On Call is an extraordinary theatrical experience, and an intense closed-door experience for three spectators that takes place in the back of an ambulance.
It is a short-form play that captures the vulnerability of life in a race against the clock. When medical and emergency services come together with theatre, manipulation, shadow, and object theatre, they create an extrasensory experience.
On Call is a dramatic emergency trip where you must fasten your seat belt!
“I attended the preview. It was pretty striking. Certainly one of the most relevant and bold creations presented in recent years.
It’s a theatrical adventure on the road aboard an ambulance. We must quickly get on board, and buckle up in one of the three seats reserved for spectators. It’s very intimate, and from the first seconds you are in the atmosphere, the tension is palpable, we are completely absorbed: there is a patient puppet on a stretcher fighting for her life, a paramedic trying every possible maneuver.
There is really a tension that is there, which is very present. There is a skillful marriage of theatre, manipulation, shadow games and also the theatre of objects…
It’s quite an experience.
We really took care of the staging, the acting, the sets and the sound environment to create this immersion, which we believe was truly successful. It feels like time actually stops because we are completely absorbed. There was a long creative process, a sustained effort to create this piece and it shows.”
Julie Larouche, CBC
“From the first second, the emotion is palpable, the complete immersion in the cabin. Which passes from light to darkness. From silence to the maddening sound of a defibrillator.
[…]
We barely have time to be impressed by the ingenious staging, deployed in an incredibly small space, before the urgency of the situation brings us back.
[…]
Intense and uncompromising theatre. Which plays out every time as if it were the last. “
Marc-Antoine Côté, Le Quotidien
Creation, direction, acting
Vicky Côté
Assistant
Christine Rivest-Hénault
Scenography
Mylène Leboeuf-Gagné
Sound
Gabriel Gagné-Gaudreault
Electronic programming and manufacturing
Carles Villanueva Plaza
Collaborators
Christian Ouellet, Geneviève Arsenault, Pierre Robitaille
Photo credit
Sophie Gagnon-Bergeron
