Special Event: Poet's Life Explored Through Multi-Media

Vancouver New Music and VECC present
Theatre Cryptic’s production of
EACH… AND EVERY INCH
A site-specific multi-media journey through the life of Canadian poet Elizabeth Smart, author of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

The Cultch is at it again: installation theatre, that is.
Following up on its wildly successful British Installation Theatre Week last season, the Vancouver East Cultural Centre (VECC) together with Vancouver New Music will present Each…And Every Inch April 18 to 29.

This multi-sensory installation combines music, text, visuals, a live cello duet, 3D video and ambient sound to explore the passions and secrets of Canadian poet and novelist Elizabeth Smart. Written by Cathie Boyd, artistic director of Scotland’s Theatre Cryptic, Each…And Every Inch was previously presented in Montreal and at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland.

The work uses as a story line Smart’s best known work “By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept,” about her all-consuming love affair with married poet George Barker. As audience members move through various spaces around the theatre, they experience slices of Elizabeth Smart’s life: her love for Barker, her hatred for that love, her jealousy, her mother, her children, her garden and more.

Following the tour, visitors can explore the installation independently. Viewing time takes 70 minutes to two hours.

About the music
Music for Each and Every Inch was created by Canadian composer Diane Labrosse together with Anthea Haddow of Scotland. Vancouver New Music cellists, Joel Stobbe, formerly with the Borealis String Quartet, and Laura Kramer, formerly with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, will play a duet in the Love Affair Room.

To complement other rooms, Labrosse will execute a soundscape of electronic music, pre-recorded excerpts from Smart’s letters and poems, and ambient noise such as shattering glass — a metaphor for shattering hearts.

“It’s a fluid definition of space that involves listening, watching, reading,” said Vancouver New Music artistic director Giorgio Magnanensi. VNM is a major presenter of contemporary music in Western Canada.