Soulpepper Theatre and the National Film Board
present the North American Premiere of Draw Me Close
June 23 to July 12, 2020

Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre Company
50 Tank House Lane, Toronto, ON, M5A 3C4
https://www.soulpepper.ca/performances/draw-me-close/7646

Draw Me Close blurs the worlds of live performance, virtual reality and animation to create a vivid memoir about the relationship between a mother and her son charting twenty-five years of love, learning and loss . Weaving theatrical storytelling with cutting-edge technology, the individual immersive experience allows the audience member to take the part of the protagonist, Jordan, inside a live, animated world.

The experience is by award-winning playwright and filmmaker Jordan Tannahill, and is a co-production between the National Film Board of Canada and the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio. Creative technology is by All Seeing Eye, with illustrations by Teva Harrison.

Draw Me Close blurs the worlds of live performance, virtual reality and animation to create a vivid memoir about the relationship between a mother and her son charting twenty-five years of love, learning and loss. Weaving theatrical storytelling with cutting-edge technology, the individual immersive experience allows the audience member to take the part of the protagonist, Jordan, inside a live, animated world.

The experience is by award-winning playwright and filmmaker Jordan Tannahill, and is a co-production between the National Film Board of Canada and the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio. Creative technology is by All Seeing Eye, with illustrations by Teva Harrison.

This spellbinding immersive experience is brought to life through live performance combined with a real-time motion capture system transforming an ordinary room into a captivating 3D interactive virtual world. The audience member enters the performance space and puts on a VR headset. They enter Jordan’s childhood home and move from room to room, navigating seamlessly through a world that is both physical and virtual. They are guided by Jordan’s mother, played by an actress. As the mother engages with the audience member in the physical world, her movements are translated by motion capture into the virtual world. What results is a disarmingly intimate and enthrallingly one-on-one performance that charts the lifelong relationship between a mother and her son.

Draw Me Close blurs the worlds of live performance, virtual reality and animation to create a vivid memoir about the relationship between a mother and her son charting twenty-five years of love, learning and loss. Weaving theatrical storytelling with cutting-edge technology, the individual immersive experience allows the audience member to take the part of the protagonist, Jordan, inside a live, animated world.

The experience is by award-winning playwright and filmmaker Jordan Tannahill, and is a co-production between the National Film Board of Canada and the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio. Creative technology is by All Seeing Eye, with illustrations by Teva Harrison.

This spellbinding immersive experience is brought to life through live performance combined with a real-time motion capture system transforming an ordinary room into a captivating 3D interactive virtual world. The audience member enters the performance space and puts on a VR headset. They enter Jordan’s childhood home and move from room to room, navigating seamlessly through a world that is both physical and virtual. They are guided by Jordan’s mother, played by an actress. As the mother engages with the audience member in the physical world, her movements are translated by motion capture into the virtual world. What results is a disarmingly intimate and enthrallingly one-on-one performance that charts the lifelong relationship between a mother and her son.

Says Tannahill: “There’s no other story that weighs more heavily on my mind right now than my relationship with my mother—a story that’s still in the process of unfolding—and Draw Me Close has been an extraordinary opportunity for me to reckon with all of those challenging and ultimately unknowable questions around mortality.”

Earlier work-in-progress versions of the piece were presented at the Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscapes program and the Venice International Film Festival, where it was met with critical and audience acclaim.

In the wake of my mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis, I became preoccupied with thoughts of the body and its ephemerality. About what the body accrues and carries with it through time, as an archive of memory and sensation. Trauma, touch, tenderness. And seeing as both my mother and I are artists (she’s an accomplished, amateur painter), I thought about art-making as a salve against mortality. A way of extending the body even further, beyond itself, through time. 

When I was approached by the National Film Board of Canada and the National Theatre to explore virtual reality through my lenses as a theatre maker, these thoughts were top of mind. And there was something about virtual reality that seemed to strike at the very heart of these questions about the body, death, and the nature of memory. For one, I was struck by the way virtual reality could mimic the sensation of traversing through the landscape of memory or dream; where you can be standing in your bedroom as a five-year-old one moment, but then turn and suddenly be fifteen and standing in your kitchen. Or how a glass of water on the table can seem so tangible in one second but then when you look back down at it, it is no longer there. Or how someone might suddenly age years before your eyes. The slippages of time and space possible within virtual reality felt quite unique, in their intensity and immersive immediacy, than any other medium I had experienced, and I knew this was something I wanted to play with. 

I also felt clear about the need to preserve three essential aspects of live performance. Firstly, the piece had to be truly live. Quite fundamentally, there had to be events unfolding in real time. Secondly, it had to have a sense of corporeality. As a theatre artist, I work with bodies in space; the bodies of the performers and the bodies of the audience. It felt important that the piece was an embodied experience; not something designed for a floating head as much VR seemed to be. Thirdly, the work had to be communal. The opportunity to gather and have a collective reckoning with others in a shared space is perhaps the most vital gift of theatre. Even in a one-to-one performance, there is a sacred exchange occurring. 

All of this led me to the shape of Draw Me Close as it exists now: an intimate encounter between an audience member and an actress that charts a lifeline relationship between a mother and son. A piece that blends animation, virtual reality, live performance, scenography, and sound design to give life to the sublime agony of loving and inevitably losing those who have shaped us the most. 

— Jordan Tannahill

What happens when an artist employs virtual reality, documentary and theatre to tell a story? More importantly, which stories can be told better by specifically bringing the three disciplines together?

This question was the impetus behind this unique collaboration between two internationally acclaimed organizations sharing a rich history in pushing the possibilities of storytelling: the National Film Board of Canada and the UK’s National Theatre.

During their inaugural three-week collaborative rapid-prototyping lab, theatre artists and creatives from both countries were engaged to develop work that combined creative documentary, theatre and VR production. The intent was to explore and advance the language of creative non-fiction immersive storytelling. Draw Me Close is the first project to come out of the lab.

“The NFB has a rich history of documentary storytelling and creative experimentation. We’re excited to bring that experience to bear to help define the language of creative non-fiction VR. This partnership with the National Theatre’s groundbreaking Immersive Storytelling Studio is an important part of our explorations in this space, and we are delighted by the unique possibilities opened up by combining the traditions of our respective organizations.”

– David Oppenheim, Producer at the National Film Board of Canada

“Storytelling is the lifeblood of both our organizations, and the possibilities opened up by combining the traditions of our respective industries are very compelling. I have long admired the work of the NFB—they are one of the most critically acclaimed storytellers in the industry. It was very exciting to partner with them on this project and to explore together documentary theatre and verbatim theatre using these new forms of immersive storytelling.”

– Toby Coffey, Head of Digital Development at the National Theatre

For more information about the NFB, visit https://www.nfb.ca/ and http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/en/about-the-nfb/the-nfb-today/introduction/.

For more information about the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio, visit https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/immersive/.