THEATRE PREVIEW
DECEMBER 2025 | Volume 258
PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
Various venues
Jan. 22-Feb. 8
$$39
/$59 etc.
www.pushfestival.ca or 604-449-6000
BUY TICKETS
PuSh Festival Returns this Winter with 25 Performances and Events for the Culturally Fearless
PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is excited to announce the programming for the 2026 Festival, which returns to Vancouver from January 22 to February 8, 2026. For two and a half weeks, PuSh Festival invites audiences to discover innovative contemporary works of live performances by local, national and international artists. PuSh has been the city's midwinter anchor for more than two decades—a place where live arts are celebrated, where risk is rewarded, and where audiences engage with bold, audacious performances.
The 2026 PuSh Festival will continue to defy the bounds of discipline, bringing together 25 presentations of theatre, dance, music, installation, film, and multimedia performance. Rooted in PuSh's artistic vision to animate culture and accelerate social change through performance, the Festival will present works that ask big questions, unsettle expectations, and create space for emotional resonance.
Opening and Closing weekends will be celebrated at the Birdhouse, with an Opening Party event on Friday, January 23, and The Motha' Kiki Ball by BlackOut Collective on Saturday, February 7, co-produced by PuSh and Van Vogue Jam.
"The 2026 PuSh Festival is an invitation to the culturally fearless—to those ready to step into fresh futurities and the uncharted possibilities of live performance," says Artistic Director Gabrielle Martin. "Across the program, artists prototype new ways of knowing and being in real time—through Indigenous cosmologies of deep time, feminist remappings of the gaze, AI-age grief rituals, and magic-realist reckonings where myth and memory blur. This is urgent work: performances as laboratories for how we might live and relate differently—where imagination is not escape, but infrastructure for the future."
The Festival lineup is dedicated to inspired risk-taking and dynamic interdisciplinary collaboration featuring visionary works from 17 countries—including 6 world premieres, 1 North American premiere, 4 Canadian premieres, 5 Western Canadian premieres and 4 Vancouver premieres. In addition to a strong Canadian presence with 11 presentations, PuSh's 2026 international projects include works by artists from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Mexico, Palestine, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe. PuSh's commitment to equity and diversity continues with 14 shows created by Black people and people of colour; 6 Indigenous-led works; 6 shows by 2SLGBTQIA+ artists; and two creation residencies for artists from the Global South.
The full 2026 Festival Program is available online at www.pushfestival.ca.
PuSh is not just about the performances—it is also a creative hub for dialogue, mentorship, and professional development. The PuSh 2026 Industry Series brings together 240+ global performing arts professionals for sector-specific dialogue and artist showcases from January 27 to February 1.
PuSh's new program for emerging artists and arts critics, In Dialogue (ages 25–35), is a free intensive inviting deep inquiry into contemporary performance. Over seven days, participants will attend Festival performances together, join discussions with leading theatre makers and scholars, and take part in post-show conversations with Festival artists from February 2 to 8.
PuSh's Youth Pass allows youth (ages 16-24) to access 4 shows from the PuSh Festival programming at the highly discounted rate of $20. Quantities are limited and passes must be booked through the box office. Some restrictions apply.
PuSh 2026 continues partnerships with organizations including The Cultch, New Works, Music on Main, Touchstone Theatre, Indian Summer Festival, frank theatre co., Playwrights Theatre Centre, Here & Now (UK), Van Vogue Jam, The Dance Centre, SFU, Vancouver Civic Theatres, Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre, and the Granville Island Theatre District.
PuSh also celebrates new partnerships with the Chinese Canadian Museum, LIVE Biennale, and the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.
PuSh presents the new series Encuentro, centering Latin American artistic expression at the Festival and featuring programming co-presented by Latincouver and Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre. Encuentro ("gathering" in Spanish and Portuguese) brings visiting Latin American artists and local communities together in performance, conversation, and celebration.
TICKETING
Prices for most PuSh shows start at $39. Full pricing varies according to show and venue. To buy tickets, visit pushfestival.ca or call the PuSh Festival Patron Services info line at 604.449.6000. Tickets are available in-person Monday to Friday from 11AM–5PM at 110-750 Hamilton Street. The Box Office will be closed from December 24, 2025 to January 1, 2026. For group tickets, email tickets@pushfestival.ca.
MORE INFORMATION
Please see below for individual show details. The comprehensive 2026 Festival Program is available at www.pushfestival.ca.
2026 PuSh Festival Performances
International companies/artists being presented for PuSh 2026 include: Luanda Casella / Pablo Casella / ntgent (Belgium / Brazil), Wet Mess (UK), Renae Shadler and Roland Walter (Australia/Germany), Rainbow Chan (Australia/Hong Kong/Weitou), L'ÉcoleParallèleImaginaire (France), Khalil Albatran / Bilal Alkhatib (Palestine), Cherish Menzo / Frascati Producties (The Netherlands / Belgium), Archa Centre of Documentary Theatre (Czech Republic), and Jerahuni Movement Factory (Zimbabwe).
Indigenous companies/artists being presented include: Lara Kramer (Turtle Island/Canada), Tyson Houseman (Treaty 6 Territory, Turtle Island), Akpik Theatre (Canada, KalaallitNunaat (Greenland), and Sápmi (Norway)), Tiziano Cruz (Argentina), Lukas Avendaño (Mexico) and Tanya Tagaq (Canada).
Canadian companies/artists being presented include: Action at a Distance / Vanessa Goodman, BlackOUT Collective, Justine A. Chambers, Creepy Boys / So.Glad Arts, Alan Lake Factori(e), UNIT Productions & Mammalian Diving Reflex in collaboration with The Chop, and Cole Lewis / Patrick Blenkarn / Sam Ferguson, and plastic orchid factory / James Gnam.
Eight Short Compositions from the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience – Archa-Centre of Documentary Theatre (Czech Republic)
THEATRE
Jan 22, Jan 23 @ 8PM | Waterfront Theatre
Post-show talkback: Jan 22
North American premiere
Presented with Vancouver Poetry House
Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a western Audiene. Photo Jakub Hrab.
Across languages and borders, five performers gather to honour the small acts of living that survive in the shadow of war. Through text, music, and movement, Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, reminding us that even in conflict, tenderness and hope endure.
JEZEBEL – Cherish Menzo / Frascati Producties (The Netherlands / Belgium)DANCE
Thurs Jan 22, Fri Jan 23 @ 8PM | Scotiabank Dance Centre
Post-show Talkback: Jan 23
Western Canadian premiere
Presented with new works DANCE
Through physical performance, hip hop visual language, and the slowed, distorted flow of chopped-and-screwed sound, JEZEBEL reclaims the hyper-sexualized "video vixen" of hip hop's golden age. Once framed through a male gaze that fetishized and vilified Black femininity, she now stretches the image until its artifice becomes her authorship. What emerges is a portrait of a woman both muse and maker—unapologetic and self-possessed.
2021 - Cole Lewis, Patrick Blenkarn, Sam Ferguson (Canada)
THEATRE, MULTIMEDIA
Jan 23 @ 7:30PM; Jan 24 @ 2PM | ANNEX
Post-show talkback: Jan 24
Canadian Premiere
Presented with Touchstone Theatre
2021 fuses live performance, gaming, and AI in a haunting act of digital resurrection. The audience follows Brian—an unhoused veteran—through a looping simulation of his final days in a hospital. With his daughter guiding the way, data and grief become entangled. 2021 is part elegy, part reboot—aching and glitchy in its pursuit of what it means to be alive.
Khalil Khalil – Khalil Albatran / Bilal Alkhatib (Palestine)
DANCE, THEATRE, MUSIC, MULTIMEDIA
Jan 23, Jan 24 @ 7PM; Jan 25 @ 2PM | The NEST
Post-show Talkback: Jan 24
World Premiere
Named after his brother, a martyr of the First Palestinian Intifada, Khalil Albatran has lived in the shadow of another life. Through movement and music, Khalil Khalil becomes a dialogue between memory and becoming—a search for self beyond inheritance. This performance offers a rare, intimate reflection on identity, grief, and the body's capacity to hold what history leaves behind.
Le Beau Monde - L'École Parallèle Imaginaire (France)
THEATRE
Jan 24 @ 5PM & 8PM; Jan 25 @ 5PM | The Roundhouse
Post-show Talkback: Jan 25
Canadian Premiere
In a future where theatre—and most human rituals—have vanished, three performers attempt to reconstruct them from memory. Le Beau Monde is part science fiction, part requiem for the everyday, where awkward reenactments and polyphonic song turn the ordinary into myth. A gently comic and deeply moving reflection on what remains when everything familiar is gone.
WAIL - Action at a Distance / Vanessa Goodman (Canada)
DANCE, MUSIC
Jan 26, Jan 27 @ 8PM | Scotiabank Dance Centre
Post-show Talkback: Jan 27
World Premiere
Presented with Music On Main and The Dance Centre
WAIL is a choreographic poem for our fractured moment. Moving through a shifting landscape of sound, light, and breath, six performers embody the tension between fragility and resilience. Drawing from the natural world's patterns and distortions, the work becomes a living ecosystem—a multi-sensory meditation on coexistence, where motion and vibration merge in a collective wail of grief and joy.
Kamwe Kamwe (One by One) – Jerahuni Movement Factory (Zimbabwe)
DANCE
Jan 27, Jan 28 @ 7:30PM | Performance Works
Post-show Talkback: Jan 27
World Premiere
On a sand-covered stage, four Zimbabwean dancers move through poles, elastics, and projected images, their bodies speaking what history has silenced. With live vocals that summon the disappeared, KamweKamwe (One by One) transforms dance into testimony—a reckoning on racism, memory, and resilience. Both protest and prayer, it's a choreography of solidarity rising from the dust.
Kiuryaq – Akpil Theatre / Theaturtle (Canada, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), Sápmi (Norway))
THEATRE, MUSIC, MULTIMEDIA
Jan 28 @ 8PM | Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Southern Canadian Premiere
Presented with the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
The Northern Lights have always carried stories—frightening, spiritual, epic, and playful. Kiuryaq is a circumpolar theatrical performance exploring our relationship with the aurora borealis. Created by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists from Canada, KalaallitNunaat (Greenland), and Sápmi (Norway), Kiuryaq blends theatre, live music, and video design to weave northern stories into a landscape of light, memory, and cosmology.
Remember that time we met in the future? – Lara Kramer (Turtle Island/Canada)
DANCE
Jan 28, Jan 29 @ 7PM | Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
Post-show Talkback: Jan 29
World Premiere
Presented with Matriarchs uprising
Remember that time we met in the future? unfolds within a transforming landscape of salvaged materials and shifting light—echoing both urban and land-based worlds. Four Indigenous artists travel through nonlinear time, guided by the intelligence of body, land, and spirit. Their movements and pulse trace connections across generations, an unfolding toward futures still forming.
askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ - Tyson Houseman (Treaty 6 Territory)
THEATRE, MUSIC, MULTIMEDIA
Jan 29, Jan 30 @ 8PM | The Roundhouse
Post-show talkback: Jan 30
Western Canadian premiere, Vancouver premiere
Presented with VIFF Live
Part live cinema, part ecological opera, askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ transforms a miniature film set into vast dreamlike mountainscapes unfolding in real time. Created and directed by nêhiyaw artist Tyson Houseman, this operatic multimedia performance merges live video, electroacoustic sound, and nehiyawewin song to explore cyclical, geologic notions of deep time and connections between land, memory, and future.
SLUGS - Creepy Boys / So.Glad Arts (Canada)
MULTIMEDIA, COMEDY
Jan 29—Jan 31 @ 9PM | NEST
Post-show talkback: Jan 29
Vancouver premiere, for adult audiences
From the award-winning performance/comedy duo Creepy Boys comes SLUGS: a techno-punk concert, clown show and basement puppet nightmare about trying to have a good time while the world burns. Fusing DIY absurdity with electronic comedy songs and trash puppetry, this "brilliantly smart and beautifully stupid" hit from Edinburgh spirals from chaos into catharsis. For tonight, we are free.
Everything Has Disappeared – UNIT Productions & Mammalian Diving Reflex, in collaboration with The Chop (Canada)
THEATRE
Jan 29 @ 7:30PM (Preview), Jan 30 @ 7:30PM, Jan 31 @ 2PM & 7:30PM, Feb 1 @ 2PM | York Theatre
Vancouver premiere
Presented with The Cultch
Everything Has Disapppeared Trondheim 2025. Photo Atle A.
A theatrical sleight of hand blending digital technology, illusion, and clever storytelling, Everything Has Disappeared reveals how Filipino labour quietly sustains the global economy. From ships to care homes to factory floors, the work transforms invisibility into revelation—with humour, wit, and wonder. Both playful and profound, it's a conjuring act about what vanishes when we stop seeing.
Catching Up to the Future of Our Past – Plastic Orchid Factory / James Gnam (Unceded Coast Salish Territories)
DANCE
Jan 30 @ 8PM, Jan 31 @ 4PM, J30–31 | Scotiabank Dance Centre
Post-show talkback: Jan 30
World Premiere
Presented with The Dance Centre
Catching Up to the Future of Our Past traces the elastic rhythms of midlife—where memory and possibility intertwine. Set within a Mary Quant–inspired, retro-futurist astral bubble, their movements measure and unspool time, revealing the quiet space where nostalgia meets anticipation, and where every gesture carries echoes of what was and what could be.
Orpheus – Alan Lake Factori(e) (Canada)
DANCE
Jan 30, Jan 31 @ 8PM | Vancouver Playhouse
Post-show Talkback: Jan 31
Western Canadian premiere
Orpheus Alan Lake Factorie - S’abreuver des volcans. Photo credit Gabriel Ramos.
In Orpheus, choreographer Alan Lake reimagines descent as transformation. Through a world both visually striking and physically visceral, performers move between rupture and renewal, intimacy and immensity. Oscillating between dream and reality, the work becomes a mirror for our fractured humanity—a dance of chaos and connection, inviting us to drink from the fire, and to emerge changed.
La utopia de la mariposa – José Miguel Jaime Crespo (Mexico) / TIERRA – Fana Adjani (Mexico)
FILM
Feb 2, Feb 3 @ 6:30PM | The Roundhouse
Presented with Latincouver
Performance, politics, and cinema converge in two visionary films featuring Lukas Avendaño. La utopía de la mariposa channels personal grief into public testimony, where art becomes a demand for justice. Tierra, directed by Fana Adjani, turns dance and ecofeminism into mythic becoming. Each film blurs the line between document and dream, revealing art as both resistance and renewal.
Bardaje - Lukas Avendaño (Mexico)
THEATRE, MULTIMEDIA
Feb 2, 3 @ 8PM | The Roundhouse
Post-show talkback: Feb 2
Presented with Latincouver
Part live art and part embodied meditation, Bardaje moves with feathers, ash, metallic paper, and ancestral ayoyotes to explore muxheidad—a third gender beyond binaries. Grounded in memory and matrilineality, this sensorial experience blurs body and spirit, inviting audiences into a space of reflection, presence, and quiet defiance.
Rainbow Chan Live at the Dream Factory – Rainbow Chan (Australia/Hong Kong/Weitou)
MUSIC
Feb 4 @ 7:30PM | Chinese Canadian Museum
Post-show Karaoke: 8:15 PM
Canadian premiere
Presented with Chinese Canadian Museum
Rainbow Chan is a Hong Kong–Australian vocalist, producer, and interdisciplinary artist celebrated for her inventive blend of heartfelt melody, textured electronic production, and culturally rich storytelling. Presented for one night only on Ming Wong's Vast Ocean, Boundless Skies stage inside the Chinese Canadian Museum's Dream Factory: Cantopop Mandopop 1980s-2000 exhibition, this special performance fuses Cantopop, Chinese folk laments, and experimental sound into a distinctive, contemporary musical experience.
SKIN - Renae Shadler& Collaborators, with Roland Walter (Germany/Australia)
DANCE
Feb 4—Feb 6 @ 7:30PM | ANNEX
Post-show Talkback: Feb 4
Canadian premiere
Presenting Supporter: Parachute Fund
Performed by Roland Walter, a dancer with full-body spastic paralysis, and Renae Shadler, a non-disabled choreographer, SKIN unfolds between contraction and expansion. Inspired by sea anemones, liquid states, and the shifting textures of the earth—whose surface is changing ever faster in the Anthropocene—this duet is not about access, but excess. A meditation on how our environment both shapes us and is shaped by us.
Split Tooth: Saputjiji - Tanya Tagaq (Canada)
MUSIC, MULTIMEDIA
Feb 5 @ 8PM | Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
World Premiere
Presented with the Chan Centre of the Performing Arts and Music on Main
Split Tooth. Photo by Celina Kalluk.
From improvisational singer, composer, and bestselling author Tanya Tagaq comes Split Tooth: Saputjiji, a staged performance that extends the poetic world of her book Split Tooth. It is neither adaptation nor concert but a new theatrical language—bringing together Inuit throat singers, musicians, and performers in a realm where music, memory, and landscape blur; a conversation with the future through mythic realism, carrying the elemental power central to Tagaq's work.
The Brutal Joy - Justine A. Chambers (Canada)
DANCE
Feb 5, Feb 6 @ 8PM | Scotiabank Dance Centre
Post-show Talkback: Feb 6
Western Canadian premiere
Presented with The Dance Centre
The Brutal Joy merges Black vernacular line dance, sartorial gesture, and scored improvisation into an exploration of self-determination and collective imagination. Through rhythm, light, and communal presence, the performers embody the poise of the Black dandy and the shared pulse of the Electric Slide. This is movement as memory and possibility—a choreography of Black living that imagines otherwise.
Wayqeycuna - Tiziano Cruz (Argentina)
THEATRE
Feb 6 @ 7:30PM, Feb 7 @ 2PM | The Roundhouse
Post-show Talkback: Feb 6
Vancouver premiere
Presented with Latincouver
Presenting Supporter: McGrane-Pearson Endowment Fund
Like a quipu—the intricate system of knotted cords used by Andean peoples to record memory and knowledge—Wayqeycuna traces Argentinean artist Tiziano Cruz's path back to his childhood in the Andean north. Through a poetic layering of testimony, ritual, and performance, this final work in his trilogy unfolds as an act of return and repair—a lament for what has been taken, and a celebration of what persists.
The Motha' Kiki Ball - BlackOUT Collective (Canada)
MUSIC, DANCE
Feb 7 @ 5PM | The Birdhouse
Co-presented by PuSh and Van Vogue Jam
From vogue to runway, The Motha' Kiki Ball crowns motherhood as the origin story, legacy, and creative force behind Ballroom. Black Out, a collective centering Blackness in the local Kiki scene, leads this year's winter ball. This Black History Month spectacular celebrates the power that gives life to cultures and movements. Expect looks that radiate iconic energy and a runway filled with matriarch moments.
Trouble Score - Luanda Casella / Pablo Casella / ntgent (Belgium/Brazil)
THEATRE, MUSIC, MULTIMEDIA
Feb 7 @ 7:30PM | Vancouver Playhouse
Post-show Talkback: Feb 7
Vancouver premiere
Presented with Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre
Trouble Score. Cred Koen Broos.
Part ritual, part pop concert, Trouble Score is a witty and disruptive storytelling séance that revisits an old family scandal unravelling into an impossible plot, set against the backdrop of racial segregation and a military dictatorship. Razor-sharp, darkly funny text, immersive soundscapes, and otherworldly lighting reimagine childhood memory through the lens of magic realism. What emerges is a surreal portrait of family myth—where humour, complicity, and renewal converge in storytelling alchemy.
TESTO – Wet Mess (UK)
THEATRE, DRAG, MULTIMEDIA
Feb 7 @ 8PM, Feb 8 @ 2PM | Performance Works
Post-show Talkback: Feb 8
Western Canadian premiere
Presented with Here + Now and the frank theatre co.
In TESTO, Wet Mess dives headfirst into the gloriously messy edges of drag, testosterone, and transition. It's a chaotic celebration of bodies in flux—where the magical hides in the mundane and made-up fantasies become real. Expect dykey desires, moustache meals, and a choreography of guttural sexuality that turns everyday life inside out.
2026 PuSh FESTIVAL ONLINE PROGRAMMING
JEZEBEL – Cherish Menzo / Frascati Producties (The Netherlands / Belgium)
Online: Thurs Jan 22—Feb 8
Through physical performance, hip hop visual language, and the slowed, distorted flow of chopped-and-screwed sound, JEZEBEL reclaims the hyper-sexualized "video vixen" of hip hop's golden age. Once framed through a male gaze that fetishized and vilified Black femininity, she now stretches the image until its artifice becomes her authorship. What emerges is a portrait of a woman both muse and maker—unapologetic and self-possessed.
La utopia de la mariposa - Lukas Avendaño (Mexico)
Online: Feb 2—8
Performance, politics, and cinema converge in two visionary films featuring Lukas Avendaño. La utopía de la mariposa channels personal grief into public testimony, where art becomes a demand for justice.
Orpheus - Alan Lake Factori(e) (Canada)
Online: Jan 30—Feb 8
In Orpheus, choreographer Alan Lake reimagines descent as transformation. Through a world both visually striking and physically visceral, performers move between rupture and renewal, intimacy and immensity. Oscillating between dream and reality, the work becomes a mirror for our fractured humanity—a dance of chaos and connection, inviting us to drink from the fire, and to emerge changed.
Parades - Alan Lake Factori(e) (Canada)
Online: Jan 30—Feb 8
A short film by Alan Lake, Parades is an initiation into a world between fable and ritual—a cinematic tableau where bodies morph, collide, and regenerate. Parades unfolds as a pagan procession of human and hybrid forms, each gesture charged with raw emotion and symbolic force. Through image and movement, transforms myth into motion—a meditation on being, becoming, and the sacred ordinary.
SKIN - Renae Shadler & Collaborators, with Roland Walter (Germany/Australia)
Online: Feb 4—8
Performed by Roland Walter, a dancer with full-body spastic paralysis, and Renae Shadler, a non-disabled choreographer, SKIN unfolds between contraction and expansion. Inspired by sea anemones, liquid states, and the shifting textures of the earth—whose surface is changing ever faster in the Anthropocene—this duet is not about access, but excess. A meditation on how our environment both shapes us and is shaped by us.
TIERRA – Fana Adjani (Mexico)
Online: Feb 2—8
Tierra, directed by Fana Adjani, turns dance and ecofeminism into mythic becoming. Each film blurs the line between document and dream, revealing art as both resistance and renewal.
ACTIVITIES/RELATED EVENTS
Opening Party
Jan 23 @ 9PM | The Birdhouse
Raise the curtain on PuSh 2026 with a luminous night of live electronic performance and dance. Palestinian DJ and composer Khalil Albatranmerges abstract sound with collective memory in a kinetic search for freedom. French composer Marie Delprat transforms the dance floor with semi-modular synths and live-manipulated vocals. Vancouver's Joshua Ongcol and company ignite the room with spontaneous, high-energy cyphers born from clubs, jams, and joy. Come move, connect, and start the festival in full frequency.
Bread for the World Workshops (Encuentro)
Feb 4 @ 6—9PM | The Roundhouse
A free, hands-on workshop where participants knead and shape bread as offerings to honour those who came before us. No experience is needed, just open hands and an open heart. The dough created will later become part of Argentinean artist Tiziano Cruz's stage performance Wayqeycuna, connecting us through shared acts of remembrance and bread.
The Unreliable Narrator: Writing in the Digital Age Artist Talk (Encuentro)
Feb 5 @5-7pm | Goldcorp Centre for the Arts | Supported by SFU
For arts professionals.
Reckoning with the cult of story in our post-truth era, Luanda Casella (Trouble Score)—writer, performing artist, and master of narrative subversion—examines how the timeless human desire for storytelling has been hijacked by the machinery of persuasion. In this lecture, she introduces her artistic practice and research into The Unreliable Narrator, revealing how deceptive discourse and irony operate across literature, performance, and digital culture to both manipulate and awaken critical thought.
Remembering the Present: A Free Creation Laboratory with L'École Parallèle Imaginaire (France)
Jan 12 @ 9AM—5PM / Jan 13—16 & 19—22 @ 10AM–6PM | The Improv Centre | Presented in partnership with The Improv Centre
For theatre artists. Free. Application required.
Current pre-professional theatre students are welcome.
Step into a nine-day creation laboratory with Rémi Fortin and Arthur Amard— members of L'ÉcoleParallèleImaginaire (France) and co-creators of Le Beau Monde. Together, you'll enter a transmission of process that merges performance and collective invention. Drawing from the dramaturgy of Le Beau Monde—a speculative ritual in which future beings attempt to reconstruct the everyday customs of our time—you'll use improvisation, collaborative writing, and embodied exploration to reinvent fragments of the original work and generate your own speculative ceremonies. What gestures, emotions, and social habits might future generations remember—or misremember—about us?
Guided by Fortin and Amard's signature blend of intelligence, absurdity, and tenderness, you'll experiment at the edge of documentary and fiction, building speculative ceremonies as new mythology of the present. Rather than transmitting a fixed form, the artists invite you to co-create an ecological and poetic model of how performance might travel—across borders, bodies, and time. The intensive will culminate in a public studio showing.
In Practice with Cherish Menzo& Jennifer Piasecki (The Netherlands)
Jan 24 @ 12—3PM | Q7 Studios | Presented with New Works Dance | Supported by FPK
For dance artists. Registration required.
Join international artists Cherish Menzo (JEZEBEL // Co-Artistic Director, GRIP) and Jennifer Piasecki (Production & Tour Management, GRIP) for a conversation on their experiences working in collaborative artistic environments. They will share personal insights, approaches, and reflections on practices that support care, balance, and collaboration across their dance company.
The Unreliable Narrator: Writing in the Digital Age Masterclass (Belgium / Brazil)
Feb 4 @ 2–6PM / Feb 5—7 @ 10AM–2PM | The Post at 750 | Presented with PTC
For writers and playwrights. Free for selected applicants.
Reckoning with the cult of story in our post-truth era, Luanda Casella invites you to explore how the timeless human desire for narrative has been hijacked by the storytelling machine. In this four-day writing masterclass, you'll investigate The Unreliable Narrator—a figure who manipulates, misremembers, and blurs the boundaries of truth—studying its evolution from literature to digital discourse and writing from the unstable edge between fiction and persuasion.
Drag & Devising Workshop with Wet Mess (UK)
Feb 10 @ 3—6PM | Goldcorp Centre for the Arts | Presented with Tara Cheyenne Performance | Supported by SFU
For artists with any performance practice excited to explore experimental drag. Registration and payment required.
Enter the gloriously chaotic world of Wet Mess—the TESTO creator, sweet prince, alien baby, and DIY drag dream coach. In this playful devising workshop, you'll lip-sync, costume, and clown your way toward new drag personas and stage creations. Explore how five-minute acts can grow into full-length fever dreams, mixing the trashy with the transcendent. Come ready to get weird, take risks, and see what strange, glorious version of yourself slips out of the seams.
LISTING INFORMATION |
PuSh International Performing Arts Festival |
Dates: |
January 22–February 8, 2026 |
Ticket Prices: |
$39/$59 General Admission plus FREE events |
Location: |
Various Vancouver Venues |
Audience Services: |
604.449.6000 / tickets@pushfestival.ca |
Website: |
pushfestival.ca |
About PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (pushfestival.ca)
For more than two decades, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival has been BC's signature mid-winter cultural event, delivering audacious, innovative, and contemporary works of live arts by acclaimed local, national, and international artists. Curated, multidisciplinary, international in scope—the Festival animates culture and accelerates social change with performance and multimedia projects that embrace creative risk and share a sense of cultural urgency. Follow PuSh on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe on YouTube.
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