PRODUCTIONS
East Van Panto: Robin Hood
It’s a beautiful day in Trout Lake for Robin Hood and the Merry-Thems—or it should have been! Alas, the naughty Sheriff has other plans—the parks have been privatized! Now everyone, including the birds and animals, has to pay to use the park. A trip to the library to read up on their rights leads Robin and friends on a grand adventure to invade Britannia, to retrieve the keys to the city’s public amenities, and try to steal back our neighbourhood from the rich and powerful.
(York Theatre, 639 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, Nov. 20 - Jan. 5, 2025)
PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
Tickets go on sale today for the 20th PuSh Festival.
PuSh International Performing Arts Festival celebrates its 20th Festival, returning to Vancouver January 23 to February 9, 2025. For more than two decades, PuSh Festival has been the Lower Mainland’s signature, mid-winter cultural event delivering audacious, innovative, contemporary works of live art by acclaimed local, national, and international artists. This year’s festival features dynamic and radical genre-bending works in dance, theatre, multimedia and music at venues across the city.
PuSh 20 features more than 25 presentations including: 20 original performance-based productions; five animated parties and cabaret-style events; two film events; and two artist residencies, one of which will culminate in an open studio showing by international guest artists.
The Festival lineup is dedicated to inspired risk-taking and dynamic interdisciplinary collaboration with visionary works from 13 countries—including 3 world premieres and 8 Canadian debuts. In addition to a strong Canadian presence with 13 presentations, PuSh’s 2025 international projects include works by artists of Belgium, South Korea, Brazil, United Kingdom, Uruguay, France, Denmark, Italy, Taiwan, USA, Sweden, and Democratic Republic of Congo. PuSh’s commitment to diversity continues with 16 shows created by people of colour; 13 by female or gender non-binary artists; and 8 by 2SLGBTQIA+ artists.
(Venues across Vancouver, Jan. 23 - Feb. 9, 2025)
Polygraph
For its 50th season, Théâtre la Seizième invites you to travel through time and rediscover some of its emblematic plays through a series of staged readings.
In this adaptation of Robert Lepage's famous Polygraph, the police of Quebec City are on the hunt. A young university student was raped and murdered. The suspect, a close friend of the victim and the last person to have seen her alive, is subjected to a lie detector test, “the Polygraph.” While efforts are made to solve the case amidst the confusing leads, a film crew is making a movie about the murder. Polygraph is close to a police thriller, yet it plunges us into a philosophical labyrinth, a nightmarish funhouse of mirrors in which truth and falsehood blur to obscure reality. Can anything be done to uncover the truth?
Introducing Quebecois and Franco-Canadian dramaturgy in English to Vancouver audiences, Polygraph marks the first time Robert Lepage agreed to have one of his texts produced by someone else.
Performance in both French and English, in partnership with Pi Theatre.
(Studio 16, 1555 W 7th Ave, Vancouver, Jan. 24 - 25, 2025)
De glace
Presented by Théâtre la Seizième, PuSh Festival and Vancouver International Children's Festival, as part of PuSh Festival 2025, Jan 31 – Feb 2, 2025.
Alternating performances in French and English.
In a frostbitten landscape, at the heart of the endless Norwegian winter, two young girls become fast friends. Love at first sight that ends abruptly, just as it is beginning: Unn disappears into a frozen waterfall, a colossal ice palace at the mouth of a lake. As for Siss, she stays with the living, clinging to the memory of her soulmate, against all odds. Meanwhile, the ice is melting…
L’eau du bain theatre company (White Out, La Chambre des enfants) breathes life into a true gem of Nordic literature, with this immersive, spellbinding experience. Using a sensory system that blurs the boundaries between audience and stage, this unique work immerses us in a passionate relationship that flows right into our skin!
(Roundhouse Performance Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver, Jan. 31 - Feb. 2, 2025)
Dimanche
A family is about to spend their Sunday together, a family tradition. But the walls are shaking and the storm has only just begun. Amidst this climatic chaos, the protagonists absurdly attempt to maintain a normal family life. Meanwhile, three wildlife reporters are doing their best to document Earth’s last living species.
Using physical theatre, puppetry, video, and ingenious practical effects, Dimanche observes the ingenuity and stubbornness of humans as they try to preserve their day-to-day habits, despite the chaos of an ecological collapse.
(Vancouver Playhouse, Feb. 6 - 8, 2025)
World Premiere of Grandma. Gangsta. Guerrilla. by Abi Padilla
Join us for this hilarious and heartwarming tale that is not a traumatizing story about war crimes, dementia, or getting old. On the contrary, Grandma. Gangsta . Guerrilla. is a sprint down memory lane of a butt-kickin', bar-spittin', tough grandma who escapes the care home to be with her family. When our favourite Filipino grandma Lola Basyang goes missing, it's up to her grandchildren Nika and Jun-jun to bring her back to safety. Using their Lola's unfinished memoir, they find clues to her whereabouts, her full-of-beans origin story and the historical turmoil of their motherland. Reminiscent of their immigration stories, they reflect on what it means to maintain family ties in a Western society.
Presented by Ruby Slippers Theatre in association with the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, Presentation House Theatre, and Blackout Art Society.
(Shadbolt Centre for the Arts (Burnaby) & Presentation House Theatre (North Vancouver), Feb. 6 - 16, 2025)
Arts Club Tour: Someone Like You
Dive into 21st-century Vancouver with millennial manifestos, dating apps, and a quest for self-love.
Best friends Isabelle, verbose and open-hearted, and Kristin, vulnerable and loyal, have been through thick and thin since university. When Isabelle takes her “wingman” duties for Kristin’s rebound romance with Harjit a bit too far, feelings and friendships are fraught with complications. A millennial take on the mistaken identities of Cyrano de Bergerac and set in East Vancouver, Someone Like You is first and foremost a comedy and a love story, featuring intensely relatable characters and scenarios.
(The ACT Arts Centre, 11944 Haney Place, Feb. 8, 2025, 8:00 p.m & Feb. 9, 2025, 3:00 p.m)
À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou
For its 50th season, Théâtre la Seizième invites you to travel through time and rediscover some of its emblematic plays through a series of staged readings. Paying tribute to Quebecois dramaturgy this time again, this landmark text by renowned author Michel Tremblay presents four interpretations of the same tragedy.
Carmen returns to the family home where her sister Manon lives, a young woman who is obsessed with the tragic death of their parents. Ten years earlier, under the same roof, Léopold and Marie-Lou engaged in a merciless verbal battle that sealed the dreadful fate of their loveless marriage. As the two sisters confront their views of the past, their interactions reveal the contours of a nightmarish family universe from which only Carmen has managed to escape.
A family drama both complex and intimate, À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou pictures an era weighed down by the burdens of religion and unspoken truths.
In French, with English surtitles. Feb 21 -22, 7:30pm.
(Studio 16, 1555 W 7th Ave, Vancouver, Feb. 21 - 22, 2025)
Lentement la beauté
For its 50th season, Théâtre la Seizième invites you to travel through time and rediscover some of its emblematic plays through a series of staged readings.
Comfortably settled in his career, his relationship, and his family, an ordinary man accidentally attends his first theatrical performance. The experience leads to a profound and intimate upheaval within him. Awestruck, he gradually transforms his perception of the world and those around him. What if beauty were what makes life worth living?
With part of the original cast reprising their roles, Lentement la beauté is a powerfully evocative dramedy that offers an inspiring reflection on the meaning of daily life and the awakening to art, and a marvelous tribute to the imagination and wonders of the world.
In French, with English surtitles.
(Alliance Française de Vancouver, 6161 Cambie St, Vancouver, Mar. 21, 2025, 7:30 p.m)
Lapin blanc, lapin rouge
For its 50th season, Théâtre la Seizième invites you to travel through time and rediscover some of its emblematic plays through a series of staged readings.
A performer is standing on stage. They have just opened an envelope. They have never read the play inside and have no idea what is about to unfold. The first page of the text contains a list of instructions written by an Iranian playwright named Nassim. Nassim refused to perform his military service, and as a result, his passport was revoked. Unable to leave his country, he wrote this play to travel the world. Tonight, he speaks to you through the voice and body of a daring performer. Unpredictable and unforgettable, Lapin blanc, lapin rouge is a powerful tribute to the power of words.
In French, with English surtitles. May 23 - 24, 7:30pm.
(Studio 16, 1555 W 7th Ave, Vancouver, May. 23 - 24, 2025)
TOUCHSTONE THEATRE UNVEILS ITS 2024/25 SEASON WITH NEWLY APPOINTED ARTISTIC DIRECTOR LOIS ANDERSON AT THE HELM
Today, Touchstone Theatre revealed its 2024/25 season programming, a captivating lineup featuring four works from Canada/Turtle Island that evoke myth and legend across cultural traditions to examine lived experiences of displacement, migration, settlement, home, and identity.
The season announcement comes with the news of Lois Anderson’s recent appointment as Touchstone’s Artistic Director, leading the company as it continues to explore the nature and purpose of theatre that reflects and amplifies stories from Canada/Turtle Island.
(The Cultch, Gateway Mainstage, PuSh Festival, various Vancouver and Richmond venues, 2024/2025 Season)
