Presentation Series
The Presentation Series is a curated performance series that brings multidisciplinary contemporary performance to local audiences. Ranging from participatory theatrical experiences to cutting-edge contemporary dance works, the Series pushes us forward, together.
In 2025, the Series included:
SmartSmart by Adrienne Wong
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Take your phone to the theatre! Join acclaimed theatre creator Adrienne Wong for storytelling, crafts, and surprises—phones on.
Smartphones are modern cybernetic devices, like contact lenses or cochlear implants, modifying us in the name of progress. They extend our senses through haptics, reminders, and constant connectivity, shaping our habits, relationships, and self-awareness.
SmartSmart is a new work exploring pervasive media and our evolving bond with technology. Developed during Wong’s residency with Theatre Replacement’s COLLIDER program, it investigates how devices impact human interaction.
“SmartSmart finds [...] Wong employing coffee, crafts, and storytelling in an audience-interactive piece that explores how our phones mediate and modify our entire lives.” - Hold On Let It Go Press Release -
Adrienne Wong (she/her) is a theatre maker whose work straddles theatrical and digital space. She is the Artistic Director of SpiderWebShow Performance and co-curates FOLDA. Adrienne holds a BFA Theatre from SFU, an MFA Writing from UVic, and is one of four finalists for the 2025 Siminovitch Prize.
Creative Team
Written, Created + Performed by Adrienne Wong
Digital Design: Andie Lloyd
Set Design: Barbara Clayden
Producer: Margaret Evans
Partners
Produced by SpiderWebShow. SmartSmart was developed as part of Adrienne Wong’s residency with Theatre Replacement’s COLLIDER program. Recent presentations include HOLD ON LET GO (January 2024) and FOLDA, The Festival of Live Digital Art (June 2024).
asses.masses by Patrick Blenkarn + Milton Lim
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asses.masses is a custom video game designed to be played from beginning to end by a live audience, one person at a time. It’s a 7+ hour epic story of a herd of unemployed donkeys trying to get their jobs back, all while navigating the perils of a post-Industrial society in which they’ve been made redundant.
Cheeky, political, and best described as Animal Farm meets Pokémon meets Final Fantasy, asses.masses puts the control(ler) in its audience’s hands and asks them to discover the space between the work that defines us and the play that frees us.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
--Broadway World UK
"This was hands down one of the best live experiences I’ve ever had in a theatre..."
— Matthew Ausin, Co-Artistic Director, MAYK -
Patrick Blenkarn (he/him) and Milton Lim (he/him) are conceptual artists exploring urgent questions around the social value of art, digital labour, and the political potential of games. Mixing their backgrounds in performance, philosophy, psychology, and digital media, their collaborations have manifested in video games, participatory installations, digital archives, and card games.
In addition to their asses.masses, Patrick and Milton are also the co-founders of the Canadian national video archive of performance (videocan) and the co-creators behind a performing arts economy trading card game (culturecapital), a role playing game about cultural design (FARCE), and an escape room intervention in a German museum (FUNFUG FORUM). Their projects have been presented across Canada, as well as in Germany, Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Turkey, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the USA, in English, French, Italian, Catalan, Turkish, Portuguese, German, and Spanish.
Their next project, dam.nation, follows the true story of twenty Canadian beavers acquired by the Argentinian government in 1946.
Creative Team
Co-direction, Text, Programming, Pixel Art, 2D Animation: Patrick Blenkarn
Co-direction, Text, Sound Design, Video, Shaders, 3D Visual Effects: Milton Lim
Dramaturgy, Text, Touring Producer: Laurel Green
Original Music, Sound Design David Mesiha
Partners
Created with support from Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, The Theatre Centre, VIVO Media Arts, Embassy of Canada to Argentina and Paraguay. Developed with the funding support from Creative BC, the British Columbia Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts. Produced in association with the National Arts Centre of Canada’s National Creation Fund.
Workshop Presentation
Joy Cuisine by Impulse Theatre
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Treat yourself – joy is on the menu!
Joy Cuisine is an experiential and tactile “meal” centred around joy. Enjoyed by a table of two to four patrons, Impulse serves a set menu of immersive activities for the audience to savour and enjoy. You’ll still leave full, even without any real food.
The project is a culmination of five years of development between Impulse and a group of disabled/chronically ill creators. The work is grounded in those smaller moments of joy in our daily lives and the ability to share in communal delight. -
Impulse Theatre is based on Lekwungen Territory (the territory of the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations). Impulse creates and presents contemporary interdisciplinary theatre and dance performance; cultivates a community of artists; and empowers artists, emerging creative producers, and arts workers as leaders.
Impulse has created over 20 works of embodied interdisciplinary contemporary theatre and dance performance. Along with the artistic projects, the company is a mainstay in Victoria as an incubator and instigator, and supports the development of performing arts workers, both their process and new work.
Credits
Conceived and co-created by Andrew Barrett
Menu co-created with Amber Downie-Back, Angus Steele-Gaffney, and Jess Amy Shead
Maître D’: Andrew Barrett
Servers: Amber Downie-Back, Jess Amy Shead, and Douglas Ennenberg
Partners
Experiential Consultation from Embrace Arts Foundation and Tom Arthur Davis.
Previous development contributors: Allison Brooks, Matilda Cobanli, Amber Downie-Back, Veronique Emmett, Loreto Espinoza, Emily Friesen, Tiffany Hannan, Ursula May, Rose McTavish, Noah McKimm, Jared Middleton, Julie Mombourquette, Patricia Reilly, Kiera, Shaw, Melissa Taylor, and Jayne Walling.
Developed with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, Province of BC and the CRD Arts Support Service.
