Live Performing Arts Production Grant Helps Curtain Razors Bring ‘Untitled Peter Tripp Project’ to Vancouver

Curtain Razors was successful in applying for Live Performing Arts Production Grant for their production of Untitled Peter Tripp Project, presented by Pi Theatre, in Vancouver from April 30 – May 6, 2023.

Untitled Peter Tripp Project is the collective work of contemporary dancer Johanna Bundon, performance creator Jayden Pfeifer, and contemporary artist Lee Henderson. After performing to ten sold-out crowds in Regina in 2021, Curtain Razors was invited to take their project to Vancouver’s Pi Theatre.

Peter Tripp, a once-celebrated radio DJ, performed a publicity stunt in 1959 wherein he broadcast continuously, for 201 hours, from a glass booth in Times Square. This act was his undoing — he suffered psychological complications from prolonged sleep deprivation, and his increased fame made him a target for investigators who would accuse him of commercial bribery in the “payola” scandal of 1960.

Untitled Peter Tripp Project is an immersive theatre experience created by Bundon, Pfeifer, and Henderson, and performed by this trio and artist Tess Degenstein. The work highlights the natural interdisciplinarity of performance, engaging space, breath, gesture, voice, light, and sound with equal importance. The performers enter the arena of Tripp’s myth to research their personal relationships to themes of exhaustion, public failure, and loneliness.

Here in Saskatchewan, Curtain Razors boasts a healthy and engaged audience. While they’re trusted and well-established locally, their focus now is moving to grow that influence and marketability in a larger centre. The Live Performing Arts Production Grant allowed them to do just that. “Our Vancouver tour was an incredible opportunity to connect with peers and makers from this region, and to share our current work and the larger narrative of Curtain Razors as a company,” says Pfeifer.

Curtain Razors was able to introduce themselves and their creation processes to several key individuals in Vancouver, including several Artistic Directors and western Canadian performing agents, who all had very positive feedback. The group also met with Managing Producers from PuSh Festival and the Anvil Centre; venues which would be great partners for Untitled Peter Tripp Project in the future. Pfeifer points out that “These encounters are foundational towards future touring of our work.”

Pfeifer suggests that funding touring opportunities outside of Saskatchewan is so valuable, “because it allows artists to have their work seen, and responded to by peers in other centres. And, to bring that knowledge home to help seed and germinate creation here.”