I’m an interdisciplinary creator, host, and independent arts scholar working in various forms of interactive media and experience design. As a creator-performer, I’ve toured Canada with my weird little shows about garbage puppets and science ghosts. I’m a loner and co-conspirator, a killjoy feminist, and citizen scientist.
“Let me tell you a tale of a world full of trash…”
Hero is stranded on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating wasteland in the middle of the ocean. Populated with trash puppet citizenry for company and ingenious – if improvised – inventions for survival, our Hero fights for life on a dying world. But the doomsday clock is ticking down to the end of the Anthropocene, and the last remaining human on earth is running out of time.
Wastelands is an apocalyptic tale about garbage and the pieces of trash who produce it: a one-person clown and puppet show performed with junk in an immersive and interactive environment.
Tread carefully while castaway on Wastelands. The wrong choice could have disastrous consequences…
Language: English
Rating: 14+
Content Warnings: coarse language, eco-grief, puppet violence, death
I live and create in Treaty 6 and 7 territories in amiskwaciywâskahikan-Edmonton and mohkínstsis-Calgary. I strive to be a de/colonizer and have historically benefited from the systemic racism and genocide of Canada’s Indigenous peoples. I am committed to dismantling oppressive systems and fighting in solidarity with land and water protectors. Indigenous sovereignty and reconciliation should be the cornerstones of climate action because environmentalism without intersectionality is just white supremacy with trees. We are all treaty people.
As a creator impassioned by the artistic and technological possibilities of digital creation, I nevertheless acknowledge and grapple with issues of the technological waste crisis, human rights violations and environmental destruction within technological resource extraction (cobalt, lithium, etc.), surveillance capitalism, digital literacy and the digital divide, the right to repair, cyberbullying and hate groups, inequitable access to broadband, and the many other dark corners of the internet that are not just silly cat videos and dank memes.
Written by: Savanna Harvey
Directed by: Savanna Harvey
Created with Lindsey Zess and the Plastic Fantastics
Production Design: Lindsey Zess
Performed by: Jamie Tognazzini
Associate Producer: Mackenzie Parrott
Production Manager/Assistant Director: Dee Kern
Director of Photography: Joel Varjassy
Editor: Mike Gallant
Additional Editing: Savanna Harvey and Brandon Wilson
Colour by: Great Canadian Films
Lighting Technician/Costume Build: Nancy Janzig
Sound Designer: Kyle Hinton
Sound Engineer: Jordan Usselman
Set and Machine Builder: Lane Shordee
Build Team: Teigan Blondin de Boer, Ali DeRegt, Trevor Gieske, Monica Ila, Nancy Janzig, Geneviève Paré, KP Smith, Jamie Tognazzini, Lindsey Zess
Digital Media Coordinator and Interactive Design: Mackenzie Parrott
Graphic Design: Kelsi Kalmer
Executive Producer: Savanna Harvey and Great Canadian Films
University of Calgary Department of Drama