Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre presents
Discomfort Lab
November 23-26, 2017 – 8:00 pm
November 26, 2017 – 2:00 pmWarehouse 534 – 534 9 Avenue SE
(Regrettably, this venue is not wheelchair accessible.)General tickets: $10
Students/Seniors/Artists/Low Income: $5
Accessible Ticketing: $0
We hope that finances aren’t a barrier to attend the Discomfort Lab. Please pick the ticket option that is available to you at this time.
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* Content Warnings: This performance features language, content and images that may be sensitive to some viewers, including nudity, suicide ideation, profanity, violence and audience interaction. Please contact us ahead of time if you have any hesitations.
Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre invites you to get uncomfortable! We are proud to present four fearless performances that will reflect and interrogate the world around us, and defy expectations of a “normal” theatre-going experience.
This band of misfit artists will inhabit an empty warehouse, turning it into an artistic den of work that will excite, problematize and explore power structures and the status quo. In turn stark, funny, honest and intimate, these performances will dare to speak the too-often unspoken, and to open peepholes into unacknowledged realities.
Participating Artists:
Outside-In
Created by Audrey Lane Cockett and Geneviève Paré
Concrete gridlines, media machines, daily deadlines and Rockies in the rearview. Chinook headaches from the pressurized, mechanized, automatized, digitized and desensitized living. Where is there to run, except inwards? Outside-In is a multidisciplinary performance installation that seeks to crack open the wild in our guarded urban souls.
Where is Mohhkinstists! (Working Title)
Created by Hayley Feigs and Justin Many Fingers
Justin and Hayley draw from their evolving lived experiences of shame and discomfort to create a sensory collage of art. They explore how these experiences have shaped their artistic identities and their relationships to this city.
Light Skin, Dark Skin
This show is about me and my blackness, and how my blackness defined me before I even knew it could. I want to have an open conversation about what it means to be black, queer and human, and I’m going to do it in 3-inch heels. I will talk about love and lovelessness. I am ready to explore my soul with you and your friends. I want to yell and scream, cry and whisper, lie and reveal. Most of all, I want to listen and be listened to. I want to take space. Sorry white cis straight people, it will only be for like 20 minutes. xoxo @nervousshipwreck.
How To Self-Suspend
How To Self-Suspend is an X-rated narrative. Part photo-essay, part rope bondage demonstration, this performance looks at Katie Sly’s existence in three cities: their childhood being raised in instability and violence in Montreal, their ecstasy and injury in the Toronto BDSM community, and where they now live: kiddie-corner to Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. Hot, uncomfortable, and with questionable ethics, this solo performance explores the impact of long-endured trauma, and how that trauma shapes what feels normal. This performance digs into internalized rage and enacts revenge fantasies. How To Self-Suspend candidly excavates the challenges of isolation and recklessness.
Within Discomfort Lab, Katie will be presenting a first attempt at a part of what will (eventually) be a three-act performance piece. Katie is scared shitless.
These performances are part of Swallow-a-Bicycle’s ongoing development of a set of guiding principles. Audience input and feedback may be requested.
