Cyclops

2020 / Performance, Port Credit, Toronto

Cycling Oriented Performer Squad

A project with Frog In Hand

2020, the first summer of the pandemic altered all of our performance plans. All of a sudden we were not allowed to gather in groups larger than 5 in public. Theatres and studios had closed. We had nowhere to be. Everyone had become so isolated.

My friends David and Tamara of Clay & Paper Theatre wanted to offer a concept to us. Years before they had created the CYCLOPS, then known as the Cycling Oriented Puppet Squad, a mobile performance & parade designed to bring puppets to the people. They thought, why not open the concept up to make it more general, hence the Cycling Oriented PERFORMER Squad. Colleen, Alice and I, along with the Frog in Hand Summer Comapny, took the concept and ran with it. If we couldn’t bring people to gather, we might as well go to a place where gathering naturally happens: parks. And we would keep mobile.

It was a pretty open concept: we wanted height to herald our arrival (this took the form of a lollypop puppet), we wanted some sort of vehicle (a bike, cart, rollerblades, etc.), and we wanted characters.

Our task was to lighten up our neighbourhoods, to be a surprise and to bring a smile to a stranger’s face.

As it was a summer of being online and separate from one another, we organized the groups in terms of geographical location, and came away with three wonderful groups, one in Mississauga, one in central Toronto, and one on Toronto’s East End. It was tricky because I couldn’t actually work with two of the three groups very often & didn’t even end up seeing their performances because we scheduled all of the three activations to happen in 3 different areas on the same days.

Cast:

Andrew Gaboury
Drew Berry
Rohan Dhupar
Mackenna Martinez

Clarke Blair
Alice Cavanagh
Erin Eldershaw

Zachary Bastille
Michael Derworiz
Lizzie Moffatt
Jeremy Pearson
Kaitlyn Seibold

Production Assistant:

Jessica Cen

Outside Eye:

Colleen Snell

BIG THANKS:

Clay & Paper Theatre