Yukon’s Open Pit Theatre troupe is one of two theatre productions in EXPO 2025’s Canadian delegation
“We were thrilled and happy, and it’s obviously very exciting”
Geneviève Doyon
Open Pit Theatre’s Radio Silence is a puppetry theatre show created in the Yukon and featuring original artwork by Rosemary Scanlon and Vashti Etzel, with original music by Calla Kinglit. Local performers Geneviève Doyon and Brian Fidler are joined in the production by former Yukoner Jessica Hickman, who now lives in Victoria, B.C. The company was first invited to present the show at Montreal’s Festival international de Casteliers, a renowned puppet festival, and from there was scouted and selected for Osaka, Japan’s EXPO 2025.
“We were thrilled and happy, and it’s obviously very exciting,” says Doyon. “But then, as the Canadian Pavilion was built, we realized our high-tech show wasn’t going to fit, but we were committed to go, so we’re creating a brand-new show with the same puppets and the same masks and a lot of the same production design. It’s like a spinoff version that is more tourable and more compact.”
Originally dubbing the redesign Radio Silence 2.0, the production team set to work reimagining the show. The visuals and the set design are key elements of the show and were what piqued the interest of the EXPO programmers in the first place.
“All of the elements are very aesthetically pleasing,” Doyon says. “It’s deeply rooted in the North and in that landscape and the animal world, and it’s non-verbal. That was something that was really appealing to EXPO because the Canadian delegation has only two theatre pieces and they really wanted it to be accessible. We didn’t make the show for kids, but it’s definitely suited for all ages.”
Since Doyon and her team had already spent years crafting the show and its puppets, masks and set pieces, they were intent to keep as much as possible. The new version essentially features mini vignettes of the characters and places seen in the original, to make for a pocket-sized pop-up presentation.
Some of the characters in the play are a female bush pilot in the Yukon, said to be the first female bush pilot in the territory, and a fox who narrates the show without speaking. The show demonstrates what life was like in the North in the 1920s and 1940s, focusing on the story of two sisters who have drifted apart but attempt to reconnect as one goes in search of the other after a plane crash.
“This new version … it’s almost closer to street performance because it’s EXPO, so people are wandering in and out,” says Doyon. “We didn’t want to get tied too much to a linear narrative that they would need to follow in order to understand what was going on.”
Open Pit Theatre is a company that focuses primarily on creating new theatre pieces, and Doyon goes as far as to say she has “zero interest” in adapting stageplays that others have written and performed before.
“We always create from scratch,” she says. “I would say Radio Silence almost came out of our previous show.”
Busted Up: A Yukon Story, the previous show in question, had 33 characters with stories made from interviews Doyon had collected around the territory. It was heavy on word use, and Doyon said the team wanted to go the opposite route for their next show and tell a story with their bodies and visual art, instead of through dialogue and verbal narration.
“We just wanted to do a three-sixty and try something completely different, which was to make a play that had no words,” she says. “How far can we go in our storytelling without saying a single word?”
When Doyon was first asked to take a call to discuss an opportunity, she had no idea it was for EXPO 2025. Her jaw dropped and she had to ask for the information to be repeated, she recalls.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” she says. “It was so surreal and exciting.”
Open Pit Theatre joins Diyet & the Love Soldiers as the creatives representing the Yukon at EXPO 2025.
“I’m super proud of our territory that in that huge delegation, with some huge names like Jeremy Dutcher; there’s Diyet, and one of the two plays in the whole Canadian delegation is a Yukon play,” says Doyon. “It’s pretty cool. I think it speaks volumes to the quality of work that comes out of our small territory.
“On a personal level, I’m so excited because I know I’m going to be completely out of my comfort zone and I’m going to encounter people from countries that I wouldn’t otherwise,” says Doyon. “I can’t even quite fathom it.”
The Open Pit Theatre will present two shows a day on the main stage of EXPO 2025’s Canadian Pavilion from Aug. 18 to 23. EXPO 2025 is a World Expo event that started in April and runs until October. Osaka also hosted the World Expo in 1970, making this the second time the city has welcomed international innovators to show off their craft on a global stage.
