A
WAKE
OF
VULTURES

K BODY AND MIND

A new work of theatre experimenting with the separation of the AURAL and VISUAL, like a radio-play paired with a silent film.

In 20XX, a security specialist named Kawabi wants what everyone wants: to leave behind the scars of sickness, hunger, and war… and lead a new life in a new body. She joins The Grove, an idealistic start-up with a fleet of bioengineered and shareable bodies. But when a hostile entity hacks The Grove’s network, colonizing the minds and bodies of its inhabitants, Kawabi must rescue her new home…by reckoning with a ghost of the past.

K BODY AND MIND is like a science-fiction blockbuster where you never see the action…an austere and mesmerizing work of science-fiction, evoking maximalist anime and cyberpunk aesthetics, delivered in a spooky and robotic minimalist style. The core formal experiment is the dissociation of sound and visuals, like a lush radio-play overlaid on a jittery silent film. The show constantly struggles to calibrate its different tracks: its cold lights to its warm cinematic sound, vividly voiced characters to robotically choreographed bodies, and even filmed sequences on a big screen coming in and out of sync with live performers on stage. As the viewer pieces these tracks together, the real show starts to emerge: the sci-fi action movie that plays inside your own head…

Learn more at kbodyandmind.com.

CREDITS

Lead Artist, Director, Writer: Conor Wylie 

Performers: Jasmine Chen and Donna Soares 

Performing Sound Designer, Composer: Nancy Tam

 Performing Lighting and Projection Designer, Technical Director: Daniel O’Shea

Choreographer, Movement Collaborator: Mahaila Patterson-O’Brien 

Co-creator and understudy: Anjela Magpantay (performer in 2022 production)

Story + Accessibility Collaborator: Amy Amantea 

Costume Designer: Leah Weinstein 

 

ADDITIONAL FILM COLLABORATORS

Producing Stage Manager: Anjela Magpantay 

Lead Filmmaker, Film Editor: Daniel O’Shea 

Sound Editor: Nancy Tam 

Sound Consultant: Ira Jordison 

Sound Mixers: Ira Jordison and Nancy Tam 

Script Coordinator: Mahaila Patterson-O’Brien 

Script Consultant: Shawn Macdonald 

Camera Operators: Lukáš Hyrman, Luc Forsyth, Thomas Chiasson 

Catering: Narong Heng

 

Film version premiered FEB 4-6 at PushOFF 2021: Speculative Futures.

Official A Wake of Vultures online self-release from MARCH 6-21, 2021, at kbodyandmind.com.

Additional presentation of the film version at Open Ears Festival of Music & Sound (Kitchener-Waterloo), Hamilton Fringe Festival, the Digital Dramaturgy Initiative, Centre A Gallery, and Vancouver Asian Film Festival (where it won Best Director of a Canadian Feature).

Live Multimedia Performance version debuted as a work-in-progress at PushOFF 2022: The Collider Effect, and made its full premiere in May 2022 at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

Presented as one half of SEEING DOUBLE @ 2025 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, alongside Walking at Night by Myself on JAN 31 – FEB 2 @ The Dance Centre.

K BODY AND MIND was commissioned by Theatre Replacement through their COLLIDER Artist-in-Residence program, and developed in-residence at The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Funding support by the Canada Council, the BC Arts Council, and the Wuchien Michael Than Foundation.