COLLIDER
COLLIDER
Pathetic Fallacy by Anita ROCHON
Photo by Peter POKORNY
2018
K BODY AND MIND by Conor WYLIE
Photo by Dan O’SHEA
2019
Mid-Light by Mahaila PATTERSON-O’BRIEN
Photo by Sepehr SAMIMI
2020
New Age Attitudes: Live in Concert
by Amanda SUM
Photo by Reagan JADE
2021
it is for when you meet me
by Anjela Magpantay
Photo by Chelsey Stuyt
2024
SmartSmart by Adrienne WONG
Photo by Chelsey STUYT
2022
Secret Ingredients by Keely O’Brien
Photo by Reagan JADE
2023
About the program
COLLIDER is a project-centered incubator that provides key opportunities for experimental artists through mentorship, access to studio space, a commissioning fee of $5,000 as well as presentation opportunities in HOLD ON LET GO. Artists are invited to dream up and begin to activate works engaged in a global conversation of art-making, and whose processes embrace experimental and interdisciplinary practices. Excerpts of the works are then highlighted at HOLD ON LET GO in both in-development and tour-ready formats, in subsequent years.
The COLLIDER residency was born out of an opportunity to foster the practices of artists in our home community who are interested in, and whose works speak to, international markets. We want to make a tangible difference to artists and artistic practice in Vancouver. As one of Canada’s most consistent touring companies, TR has experienced first-hand what working in international contexts can do for the development of artists and their work. We want to create space for artists to push against the more dominant forms of performance-making and test the boundaries of theatrical form. This is not only a reflection of TR’s own artistic interests, but a direct result of the work that has evolved out of Vancouver.
COLLIDER Artists and projects have included Anita Rochon with Pathetic Fallacy, Conor Wylie with K BODY AND MIND, Mahaila Patterson-O’Brien with Mid-Light, Amanda Sum with New Age Attitudes: Live in Concert, Adrienne Wong with SmartSmart, Keely O’Brien with Secret Ingredients and Anjela Magpantay with it is for when you meet me.
The residency is open to all performance-based artists. For more information, contact maiko@theatrereplacement.org
2025 COLLIDER artist:
ellis cheadle
ellis cheadle is a theatre artist living and working on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations. She holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, and a diploma from Mount Royal University’s acting conservatory program.
ellis is a collaborator, writer, director, and dramaturg with a practice focused on devised and experimental theatre. She is drawn to slow creation processes and is increasingly dedicated to making malleable theatrical set-lists that can responsively adapt to requirements of scale, duration, location, and collaborator curiosities. Her work regularly plays in the realms of the absurd and existential, and delights in collaging seemingly incongruous genres, themes, and materials. She believes it is a political act to find meaning and form in seeming chaos — and uses theatre to practise that skill collectively.
Recently, ellis’ work has been shared at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Boombox, Exquisite Pressure, Festival de Casteliers, Schaubude Berlin, Centre A Gallery, and the rEvolver Theatre Festival. In January 2025 she completed the Block D dramaturgy program through the Playwrights Theatre Centre. In May 2025 ellis will be travelling to Montreal as a dramaturg and performer with Hong Kong Exile’s Heaven FM presented at Festival TransAmériques.
COLLIDER piece:
Frankenkenstein
PHOTO: Derek Chan, Ashley Aron and Keely O’Brien by ellis cheadle
Frankenkenstein is a new devised theatre piece by artist ellis cheadle, drawing on fragments of Mary Shelley’s iconic Gothic tale to explore monstrosity, ambiguity, and the relentless ways the past intrudes upon the present. After early development at What Lab’s Exquisite Pressure and HERE FOR NOW’s Boombox, Frankenkenstein is now being further shaped through TR’s COLLIDER Artist Residency and will be shared in-progress at HOLD ON LET GO in 2026.
Frankenkenstein is an indulgent autopsy of the Gothic genre, as stitched back together (again and again) by a hack surgeon. It’s a camp-horror theatrical collage set during a perpetually dark and stormy night. The performance acts as an exhibition of sorts — revealing the results of experiments performed on collective rememberings of Shelley’s Frankenstein. Structurally, the show takes inspiration from the musical canon — a form built on staggered, layered melodic loops. In Frankenkenstein, three performers weave together cheadle’s text and physical action, blurring beginnings and endings. The result is a stacking of ghastly motifs that constantly accumulate and unravel, forcing us to reckon with cryptic questions of action and consequence; monster-makers and makers’-monsters.
2026 Project Collaborators:
Aryo Khakpour, Ashley Aron, elika mojtabaei, Elliot Vaughan, Keely O’Brien, Paula Viitanen, Marc Arboleda