story by Hazel Venzon
art by David Oro
NOW A GRAPHIC NOVEL
Grace — a girl in Sta. Mesa, Manila, whose Nanay left for work in Winnipeg three years ago — wakes up one morning on her Nanay's birthday with the best idea for a birthday present: to look for work in hopes to buy Nanay a flight home, if only for a day.
Places We Go follows Grace through the small arithmetic of that goal: odd jobs, quiet sacrifices, and coins counted twice. It's a story about growing up faster than a childhood should ask of anyone, and about hope that keeps finding its way back too.
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Show History
Places We Go has been in development since 2013. First, as an oral story, Hazel wrote and read to audiences at the Yukon Literacy Coalition and Culture Days (Whitehorse). She was asked to retell a Filipino folktale of which she knew none. In the hopes of bringing voice to the contemporary reality of many children in the Philippines, she created what was originally called Grace.
Inspired to create a visual backdrop to ‘Grace’, in 2017, she renamed the show 'The Places We Go’ and Hazel partnered with illustrator David to independently produce what they described to be as a Live-Graphic Novel, (live action puppetry with overhead projection illustrations) for the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. One year later, they were asked to tour the 30 minute production to Tacloban, Leyte as part of Bugsay ConFest which received international acclaim from festivals artists, scholars and educators.
Newly named, ‘Places We Go’ is facing a fresh and invigorating stage in production. Originally viewed as a live-action 2-D performance, David and Hazel explore it’s new form as a live-action animation. For this iteration, the creators have deepened the themes and enhanced the artwork, using green screen technology resulting in brand new scenes; to be viewed as nine separate episodes or as a 30 min short film.
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About the Creative Team
Hazel Venzon is an actress, writer, director, and producer whose work lives inside the question of belonging. Trained in sculpture at the University of Manitoba’s School of Fine Arts and an alumna of The Black Hole Theatre and Studio 58, her own practice refuses to belong in any single convention — immersive, intercultural, and stubbornly rooted in play. Her art keeps returning to the same questions: What does migration cost? What does culture carry across borders? How do you tell stories about a place that is both yours and not yours? From programming associate at the Yukon Arts Centre to artistic associate at Prairie Theatre Exchange, she has now co-founded her own stage — U N I Together (you and i together) Productions, a company dedicated to Filipino storytellers and the stories of the Filipino diaspora. Places We Go is her first graphic novel. The daughter of immigrants, she was born and raised in Winnipeg, on Treaty 1 Territory.
David Oro is a Manila-born, Winnipeg-based artist and visual storyteller. He arrived in Winnipeg at age 17 — a crossing between worlds that has quietly shaped everything he’s made since. Over 25 years he has built worlds at every scale — illustration, concept art, UI/UX design, storyboarding, stage design, and type design for clients including Disney, Sony, CBC, and Games Workshop. His most personal worlds, however, are entirely his: studio SARISARI, his creative studio, and SARISARI world, an expanding visual universe born from Filipino mythology and imagination. As co-founder and visual director of U N I Together Productions, he is the visual architect of its worlds — shaping each production through storytelling, set design, costume design, illustration, and type design. His most recent productions include U N I T’s The Glitter Bird and Everything Has Disappeared. Places We Go is his first graphic novel. He calls Treaty 1 Territory home.
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Places We Go
The Graphic Novel
Story by Hazel Venzon
Art by David Oro
Layout and design by studio SARISARI
This book was supported by the Winnipeg Arts Council
Produced by U ‘N I Together (UNIT) Productions
Published by
ANAK Publishing Worker Cooperative Ltd.
Versions of ‘Places We Go’ (formerly ‘The Places We Go’ and ‘Grace’) were made possible by the generous support of the Yukon Literacy Coalition, Culture Days Yukon, Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, Leyte University - Tacloban, Philippines.
This book is supported by the Winnipeg Arts Council and the City of Winnipeg.