K BODY AND MIND
new body, old ghost
The Story
In 20XX, a security specialist named Kawabi wants what everyone wants: to leave behind the scars of sickness, hunger, and war…and lead a new life in a new body. She joins The Grove, an idealistic new start-up with a fleet of bioengineered and shareable bodies. But when a hostile entity hacks The Grove’s network, colonizing the minds and bodies of its inhabitants, Kawabi must rescue her new home…by reckoning with a ghost of the past.
The Project
K BODY AND MIND is a new multimedia sci-fi performance by interdisciplinary performance collective, A Wake of Vultures, under the leadership of writer, director, and producer, Conor Wylie. It features dissociated but interlocking tracks of sound, light, and choreography, like a radio-play overlaid on a silent film. It blends the maximalist cyberpunk and anime aesthetics of films like Ghost in the Shell, AKIRA, or The Matrix, with the type of off-kilter minimalist performance seen in a Richard Maxwell play, or a David Lynch movie. It’s a strange and mesmerizing convergence, performed by two bodies in a 100-year-old theatre.
Our Journey
Workshops of K BODY AND MIND began at the end of 2018 at the Russian Hall in Vancouver, with the support of Theatre Replacement’s COLLIDER Artist-in-Residence program, which led to a 25-minute work-in-progress showing for presenters and arts professionals at Theatre Replacement’s PushOFF 2019.
In 2019, The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts invited us to continue our development as Artists-in-Residence, and programmed us for a premiere live performance in November 2020…
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic put those plans on hold. But with the continued support of Cory Philley and the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, we workshopped and filmed K BODY AND MIND in the James Cowan Theatre over a 5-week period in October and November 2020, and debuted online in 2021. The filmed version of K BODY AND MIND played online at numerous theatre and film festivals, and won the Best Director of a Canadian Feature prize at Vancouver Asian Film Festival.
And after many long years, the full live performance version, which integrates excerpts of the film, debuted at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts from May 4-7, 2022.