Last week, excited audience members were welcomed back to Calgary’s West Village Theatre as Ghost River Theatre premiered its new socially-distanced sensory production, SensoryBox, also live streamed to audiences attending the shows from home. According to co-creator Eric Rose, “It is our intention to celebrate and examine our relationship to touch at this particular moment in time. We are experimenting with how visceral touch can be in a live performance and through an online medium.” Under Rose’s vision, the performance creation company is currently exploring the meanings and possibilities of hybrid live and digital theatre experiences.
The 65-minute SensoryBox experience starts with the delight of a wrapped gift of mysterious contents - for home audiences, delivered to their doors in advance of the performance date. During the show, blindfolded and alongside the guiding voice of performer Mike Tan, audience members uncover the contents of the box and rediscover the importance of play. SensoryBox is both a delightful exploration of the unknown and a comforting reframing of everyday things - like hugs - which suddenly feel daunting to us at this uncertain time of a pandemic. The experience takes our isolation and separation, and offers communal connectivity and discovery across digital platforms through to the tips of our fingers.
It is amazing to think that for the premiere, audiences joined from as far away as Serbia and New Zealand and that blindfolded, we were simultaneously yet personally interpreting identical objects through our sense of touch. SensoryBox runs until October 3rd (live and via Vimeo) and is available to be presented as a live/ and or streamed production.
Written by: Eric Rose & Christopher Duthie
Direction: Eric Rose
Art Direction & Design: Emily Promise Allison
Stage Management: Sara Turner
Featuring: Mike Tan