A new play

Produced by Electric Company Theatre

World Premiere: Jun 12-29, 2013 - H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, MST Territories/Vancouver

An immersive, transmedia experience that transports you back to 1968 and ahead to 2048.

You Are Very Star traces two stories, from the height of the Space Race to the dawn of a new augmented humanity, as characters in each story look forward or back to 2013 as a mysterious time of wonder. “Part One: Orbiting the Cusp of Greatness,” set in 1968, the year the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre was built, will be performed in the centre’s vintage-feeling basement auditorium, and “Part Two: Transcendence,” set in 2048, will play out, replete with projections, in the Star Theatre. Perched like a spaceship in Vanier Park, the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre is, for a limited time, a portal to the most important moment in history: right now. Your presence will change the world.

Pushing at the boundaries of where theatre exists, You Are Very Star is encountered on-line, through social media, as a site-specific treasure hunt and as live theatre inside Vancouver’s beloved planetarium.

Seeking the outer limits of site-specificity, this is a production that can only occur in one place and one moment. Not only is it deeply enmeshed with the spaces it occupies, it is marking a profound transition: “We get to be the last show in the Space Centre using their old system, which is a gorgeous vintage set-up involving scores of 35-mm slide projectors and curious little mechanical handmade optical devices designed to create cosmic effects,” says co-writer Kevin Kerr. “There’s something beautifully vintage-nostalgic in them and that’s really informed the piece in a lot of ways.”