What would happen if a room full of strangers had to build a society together?
New Societies turns that question into a game. Audience members become citizens, make collective choices, compete for resources and decide what their society values while the conditions around them keep changing.
The project began during my MFA at Simon Fraser University and developed through Re:Current Theatre. I created the original concept, directed and produced the project, and performed in its first iteration.
Artistic inquiry
What happens when the audience makes the decisions—and those decisions change the world of the performance?
The game and the performance develop together. Rules, space, timing and facilitation shape the choices people can make, and those choices change the experience for everyone in the room.
As we took the game to different rooms and cities, we kept asking whether the rules still made sense for the people playing.
Process
The first live version was developed in Vancouver with a company of performers, dramaturgs, designers and technologists.
In 2020, the work moved online. Instead of watching a streamed performance, people played together from separate homes and screens. That version was presented through eVolver Festival, Kick & Push, Crow's Theatre and Rumble Theatre.
The live work returned in 2022 for presentations in Vancouver and an Ontario tour through In the Soil, Kick & Push and SummerWorks.
In 2022, New Societies Online was adapted into Mandarin and performed by a local Taiwanese cast, presented by the National Theater & Concert Hall in Taipei. The audience played together online.
A work that keeps changing
Taking the game online, on tour and into another language meant reconsidering how people could play together.
Each version returns to the same question: how do people make decisions together when their choices affect other people?
Where directing and producing meet
As director, I shape how people enter the game and how performers guide it. As producer, I find the development time, funding and presenting partners to try those ideas with audiences.
Selected credits
- Concept / Direction
- Brian Postalian
- Created by
- Re:Current Theatre
- Dramaturgy
- Evan Medd
- Scenography
- Christian Ching
- Sound Design
- Stefan Nazarevich
- Digital Programming
- Howard Dai
- Digital Platform Design
- Sam MacKinnon
Created with Sena Cagla, Howard Dai, Alexa Fraser, Evan Medd, Hannah Meyers, Pascal Reiners, Amanda Sum, Meagan Woods, Montserrat Videla, Laura Coons and the broader company across its iterations.
