Sophia Woodward doesn't quite know how her chosen Granville Island site for the Vancouver Fringe Festival will pan out.
But judging from the reaction of passersby during rehearsals, it's likely her production, Dear Life, will cause a bit of stir.
That's because Dear Life is set in the Granville Island kids' waterpark and the two protagonists use swords for their fights.
"When we're practicing, we get interrupted multiple times with people saying, 'Oh, swords!'" Woodwood said. "It doesn't matter if they are weapons - even though they're not sharp - people will still come up to them really close because they're so pretty and shiny."
"It's a public site so we can't kick anyone off when we rehearse. If children are running around, that's what it is," added director Sachi Lovatt.
Woodward, a graduate of the Vancouver Academy of Dramatic Arts' acting program, said when she first entered the kids' waterpark as a possible staging location for the fringe's mentorship program, she found it "grand."
As a result, "you have to feel what story IT wants to tell you," she said.
Woodward thought up a dream reality sequence that centres on a ship with two sisters at combat and the audience as shipmates.
For the dueling scenes, Woodward and Lovatt - who make up The Seicho Sisters, a theatre production company founded this year - recruited fight choreographer Sylvie La Riviere.
And testing the sisters' grasp on life is "bad guy" Nayden Palosaari of Coquitlam, who last year starred in Plotdigger Films' horror flick BFM: Alarming.
The play, Woodward said, "is an adventure. It's also lots of fun being outdoors. And what better way to spend an evening than as a shipmate, sailing on the ship of dreams, in a kids' waterpark?"
