In the Liminal Space of Fantasy, Denial, and Retail at the Mall: The Making of Mall of Maladaptive Dreaming
WOOMcollaborative at CATR 2025
In June 2025, WOOMcollaborative was involved in the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR) Conference in Regina, Saskatchewan. We participated in person as CATR members during the second act of the conference, held at the Atlas Hotel (4177 Albert Street) with additional performances and praxis sessions hosted at the University of Regina.
It was a joy to get off screen and onto a plane from Ontario to Regina, to share space and ideas with fellow scholars and artists, to break bread, and to share our paper presentation, titled:
In the Liminal Space of Fantasy, Denial, and Retail at the Mall: The Making of Mall of Maladaptive Dreaming
By WOOM members Andy Houston, Joanna Cleary, and Brooke Barnes
The Origins: A Dead Mall, a World on Pause
In early 2020 our collaborative began a creative exploration of a dying mall in Waterloo, Ontario. This mall—like so many others across mid-sized Canadian cities—had become a fading echo of the commercial hub it once was.
When the pandemic hit, this dying mall became more than just a retail relic; it became a mirror to a world in suspension. What began as an exploration of physical space quickly transformed into a layered investigation into desire.
For over two years, we labored inside and alongside this space, developing a dramaturgical process that navigated the blurry thresholds between:
Built environment and natural landscape
Consumer identity and artistic inquiry
Performance practice and commercial design
Making the Mall: Liminality and Performance
The mall became for us a liminal space—caught between past relevance and present obsolescence, between fantasy and failure. Through site-specific devised work, we explored how the retail environment, though in decline, continued to hum with psychological charge. We were interested in how fantasy shapes the mall, and in turn, how that fantasy shapes us.
Retail as Fantasy: Desire on Display
Drawing from Lacanian theory, we understand fantasy as the staging of desire, not its satisfaction. In this view, fantasy doesn’t give us what we want—it teaches us what (and how) to want.
The Gaba Girl: Mannequins as Co-Creators
As the project progressed, we found ourselves in unexpected collaboration with mannequins. These uncanny figures became central to our performance inquiry—especially as we drew inspiration from Lester Gaba’s “Gaba girls”, early 20th-century mannequins designed with eerie lifelike features.
The Gaba girl evolved into a kind of object of desire, a Lacanian objet petit a—an object that functions not through presence, but absence. She became a void filled by our projected fantasies, a plastic promise that echoed the seductive emptiness of digital interfaces, influencer culture, and smart technologies.
The Fantasy of Collapse
Retail, like theatre, became a metaphor for the spaces we seek when reality becomes too much. Both offer pleasure and escape—but both also demand interrogation.
CATR 2025: Performing the Research
Sharing this work at CATR 2025 was a powerful culmination of our research and creative process. Being in Regina, surrounded by scholars who understand the depth of performance as both a practice and a lens, made for a meaningful and provocative exchange.
As Andy Houston noted:
“It was lovely to return to a place that for me truly reveals itself through its traces and its hauntings. Saskatchewan is known as a ‘land of living skies’ for a reason, but beyond the vast beauty of its prairie skies, upon the ground and within its buildings, evocative realities reveal themselves to those who take the time to explore and look closely.”
Final Thoughts
Mall of Maladaptive Dreaming is a meditation on collapse, fantasy, and the rituals that shape how we consume, cope, and create meaning. It lives in the space between what we want and what we’re offered, between display and disappearance, between reality and desire.
Thank you to our colleagues at CATR for engaging with this work—and to the city of Regina and the University of Regina for a conference that helped us reflect, connect, and pose meaningful questions and reflections on interiority.
We will not forget about the land of the living skies
