Photo: Caio Silva L-R Tobias Macfarlane and cast

The Impossible Has Already Happened

The Impossible Has Already Happened comes to you after a New Zealand tour, a remount and tour of Western Canada. The project is allowing us to question the role of art in partnering with the environmental situation.


A 60-minute love story of water and our relationships with it.

As the water’s voice, performer Tobias Macfarlane narrates. Dancers transform the skeleton of a hut into home, house, outhouse, shelter, boat while lights made of ice slowly melt and projections evoke freighters barrelling heedlessly ahead, dream beaches too hot to touch, and an earnest guide providing ridiculous instructions on how to manage climate change.

As an evocative electronic sound score uses delight as a bridge to experience water - from tiny water droplets to roaring surf, 6 dancers (including New Zealand co-creator Claire O’Neil and dancer Levi Siaosi) themselves become water - flowing around obstacles, merging with the ocean’s never-ending roll.

Potent but not bleak, often humorous, the production plays with scale and the enormity of the climate crisis and the absurd role we as humans play.

Mascall Dance

Photo: Caio Silva of Ysadora Dias and cast

Project Created by: Jennifer Mascall (Canada) and Claire O’Neil (New Zealand)

Key Artistic Collaborators:

TOURING PRODUCTION:
Performers Ysadora Dias, Allison Brooks, Claire O’Neil, Levi Siaosi, Marisa Gold, Tobias Macfarlane, Kathleen Nisbet, Co-Choreographers Jennifer Mascall, Claire O’Neil,

Original Creative Team:
Sound Design: Kathleen Nisbet and Jason Wright
AV Design: Claire O’Neil, Jennifer Mascall and Jason Wright
Light and Set Design: Marcus McShane
Costume Design: Anne de Geus, Tobias Macfarlane
Costume Consultant: Ralph Escamillan

Performance type: This work is built for a theatre, Full-length work

How do you define this work: Dance/Theatre, Multi-disciplinary, Social Issues (Climate Change), all-ages

Length of performance: 55 minutes

Audience type: General Audience

General Technical Requirements:

Does the work require tech residency: Minimum 8 hours would be valuable if possible.

Number of Performers on tour (including choreographer): 8

Number of Support Staff on Tour: 2 (2 Production support, Tour Manager)

Availabilities: 2024/25 season, 2025/26 season

Jennifer Mascall's perspective is driven by curiosity, which often leads to surprising places. After 50 years of creation, she feels she has only just begun her path as an artist. Recently, we have pivoted to focus on climate, and view the audience as collaborators. Our most influential teachers this year were dance artists, particle physicists, Indigenous Elders, Rabbis, and climate scientists. MascallDance is a creation, production, and education endeavour with 30+ seasons of works; many with extensive touring lives. “Our ability to survive for so long has come from our comfort with grassroots, low budget, guerrilla-style invention” -Jennifer Mascall, Artistic Director. Annually we offer residencies, intensives, and workshops based on where our own body of knowledge meets the interests of participants. MascallDance is looking to build relationships with presenters now for three projects, further touring of the international creation The Impossible has Already Happened, the premiere of Lurch, and our community builder, Privilege at Home.

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Performance History & Upcoming Performances

Co-produced by MascallDance and Footnote New Zealand Dance

Preview - 18 March, 2023 Carterton Events Centre, Wairarapa.
New Zealand Premiere - 21 March, 2023 Wellington Opera House, Wellington/Te Whanganui-a-Tara
Tour - 29 March, 2023 Whanganui-a-Tara, Great Lakes Centre, Taupō
Tour - 01 April, 2023 Q Theatre, Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau
Tour - 05 April, 2023 Theatre Royal Nelson, Nelson/Whakatū

CONFIRMED UPCOMING
Produced by MascallDance
Canadian Premiere - 27 October, 2023 Anvil Theatre, New Westminster, BC
Tour - Nov 1, 2023 The Esplanade Theatre, Medicine Hat, AB
Tour - Nov 19, 2023 Rachel Browne Theatre, Winnipeg, MB.
Tour - Nov 24, 2023 Cowichan Arts Centre, Duncan, BC

Project Details

Community Engagement

  • SOMATIC WORKSHOP (1.5-3 hr)
    An opportunity to explore with somatic practitioner Jennifer Mascall.
    WHO: those interested in exploring the fluid systems in the body.

    DANCE REPERTOIRE (1.5 hr)
    Company-led class incorporating ideas, movement and choreography from the production.
    WHO: Movers, age 15 up

    TALKS (1.5 hr)
    with scientists, environmentalists, activists and experts, partnered by artists.
    WHO: those looking to a better understanding of what it is to live in this place at this time.

    CIRCLE (2 hr)
    led by company and community members, an exchange of stories and knowledge of water.
    WHO: all age - with an interest in water.

    STORYTELLING: (1 hr)
    Over supper in the lobby, community members and company members exchange stories about water.
    WHO: Audiences (General public).

  • We see Community Engagement as an opportunity to develop relationships with the presenter and their community. With you and your community we hope to share water stories celebrate water, and open conversations.

    In partnership with you we’d like to host a water gathering in your community. Workshop format, leaders and schedule are developed with the co-hosting group. In advance, we seek out local community experts in the water in your area. These have so far included local historians, Indigenous knowledge-keepers, gardeners, scientists, teachers, architects, social activists, and artists.

    The gathering is an all-age group experience of water knowledge through stories, information, and artistic expression. Conversations, talks, workshops, water walks, and other potential experiential outreach activities connect local expertise and the community with our research and creative sources.

    These gatherings bring fresh perspective, collect stories, reveal questions, and possible ways to proceed.

Contact information

Agent/Manager: Bea Orbegoso, operations@mascalldance.ca

Website: https://www.mascalldance.ca/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/MascallDance/
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/mascalldance