Let’s make one thing clear.

The Escarpment doesn’t compare to actual mountains.

This past September, Same Boat Theatre took my award-winning play Whale Fall to the Vancouver Fringe Festival. The company had won a spot in the Vancouver Fringe lottery. As luck would have it, it was the only lottery we won after our Critic’s Pick Award winning premiere run at the 2022 Hamilton Fringe.

During our first run, as we saw how receptive audiences were, the company often talked about taking the show on tour in ’23. Vancouver was always at the top of the list for obvious reasons. The play’s narrative starts off in Vancouver, and deals with an issue that directly concerns audiences living on the West coast. So, being selected in the Vancouver lottery seemed like a sign.

The day we left for the West, eventually arriving exhausted to our load-in and tech at the Pacific Theatre, was perhaps the longest all of us had spent uninterrupted in each other’s company. Yet, as tired as we were, the power of the mountains and the waters of the Georgia Strait seemed to beckon all of us from our humble city of Hamilton.

These are the mountains and waters of the play, after all.

We had an amazing run at the Vancouver Fringe. The show earned audience accolades and some terrific critic reviews. But, just as important, it bonded all of us together as a company. In downtime between shows and show promo, we took time explore the city and the surrounding areas. We traveled to the mountains of Whistler, took a ferry to Bowen Island and, of course, went whale watching. During our stay together, we would often cook meals or simply unwind after a particularly busy day in each other’s company.

Vancouver wasn’t a vacation but rarely has a “business trip” (theatre is all of our careers) felt so un-stressful. That said, being away from home is always hard. We all missed our respective families and friends. In particular, myself and Aaron would often call home at the end of each night to give a long-distance good-night to our young children. For all the beauty and insights into the show that Vancouver gave, we all looked forward to coming back home when the Fringe was done.

That’s why it’s a such a gift to be back at the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts to present Whale Fall as part of the HCA Dance Theatre’s PASS 23-24 season. There is something altogether inviting and unique about the HCA Black Box space. The way the blue of the lights wash over the stark white of Becca’s ‘boat’, or how sound never seems to echo despite the size of the room, itself.

It is, without a doubt, one of the most intimate of spaces in the city.

It’s a big part of why we decided to first perform the piece at HCA last year, and why coming back to it now, feels so right. Despite the story being set on the West coast, Hamilton is the community that first breathed life into Whale Fall. And it’s largely this community that gave the project wings in our Kickstarter earlier this year so we could make it to Vancouver in the first place.

So it’s fitting we come back here… before we set off on the next leg of our journey up the QEW to Toronto and the Red Sandcastle Theatre. I hope you can join us and that you’ll let us know what you thought of this project afterwards.

After all, in many ways, we made it for you.