This month, please take a moment to send wishes and love to the people of Ukraine fleeing war and show your support at the various rallies and events being held around the city. Stay safe everyone!
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17th Annual Vancouver International Women in Film Festival
March 8–13
This year’s festival showcases a local, Canadian and international lineup of short and feature-length films including narratives, documentaries and animation – celebrating the complexity and diversity of ways girls, women and gender diverse people choose to challenge, overcome and inspire – themselves, each other, their communities and our world today. For a complete list of films, check out the festival’s website.
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Certified
March 8–20
Comedian and certified insane person JD Derbyshire turns the audience into a mental health review board in this memoir-play, breaking the stigma around mental health. It is an irreverent, fun, hilarious and heart-aching journey through the mental health system. Since its premiere at the Vancouver Fringe Festival in 2016, this show has seen numerous productions across the country and has won several awards. This performance will be held at the Gateway Theatre until March 20; check out the theatre’s website for tickets and more information.
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Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Benefit Concert
March 11, 8 p.m.
The Ukrainian Community Society of Ivan Franko will be co-hosting a benefit concert for Ukraine with Vancouver’s non-profit Symphony 21, tentatively scheduled for March 11 at St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church in Vancouver. All proceeds from the concert will go to the Canadian Red Cross Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal. Check out the society’s website and local newspapers for the most up-to-date information.
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Steaming Ahead: SS Master and the Tugs that Worked the Coast
March 11–May 29
This year marks the 100th anniversary of SS Master, the oldest wooden steam-operated tugboat in the world. Steaming Ahead: SS Master and the Tugs that Built B.C. celebrates this important milestone and looks at the role steam powered tugboats like the Master played in making British Columbia what it is today. Steaming Ahead features archival images of tugs. Models of tugboats from the VMM Collection and the SS Master Society will also be on display. This exhibition covers the history of tugs in British Columbia up to the 1950s. Check out the museum’s website for more information.
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CelticFest Vancouver
March 16–20
CelticFest Vancouver is Western Canada’s biggest annual Celtic festival. CelticFest is a rich cultural celebration of the seven Celtic nations’ kinship and community. The festival showcases the best of Celtic music, dance, spoken word as well as film, food and fare and the much-anticipated St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Founded in 2004, the cornerstones of CelticFest Vancouver are community, diversity, family and civic pride. CelticFest draws its artistic direction from some 5,000 years of Celtic history and culture. This young, vibrant event has quickly, and firmly, established itself as an annual springtime tradition in downtown Vancouver. Check out their website for this year’s events.
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Barbara Strozzi: From Tears to Laughter
March 16–22
This programme is a tribute to the Venetian composer and singer Barbara Strozzi, one of the most important composers of Italian cantatas and baroque arias. Her sensitivity to text and experimentation with form and style offered nuance and a high level of emotional sensitivity to her music. This concert will explore Strozzi’s lighter side as well as presenting her famous lament “Lagrime mie”. A rich mix of plucked and string instruments from Iran, Turkey and Italy (two theorbos, baroque guitar, kanun, setar, cello, gamba, viola d’amore and violin) complements the vocal pieces and creates some lively instrumental dances.
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The Phil Lind Initiative Presents: Matt Taibbi
March 17, 6–7:30 p.m.
www.sppga.ubc.ca/events/event/the-phil-lind-initiative-presents-matt-taibbi
Matt Taibbi, best-selling author and award-winning columnist for Rolling Stone, will be a part of the UBC 2022 Phil Lind Initiative series on “The Future of Media.” Media is at a crossroads. Full-time journalists and long-form reporting have been forced to cede public space to click bait news articles, online echo chambers, and disinformation campaigns. It has never been more challenging to inform the public, to bridge political divides, and to stimulate healthy debate. This series explores these questions and asks where we go from here. How can we restore trust? How do we reconcile evidence-based reporting with the digital age? And above all, how can we reshape the media landscape in the face of these challenges to
better society?
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Made in Italy
March 17–April 17
The Arts Club will be hosting a production of Made in Italy at the Granville Island Stage from March 17 to April 17. Meet Francesco Mantini, a second-generation Italian teen struggling to find his place in Jasper, Alberta. Inspired by pop culture icons Rocky Balboa and John Travolta, he reinvents himself as Frank Martin: crooner and ladies’ man. As buoyant and bubbly as a glass of prosecco, Made in Italy is a celebration of music, food and family that’s so delightful you won’t soon fuhgeddaboudit.
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Men Express Their Feelings
March 18–April 3
A comedy about culture, hockey, relationships and sex. Two dads and their sons are sentenced to stay in the hockey dressing room until they’ve talked through their feelings about a heated scuffle. In 90 hilarious minutes, these guys get to know each other and themselves a whole lot better, while redefining what it means to WIN. Men Express Their Feelings enriches, instigates and empowers questions of gender, sexuality, identity and the cultural impact on all of these. Check out the theatre’s website for tickets and cast information.
