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Boca del Lupo

Experimental theatre company, based on Granville Island in Vancouver British Columbia. Boca del Lupo originated as a collective creation group in 1996. It now specializes in multi-media theatrical productions and spectacular outdoor presentations, often with puppets. It also frequently collaborates with international, national and regional artists.

Its Spanish name literally means “mouth of a wolf”, and references the theatre expression used before a performance to wish the actors good luck by wishing them bad luck, as with the English expression, “break a leg.”

Boca del Lupo is led by Artistic Director Sherry J. Yoon and Artistic Producer Jay Dodge. Yoon has created and/or directed each of the company’s original productions, and Dodge’s writing, performance and designs have been central in all of the shows.

In the summer of 2001, Boca del Lupo created the first of its free, outdoor, roving spectacles for all ages in the form of a Fringe Festival performed in a large Plexiglas cube situated on a grassy knoll, surrounded by trees and encircled on three sides by water. In 2002, in partnership with the Vancouver Parks Board, it created The Only Animal; and with the support of the Vancouver Playhouse Boca del Lupo mounted The Last Stand, featuring a mixture of daring performances set high in the tree canopy of Stanley Park.

In 2005 the company adapted the Russian folktale Vasily the Luckless, and in 2007 Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris as Quasimodo in partnerships with Vancouver Opera and the Squamish Nation.

My Dad, My Dog was commissioned by the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (2008). In this bleak comedy, a North Korean translator is convinced that her abusive father, who functions as metaphorical representation of the oppressive state, has returned to her reincarnated as a dog. An Imaginary Look at the Uncompromising Life of Thomas Smith (2010) provides a flashback of a war photographer’s life in his dying moments.

Boca del Lupo contributed site-specific works to the “Hive” projects for three years, which brought together the imaginative new creations of eleven Vancouver theatre companies. Hive 3 was performed during the Cultural Olympics in 2010.

In 2012, The Voyage simulated the experience of human trafficking by shutting up fourteen audience members in a shipping container.

The company has received numerous awards including Jessie Richardson Awards for Outstanding Design, Outstanding Production, Significant Artistic Achievement, Outstanding Performance; the Critic’s Choice Award for Innovation; and the Alcan Performing Arts Award.

Website: www.bocadellupo.com

Profile by Anne Nothof, Athabasca University

Last updated 2023-01-22