City of Dreams: Staging an Urban Imaginary

Abstract

This article documents the recent production of City of Dreams, a theatre-installation work created in a transnational collaboration between UK and Vancouver artists, and which premiered at the 2011 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver. I draw on interviews conducted with cast members to assess the possibilities for constructing a poetic cartography of the city. I also consider the dilemmas and opportunities of representing public-private memory, and the uneasy ambiguity with which the project attempted to forge identification with a shared urban imaginary