Best Life
Artist: THEATRE REPLACEMENT (Vancouver)
January 30 @ 9pm, January 31 @ 7pm, February 1 @ 9pm, February 2 @ 8pm
Duration: 65 minutes
Best Life – Theatre Replacement
Photo by Chelsea Stuyt
Image description: A group of people stand by a row of house lamps in a dark space. Many of the house lamps are lit and there’s a warm glow. One person is leaning over and turning on a lamp, and their face is lit brightly. They are wearing a jean jacket and sweatpants, and they are holding a bouquet of leaves and a card in their left hand.
Best Life is a new, relational show performed by an audience for an audience, inspired by the machines that make our lives better. What if these domestic machines could whisper to us the stories of the people they are caring for? In Best Life, they become the audience’s companions — everyday ‘R2D2s’ that teach us how to perform the show for each other. Scenes emerge that reveal a suburban neighbourhood, over a span of 50 years — an origami of everyday objects that the audience interacts with, to build a shared narrative of longing in this moment.
An intimate and participatory audience experience that will simultaneously take you back into the past, as well as forward into the far far future, Best Life also asks a much bigger question about what it is we are leaving behind.
Conceived, Created, Directed and Performed by: Maiko Yamamoto
Co-created with: Keely O’Brien and Arthi Chandra
Illustrations and Ephemera by: Keely O’Brien
Sound Design by: Antoine Bédard
Lighting Design by: Itai Erdal
Technical Consultant: Daniel O’Shea
Special Thanks: Shanae Sodhi, Remy Siu, Leah Weinstein, Cindy Mochizuki, Kyle Loven, Cory Philley, Kris Nelson and Kee Hong Low.
If you have accessibility needs please email katie@theatrereplacement.org so we can best support your needs during the performance.
Best Life was developed through LIFT’s inaugural Concept Touring Digital Residency, Deer Lake Artist’s Residency and the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Theatre Replacement recognizes the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council and Province of BC, and the City of Vancouver.
Trailer by Emma Pollard
MAIKO YAMAMOTO is Artistic Director of Theatre Replacement, and a Vancouver-based artist who creates new, experimental and intercultural works of performance. Many of these works are built through a career-long practice of collaboration and include theatre projects, public art works, and performance installations. She co-founded Theatre Replacement in 2003 with fellow artist James Long. For TR she has created over 25 new works, many of which have toured to festivals and venues around the world. In addition, Maiko mentors artists for a range of different companies, organizations and individuals, both in Canada and abroad. She also works as a curator, and writes and speaks about performance regularly, centred around devised theatre making and its capacity to transform systems and structures within the contemporary art field. She holds a BFA in Theatre from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and a Masters of Applied Arts in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Maiko was the co-recipient of the 2019 Siminovitch Prize in Directing, with James Long.
Information for Presenters: Available for touring. Premiered at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in November 2022. Part of ISPA’s Pitch New Works in June 2023.
CONTACT
Katie Roberts
katie@theatrereplacement.org
theatrereplacement.org / thelocalbubble.org
X: @THTRreplacement
Instagram: @theatre_replacement / @the_local_bubble
Facebook: /TheatreReplacement