Mermaid Spring

deep co-creation, slow process & social handcraft

Mermaid Spring is a new work of interdisciplinary music theatre in co-creation by designer and performance maker Kyla Gardiner, writer Barbara Adler and musical director/producer James Meger, featuring compositions by Peggy Lee, Leah Abramson and Alicia Hansen.

Our story is loosely inspired by Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida – a real-life natural attraction where since 1947, women have donned mermaid tails to perform underwater shows. Set between Weeki Wachee, and a Gulf Island in the Coast Salish sea, the story follows professional mermaids and tourism workers hustling to hold on to their dream jobs in natural landscapes that are threatened by development.

From our vantage point in the Pacific Northwest, Florida is chimeric; an unlikely land of working mermaids and orchid smugglers, vanishing plume birds and nursery-bred palm trees, gator wrestlers and engineered swamps. As in British Columbia’s lower mainland, Florida’s unique landscapes and climate inspire environmentally destructive and gentrifying land-use projects. Astonishing ecosystems exist as unsettling hybrids with tacky tourism, development schemes, and agro-business, selling nostalgia for what they will soon displace.

Equal parts pleasure and panic, investigating Florida helps us ask: how is our enjoyment of a place complicit in its destruction?

As a long-term project, we’re adapting to changing circumstances. With the global pandemic, we have decided to delay plans for a ‘final’ show to spring/summer 2022. In the meantime, we are focusing on Social Handcraft, and curating a series of short artist responses to our project, with a wide community of collaborators. We’ll share more information about this soon. In the meantime, here’s a taste of what we’ve made so far:

Developed with support from Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts, The Hamber Foundation.

Thank you to our partners: SFU School for the Contemporary Arts, Playwrights Theatre Centre, Barking Sphinx Performance & Sawdust Collector