Till Human Voices Wake Us was a collaboration between Concordia’s Theatre department and École National de Cirque. It was an adaptation of the T. S. Eliot poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, devised and led by director Shana Carroll. Fifteen actors and six circus artists perform, with characters, imagery, and themes flowing fluidly from one to the next, representing the movements of the poem itself. The show follows Prufrock’s journey through time and lack of time, through connection and isolation, through streets and memories, with performer’s own stories woven through it.

For me the role of projection was to support this journey, allowing the world of the play to smoothly flow between reality and surreality. Much of the imagery involved projections of items from the world of the show — the actors, set, the imagery described in the text — but shown in a distorted, fractured way. Like Prufrock’s journey, the projections allow the audience to feel at times immersed and at times distant, like viewing one’s own life as an outside observer.