Waiting on a train platform for a woman that may never come, somewhere between this world and the next, the lives of a man, a mysterious woman and a noodle girl all intersect in Maiko Bae Yamamoto’s Train, premièring at the Enbridge playRites festival this week.

Vancouver audiences might be more familiar with Maiko’s work, as she is the co-artistic director of Theatre Replacement. Her collaborator and artistic partner, James Long, is in the director’s chair for Alberta Theatre Projects’ (ATP) production. However, Calgary did get a taste of the Theatre Replacement style when Bioboxes (a series of one-on-one shows performed from within the frame of a cardboard box on the actors’ shoulders) was performed at the High Performance Rodeo in 2007. She also contributed to the critically acclaimed Sexual Practices of the Japanese, in which she performed a monologue about being groped — on a train, coincidentally. “I’ve always been fascinated by trains and train stations” says Yamamoto. “But mostly I’m interested in portraying a chunk of Japanese culture, without making it too pointed.”

Combining movement, music and text in equal measure, Train, with its surreal approach, sounds more like a One Yellow Rabbit performance than a mainstage ATP festival production. For Yamamoto, however, the line between alternative and mainstream theatre is not so clearly defined. “I feel quite honoured to be asked, because this isn’t the regular type of play that they might choose for a festival like this. I feel that the marriage is very harmonious. They are allowing us to work as we do, with their support, which is fantastic.”

PlayRites has grown to become one of the biggest new play festivals in North America, specializing in showcasing and developing new Canadian works. For some writers, the process can be gruelling and intensive, with changes happening in rehearsal, sometimes right up until opening night. However, the nature of Train as a multi-disciplinary piece of theatre that organically layers together several elements makes things a little easier on the writer, at least when it comes to the text. “We’re doing little rewrites here and there,” says Yamamoto. “[We’re] taking chunks out and moving things around, and adding little things.” That doesn’t mean play development is a close-ended process for Yamamoto. “You never stop working on shows like this,” she adds. “After this run, I can get a lot of new information that can go into furthering the piece.”

Train does have a future, as some dates in Vancouver have already been lined up. In fact, Train has been rolling down the tracks for some time now, starting with Yamamoto’s invitation to the Banff Playwright’s Colony, which she refers to as a “turning point” for the piece. “I was able to focus solely on the writing of it, which is really good. This was an opportunity just to focus on the story and the narrative lines running through the text, so it made a big leap there.”

After another workshop last November with director and choreographer Sarah Chase that concentrated on the physical side of the piece, it’s now ready to come together as a whole on the Martha Cohen stage. As if having your new play première at the mainstage of playRites wasn’t nerve-racking enough, Maiko decided to make it a family affair. Not content with just trying to impress her parents, she went ahead and put one of them in it. “It’s interesting because the piece is performed with my father. Even though he is a musician, and a master of the Japanese flute, he’s not a performer.”

See for yourself if she’s being a little too hard on dear old dad when Train opens on February 14.