The Effect, by Lucy Prebble, is running at The Cultch’s Historic Theatre, 1895 Venables, Vancouver, 15–25 October. Ninety minutes, no interval. Rumble Theatre and ITSAZOO Productions. CBC Arts, 14 October: two companies, one show, because the funding formulas have split infrastructure from money. This is not a world premiere. It is a remount. Last year, Progress Lab, it sold out.

Prebble is known from Succession and I Hate Suzie. The play, 2012: Connie and Tristan, a clinical trial of a dopamine-regulating antidepressant. The dose rises. The attraction rises. They do not know if it is love or chemistry. The doctors: Toby Sealey, chemical imbalance; Lorna James, sceptical of over-medication. Stir, Janet Smith. The Cultch, on its site: “is this love… or just chemistry?” That is not a medical release. It is theatre.

Jivesh Parasram, Rumble’s artistic director, the director: what is real and what is not, when it is pills. Sebastien Archibald, ITSAZOO: austere times, small companies and large ones joining forces. Rumble has staff, sometimes a room, operating money from the Canada Council, not enough for the shows it wants. ITSAZOO has no operating grant, can apply for project money. Project grants, Parasram says, can exceed a large company’s whole year. Some have the building. Others have the grant. Neither has both.

Parasram: contracts, across the country, cut in half. That is his line. It is not a Council table. The set: plexiglass mirrors. At Progress Lab, the audience sat on both sides. At The Cultch, the house is traditional. The mirrors stayed, for surveillance. You are in the study. The cast, the same four: Paige Louter, Andy Kalirai, Meghan Gardiner, Anthony Santiago. Tech week before opening. Today is the 19th. The run is in the middle.

The Cultch presents. Rumble and ITSAZOO produce. Pay-what-you-can preview, 15 October. Opening, the 16th. Evenings, 7:30. Matinees the 18th, 24th, 25th, 2 p.m. Archibald: buy a ticket. Without a rethink of public arts funding in B.C. and in Canada, collaboration, CBC says, may not be enough. That is a producer’s warning. It is not a voted budget.

Until the 25th, what remains is the mirrors and the 90 minutes. After that, what remains is whether the Canada Council formula still holds two companies on one bill. Between them, a fictional antidepressant trial and a real house on Venables, which is not the Orpheum in the picture.

Image: Xicotencatl, Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver, 22 September 2012, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph is of the Orpheum on Granville, not the Historic Theatre on Venables.

Sources consulted: In austere times, theatre groups are learning to work together — and this is The Effect — CBC Arts; The Effect | Love-and-science thriller | OCT 15–25 — The Cultch.