La Marea

“Is it theatre? Performance art? Film clips come to life?... What we can tell you is that La Marea is a slice of surreal voyeurism you won't soon forget.”

– Janet Smith, The Straight

In the spirit and tradition of our free, summer spectaculars in Stanley Park, in 2011 Boca del Lupo worked with Mariano Pensotti and his team from Argentina to take over the zero hundred block of Gastown. This free, outdoor, winter production was a cinematic peek into the private lives of Vancouverites as we celebrated 125 years as a city.

Over 6700 people came down over the 4 days of performances which featured partnerships with the PuSh Festival, UBC, SFU, Studio 58 and the Gastown Business association.

And here's the rest of Janet's article, we think she says it best:

"Walk toward the block of Water Street between Carrall and Abbott and at first you'll think you've stumbled upon a film set: giant flood lights illuminate the brick road, which has been cut off to traffic at either end.

But instead of being waved away from the production zone, you're coaxed in. And if last night's dress rehearsal was any indication, what awaits is one of the coolest things happening at this year's PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

Did we mention it's free?

The show is called La Marea, and along the street, in the trendy heritage storefronts and upstairs windows, a series of vignettes plays out, with live actors and surtitle screens that reveal their stories and innermost thoughts.

The most striking, and disturbing, sequence finds a man splayed out in the middle of Water Street, apparently thrown from the nearby spilled motorbike, his helmet tossed a few feet away. While he struggles slowly to crawl across the concrete, projected text tells us what brought him here and lets us in on the life that's flashing before him.

In a nearby second-floor window, club music pulsates and disco lights flash, but what we see is a middle-aged man—well-known local actor Tom Scholte—watching his teenage daughter's birthday party and reading his thoughts.

Other moments: in the giant window of Obakki, a couple is watching a TV zombielike while eating dinner until the woman suddenly grabs the man and plants a passionate kiss on him; through the glass at Spirit Wrestler Gallery, a woman tosses and turns in bed trying to make herself go to sleep; and at InForm Interiors' storefront, a guy does pushups and situps, detached from his partner, who's playing a nearby piano in their livingroom.

Most of the pieces touch on love—its early stages (a couple kissing for the first time, love at first sight) through to its end stages (a couple having a last dinner before the wife leaves forever in the morning).

Is it theatre? Performance art? Film clips come to life? Trying to figure that out is part of the multidisciplinary fun of a festival that defies genres. What we can tell you is that La Marea is a slice of surreal voyeurism you won't soon forget.

It's the brainchild of Mariano Pensotti, an Argentinean-born theatre artist who, not surprisingly, has worked heavily in film and video.

Props go to the city for letting the PuSh people and its cohorts at Boca Del Lupo, block off the busy thoroughfare for such high-concept art, and to the Gastown businesses who have donated their little windows on the world.

Bundle up before you head down, and check it out before it's gone. It runs from 7 to 9 p.m. from tonight (January 18) to Saturday (January 22); the nine episodes are about 10 minutes each and run concurrently, but play over and over so you can wander through them as you please.

And pinch yourself to remind yourself that you're in Vancouver."