Street theatre
BY Jussica Duffin Wolfe
Illustration by Dave Donald
Starting this month, Canadians will be able to experience a play in its native setting, without any showtimes other than the moment at which they happen to pass by.
Uth Ink is a partnership between the Playwrights Guild of Canada and [murmur], the urban oral-history project that records stories about specifi c locations. The project pairs youths aged 12 to 20 with established playwrights to create short plays about the communities around them.
The completed works will be available online and as site-specifi c theatre installations in the authors’ communities. Signs will prompt passersby to use their phones to hear a play set in the location where they stand.
The productions create windows into the history the youth see in the places they grew up. On Ottawa’s Wellington Street, two friends reminisce about the many ways they’ve used the lot as a playground. On the threshold of a suburban supermarket, an old woman tells an impatient younger one how much the place has changed in her lifetime.
Over three years Uth Ink will come to 20 communities across the country, incorporating the work of 900 youth.
