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Anthropologies Imaginaires, an avant-garde experimental vocal show by musician Gabriel Dharmoo, was awarded Best International Production at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival in 2015, and is now being presented at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival from Feb. 1–2. “Anthropologies Imaginaires is a live art and vocal performance,” says Dharmoo, composer, improviser and researcher of ethnomusicology.…
Social Studies, a comedy play written by Trish Cooper and presented by the Firehall Arts Centre, takes on topics that address Canadian values and culture through the story of a Sudanese refugee who is adopted by the Wilson family of Winnipeg. Although inspired by her own family’s background, the play and the story’s reality differ…
Pangaea Arts (Canada) and ArtStage SAN (예술무대산) (Korea) present 상자Sangja (Boxes), showing Nov. 19 to 21, 2015 at Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby: a performance art project combining puppetry, music and physical theatre, delving into themes of identity, diversity, culture, race, families and the boxes in which we put ourselves and others. Symbolizing…
Writer and star of Empire of the Son, Canadian-Japanese broadcaster and scholar Tetsuro Shigematsu takes the stage at the Vancity Culture Lab at the Cultch Theatre from Oct. 6–17. Produced by the Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre (VACT), Empire of the Son is the story of Shigematsu’s personal relationship with his now dying father. While they…
Can an older orphan who has been institutionalized learn how to love and bond with an adoptive family? This is one of the questions explored in the upcoming play Olya the Child by Lauren Kresowaty. At the Vancouver Fringe Festival, playwright Kresowaty and director Aliya Griffin are putting on Olya the Child from Sept. 10…
Noticing the lack of positive energy being represented on stage or in literature, Drew Hayden Taylor, rather than complain or whine, decided to deal with contemporary Native issues in a more positive way. Taylor’s God and the Indian, showing at the Firehall Arts Centre (May 20–30), is a story about Johnny, a Cree woman in…
Songs, poems, stories and speeches are created with words, the main ingredient for the Verses Festival in Vancouver this year. The Verses Festival of Words celebrates the power of oral and literary art forms to encourage diversity and inclusion. The festival has its roots in 2011 as the Vancouver International Poetry Festival, where the first…
Cantonese opera fans, or anyone looking to learn more about Chinese culture, can look forward to the famed production The Legend of the Red Peony, featuring English and Chinese subtitles, put on by the Vancouver Cantonese Opera April 18 at the Michael J. Fox Theatre in Burnaby. Robin Leung, a stage actor who came to…
Performer and musician Tina Milo, who immigrated from Valjevo, Serbia to Vancouver in 2000, started a personal research project in 2012 that would eventually become her current production: The Village. A Serbian-Canadian multimedia collaboration, The Village is a one-woman play born from a set of queries. Milo interviewed 18 close friends, many of whom work…
Shadow puppetry has been performed in China for over two millennia. However, with the rise of new forms of entertainment, some feel that the art form today is just a shadow of its former self. Lu Baogang, a fifth-generation descendant of the Lu family of shadow puppeteers and the current leader of the Beijing Shadow…
Everyone has secrets, and some people have shared theirs anonymously through an online forum as part of a project called PostSecret. Three actors based in British Columbia will be telling these secrets on stage: Kahlil Ashanti, Nicolle Nattrass and Ming Hudson. PostSecret: The Show aims at engaging the audience through a crowd-sourced narrative of stories…
From Oct. 21–31, the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden will host a Halloween event where visitors have the chance to become part of a real-life mystery story. “We call it Judge Dee’s Chinatown Haunted House. It is based on the real Judge Dee, from Ancient China,” says Daniel Deorksen one of the artistic producers…
The interaction between Jewish and Muslim cultures is an internationally relevant and controversial issue that many artists find challenging to address. However, Sum Theatre’s Joel Bernbaum and Kayvon Kelly, co-creators and stars of My Rabbi, a play that will feature at the Firehall Arts Centre October 7-18, personalize this large-scale issue by placing it in…
