've held fast to an ethos of
coexistence, and this idea still runs through everything they do.
Their new works are built through highly collaborative processes
over extended working periods and foreground diverse
artists.
Gabrielle Martin 00:51
Theater replacement's artistic director is Maiko Yamamoto, a leader
in the Vancouver and National Art scenes and known internationally
for her work, Maiko has created over 25 new works for theater
replacement, drawing upon her love of formal inventiveness and
exploration, conceptual play, creative research, artist -centered
processes, and experimental and multidisciplinary
practice.
Gabrielle Martin 01:13
Yamamoto often collaborates with intergenerational artists,
individuals and family members in making work that searches for
playful, immediate, and authentic ways of bringing audiences and
performances together.
Gabrielle Martin 01:25
James Long is a director, actor, writer, and teacher whose creative
practice occurs in a wide variety of interdisciplinary and
collaborative contexts, including as a co -founding artistic
director of theater replacement from 2003 to 2022, and as an
independent artist working in live performance, community -engaged
practice, and public art.
Gabrielle Martin 01:45
In 2022, he joined SFU's School for Contemporary Arts, Theatre, and
Performance program as full -time faculty to co -develop a new
direction for its curriculum while also continuing to make and tour
new works of performance.
Gabrielle Martin 01:59
Here's my conversation with Maiko and James. I will just share with
our public where we are right now. We are on the stolen ancestral
and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the
Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Wautu.
Gabrielle Martin 02:18
We're also on that land, on Commercial Drive, what is currently now
Commercial Drive, which is where the theater replacement office is
located or close by. Very close by. So let's go back to the
beginning.
Gabrielle Martin 02:37
Before Clark and I somewhere in Connecticut, in 2005, push
presented the Empty Orchestra. In 2006, sexual practices of the
Japanese. In 2007, bio boxes, artifacting the human experience. So
can you just talk to us about how the relationship with push
started and those early projects may be starting with the Empty
Orchestra?
Maiko Yamamoto 03:01
Well, I mean, it was really through Norman and through knowing
Norman. I interned at Rump Bowl when Norman was the artistic
director there. And it was just around the time that he was
starting to think about Push and talk about Push with
Katrina.
Maiko Yamamoto 03:18
And so I kind of we formed a relationship there and then and then
stay connected with him and then you met probably around the same
time. And we had talked to him when we started to talk about
theater placement and starting this company.
Maiko Yamamoto 03:34
And he just really he just took a he took a gamble on us. And Empty
Orchestra was the first show that we ever did as a company. And I
don't think Norman had seen it because we hadn't made it yet. No,
but yeah, but he had he had he knew Darren O 'Donnell who came in
to direct the piece.
Maiko Yamamoto 03:51
And of course, he knew Adrian Wong, who was kind of our gal Friday
on the project. She stage managed it, but she also did the costumes
and she did everything. And so he had just started Push and he he
started to do satellite presentations.
Maiko Yamamoto 04:08
So because we were a young local company, he kind of, yeah, he
supported us and put us in the festival.
Gabrielle Martin 04:16
2005, when was that in relation to when you started the
company?
Maiko Yamamoto 04:20
We started the company the same year that push started. So that's
like series. Yeah, that's right Okay, so that's why you're the next
year is the 20th festival and we're in our 20th year, too So it's
kind of like hitting that same age Yeah, so 2003 we started 2003
yeah, that's when we officially were incorporated
James Long 04:42
many years called ourselves pushed babies because we were born at
the same time and certainly enjoyed that relationship.
Maiko Yamamoto 04:49
And clearly we were, because when you were saying that list, I
didn't remember that those three years were at the push
fest.
James Long 05:00
I think there's something that Norman too, because of his drive and
his energy and his focus on building this festival, I think he
found something similar in us because we were starting at the same
time.
James Long 05:11
He was obviously our senior artist and a huge mentor to both of us,
but we had that same energy and excitement and creativity to make
something happen with our company, so it aligned really
well.
Gabrielle Martin 05:24
And for the empty orchestra, did Norman just give you a carte
blanche? Did you end up pitching him the idea? Do you remember how
that became part of the foot festival? It's hard to
remember.
Maiko Yamamoto 05:37
So now I know he was always asking, what are you up to, what are
you thinking about? And so we had told him that we were starting
the company A, which he thought was really exciting and made sense.
And he was, actually now it's all coming back to me, he was really
critical in giving us advice around what to do in starting this new
company.
Maiko Yamamoto 05:55
Because we had been part of another company, Boca del Upo,
previously, and then we started this new company. And so he was
offering his words of wisdom and advice. And, you know, we were
kind of focused on one and two person shows, that was our whole jam
when we first started.
Maiko Yamamoto 06:12
And so he said, call them Chamberworks. Chamberworks. Chamberworks.
Chamberworks.
James Long 06:17
To become part of our mandate, we put chamber works in the
mandate.
Maiko Yamamoto 06:20
We had one and two person shows as part of the mandate, but they
were, yeah, so it was like that. He was very poetic with his advice
and so Empty Orchestra was the first chamber work that we presented
and I think he just, we told him about it, we told him about the
artists that were going to be involved and he just said yes right
away.
Gabrielle Martin 06:40
What was that initial idea that you, what was the initial idea
behind the empty orchestra?
Maiko Yamamoto 06:46
We were making a show about the end of the world, and the frozen
world, and karaoke. And I think we told him about the people. So it
was Darren O 'Donnell right when he was kind of, you know,
establishing himself.
Maiko Yamamoto 07:01
And so Adrian Wong and we had made a hilly. So he couldn't really
say no. But yeah, we had, he knew how we made work, which is just
to get in a room with people and throw a bunch of ideas together.
So we had some loose notions, but I think mostly he was really
interested in the people and the energy that we were sort of
bringing forward and yeah, and came on board.
James Long 07:23
And it was a panicked state of making in the end, because we had
our ideas, we got Norman excited about it, we made something with
Beta kind of peripheral to it. You and I were working a lot in the
studio making something, brought Darren Donnell out, if you
remember this moment, and showed Darren our first 40 minutes or so
of the show we had in Darwin.
Maiko Yamamoto 07:41
He was, to use his words, he was underwhelmed.
James Long 07:44
underwhelmed, and we're like, oh, so what does that mean, Darren?
We're three weeks still opening, and Dan said, well, I guess we'll
just start again. So we were able to cobble some pieces together
and keep them, but it really was just a build from panic, scratch
moment with Darren, which was pretty exciting, because Darren's an
amazing artist, an amazing writer, an amazing creator, so we worked
with him,
James Long 08:02
learned a lot, and I remember thinking to myself, is it too late to
take down the poster?
Maiko Yamamoto 08:09
You did ask that several times.
James Long 08:10
That's the poster's up, and I was like, this isn't a good
idea.
Maiko Yamamoto 08:13
But I think, too, it started us on this path of like when you work
with people who have different opinions than you or different ideas
or aesthetics, that it actually, that kind of challenge creates
better material.
Maiko Yamamoto 08:28
So the material that we, being very simpatico at that time and just
wanting to like make this company and do this stuff and encouraging
to each other and supportive, we're bringing, didn't have that kind
of tension, but as soon as you pulled Darren in the room, that
tension existed and it did bring out some really great
material.
Maiko Yamamoto 08:44
And Adrian wrote on the project, too, he had, yeah, everybody was
kind of throwing their or in.
James Long 08:50
because we had to. We only had three weeks, so we had to get it
together. And it did create a bit of an ethos for the company, like
Michael was saying. From that point on, this idea of collaborating
with artists from other disciplines or cross -disciplines became
pretty key to the work we're making.
Gabrielle Martin 09:03
and clearly it was successful or at least enough to be invited back
the next year.
Maiko Yamamoto 09:09
It was young. Darren described it at the time when he was trying to
give us our pep talk before we opening night when, you know, Jamie
was probably still asking if the posters were... Just take the
posters down and go home?
Maiko Yamamoto 09:22
He sort of described it as a really well -baked cake, you know,
like it had some sweet simit, it had some interesting parts, some
interesting textures, some icing, and it was all sort of put
together.
James Long 09:34
And to follow through on that metaphor, Etair Dal did the lights as
well, so he would have had been the nice candles on top. He
did.
Maiko Yamamoto 09:40
He did but even then like the the interesting artistic conversation
in the room between Darren and Itai was you know There was a moment
where Darren just wanted blackness. I remember that he just wanted
it to be in blackness and Itai
James Long 09:53
This did make sense to him.
Maiko Yamamoto 09:54
he just couldn't change his lighting design of rain. He was like,
what do you mean? Black darkness, they're not gonna be able to see.
And so in the end, it really created probably one of the most
beautiful moments of the show, which was just a tiny glint of a
side light, a shin, that would just like catch the reflection of
the eye of the performer.
Maiko Yamamoto 10:14
But that was it, otherwise it was very dark.
James Long 10:18
As significant, I think, in the trajectory of the company was that
we showed the work. There was a guy there named James Tyson from
Cardiff, who ran chapter of the Chapter Arts Centre. He saw the
work and he was turned by the work.
James Long 10:31
It wasn't his kind of work as we found out afterwards when we made
something with him. But he was excited by the work and he was kind
of coming looking for Canadian collaborators. So Norm was able to
facilitate that relationship between James and us and then we ended
up going to Cardiff and making a new work over there, which started
the international side of theatre replacement, which was huge
because there wasn't a lot of international touring of companies
inside of Vancouver going elsewhere.
James Long 10:55
So that was as significant, I think, as presenting in Push was a
relationship that Push built for this company with the rest of the
world.
Gabrielle Martin 11:05
from that first year that's impressive that international
presenters industry folks were attending in 2005.
Maiko Yamamoto 11:12
I think also back then you just I mean we talked about this all the
time but people were like how did you become an international
company and we were like we just went we literally went once
somewhere and then suddenly that started you know so back then I
think it was easier to sort of make pathways that way yeah because
we just did it once and then that just sort of started us on a on a
momentum to be able to tour and do partnerships
internationally
Gabrielle Martin 11:39
Clark and I are somewhere in Connecticut. Was that a premiere? At
Push in 2008? It was a premiere. Was that a project that you also
brought in? A director from Tomorrow Else? Or an artistic
collaborator from Elsewhere?
James Long 11:54
That was a repeat relationship with Craig Hall. Craig Hall ended up
taking over Rumble from Norman, which was kind of bookended prior
to that. His broiler, which was a project that was in motion when
theater placement was being founded.
Maiko Yamamoto 12:07
It was a second show
James Long 12:09
Craig Hall and I were making a show called Broiler that was part of
Young and the Restless, which was Rumble's little mini festival
thing that that Norman had set up when he was at Rumble. But Craig
Hall was the director on that project and that's, so Norman was
aware of it from its beginnings and it has a really fraught
story.
James Long 12:29
I don't know if you know the story behind Craig, but I'll keep it
pretty tight because it's kind of epic. Basically wanted to make a
show with Craig about cannibalism while I was writing The Grant,
found a bunch of photo albums in an alley behind my house on East
Port T and said, oh this is really interesting.
James Long 12:45
These photo albums are beautiful. I brought Craig over and we
sifted through them and said this is really exciting and it's kind
of like we're now consuming other people's memories. This makes
sense to cannibalism.
James Long 12:52
Let's write this into the Cannon Council Grant. So we wrote that
grant and started making the show and originally the show is just
going to be about this idea of photographs and how we can, just
about how amorphous a photograph is and how amorphous nostalgia is
and we're using it sort of this opportunity to explore semiotics in
photography.
James Long 13:14
We showed a little version of it to some friends who were kind of
bored by it, this idea of me just talking about myself in front of
other people's photographs and they said you should really try to
find the people who own these photographs and do a bit of a docu
-thing and be really exciting.
James Long 13:27
So we did that and after finding them we're faced with a lawsuit
about shutting the whole show down about four weeks before the show
opened. So a clear memory of that piece in 2000, Christmas of 2007
was Norman coming over to Craig Hall's house on Christmas Eve when
they sent the letter and telling Norman I don't think the show is
going to happen.
James Long 13:50
Can we take down the posters? Because it might be a good idea to
take down the posters because there's a show now and they say we
can't use any of the photographs, which then sparked another total
manic rewriting process and resulted in a show that we put up and
was fine.
James Long 14:08
I don't know if it was quite a good well -baked cake at that point.
It was just too epic and spacious and frantic and awe
-inspiring.
Gabrielle Martin 14:16
Heav it.
James Long 14:17
It was a great pivot.
Gabrielle Martin 14:18
if people knew the back story.
James Long 14:20
They did and then we subsequently toured Toronto and then Regina
and then I think Norman programmed it again, one because he
actually liked the work and he liked us, but also because he had
seen what happened after two years of continued development on the
piece and a bit of a calming, a breath outside of lawsuit territory
because we were able, we did a bunch of things to it that made it
lawsuit proof and so that's how we ended up doing it again in
2010.
Maiko Yamamoto 14:45
And in the end you did speak to some members of the family who were
not opposed, who were not on the team lawsuit.
James Long 14:53
that were deceased, Clark and Ruby.
Maiko Yamamoto 14:56
to Christina Lake didn't you meet with somebody there who then
gave
James Long 14:59
Well, that was where it all kind of went sideways, because we went
to Christina Lake to engage with it. We knew that these six photo
albums were from Christina Lake, a lot of them. Let's just take
photographs around Christina Lake and experiment with this idea of
the photograph and how we can hold onto the photograph in our own
memories.
James Long 15:15
And Camille Jean -Grasse said, well, you should just go knock on
that person's door and say what we're doing and see if they know
the people. And they said, oh, we do know the people, let me just
make a phone call.
James Long 15:23
I'm like, no, no, no, no, don't make a phone call. And they made
the phone call, and then we spoke to the woman who lived outside of
Christina Lake near a trail or something. And she was very
welcoming, but then it was her son that phoned us
afterwards.
James Long 15:39
I got the lawyers on it.
Gabrielle Martin 15:41
how far into the process you were.
James Long 15:43
deep into the process. The show was gonna go up in February, this
was in October, we went to Christina Lake to just kind of explode
the project a little bit before the final development
period.
Gabrielle Martin 15:51
and explode it, you did.
James Long 15:53
and we exploded it and it was really kind of an eye -opener because
we were using with this kind of conceptual frame of the photograph
and then once we actually met the people we realized no these are
real people inside these photographs and so what we ended up doing
and it was a nice turn inside the work I think was we ended up
taking all their photographs out keeping a lot of the text the same
but then placing my own photographs inside of it and telling the
same story and then revealing that at the end that we can because
of the shape of the photographs and the Kodachrome sort of coloring
the nostalgia piece remained the same and the attachment to the
past remained the same but the narrative suddenly became multi
-layered and it was much more true to the original idea of the show
than where we had gotten to writing narrative on it.
Maiko Yamamoto 16:40
title came from like in the envelopes or envelopes in the photo
albums there were like written things underneath some of the photos
and one of them said Clark and I somewhere beautiful
James Long 16:53
such a beautiful piece of text for a title for a show that really
has no solid grounding.
Gabrielle Martin 17:00
And did you take away a lesson with regard to process, with, you
know, with regard to ethics and inspiration, or around not asking
permission, or...
Maiko Yamamoto 17:10
I mean, I think you wouldn't make that show in 2024, or if you did,
you would go about it in a different way.
James Long 17:16
I don't know. It's interesting how to appropriate someone else's
property to tell your own story. I think the questions are still
really valuable and true to this moment, but yes, there were
subsequent projects, something that were forms and ethics and all
these other considerations.
Maiko Yamamoto 17:35
Found Material is so different now than it was back then when we
were, and there was a lot of verbatim and documentary theater that,
you know, certainly those were the fields in which we were playing
in, where, you know, you kind of boldly did things.
Maiko Yamamoto 17:50
There wasn't that significant of a, you know, there wasn't that
kind of idea of care ethics yet. No. So, I think it's different now
when you use people's, when you use Found Material or you use
people's stories.
Maiko Yamamoto 18:04
I think there's lots of conversations around how to use
them.
Gabrielle Martin 18:08
So in between the presentations of Clark and I somewhere in
Connecticut, Push also presented the night that follows day in
2009, and this was a special project. My understanding is that this
is also an iconic piece for theater replacement.
Maiko Yamamoto 18:24
Well, it was a really cool example of this thing that I think
Norman was so good at, which was forming partnerships between an
international organization or an international artist and Vancouver
artists to sort of create, well, I think in a lot of ways it was
about fostering and nurturing our work here and putting our work in
conversation with the international scene, but it was a tri -pro
between PUSH on the boards in Seattle and theatre replacements and
it was a script by Tim Echols who had worked with a company in
Ghent called Victoria who had set up this,
Maiko Yamamoto 19:00
they were doing a series of works where they were making shows for
adults but with kids that were centering around, you know,
children's experiences inside of it and so this was one in a series
and Norman just had this idea that he would love to see a Vancouver
production of the work and so he got in touch with us and we said
yes right away because we were big fans of Tim Echols and PUSH
Entertainment and we started to work suddenly for the first time
with a group of,
Maiko Yamamoto 19:30
I think it was 17 kids between the ages of 8 and 14 and it was a
beautiful choral piece, spoke by children all about the things that
adults say to kids and the lens of adulthood on childhood and yeah
it was really, it was such, it felt like a really long process
because I think working with kids is, it feels like you have to
work in small bursts more often than not, you know, you can't work
all day as we do,
Maiko Yamamoto 20:02
you can't do one of those really intense rehearsal periods so we
had them on the weekends and in the evenings sometimes over an
extended period of time and we took the tour, we took the show on
tour to Seattle after the PUSH presentation so it did really feel
like we had a lot of time for those youths.
Maiko Yamamoto 20:22
Yeah, it was a really beautiful and memorable experience for sure
and very, I think, formative for us and we're still connected to a
lot of these kids.
Gabrielle Martin 20:33
And was this your first time working with amateur artists or non
-professionals?
Maiko Yamamoto 20:38
Yeah, I just texted her. No.
James Long 20:40
2009? No, I guess? Like, non -actors? Like, Biobox is flirted with
working with people who weren't normally on stage. Um, the other
ones, I guess everyone had been on stage in the shows.
Maiko Yamamoto 20:55
Yeah, I think it was like maybe not the first time we considered
non -professionals to be collaborators, but it was the first time
we were really putting them on stage.
James Long 21:05
But these guys were experts, they're little kids, right? And
they're saying, you tell me this, you tell me that, you tell me
this, and they're amazing. Like, they're way better than any kind
of, I don't want to diss any of the training institutes for young
children actors.
James Long 21:15
But these kids were just sitting up there, they learned the lines,
and then we worked with them a lot just to be honest and tell it
with some punch. And they were beautiful, and there was some really
kind of sentimental bits inside of it, and they spoke those texts,
we had some movement sections where it just, run around, but make
sure you run over there, and then run over there, and run over
there,
James Long 21:29
and then do whatever you want. And they were amazing, they're
stellar actors. I saw Luke the other day, Luke who sings with
Vancouver, or sang with Vancouver Choir, now teaches my daughter
the choir at her high school, which just also put that in
perspective of how long that is 15 years ago when that show went
up.
Maiko Yamamoto 21:47
And I was just emailed by one of the kids, Elena Kirby, about
working on a project.
Gabrielle Martin 21:55
Obviously, the roots of your company go deep and the kind of fruits
of that community -engaged process goes into the present, which is
kind of where I want to go next. I mean, I know that you have
continued to work with non -professional artists, at least with the
similar work that his concept toured.
Gabrielle Martin 22:16
So I'm curious about some of the themes and where your artistic
practices evolved, as theater replacement, individually, but just
also to kind of give some context into how those projects have been
framed in push over the years.
Gabrielle Martin 22:35
After that 2010 presentation of Clark and I, there was 100%
Vancouver, which was a co -production or co -presentation with SFE
cultural programs.
James Long 22:47
Yes.
Gabrielle Martin 22:48
collaboration in 2011, Winners and Losers with New World in 2013,
Town Choir in 2017, Little Volcano with Beta Hilly in 2020, and
footnote number 12 in 2020. And do you mind if I sit here in 2022?
So across all of those projects, as a company and individually,
would you reflect on some of the through lines and evolution of
your practice?
James Long 23:24
Wow, how'd it even begin? You know, framing practice has always
been, I think, certainly interesting and an ongoing thing for me
because it's kind of hard to do, especially when I follow impulse a
lot of the time and also difficult for theater replacement because
as we continue to develop as artists, as we continue to develop, we
found ourselves also finding other things interesting inside of our
individual practices as opposed to always intertwining our
work.
James Long 23:52
When I articulate and look at what I'm doing right now,
particularly as research faculty at SFU, because things have
changed, I'm no longer at theater replacements as a co -founder or
a co -artistic director, the large majority of my work is teaching
and research and service for the university, that is Simon
Fraser.
James Long 24:11
And it's really focused on methods of collaboration and methods of
collaboration with artists from other disciplines, but also artists
and individuals and citizens outside of normal disciplines. So how
does art intersect with the city?
James Long 24:28
It was one of my big focuses now with the work I do. Do you mind if
I sit here? It was really about the Russian Hall. The Russian Hall
was the protagonist of that show. We filled it with actors,
actually actors, the probably most actorly show I've done in a very
long time with the people that were on stage, but the real
protagonist, the real focus was on that building and the function
of that building and the function of these buildings inside of
Vancouver,
James Long 24:51
particularly buildings that were culturally specific and now are
being repurposed or gentrified for artistic purposes. So that was a
collaboration with that structure, I think, and with the
architecture of that place.
James Long 25:03
So that's how I think the framing of my practice sits now. And if I
bounce it back into the past, I can make connections all the way
through the work of theater replacement did from the very
beginning, whether it was working, Mike and I working together or
bringing Darren into work with us or Vader or Sarah Chase, or it
just goes on and on and on and many, many different artists that
we've worked with.
James Long 25:24
It's always been an active negotiation and conversation about
practice.
Gabrielle Martin 25:28
Do you still sometimes have some nerves before Premier where you
wish you could take down a poster or have you managed to get
comfortable with that disconnect?
James Long 25:38
I haven't had a crushingly uncomfortable premiere in a long time, I
don't think. It could be that I just don't invest in that kind of
energy anymore because I'm too old and too tired to really freak
out about those things.
James Long 25:51
And also the knowledge, and it's something I tell students all the
time when they're really freaked out, this is not the last thing
you're ever going to make. Just go do a good job, do the best you
can, survive, use it as research for the next thing.
James Long 26:03
So no, that anxiety doesn't exist, but that could also be a gap,
maybe I'm not taking enough risks anymore, maybe I'm getting
complacent. So I'll try to freak myself out in the future, I
promise.
Gabrielle Martin 26:16
And you're working, do you mind if I sit here? It was an ensemble
work, so this, like, working with one or two actors, which was so
key to the earlier work, that kind of frame that has
shifted.
Maiko Yamamoto 26:33
or is it still a key interest? I think it's really shifted. It
shifted as soon as Jamie and I started to explore curiosities and
open up processes to other actors and that really shifted. And we
just changed our bylaws officially because it's not true
anymore.
Maiko Yamamoto 26:50
We started to make bigger shows and if anything it is about,
theater placement has become a company that is beyond the two co
-founders now. And my work has really been about opening up a
company to other art opportunities, to work with other artists or
to bring other communities together.
Maiko Yamamoto 27:09
And it's kind of the opposite because my, because I'm the only AD
there now, it's my whole artistic practice. It's become everything
and things like programming have become more interesting. So it's
about, yeah, creating rooms where people can be at their best and
be really creative and then also finding time where I can do that
for myself as well.
Maiko Yamamoto 27:34
So yeah, things have really, things have changed. We've gone
through a big transition, but I would say the things that are still
interesting to theater placement when we started, the ideas of
coexistence, forefronting collaboration, making works that draw
people's different perspectives, histories, experiences together,
that's still a big priority and we're doing that in everything that
we do.
Gabrielle Martin 27:57
And because you've been there from the very first festival, and
even before that, in the conformance series, before Push became a
festival, I'm curious to know your perspective on the cultural
context that Push existed in, exists in, and the significance of
that for your own practice.
Maiko Yamamoto 28:20
I mean, I think Push has always been a really important and vital
gateway for artists here to have connection with the rest of the
world and, you know, it's done a huge service in terms of, you
know, fostering artistic practice here, changing the way that we
make work and really building this community into a really special
artistic community.
Maiko Yamamoto 28:43
I was talking to somebody the other day saying, it's very unique
here, you know, and I think, you know, the pandemic was hard and we
lost some of that focus and connection, but I think it's to
recognize it kind of grew up in a really cool way and everybody's
kind of involved in getting it to a, you know, keeping it unique
and keeping it interesting.
Maiko Yamamoto 29:06
And I think the one thing that Vancouver artists do really well and
what our city seems to do really well is to grow artists that are
very good at doing multiple things. I don't know, maybe that's a
bit of a, maybe that's also hard because you have artists that are
also producers that, you know, wear multiple hats, but I actually
think it's a real strength of right now.
Maiko Yamamoto 29:26
And so it's interesting to be in this moment in the artistic
community here where people are doing multiple things and I suppose
the turn to digital and the, you know, that all fostered that too.
A lot of people are making films now or podcasts or making albums
or what have you, but it's really cool to recognize that the
artists here do a lot of different things and sometimes have
moments where they can bring those together in service of making
something really cool.
Maiko Yamamoto 29:55
So I think it's always been a really unique community and push has
been huge in kind of opening the world up to Vancouver artists and
the community here.
James Long 30:05
Vancouver is an interesting moment in Vancouver because I don't
want to talk about real estate and the realities of trying to live
in the city for artists, which is just a given now. Everybody is
aware of those things.
James Long 30:16
And I look at what push came out of, and it was a moment of real
community cohesion inside the city. Certainly in the theater realm
of the performing arts, I can't speak to the dance realm as much
because I've never been part of the dance world.
James Long 30:32
Vancouver is tricky. And the aughts, which I believe what we call
them, the zeros, was a moment of real cohesion inside of the
theater community. There's Progress Lab, which is now a building,
which is a consortium of seven or eight or nine or ten sometimes
companies, saying how can we support each other?
James Long 30:49
How can we lend each other resources? How can we give each other
space? How can we give each other feedback to make new work? That
was really really important, and I think that's what helped build
push at the same time as us.
James Long 30:59
We were all going to those festivals. We were meeting each other at
that place and seeing work we were being presented in those places.
We were sharing our rolodexes with each other, saying this show
should be here, and we just were lucky enough to go to
Germany.
James Long 31:11
You should talk to this guy because maybe you can go to Germany too
and show your work. And I think the pandemic had an impact on that
because we did fracture, and I think we are kind of fractured
inside the city right now.
James Long 31:21
There's a lot of, there's an anxiety inside this city right now of
change, and you can feel this change wanting to happen and
happening, and it's stuttering and it's spinning. Where we were
objects and agents of change and the aughts inside of a better
funded moment, I think, and a more affordable moment inside this
Vancouver.
James Long 31:42
How this now translates to this time and to this festival moving
forward is going to be the biggest question. How do we support each
other inside this work?
Maiko Yamamoto 31:52
it's certainly been less about international, it's just been less
about international just because we have been kind of closed in and
I think that it's always going to be super valuable to be in
composition that's one of the things that theater replacement
really tries to work for is to keep international connections alive
but it arguably it's not about that as much anymore you know it's
been really about regional and local and I think there are things
happening like things like boombox and the birdhouse being really
close and proximal there's a cool energy that's happening there I
also feel like as someone who is of a certain generation sometimes
I have to look really hard to sort of get into the conversations
that are happening in the younger generation but there are some
really exciting things that are starting I'm excited to see how
things sort of evolve in the next five to ten years here in the
city I think it's going to look really different but I think it's
going to be really cool very exciting
Ben Charland 32:47
That was a special episode of Push Play, in honor of our 20th Push
International Performing Arts Festival, which will run from January
23rd to February 9th, 2025. Push Play is produced by myself, Ben
Charland, and Tricia Knowles.
Ben Charland 33:03
A new episode of our 20th Festival series with Gabriel Martin will
be released every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. To stay
up to date on Push 20 and the 2025 Festival, visit pushfestival .ca
and follow us on social media at Push Festival.
Ben Charland 33:22
And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word and take
a moment to leave a review.