As part of this year’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Vancouver-based Electric Company Theatre presents the premiere of An Undeveloped Sound.
On the shores of an ocean sound, an abandoned commercial outlet has been repurposed as a call centre. Inside, a team of spokespeople have been recruited to speak on behalf of a mysterious new development. Their task, it seems, is next to impossible. Although units have been sold and the development should be in its final phase, the developer has stopped responding, the units haven’t materialized, and the spokespeople are at a loss for words. What exactly have they been hired to represent?
This beguiling creation features four spokespeople hired to represent a mysterious development. Using Goethe’s Faust as a loose template, writer-director Jonathon Young applies its core themes to the issue of communication itself: caught between the forces of development and destruction, the spokespeople are on a quest to say what can’t be said.
“It’s like No Exit meets Severence,” says actor Andrew McNee, who plays Wade in the production alongside Ryan Beil, Amy Rutherford, Laara Sadiq & Ruby Henderson.
In this edition of Before The Curtain Goes Up, Vancouver Presents contributor David C Jones speaks with McNee about the production.
An Undeveloped Sound plays as part of the 2023 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (149 W Hastings St, Vancouver) from January 30 through February 4. Visit pushfestival.ca for tickets and information.