Uqqudq, the Shelter: Building a Space for Intercultural Exchange

Abstract

I originally thought of Geneviève and Laurentio for this issue on audiences because I remembered their Uqquaq, the Shelter as a piece that evoked a particular audience-performer intimacy. I saw their production at a studio on the corner of Front and Cherry Streets in Toronto, on a frigid February evening in 2007. I remember waiting sceptically for a friend on the all but deserted street, hoping that this production would be worth the wait in the freezing cold and the trek to a crossroads that’s not transit friendly in the best of weather. On entering the studio, we were asked to take our shoes off and don a pair of slippers; we were invited to take a seat on the floor with other audience members, who encircled the performance space in which Geneviève and Laurentio had already set to work, Laurentio softening with his teeth the sealskin rope that would form the skeleton of their shelter, Geneviève gathering the yarn that would make up its outer layer. This working space was simultaneously their performance space.