The High Performance Rodeo is a fantastic opportunity to sit back and take in some world-class theatre.
But have you ever wondered what it would be like to actually be part of the show? As luck would have it, this year’s HPR features many shows that encourage and require audience participation, either sitting in the theatre or touring the streets of Calgary. If interactive theatre is your thing, you’re in luck!
Interactive HPR:
#boxtape: With more packing tape than anyone could ever imagine, the public is invited to join in on a giant tape sculpture bridging dance and visual art.
By Heart: Playwright and actor Tiago Rodrigues’ performance involves teaching a poem to 10 people in front of the audience, and in the teaching is revealed a mix of stories.
Every Brilliant Thing: A play about depression, looking for the little gems in life and looking out for those that you love.
5-Minute Therapy: “Professional advice giver” Emelia Symington Fedy will dish out five minutes of the harsh truth about your life in record time.
Landline: Calgary to St. John’s: Participants, required to use their phones, are invited to play the dual role of audience and performer in an audio-guided, experimental walking tour of the city. Each participant is partnered with a participant in another city, sharing stories through text.
The Plainclothes: Tapping the Audience: Plainclothes agents and renegade interviewers infiltrate and interview the audience with hidden mics. Everyone invited to a listening party afterwards to hear the results!
Through the Gaze of a Navel: Emelia Symington Fedy invites the audience to participate, or just observe, this class/show which explores the fine line between seeking out enlightenment and destructive navel-gazing.
Why We Are Here!: Audience members are encouraged to become a choir and sing not only in public, but in a site that wouldn’t ordinarily be thought of as a performance space.
Wine Stage: OYR’s annual fundraiser. There’s wine. Drinking is interactive, yes?
Kari Watson is the former Listings Editor of Fast Forward Weekly, and has continued to bring event listings to Calgary through her website, The Culture Cycle. Kari’s day job involves heading up the SpaceFinder Alberta initiative for Calgary Arts Development, and because she clearly doesn’t need to sleep, she has added Editor at theYYSCENE into the mix. She loves pro cycling and Nick Cave.
kari@theyyscene.ca
