Performing at Home in the Pandemic: Boca del Lupo’s Plays2Perform@Home Collection

Abstract:This article explores Vancouver theatre company Boca del Lupo’s Plays2Perform@Home collection. Generated as a way for audiences to bring the theatre home with them during the pandemic, the collection is composed of twenty short plays across five regional box sets, and was commissioned by Boca del Lupo in partnership with several other theatre companies across Canada. The author offers some observations and personal highlights from the collection, and reflects on what it means to perform these plays at home. She complements her analysis of the plays by drawing on her own experiences performing some of the pieces at home with her family, re-creating the intended experience of the collection. Because of the unusual circumstances of their production, Lynch suggests that it is valuable to examine the Plays2Perform@Home pieces through an immersive and site-specific lens, rather than a purely dramatic one. She argues that the plays that succeed the most in performance are those that seriously consider the experience of their audience-performers and incorporate the expected conditions of performance into their dramatic works. The article also includes a full listing of the plays in each box set.