Arts Umbrella presents Splash 2026 Art Exhibition at Pendulum Gallery September 8 to October 1. The Splash Auction takes place at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver on October 3

A DIVERSE COLLECTION of works by established and emerging Canadian artists will be on display at Pendulum Gallery this month, ahead of Arts Umbrella’s 44th annual Splash Art Auction on October 3. 

From September 8 to October 1, the free exhibition includes 91 original artworks from innovative artists spanning generations, disciplines, and geographies. Take Tiko Kerr’s vibrant mixed-media canvas, Homeland Vigil, celebrating Canadian identity. The abstract collage depicts a scene of colourful festivity on Canada Day, with playful glimpses of watermelon being launched in the air and the Canadian flag peeking out from one corner. Elsewhere, Marie Khouri’s charcoal and bronze sculpture, El Abanico de mi Madre, speaks to the artist’s deeply personal experiences of memory, resilience, and roots. The Paris- and Vancouver-based sculptor signs all her charcoal works with a bronze nugget, and for this piece, a delicate flamenco flower shines out of the dismantled folding fan.

Among the other standout donations are Landon Mackenzie’s oil painting Neuronets and Jesse Ward’s mixed-media canvas titled Van Morrison. Like neurons firing electrical signals throughout the body, geometric webs stretch across the crimson canvas of Neuronets, scattered with cell-like forms—a fitting piece for an auction supporting the imaginations of young minds. In Van Morrison, Ward channels his personal childhood memories of going camping with his family while listening to the “Brown Eyed Girl” singer; thick, looping strokes of red, pink, yellow, green, and blue evoke the lively feelings of the Pacific Northwest. 

Bidding opens online September 8, with proceeds supporting Arts Umbrella’s extensive arts programming for children and youth. Every year, the non-profit organization serves around 20,000 young people through scholarships, bursaries, and community initiatives that foster creativity.

While tickets to the Splash Art Auction at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver are now sold out, people can still tune in to the event’s online livestream. Hosted by Fred Lee and Gloria Macarenko, the gala features performances by the Arts Umbrella Dance Company and the Pre-Professional Musical Theatre Troupe, alongside a cocktail reception showcasing all the artworks. 

For more details, see the Arts Umbrella website.

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The Vancouver Latin American Film Festival opens with A Loose End at SFU Woodward’s on September 10 at 7 pm

IT HAS ALL THE makings of a Nordic Noir thriller: when an idealistic police officer discovers that two of his fellow cops are involved in criminal activity, he’s forced to flee across the border to escape reprisal from his corrupt colleagues.

A Loose End isn’t the latest big-screen adaptation of a Jo Nesbø novel, however; it’s a feature from writer-director Daniel Hendler, and, while it is indeed a thriller, in its own roundabout way, the tone is one of deadpan humour as mild-mannered fugitive Santiago (Sergio Prina) struggles to adjust to his new reality on the run.

Reviewing A Loose End for Screen Daily, critic Lee Marshall praised Hendler’s “fine, lean script” and “inventive vision of a fugitive who turns the dangerous frontier into a place in which to unburden, change and grow”.

Hendler is a Uruguayan who works primarily in Argentina, and this cross-border caper (titled Un Cabo Suelto in Spanish) is set in both countries. The movie was selected as the Uruguayan entry in the Best International Feature Film category at the 99th Academy Awards, and it opens the 2026 Vancouver Latin American Film Festival.

This year’s edition of VLAFF features films from 12 countries, including Canada, with spotlights on Colombia’s Oscar Ruiz Navia and Mexico’s Mayra Hermosillo. Screenings take place at the Cinematheque and Cineworks, SFU Woodward’s, and International Village Cineplex. The fest also includes live music in the Cinematheque courtyard, with performers including Tamboré, Paula Pazos, Linaldo Sans, Brendocha, Colectivo SUR, and Los Grandes.

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Western Gold Theatre’s fourth annual Have A Senior Moment Festival brings audiences 10 days of theatre, works in development, music, creative workshops, artist salons, and more. Taking place from September 25 to October 4 at PAL Studio Theatre and other West End venues, the festival celebrates the fact that creativity has no expiry date.

This year’s edition is headlined by the On Our Feet! (OOF!) staged reading of Anniversary by Carol Shields and Dave Williamson from September 25 to 27. The comedy, which follows recently separated couple Dianne and Tom, takes a sharp look at middle-class suburban life, love, and marriage.

Among other Have A Senior Moment Festival highlights is Popcorn & A Movie on September 29, featuring horror film The Rug and its process documentary Silver Screamers. The festival closes on October 4 with an uplifting Métis Kitchen Party & Feast in partnership with Full Circle: First Nations Performance, the Talking Stick Festival, and V’ni Dansi.

Browse the full lineup and purchase tickets through Western Gold.

Post sponsored by Western Gold Theatre.

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Out on Screen presents Vancouver Queer Film Festival at various venues from September 10 to 20

AS VANCOUVER QUEER FILM FESTIVAL kicks into gear this week, here are a few quick takes on its diverse array of films—from a documentary about restoring buildings and community to a dimsum-happy celebration of sexuality.

SAVING ETTING STREET

September 12 at 1:30 pm at International Village

In this international premiere, directors Dena Fisher and Amy Scott shine a spotlight on the women behind Black Women Build - Baltimore, illuminating the history and systems of discrimination that continue to impact communities like Etting Street. 

Through a program of restoring buildings in historically disenfranchised neighbourhoods, the nonprofit takes an intersectional approach to empowering home ownership, skills training, and community. The film does the work to share Baltimore’s history and provide educational framing so viewers can better appreciate the organizing behind the labour. Best of all, the documentary team understands that the weight and meaning of the program participants’ work is felt through Etting Street’s growing cast of characters. As Etting Street slowly transforms over the course of the documentary, so too do the people working to restore it to its former glory.

Master carpenter Shelley Halstead and the program’s pilot participants anchor the film’s exploration of complex and difficult topics through their everyday triumphs and setbacks. As a black queer woman, the sexism, racism, and homophobia Halstead recounts (and faces during the documentary) provides an on-the-ground view of how these issues affect community and prosperity. 

Fisher and Scott avoid inserting their own dramatic flairs and have us take in the daily grind of hammering floorboards and resolving arguments. The culmination of their labour becomes a rewarding reminder that building power requires community, even when Saving Etting Street makes it clear that the work needs to continue.

EGG YOLK CUSTARD BUN (奶黃包)

September 18 at 7 pm at Emily Carr University’s Reliance Theatre, as part of Shorts: The Coast is Queer

Described as a short film where food meets kink, “Egg Yolk Custard Bun (奶黃包)” transforms the familiar setting of a dimsum restaurant into an unabashed celebration of queerness, pleasure, and the reclamation of a succulent Chinese meal. Performers Kamiya Iwamoto, Anjalica Solomon, and Kevyn Hu commit to their full-bodied performances even when the food onscreen competes for our attention. Despite its two-minute runtime, the film complicates the imagery of kink by presenting it through the lens of diasporic, generational, and class tension.

Filmmaker and ecoqueer artist Soya Wu gives nods to performance artists like Patty Chang, while adding their own parodic flavour to a splashy piece of film art. Wu presents an interesting blurring of boundaries between good food and politics by spotlighting the people and culture that facilitate these experiences. As an artist based in B.C. whose work features other local talents and performers, Wu brings a cultural specificity that should feel right at home as part of Vancouver Queer Film Festival’s B.C.–focused short film program, The Coast Is Clear. 

WHAT WILL I BECOME

September 20 at 1:15 pm at International Village

In this B.C. premiere, What Will I Become takes a gentle approach to honour the lives of two trans boys, and in doing so, provides a compassionate beacon for an often-overlooked community. The documentary serves as a memorial dedicated to two trans teens, Blake Brockington, the first Prom King at his North Carolina high school, and Kyler Prescott, a soft-spoken San Diego resident; both died by suicide and their stories attracted significant media attention. The film is led by transmasculine co-directors Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos.With the support of Blake and Kyler’s families and communities, the film’s exploration of suicide and transphobia is buoyed by a tender display of the teens’ positive impact on people. 

What Will I Become navigates the difficult balance of portraying what has been lost and what remains through a combination of footage filmed by Bean and Rozos, archival footage, and community-led art montages dedicated to Blake and Kyler. Interspersed throughout the documentary, the art sequences give viewers room to process as Blake and Kyler’s stories are revealed through interviews and news footage.

Despite the injected authorship in certain design choices, the co-directors’ decision to weave their own experiences into the narrative feels more additive than disruptive, particularly in sharing their perspectives as suicide survivors. Their journey of connecting with Blake and Kyler’s loved ones becomes an organic entry point for the audience, while a plurality of perspectives helps to illustrate systemic issues across different sectors. There is heaviness in confronting dire statistics and violent bigotry, but they are presented alongside life-saving resources like Trans Lifeline, and spaces that prioritize trans health and safety. 

What is clear from beginning to end is that the film is made by and for trans people, and equally as important, made to honour suicide survivors. What Will I Become is a bittersweet yet affirming addition to the 2SLQGBTQIA+ documentary canon.

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The newly revised and redesigned book Gaslights to Gigawatts: A Human History of BC Hydro and Its Predecessors, Updated is now available for order.

Written by Hugh Wilson and The BC Hydro Power Pioneers, this publication tells the human history of the company that developed the electric system in British Columbia. Throughout the book, BC Hydro employees recount stories of the people and projects that delivered power across the province—ranging from an era when gas street lamps were lit by hand each evening, to the present day of technological advancements.

Gaslights to Gigawatts was first published in 1998 and became a BC Bestseller. This hardcover edition features new interviews and a contemporary design, with more than 300 archival photographs and illustrations, plus a glossary, chronology, and index.

The book is available for purchase through Figure 1 Publishing. Proceeds go to the BC Hydro Power Pioneers Miracle Millions Campaign for BC Children’s Hospital.

Post sponsored by Figure 1 Publishing.

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John Pizzarelli presents Dear Mr. Bennett at the CapU Centre for Performing Arts on September 10

ONLINE MISINFORMATION IS a growing problem, even in the generally polite and respectful world of jazz-guitar enthusiasts. Just a couple of weeks ago, for instance, a member of a Facebook group dedicated to jazz guitar made the outrageous claim that all the great jazz guitarists were Italian-American. “Piffle,” another poster replied. “Charlie Christian. Wes Montgomery. Django Reinhardt. George Barnes. Grant Green. Jim Hall. The list of non-Italian giants is endless.”

The OP had a point, however. Italian-Americans don’t have a lock on the jazz-guitar pantheon, but they’ve contributed to the instrument at a level that’s way out of proportion to their demographic strength. The first great jazz guitarist, Eddie Lang, was known to his mother as Salvatore Massaro. Moving into the 1940s and beyond, we have Al Caiola, Jimmy Bruno, Tony Mottola, Pat Martino, Joe Pass (born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalacqua), Al Di Meola, Toronto’s Michael Occhipinti, and hundreds more, not to mention the greatest jazz-guitar makers of the 20th century, John D’Angelico and James D’Aquisto.

Singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli Jr. is the proud inheritor of that tradition, quite literally. His late father, John “Bucky” Pizzarelli, was revered for his assured touch, his encyclopedic knowledge of harmony, and his popularization of the seven-string guitar, which he played onstage and in the studio with artists as diverse as Tiny Tim, Aretha Franklin, and Benny Goodman. John Junior has built on his father’s innovations, and expanded them by adding his personable, low-key vocals to the mix. Not surprisingly, he has some thoughts on the relationship between ethnicity and instrumental prowess.

“My father’s generation, and especially the Italians, their fun was by making music at home,” he explains in a phone call from his family’s summer cabin, an hour north of New York City. “They didn’t have anything other than maybe a radio, and when they all got together they would sing songs. My father’s uncles were banjo players and mandolin players, and when he wanted to learn they gave him a guitar because, they said, ‘The guitar is the new instrument. It’s going to be the big rhythm instrument in the band.’ 

“That’s how I got into it too,” he adds. “I mean, the only way you got to be in the inner circle was to learn [Fats Waller and Andy Razaf’s jazz standard] ‘Honeysuckle Rose’. The language was music, and that’s how you got in with the guys and got to play on Sundays. You got to be in the circle when everybody was sitting around in the living room after dinner, and it was fun! That was the thing, as my grandmother used to say: ‘We made our own fun.’”

Music was not only affordable entertainment for new immigrants and their children, it was a way to stay connected to the traditions of Apulia, Calabria, Sicily, and other musical hotbeds. Could this have been why Italian-Americans found it so easy to learn the vocabulary of jazz, itself invented by African-Americans who were also morphing their own heritage into New World forms?

“I have to say ‘Yes, I agree with you,’” Pizzarelli comments, sounding intrigued. “It makes sense to me that there is that connection.”

Pizzarelli has paid homage to the African-American roots of jazz with tributes to Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington, but his two most recent releases focus on the legacy of an artist whose records would have been a constant in his family home. (And not only because Bucky played on a few of them.) Dear Mr. Bennett and its EP-length sequel, P.S. Mr. Bennett, focus on songs recorded and in some cases made famous by jazz and show-tune singer Tony Bennett—whose birth name, it should be noted, was Anthony Dominick Benedetto. The releases also honour the centenary of the vocalist’s birth; he died in 2023.

Unlike his father, Pizzarelli never recorded with Bennett, although they performed together on a number of radio broadcasts and had a friendly relationship for many years. At one point there was even a possibility that the younger musician could be Bennett, at least on the silver screen. Apparently, a Bennett biopic was being considered, and the singer knew who he wanted in the lead role.

“He was on a talk show, years ago,” Pizzarelli reports. “It might have been Rachael Ray; I forget. Anyway, they said, ‘Who should play you in the movie?’ And he said, ‘Well, John Pizzarelli should play me as a young man.’ Which totally stumped the questioner, and they quickly got away from that. ‘We don’t know who John Pizzarelli is, and we’d better just move on.’ But he had come to see me and said that I looked like him on the back of the Astoria record, where he’s standing in front of his apartment. And then he called me up once. I thought it was a gag, but it really was him, saying, ‘I’m talking about making a movie, and I want you to play me as a young guy.’ 

“I couldn’t believe the phone call was actually happening, but he was that kind of guy. He’d call people up and he was always walking around New York, coming to your gigs, sketching you… All the aspects of him were so wonderful; he was just such a genuine person.”

A gifted amateur artist, Bennett also provided the cover art for both new releases, an edited version of an impromptu cocktail-napkin portrait of Pizzarelli and his vocalist wife, Jessica Molaskey. “We have it framed at our house, and he put on the top ‘What an evening!’” Pizzarelli says. “It was very sweet to receive this, and he was always handing these things out.”

Despite this skein of connections, neither Dear Mr. Bennett nor P.S. Mr. Bennett aims to reproduce Bennett’s unique style, or the strength of his voice—which can probably be attributed to the older performer’s early exposure to operatic tenors. In his live performances, Bennett would often step away from the microphone and wow every listener at the back of the room without electronic assistance. Pizzarelli is a more intimate singer, with a quietly confident approach to the Great American Songbook.

“With me, it’s more about finding material that I like to sing,” he explains. “So I’m not concerned about sounding like anybody but me after all the years I’ve been doing it. I just like to find some chords, find a nice arrangement, and songs that I think are interesting and that will keep the listener listening.

“The things that I like about Tony Bennett and even Frank Sinatra is that I just love their phrasing,” he concludes. “Listening to Tony sing with [adventurous jazz pianist] Bill Evans is a very inspirational thing, the way he communicates those songs. And that’s just something that you keep in mind. It’s like listening to a great soloist: you can’t play like Joe Pass, but you can sort of take something from it that you can apply to your own playing.”

It’s funny, perhaps, that Pizzarelli concludes our chat by referencing two great Italian-Americans, but he’s very much in their tradition—and advancing it in his own way too.

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Steve Patterson is an award-winning stand-up comedian with over 25 years of international performance experience. He’ll be hitting the stage at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts for An Evening with Steve Patterson on September 23 at 7:30 pm.

As host of the long-running hit radio show and podcast The Debaters and theatre show The Debaters Live, Patterson delivers a brand of comedy that is best described as honest and erudite—combining well-crafted writing with unparalleled, off-the-cuff wit. Twice named Canada’s Best Male Stand-Up at the Canadian Comedy Awards, he is known for keeping audiences engaged with heartfelt stories, concisely constructed letters, and original songs.

Patterson served as anchor for the “If It Makes You Happy” Gala at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival in 2022, and is the author of The Book of Letters I Didn’t Know Where to Send and Dad Up!.

Tickets to the show are available through the Shadbolt Centre.

Post sponsored by Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

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VANCOUVER’S CHOR LEONI is celebrating its 35th year with a full lineup of performances at St. Andrew’s–Wesley United Church and a new series of free public concerts as part of its annual choral festival The Big Roar. 

The season kicks off on November 11 with the choir’s Remembrance Day Concerts, The Soul Flies Away, featuring the highly anticipated return of Don Macdonald’s High Flight, a six-movement composition honouring the life of a World War II Canadian air-force pilot.

December brings the long-standing holiday tradition Christmas With Chor Leoni, running December 17 to 19. Performing alongside the choir are local guest musicians including pianists Tina Chang and Karen Lee-Morlang, guitarist Keith Sinclair, and violinist Cameron Wilson. 

On March 5 and 6, Chor Leoni sets sail once again with Montreal’s acclaimed ensemble La Nef in a rollicking program of songs of the sea, featuring shantyman Seán Dagher, santour player Saina Khaledi, and violinist Cameron Wilson. Bound Away includes a major new piece by the choir’s composer in residence, Marie-Claire Saindon.

Closing the season is Chor Leoni’s annual festival The Big Roar, on May 7 and 8, gathering over 450 singers whose harmonized singing is sure to live up to the festival’s name. Participants this year include the group’s professional ensemble The Leonids, MYVoice youth choirs, participants in the Emerging Choral Artist Program, and 12 local invitational choirs—among them the Vancouver Welsh Men’s Choir, Vancouver Cantonese Choir, Vancouver Iranian Choir, Koro Pacifico, and KÔR. A new community initiative, The Big Roar: Day of Singing, takes place on the second day of the fest with a series of free public performances.

Throughout the season, Chor Leoni will continue offering their digital Concert Film series, available for free with RSVP. 

Season packages are now on sale, with single tickets available starting October 1. Visit Chor Leoni’s website here for more details.

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Vancouver New Music’s 2026–27 season is here, and tickets are now on sale for a remarkable lineup of internationally celebrated artists from Japan, Korea, Egypt, Australia, the United States, and Canada. Bringing together distinct cultural perspectives and singular artistic voices, this season explores experimental performance practices at the intersection of acoustic and electronic sound.

The highly anticipated opening night of the VNM Festival: Open Frequencies at Pacific Spirit United Church on October 22 features Japan’s Kuniko Kato Quartet. As part of its REICH90 North American Tour, the group is performing a special program focused on Steve Reich’s work in celebration of his 90th birthday. Quartet members include Haruka Aoyagi, Karin Tozaki, Koichi Hosono, and Misaki Matsuno.

The VNM Festival continues on October 23 and 24 with internationally acclaimed and emerging artists working at the forefront of experimental, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural sound practices. These include Korean cellist and composer Okkyung Lee; Egyptian-born, Montreal-based vocalist Nadah El Shazly with fellow Montreal-based harpist Sarah Pagé; Salt Spring Island–based violinist Meredith Bates; and Nanaimo-based musician Piu.

On January 23 at Christ Church Cathedral, the season welcomes the return of the One-Page Score Project, Vancouver New Music’s popular community initiative that invites participants to create scores using graphic notation, which will then be performed by Plastic Acid Orchestra. Among other highlights is Australian-American vocalist Charmaine Lee, bringing her distinctive approach to voice and live electronics by crafting intricate, spontaneous sonic environments at The Beaumont Studios on February 20. The evening features an opening performance by Vancouver’s own x/o (Veron Xio), a music producer and multidisciplinary artist.

The eighth edition of the PARALLELS series, featuring Australian-Japanese koto player Miyama McQueen-Tokita and an ensemble of local vocalists from the Nikkei community, takes place at the Annex on March 20. And American sound artist Olivia Block is performing on the city’s largest pipe organ at Pacific Spirit United Church on April 24, with organist, pianist, and continuo player Angelique Po offering a complementary set featuring Iannis Xenakis’s only work for organ.

Tickets for the full 2026–27 season are now on sale. To purchase and learn more, visit Vancouver New Music.

Post sponsored by Vancouver New Music.

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Silvana Estrada plays the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on September 6 at 7:30 pm

IT WOULD BE hard to imagine higher praise: Dazed once described Silvana Estrada as “the Gen Z, Latin American answer to Joni Mitchell”. While that might be an impossibly high bar, the Mexican singer-songwriter has, at 29, already firmly established herself as one to watch. Estrada picked up the best new artist award at the 2022 Latin Grammys on the strength of Marchita, her debut album.

To clarify, Marchita was Estrada’s solo debut, but it came after two earlier albums she made in collaboration with American jazz fusionist and guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter. That should tell you a bit about Estrada’s tastes, as she has cited jazz legends Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan as formative influences.

Her own music is centred on her warm, fluid vocals, imagistic but emotionally compelling Spanish-language lyrics, and delicately fingerpicked nylon-string guitar, which she sometimes swaps out for a Venezuelan cuatro. It could probably be summed up most succinctly as Latin American folk with an indie-pop sensibility.

In addition to Hunter, Estrada has collaborated with a number of different artists from all over the world, including Mexico’s Natalia Lafourcade, Spain’s Guitarricadelafuente, Iceland’s Laufey, and Smithers, B.C.–based Alex Cuba. For her Chan Centre concert, she will perform with Vancouver’s Black Dog String Quartet.

Estrada doesn’t truly sound anything like Mitchell, but let’s just say that fans of Ladies of the Canyon and Blue will probably find plenty to love anyway.

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Neworld Theatre and Playwrights Theatre Centre present Postcards to my Younger Transexual Self(or YTS), Ages 0–119 at PAL Studio Theatre to August 30

A POSTCARD IS A funny invention. You go somewhere far enough away to be worth announcing, and send back proof of your presence and of having thought about someone else. There’s a picture on one side, a few sentences on the other, a date, a place, a signature. “We got here yesterday, it’s beautiful. We’re going to the beach tomorrow.” It takes a while to get to the recipient, so by the time it arrives, tomorrow has come and gone, and the person writing is probably somewhere else too.   

There’s something tender and melancholy about the whole arrangement. Postcards to My Younger Transexual Self (or YTS), Ages 0–119 makes a home inside that soft ache of reaching for somebody across distance.  

Playwright and performer Christina Cook plays Spiling, folding details of her own life into the show’s more fantastical inventions. We meet Spiling as a grad student studying psychology and navigating academia while publicly expressing her trans identity. She reads postcards addressed to her younger selves and spends time with the things her grandmother left behind, including a science-fiction story dedicated to her “future granddaughter”. Gradually, the past and future begin talking back.  

A grandmother writes to a granddaughter who doesn’t exist yet; Spiling writes to versions of herself who no longer exist, or haven’t yet come to be. Spiling’s mother, meanwhile, calls from the present, only to be met with the answering machine. Cook is sensitive to the ways absence can become its own kind of presence. The people we love persist in memory, in the versions of them we hold on to, and the living can become distant to one another. To know someone, the play suggests, is always partly to know them out of time.  

Spiling’s time at university finds echoes in the lives of both her mother and her grandmother, both academics. Time passes, but some things never change: each of them comes up against the misogyny of her respective field, separated by decades but caught in familiar structural pitfalls. Postcards is less interested in cataloguing these injuries than in tracing what gets carried forward, where the intensely personal brushes up against the unavoidably political. 

There are commonalities, misunderstandings, and contradictions between the three generations. Spiling tells her long-dead grandmother about the difficulties of her first year as a trans university student. “I’m not sure I understood all that, but I hope writing it made you feel better,” her grandmother replies warmly. The two commiserate over their university experiences and books, quite literally sending postcards back and forth through time.

Their reality-bending correspondence plays out across a stage divided loosely between the three women: Alia Rusu-Tahir embodies the departed grandmother at one end, Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg’s mother occupies the other, and Cook moves between them. The women largely inhabit their own pockets of space, their stories unfolding through monologues that answer one another across the room, rather than through conventional scenes together. 

Rusu-Tahir fills the character of the grandmother with a lively curiosity, bright and almost innocent at first. It’s a curiosity she shares with Spiling, making their transgenerational kinship feel intimate.  

Spiling’s mother is keenly aware of the irony: her daughter has found a way to talk to the dead while barely talking to her own parent. “Leaving messages on the phone is a fictional relationship,” she says in a voicemail to Spiling.  Friedenberg gives the character a lovely directness, unafraid to challenge her daughter on her emotional distance but never turning cruel or dismissive. Where the grandmother remains largely tethered to her own corner of the stage, Spiling’s mother occasionally crosses into her daughter’s space, bringing them into more direct contact. Those interactions become the emotional core of the play, pulling Postcards out of the fantasy and toward something more immediate.

If this all sounds heady, it is, partly. The monologues in this play can be lengthy and dense, rife with detail and specificity; Cook’s is an intelligent script that expects its audience to keep up. To the play’s benefit, Cook herself has an unhurried presence, and yet there’s an earnestness to her performance too, fitting for a character who makes her own transition into something to study and perfect: “I’m trying to get an A+ in electrolysis,” she says. 

Throughout, the playwright’s words carry a whimsical rhythm that’s perhaps most buoyant when describing the pleasures of gender euphoria: “I used to collect ‘ma’ams’ like diamonds. Diamonds I could eat.” 

That buoyancy is also beautifully punctuated by Hayley Sullivan’s live musical accompaniment, a constant presence throughout the show. Moving between an eclectic assortment of instruments and even her own voice, Sullivan gives the production a lush sound that feels as curious and free-ranging as Spiling herself. 

The play has some even stranger registers, from the grandmother acting out her own science-fiction story to the increasingly absurd bureaucrats and academics played by Rae Takei—a highlight of the night is a professor's painstaking lectures on gender-neutral pronouns that devolves into a dance routine. These diversions work better at some moments than others, but the occasional structural vagueness feels minor in a production this sensitive and bold. Dramaturge and codirector Joanna Garfinkel handles the shifts with a gentle touch, while Jamie Sweeney’s set and Victoria Bell’s lighting send waves of colour through the space to match the at times errant pace.

There are two moments toward the end of Postcards when the whole production seems to reach for transcendence, for that feeling Spiling describes again and again as “floating”. For a moment, it’s transporting to simply hang there, held across all that distance, waiting to be caught.  

Angie Rico wrote this review as part of Page Turn, a professional development network for emerging arts writers, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and administered by Neworld Theatre.

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EDAM and Pi Theatre present birdcage at EDAM September 3 to 5

NOT TO BE mistaken for the Mike Nichols film The Birdcage (or La Cage Aux Folles, the French farce that 1996 movie was based on), this birdcage is a new original work produced by interdisciplinary performing artist, composer-musician, and dancer Alex Mah.

Mah’s birdcage is the Vancouver-based artist’s introspective work exploring his mixed-race identity and reflecting on family, migration, and memory through movement, text, music, and lantern light.

Mah performs birdcage with violinist Ilana Waniuk. Off the stage, the artistic team comprises first- and second-generation Canadians, including movement consultant Natalie Gan, costume designer elika mojtabaei, lighting designer Jonathan Kim, technical director Gillian Hanemayer, and stage manager Agnes Hui.

 A copresentation of EDAM (Experimental Dance and Music) and Pi Theatre, birdcage is part of the Pi Provocateurs Performing Arts Series, which has previously presented works including puppeteer Ingrid Hansen’s Epidermis Circus, Munish Sharma’s Danceboy, and the surreal fever dream of Untitled Peter Tripp Project.

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Vetta Chamber Music celebrates its artistic lineage with Legacy, the first concert of its 2026–27 season, from September 25 to 28.

For this special concert, Joan Blackman—former artistic director of Vetta for 19 years—and esteemed pianist Jane Coop are sharing the stage with Vetta’s newly appointed artistic director Hung-Wei Huang, in a program that honours the past while heralding a vibrant future.

The musicians are performing two pieces by Mozart: his Duo for Violin and Viola No. 1 in G major, K. 423 and Duo for Violin and Viola No. 2 in B-flat major, K. 424. The program also features Leoš Janáček’s Violin Sonata and Paul Hindemith’s Viola Sonata, Op. 11 No. 4.

Performances are set to take place at West Point Grey United Church on September 25, West Vancouver United Church on September 26, Pyatt Hall on September 27, and ArtSpring on Salt Spring Island on September 28.

Tickets are available through Vetta.

Post sponsored by Vetta Chamber Music.

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COMEDY IN ALL forms fills much of the programming at the summer mini-installation of new films that comes care of Visions Ouest (the folks behind the Rendez-Vous French Film Festival) at Alliance Française Vancouver.

Below, our take on just a few of the options continuing at the Cambie Street venue to September 3—from a daring but rewarding Quebec comedy on faking diversity to a social satire set in a southern French villa.

FRANÇOIS.E

August 28 at 7 pm at Alliance Française

This risky new comedy from Quebec director Jean-François Asselin (Plan B) quite literally shows its nards in its first seconds, shooting a bunch of guys from the waist down, full-frontal, as they shower and talk about sex after hockey practice. It’s here, in this ultramasculine, beer-drinking world that white, straight, 50-something TV screenwriter François feels most at ease. But he can’t sell scripts anymore: the networks want diversity. And so he cynically checks the “transgender” box on his next funding application and gets the green light to create a new series centred on a trans character. It’s loaded, possibly offensive territory, but trans author Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay and coscripter Jean-François Léger work sensitive magic to turn all the irreverence into something warm and illuminating. François (an adept, self-deprecating Louis Morissette) is forced to walk the walk (in heels) as he becomes ever more entrapped by his elaborate deception. At the same time, he starts to see the world through trans eyes—and all the macro and micro aggressions that happen—thanks in large part to smart trans script doctor Sara (a likeable Pascale Drevillon). As a bonus, François’s neglected family actually likes him more as Françoise. None of this is subtle—as announced by that opening scene—but it’s fun watching François.e pull off its audacious setup, and a few surprises, while managing to build bridges and walk a comedic tightrope (in heels) through laughter.

LA VÉNUS ÉLECTRIQUE (THE ELECTRIC KISS)

September 2 at 7 pm at Alliance Française

Pierre Salvadori’s light-as-static 2026 Cannes Festival opener transports audiences back to the atmospheric Paris of the late ’20s, when a travelling carnival attracts the masses with Siamese twins and fortune tellers. Amid the acts is Anaïs Demoustier’s flapper-bobbed Suzanne, the “Electric Venus”: looking a bit like a more jaded Amélie, she takes the stage to kiss young men from the crowd, her hands clutching two globe-shaped generators that send electric volts through her lips. But she’s hard up and needs more money to feed her laudanum habit, so she moonlights as a fake spiritualist for a rich artist, Antoine, who believes she can channel his beloved dead wife. Cue long flashbacks as Suzanne searches for the late Irène’s diaries for believable details—and starts to question her own grifting ways as she learns more about a woman sure in herself and in her love of art and Antoine. Along the way, as you might expect, Suzanne starts to fall for Antoine too. It’s far-fetched and sometimes falls into silly farce, but waouh, is La Venus électrique beautiful to look at, from the antique palette of its carnival wagons to the sight of Sacré-Coeur looming in the distance beyond Antoine’s apartment. 

CLASSE MOYENNE (THE PARTY’S OVER)

September 3 at 7 pm at Alliance Française

Think class warfare in a luxury villa in sun-baked Southern France. In Antony Cordier’s biting social satire, Mehdi (Sami Outalbali) has just graduated from law school, joining his spoiled aspiring-actor girlfriend, Garance (Noée Abita), to holiday at her snobby parents’ estate. One of Mehdi’s first introductions is to the live-in caretakers, and even though they’re celebrating their daughter's 20th birthday, patriarch Philippe (Laurent Lafitte) casually mentions the drain needs fixing. Think arch characters and absurd situations—a little like White Lotus en français—as tensions escalate between the permanent residents who repair the plumbing and tend the tomatoes (Ramzy Bedia and Laure Calamy) and the people who float in for only a few months of sunbathing and Champagne-sipping per year. Mehdi tries to mediate but chaos ensues. That’s mostly because there’s something important missing in this microcosm of today’s world—namely, the bridging class of the French title. 

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THE VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL will open October 1 at the Vancouver Playhouse with Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut, an offbeat comedy about self-serious community theatre starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti.

At a press conference today at the VIFF Centre, director of programming Curtis Woloschuk said it’s an apt opener that carries through a fest theme of empowerment and self-actualization through art, as Moore’s timid housewife finds her inner strength in her small role in a musical.

The fest also announced it will close the event on October 11 with Martin McDonagh’s much-anticipated Wild Horse Nine, set on the eve of the 1973 Chilean coup, as bumbling CIA agents played by John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell head from Santiago to Easter Island. McDonagh, who has directed critically acclaimed films like The Banshees of Inisherin, has called the bitter comedy his most political film yet. The dream cast also includes Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi, and Parker Posey.

VIFF unveiled more than 160 features in all. “This fest is one of great balance,” said executive director Kyle Fostner at the event. “We’re seeing a real expression of multigenerational programming, with the latest from great filmmakers like Kore-eda and Almodóvar, but also from a new generation of filmmakers.”

The choices span a rich assortment of hits from fests in Cannes and Berlin. Among the standouts: award-winners from Cannes, including Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden, as well as Venice hits, including Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Look Back and Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love.

The festival had earlier announced its largest VIFF Live lineup so far—and had a big addition to announce today: An Evening With Mark Mothersbaugh will feature the legendary DEVO frontman and prolific film composer (The Lego Movie, Thor: Ragnarok, The Royal Tennenbaums) in concert with a 16-piece ensemble, October 8 at the Vancouver Playhouse. “They [DEVO] will be performing with the B-52s a few weeks before that,” Fostner said of the Rogers Arena show September 27. “This is a completely bespoke concert of his film work.”

Other big-name works set to hit theatres for the 45th annual celebration: acclaimed British realist Mike Leigh’s swan song Tender Loving Care, Spanish icon Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas; Peter Farrelly’s true filmmaking underdog story I Play Rocky; and Pawel Pawlikowski’s luminous, black-and-white Fatherland.

Elsewhere, big draws include Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, starring Pedro Pascal as a cello player who scores motion pictures, in its Canadian premiere. Other notable offerings include Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s Wicker, Alain Gomis’s Dao, Ali Asgari’s A Bit of Light, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s Mouse, Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea, and Hong Sangsoo’s Nowhere to Lay My Eyes.

Buzzed-about newcomers include “Los Javis” Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s epic La bola negra, a Cannes directing-award-winner that looks at queer pain and resilience from pre–Spanish Civil War till 2017; and Club Kid, the tale of a washed-up underground-party promoter forced to care for the young son he didn’t know he had, all written, directed, and starring Jordan Firstman in his feature directorial debut. “Club Kid is going to be one of the audience favourites this year,” predicted Woloschuk, adding the film is the current subject of an international bidding war.

Among VIFF’s celebrated B.C. voices, Mina Shum (of Double Happiness fame) is set to screen Whatcha Want, about a young trophy wife whose marriage to a wealthy businessman is falling apart; Woloschuk said the Vancouver-set film is about “how someone finds their own voice, their own self-expression—in this case through dance”. Meanwhile, Marie Clements brings both How We Stand and the world premiere of the first three episodes of Reclaim My Skin, her forthcoming Knowledge Network documentary series about reclaiming Indigenous women’s history and authority—a collaboration with Pura Fé that blends music, choreography, and stylized documentary techniques.

From Clements’s projects to Cody Lightning’s hockey movie Smudge the Blades, “I think there are 19 Indigenous films in the fest, which is the highest number I can remember and also the strongest slate I can remember,” Fostner said.

This year’s Focus on New German Cinema: Extreme Tension, presented with German Films, showcases six features from fast-rising talents: Christoph Otto’s The Ballad From Wednesday to Thursday, Ella Cieslinski and Nina Wesemann’s Dear Future Self, Kilian Armando Friedrich’s I Understand Your Displeasure, Faraz Shariat’s Prosecution, Daniela Magnani Hüller’s Sometimes, I Imagine Them All at a Party, and Kai Stänicke’s Trial of Hein.

As usual, the fest has a strong nonfiction lineup, boasting more than 50 features to qualify as the second-largest documentary festival in Canada. Entries include the world premieres of the NFB film First Comes Love: Nakabingwit by Vancouver-based Joella Cabalu (about three Filipino women and their white romantic partners navigating conversations about race and love) and Relax, Open Your Eyes by B.C.’s David Ehrenreich. Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney is the latest effort from Matthew Rankin, who attracted international attention with 2024’s Universal Language; it’s described on producer NFB’s website as “a psychedelic doomscroll through the mind of a master Canadian politician” and “a fever dream of politics, propaganda and pop culture”. And two Canadian heroes are explored in Run Terry Run, about Terry Fox’s legacy, and Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story.

Programming for the VIFF Industry conference was also unveiled, featuring such guests as Flow cowriter and producer Matīss Kaža, Sound of Falling editor Evelyn Rack, and Locarno Film Festival programmer Pamela Biénzobas.

The soundtrack-music-focused VIFF Amp features guests such as Meg Remy (U.S. Girls), Peter Peter (composer of Heated Rivalry), and Matthew Rogers (of the musical duo the Harpoonist & the Axe Murderer). 

VIFF Industry and the Amp Music in Media Summit take place from October 2 to 8, all under the umbrella of VIFF’s recently established Institute of the Moving Image. Additionally, a slate of talks is set to be unveiled next month.

Fostner said today that the integration of the Institute with programming, plus an expanded roster of curators, has brought a new sense of clarity and identity to the organization. “We've gone through a lot of changes over the last seven to 10 years,” he said. “The organization feels whole.”  

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Basia Bulat is a Montreal-based singer-songwriter whose work bridges gospel, soul, and classic folk, carried by a distinct voice and deeply expressive multi-instrumental approach.

A three-time Polaris Music Prize finalist and Juno Award nominee, Bulat has built an international reputation through a rich and evolving catalogue, from early analogue folk recordings to more expansive collaborative works. She has toured alongside such artists as Sufjan Stevens, The National, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

In 2025, Bulat released Basia’s Palace, her most sonically expansive album to date, featuring lush arrangements, synthesizers, and layered melodies. This year, she returns to a more intimate setting, presenting a solo tour that reimagines songs from Basia’s Palace alongside highlights from her extensive catalogue.

On September 20, Bulat will tour to the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts for a 7:30 pm concert, performing on guitar, piano, and autoharp.

Tickets are available through the Shadbolt Centre.

Post sponsored by Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

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SURVIVING HIGH SCHOOL is a lot like doing improvisational comedy, when you think about it. Rather than beat that analogy into the ground, let’s just say that it’s one that probably isn’t lost on Jessica Gutteridge, managing director of the Improv Centre.

Gutteridge and her comedic colleagues have made the link between funny business and secondary education more concrete through the East Van Schools Improv Project. That program sees pairs of performers from the Improv Centre’s rotating ensemble lead 90-minute after-school classes for students at participating schools.

“For a 10-week period, the teachers will come every week, work with the group of students in the cohort on teaching them everything they need to know about improv performance, playing games with them, working on stage presence, working on collaboration and cooperation, and ultimately working toward presenting a showcase of their performances at our theatre on Granville Island,” Gutteridge tells Stir. “And in the process, they also take a field trip to visit the theatre during the program, get a full tour of backstage, get familiar with the space they’re going to be performing in, and then stay to watch their teachers performing in a show that evening.”

The East Van Schools Improv Project first ran as a pilot program during the 2024–25 school year. This past spring, the Improv Centre ran the full program at Vancouver Technical, Gladstone, and David Thompson secondary schools. For schools interested in participating in the next round, which starts after spring break 2027, registration is open between now and November.

Gutteridge hopes that once young people get a taste of improv, they’ll fall in love with the art form. 

“One of our strategic goals as an organization is to bring new people into the improv community, whether it’s as audience members or performers, and we’re looking to make sure that the community of improv performers really reflects the diversity of Vancouver,” she says. “And so going out into the schools and meeting kids from all backgrounds and bringing them into the art form is very exciting to see. And we’re really, really hopeful that as they go through high school and university and into their adult life, they stay with us in one form or another.”

Of course, in learning the art of improv, students will also develop skills they can use outside the classroom. “I think theatre generally brings a huge number of transferable skills to young people, and I wish that arts programs were as well-funded as some other programs are for students, because they really focus first and foremost on teamwork and collaboration and working with others,” Gutteridge says. “And improv is really an immediate way of seeing that. You really can’t do it by yourself. You need to really be listening to your scene partner, responding to exactly what they’re saying and doing—not, you know, concocting something in your head and then spitting it out. It’s amazing for public speaking and confidence in public presentation.”

Gutteridge encourages secondary school teachers or administrators interested in learning more about the program to send an email to education@theimprovcentre.ca.

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Still Moon Arts Society presents the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival, honouring the harvest moon, art, nature, and diverse cultural traditions of Renfrew-Collingwood, from September 7 to 26.

The 24th annual festival features workshops and outings throughout the month. This year’s theme, Tiny Life, invites locals to slow down and celebrate the often-overlooked wonders that thrive in Renfrew Ravine and local greenspaces.

The main festival day on September 26 starts off at Slocan Park with the Harvest Fair, featuring live music, dance, and art workshops from 4 pm to 7 pm. Visitors can warm up with a bowl of harvest soup, browse items by local artisans, and make a last-minute lantern to carry in the Twilight Lantern Procession, which travels along the edge of Renfrew Ravine from Slocan Park to Renfrew Community Park.

There, Streamside Lanterns features hundreds of handmade lanterns and live music throughout the park. At 8:45 pm, the finale performance—Welcoming Water Woman, directed by Isabelle Kirouac—features a giant puppet that embodies the community’s relationship with water, created by artists Carmen Rosen with Willoughby Arévalo, Liz Oakley, Sesemiya (Tracy Cameron), and Joe Boyd, with participation from over 750 community members.

More festival highlights include Voices in the Garden on September 12, a sunset concert in a flower-filled garden featuring vocalists Ace Fable and Las Satyas with Estonian-Canadian trio Salalaul; and the Equinox Labyrinth Walk on September 22, a contemplative walking meditation with an acoustic soundscape performed by award-winning cellist Marina Hasselberg.

Full #RenfrewRavineMoonFestival details and registration are available here.

Post sponsored by Still Moon Arts Society.

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Nebula Performances presents I Pagliacci at the Nebula Performance Hall (9205 Shaughnessy Street) on August 26, 28, and 30 and September 1, 3, and 5

TRANSLATED LITERALLY, the title of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci means “The Clowns”—but in the 1892 Italian opera, there’s more pain, anger, and jealousy than comedy. In its famous tenor aria “Vesti la giubba” (“Put on the costume”), the lead character, Canio, must paint his face and prepare to make an audience laugh even though his heart has just been broken by his wife’s infidelity.

Opera lovers can experience that moving music live—and much more—as Vancouver’s Nebula Performances stages a full rendition of I Pagliacci to wrap up the summer.

Nebula burst out of the gates last summer with a buzzed-about production of Peter Brook’s adaptation La Tragédie de Carmen. The company was founded by executive producer Alice Chee and pianist/artistic director Wenwen Du, who bring together emerging and established artists, hosting intimate, fully costumed performances in an adapted space on southern Shaughnessy Street.

David Walsh directs this production, with Du heading up the music side. Wanshuai Yu—a resident artist at Nebula who performs across China, Europe, and North America—stars in the demanding role of the tragic clown, while sopranos Holly Chaplin and Hannah Ernst alternate opposite him as the unfaithful wife, Nedda. Expect costumes that draw on historical Commedia dell’Arte, care of designer Helen Langerud—and yes, that means iconic clown suits for Canio, at least until everything goes awry.  

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Love Letters to Turbulence is at THIS Gallery to August 30, with a closing reception on the last day from 12 to 4 pm

FOR VANCOUVER-BASED INTERDISCIPLINARY artist Angela Fama, overcoming discomfort through her work is nothing new. Whether facilitating open conversations about death or collaboratively redefining the concept of love, Fama’s projects seek to create safe opportunities for collective creation and dialogue.

“I do a lot of work that is interactive with the community where I might present something, and then the work itself is cocreated by the community,” Fama tells Stir over Zoom. “And I don’t really believe in asking people to go deep into things without my own vulnerability in that. Often why I’m drawn to do these works is because there’s something in me that’s scratching at me to be explored.”

Her latest project, Love Letters to Turbulence, is no different.

The durational participatory exhibition, which just opened at THIS Gallery, is rooted in the idea of how people communicate with themselves and others about trauma. Covering three walls of the gallery room is a nonlinear autobiographical “manuscript” sharing Fama’s story as a survivor of child, teen, and adult trauma: 217 8.5 x 8.5 loose-leaf pages hang from clotheslines, filled with typewritten fragments of personal journal entries and ink and graphite drawings. Three clotheslines remain empty for displaying visitor creations that are anonymously donated from any of the artist-led workshops. 

In one corner of the room is a selection of zines made by seven collaborating artists (Joy Gyamfi, Kira Pratt, Leah Abramson, Lichen, M-A Murphy, Marieke Helmke, Sonja Ahlers), who collaged elements of Fama’s manuscript with their own art. And beside the entrance is a QR code directing visitors to a Digital Container, cocreated with designer Randy Walton, where anyone can contribute to an evolving collection of anonymous narratives on trauma, support, and healing.

Although the initial planning for the project started five years ago, Fama says this curiosity started 10 years before that, when she decided to transcribe all her personal journals from childhood to the present. “I got quite overwhelmed by my body reliving the experiences at that time, and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m just going to shut that away,’ and I didn’t really think about it as a project for the next five years,” she explains. “It was through a lot of exploration and a lot more work internally that I was able to find the space and the voice that this project needed.”

And that exploration was anything but linear. Ink, watercolour, photographic retouching fluid, and even an old typewriter became tools for Fama’s experimentation. “During the pandemic, I started an exercise of one drawing a day, and from that I was like, ‘Oh, what are these things coming out in my drawing?’” she recalls. 

Allowing her body to lead the way in her creative release, the casual daily sketches organically shifted into a distinct visual style. Over the five years, she worked with video, audio, photography, and even interactive sculpture before whittling down thousands of drawings and typewritten texts to a few hundred. Once again, she relied on her instincts to decide which images she felt comfortable sharing.

Among the images that made the cut is a small, spindly figure with a black cloud wrapping around its waist, pushing down the body, or perhaps pulling it up. Another is of a figure leaning over, a dark goop seemingly oozing out of or into the bent body. For Fama, the ability to view her own work from different perspectives did not come easily. “I have become so much more of a person through the process of this project, and through these experiences I can approach the effects and affects of trauma multiple ways,” she says.

How does one talk to others about trauma? How can we normalize that conversation safely? Love Letters to Turbulence responds to these questions not only through Fama’s personal explorations, but also through the voices of those who choose to witness and take part in the conversation.

Fama understands first-hand the challenges that come with telling stories about trauma, and for those who may not feel comfortable sharing in the moment or are not present at the exhibition, she created the Digital Container as another accessible space to hold those narratives. For the next three years, people can submit anonymous reflections to the online space, where three different categories will be displayed as clouds moving across the screen: black clouds relating to personal trauma, grey clouds conveying what support feels like, and white clouds representing healing acts. Each reflection is then reviewed by Fama and uploaded at random to ensure anonymity.

“I wanted to offer a space where those stories could be shared and seen, but not in a public space where you might be shocked by it or surrounded by others,” says Fama. “This is an opportunity where people can contribute a personal narrative, and if they want to, they can come back and send a new story, or the same one again—perhaps it changes through repetition, and if they need to repeat it the exact same way every single time, that’s awesome too!”

Although the exhibition offers various ways for attendees to safely engage in thoughtful dialogue, Fama stresses that participation is completely optional and up to the individual.

“It isn’t very often that there’s public spaces to communicate about things like this,” she says. “And it will be just as successful if, when the show is done, the three clotheslines that start empty for contributions remain empty, knowing people had enough agency in themselves to not donate.”

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