The Improv Centre presents Deadly Dinner Party on Fridays and Saturdays at 7 pm from September 25 to October 30

THE IMPROV CENTRE sets its comedic sights on Agatha Christie and classic mysteries to mount an old-school whodunit for its fall show.

The Granville Island–based company is set to premiere Deadly Dinner Party as its weekend show through October, inviting audiences to an eccentric millionaire’s mansion where bodies drop, accusations fly, and alibis unravel.

Expect secretive, over-the-top characters straight out of Clue, seat-of-the-pants twists, and, because every performance is improvised and driven by audience shout-outs, a different murder to solve every night. A Hercule Poirot–like detective interrogates each guest to try to solve the crime before it’s too late—tearing down tried-and-true mystery tropes along the way.

Alternating onstage are TIC’s crack team of improvisers: Arell Bryski, Delaney Gilmour, Derek Burrows, Jordan Michaux, Karinga Wells, Ryan Bell, Jordy Matheson, Lanvi “Six” Nguyen, Syd Campbell, and Zach Wolfman, and Ryan Knighton.

As with a great Agatha Christie novel, the joy will come in trying to untangle the mystery—a task made considerably more difficult considering the cast itself won't even know what's coming. As TIC artistic director Alan Pavlakovic puts it in the press notes for the show, "Every night, a new mansion. New suspects. New secrets. New motives. New clues. And, inevitably, a new murder. The audience may think they know whodunit, but with improv, even we won't know until the final curtain.”  

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Canoe: A Collection of Canadian Art, a beautifully designed volume that catalogues the McCreath Canoe Collection, is now available for purchase.

The McCreath Canoe Collection spans 200 years of artistic output, encompassing 90 works from all provinces and territories (except Yukon) and covering all three Canadian coasts. Canoe showcases paintings, sculpture, prints, carvings, glass, ceramics, and birch bark canoes by 50 historical and contemporary artists, including Alex Colville, David Milne, Cornelius Krieghoff, Frances Anne Hopkins, Ernest Lindner, Illingworth Kerr, and Walter Phillips.

With its origins in commerce and Indigenous culture, and its status as a modern cultural emblem, the canoe serves as a link between Canada’s rugged history and its contemporary character. Each full-colour image in the book is accompanied by thoughtful commentary written by Anne Ewen and Rod Green. Canoe also features a foreword by Grit McCreath and Scott McCreath.

Learn more about Canoe and choose from a list of retailers through Figure 1 Publishing.

Post sponsored by Figure 1 Publishing.

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WITH THE APPROACH of the municipal election next month, the public will have the chance to hear directly from the City of Vancouver’s candidates on their positions on issues that shape the local arts scene.

The nonpartisan forum organized by the BC Coalition of Arts, Culture, and Heritage is set to take place on September 22 at the Museum of Vancouver and H.R. MacMillan Space Centre auditorium. Up to seven candidates will be present at the livestreamed event, responding to moderator-led questions spanning project funding, cultural infrastructure, affordability for artists and cultural workers, tourism strategy, and relationships with Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

Among the topics expected to be covered at the event, municipal funding has been an ongoing point of contention over the years. In the face of climbing operational costs and dwindling revenue, arts organizations have been pushing for an increase to city funding and grants.

As part of Mayor Ken Sim and the ABC Party’s broader effort to have a zero percent property tax increase, the civic arts budget is taking a 12 per cent or $6 million cut this year—the second largest spending decrease in the 2026 budget following a 14 per cent or $5.5 million reduction for planning, urban design and sustainability. While arts grants were kept at status quo amid those cuts, arts leaders had instead called in 2025 for an “urgent” increase to operating funding. (By comparison, police funding was increased by 10 percent, fire funding was increased by six percent, and libraries got an increase of three percent.)

Vancouver’s arts and culture sector generates over $6 billion yearly in GDP and more than 24,000 jobs across Metro Vancouver. The city boasts the highest concentration of artists and cultural workers per capita in Canada.

The availability and affordability of cultural and heritage spaces is another major concern. In 2019, the City of Vancouver passed a 10-year plan focused on supporting the sector with accessible spaces. The outlined goals include the creation of 800,000 square feet of new, repurposed, or expanded cultural space, including 400 units of affordable artist housing.

The plan cited findings from a 2018 cultural infrastructure report commissioned by the city, which highlighted the increasing vulnerability of cultural spaces due to short-term rentals, displacement, and limited community ownership. But those pressures have only grown since, with decreased funding, inflation, and rising rental costs remaining key issues for the arts and culture sector.

The coalition organizing the forum is made up of more than 30 organizations that represent thousands of arts, culture, and heritage organizations across more than 188 communities in the province; members include Arts BC, the BC Alliance for Arts and Culture, the GVPTA (Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Association), BC Live Performance Network, and the BC Museums Association. Amid sectoral strains including pandemic recovery, the group has expressed an urgent need for a new action plan and more sustainable funding for the arts.

The forum will run from 6 to 7:30 pm and is free to attend, with registration required for both in-person and online attendance. More details can be found on the coalition’s website here. 

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With Halloween fast approaching, the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts is pairing a seminal horror film with live music at Nosferatu Featuring TAXA, October 17 at 7:30 pm.

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, released in 1922, is a German Expressionist silent film directed by F.W. Murnau, serving as an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This presentation will feature the performance of an original score by Vancouver band TAXA.

Andrew Morrison and Hieg Khatcherian (also known for his music with Deadsure and Damages) launched TAXA in 2012 to blend their love of noisy punk with driving indie rock. With Daniel Fedak on shared guitar and vocal duties along with Dan McVeigh on drums, the group is inspired by the discordant sounds of Unwound and the feedback-drenched howls of Sonic Youth.

Tickets to this event are available for purchase through the Shadbolt box office online or by phone at 604-205-3000.

Post sponsored by Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

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Vetta Chamber Music presents Legacy on September 25 at West Point Grey United Church, September 26 at West Vancouver United Church, September 27 at Pyatt Hall, and September 28 at ArtSpring on Salt Spring Island

VETTA CHAMBER MUSIC kicks off its 2026-27 season with a program featuring a pair of string duos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, plus Leoš Janáček’s Violin Sonata and Paul Hindemith’s Viola Sonata, Op. 11 No. 4. Pianist Jane Coop and violinist Joan Blackman join Vetta artistic director and violist Hung-Wei Huang.

But the opening program marks much more than just the return of the organization well-known for its intimate, high-calibre performances. Here are a few important things to know about the coming shows.

This concert represents a passing of the torch

Legacy isn’t just the opening performance of Vetta’s new season, it’s also the beginning of a new era for the long-running local chamber-music organization. The 2026-27 season marks Huang’s first as Vetta’s artistic director. After 19 years in that role, Blackman accepted a position as concertmaster of Nanaimo’s Vancouver Island Symphony, hand-picking the Taiwanese-born Huang to be her successor.

Huang, who is also principal violist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, officially took the reins on June 1. He prepared for his new gig by shadowing Blackman for several months. In an interview with Stir this April, he said, “This experience is incredibly, incredibly valuable for me at the moment. I’m just very thankful and grateful to have someone like her to learn from.”

It’s also a gathering of old friends

Coop is no stranger to the Vetta stage, having graced it a number of times over the years. Most recently, she joined Blackman and cellist Ariel Barnes for a concert in January of this year titled Music to Warm the Heart. The season before that, Coop and her Steinway performed as part of Vetta’s French Connections concert, alongside Blackman, Huang, and cellist Henry Shapard.

An internationally recognized and in-demand concert pianist, Coop has performed in concert halls the world over, and three of her recordings have received Juno Award nominations. In 2012, she was appointed a member of the Order of Canada, and in 2019 she was appointed to the Order of British Columbia.

Mozart wrote his string duos as a favour to an ailing pal

You can think of Mozart as music history’s greatest pinch hitter. In 1783, Archbishop Hieronymus Joseph Franz de Paula Graf Colloredo von Wallsee und Melz—we’re just going to call him Colloredo for the sake of simplicity—commissioned Michael Haydn (brother of the inarguably more famous Joseph) to compose six string duos.

Haydn got four of them written, but then he fell ill, and Mozart stepped in to do the remaining two, which are the ones on Vetta’s Legacy program. All six were presented to Colloredo as the sole work of Haydn, but you would think the archbishop should have been able to detect Mozart’s unique style, given that he was the latter’s patron and employer for the better part of a decade.

Janáček’s Violin Sonata was shaped by the outbreak of war

In the summer of 1914, Czech composer Leoš Janáček was working on his Violin Sonata while, elsewhere in Europe, all hell was breaking loose. It’s no great stretch to imagine that the outbreak of the First World War had an impact on Janáček’s music. In fact, he later said as much himself, writing that “In the 1914 sonata for violin and piano I could just about hear the sound of the steel clashing in my troubled head.”

Noting the “psychological immediacy” inherent in Janáček’s signature compositional technique of using short phrases mimicking human speech, classical-music blogger Emily E. Hogstad writes: “It is one of the first great violin sonatas—maybe the first—that announces the death of the sentimentality of the Romantic era.”

When the piece was first performed outside of what was then Czechoslovakia—in Frankfurt in 1923—the violin part was played by a young German musician and composer named Paul Hindemith. Speaking of whom…

Paul Hindemith was both a traditionalist and a musical maverick

Hindemith wasn’t just a musician, and he was more than a composer. In some ways, he was a musical philosopher, as exemplified by his three-volume treatise, The Craft of Musical Composition. Hindemith's musical forms and use of counterpoint were rooted firmly in Baroque and classical traditions, but he also made free use of all 12 notes of the chromatic scale.

To our 21st-century ears, works like Hindemith’s gorgeously detailed Viola Sonata, Op. 11 No. 4 don’t sound far outside the norm, but he had his detractors in his day. Joseph Goebbels, for one, dismissed the composer as an “atonal noisemaker". Anyone who could get the Nazis so worked up is okay in our books. 

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More than 150 local and international authors in over 90 events will be featured at the Vancouver Writers Fest during its 2026 edition. Expanded by a day to accommodate even more authors and conversations that matter—including an electrifying special event with international bestseller Barbara Kingsolver—this year’s festival returns to Granville Island, as well as select venues and schools in Vancouver and across the Lower Mainland, from October 18 to 25.

A perennial favourite, the festival’s opening event at the Vancouver Playhouse, is hosted by Elamin Abdelmahmoud this year. Grand Openings (Event #1) invites esteemed authors and leading thinkers Ayad Akhtar, Cory Doctorow, Tayari Jones, Ruth Ozeki, Ece Temelkuran, John Vaillant, Jesse Wente, and Jody Wilson-Raybould to present sequential talks reflecting on the essential themes at the heart of the festival.

Three events are inspired by the works of this year’s award-winning Guest Curator, John Vaillant, that focus on the fraught relationship between humans and the natural world. Canary in a Coal Mine (17) features three authors in conversation about Earth’s embattled bird species and their roles in their ecosystems as well as in our imaginations. At More than Human: Wildlife in an Age of Extinction (30), authors discuss the dynamic relationship between humans and non-human animals. And at Repair and Revive (56), authors contemplate the consequences of, and solutions to, the human activity–driven climate crisis.

Vancouver readers will also have the chance to hear from the 2025 Booker Prize winner at David Szalay: Flesh (42), along with nominees for this year’s prestigious international prize, Douglas Stuart at An Evening with the Scots (65) and Marlon James in Conversation (47).

This year, the Writers Fest is offering a free in-person and online event for adult audiences in partnership with BC’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, Ece Temelkuran in Conversation with Commissioner Kasari Govender (51).

Tickets to all events are now officially on sale through the Vancouver Writers Fest. Browse the full lineup of offerings online here; locals can also pick up a print program guide on Granville Island, at bookstores, libraries, JJ Bean locations, and other venues across Metro Vancouver.

Post sponsored by Vancouver Writers Fest.

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Still Moon Arts Society presents the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival until September 26 at various locations in the Renfrew-Collingwood neighbourhood

AHEAD OF THE full harvest moon, Still Moon Arts Society is set to celebrate the changing seasons through art, music, and lantern light.

Running through September 26, the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival is returning to the Renfrew-Collingwood neighbourhood, highlighting the community’s diverse cultural traditions and lush greenspaces.

This year’s theme, “Tiny Life”, encourages community members to observe and appreciate the small natural wonders that make up the Renfrew Ravine and Still Creek through a series of workshops and outdoor experiences. Program highlights include a concert at the blooming Colour-Me-Local Dye Garden on September 12, featuring local artist and musician Ace Fable and five-member “galband” Las Satyas; and a meditative walk at the Renfrew Ravine Labyrinth on September 22, accompanied by award-winning cellist Marina Hasselberg playing an acoustic cello soundscape.

The festival’s main day unfolds on September 26, starting with the Harvest Fair from 4 to 7 pm at Slocan Park. Live music features Afro-influenced pop artist MAUVEY and alternative folk and rock songwriter Ballyclaire, plus a graceful performance by House of Indian Dance. Alongside last-minute lantern-making and needle-felting workshops, local artisans and food vendors will offer creative works and hearty eats.

As the sun sets, the Twilight Lantern Procession will be led by Trubači brass party orchestra Balkan Shmalkan along the edge of the Renfrew Ravine. Accompanied by puppeteers and performers, the crowd will transition from Slocan Park to Renfrew Community Park, where Streamside Lanterns takes place.

Illuminated artworks and hundreds of handmade lanterns will be displayed throughout the forest as ambient soundscapes echo in the background. Performers include a cappella group The Heartbeets, the Tiddley Cove Morris dance group, and sister duo The RaRas. Closing the evening is Welcoming Water Woman, a performance choreographed by Isabelle Kirouac, featuring Still Moon Arts Society’s new giant puppet. Created by Carmen Rosen with Willoughby Arévalo, Liz Oakley, Sesemiya (Tracy Cameron), Joe Boyd, and more than 750 community members, the Water Woman puppet represents the neighbourhood’s collective relationship with water, holding shared feelings of love and loss.  

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Vancouver Opera’s 2026–27 season launches with Puccini’s Tosca, a gripping thriller of passion, politics, and betrayal set against the turmoil of Rome, circa 1800. Performances take place at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on October 24 and 29 at 7:30 pm, and November 1 at 2 pm.

Under the baton of Vancouver Opera music director Jacques Lacombe and the stage direction of Brenna Corner, artistic director of Pacific Opera Victoria, this acclaimed co-production with Pacific Opera Victoria pairs unforgettable music with edge-of-your-seat theatrical intensity for three exhilarating performances.

A story of power that’s propelled by one of Puccini’s most emotionally charged scores, Tosca delivers opera at its most thrilling. The tale unfolds over a breathless 24 hours, as celebrated singer Floria Tosca finds herself caught between the man she loves and a ruthless chief of police determined to possess her. Love, jealousy, artistic freedom, corruption, and personal sacrifice collide as Tosca is forced into an increasingly impossible confrontation with Scarpia.

“We are thrilled to have this Puccini blockbuster return to our stage for the first time in 13 years,” says Tom Wright, general director of Vancouver Opera. “From its explosive opening chords to some of the most recognizable and emotionally powerful music in the operatic repertoire, Tosca moves with the intensity of a political thriller.”

Leading the cast is internationally acclaimed Lebanese-Canadian soprano Joyce El-Khoury, making her return to Vancouver Opera as Floria Tosca. Canadian tenor David Pomeroy also returns as her lover, revolutionary artist Mario Cavaradossi, with Canadian baritone Gregory Dahl channelling the formidable villain Baron Scarpia. They are joined by the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, Vancouver Opera Chorus, and Vancouver Opera Children’s Chorus.

This production was first presented by Pacific Opera Victoria at Victoria’s Royal Theatre in February. Tosca is set in Rome in the year 1800, and the production brings a traditional atmosphere to the story through set and video design by Scott Reid, costume design by Kevin Knight, and lighting design by Michael Walton.

Tickets are available through the Vancouver Opera box office online or by phone at 604-683-0222. For more information about Vancouver Opera, visit vancouveropera.ca.

Post sponsored by Vancouver Opera.

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A book launch for Raven Transforms: The Haida Argillite Art of Kihl'yahda Christian White takes place at the Museum of Anthropology on September 20 at 1 pm.

GARY WYATT HAS represented Haida master carver Kihl’yahda Christian White for nearly four decades, long enough to see his artworks sell before they even reach the gallery floor. 

In his new book Raven Transforms: The Haida Argillite Art of Kihl’yahda Christian White, the Northwest Coast art curator and gallerist brings together nearly 200 of White’s sculptures, most of which have never before been publicly seen. In the first-ever monograph of a Haida argillite carver, Wyatt documents White’s extensive 50-year career, from his introduction to argillite carving at the age of 12 to his emergence as a renowned artist and cultural advocate.

Raven Transforms is a celebration of both White’s legacy and Haida culture and tradition. The argillite stone is a unique black shale that is found only on Haida Gwaii and has been carved by Haida artists for over two centuries. Alongside photographs of his creations, White shares more than two dozen traditional Haida narratives that have inspired them, including supernatural stories of Travelling Raven, Sea Grizzly, and Volcano Woman. 

A book launch takes place on September 20 at the Museum of Anthropology, featuring a Haida cultural performance by the Tluu Xaada Naay Society (Canoe People’s House). Ahead of the event, Stir caught up with Wyatt to learn more about the book, the artist, and the process of tracking down decades of scattered artworks. 

How did you discover Christian’s work, and what drew you to his argillite carvings? 

I first met Christian in 1985 when he brought in three pieces for sale to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, where I was a student in the Museum Studies program—one was acquired for the permanent collection and two were acquired for the shop to sell. Christian was 22 years old, and to have a piece added to the permanent collection among the master artists of argillite was a prestigious honour. This piece was Raven Dancer (The Transformer), chosen for the cover of the book.  I worked in the shop on the weekends, and I was asked if I could sell the remaining two pieces; I replied, “Absolutely.” They both sold over the next two days. One was purchased by the family that, 42 years later, would finance this book. 

Although it was just a transaction over a counter, we would reconnect a few years later when I joined a commercial gallery, and they became long-term clients and very close friends. We would meet often in Vancouver and Haida Gwaii, and the three of us formed a bond that continues to this day. Many pieces were added to their private collection. Christian was the first artist that I sought to include in the first exhibition that I curated for the 1987 catalogued exhibition Hands of Creation at the Inuit Gallery, and the “Bear Mother” piece was the first to sell. I would represent his work over the next 34 years. This book is a tribute to this relationship.

You’ve represented Christian’s work for many years; throughout the collaboration and writing of this book, was there anything that surprised you or made you see some of the artworks in a different light? 

When you represent an artist for 34 years, pieces come and go, and Christian’s pieces sold quickly—often before they went on display. You rarely get to see pieces that span his career, but over the many photo sessions for this book, I had the opportunity to hold and study pieces done decades apart, or similar subjects such as the panel pipes, which are complex carvings. It was interesting to see how an artist weaves together figures, tells stories, and captures particular moments in the story. No one, including Christian, has had the chance to hold and study so many of his pieces at one time. This was a privilege, but also a challenge, to locate and document as many pieces as possible.

Raven Transforms features nearly 200 of Christian’s artworks found in private collections and institutions all around the world, many of which have never been seen publicly before. What did that process look like, and what does it mean to share these pieces with the world for the first time?

Most books documenting an artist’s career are retrospective catalogues for exhibitions that are restricted to the exhibited pieces. The gathering, photography, design, and printing are all on a short schedule, timed for the opening of the show. This book had lots of time to breathe. First, I had the photo file from the Spirit Wrestler Gallery, which was extensive, but I also had the amazing support of other galleries and auction houses that have represented his work, and all these files were offered for this publication. Beyond this, we arranged for several major photo sessions in private homes, museums, and collectors bringing pieces to the studio for photography. It is impossible to include everything, but this is a really good overview of his work.

Argillite carving is a distinct Haida art form and tradition that is inseparable from the culture. How does the book, and Christian’s work, speak to that legacy? 

Argillite is considered cultural property, and the trip to harvest stone requires a full day of boat travel and a hike up a mountain site—the isolation with no roads is critical to the protection of the stone. Artists who carve argillite have several levels of education: the trip to harvest stone, the proper storage of the material to allow it to dry evenly, the lifelong study of the stories that are passed from generation to generation, and the skills needed to render them in stone. There are also the multi-generational master Haida artists who set the bar high, and artists understand they are expected to maintain the tradition at the highest level.

Out of all the pieces from the book, is there one that speaks to you the most? 

I have several favourite pieces in the book, beginning with Raven Dancer (The Transformer), which was my first introduction to his work and a piece that I have visited often over the last four decades. When I had a summer internship with the conservation department in 1985 and 1986, I would measure the humidity levels in each room of the museum every day, meaning that I had this incredible museum to myself for an hour every day. Raven Dancer (The Transformer) was always on my path. I also feel that his book captures his work in series, certain subjects, the panel pipes, and his ability to capture details through inlays, and in the very small figures woven into the sculptures. His sculptures are amazing to view, hold, and see in the round. Christian is also ambidextrous, allowing him to work both sides of the sculpture at the same time, a rare feat and equally valuable when he is carving large monuments. He began experimenting with inlays early in his career and it has become a signature of his work—carefully inlayed stone, shell, and bone in various patterns that enhance details and never overpower the sculpture. 

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The Vancouver International Film Festival is gearing up to present its 2026 VIFF Live program, a bold lineup of 10 exclusive live experiences, from October 2 to 8.

This year’s series features internationally acclaimed composers, musicians, filmmakers, and multimedia artists who challenge conventions and push creative boundaries. With multiple Canadian and North American premieres, rare artist appearances, and collaborations with leading cultural organizations, VIFF Live redefines the intersection of cinema and live performance.

Curated by Jarrett Martineau, the 2026 edition explores the theme of “reworlding”, inviting audiences into imaginative new ways of experiencing image and sound. Programming spans avant electronica, experimental performance, Indigenous futurism, orchestral film music, and immersive audiovisual art.

VIFF Live opens on October 2 at 5 pm with a special 30th anniversary presentation of the Black Audio Film Collective’s The Last Angel of History, co-presented by the Vancouver Art Gallery. The Last Angel of History traces the musical legacy of Afrofuturism from its rhythmic origins during the Transatlantic Slave Trade through imaginary digital-future worlds conjured in techno and jungle music. The evening opens with a performance by Speaker Music and closes with a conversation between DeForrest Brown Jr. and Otolith Group founders Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar.

Among other highlights is VIFF’s first collaboration with renowned Montreal electronic-music and digital-arts festival MUTEK; Arctic film TAKKUUK, featuring live performances by Inuit throat-singing duo Silla and Greenlandic rapper Tarrak; experimental music duo Los Thuthanaka; Derrick Gee’s music-focused variety show Radio Hour; and an intimate masterclass with Emmy and BAFTA–winning composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, who’s known for his work on Black Mirror, The White Lotus, and more.

Audiences can also experience The KLF: 23 Seconds to Eternity, a new compilation of the titular electronic duo’s complete film and video archive; ERASERHEAD XIU XIU, the acclaimed band’s hallucinatory live reinterpretation of David Lynch’s cult masterpiece; a rare live audiovisual performance by acclaimed pianist Kelly Moran; and an evening with Mark Mothersbaugh, founder of rock band DEVO and composer for over 150 films, TV shows, and video games.

Browse the complete VIFF Live lineup online to learn more about the many musicians, filmmakers, composers, performers, and collaborators who bring these one-of-a-kind experiences to life.

Tickets for all events are on sale now through VIFF.

Post sponsored by VIFF .

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THE CANADA COUNCIL for the Arts has just announced this year’s winners of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, with two local names making the list: art historian Roger Lee and interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Carole Itter.

Lee has been named for the Outstanding Contribution Award, which recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to Canada’s visual arts, media arts, and fine crafts scene in a volunteer or professional capacity. The Vancouver-born art historian and philanthropist studied art in Vancouver, Mexico, and France before becoming Canada’s first Chinese Canadian art history professor, teaching at the University of Regina for more than three decades. In the early 1970s, Lee established the university’s Department of Visual Arts Gallery; in 1997, he helped to bring the student-run Fifth Parallel Gallery to its current home, later funding its renovation in 2023. His donations extend to the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Centre for Global Asias fund and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, which houses the Roger Lee Gallery of Asian Art. He’s also an avid collector of art and art objects, including an extraordinary Yixing teapot collection.

“Across decades, Roger Lee has helped reshape the cultural landscape of Canada. Through his work with museums, galleries and universities, he has championed acquisitions and exhibitions that bring diasporic, cross-cultural and historically marginalized perspectives into the centre of institutional narratives,” said his nominator, Dr. Melissa Karmen Lee, CEO of the Chinese Canadian Museum, in the awards announcement today. “His influence has helped move diversity beyond representation alone, insisting instead that these histories are fundamental to how we understand Canadian art, culture and identity.”

Itter, known for diverse works that range from sculptures and installations to performances and film, is honoured with an Artistic Achievement Award. Born and raised in Vancouver, she began her studies at UBC, before pursuing further education at the Vancouver School of Art and Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. Some of Itter’s influential projects include 1972’s Personal Baggage, in which a cedar log from Roberts Creek was disassembled and transported to Nova Scotia, where it was reassembled. Where the Streets are Paved with Gold: A Tribute to a Canadian Neighbourhood, created in 1991, is a 29-foot-long floor installation built from cast-off objects the artist had collected, then painted and gilded, in her own Strathcona neighbourhood; it honours the community’s elderly immigrants and their belief in Canada as a place “where the streets are paved with gold”. Itter collaborated extensively with artist Al Neil from the 1970s, both working out of The Blue Cabin that now lives on as a floating artist residency. This fall, Itter’s work is set to appear in Here to Play: Variation for Sixteen Hands—a group exhibition exploring play as a way to understand material value and established systems—at the new Gibson Art Museum at SFU Burnaby.

“Itter championed feminist and ecological art practices when attention largely focused on her male photo-conceptualist peers in Vancouver. Her perseverance and integrity have yielded a remarkable body of work that continues to speak directly to our current concerns. It was always speaking to these concerns—we just needed to catch up,” said her nominators, Emily Carr University of Art + Design artist and assistant professor Allison Hrabluik and Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery associate director and curator Melanie O’Brian.

Other recipients of the Artistic Achievement Award include Kainai First Nation artist Faye HeavyShield; Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk; Mansonville visual artist Lyne Lapointe; Gatineau photographer Marie-Jeanne Musiol; and Kanien’kehá:ka artist Skawennati. This year’s honouree for the Saidye Bronfman Award is textile artist Chung-Im Kim, from Cookstown, Ontario.

An exhibition featuring the artists’ selected works opens at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on November 7.

Along with a $25,000 prize and bronze medallion, each winner is the subject of a short video portrait, commissioned by the Canada Council for the Arts in partnership with the Independent Media Arts Alliance.

The films can be viewed below and at the Canada Council website here. 

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Vancouver Moving Theatre has just announced the lineup for the 23rd annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, taking place from October 30 to November 7.

Since its inception, the Heart of the City Festival has been grounded in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. With a focus on listening and learning from the community, the festival carries forward stories, ancestral memories, cultural traditions, lived experiences, and artistic processes.

This year’s theme, Belonging, celebrates the experience of being seen, heard, respected, and valued. At the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, belonging is fostered through sharing stories, laughter, grief, and joy. Artists and community members gather to present music, poetry, theatre, ceremony, films, dance, readings, forums, workshops, discussions, gallery exhibits, art talks, history tours, and more.

Among the highlights is Electric Company Theatre’s Epigone, running at the Russian Hall; the new play is about complicated grief, stigmas of addiction, and responsibilities to the dead. In a run-down mobile home on the outskirts of a small northern town, an epic tale unfolds about a pair of siblings trying to escape a labyrinth built of shame and secrets. The brother’s mission is to save his sister; the sister’s mission is to save the world at a time of plague and widespread fear.

The 2026 lineup also features video installations created by The Circle Project, a Vancouver-based association of people with lived experience of incarceration committed to creating provocative art. Produced in collaboration with artists Adad Hannah and Jin-me Yoon, the installations are stimulating riffs on classic theatre that invite viewers to reimagine justice.

More standout events to catch are Life at OPS, a collection of videos by Nathaniel Canuel aimed at raising awareness about the importance of the Overdose Prevention Society; Indigenous Exhibition, hosted by 2-Spirit grass dancer Larissa Healey, women’s northern traditional dancer Tanisha Shawna Pahtayken, and powwow dancer Pavel Desjarlais; and From the Archives of Sid Chow Tan, featuring videos by the late, legendary Downtown Eastside documentarian, compiled by his collaborator Byron Peters.

Vancouver Moving Theatre presents the Heart of the City Festival in association with the Carnegie Community Centre. Learn more and purchase tickets here.

Post sponsored by Vancouver Moving Theatre.

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The Vancouver Fringe Festival runs at various venues to September 20

“WHAT’S WORSE, a bad girl or a sad girl?” asks the She-Devil in LIVE IN HELL. It’s a recurring gag: posing snappy moral puzzles to the audience that are provocative and stupid in roughly equal measure. “What’s worse, a show about nothing,” she asks, talking about Seinfeld, “or a show about me?” 

For the She-Devil, the answer is obvious. She’s a self-professed cultural icon, after all. Cultural icon status pending, performer Marita Michaelis has made her wonderfully wicked and hard to ignore.

The character arrives at this year’s Fringe after a year of development through Playwrights Theatre Centre’s Kathleen Flaherty Prize, with LIVE IN HELL receiving its premiere here. In Tabi heels, red lipstick, and a hand-sewn horned cap tied under her chin, she looks like a vintage Halloween devil who made it to the present day and acquired vocal fry. She’s coy about the whole thing, smiling sweetly at us as she writhes on the floor or drops her voice into a demonic register. Even when she gets vulgar, which is often, she has a way of looking surprised, and delighted, that we noticed. 

That same cheerful slipperiness lets the solo show find cartoonish little trap doors out of very serious things like fascism, climate disaster, and genocide, all of which the She-Devil, of course, takes credit for. Eventually, a therapist puppet suggests that she might not be an all-powerful harbinger of badness and horrors at all, but something much more mundane, garden-variety, and recognizably contemporary.

LIVE IN HELL occasionally gets lost in its own chaos on the way there, but the mess is part of the fun, like playing a record backwards because someone said there's a satanic message in it. Michaelis’s delight in her devilish creation is infectious too. She and her collaborators have found a character from which they could mine endless possibilities. Then again, the horrors are endless too.  

In another solo show at the Fringe, Savannah Erasmus has more earthly concerns: she doesn’t want to look like “a male comedian in 2002”. A reasonable enough ambition. What she should look like instead is a surprisingly complicated question though, and one that takes up most of Fashionably Late. The premise has her getting ready for a comedy show while already performing one, trying outfits on and asking for our opinions between personal anecdotes. The Vancouver-based stand-up has been doing comedy for years, but Fashionably Late is her first full-length show. On opening night, she was nervous at first, stumbling through some of the show’s more theatrical business before relaxing into the thing she’s clearly great at: telling a joke.  

Erasmus, who is from Kikino Métis Settlement and Cold Lake First Nation in Treaty 6 territory, has a dry, conversational, and deceptively precise delivery: she’s especially funny when the punchline seems to occur to her a second or two after the rest of the sentence has. “Ever since I was a little girl I knew I wanted to wear miniskirts,” she says. “I learned that while hunting with my dad.”  

There’s a lot of Erasmus in Fashionably Late: Indigeneity, mental health, relationships, getting labelled a domestic terrorist, Snooki—she worries and jokes her way through all of it. Letting us in on the anxious mode of her thought processes and hyperfixations, she occasionally stops, self-consciously, to assure us, “This is a comedy show, I’m getting to the comedy.” Not every tangent earns the time it takes, and the getting-dressed conceit sometimes feels less like a structure than a very attractive clothes hanger for Erasmus’s intelligent and humorous observations.  

She tells us that an elder Métis elder once came up to her with a sincere and long-winded compliment that ended in her telling the performer that her comedy is “very contemporary”. Erasmus rightly points out that the elder never said it was funny. Fortunately, it is.

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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Touchstone Theatre launches its 2026–27 season with the world premiere of Vascular Necrosis, a dark comedy by Flying Start Playwright-in-Residence Jordyn Wood. Co-produced by Touchstone and Glitch Theatre, Vascular Necrosis runs October 7 to 18 at The NEST on Granville Island.

Five years ago, Penelope killed herself. Shortly after, she rose from the grave as a flesh-eating monster. Now, with the help of “de-necrotizers”—medication designed to suppress her zombie instincts—she has been given a second chance to rejoin the living.

Blending zombie lore, queer romance, and dark comedy, Vascular Necrosis turns the post-apocalyptic genre inside out. As Penelope navigates the uneasy territory between her life and afterlife, the play asks what it means to live in a world shaped by trauma, uncertainty, and profound change.

Flying Start is Touchstone’s incubator program for early-career theatre artists like Wood, who is a Vancouver-based playwright and producer.

Tickets to Vascular Necrosis are available here.

Post sponsored by Touchstone Theatre.

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The Vancouver Flamenco Festival takes place at various venues from September 19 to 27

EACH SEPTEMBER, Flamenco Rosario livens up the beginning of fall with the sound of stamping feet, clapping palmas, and vigorously strumming guitars.

This year’s Vancouver Flamenco Festival boasts some stunning musicians, innovative choreographic works, and a star male dancer coming all the way from Bilbao. Here are a few of the highlights:

Philippe Jean and Iminah Kani

September 22 at Alliance Française Vancouver

In this flamenco guitar concert, two standout Canadian artists join forces to bring the rhythmic rasgueados and picados. Montreal-based guitarist Philippe Jean has won this year’s Victor Kolstee Award, a prize for emerging guitarists named for the well-known late musician who founded Flamenco Rosario with his wife, Rosario Ancer. Trained in both classical and flamenco styles, Jean has studied extensively in Spain, taking deep dives into lesser-known forms like the fandango and its derivatives. Jean will perform on the same program as Iminah Kani, the Victoria-by-way-of-Salt Spring Island resident who was the recipient of the inaugural 2024 Kolstee Award. A rarity in a music form that’s dominated by men, Kani used the prize to study flamenco at the renowned Fundación Cristina Heeren in Seville, Spain. Alliance Française copresents with the VFF.

Raíz Viva

September 23 at Performance Works

Singer Jafelin Helten was born in Venezuela and later moved to Vancouver, becoming a centrepiece of the local and international flamenco scene for more than two decades. The spellbinding cantaora here explores “raíz viva”, or the “living roots” of flamenco, starting in the timeless melancholic traditions of cante jondo—“deep song”, as in the intensely emotional vocal style of traditional flamenco music from Andalusia. From there, she moves into more joyful and contemporary terrain.

United Elements—Kasandra Flamenco

September 24 at Performance Works

Led by dancer Kasandra “La China”, the Kasandra Flamenco Ensemble draws together rhythm, voice, palmas, and thundering feet, bringing a contemporary sensibility to the ancient art form. La China first trained with Oscar Nieto and has travelled to Spain numerous times over the past three decades to deepen her flamenco skills. She’s known for taking the dance form to new heights, whether by combining it with Egyptian belly dance or fusing it with Cuban rumba.

Jewels

September 25 at Performance Works

Karen Pitkethly is another high-profile Vancouver dance artist who puts her own innovative touches on flamenco. The creative force behind Karen Flamenco hits the Vancouver Flamenco Festival with a production that reimagines George Balanchine’s Jewels, a legendary work in three acts (“Emeralds”, “Rubies”, and “Diamonds”) that debuted in 1967 and is considered one of the first abstract ballets. Expect glittering, gem-like dresses and ruffles that catch the light in a performance that brings together impassioned traditional movement with the sleek abstraction of contemporary dance.

NUEVO IV—Lo Nuevo y lo Añejo

September 26 at Performance Works at 4 and 8 pm 

Granada-raised, Bilbao-based dancer and choreographer Víctor Fernández is a huge draw at the NUEVO series that has long fostered new ideas from around the world. Here, collaborating with Flamenco Rosario, the Spanish sensation will set the stage on fire with boundary-pushing contemporary innovations with deeply traditional roots. Living and breathing flamenco since he was a young child in Granada, the fast-rising talent has performed with legends such as Rafaela Carrasco, Rafael Aguilar, and Eva Yerbabuena in major theatres from Spain to Taiwan, and is considered a major trailblazer in modern flamenco choreography. In this show he’s joined by celebrated Spanish cantaora Mercedes Cortés, with an opening performance by Seattle’s Semilla Flamenca.  

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The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts is hosting a captivating conversation with Zadie Smith, one of the most prolific writers of her generation, on October 15 at 7:30 pm.

Smith’s work has helped shape the literary landscape for over two decades. Two of her novels, White Teeth and NW—the former published when she was just 24—have been named among the best books of the 21st century by the New York Times and Kirkus Reviews. Her latest novel, The Fraud, was named best book of 2023 by both the New Yorker and Publishers Weekly, while her essay collection Dead and Alive was included on TIME’s 2025 list of must-read books.

Whether writing on class, race, culture, art, or politics, Smith captivates readers around the world with her singular voice. Her novels have won major awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Orange Prize.

Tickets to this intimate evening are available through the Chan Centre.

Post sponsored by Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

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The Steve Maddock Quintet presents a special evening honouring the centennial of the legendary Tony Bennett, one of the most enduring voices in American music. The ensemble is hitting the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts on October 15 at 7:30 pm, as part of the new VanJazz festival.

Bennett is known for his warmth, phrasing, and deep connection to the Great American Songbook. His legacy is brought to life here through fresh, jazz-driven arrangements that capture both the elegance and emotional depth of his iconic recordings.

The Steve Maddock Quintet features vocalist Maddock, tenor saxophonist Cory Weeds, pianist Sharon Minemoto, bassist André Lachance, and drummer Joe Poole. Blending reverence with creativity, the group reimagines classics associated with Bennett while leaving room for improvisation and personal expression.

This tribute celebrates the timeless artistry of a singer who shaped generations of musicians and listeners. Audiences can expect a night full of swinging rhythms, lyrical storytelling, and unforgettable music.

Tickets are available through the Shadbolt Centre.

Post sponsored by Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

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Saodat Ismailova’s installation Other Light is at the Western Front to November 28

IN SAODAT ISMAILOVA’S 2024 film Melted Into the Sun, a veiled man roams the desert landscapes of Central Asia. On the surrounding hillsides, distant figures brandish metallic discs that reflect the sun in brilliant starburst shapes.

The person behind the veil is al-Muqanna, an eighth-century Islamic prophet and revolutionary leader. As U.S. poet and critic Quinn Latimer writes in the brochure for Other Light, an installation of Ismailova’s work on now at the Western Front: “Faceless, without language, he is at once some deep and fathomless vessel for desires of surrender, and a burning screen for the projection of resistance and liberation.”

With Melted into the Sun, and its 2026 follow-up, To the Throat of the Sun, Uzbekistan-born filmmaker and artist Ismailova draws on the oral traditions of Central Asia, as well as the region’s cinematic traditions and the environmental legacy of Soviet nuclear testing, to explore light as a political and spiritual force. Legend holds that al-Muqanna wore a veil to conceal a radiant light emanating from his face.

Of the imagery contained in To the Throat of the Sun, Latimer writes:

The cloaked prophet crossing a river. Labour of its oars, his arms. Sunspot where his face should be. Not a black aperture but its opposite: a burning star. Images of veiled bodies sleeping on some hard ledge. Bodies blue as methane, solarized as film negatives, with white, blinded eyes. Hands on the forehead, blessing the face, lined as the landscape. Look away from the star, I think, light where the face should be, pale blue screen.

Both films are shown in full as part of Other Light, curated by Suzy Halajian in an ongoing collaboration with Ismailova. The installation also includes kurpachas, the traditional Central Asian quilted mattresses that accompany life from birth to death.

Admission is free, and the films screen every hour on the hour during the Western Front’s open hours, Wednesday through Saturday from 1 to 6 p.m.

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Gateway Theatre hosts Secret Ingredients, an experimental theatre performance created by Richmond-based artist Keely Rois O’Brien, from October 14 to 17 in Studio B.

Secret Ingredients uses cake to explore the quirks, nuances, joy, and heartache of human relationships. Leading up to the performance, the public is invited to consider messages that they find too difficult to express directly to someone in their life, and submit them via an online form. One of these submissions will be made into a beautiful, subversive cake, and incorporated into the show.

Flavours are paired with the message—the dark chocolate of embarrassment, the citrus zest of annoyance, the tart cherry jam of grief—and cake is served to the audience as part of the work (though eating it is optional). With limited seating of 50 guests per performance, Secret Ingredients provides an intimate look into the details of other people’s lives.

Tickets are now sold out. Join a waitlist to see the show through Gateway Theatre.

Post sponsored by Gateway Theatre.

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The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Heist at the Stanley BFL CANADA Stage from September 17 to October 18

THE LIST OF TECHNICAL requirements for Heist reads more like specs for a Hollywood film production than for a stage play. According to the official Heist website, the show calls for “lasers, drones, sensors, fog, flashing lights, high-tech toys…on screen graphics, rapid-fire sound cues” and of course “several scenes incorporating aerial sequences, requiring wires, harnesses, and actors dropping from the grid”. 

Playwright Arun Lakra has acknowledged that Heist—about a team of criminals attempting to steal a highly prized diamond from the lair of an international jewel thief—draws much inspiration from big-screen capers like Ocean’s 11. It’s the play’s movie-like aesthetics that make staging it a daunting prospect for any theatre company.

“I’ve always tried to braid the design of a show really intricately with all the other storytelling, but I’ve got to say, this is next-level,” says Andrew Kushnir, who’s directing the Arts Club’s upcoming production of Heist. “The number of cues for this show—across lighting changes, sound changes, video changes, aerial changes, laser changes—it’s in the hundreds and hundreds. It’s at an operatic level. I’ve worked on shows that are intricate, but I’ve got to say that this is the most complex in terms of integrating all those design elements, and it kind of befits a heist story. Any heist movie has you wondering, ‘Can these people actually pull this off?’ And I’d say the play is no exception.”

Kushnir admits he hasn’t actually seen the play, which is a relatively new one, having premiered in Lakra’s hometown of Calgary in 2024. 

“I haven’t even watched any archivals of it,” Kushnir says. “I’ve really taken on the opportunity to create an original version for the Arts Club. I’m aware of it. I’ve followed the success of the play, and even right now, I think there are two other productions that are at about the same spot as we are, in Cincinnati and in Arizona. So there’s uptake of the show, but I will say ours is really independent. We’re doing our own thing out here.”

Like the Heist character Marvin, also known as “the Boss”, Kushnir knew he would need to assemble a behind-the-scenes crew of master criminals, each one hand-selected for their specialized skills. “Not unlike in a heist movie, you want to have your A team, and it feels like we’ve done a comparable thing with Vancouver’s design community,” the director tells Stir.

They’re not actually criminals, of course, just some of the local theatre scene’s top craftspeople, including some familiar names to regular attendees of Arts Club productions.

“Ryan Cormack is our set designer, and he just did The Play That Goes Wrong for the Arts Club, so in him I have somebody who’s just deeply thorough about a tricked-out set,” Kushnir says. “And when people come see the show, they’ll realize that it is indeed a feat to figure out how to make all the jump cuts and all the tricks and all the surprises that we need. How do you make a set carry of all of that? So Ryan’s really been phenomenal.”

The director lavished equal praise on the rest of the production’s design crew, including Barbara Clayden (costumes), Sophie Tang (lighting), Malcolm Dow (music and sound), and Wladimiro A. Woyno Rodriguez (projections).

Each has a unique set of technical challenges to tackle, but at least none of them will be required to act while also descending on an aerial harness. That job falls to Alexandra Lainfiesta, who plays Angie.

“It all sort of lined up quite cosmically, that she’s the right actor for the role, and it just so happens that she has a background in doing some acrobatics, doing some rock climbing, all that sort of stuff that gives the director a big sigh of relief, because you get to have your cake and eat it too,” says Kushnir.

The cast also includes Patti Allan, Charlie Gallant, Tainui Kuru, Andrew McNee, and Jennifer Tong. None of them will have to hang from the ceiling either, but they will have to keep the audience guessing. That’s because Heist isn’t just about, well, a heist; it’s also a whodunit, in which one of the gang has secretly betrayed the others.

“It’s truly an ensemble piece, and if we’ve done our job right, I think audience members ought to follow every character line very, very carefully, because there are a lot of bread crumbs,” says Kushnir. “Arun, the playwright, has done a really phenomenal job of creating a real puzzle, not only for the characters, but I think for the audience—the satisfaction of having all of these clues and all of these possibilities. I think Arun has really succeeded in creating a story that authentically surprises.”

In other words, while they’re being dazzled by the production’s technical aspects, audience members will also have a job to do. Fortunately for ticket holders, their work will be entirely mental. The cast and crew of Heist won’t have it quite so easy.

“We’re using every calorie we’ve got and every muscle we have,” Kushnir says. “It is a really ambitious piece of writing, and our production is really ambitious. We’re trying to transform the Stanley Theatre and really take audiences on what I would almost call an implausible ride. I don’t think people would believe it. We aim to wow.”

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