A shadow image from the play.

The scene was remarkable in its complexity: behind the white screen, the character Katie is trapped inside an oversized liquor bottle. She cries and pounds on the bottle, wanting to be let out. The audience can hear the echoing sounds of her pounding on the glass and can see her shadow as she writhes in agony and lashes out at side of the bottle.

This was just one of the powerful scenes in Vancouver Moving Theatre’s (VMT) most recent production, “The Shadows Project: Addiction and Recovery, We’re all in This Together.”

Billed as a contemporary fable from the Downtown Eastside, the play was two-and-a-half years in the making and involved literally hundreds of people, most of whom are Downtown Eastside residents. It tells the story of two families trying to cope with their struggles around addiction.

Terry Hunter, who produced the play, said more than 1,000 people attended the play’s eight performances between April 19-29 in the Russian Hall on Campbell Avenue. “It just took off over the last weekend,” Hunter said. “There was a big buzz about it.” Organizers even set up mats on the floor to seat some people, but still had to turn away many at the door.

Hunter explained that the play is part of a continuum of work Vancouver Moving Theatre has done, with partners, in the Downtown Eastside including the 2003 community play, “In the Heart of a City,” which included 80 performers. After that play, VMT held a workshop with participants to see what they wanted to tackle next. They said they wanted to focus on the issue of addiction.

Around that time, Hunter’s partner Savannah Walling traveled to Enderby, BC, where she viewed a shadow play that addressed addiction issues. She returned home fired up with enthusiasm to stage a shadow play.

“The arts have that ability to function as a platform, to give people a voice.” Terry Hunter, Vancouver Moving Theatre

“We wanted to reflect on the issue of addiction and recovery from a Downtown Eastside perspective.” Hunter said the Downtown Eastside attracts a lot of outside attention from those who want to study it, run research studies on its residents or try to impose solutions to its problems. “The viewpoint of the community doesn’t get expressed a lot.” A play can give area residents the opportunity to be heard. “The arts have that ability to function as a platform, to give people a voice,” he said. “By doing a show like this, we can have a high impact in terms of the media coverage and audience members.”

VMT started offering workshops and forums in the community, involving Downtown Eastside residents in examining the issues related to addiction and exploring their own perspectives. Walling assembled a team of Downtown Eastside writers to start writing the script and the songs for the production. VMT put up notices and ran pieces in the Carnegie Centre’s newsletter, inviting area residents’ participation in the process. It also organized workshops in shadow theatre, so that the play could feature a very sophisticated approach to the shadow aspects of the play with several different kinds of shadow casting.

In the fall of 2005, it offered a 30-minute prototype of the play at the Heart of the City Festival. The final product was about 60 minutes long, included about 30 actors, singers, shadow casters and musicians. The performance took place both in front of the shadow screen (which covered the stage, from floor to ceiling) with performers and as shadows cast on performers and props backstage. Technical crew had to deal with cues for voice, music, sound effects and all the different kinds of shadow casting. “The number of cues in the production was just phenomenal,” Hunter said.

“I think we met our goals in terms of community engagement and creating a theatrical work of a high standard and raising a level of awareness around addiction.” Terry Hunter.

Following each performance, one invited guest led a post-show discussion. On the last night, Vancouver’s Drug Policy Program Coordinator Donald MacPherson led the discussion.

“It’s not a typical theatrical process at all,” Hunter summarized the production, adding it will never be performed again, because the process was more important than the final product.

“I think we met our goals in terms of community engagement and creating a theatrical work of a high standard and raising a level of awareness around addiction,” he said. VMT has also contracted an outside organization to run an evaluation of other impacts the play may have had on healthy behaviour and health outcomes in the neighbourhood.

VMT’s next production will reflect a change of pace, tackling a Downtown Eastside version of the Romeo and Juliet story. “We’re going to do it as a clown show,” Hunter said, showing how love can overcome social and class differences.