In East Van Panto: West Van Story<\/i>, written by Marcus Youssef with Pedro Chamale, a tsunami strands West Van influencer Holly and her curling team in East Van, where she falls for Joes \u2013 a member of their sworn rivals. Adding to her troubles is her mega-developer \u201cmotherfather,\u201d Boberta Rainy. The question is will Holly \u201cfollow her heart \u2013 and Joes \u2013 into a new world of love, dance battles and civic resistance? Or will Boberta\u2019s towers and renovictions crush everything in their path?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really fun to be part of a show that takes being silly so seriously,\u201d technical director Daniel O\u2019Shea told the Independent<\/i> in a recent interview.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Shea has been involved with the Panto<\/i> for a few years now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe creative team will come up with such wacky characters and gags, and then we have to earnestly sit around the table and figure them out,\u201d he said. \u201cMy first year with Theatre Replacement\u2019s East Van Panto<\/i>, we had to have the king of the skunks shoot a \u2018Stink Canon 9000\u2019 into the audience \u2013 who wouldn\u2019t enjoy coming up with that?! Also, because the Panto<\/i> is a new satire every year, getting to be part of a show that speaks to the current community concerns from a local perspective always feels like a breath of fresh air.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Shea first worked with Theatre Replacement on a show called MINE<\/i>, which, he said, \u201cwas a performance that took place half on stage and half in Minecraft. I was colleagues with a number of the devisors on the show and we needed to build some systems for controlling the projection integrating the video input from multiple gaming computers and building in game cues. As part of that show, we built a tech booth in Minecraft and I had little avatar who would run around and hit in game buttons to teleport people or spawn creatures; it was quite fun. I guess I mention it because the pleasure in working with Theatre Replacement is that I\u2019ll often be solving unorthodox problems or working in novel ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biggest challenge of working on the Panto<\/i>, he said, is its size.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want East Van Panto<\/i> to feel like a big show, with clever sets and big costumes and arresting moments, and we often succeed, but all of that has to fit into quite a small container,\u201d he explained. \u201cThe York Theatre is a wonderful home and we love being there, but we are often pushing the limit of what we can fit onto the stage. It often requires extremely thoughtful planning and clever technical solutions to achieve this big story book mise en sc\u00e8ne in a converted movie theatre. We are grateful to our partners at the Cultch and the tech team there that help to pull it off each year.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Shea has a bachelor of fine art from Simon Fraser University, where he majored in theatre performance and film production.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always had a love of both film and stage since I was a kid, fostered by my parents taking us out to shows, and a somewhat onerous VHS mail arrangement through which we received dozens of old back catalogue titles. Though they present quite differently now, both film and theatre share so much DNA, going to back to early cinema. That particular artist-alchemy of narrative, imagination, character, emotion, etc., that both seek has always been something I\u2019ve been drawn to create.\u201d<\/p>\n He gave a shout out to his high school, Burnaby North, and to Alison Schamberger and Phil Byrne, who ran the theatre and media arts program. \u201cThey were both instrumental to instilling the sense that creating in both fields was possible, valuable and worthy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Career-wise, O\u2019Shea has focused on lighting and projection design, filmmaking and technical direction. He has done some performing, but not for about 10 years now. Nonetheless, his acting experience continues to help his work, in that it allows him to have a fuller sense of the world a show creates.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s possible to get overly engrossed in the issues that feel pertinent to one\u2019s role, like the efficiency of technical rehearsal or the familiarity of \u2018how things are done\u2019 and miss the chance to allow for creative risk-taking and imagination,\u201d he said. \u201cHaving that performance background helps remind me that achieving the desired audience\u00a0<\/span>experience during a show is the goal rather than whether your plan going into tech looks like what\u2019s on stage opening night.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Shea is also a founding member of A Wake of Vultures, with Nancy Tam and Conor Wylie.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a vehicle for us to make work that is true to our artistic core,\u201d said O\u2019Shea. \u201cThe three of us work as freelance designers\/ artists in the broader community and convene together when someone has a juicy idea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWorking as a freelancer, you are often given creative agency, I mean it\u2019s clearly part of what you are there for, but it\u2019s often within the constraints of the production or the shows\u2019 genre\/esthetics. If it\u2019s a play about a character journey, then the design has to serve that. When we work together in A Wake of Vultures, we really get to dream wildly as designers\/conceptual thinkers and follow our process\u2026. That freedom to dream and build ways of affecting the audience before serving other elements of the show is deeply enjoyable.\u201d<\/p>\n Currently, A Wake of Vultures is working on a piece called SweatCry<\/i>, \u201cwhich will be some sort of structured social experience investigating ecstasy, purgation and dance,\u201d said O\u2019Shea. \u201cI\u2019m also going on tour with Jade Circle, a show on which I did the projection design, made by Jasmine Chen, which is a beautiful show tracing the cascading chain of mother-daughter relationship and stories buried within our own families.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Shea described his own connection to Judaism and Jewish community as \u201ccultural and fostered through the deep networks that I\u2019ve grown up a part of and, yet, it feels most represented by the Groucho Marx line, \u2018I wouldn\u2019t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member\u2019 \u2013 a belonging and exclusion at the same time. That, or Moses\u2019 line about being a \u2018stranger in a strange land.\u2019 There is a tension in being a tribe of the estranged that has meaning to me, both in the way that it seats one in relationship to the world and in how it asks of you to make kinship with \u2018the stranger.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI think it is also the reason why I have such a love of ritual,\u201d he concluded. \u201cWhether it\u2019s in a show or a meal of special ceremony, the sense that formal choices, of how to do things, can have deep symbolic and historical ties, and be a thread that links people across time really moves me \u2026 both of these facets of my Jewish identity shape my life and work.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/nov-21-cov.21.East-Van-Panto-Daniel-OShea.jpeg\")
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