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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tickets are available through Vetta.

Post sponsored by Vetta Chamber Music.

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

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

FRANÇOIS.E

August 28 at 7 pm at Alliance Française

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

LA VÉNUS ÉLECTRIQUE (THE ELECTRIC KISS)

September 2 at 7 pm at Alliance Française

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

CLASSE MOYENNE (THE PARTY’S OVER)

September 3 at 7 pm at Alliance Française

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tickets are available through the Shadbolt Centre.

Post sponsored by Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full #RenfrewRavineMoonFestival details and registration are available here.

Post sponsored by Still Moon Arts Society.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ʔəm̓i ce:p xʷiwəl Come Toward the Fire, a family-friendly celebration of Indigenous culture, creativity, and community, is returning for its fifth edition. Presented by the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in partnership with Musqueam Indian Band, the festival runs September 18 to 20 at the Chan Centre on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory.

A Day of Knowledge Sharing launches the festival on September 18. Visitors can learn about Indigenous cultures, languages, and histories through guided tours, film screenings, and workshops.

At the main Festival Day on September 19, attendees can expect live music and dance from almost a dozen acts, along with storytelling, a live mural painting, skateboarding, food trucks, an Indigenous artisan market, and much more—all for free.

September 20 features a ticketed Closing Concert hosted by Dallas Goldtooth. The exuberant mainstage show includes a headlining performance by Oji-Cree singer-songwriter Aysanabee, who is a two-time Juno Award winner.

Learn more about all the festival offerings at Come Toward the Fire.

Post sponsored by Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

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TAFF Art Society and VIVA Alliance present To Love or Not to Love at the Annex from August 27 to 30

SOMETIMES THE OLDEST stories can tell us the most about the way we live today. When writing his play To Love or Not to Love, Majid Tafreshi drew inspiration from Khosrow and Shirin, a romantic epic by 12th-century Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi.

Ganjavi’s poem tells of the love triangle between Khosrow II, monarch of the Sasanian Empire; the Armenian princess Shirin; and a sculptor named Farhad. Tafreshi set the play not in pre-Islamic Iran, however, but in a contemporary rehearsal studio, where a group of actors is preparing to stage the ancient love story, only to have their own interpersonal relationships and unresolved desires complicate things. 

In addition to directing To Love or Not to Love in its run at the Annex, Tafreshi also performs as one of the play-within-a-play’s actors, alongside Nikta Ghazi, Steve Amazzal, Navid Charkhi, Sara Poursorkh.

On the website of his production company, TAFF Arts Society, Tafreshi writes:

I was drawn back to the ancient story of Khosrow and Shirin while searching for a way to speak about the world we live in today. Surrounded by conflict, displacement, and uncertainty, I found myself asking whether love is still enough to hold us together—or whether it has become another role we struggle to perform. An absurd play-within-a-play became the natural form for this question, where myth and reality, actors and characters, truth and performance continually blur. I don’t offer an answer. I simply invite the audience into the question. 

To Love or Not to Love is described as a "half-musical", with original music by Parisa Torabi, also known as Madmazel.

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By lantern light, Alex Mah goes looking for home. birdcage, his new interdisciplinary meditation on identity and migration, opens at EDAM from September 3 to 5, kicking off Pi Theatre’s 2026–27 season.

birdcage explores the hope, longing, and confusion of Mah’s mixed-race, immigrant identity through an introspective multimedia performance. Combining poetry, new music, lanterns, soundscape, and improvisational performance techniques, Mah’s latest piece is sure to provoke contemplation.

Mah is a Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artist, composer, musician, and dancer who has participated in festivals, workshops, and performances across Canada, Germany, and the U.K. He created birdcage in collaboration with violinist Ilana Waniuk over a two-year period. The creative team for the production includes movement consultant and outside eye Natalie Gan, costume designer elika mojtabaei, lighting designer Jonathan Kim, technical director Gillian Hanemayer, and stage manager Agnes Hui.

This presentation is part of the Pi Provocateurs performing arts series. Tickets to birdcage are available here.

Post sponsored by Pi Theatre.

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Kokoro Dance presents Improv Butoh at KW Studios on August 21

IMPROVISATION IS A core element in both jazz and butoh dance—and the two have long met at Kokoro Dance’s Butoh Jazz nights.

But that series’s regular music performer, the revered, inventive jazz guitarist Tony Wilson, passed away in June. In honour of Wilson, Kokoro Dance’s Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget reached out to Wilson’s long-time friend, jazz guitarist and programmer Cole Schmidt, to continue the series—now renamed Improv Butoh, but still held at Kokoro’s intimate underground home base, KW Studios.

Schmidt is part of the psychedelic chamber jazz ensemble SICK BOSS, drone improv unit LETTR OPENR, and a collaborative project with cellist and composer Peggy Lee, Forever Stories of: Moving Parties. Joining him on the improv-driven musical side for the evening is Alvaro Rojas, another local composer and guitarist whose projects include Afro-Peruvian jazz-prog outfit GRAN KASA and whose concert pieces have been performed by new-music groups from the Turning Point Ensemble to Microcosmos String Quartet.

Providing the moves are Vancouver dance-scene icons Bourget and Hirabayashi themselves, as well as special guest Vanessa Goodman, the celebrated artistic director of Action at a Distance who’s choreographed recent work like WAIL and cocreated the hit touring show Graveyards and Gardens.

Together, they’ll express themselves in the moment to the sounds of live music. As Hirabayashi has put it: “We never know what they are going to play or what our responses will be. We know that it is always a conversation—a call from them and a response from us that is also a call back to them.”  

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Metro Theatre opens its 64th season with Avenue Q, the irreverent musical comedy about adulthood, relationships, and the uncomfortable realization that nobody has it all figured out. Directed by Christopher King from September 18 to October 10, this bold, memorable production brings together humans and puppets.

Fresh out of college with a degree and plenty of optimism, Princeton arrives in New York City ready to discover his purpose. What he finds instead is Avenue Q—a rundown neighbourhood populated by an eclectic group of characters navigating careers, relationships, money, identity, and uncertain futures. As Princeton searches for direction, he discovers that life after college looks very different from what he imagined.

Winner of three Tony Awards, Avenue Q pairs the familiar style of children’s educational television with an adult perspective. Its sharp humour and witty score remain strikingly relatable.

Avenue Q is intended for adult audiences. Tickets are available through Metro Theatre.

Post sponsored by Metro Theatre.

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THE CANADIAN PREMIERE of Hideki Noda’s Red Demon will kick off the Firehall Arts Centre’s 2026–27 season from October 8 to 18, the theatre announced today. Produced by rice & beans theatre and Gokko Creative Society, Red Demon tells the story of a creature that washes up on the shore of a small beach town and explores intolerance and xenophobia.

That’s followed by the Governor General’s Award–winning play Where the Blood Mixes, from November 14 to December 6. The work by Nlaka’pamux playwright Kevin Loring, who also directs, tackles the subject of intergenerational trauma through humour, as two Indigenous friends spend their time drinking in a bar, masking the pain tied to their childhoods in residential schools. 

Ballet BC alumni Kirsten Wicklund and Peter Smida then present the world premiere of Horses Won’t Follow from December 9 to 12, in which six strangers arrive in a barren landscape suspended between reality and myth. Since her time dancing in Vancouver, Wicklund has performed with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in Antwerp, Belgium, and served as artistic director of Ballet Edmonton. Smida is an independent dance artist, photographer, and filmmaker, and has been working as the rehearsal director and creative associate at Ballet Edmonton.

In time for the holidays, Krystle Dos Santos and her band present A Holly Jolly Jamboree, from December 16 to 24.

In the new year, Blocking, a hit performance from the Dancing on the Edge Festival, choreographed by Helen Walkley and danced by creative collaborator and Company 605 standout Josh Martin, happens January 6 to 9. The solo work integrates 250 small cedar blocks. 

Set in a diner on the Alberta-Montana border, Kelly Rebar’s Canadian classic Bordertown Café takes the stage from January 16 to 31.

And February 4 to 14 sees a Blackout Art Society production of Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here, a dramedy that draws on the relationships between five women during the Iranian Revolution.

In the spring of 2027, the Firehall will also present the world premiere of Dumpster Fire: A Satirical Musical Revue of Here and Now, a collaborative musical creation produced by the Firehall Arts Centre that uses humour to satirize the unique challenges and absurdity of today’s world. It takes place March 20 to April 11.

The critically acclaimed Tarragon Theatre production Benevolence will be presented on the Firehall stage from April 21 to May 9, telling playwright and performer Kevin Matthew Wong’s story of wrestling with his Hakka identity.

From May 13 to 23, the Firehall closes the season with Sorry for Your Loss, Cian Parker (Ngāpuhi)’s widely touring work about growing up on the mean streets of Aotearoa (New Zealand) with an often absent father.

Season passes are on sale now, and single tickets are available starting September 1. More info is at the website here.  

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TRADITION HOLDS THAT the appropriate gift for a couple celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary is rubies. It makes sense, then, that Elektra has dubbed its 2026–27 season—the acclaimed choir’s 40th—“The Ruby Season”.

Like any long-lasting marriage, Elektra owes its longevity to a solid grounding in harmony. In Elektra’s case, of course, that means actual musical harmony, and there is certainly plenty of that in the coming season, which kicks off on November 28 and 29 with Chez Nous: Christmas With Elektra. The Allegra String Quartet will join the choir at Pacific Spirit United Church for a seasonal program of music by composers including Stephen Smith, Sarah Quartel, and Levente Gyöngyösi, alongside works by Srul Irving Glick, Shireen Abu-Khader, and Marie-Claire Saindon.

On March 20 and 21, 2027, Elektra returns to its roots at a concert called Radiant Dawn by singing Gustav Holst’s Choral Hymns From the Rig Veda, which it first performed 40 years ago. Harpist Vivien Chen is featured in a program that also includes the world premiere of a new commission by Canadian composer Suba Sankaran and contemporary works by Shruthi Rajasekar, Reena Esmail, Katerina Gimon, Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton, and others.

Rounding out the season is Ruby: The 40th Anniversary Concert, with performances on May 15, 2027, at Vancouver’s Christ Church Cathedral, and May 16 at Good Shepherd Church in Surrey. The program includes a new commission by Canadian composer Alex Eddington, inspired by reflections shared by Elektra singers on the choir’s first 40 years. Elektra alumni will join the current ensemble, singing together under the direction of both current artistic director Cassie Luftspring and founding artistic director Morna Edmundson.

In addition to the concerts, Elektra will celebrate its 40th season with The Ruby Gala at the Terminal City Club on February 27. We don’t have all the details—watch for those in the coming months—but an announcement from Elektra promises that the evening “will bring together singers, alumni, supporters, and friends of Elektra for a joyful celebration of four decades of music and community.”

Season tickets are now on sale, offering 20 per cent savings on all three main-stage concerts through October 1. See the Elektra website for details.

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The Richmond Maritime Festival takes place at Britannia Shipyards National Historic Site on August 22 and 23

FULL STEAM AHEAD, the Richmond Maritime Festival arrives at Britannia Shipyards National Historic Site this weekend for its 23rd annual celebration of Steveston’s rich nautical heritage.

Anchoring the Port of Call Stage this year is a special performance by the 35-member Naden Band of the Royal Canadian Navy. Also appearing on this stage during the festival are returning favourites Tiller’s Folly, the Whiskeydicks, and the Wheat in the Barley with their Celtic- and folk-inspired tunes.

Other events to look forward to include a traditional performance by the Stars of the North Drum Group of the Tlowitsis-Mumtigala Nation; an energetic dance by Japanese Yosakoi group Appare Yosakoi Vancouver; and the stirring harmonies of Indigenous women’s vocal ensemble M’Girl Music.

Down by the docks, several heritage boats will be on full display, including the 104-year-old steam-powered tugboat SS Master, alongside the Island Provider and Midnight Sun. Visitors are encouraged to explore the surrounding historical landmarks, including the newly reopened Britannia Shipyard building and the Richmond Boat Builders, where shipwright Dave Sharp will share details of the 63-year-old fishing vessel Crystal S that is currently under restoration.

For those who wish to wade farther out into the waters this year, the River Queen will make free trips between Steveston’s Fisherman’s Wharf and the Britannia Shipyard’s dock throughout the festival weekend.

Returning to shore, there’s plenty more to keep families occupied. Rikki the Rat and Lulu the Mermaid will be trading tall tales and jokes at the Captain's Quarters Puppet Theatre, while the Cannery Mermaids wander through the shipyards singing their siren songs. For more hands-on activities, join a cyanotype print workshop with Grace Gihm, make maritime-themed papier mâché creations with Shahrzad Farahmand, or contribute to the community knitting tree.

As seafaring activities work up quite the appetite, there will be opportunities to refuel at a selection of food trucks offering everything from crispy sushi tacos and juicy sausages to fluffy bannock and creamy Hong-Kong-style soft-serves.

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French-Senegalese singer-songwriter anaiis is making her Canadian debut at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on September 16 at 7:30 pm. With her gentle, powerful music, she explores transformation, connection, and the possibilities that emerge from embracing change with grace.

anaiis’s latest release, Devotion & The Black Divine, was named one of the top albums of the year by both BBC and Apple Music. Recorded live-to-tape in London, the work is deeply influenced by anaiis’s new experience as a mother, as she explores what it means to be unabashedly human. The album is a meditation on the natural world, inner selves, and recognizing people’s innate divinity.

Born in Toulouse and raised between Dakar, Dublin, and Oakland, anaiis brings a distinctly global perspective to her music. With each new release, she traces a lineage of diasporic collaboration and cross-cultural kinship.

Tickets to this Chan Centre EXP concert are available here.

Post sponsored by Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

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Volume 1: Interior Infinite Revisited is online at the Polygon Gallery’s Parallelogram website until September 20

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC changed our world in ways big and small, but its full impact will likely not be fully apparent for years to come. In the arts, one of the immediate effects of lockdowns and capacity restrictions was a pivot to online offerings. This had mixed success, as some forms of art are more easily transferable to the digital realm. It turns out, for example, that not many people are keen on experiencing a three-hour Italian opera while sitting in front of a computer monitor.

The Polygon Gallery rode out the COVID times without switching to digital programming, but the pandemic did plant the seed for a project that is only now coming to fruition, as curator Elliott Ramsey tells Stir.

“In response to all that happened during 2020, the Canada Council disbursed these Digital Now grants, because as all these cultural organizations were changing course to put material online, a lot of us discovered that we really lacked the digital infrastructure to do this well, and to hold artist projects and visual and audio experiences richly online,” Ramsey says. “And so, these Digital Now grants were meant to build more robust digital infrastructure for cultural organizations, and we were awarded one of these grants. Of course, building a website takes a lot of time and testing, and considerations around accessibility.” 

The Polygon’s digital exhibition platform launched just this summer, and while the world is no longer caught in the grip of a public health crisis, the first virtual exhibition at Parallelogram, Volume 1: Interior Infinite Revisited, harks back to a Polygon show from the height of COVID.

“It opened in 2021 and was in some ways responding to the way the world was changing, these calls to go back to normal, and questioning sort of fundamentally who this so-called normality that we were trying to get back to, served—and who it excluded,” Ramsey says of the original Interior Infinite, which focused on the way artists use costumes and masquerade to explore a range of identities. 

“It was always in the back of my mind that maybe this would also be a chance to revisit Interior Infinite and to use all of this digital content that we produced during the show and give it a second life,” Ramsey says of Parallelogram’s development. “And it turned out that our finishing the whole back end of the website coincided with not only the five-year anniversary of Interior Infinite, but also the opening of Martine Gutierrez’s major solo show at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam.”

Multidisciplinary artist Gutierrez had been featured in Interior Infinite and was subsequently the subject of a solo exhibition, ANTI-ICON:APOKALYPSIS at the Polygon. As part of that, she presented Odysseus and the Sirens, a performance piece based on Homer’s Odyssey that also featured Ramsey himself as one of the Sirens.

“We made a video document of it that’s never been seen before,” the curator says. “And we thought, you know, let’s roll that together with some of the new stuff and the old stuff from Interior Infinite, and just use the opening of Martine’s show, and the five-year anniversary, as a chance to launch this platform, to kind of look back on on this exhibition five years on as we inhabit this world that’s changed so much and so little, and have a chance to reflect.” 

Other works in Volume 1 include “Fauxcasian”, a video short by Skeena Reece in which the B.C.–based Indigenous artist flips the notion of the “Pretendian” on its ear; Lunoryza, a “queer zodiac” by local Asian drag collective House of Rice; and “The Fountaincleaners”, a video by Tycoon filmmaker Charlotte Zhang.

It’s a substantial collection of work, but not an exhaustive archive. Ramsey has cannily avoided the temptation of taking the seemingly limitless capacity of the internet as an opportunity to create a monumentally scaled digital gallery. His concept for Parallelogram, he explains, was that there should be “a little too much to sit down and browse the whole thing in one sitting, but enough that you’d be like, ‘I’m going to bookmark this and read this project tomorrow or watch this video next time.’”

“So, there was this sense of having everything be really rich in content,” he says. “There’s something to watch or listen to or read, and some combination thereof in many of the cases; enough that you can get through it pretty quickly and then revisit it or move on. So having something that was sort of dense and compact in terms of its richness and volume, but not so much that it’s demanding a lot of your time. You can do a deep dive and a slow read or you can kind of just dip in, dip out.”

One thing Parallelogram is most definitely not designed to do is resemble the unrelenting and stultifying engagement of platforms such as Instagram or TikTok.

“I’m not on social media myself because I find that infinite scroll actually really daunting,” Ramsey says. “I read all these reports of these dopamine hits and how addictive it is, but I have the complete opposite reaction to an infinite scroll. It shuts me down and makes me run in the opposite direction. And so as someone working on this, I had no desire to replicate that whatsoever.” 

By not overwhelming the viewer with a bottomless well of content, Parallelogram ensures that each work has equal opportunity to be seen and given due consideration. Ramsey points to Vivek Shraya’s short video “Bodyrebuilding” as a case in point.

Inspired by the type of photography found in vintage physique magazines, Shraya uses the piece to delve into both her experiences as a trans woman and her connection with her body as someone who lives with chronic pain.

“Gym culture is aspirational and we kind of celebrate physical transformation,” Ramsey says, noting that “Bodyrebuilding” is “kind of asking, with hope, what that could mean for being trans or changing your gender presentation—you know, if we can celebrate transformation in that way, are there possibilities for also celebrating, instead of shaming, transformation, in other ways? And it kind of came about from her having to rehabilitate an injury and chronic pain and having to go to the gym, to this very kind of male bro space and not only having a chance to re-evaluate her relationship to her own body, but also to gym culture.

“It's a really exquisitely meditative and thought-provoking piece,” Ramsey says. “And it's not the kind of thing that you bury in a glut of content. It's something you actually want people to find.”

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