A Vancouver theatre company is creating a production that will be staged on ice inside a snow-covered dome.

The Only Animal Theatre Society is known for its site-specific productions, set in daring locations such as parks, under bridges and even in bodies of water.

Geodesic dome will be covered with 200 dumptruck loads of snow and ice for a trial run in Calgary.
(Only Animal Theatre Society)

Its next work, Nix, is being created in co-operation with Alberta Theatre Projects and Sage Theatre in Calgary.

Director Kendra Fanconi and her partner Eric Rhys Miller plan to stage the play, set in a post-apocalyptic ice age, inside a geodesic dome 13 metres in diameter.

They'll place it on an ice rink, and cover it with 200 dumptruck-loads of snow.

Rhys Miller says the audience won't be cold.

"Our biggest concern at this point is that when you put 100 people inside a dome, the temperature actually goes way up," he said in an interview with CBC Radio. "And our concern is how we're going to keep the set cold enough."

Another technical challenge is the acoustics, he said.

"It's like a perfect lens so sounds just bounce crazily. You'll hear somebody across the room and they'll move a foot and you can't hear them at all."

The play, written by Fanconi, follows a few survivors struggling to build a new world in a landscape consisting only of ice and snow. A character called the Arsonist shows up and threatens to end everything.

The dome theatre can be moved and set up virtually anywhere.

NIX will be workshopped in Calgary Feb. 27-March 4 and in Williams Lake, B.C., this March.

It has received cultural funding from 2010 Legacies Art Now.

Only Animal's most recent production is Dog Eat Dog, which continues until Feb. 4 in Vancouver.