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M/HOTEL

...a guy from the bar, whom I convinced to see the show one week, came back to the bar the next week to demand that I explain what the work had done to his body. He had been unable to stop thinking about it, he didn't know why. He felt "flummoxed". Why?
I am flummoxed by the green beans in the Caesar Cocktail that Tim makes...David McIntosh

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...the 3 monologues I heard last night (the American hotel on fire, Galiano initiations, and cab driver) really resonated. I thought the  repetition of pattern and use of the hotel rooms gave the monologues an overlying sense of life's loneliness and at the same time, listening to music together and the chatter with the audience members before and after made me feel good.
 Kind of cool, how your pieces made me feel loved and lonely at the same time, elegiac and hopeful, can't quite describe the feeling, like you're sad for having lived, but glad to know what you know all at once.
 As a director, props to you for not only attempting that very tricky balance, but to pull it off seamlessly.
Super excellent. ...Mina Shum

Room Service? Mary Theresa Kelly

Theatre pick of the week - Colin Thomas

"M/Hotel reaffirms Battery Opera’s fearlessness" - Jo Ledingham

"Go on. Enter the room." - Colin Thomas

"I am the audience" - Kevin Griffin

Checking In



When you think of making an hour-long visit to a hotel room in your own city, likely the shortlist of scenarios of what's going to happen in that room is pretty small. In fact, David McIntosh's new site-specific dance-theatre piece for battery opera, M/HOTEL, on at the Holiday Inn on Howe Street, suggests a much broader spectrum of things to enjoy with strangers in said rooms than hospital corners on bed sheets and those tiny, pre-wrapped toiletries.



I don't want to give away what happens, but I suggest arriving early (rooms are available hourly beginning at 6 pm) and spending the night. Look for David in the Lobby Bar to collect your room key. Rates negotiable. ...Peter Dickenson



Go on. Get your ass in the M/HOTEL room. It's easy.

Meet Me at the Lobby Bar.

Performed by Alana Gerecke, Alison Denham, Brian Solomon, Paul Ternes,  Jay Hirabayashi, Aryo Khakpour, Cai Glover and David McIntosh. Music by Aleister Murphy.

Photo credit : Amy Pelletier.

in photos Brian Solomon, Alana Gercke

Click here for a video slide show of M/Hotel

Thanks to Tim the Barman
The Holiday Inn & Suites Vancouver Downtown
The Vancouver Foundation, BCAC
DD Kugler

background context

In 2009 – 2010, battery opera presented David McIntosh’s work Lives Were Around Me, an intimate, site-specific, roving theatre work that explored the notions of history and evidence in the context of a downtown city block in Vancouver. Taking an audience of three at a time on a guided tour, the performance conjured past, present and future histories of Vancouver and, beyond that, asked the audience to consider the residue and evidence that these stories left in their own bodies. While Lives were around me occurred entirely out of the confines and controlled space of the theatre, taking place instead in restaurants, bars, the streets of Vancouver and in darkened institutions, it also offered a theatrical experience that was intimate and about the body of both performer and audience.

Continuing and evolving along this stream of inquiry, battery opera presented the first draft of McIntosh’s next work, M/Hotel in January-February 2011, and the full length premiere later in November/December, 2011. Arising from a series of twelve narratives, written by McIntosh while staying in motel or hotel rooms, the work was performed within the confines of a standard mid-range hotel for a small audience. Juxtaposing against the perceived neutrality of its environment, the work offers improvised dances, music, and intimate narratives that create unique performance experiences evoking the transient states within human relationships, and the paths we trace in our lives and our surroundings. In M/Hotel, the audience spends time in a hotel room with a handful of other friends or strangers, the undercurrent of anonymous intimacy thick in the air, and considers the residue of lives lived in and amongst banal objects, and between destinations.