K Body and Mind finds multimedia utopia in a sci-fi miniseries
Conor Wylie describes the genre-deyfing new A Wake of Vultures’ work as “radio overlaid on a silent film”
Jasmine Chen and Donna Soares in a still from K Body and Mind.
Conor Wylie
A Wake of Vultures streams all three episodes of K Body and Mind from March 6 to 14
Frozen in place: as we surpass the one-year benchmark of the current pandemic, that is how many Vancouverites feel, especially those in the arts industry. Careers, practices, performances, and lives continue to flood with uncertainty and ambiguity, which, for some, makes the future seem bleak.
However, the future is radically reimagined in the upcoming sci-fi experimental theatre production K Body and Mind, produced by Vancouver-based writer, performer, director, and 2019 Siminovitch Prize Protégé winner Conor Wylie.
Presented virtually from March 6 to 14 as a triple-episode miniseries, the production follows security specialist Kawabi and her journey through a future free from sickness and war. Kawabi is a member of The Grove, a start-up company that engineers bodies to be shared between multiple people. When an unknown virus tries to colonize The Grove, she is tasked with protecting her new safe haven and all the other citizens that inhabit her body.
The work is performed by Donna Soares and Jasmine Chen, who play a variety of roles. However, they use only their voices to differentiate between each character while maintaining a constant blank facial expression. This separation between the animated audible and the contained visual components builds what Wylie calls a “radio overlaid on a silent film” experience, where what’s seen doesn’t quite match what’s heard.
The experience is heightened by the cyberpunk aesthetics that inspired K Body and Mind. The production’s intricate soundtrack conjures cityscapes and the cyberpunk genre without showing the setting onscreen. The performers move minimally, yet the videogame-like expressivity in their voices and the action-packed soundtrack tells us there’s more going on than what initially meets the eye.
K Body and Mind fantasizes about a utopian future, imagining an idealistic social order where citizens exist so peacefully that they can cohabit the same body. And, without hunger and sickness, everyone is equal, and everyone is thriving.
K Body and Mind aims to provide its viewers with the hope for a better future, where disease, disparity, and colonizing control are instead replaced with prosperity, equality, and independence.
Wylie is one-third of A Wake of Vultures, an interdisciplinary collective based out of Vancouver. K Body and Mind features the work of Wylie’s collaborators, sound designer Nancy Tam and visual designer Daniel O’Shea. Wylie, Tam, and O’Shea have been partners since their studies at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, and formed A Wake of Vultures officially in 2013. Together, the trio investigate their shared interest in science fiction, reality and perception, video games, and anime through multimedia explorations, including audio walks, theatre productions, and installations.
The initial workshopping phase for K Body and Mind began in 2018. Since then, Wylie has worked consistently with Tam, O’Shea, and Vancouver-based choreographer Mahaila Patterson-O’Brien to bring his ideas to life.
“Over time, even though the form was so unusual, we had developed some sense of a shared vocabulary and experience together,” he adds. “A real mind meld happens when you’ve worked with each other for two or three years on a project. That’s where the experience of the movie-in-your-head or radio on a silent film came in.”
Now, three years after the first workshop and in the COVID-19 era, the themes within K Body and Mind are more prevalent than ever.
“It’s interesting to think that back in 2018, from the works’ earliest moments, there were questions in it about a virus, and policing. I understand those two main themes in a very different way now,” Wylie says.
The pandemic also impacted the way Wiley approached the creation of his production. Quarantine and isolation overtook his work, and he found himself with a script far too convoluted for what the virtual performance space could traditionally support. This is when the on-demand miniseries format came to mind.
“You watch it, you pause it, you leave and do something else, and you come back to it because it’s always there. Then you have the next episode,” he says. “That’s how I like to watch things at home, so I wanted to offer that to people.”
In the future, Wylie still intends to create a live version of K Body and Mind.
“There’s a special quality about watching it in live performance for 75 minutes,” Wylie says. “You can see how hard the actors are working to make it seem like they aren’t working. There’s a joy that you get from seeing them having to do it live—a kind of performance magic.”
Wylie says K Body and Mind is meant to inspire its viewers to imagine a more positive future, despite the current feelings of uncertainty and ambiguity.
“At the heart of this piece is people trying to build a better world,” Wylie says. “We’re sitting at home feeling frozen in place, so it only makes sense that our imaginations are running wild. We want to reimagine what our world looks like. I really hope that we keep that momentum when the world opens again.”
Find more information and tickets here.
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