Over the past couple months I’ve been busy working with Boca del Lupo, a theatre company here in Vancouver. It’s been a great experience meeting new people – artsy and creative people. I had the distinct pleasure to meet Jay Dodge and Sherry J Yoon, Artistic Producer and Artistic Director, respectively, of Boca back on April 30 2009. I was attending a Canada Council for the Arts luncheon along with my Neworld Theatre family. (More on my connection with Neworld Theatre later.) So I sit down at a table and Jay and Sherry end up at the same table. “Pleasant folks,” I thought to myself.

Fast forward eight months to mid-December and I get a call from Jay. They needed someone to help on the production-side with their upcoming show, Dance Marathon. I knew the Olympics was coming up and auditions would be down a bit and figured it would be a great use of my time. The biggest reason why I decided to take on the opportunity was because when Jay had described the show to me, I was instantly excited. The show was not just your typical sit-down-and-watch type of show. It was participatory – highly participatory – and it was dance and music and competition.

Hello?! I’m big on the participatory theatre aspect and adding those extra things was just icing on the cake. Not just any icing and not just any cake. It’s like the cake I only find in Japan when visiting family which is not too sweet but just perfect.

But I digress.

Dance Marathon was a huge success. It definitely kept me busy. I even had a chance to work with and get to know Kim Barsanti in a different light since I only knew her through her work as a Talent Agent.

One of the highlights was heading downtown to do some “on the street” interviews with people to drum up some buzz for the show. I’ve embeded the video below for your viewing pleasure.

and here’s a 4 minute montage of what the show was about

This video has been viewed just under 4.5 million times as I just checked and it’s definitely one of my favourite videos lately. DJ Earworm does a mashup of the Billboard Top 25 hits of 2009 and I enjoy it immensely.

For those of you who don’t know what a Mashup is, essentially when you have existing audio and visual clips from various sources and combine them to create a new piece of work. Last year, at DOXA, we screened a documentary film called RiP: A remix manifesto.

The film explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.

You can view the film’s trailer and description on a previous post on my company blog.

In the meantime, check out this awesome music video below.

Welcome to the new KenjiMaeda.com website. It’s been, I think about 5 or 6 years since this site has shown anything but the “under construction” page. I knew I couldn’t put my previous site up even though I loved (and still do) the design but my needs and the purpose has changed.

So here I am at the start of 2010. I was able to take some time over the holiday to sit and design the page. It’s going to be an ongoing process of what I include on this site but this blog is definitely one of the highlights.  As some of you may know, I have my Production Heads blog but I have more interests than simply the production industry and acting. I plan on including content on this page that relate to many different topics, including business, sexual health, facilitation, technology, film industry, my projects, and anything else that comes to mind. I wanted the flexibility to include a variety of topics and themes.

As of right now, not all the pages have been completed and more pages will be added to showcase who I am, what I do, and what I can do… for you.

To keep updated on my blog you can subscribe via RSS feed by clicking the RSS button at the top of my page, right beside my face.

In the meantime if you have any questions or would like to contact me, you can send me an email at info [at] kenjimaeda.com

Kenji Maeda