PLAY DEAD by People Watching

Event Description

📍Jenny Belzberg Theatre

Duration: 70 minutes
CONTENT WARNING: Partial Nudity / Fake Blood

Set in a shifting universe of domestic trappings and interlocking stories, People Watching’s debut creation Play Dead brings us a surrealist chronicle of the familiar. The show's inventive mix of acrobatics, dance, and physical theatre casts circus in a fresh and unexpected light.

By giving place for seemingly unexceptional stories to unfold, we look closer and marvel at how beautiful, twisted, and sometimes laughable reality can be. Far from settling into bored fatalism, this show marvels at the absurdity of the mundane and celebrates life, the same way people desperately dance to the last song before the party ends.

Awards
2024 Finalist — Propulsion Prize by En Piste
2023 Winner — Coup de Coeur Award by Festival Quartiers Danses
2025 Finalist — CALQ Prize; Emerging Work in Montreal

Reviews
“Not only did the six Montreal artists of People Watching offer us the festival's favourite show, but they also created one of the most memorable contemporary circus shows of recent years.” - La Presse; Montréal, Canada (9/10 review)

“Play Dead is currently one of the truly sublime artistic achievements of contemporary circus. It includes the world's highest artistic level of an uncompromising character, captivates with visually engaging images associating tenebrism and naturalism in 17th century painting, and with the overall action on stage draws you into the dreamy timelessness of surrealism.” - Dance Zone; Prague, Czech Republic


“People Watching has created with barbaric finesse, with the subtlety of watchmaking precision, a piece of such power that forces the eye not to want to miss a single detail.” - La Verdad; San Javier, Spain