Speed Dating with Cacti by Mammalian Diving Reflex

Another socially-engaged masterpiece from the company that brought you “Haircuts by Children”, “All the Sex I’ve Ever Had", “The Children’s Choice Awards” and "Nightwalks with Teenagers”.

A botanist, a cognitive neuroscientist, a dharma teacher, a stand-up comedian, an 88-year old woman with Alzheimers, a young man with a brain injury, a bunch of teens, a few walking meditators and a group of children all walk into the Botanic Gardens.... The cacti turn to them and they say...

“Speed Dating with Cacti” stars a cast of dozens, all of whom are experts of the present moment.“Speed Dating with Cacti“ looks at the rapidly narrowing gap between science and spirituality, with the question of plant cognition as the entry point, with the exit point being the fact that humans - like all species - will inevitably go extinct. Co-devisors and guides to the present moment include St Martins Youth Arts Centre, with culinary services by Long Prawn.

You are passed from person to person, location to location, and led through a series of demonstrations, meditations and experiences focused on that very strange thing we call consciousness. You will spend glorious moments lying back in the quantum field, your essence spread across the cosmos, like an infinite layer of vegemite on a piece of eternal toast.

Mammalian Diving Reflex is a Toronto-based company and has presented work around the world in over a hundred cities. We create spectacular encounters between people, where you, the audience, are engaged mentally, emotionally and physically. “Speed-Dating with Cacti” began in 2019 in a research residency at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, where the question of plant consciousness inevitably led to taking seriously the implications of where cutting-edge physics is taking us. There is no space. There is no time. There is just this moment now, with you... reading this description.
And then,
the moment is gone.

“One of Canada’s most in-demand cultural exports” - Weekend Australian