A multimedia, live-art performance staged at UBC Okanagan earlier this month goes on the road – to downtown Kelowna – in December.
This Neck of the Woods, created by Neil Cadger, Associate Professor of Creative Studies at UBC Okanagan, in collaboration with students and alumni, will be performed at the Rotary Centre for the Arts’ Mary Irwin Theatre at 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 8 and 9, and at 12 noon on Monday, Dec. 10.
The performance is based on found materials -- text, sound and imagery -- from the immediate local landscape. The first series of performances at UBC Okanagan from Oct. 30 to Nov. 3 prompted enthusiastic reviews from faculty in both Creative and Critical Studies:
- "Performances such as this bring a richness of experience that is truly satisfying," said Bryan Ryley, Associate Professor, Creative Studies.
- "The performance had great energy, expressing the meek, the perky and even a little of the outrageous," noted Byron Johnston, Associate Professor, Creative Studies.
- "This is an impressionistic, evocative, and mordantly humorous portrayal of our glorification of 'progress' and our seemingly relentless will to build, develop, produce, consume, invest, speculate, and make profits at all costs," said Virginie Magnat, Assistant Professor, Creative Studies. “This Neck of the Woods relies on the visceral power and poetic energy of live human presence to shake us out of our high-tech, corporate-sponsored, sanitized, and environmentally unsustainable daily existence.”
- "Aesthetically edgy and politically provocative, this multi-media performance examines the darker sides of Kelowna, but it's ultimately about much more than our own neck of the woods," said Lisa Grekul, Assistant Professor, Critical Studies. "Suburbia -- thank goodness -- will never look the same."
- "This is a contemporary, exuberant, socially aware multi-media ensemble work," said Sharon Thesen, Associate Professor, Creative Studies.
- "Kelowna needs more performances like this to kick us in the butt and make us pay attention to what we're doing to this place," said Nancy Holmes, Associate Professor, Creative Studies.
- "This Neck of the Woods is full of infectious and creative energies that provoke our laughter -- sometimes a very uneasy laughter -- as when one sees the truth, naked, walking around in public," said Jennifer Gustar, Associate Professor, Critical Studies.
- "It satirizes the self-centredness, aesthetic dreariness, and ecological unsustainability of contemporary suburban culture without simplistically degrading it," commented David Jefferess, Assistant Professor, Critical Studies.
- "Using playful and provocative spectacle, This Neck of the Wood maps the Okanagan's construction as a real-estate boomtown for boomers. A short sharp shock to the cranium," said Daniel Keyes, Associate Professor, Critical Studies.
Tickets are $9 ($5 for students) and are available at the door. To learn more about Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan visit: www.ubc.ca/okanagan/creativeandcritical.
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