People to See
One of the central tenets of Betwix’t is the value of intergenerational knowledge exchange and mentorship. Our youth participants will enjoy the benefit of working with and learning from both our community of Elders as well as from our team of vetted Community Mentors and even the occasional guest presenter.
Bria
Team Lead and Director
Sabrina “Bria” Symington is a transgender woman with over 10 years of experience working in the arts and theatre, as well as volunteering and working with youth and the 2SLGBTQ+ community at large. She is best known for her cartoons and graphic novels – at one time referred to as being one of the “Holy Trinity of Trans Web Comics” – but she has also acted in numerous plays and does voice over for film and television. She also teaches voice feminization training for transgender women and non-binary people, as well a Karate at Kumakai Dojo in Vancouver.
More Mentors Still Being Selected!
Our Performing Arts Troupe
Betwix’t is a 2SLGBTQ+ youth led performing arts collective that will be defined by its members much in the same way 2SLGBTQ+ people define their own identities. As our starting point, our programmers and mentors have their own lessons, experiences, and challenges that we can convey, as well as safety protocols that we must follow. But outside of that, we don’t believe in top-down dictation – the world does enough of that already. By the end of our season together, the show that Betwix’t puts on will be discovered through all of us working together, just as we will hopefully discover at bit more about ourselves.
The ShoBoat
The centrepiece of our program is undoubtably our stage – a beautiful 20 foot Viking Longboat/Chinese Junk hybrid. With space for half a dozen performers inside and more that a few puppet surprises built in, our stage boat is sure to be a worthy vessel on our journey of self-discovey together.
Building Puppets
Members of our circle of elders are currently working away of a collection of customizable puppet bodies that can be dressed up and modified as easily as building a LEGO set using assessories mounted on velcro. Betwix’t members can modify and costomize one of these puppet bodies to create a puppet avatar that reflects some aspect or charactristics they would like to portray, or, if they are really ambitious, they can take on building their own puppet from scratch (with help and guidance from us,, if they want it.)
Puppeteering
A core part of the philosophy underpinning Betwix’t is the value of theatre and performance as a means of overcoming challenges and fears. When we perform in front of a live audience, we must be a little vulnerable and emotionally engage with our audience and fellow performers. We have to get the correct timing and delivery of things, and act in a coordinated manner with other people’s bodies in physical space. It requires us to overcome momentary anxieties to become capable of acting freely under pressure. But, of course, sometimes that’s a lot for a person new to performing to take on. Sometimes it helps to have a little puppet dude act as an intermidiary or safety barrier between yourself and the audience.
Similarly, puppet therapy can help people express emotions they might have difficulty with otherwise, and the use of puppets for the exploration of grief and trauma is well established.
The use of puppets in Betwix’t is to open participants up to engaging with their own identities and emotions, as well as with those of others, in a fearless and honest manner that results in a greater depth of communication and understanding.
All Arts Needed
We have centred things like puppets and performance in our planning for Betwix’t, but we think of the show we are putting on a bit like the Space Race. The rush to be the first to explore space led to all manner of scientific and technological advancements beyond space travel applications. We use the goal of creating a live puppet show as a means of exploring and developing our entire character.
Similarly, it takes all manner of arts to put on a show. We need a variety of types of performers, each with their own skillsets. But we also need poets and writers, who can put what they are feeling into words of depth and beauty. We need craftspeople to build puppets, props, set additions, costumes – any material thing that can enrich our performance. We need visual artists to design images for our posters and playbills, as well as to even storyboard the staging and visual appearance of the scenes of our show.
Just like we believe in a diverse and equal world, any and every artform is welcome in Betwix’t. If a participant has something they love doing, we will put in every effort to integrate it into the final show.
And if you have no arts experience whatsoever? Then you are even more welcome to come!
Year End Show
Our year end show is comprised of different parts. We’ll have some musical bits sung by our elders, and we’ll have important stories that we feel need to be told, as well as room for a bit of an open mic for whoever has a talent they’d like to share, but the part that our Betwix’t youth will be concerned with is a 12 minute segment centred around our youth’s undrstanding of their own identies and their place within our community. They will decide the characters and the storyline, and the themes of the story will be drawn from the lessons they learn during the time we spend working together.
Our starting point this term is the question of “I am not my body, but without my body I am not.” – a core struggle for many trans and queer youth. We aim to build empowerent to self-define, combined with the ability to act within and upon the external, physical world. We can define our own interpretation of reality while still engaging with an often unpleasant physical reality that exists independently of the language we use to understand it.
Our show this term will hopefully reflect our youths’ ability to assert themselves to the world on their own terms.
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