Ep. 20 - Collaboration and Collision (2006)

PuSh Play

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.