Several federal ministers slid into bed with Radix Theatre in Ottawa in 2009 within the privacy of a six-foot by eight-foot cardboard box.
I wont say whose name it was, but there was one minister who was brought to tears by his experience in the relationship trap, said Andrew Laurenson, artistic director of the 25-year-old theatre company. It can get very intimate.
Radix developed traps for a Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Art Gallery FUSE event in 2007 and then presented them as part of B.C. Scene at the National Arts Centre in 2009.
Now its Performance Art Trap returns to Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»May 1 to 4 as the next presentation in Boca Del Lupos Micro Performance Series 2013.
For FUSE, the Radix collective needed to create a show that could run on a shoestring and harness attention in the loud, cavernous space.
Laurenson had never forgotten the image hed seen years earlier in a childrens play of a rabbit trap propped up with a stick, with two guys waiting to capture something with a sausage.
We just thought well lets try trapping some people, he said.
Because it was a trap we started thinking about the trappings of life, so we created these one-on-one performances that are sort of metaphors for different kinds of traps that we all fall into, he added. So theres the relationship trap and the fame trap and the death trap and then theres one special trap that were keeping a secret.
An audience member slips into an empty chair or space in a bed and a nearby security guard pulls the stick on the custom-built cardboard box, trapping the visitor for the next 10 minutes.
Performance Art Trap-goers will experience at least one of the four traps, which will be set up at different locations around Granville Island.
Part of the experience in going there is watching the other traps in operation, Laurenson said. When they fall, they make a huge crash Part of it is maybe talking with others about whats to come or what youve experienced inside, sharing your stories about what went on in there.
A mingling area will include VIP and fame traps, music, video feeds and drinks for purchase.
Teens from Boca Del Lupos next Micro Performance Series show, Ask a Teenager, will be on hand to offer advice.
As for the name of the production, Laurenson says Radix Theatre always like[s] to poke a little bit of fun at performance art because Radix inhabits a realm between theatre and that genre.
Previous Radix productions include Fever, presented at the HIVE3 theatre warehouse party, in which visitors listened to a soundtrack about mortality while being physically examined; The Swedish Play, where audience members at Richmonds IKEA listened to a radio broadcast among regular shoppers with performers stationed throughout the giant store; and Box, in which Radix performers served theatre-goers and unsuspecting customers at Granville Streets Templeton diner and a performance slowly emerged.
Radix strives to create socially relevant work, a deeper experience for audience members and to further a deeper engagement in the world.
You kind of have to take responsibility for your engagement with the work. You cant just sit there in your darkened seat in a theatre and witness something, Laurenson said. You actually have to be there and take part.
twitter.com/Cheryl_Rossi
