IT WAS THE LITTLE DIY awards show that grew into a sold-out event—one its organizers hope will happen annually.

For the past year, organizers Jasmine Chen and Angelica Schwartz, coworkers at Neworld Theatre, had been trying to throw together a Vancouver community-building awards night “where everyone could feel seen”. Their inspiration was Toronto’s Harold Awards, and Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang’s satirical Las Culturistas Culture Awards.

On June 1, their dream became a reality with the the inaugural Rumpus Awards at 1422 Progress Lab. Hosted by Steffanie Davis, with musical collaboration from Mishelle Cuttler, the event handed out such absurd awards as the Most Perimenopausal Jokes in a Single Season Award (Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg) and Best in Show: Best Performance by a Dog in a Show (Neko the Cockapoo in Gateway Theatre’s production of Annie), giving recognition not just to those onstage, but to those behind, from stage managers to dramaturgs to volunteers. Organizers say they were blown away by the number of nominees—86 in all—submitted through a public callout for an event that was mainly funded through ticket and bar sales.

The Marcus Youssef Shit Disturber Award went to interdisciplinary performer, dramaturg, and director Aryo Khakpour, while the Backstage Ninja Award for Outstanding Technicianship was bestowed upon Nico Dicecco and Sarah McCready. The Hudson Williams Presents: The Gay Icon Award, meanwhile, went to Alen Dominguez and Rae Takei, while Rebecca Mulvihill and Yvonne Yip were recognized with the Standby, Go! Excellence in Stage Management Award.

There was much more, alongside such entertainment as the newly coined “Royal Rumpus Choir”, tap dancing by Amanda Sum, and improv antics by Tightrope Theatre. The rationale behind all of it? “This industry can be exhausting,” said coproducer Schwartz. “So much of being an artist involves administration, fundraising, grant writing, and all the unseen labour that happens behind the scenes. It can be hard to pause long enough to celebrate our wins—especially together. The Rumpus Awards was our attempt to create that moment. A space where people could laugh, be recognized, and remember that none of us are doing this work alone.”

Organizers say they hope to bring the Rumpus Awards back in 2027 and are exploring community fundraising to make a second edition possible. 

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Bard on the Beach presents Macbeth from June 11 to September 18 at the BMO Mainstage

A BOLD NEW adaptation of Macbeth at Bard on the Beach this summer is moving Shakespeare’s story from the shadowy castle corridors of medieval Scotland to a cold and almost clinical dystopian future.

Veteran Bard director Stephen Drover, who’s also adapting the play, says the setting lends itself intriguingly to the themes of power, tyranny, and corruption. He’s drawn inspiration from dystopian films—and even the horror genre.

With Munish Sharma starring here in the title role, and Tess Degenstein as Lady Macbeth, the play tells the story of Macbeth, who’s fresh off a battlefield triumph. But on the way home, three figures—traditionally portrayed as witches—predict he’ll become king, and he and his ambitious wife begin to plot to murder King Duncan and seize the throne. Paranoia and madness ensue, leading to more bloodshed.

What does all that look like in the near future, after a devastating event has wracked Earth? Will there be witches, and what’s the role of fate? 

Below, we’ve included our whole wide-ranging conversation with the theatre artist, who talks about everything from The Last of Us and Star Wars to Adam and Eve and the role of handwashing in his inspired adaptation.

He’s kept some of the best surprises in this visually stylized, deeply thought-out production a secret, but one thing we can guarantee: there will be blood. (The interview has been edited for brevity in some passages.)

Your production has been described as dystopian. How far in the future is it? Can you describe where and when it’s set?

It sits sometime in the future, not too far in the future, but in the near future, and it’s after an earth-shifting event has happened that has changed how people interact with one another. And it’s not quite so far along, it’s not Mad Max, and the reason I say that is because that world has gotten to a place where they’ve started to make art again. They have structures, they have hierarchy, they have some weird sense of culture, but I think that the world we’re experiencing right now is trying to negotiate that, trying to rebuild something. I know that’s a world that doesn’t have a government, so they have kind of a tribal rule, and they don’t have firearms or cellphones, or a great deal of electricity—maybe a little bit, but not much. The closest example I can think of is like it’s a little bit of The Last of Us or The Walking Dead, where people still remember how things were. It’s been a while, but it’s not so far along that it’s completely alien.

I’m struck by the specificity you want to bring to that.

Yes, it was mostly for very practical reasons, because whenever I work on a Shakespeare play, two of the questions that I end up asking myself early on are “Is this a world where they have swords?” and “Is it a world where they have cellphones?” Because those two things will change the narrative. And so if I go, “Okay, there’s no swords and there’s no cellphones,” then that changes the options to where we’re going to place it, or it complicates it in interesting ways. 

I just did a production of Romeo and Juliet at Studio 58, and I decided this is not a world with swords, and that felt very important because they’re all walking around with swords on their sides, and that’s just the way it is—nobody’s armed and they just have these accessories. That didn’t ring true for me in a contemporary sensibility, so I decided no swords. And for Macbeth, I took it one step further, where I said, “Okay, no swords, and no cellphones, and if there’s no swords, are there guns?” So often, if we omit swords, usually the thing we do is replace with guns, and I decided against that too. So if there’s no cellphones and there’s no swords and there’s no guns, what does that do for us? And it kind of nudges us towards an imagined future—a dystopian society where assets are at a minimum, and people are making do with what they have, and it’s a bit of a scavenging society and they’re pulling things together.

It sounds like there are a lot of details and logistics to think through when you do this. I would think that dystopian approach lends maybe a bleakness to it—something that I associate with Macbeth. As far as visual design, would that be an accurate description?

Interestingly enough, I don’t know if it is, and I only say that because it’s an odd play, because it’s got witches and ghosts and apparitions. It’s very steeped in the supernatural, but the way the supernatural manifests in the text, and the way it’s been handed down over a few hundred years, it doesn’t, I believe, have the same meaning as it once did. In the description of the witches in the play, they’re dancing around a cauldron, and they’re doing “eye of newt, tongue of dog.” It’s certainly not scary. We’ve had a couple hundred years of getting used to Halloween witches, to go, ‘Okay, that just sounds kind of silly.’ But to the OG audience, that would have been a very different story. I’m not one for invoking authorial intent, because I think it’s kind of misguided and a bit of a waste of time, but I do think that there’s value in looking at the circumstances around which the plays were created and how the Jacobean society regarded witchcraft and the supernatural. And it leads me to think that this was produced with a certain degree of sincerity—and that I feel like this should scare an audience. I’ve seen a variety of Macbeths, but I’ve never really been scared. I go, “Oh, that’s a little bit creepy—but, okay, what does that mean to be scared?” So I did a bit of a deep dive into this, into the horror genre.

I watched a lot of horror films, and horror is not a genre that theatre does very well—and to qualify that, the kind of horror that theatre does well is a bit of a schlocky, campy horror in which a fright or a jump scare is followed by a laugh. It’s kind of fun horror, but it’s interesting because the kind of horror that’s been produced in the past 25 years there is fun horror. But there are also real, genuine attempts to terrify, to create terror, and not only 25 years, but going back even further than that. You look at something as canonical as The Exorcist, which was deeply horrifying, and still kind of is. So I think there’s a relationship between Macbeth and horror as a genre and as a psychological state. Macbeth says to his wife, “Full of scorpions is my mind.” He even has this wonderful line where he says there was a time when the brains were out, the men would die, but now they rise. [“The time has been/That, when the brains were out, the man would die,/And there an end. But now they rise again.”] So, in a very strange way, it’s an early-modern description of zombies: there was a time when people would just die, that was it, but now the dead are rising.

What were the challenges of staging that approach in the open-air tent at Bard?

The big challenge that myself and Amir [Ofek], who’s the set designer, faced early on is that it’s tricky to do Macbeth when you cannot control the light, because it’s a play that really kind of leans on the dark—it’s dark in tone, in psychology, and literally it’s dark.

I read something a while ago that there’s a reason why it’s accumulated a reputation for being the cursed play, and the superstition of not saying “Macbeth” because it’s a cursed play. And the reason it’s cursed is because there’s so little light in the play, and actors would get injured, because all the great scenes take place at night under candlelight. It’s not well lit, and the play kind of invites that. But at Bard on the Beach, there’s very little control over the light: as the evening goes on to the end of the show, it’s starting to get a bit dark, but you know, in the middle of summer, at a matinee, there’s very little control. So we had to shift our thinking in terms of presenting a dark, moody, shadow-filled world, and we actually pushed on the other direction. So the set is quite bright—it’s illuminated, and it’s deceptively sterile. I don’t want to give too much away, but the conceit we’re going with is that something has happened to the world. We don’t know what it is, but outside, the outdoors is inhospitable—perhaps the air is not as breathable as it once was. I’m also leaning a little bit into climate-emergency commentary as well, because the play does have that; when Macbeth kills the king, then the world starts to react, and we start to hear noises, and chimneys are knocked down. You hear great shrieks—the earth reacts to this to this tragedy. So there’s something about the earth reacting that I found very apt. 

So it’s a world where the outdoors is rather inhospitable, but Macbeth and his wife have created a sort of bunker underground that is sterile and sanitized and brightly lit and clean, where they wash their hands when they come inside, and they don’t wear outdoor clothes, and if anybody comes to visit, they’re automatically given a new set of clean white linens to wear.

The other advantage there is that white shows blood very well, and I was adamant that we were going to push as much blood as we could! So that’s been a guiding value in the production: trying to make it as bloody as possible.

You’re making me think of COVID hygiene measures as well, like a post-pandemic world.

I don’t think we actively invoke that, but I think, you know, as a culture, we’ve kind of inherited or created that vocabulary that we might see in places that we wouldn’t have seen 10 years ago. We go, “Oh, okay, I’ve experienced that to some degree.” There’s a sink onstage where the characters wash their hands, and one of the actors was washing his hands, singing “Happy Birthday,” like we had to do. So I’m not in any way interested in invoking the pandemic, but yeah, this kind of narrative suggests a global health crisis. It’s almost impossible to get away from.

I want to circle back to what you were saying about the witches. How do you handle those figures within that dystopian world?

I, as adapter of the script, have removed any reference to the word “witch”. And I’ve also been looking at any reference to the gender of those three figures: they’re not the weird sisters, they’re not the weird women, which they’re often referred to. This kind of grows from my understanding of the circumstances around which the play was written. Unlike Elizabeth [Queen Elizabeth I], who in her court was surrounded by women, James [King James I], who was fresh on the throne, fostered a very homosocial environment, surrounded by men. He reputedly didn’t trust women, and so Shakespeare, as a way to write something that James would like, wrote a play in which the women in the play are either supernatural agents of evil, or they’re questionable. In the case of Lady Macbeth, a slightly questionable prod to an otherwise innocent man’s ambition. Or there’s Lady Macduff, who was a complete victim, and I don’t think that menu of feminine profiles serves us anymore. So I’m inclined to push back a little bit against that.

Also, in terms of the witches, I’m more interested in suspending them from a gendered perspective, and pulling them out of that. And there’s always something really interesting you see in horror movies where somebody hears a sound, or they see something, and there’s something terrifying about the question “What is that?” You know, you hear a noise outside, and you don’t know what it is. It’s kind of scary. But if you come across three figures and they don’t seem to be men or women, and they look very strange, they sound very strange, unlike anything you've ever seen before—rather than in the source text, with the line “You should be women, but your beards forbid me to interpret that you are,” which is a little bit of, like, early-modern transphobia. 

And so I think that there’s a perspective of gender that’s in the source text that I don’t know that serves us well anymore. We can probably interrogate and push back, or at least offer perspectives that might advance a conversation around it. 

So I’m interested in kind of repositioning those three figures not as female-oriented witches, but as genderless, sexless creatures or figures. Even in the program, I asked the company to not use the word “witch”.

In your adaptation, are you also changing the text around the portrayal of Lady Macbeth?

Early on, I was actually tempted, when I was working on the adaptation, to retitle it The Macbeths rather than just Macbeth, because I think there’s something very rewarding, very intriguing, and exciting about the idea of thinking of that couple as two halves of one individual, and that the story of the play completely surrounds how close and far apart they are. 

I’m fascinated by a medieval concept called psychomachia, which is where we get the idea of the good angel and the bad devil on your shoulders, the two manifestations of you talking something out. And then, in the medieval ages, we had a play like Everyman [the famous 15th-century English morality play], where you have characters called Good Deeds and another one called Kin [or Kindred] and another one called Goods. These are like aspects of a human psyche that are given a role, given a job in the play, and so we think about them at best as two halves of one soul. That I find very interesting—that the play starts out with them negotiating this objective and coming together and saying, “Okay, we’re going to do this together,” not trying to move away from this idea of Lady Macbeth, as the Eve character, saying “Here, Adam, eat this apple”—like, “Oh, Adam didn’t do anything, it was all the woman’s fault,” which is an unfortunate narrative that kind of made its way through history. 

So there are slight textual interventions to try to adjust that and course-correct it a little bit, and also some staging things as well to try to make Lady Macbeth a little less of an instigator, an evil character. It’s a very interesting relationship. It’s the only Shakespeare romantic relationship that starts with us meeting them when they’ve already been married a long time. It’s usually about getting married and the man and woman coming together. Any narrative that centres around a marriage usually is a play that results in a marriage. This one starts with it, and Lady Macbeth doesn’t say, “I want to be queen.” She doesn’t say, “I want to be rich.” She doesn’t express any kind of ambition for herself, and she’s actually quite selfless about it. So I’ve made some adjustments to say not “You could be great,” but “We could be great. Let’s do this together.” So it’s small things to get them on the same track early, so they’re equally responsible for what happens. 

Moving to Macbeth himself, I’ve seen productions where he leans towards victim. I’ve seen many where he leans towards villain. Do you want to hint at where this adaptation falls in that spectrum?

That’s a really great question—I find that so fascinating about Macbeth, because you have to go, “Is Macbeth a hero, or is he the villain, or is he a hero that becomes the villain, or is it that clean?”

I did some tooling around with the text for the Porter, that very well-known speech, which I never understand, because the Porter talks about Elizabethan reference points that nobody today would know. But the Porter asks a question of the audience that basically invites us to think: Are we basically born good and sometimes we slip, or are we born bad and sometimes we behave? So that there isn’t the idea that there is no such thing as a hero or a villain—it’s just gradations of grey, and sometimes good people can do bad things. So that’s kind of the question I have: Is Macbeth a good guy who got wrapped up in something, or is he a bad guy that just needed a push to let his madness out? And I don't feel confident making a decision between those two things—but my goal is to make him as likable as possible for as long as we can.

I tried to do the same thing with Hamlet a couple years ago. Interestingly enough, the part of Claudius was also played by Munish, and I think that it’s a mistake in the mounting of that play to have Claudius evil from the beginning. In fact, we should go, “I actually kind of like that guy.” And I’m always interested in what can we do to encourage the audience to think, “Maybe I’m wrong about this, and maybe Macbeth is the good guy here, and what does that say about me?” You know, I heard someone once describing Star Wars, saying that, while Luke Skywalker is the hero, and he’s the one that saves the day, it’s Darth Vader who's the protagonist. He’s the one you watch; when he dies, the play’s over, the story’s over. So I think there’s something interesting about considering Macbeth as the protagonist, the person we follow. And you know it’s not the only time Shakespeare does this. It’s very similar to Richard III, a very attractive person who ends up being a monster. The difference is that Macbeth never intends on becoming what he ends up being. So I find that journey particularly interesting and intriguing. 

I say that with the acknowledgement that this very much is a play about binary perspectives—“fair is foul, and foul is fair,” but it does say those two binaries sometimes are the same thing.

In a Macbeth at Stratford last summer, I felt his portrayal was interesting in that it was almost bumbling. I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but it was like he was stumbling into his predetermined fate. I wanted to ask you about Macbeth’s agency, and your take on this role of destiny.

That’s another idea that I grappled with from the very beginning, and I think that’s one of the strengths of the play. That ambiguity, that mystery about it is: Do these things happen because supernatural forces made them happen, or did Macbeth make them happen just because he was told he would? So I don’t know if it’s fate or intention, but I do really appreciate that question. Not to reference a non-Shakespearean film to make my point, but there’s a wonderful moment in The Matrix when the character of Neo goes to visit the Oracle, who supposedly can see things, and she says, “Have a seat and don’t worry about the vase,” and he turns around and says, “What vase?” And as he does so, he knocks it over and breaks it. He says, “I’m sorry,” and “How did you know I was going to knock that over?” And she says, “Well, what’s really going to get you later is, would you have knocked it over if I hadn’t said anything?”

So she didn't make him knock it over. Or did she? So there’s something interesting about: Is Macbeth allowing something to infect his mind and grow? Or is he carrying out what he thinks is his job? At one point, he says, “Come what come may,” like he says, “If fate will have me king, then fate will crown me/Without my stir.” He says, “Oh, okay, this is the way it’s going to be. I’m not going to do anything. I’ll sit back and let it happen.” But eventually, very soon after that, he starts to realize that “I have to do something,” and I think there’s something in that. I could say, “I am destined to be a great whatever,” but you don’t just sit down and let that happen. You do still have to make decisions. He just ended up nudging them in a way that he probably didn’t have to. I’m inclined to not make a decision as to whether the witches have an agenda or an objective. I don’t think they’re there to make anything happen, or at least that’s the way that we’re playing them. I’ve seen productions before where the witches are actually on the battlefield, dressed up as soldiers, like, contributing to the carnage. And I don’t think—to me, anyway—that’s as interesting as going, “Did they make this happen, or did they just plant an idea and walk away?”

I wanted to try to tie this into what’s going on in our world right now. Was that on your mind? These questions of power and technology: Were these things that were present in your thinking about it?

It’s difficult to not allow that framework or filter to affect interpretation of things, and especially when you’re engaged with a narrative that maps the trajectory of a tyrant—or someone who’s at least playing the part of a tyrant. There’s the recognizable shapes that are recurring in that journey—that Macbeth becomes king, and next thing you know, there's a lot of people saying, "Yes, sir, you’re the best, sir,” and that kind of feels somewhat familiar to us right now on the world stage. Also, there comes a point where those loyalists and those supporters start to leave the tyrant because it goes too far. We also have been watching that happen a little bit. I’m not terribly interested in overtly invoking clear references to political figures, but I think folks can kind of do that for themselves.  

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Universal Gospel Choir presents Songs of Resilience at Canadian Memorial United Church on June 13 at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.

FRESH FROM performing alongside tenor Spencer Britten and the Vancouver Cantata Singers at the inaugural event for the city’s newest concert venue, the Freedom Mobile Arch on the PNE grounds, Universal Gospel Choir returns to more familiar turf for its season-closing concert.

The 70-plus members of the long-running, multi-faith choir will be at Canadian Memorial United Church on June 13 for a concert titled Songs of Resilience. Music Director Lonnie Delisle hasn’t spilled any of the details of exactly what’s on the set list, but the choir promises “songs that honour struggle and celebrate strength”, and an exploration of “the ways faith, love, laughter, and community continue to carry us forward, even when the path feels uncertain”.

All of that sounds especially timely, since the path forward feels more uncertain now than at any time in recent history. In today’s world, we can certainly use any bit of hope and resilience that we can muster, and it’s definitely a bonus when it comes with a dose of goosebump-inducing harmonies.

How good is Universal Gospel Choir? Good enough to have been hand-picked to sing with Alicia Keys when the 17-time Grammy winner performed at Rogers Arena in 2022. Good enough to be the choir that backed Coldplay frontman Chris Martin during the opening ceremony of the 2025 Invictus Games at BC Place. That good.  

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The Arts Club Theatre Company and Citadel Theatre present Come From Away to August 16 at the Stanley BFL CANADA Stage

IN COME FROM Away—the poignant musical retelling of how the people of small town Gander, Newfoundland, opened their arms to 7,000 diverted airline passengers on September 11, 2001—the cast sings, “Welcome to the Rock if you come from away.” But travelling to “the Rock” need not go any farther than the Stanley BFL CANADA Stage, where Arts Club Theatre Company and Citadel Theatre’s coproduction glows with heartfelt emotion and maritime pride. This production offers a fresh take on the beloved Broadway hit while staying true to its spirit.

Come From Away is known for telling a large-scale story with a relatively small ensemble, minimal costumes, and a simple set. The characters span Gander locals, “Come From Aways” or “Plane People”, airline staff, and media. Under the direction of Ashlie Corcoran, and featuring an all-Canadian cast, the storytelling here feels vivid and alive. Each actor seamlessly shifts between multiple roles on an almost bare stage that doesn’t feel empty at all, highlighting the ingenuity of the piece.

With the removal of her blazer and hat, Jocelyn Gauthier moves effortlessly between Beverley, the trailblazing pilot, and Annette, a cheerful schoolteacher. Kamyar Pazandeh transitions from the comedic Kevin J to Ali, an Egyptian traveller whose story carries a much darker weight. Lisa Michelle and Tenaj Williams portray a frightened African couple, while Michelle also brings depth to Hannah, a mother searching for news of her firefighter son. Meanwhile, Williams also plays Bob, whose early fears of the Gander locals stealing his wallet (a ridiculous thought!) adds welcome humour.

In one moment, the cast members are airline call-centre agents fielding frantic calls; then with a simple shift of chairs, they become passengers aboard Beverley’s plane as it makes an emergency landing. These transitions are handled with precision and clarity under Corcoran’s direction.

One element that distinguishes this production is its elevated visual design. Set designer Lorenzo Savioni and lighting designer Sophie Tang introduce creative elements that enhance the storytelling without overwhelming it. Savioni’s set features tall rectangular panels that flip to reveal shifting backdrops, from the greenery of Gander to the warmth of a local pub. Tang’s lighting adds atmosphere and intensity, from the ominous glow of descending lights as passengers are transported into the unknown to the vibrant bursts that add excitement to Beverley’s “Me and the Sky”. Throughout the show, radiant beams of light are strewn across the set, building wonder but never pulling focus from the story.

Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s score (the duo also wrote the book), soars musically and emotionally under the musical direction of Ken Cormier. The strong cast and band bring numbers such as “Welcome to the Rock” to life with energy and urgency, while Gauthier’s “Me and the Sky” builds with stirring impact.

With the story set in Gander, the show wouldn’t be complete without capturing the spirit of the people of Newfoundland, and “Screech In”, which sees the “Plane People” and locals jamming together in a pub, is a charming highlight. Thanks to choreographer Gianna Vacirca, we’re treated to fun, high-spirited, East Coast–flavoured choreography. Add impressive dance skills to the talents of a cast that already has strong acting and singing chops. And the multitalented Caitriona Murphy, who plays caring SPCA worker Bonnie, takes things even further by adding expert fiddle playing. 

On the dance floor and elsewhere, Charlie Gallant is a standout as he switches through a multitude of characters, some with knockout dance moves, including gym teacher Oz and the leader of a dashing group of cardiologists who send Beulah and Annette’s hearts racing in more ways than one. 

Genuine relationships are at the heart of this production, with romantic interests Diane (Janet Gigliotti) and Nick (Garett Ross)’s duet “Stop the World” adding deeper meaning to a fleeting moment. Michelle’s Hannah and Stephanie Wolfe’s Beulah form a touching friendship, and Williams’s Bob and Andrew Wheeler’s small-town mayor develop an unexpected bond that’s boosted by Irish whiskey.

Elsewhere, Gauthier’s Beverley inspires female empowerment, and Pazandeh’s Ali reminds us of the surge of racism experienced in the aftermath of 9/11. This production's real success is in how it captures the humanity at the heart of Come From Away. It honours the real people whose lives intersected in extraordinary circumstances and reminds us of the kindness and compassion that can emerge in even the darkest of times.

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Bard on the Beach presents The Merry Wives of Windsor on the BMO Mainstage in Vanier Park from June 9 to September 19

NO LESS THAN Orson Welles once declared the character Sir John Falstaff to be William Shakespeare’s greatest creation. This remains a controversial take, and Welles certainly had a vested interest, having cast himself as the dissolute knight in his film Chimes at Midnight. The truth is, though, that Falstaff was one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated characters during the Bard of Avon’s own lifetime. After providing the comic relief in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2, Prince Hal’s erstwhile companion proved so popular with audiences that Shakespeare wrote a spinoff, The Merry Wives of Windsor, giving Sir John top billing.

It’s a credit to Shakespeare’s deft hand with characterization that a man who on paper should be irredeemably repugnant—Falstaff is a gluttonous, licentious schemer, and a drunkard to boot—is generally accepted as an endearing rogue.

“Falstaff is such a lovable, likeable character that even his faults, people sort of look over,” actor Ashley Wright tells Stir. “He’s one of those bumbling fools that everyone loves.”

Wright points out that, while the characters in most of Shakespeare’s plays have sources—they’re based on historical figures like Julius Caesar and Richard III, or drawn from earlier literary works—Falstaff is Shakespeare’s own. Sure, the Bard may have taken some inspiration from several actual medieval knights (John Oldcastle, who led an uprising against Henry V and the Catholic Church, and Sir John Fastolf, who fought against Joan of Arc’s forces in the Hundred Years’ War), but Falstaff as we know him is truly a character of Shakespeare’s own invention.

“I suppose Orson Welles may be correct,” Wright says. “Of course, I’m biased as well, because I tend to play this character a lot. Yeah, I would say, if not the best, then he’s certainly up there as a very lovable, unique, great creation.”

The Port Coquitlam–born actor will play Falstaff this summer in Bard on the Beach’s latest production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which Sir John, newly arrived in Windsor and finding himself in a spot of financial trouble, sets out to seduce and swindle Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, the spouses of two prominent and wealthy local gentlemen. This goes about as well as you might expect, and much hilarity ensues.

“In 2016 and 2012 I did Falstaff at Bard, and it was set in the 1960s—in Windsor, Ontario, was the conceit—and the time before, I did it in Edmonton, and it was set in the 1930s, and Falstaff was a silent-move star,” Wright says. “And this time around, we’re setting it in 2026, and it’s at a community centre in Vancouver. All the characters go to the community centre, and there’s lots of hijinks and frivolity.”

To clarify, that community centre is located in a fictitious, soccer-obsessed Vancouver suburb called—you guessed it—Windsor. The particulars of time and place don’t have much bearing on the story, however. Wright points out that, even though it is ostensibly set in the early 15th century, Shakespeare effectively wrote Merry Wives (which was published in 1602) as if all the action were taking place in his own time.

“You can set it anywhere you want, really,” Wright says. “You could set it in outer space. Wherever it’s set, wherever the director decides to place the play, the circumstances are still the same, right? Falstaff is broke, he’s a bit of a horny bugger, and so he decides to seduce these wives to gain access to their money and have a bit of fun on the side. That never changes, that’s always the same. Even though it’s a different locale and a different era, I still feel my job is pretty much the same. I still have the same motivations, I still have the same desires, and a need for money, so I’m always happy to try a new Merry Wives, you know?”

It’s fair to say that Wright knows this material inside and out. In addition to his wealth of experience portraying Falstaff, he also directed The Merry Wives of Windsor for the Freewill Shakespeare Festival in Edmonton in 2017.

“This is the first time that I’ve acted in Merry Wives since directing it,” he says. “It’s always a treat to remount the play with a different company and conceit. I feel my job as an actor is to buy into the director’s vision and help them achieve what they are hoping to accomplish. As soon as an actor gets too all-knowing, or they have the answer, it’s not a good outcome,” Wright continues. “I’ve seen it happen a few times. Buy in 100% to what the director’s take is and you’ll be a much happier actor.”

Wright knows he’s in safe hands with Rebecca Northan, who’s directing the 2026 Bard on the Beach production of Merry Wives. Fans of delightfully twisted takes on Greek classics should also catch Northan in full latex-masked goblin mode in Goblin:Oedipus at this year’s festival.

“She is absolutely fantastic,” Wright says. “She brings something really unique to Shakespearean comedies, and that’s her whole improv background. She created that show Blind Date, which went on for 20 years all over the country and into the States. She brings a very refreshing take on it. I just love working with her.

“It’s been a real eye-opener—and I’m going to steal a lot of her techniques when I direct again,” the actor adds with a suitably Falstaffian chuckle.  

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Western Gold Theatre presents Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me But Banjos Saved My Life at PAL Studio Theatre, June 11 to 14 at 7:30 p.m., with matinee performances on June 13 and 14 at 2 p.m.

MAYBE YOU’VE ALWAYS wanted to learn how to knit—or paint landscapes, or swim, or make a perfect omelette—but you’ve never managed to carve out enough time to start. Whether it’s bills to pay or kids’ hockey practices to race to, there’s always something more pressing that seems to get in the way.

Keith Alessi always wanted to play the banjo, and he even had a whole collection of the instruments, but his busy corporate role left him no time to actually make music with them. That all changed when Alessi was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and told by doctors that he didn’t have long to live. Suddenly, devoting his remaining time to playing the banjo seemed a whole lot more compelling than being a CEO.

Alessi beat the cancer, and he turned the experience into a one-man show with the unlikely title of Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me But Banjos Saved My Life. In the show, Alessi shares his story, and as you might have guessed by now, he also plays plenty of banjo.

This spring, Alessi has taken the show on the road, and with dates in places like Wells, Horsefly, and Saturna Island, it’s clear that he’s determined to take it as many places as possible. He’s coming to Vancouver too, of course, for a series of shows at PAL Studio Theatre.

Alessi donates 100 percent of his portion of ticket sales to charities, with contributions to date totalling over $1.3 million. Proceeds from his Vancouver run will support Western Gold Theatre’s Creative Accessibility Program and the West End Seniors' Network’s delivery of essential services.  

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Grammy Award–winning trumpeter, vocalist, and producer Keyon Harrold is bringing his concert Foreverland and Songs For Miles to this year’s Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Presented as part of the Marquee Series, this performance is taking place at the Vancouver Playhouse on June 30 at 7:30 pm.

Hailed by the legendary Wynton Marsalis as “the future of the trumpet”, Harrold is known for making some of the strongest artistic statements of any musical group today. On his Grammy-nominated 2024 album Foreverland—which features crossover collaborations with Common, Robert Glasper, PJ Morton, and Laura Mvula—his world-class band freestyles through the spectrum of African American music with emotionally charged sonic expression.

Harrold was born in Missouri as one of 16 children in a musical family. He first stepped into the international spotlight playing the trumpet on the soundtrack of Don Cheadle’s 2015 Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead. Elsewhere in Harrold’s genre-defying career, he has worked with Beyoncé, Rihanna, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards; and he has toured with a diverse selection of artists and companies, from Jay-Z to Cirque du Soleil. His accomplishments include being signed to Mass Appeal by legendary rapper Nas and writing the theme song for The Queen Latifah Show.

Whether leading his powerhouse ensemble, performing with orchestras, or presenting special programs like Jazz and the Birth of Hip Hop, Harrold moves with thrilling variation. His melodic compositions flow from rock to hip-hop to classical piano and back again, glued together by bright, jazz-rooted motifs.

Tickets are available through Coastal Jazz.

Post sponsored by Coastal Jazz & Blues Society.

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Cascade Peaks ChamberFest takes place at RockRidge Canyon Resort from June 19 to 21

AT THE RISK of understating things, Imant Raminsh has written a lot of music. The Canadian Music Centre has 263 works by the composer in its catalogue, dating back to the early 1970s, and these include violin concertos, orchestral pieces, and the choral works for which he is best known.

All that work has not gone unrecognized. In 2018, Raminsh was made a Member of the Order of Canada, and in 2024, he was made a Member of the Order of British Columbia. The composer is also an officer in the Order of the Three Stars of the Republic of Latvia, the highest civilian honour in the country of his birth.

Like most creative people, Raminsh no doubt feels a connection with everything in his catalogue, but his latest composition has a deeper meaning than most. Written for four-part mixed choir and strings or piano, Where Wildness Lives features lyrics by Raminsh’s wife, Becky Strube, and is dedicated to the memory of their long-time friend Marsh Yawney. It was commissioned by Marsh’s son, Yuel Yawney, who is the artistic director of the Cascade Peaks ChamberFest.

“When Becky and I moved here to the Okanagan in the late 1970s, the Yawney family were here, and they were keen amateur musicians,” Raminsh says when Stir reaches him at home in Coldstream. “Marsh was a cellist, Jo was a violist, and their very young son, Yuel—he might have still been in preschool, I’m not sure—was starting on violin. So my wife and I have had a long, long friendship with the Yawneys, so it’s kind of neat that this has transpired into this project.”

Where Wildness Lives will get its premiere during this year’s edition of the festival, which takes place annually at RockRidge Canyon Resort, near Princeton. With Mark Vuorinen at the podium, the Chamber Vocal Ensemble will sing the piece, accompanied by the Borealis String Quartet.

Strube’s lyrics reveal the deep-seated love of nature that the couple share; they will resonate with anyone who has ever trekked deep into the woods, the sacred silence broken only by the creaking of ancient trees and the songs of thrushes and warblers: “Even stillness has its music/throughout nature’s domain/each resonant call a harkening/to seek what can be found.”

“Both Becky and I are keen environmentalists, and we’ve spent time in the mountains, so we found that this was a fitting theme for this specific work, but also we thought that it would help celebrate Marsh’s life as well, because he was a keen outdoorsperson,” Raminsh says. “The fact that Yuel is one of the founding members of the Borealis Quartet, who are in residence there, added another dimension to this.”

This isn’t the first time that having a talented wordsmith close at hand has been a lifesaver of sorts for the composer. In 2002, for example, the two were commissioned to write a theme song for the Fourth International Children’s Conference on the Environment, held in Victoria. And in 2010, the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 50th anniversary by premiering Raminsh’s major choral-orchestral work Quaternity: A Cantata of Seasons, for which Strube provided the libretto.

“There have been a number of times when I’ve been asked to write a piece for a particular occasion and I’ve really struggled to find an appropriate text,” Raminsh says. “In my desperation I’ve asked my wife Becky, who I think is really a very talented poet, if she could come up with a text, so we’ve been able to collaborate on quite a large number of works.

“Finding the appropriate text is often at least 50 percent of the work,” the composer continues. “I’m a very fussy person when it comes to texts. The text needs to be appropriate, obviously, to the circumstances of its first performance, so the context is important, but I’m also aware that some texts are just so perfect in themselves that there’s nothing that I could add to them musically. So to find a text that speaks to me, or that I think I can work with, is not always easy. This is where my collaboration with Becky pays off.”

In addition to the premiere of Where Wildness Lives, Cascade Peaks ChamberFest features three main-stage concerts in the resort’s 350-seat theatre, with repertoire ranging from Mozart and Haydn to contemporary Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy. Featured performers include violinist Mark Fewer, violist Sharon Wei, and the Gryphon Trio, comprising violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, cellist Roman Borys, and pianist Jamie Parker.  

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The Universal Gospel Choir is presenting Songs of Resilience, a concert experience shaped by messages of perseverance and possibility, at the Canadian Memorial United Church on June 13. Two performances will take place—one at 3 pm and another at 7 pm.

Gospel music has always been rooted in resilience; it serves as a reminder that joy and sorrow can exist in the same breath. Through songs that honour struggle and celebrate strength, the Universal Gospel Choir will explore the ways that faith, love, and laughter carry communities forward, even when the path feels uncertain.

Audience members are invited to experience an event where more than 70 voices rise and everyone’s spirits lift. Folks will leave feeling connected to the music, to the community around them, and to a renewed sense that people are stronger together than they are apart.

Purchase tickets to Songs of Resilience through the Universal Gospel Choir.

Post sponsored by Universal Gospel Choir.

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Dancing on the Edge presents Kin & Doves at the Firehall Arts Centre on June 12 and 13

AS IT PREPARES to wrap up its season with the double bill Kin & Doves at Dancing on Edge, Belle Spirale Dance Projects continues to overlap, interweave, and knot together its own history with new threads from the city’s arts scene.

The two-part program features three dancers from Ballet BC, the company where Belle Spirale founders Alexis Fletcher and Sylvain Senez once danced, and where Fletcher is now guest rehearsal director. Doves is a fractured, dream-like creation by another one of Ballet BC’s artists, Sid Chuckas—whose own choreography has been partially developed not only at Ballet BC’s Take Form platform, but also on Belle Spirale’s casual, outdoor summer event Dance Deck. Three other independent local dancers round out Chuckas’s work—and Fletcher and Senez’s Kin features two new faces, Ysadora Dias and Lazaro Silva, a collaboration that integrates Portuguese text and explores immigration and belonging.

In the process, Belle Spirale is showing how independent companies can make a go of it on Vancouver’s small but thriving dance scene by nurturing their connections—especially new voices in dance—while continuing to create their own work. 

“Our vision is that Belle Spirale is a platform for Sylvain and I to create with our incredible core group of dancers, but also to commission original works from both emerging and established creators,” Fletcher tells Stir in a Zoom call, alongside her partner in life and art, Senez. “We’re really wanting to nurture that local talent and give these freelance artists access to this kind of repertoire. There’s this range in the group of experience levels, and that really feeds and inspires across that whole spectrum.”

First developed as a work in progress at the 2023 STAND Festival, their Kin draws on the journey of Brazilian dance artists Dias and Silva.

“There’s a lot of soundscape I’ve created with the Portuguese language, and there are some poems in there,” Senez explains. “We hear sounds of trains and planes and different languages, and this kind of path that they’ve been through before they ended up in Canada, and so this is sort of a personal journey on both of them, explored basically through sound.”

“So much of the movement language has been their responses to the found text, and their personal stories of their literal path of immigration to Canada,” Fletcher adds. “But we’ve also been speaking a lot about the universality that we experience as dancers where, in an art form that is constantly being witnessed and doesn’t really exist in a certain way without a viewer, we’ve been talking about that sort of inner fortitude and tenacity that is required to constantly be showing up in new spaces. You’re constantly going through this act of auditioning or having to prove yourself in a specific way—or, in their case, not only doing that as artists that we are all doing, but doing that in a new country, in a second language.”

Much of the Portuguese, recorded or spoken in the work, is left untranslated, Fletcher reveals—allowing the dancers to move within the comfort of their mother tongue, and the audience to experience a bit of that navigation of the unfamiliar.

“The piece is about this cellular memory and lineage—how that carries us into all of these new and different places as we move through the world. And what does it mean to arrive in a dance studio in a new country, in a new part of the city, in a new space with people that you haven’t worked with before?” Fletcher elaborates.

“There’s this constant sense of arrival that I find really interesting, and we’ve kept these conversations between Lazaro and Ysadora that happen in the room—there’s a number of times where they just drop into an improvised conversation in Portuguese in the piece,” she adds. “It was such a beautiful dynamic that we really wanted to keep it alive and not change.”

DOVES, BY CONTRAST, takes viewers into a more surreal, liminal place. Chuckas tells Stir in a separate call that it was inspired by the artist’s own struggles, as a child, with insomnia, nightmares, and night terrors. 

“I think ever since that young age I was really fascinated with the mind and all it was capable of, and I really wanted to celebrate that in movement and dance,” Chuckas says. 

When they first developed it as a short, 10-minute piece for Ballet BC’s Take Form—a platform for dancers to try their hand at choreography—Chuckas developed a “look book” of imagery and writing. It speaks to the artist’s own love of art and architecture and the strong role visuals play in their work—including a central painting of feverishly rendered figures called Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams, by Ibrahim El-Salahi.

“I’m a super visual person, so imagery was really important for this work, particularly because a lot of it operates in a quite dark space,” Chuckas says. “I was really drawn to this painting just because of the three faces and the perceived meaning behind it.”

The action unfolds around a central, human-like sculpture of salvaged bubble wrap and wood by Chuckas. The lighting, developed here with Victoria Bell, becomes a key element in building the hallucinatory space of the work, bathing the action in an orange-peach glow that feels otherworldly.

Chuckas has expanded Doves from four to six dancers and from 10 minutes to a full half hour.

The artist says they’re trying to conjure “this extremely vivid and boundless dreamscape that we have as children, where our imagination becomes both a refuge and also our reality, because we learn a lot through our dreams. Our dreams shape us and the way we see the world.

“There’s a lot of play between the emotional extremes, you know, fluidity; there’s tenderness and terror, softness, fury, and I try to inhabit in a physical way the shifting landscapes that mirror the emotional logic of dreams themselves—because dreams often make no sense,” they add. “I’m using four pieces of classical music, and they’re interwoven with these environmental soundscapes—children playing, rainfall, the forest… And it kind of evokes this familiar place that feels both intimate and unreachable, of what it’s like to physically be inside of a dream.”

It’s performed by three dancers Chuckas shares the Ballet BC stage with—Kylie Miller, Kaylin Sturtevant, and Stan Tonin—plus members of Belle Spirale’s developing corps of dancers: Ariana Barr, Nathan Coburn, and Brenna Metzmeier.

For the Chicago-born Chuckas, who has also created works for Arts Umbrella and Lamondance, developing Doves has meant spending many late nights amid a rigorous touring and performing schedule at Ballet BC. But they say choreographing work, at Ballet BC, Belle Spirale, and beyond, has become integral to their practice. And they’re grateful to have found so much opportunity to do it here.

“I just feel so blessed that I’m in the community I’m a part of,” Chuckas says. “My parents say I was born to be a creator from a young age, and I think, actually, I feel very seen in these communities, because of people like Alexis and Sylvain; they understand that it’s an important part of who I am—they aren’t separate. It’s an incredible opportunity, and I just feel so fortunate and so seen.” 

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THE CHAN CENTRE for the Performing Arts today dropped details of some of the performances and events that it will present as part of its 2026–27 season, including a tribute to a jazz legend, reimagined classic film scores, and urgent insights from two of today’s most acclaimed activist writers.

Highlights announced today fit into several different programming streams at the UBC venue, including Chan Centre Presents, a concert series bringing celebrated artists from around the world; Chan Centre EXP, showcasing innovators and emerging voices in contemporary music; and Chan Centre Insights, featuring writers and thinkers making their mark on today’s literary and cultural landscape. In addition to these, the Chan will debut a new series of live presentations by National Geographic.

Under the Chan Centre Presents banner, the Chan hosts Tuareg music pioneers Tinariwen, playing songs from their 10th album, Hoggar (September 4); the North American premiere of a multimedia concert experience celebrating the film scores of the late Jóhann Jóhannsson (October 9); a tribute to John Coltrane by Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves (October 13); a concert by jazz guitar virtuoso Julian Lage and his eponymous quartet, playing music from his new album, Scenes From Above (October 14); a performance by Grammy- and Juno-winning singer-songwriter Allison Russell (November 9); world-music icon Angélique Kidjo (May 2); and rising-star violinist Christian Li, playing works by Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and more (May 16).

In the EXP series, the Chan welcomes U.K. alternative-rock band Palace, not to be confused with Will Oldham’s 1990s project of the same name (October 16); a concert of reimagined Studio Ghibli film scores from Vancouver’s own Ghibli Jazz Orchestra (October 24); the Vancouver debut of genre-defying pianist Elijah Fox (November 28); and Juno-nominated composer-pianist Jean-Michel Blais, performing music from his new album, mirador (April 30).

As part of the Insights series, activists Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor discuss their new book, End Times Fascism (October 8); author Zadie Smith joins the Chan for an intimate conversation on writing, culture, and storytelling (October 15); Min Jin Lee discusses her new novel, American Hagwon, in her first-ever literary appearance in Canada (November 5); American author and cultural critic Fran Lebowitz holds court (February 6); and astrologer and author Chani Nicholas explores mindfulness in her first Vancouver appearance (February 11).

The National Geographic Live series includes presentations on India’s wild cats by Sandesh Kadur (November 18), the night sky by photographer Babak Tafreshi (January 20), and the weird world of frogs by conservation biologist Jodi Rowley (March 31).

Tickets are already on sale for Chan Centre Plus members. Basic members get early access starting on June 4 at noon, and general ticket sales start June 5 at noon. See the Chan Centre website for details.  

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La Fête de la Musique, a celebratory day of music, returns to Alliance Française Vancouver on June 21 from 2 pm to 9 pm. The lineup includes more than a dozen artists playing free concerts all afternoon.

On the Theatre Stage, Alpha Yaya Diallo, Deo Munyakazi, Reza Abaee, and the Absinthe Ensemble will perform as part of Festival d’Été Francophone de Vancouver’s artists-in-residence program, presented in partnership with Le Centre Culturel Francophone de Vancouver. The same stage will also host indie-rock band Grade School and rap artist Missy D.

On the Atrium Stage, expect performances by the Cedar & Sage Dancers, groove-heavy ensemble Robin Layne & the Rhythm Makers, and El Salvador’s DJ Staniml. The outdoor Patio Stage will host singer Kaya Ko, DJ Lil Cis, funk duo Phantom Jungle, and a music competition called Les Étoiles, organized by École des Pionniers de Maillardville.

Attendance is free and on a first-come, first-served basis. Learn more about La Fête de la Musique here.

Post sponsored by Alliance Française Vancouver.

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The Cultch presents Sophie's Surprise 29th at the York Theatre from June 10 to 28

VANCOUVER AUDIENCES HAVE sampled circus from around the world—starting with, of course, the glittering, elaborately themed acrobatics of Cirque du Soleil under the big top at False Creek. We’ve witnessed the raucous, beer-soaked acrobatics of Quebec beardo lumberjacks Cirque Alfonse. And we’ve watched the full range of Australian artistry, from the intricate choreography of Circa to the artful innovation of Gravity & Other Myths.

But for its traditional season-closing acrobatic show at the intimate York Theatre this year, The Cultch has something different for audiences to discover: the unique take on contemporary circus that has grown out of England. Or at least the chaotic, comedy-spiked one coined by the relatively new London troupe Three Legged Race Productions.

Let’s start with the novel setup for the hit show it’s bringing here—Sophie’s Surprise 29th. Right off the top, audiences will be welcomed to a birthday party.

And not to reveal too much about a show that has “surprise” right in the title, but Katharine Arnold—who runs Three Legged with Isis Clegg-Vinell and Nathan Price—promises it’s rowdily interactive.

“We get a completely different, legitimate audience member every night, and we take them backstage. We do a countdown—we tell the audience she’s about to arrive,” Arnold says. “‘She’s here! She’s here! She’s here!’ We do a countdown, and then we pop her out through the curtains, and she’s onstage, and that stops the room. We get the whole room to yell and cheer.”

“There’s something so unifying about a surprise birthday party, and being there, and then yelling,” adds Price, joining Arnold on a Zoom call.

A wild array of acrobatic acts unfurls from there at this banger of a party, but back to the show itself in a minute. 

To understand the form it takes, it’s important to know the backgrounds of the company’s founding artists. Each studied at London’s elite National Centre for Circus Arts, one of the top training facilities in the world, and they’ve gone on to perform for some of the best companies around the globe—from Cirque du Soleil to La Clique and the 7 Fingers (Les 7 doigts).

Between tours, the Three Legged Race founders crossed paths a lot in London’s distinctive circus-cabaret scene—especially in one restaurant that served up aerial acts and fire-breathing with cuisine and cocktails in Covent Garden. 

“When it was very busy in London, you might do three gigs a night—you might run from a bar in Covent Garden to another venue to a casino to something else,” Arnold explains. “And for each of those, they probably would want a different act, and then they would want to change their acts up quite a lot for repeat. 

“It was really like, ‘Get in there, hit them quick.’ You’ve probably got four minutes, it’s a short act, because they all happen really quickly. Get in, do something cool, impress them, make them clap, make them have a nice time.”

That style informs the non-stop parade of gravity-defying feats in Sophie’s, a show that finds a distinct middle ground between the honed, high-calibre, contemporary-dance-influenced training of the National Centre and the rip-roaring, unpretentious entertainment of the cabaret scene they came up through.

“One of the things I love about it is that it pulls from so many different parts of our art form—we sort of make reference to and juice up the style of traditional circus,” explains Price.

The show is also unabashed in its crowd-pleasing. As Arnold points out, there’s a circus term “splits for claps”—a playful, tongue-in-cheek way to call a flashy move aimed at quick applause. “And in some scenes, in some of the very contemporary circus environments, ‘splits for claps’ is like a bad thing,” she explains. “It’s looked down on. ‘You don’t do that, we don’t want to just give them what they want.’ And we’re kind of like, ‘No, no, we really do! We want to give them what they want, we want to give them that splits moment!’”

With its additional influences of immersive theatre, variety shows, and comedy, Price says Sophie’s feels like its own animal.

“There are some really, really strong, brilliant contemporary circus companies out there—these kinds of companies that are doing really incredible big group acrobatics, movement-based pieces, that kind of thing, and then there’s great kind of ‘lineup cabaret’,” Arnold says. “And then there’s traditional circus, which is a whole sort of other world, but we saw that there’s nothing really that feels like it’s in the middle of all of that, that uses all of those things and that feels like an ensemble little show, but that is still kind of accessible.”

What exactly will that mean once the party gets started? The acts switch up almost every time the team performs the show, and there will be a guest spot by a Vancouver circus artist when Sophie’s hits the York.

In a production that plays with stereotypes, “we’ve had an office guy hula-hooping, we’ve had an American jock who does diabolo, we’ve had a policeman stripper, and we’ve had a Barbie pink girl doing the fire act,” Arnold allows.

All this rolls out amid a ton of ’90s nostalgia, care of a soundtrack culled from that era, alongside archetypes from the parties of yore: you may see a goth, a nerd, or even a chav. (For those who don’t know that last bit of oh-so-Brit slang, think knock-off tracksuits and loutish behaviour.)

That nostalgia has helped Sophie’s Surprise 29th hit right in a world looking to escape the dystopian present. “I think accidentally the show really tapped into that in a way we weren’t expecting,” Price says. “We just kind of put music in that we love from our generation, and I think it coincided with this shift towards people really wanting to be nostalgic.”

The retro mood takes nothing away from the breathless daredevil feats the troupe performs, with reviews from spots like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe expressing the gasp-inducing experience of seeing the acrobats flying high so close to the audience. There’s one novel act, Price notes, that mixes trapeze with hand-to-hand work, and finds a performer dropping head-first into the grip of another artist from high above the stage.

“We really pushed the bounds of those disciplines, and it’s so hard in circus to come up with new stuff,” Price says. “That’s one of those acts where we absolutely play up and lean into this audience perception of risk, because she’s falling five metres.”

“It’s more exciting when it feels like there’s real jeopardy,” Arnold enthuses, adding that everything is calculated for absolute safety.

As Price puts it, “There’s a difference between perception of risk and risk.”

And so consider this a birthday celebration where the party favours come with extra gasps—and more than a little British-circus bravado is on fine display. 

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Inverso Productions presents the LIFT Festival June 3 and 4 at the Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre

INVERSO PRODUCTIONS hosts its second annual intergenerational LIFT Festival at the Roundhouse this week, complete with performances, workshops, panels, and other events that spotlight older adults and bring them into dance collaborations with younger counterparts.

Its name comes from the idea that, as celebrated local choreographer Lesley Telford has said, “we all hold each other up.”

Conceived by Telford, the show draws on the way lived experience can enrichen dance. As the Nederlands Dans Company alumna told Stir last year during the inaugural event: “I was looking for a way to highlight how we can interact across ages through dance. I know that often dance for older adults is highlighting a specific demographic, and I think the beauty is crossing over, not only ages, but crossing over from professional to community dance.” 

It culminates June 4 at 7:30 pm with Seeds of Departure, a show that features familiar names from the Vancouver dance community.

Veteran performer Claudia Moore, a former dancer with the National Ballet of Canada and Toronto Dance Theatre, performs her collaboration with Tedd Robinson, lonesome; she also debuts a new, cross-generational work in progress choreographed by Telford and performed with Calder White, set to music by John Cage and Hildur Guðnadóttir.

Elsewhere, Vancouver names Anne Cooper and Hayley Gawthorpe present an improvised duet, while Savannah Walling and Yuha Tomita perform a work in progress created by Telford and set to the music of Vega Trails.

The show also features an open intergenerational improvisation with a cast of LIFT dancers.

There's much more, from a screening of Borrowed Time to a workshop with Moore and a mask-making workshop with Raven Grenier. Find out more at the web link here .  

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Boca del Lupo and ArtstageSAN presented Me & the Forest as part of the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, which took place on Granville Island from May 25 to 31. Performances continue at Ron Basford Park to June 14

YOU SEE HIS HEAD first, appearing just past the rise of the hill at Ron Basford Park. Well, his top, at any rate; being a tree, Mitig doesn’t have a head, although he does have a face, one that’s as ancient and inscrutable as you might expect a tree’s face to be.

Soon enough, the rest of Mitig appears as he crests the hill and heads ponderously down toward the audience. At some five metres tall, he cuts an impressive, even awe-inspiring figure, and as he ambles about, you hardly notice that his every movement is controlled by a team of five talented puppeteers working in seamless union.

Actually, there was one moment during the opening performance of Me & the Forest—a coproduction of Vancouver’s Boca del Lupo and South Korea’s ArtstageSAN—when the illusion was broken. Mitig’s leafy crown was snagged on a tree (a real one, perhaps out to prove some sort of point) and had to be rescued.

Otherwise, the Vancouver International Children’s Festival show played out with nary a hiccup, which was a feat in itself, considering everything from the uneven terrain that the puppeteers had to navigate to the technical aspect of having the audience experience all of the audio aspects of the show—including Pietro Amato’s music, Carey Dodge’s sound design, and Mitig’s dialogue as spoken by actor Hiro Kanagawa—through wireless headphones.

Me & the Forest is more of a immersive performance piece than a plot-driven play. As conceived by Boca del Lupo’s Jay Dodge and brought to life in collaboration with director Sherry J Yoon, writer Yvette Nolan, and puppet designers Ru Ji Yun and Jo Hyun San, the show imagines a first dialogue between humankind and this giant emissary of the woods.

There is, naturally, an environmentalist message at the heart of the performance, but it is never delivered in a heavy-handed or clumsy way. Our symbiotic relationship with trees is expressed elegantly through Mitig’s spare, evocative reminder: “You breathe out, I breathe in; I breathe out, you breathe in.” 

At one point, the show’s only other character, a forest spirit named Sol (a smaller puppet operated and voiced by Randi Edmundson), asks Mitig, on behalf of the audience, why the trees have only just now begun to talk to humans.

“We’ve been talking for a long time,” he responds. “You haven’t been listening.” This is show is also frequently funny, especially in a recurring bit of business in which Mitig’s body tries to root itself in place any time he stays in the same spot for too long.

It’s aimed at children, but Me & the Forest never talks down to its audience. Instead, it hints at very profound questions without spelling them out, which is a bold approach that assumes the viewer will be savvy enough to get it. This is also precisely why the show works so well for adults, and might very well spark some fascinating intergenerational conversations.  

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New Works has announced the return of All Over the Map, a vibrant dance-performance series celebrating diverse artists from across cultures and styles. This free outdoor event invites audiences of all ages to the heart of Vancouver for captivating performances.

In partnership with CMHC Granville Island and Vancouver Public Library, the 2026 edition introduces an expansion to the VPL Central Library’s rooftop on July 24 and August 14, complimenting the series’ longstanding home at the Granville Island Picnic Pavilion on July 26 and August 16.

This year’s program showcases eight diverse artists and collectives, spanning genres of street dance, Kathak, Bharatanatyam, juggling, contemporary, and more. July features Arno Kamolika and Akshaya Surve, Jes Hanzelkova, Joanne Park, and Satya Mari and Max Hanic; and August spotlights Bryn Bridgen, Linnea Goldstrom, and Piper French, Jayden Gigliotti, Sruthi Purushothaman and Remya Rajiv, and Mario Matias.

Tickets and more details are available through New Works.

Post sponsored by New Works.

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WHEN THE FEDERAL government announced back in January 2024 that it would be implementing a cap on international student study permits, it had a number of goals in mind. It wanted to curb the strain on housing markets, and alleviate pressure on infrastructure and public services like healthcare. The move was also intended to crack down on private colleges exploiting foreign students and essentially using them as cash cows.

One of the knock-on effects of this policy, however, has been a negative impact on legitimate colleges and universities across the country, with financial pressures forcing many to lay off staff and cut programs.

Yesterday, for example, Studio 58—the professional theatre training program at Langara College—announced via a Facebook post that one of its long-standing components would be shutting down, in response to “a new financial climate”.

“Recently, the Production Program was put on pause to evaluate how to meet the current needs of the theatre industry while building a financially stable model,” the post read. “Following this review, the College made the difficult decision to suspend all future intakes. There are no plans to reopen the program.”

The Facebook post was later edited to clarify that Studio 58’s acting program will continue.

Over the years, a number of Studio 58 production graduates have gone on to win awards and take prominent positions with leading arts organizations. A 2006 grad, Rachel Peake, has directed for Vancouver Opera and the Arts Club, and currently holds the post of artistic director of the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario. The late Drew Facey, who graduated in 2007, won 18 Jessie Richardson Awards over his career. More recently, 2024 grad Starlynn Chen took home a 2026 Ovation! Award for her set design on Rent at Metro Theatre.

Langara’s announcement comes as institutions all across the country are slashing arts programs. And this is just the latest bad news from Langara in recent weeks. In late April, the college announced that it was no longer accepting students into its journalism program, effectively ending a program that had been in place since 1965.  

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THE RICKSHAW THEATRE and the Eastside Arts Festival have just announced the programming for their free, outdoor concert at Maclean Park, set to take place July 25.

Amid the Vancouver bands hitting the festivities from 3 to 8 pm, grunge-poppers Buddie hit the stage, while neo-psychedledic Wack bring the dance rhythms.

Elsewhere, Stephen Hamm: Theremin Man, plays his enigmatic instrument while wearing shimmering robes. The musician is an alumnus of such Vancouver bands as Slow, Canned Hamm, and Nardwuar and the Evaporators.

Big Rig, meanwhile, is the solo project of The Courtneys’ Jen Clement, with Geoff Reith on banjo, Dan Forest on bass, and Jay Arner on drums for tunes she’s coined as “coastal cowgirl” and “boot gaze”.

Elsewhere, Vancouver-based DJ and musician Jody Glenham is on hand to spin a mix of indie dance, dark disco, synth-pop, and new wave.

Aside from the music, there will also be a Strange Fellows Brewing beer garden, public art activities, art shops, and food trucks. The Strathcona Business Improvement Association copresents.

Stay tuned for more programming announcements for the sixth annual Eastside Arts Festival, which runs July 17 to 26, with art workshops, more live music, public art activations, and more.  

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As part of Dancing on the Edge, Lukas Malkowski performs Microphone Controller at the Firehall Arts Centre on June 8 at 7 pm and June 9 at 9 pm

ANYONE WHO HAS ever felt the pyrotechnic heat at a Rammstein show, experienced the bowel-rumbling bass vibrations of a Skrillex set, or been dazzled by one of Coldplay’s arena-sized confetti drops could tell you that the most memorable concerts are about more than just the music. 

That multisensory reality is one of the driving forces behind Microphone Controller, a 55-minute solo piece by choreographer and performer Lukas Malkowski. “The concept is that it’s a rock ’n’ roll concert that’s supposed to rock all your senses,” Malkowski tells Stir over the phone from Toronto. “Music is not just experienced through your ears. It’s experienced through your eyes, through your skin, through vibrations, lights, and movement.”

Although Malkowski can hear, he spends a lot of time considering how the Deaf experience various types of performances. Raised by a Deaf father, Malkowski identifies as a CODA, i.e., a child of a Deaf adult.

“Being CODA means, for me, that I grew up with American Sign Language [ASL] as my first language—I learned how to sign before I learned how to speak—and that my art and my identity is informed by my membership in the Deaf community,” he says. “It’s kind of a Deaf-adjacent identity. It means I’m culturally Deaf through my heritage, my lineage. I’m a member of a cultural community. It’s probably the closest you can get to being in the Deaf community without actually being Deaf.”

Malkowski, who premiered Microphone Controller at The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance in Toronto in January, says that his CODA identity has shaped who he is as an artist.

“It informs a lot of things in my choreography,” he says. “It informs how I approach performance. It informs who I make my work for. I would say I’m always considering Deaf audiences, consciously or subconsciously, in everything that I make. My knowledge of sign language definitely shapes the way I move, the way I choreograph, the way I think about movement, the way I use my face in performance, the way I write music.”

Yes, there is music in Microphone Creator; this is a rock show, after all. Although it’s Malkowski alone on the stage, he created the show’s songs in collaboration with musicians Stephen Joffe and Roland Meyer de Voltaire, with Dawn Jani Birley and Gaitrie Persaud-Killings assisting with the ASL lyrics, and his brother, Chris Malkowski, designing the lighting.

“I think a lot about visual rhythms, and I think a lot about visual representations of sound,” Malkowski says. “So one of the ways I do it in choreography, in Microphone Controller, is that I think about how my movement or gesture accompanies my voice, when I’m signing, and also when I’m singing.”

To illustrate this approach, he points to Queen’s myth-making Live Aid performance at Wembley Stadium in 1985, in which the band’s iconic frontman conducted the entire crowd of 72,000 in repeating his wordless vocalizations, starting with a thunderous echo of “Ay-oh!”

“If you watch Freddie Mercury’s hands while he’s doing it, he’s kind of showing it visually,” Malkowski points out. “This show is really inspired by a lot by people like Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, and Prince, these frontmen who could move, and have this way of moving while singing.”

Beyond the charismatic frontman, of course, no rock show is complete without the energy of the band, and Malkowski has that covered too. “There are also these moments where there are these guitar solos and I will create this huge air-guitar choreography that is like a visual representation of how the guitar feels to me,” he says. “It’s kind of like a synesthesia thing, where I’m not just miming playing the guitar or miming playing the drums, I’m taking a lot of creative license with that, and trying to create these choreographies that are not just literally descriptive of what I’m hearing, but also poetically descriptive or emotionally descriptive.”

Microphone Controller isn’t just the title of the show. It’s also the name of the character Malkowski is portraying. Like Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust or Pink, the Roger Waters stand-in played by Bob Geldof in Pink Floyd—The Wall, Microphone Controller is a larger-than-life rock idol struggling with the burden of his audience’s expectations.

“There is a kind of crash-out that happens,” Malkowski says. “You kind of realize that something is wrong with Microphone Controller a little bit, the same as with a lot of rock stars. He’s come to maybe a crossroads in his life where he doesn’t know if he can keep doing this. He doesn’t know why he’s doing it anymore, and he has to deal with what his father thinks of him—his Deaf father, who was a politician.”

There’s an autobiographical element to some of these details of the Microphone Controller story. The choreographer’s own father was in fact a politician. Representing the riding of York East in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1990 to 1995, Gary Malkowski was Canada’s first Deaf parliamentarian, and also the first Deaf parliamentarian in the world to address a legislature in a sign language.

Microphone Controller might not be explicitly political, but in many ways, its creator is following in his father’s footsteps. It’s all about using his voice, Malkowski says.

“As a CODA, I don’t just think about my voice as something that exists through speech. I have a signed voice; I have a voice that is expressed through my hands and through sign language. As a choreographer, my voice is expressed through movement. Sometimes it’s spoken, sometimes it’s signed, and sometimes it’s danced.”  

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The Queer Arts Festival runs at the SUM Gallery and other venues from June 5 to 30

THE QUEER ARTS Festival will span concerts, screenings, storytelling nights, and a wild array of other events in June. Still, its traditional heart—and kickoff—is in its form-pushing visual-art exhibitions.

Everything at this year’s event centres around the theme of On the Edge—framing “the precipice as both danger and possibility”, the fest’s artistic statement states: “Around the world, queer and trans communities are being pushed to the brink: rights stripped away, identities erased, futures uncertain. Yet edges are also where transformation begins, where risk and reinvention thrive.”

Those ideas will resonate as QAF launches with its annual ArtParty! Festival Opening Night, June 5 at SUM Gallery’s Sun Wah Centre headquarters, for the first look at the QAF Community Art Show, complete with free ice cream, cash bar, tarot readings, and DJ O Show spinning tunes.

This year’s exhibit features diverse takes on the 2SLGBTQIA+ experience, across a range of media, with Cedar Sargent, Dana Ayotte, Maya U Schueller Elmes, Sophia Greene, Eldie Forget, JC Fung, Justin Ducharme, and many more taking part. The show runs to June 27, and honours the legacy of Pride in Art founder and artist Robbie Hong.

Right next door, on the same dates, find Varied Editions at On Main Gallery, a show that takes its name from the printmaking technique in which artists alter individual prints within an edition to create a series of related yet distinct works. Curated by Cheryl Hamilton and Edward Fu-Chen Juan, the exhibition features their work alongside that of Paul Wong, Zoë Grace-Ann Laycock, Jeff Hallbauer, Ash Boan, Taryn Walker, and the late Preston Buffalo. Onsite, look for three community workshops: papermaking on June 7, silkscreening on June 13, and zine making on June 14. The show is presented in partnership with Malaspina Printmakers.  

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