Podcasts

PuSh Play: New Episodes for 2024

On the stage, in the rehearsal studio, and now: in your podcast library! PuSh Play, our freshly-pressed podcast, is now online. Join Gabrielle Martin, PuSh’s Director of Programming, in conversation with PuSh artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form.

New episodes weekly, wherever you listen to podcasts!

Season 3: 2025 Festival

Gabrielle Martin chats with Anne-Marie Ouellet, whose work De glace (From Ice), will be presented at the 20th PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

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Gabrielle and Anne-Marie discuss:

Why did you choose a Nordic tale as inspiration for De Glace?
What does it mean to allow the unspeakable to emerge? How do you create an environment that fosters this?
Can you describe the visual aesthetic of L’eau du bain
What about the various technology and design used for this work, especially audio?
What’s exciting and interesting about the child’s presence on stage?

About Anne-Marie Ouellet

Anne-Marie Ouellet lives and works in Montreal (Quebec), Canada. Her interdisciplinary practice explores matters pertaining to the standards that govern behaviors in the public and private space. Through the elaboration and experimentation of different types of behaviors, Anne-Marie Ouellet creates organizational structures in the form of interventions in collaboration with groups of participants who wear her clothes-uniforms in the urban space. Her work mainly gravitates around the notions of individualism and collectivity, standardization and regimentation.

With an MFA from Université du Quebec à Montréal (2011), Anne-Marie Ouellet has exhibited in Quebec at Musée d’art de Joliette (2022), Le lieu (Quebec, 2019), Verticale (Laval, 2017), Optica (Montreal, 2015), Maison des arts de Laval (2013), Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal (2011), Manif d’art 4, Quebec (2008), and at the Musée Régional de Rimouski (2005). She also participated in events and artist residencies in Quebec (Sagamie, Alma, (2020), Axenéo7, Gatineau (2016), PRAXIS, Ste-Thérèse (2012) and DARE-DARE, Montreal (2012)), France (FRAC/Alsace, Strasbourg (2006)), and Germany (B_Tour Festival, Berlin (2013) et Oberweilt e.V., Stuttgart (2007)).

Land Acknowledgement

Anne-Marie joins the conversation from Ottawa, and recognizes the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation as the traditional owners of the land and honors their culture and history.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Andrea Peña about her work BOGOTÁ.

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Gabrielle and Andrea discuss:

What does the choreographic practice require?
What is the future of choreography from today forward?
What does it mean to democratize the choreographic process and how is that different from the norm?
What are the sociopolitical questions in the work?
What does it mean to make a work about the anthropocene?
What do you mean by the container-state?
What does the word “queer” mean to you, your practice, and Bogotá?
What does it mean to queer the baroque, especially in the body?
How do you capture both past and future notions of the industrial and industrial society?
How does it feel to return to Vancouver with this work?

About Andrea Peña and Artists

Andrea Peña and Artists (AP&A) a millennial company that believes in the possibilities of crafting new imaginaries in choreographic and performing arts. Returning, individually and collectively, to our essence as humans. As an upcoming generation of artists, we feel we have the responsibility to reflect on the values that shape us, our decisions, reflections, work, to focus beyond our actions and return to our essence.

AP&A merges the universes of choreography and design; a multidisciplinary company that creates performative universes that challenge notions of a sensible humanity through political yet abstract creations which transform conceptual research into theatrical larger ensemble installations. The foundations of Peña’s work is to create rich choreographic systems that reveal the point of view of the performers. Negotiations can take the form of frames, concepts, athletic constraints, to reveal the individual and collective point of view, as much as the choreographers.

As a bi-cultural artist, our works bring forward interwoven Latin American philosophies and inclusive values to carve space for the futuring of finding unity through our complexity and diversity, thus perpetually encouraging collisions between heterogeneous fields, disciplines and individuals. We aim to democratize the choreographic process as public sources for experimentation and collective knowledge creation.

Land Acknowledgement

Andrea joins the conversation from Pittsburgh, ancestral lands of the Seneca in Pittsburgh and Sharpsburg, Adena culture, Hopewell culture, and Monongahela peoples who were later joined by refugees of other tribes (including the Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, and Haudenosaunee tribes, who were all forced off their original land and displaced by European colonists.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Mirko Guido about his work All That Remains.

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Gabrielle and Mirko discuss:

Where are you from and why is that important?
What does it mean for your show, All That Remains, to be an “urgent call to consciousness”?
How does being onstage affect people’s internal responses?
How do you work in the devising process?
What does it mean to be in a state of “sensitive listening”?
What did your collaboration with a sculptor, Soren, entail?
What are the parameters you offer your students based on Soren’s work?
What is your practice of local collaboration?
How does “All That Remains” fit into your larger practice?
How do you devise “systems of responsiveness”?
What is the place of your own body in your current artistic practice?

About Mirko Guido

Mirko Guido (b. Italy) works with dance and choreography between theatres, art galleries/museums, and public spaces – spanning over performances, installations, intra-disciplinary research projects, and publications. All works are a continual negotiation of boundaries — between body, space and materialities, between individual and collective experience, between certainty and ambiguity. Each project operates as a physical, material and intellectual inquiry into choreography as a system of responsiveness, guiding the attention towards the co-existence of multiple processes and materialities. As a dancer he worked in several dance companies, including the Cullberg Ballet, and with a great variety of choreographers, whom have provided him with a wide range of embodied perspectives on dance, from Mats Ek, Crystal Pite, Johan Inger to Deborah Hay, Benoît Lachambre, Cristina Caprioli and Tilman O’Donnel, passing by Paul Lighgoot & Sol Leon, Itzik Galili, Alexander Ekman, Rafael Bonachela, Jo Strømgren, Stephan Thoss among many others. As a choreographer Mirko he has toured his productions across Europe, including Athens dance festival (Greece), Festival La Becquée (France), Festival MAP/P E-motional (Portugal), Teatri di vita (Italy), Dance Station (Serbia), Weld and Dansens Hus (Sweden), Bora Bora and ARoS Art Museum (Denmark), SPEL – The State Gallery of Contemporary Art, Nicosia (Cyprus) among many others. His artistic processes have been supported by major choreographic centres such as Summer Studios Rosas, Work Space Brussels; Uferstudios Berlin; PACT Zollverein; MDT Stockholm to mention but a few. Mirko holds a master’s degree in New Performative Practices from DOCH / Stockholm University of the Arts, and today he’s based in Aarhus, Denmark, and is an in-house artist at Bora Bora – Dance and Visual Theater.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with performance artist, experience maker and writer Ray Young.

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Gabrielle and Ray discuss:

How did you create “Out” and what is the significance to your artistic trajectory?
What are the complexities of blackness, queerness, and age, and how can they be worked through the body on stage?
Why remount it for PuSh and how has the work evolved?
Why is it important to be visible and seen on your own terms?
How are you exploring notions of care and rest in “Thirst Trap” and other works?
How do you create an immersive experience for 24 people in a swimming pool?
Does form always come after concept, or is it sometimes the other way around?
Where are you at in your career at this point? What are the challenges and opportunities?

About Ray Young

Ray Young is a transdisciplinary performance artist, experience maker, and writer, widely recognized for their groundbreaking work at the forefront of activism, queerness, race, and neurodiversity. Their practice is centered around creating a safe space for those who exist at the intersection of multiple realities, through collaboration and resistance to traditional forms.

In recent years, Ray’s work has been focused on exploring and shedding light on notions of rest, care, and recovery in art, particularly as it pertains to the experiences of neurodivergent artists. Ray has been working towards creating a more holistic practice that draws together art, nature, and technology, as they seek to challenge traditional capitalist ideologies of production that prioritize speed and productivity over creativity, care, and wellness.

For 2024 Ray is bringing back OUT, an interdisciplinary performance that defiantly challenges homophobia and transphobia across our communities. OUT is a duet – a conversation between two bodies, inspired by ongoing global struggles for LGBTQIA+ rights. It is a defiant challenge to the status quo, bravely embracing personal, political and cultural dissonance.

Ray’s other works include BODIES, an immersive water, light, and soundscape installation that investigates the embodied experiences of our relationship to water. Through this work, Ray seeks to explore and understand the complex and multifaceted nature of our relationship with water, and to engage viewers in a transformative sensory experience that encourages reflection and introspection.

Another recent work, THIRST TRAP, is a meditative sound piece that explores the correlation between social and climate justice, and how our actions and choices impact the world around us. Through this work, Ray invites viewers to reflect on the interconnectivity of our lives and the world we live in, and to recognize the importance of taking collective action towards building a more just and equitable future.

Ray’s work has been presented widely across the UK, including in London, Cambridge, Brighton, Leeds, and Edinburgh, as well as internationally including Portland, Mexico City, and Venezuela. Their groundbreaking contributions to the field of performance art have earned them numerous awards and accolades, and their work continues to push boundaries and challenge conventional notions of what art can be and do.

Ray also works as a lecturer, mentor, and outside eye for other artists.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Carmela Sison about Lasa Ng Imperyo (A Taste of Empire).

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Gabrielle and Carmela discuss:

Why adapt and translate A Taste of Empire?
What is involved with your process of translation?
How does the show reflect your experience as a Filipina in this world?
How is translation and adaptation linked to language reclamation, specifically for Tagalog?
Is it healthy for audiences to have a destabilizing experience sometimes, especially when the world is catered to us?
What role will writing and adapting play in your practice to come?

About Carmela Sison

Carmela Sison is a Filipino-Canadian artist living and working on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, colonially known as Vancouver, Canada. She is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s BFA in Acting program with additional training from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, the University of Victoria, and the FUEL Ensemble at Theatre Calgary. She continues to hone her craft with various teachers and mentors in Vancouver, Toronto, Chicago, and New York.

Over the past few years, Carmela has been an instructor for theatre for young audience residency programs in elementary schools, mentored and coached youth in their pursuit of a career in acting, including coaching many young adults going into professional acting programs.

As an instructor, Carmela strives to build up young actors, giving them a solid foundation with voice, text, and movement. This serves as a springboard for further growth, seeking truth, and making authentic connection. She encourages her students to be curious actors, asking questions to better understand their work.

Carmela has been working closely in Beatrice King’s Youth classes since March of 2020, shaping young actor’s careers, coaching auditions, self tapes, and providing mentorship.

As an actor, Carmela has had recurring roles on The Mysterious Benedict Society and iZombie, has appeared in many shows such as Riverdale, Altered Carbon, The Flash, and Bates Motel and can be seen in a supporting role on Lifetime’s The Kidnapping of Abby Hernandez this Fall. She has also graced many of Western Canada’s most prestigious stages, most recently in Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley at The Arts Club Theatre, Bard on the Beach, Western Canada Theatre, The Belfry Theatre, Concrete Theatre, and Theatre Calgary.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Bettina Szabo of Petrikor Danse about Habitat.

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Gabrielle and Bettina discuss:

What is the relevance of the Hermes metaphor and sculpture? What drew you initially to the sculpture and made you reach out to the artist?
Can you speak to your trajectory with form over your career as an artist?
How does sound spatialization fit into this production?
How do you manage all of the lighting cues yourself while onstage?
How do you integrate your workshops into your practice, and vice versa?
What is cultural mediation and how does it affect your work?
What is the purpose of bringing art back down to earth and demystifying the process?
What is relationship between form and subject matter?
What is internalized misogyny?
Are there recurring dramaturgic elements or social themes in your work, or is the throughline about process, making each work totally unique?

About Bettina Szabo

Born in Uruguay, Bettina Szabo is a dancer and choreographer. Before she arrived in Montreal in 2007, she studied with Hebe Rosa (Uruguay), and Rami Be’er (Israel). She graduated from the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (EDCM) in 2013, and obtained her BFA in Choreography at Concordia University (Montreal) in 2017. She has participated in many workshops with renowned artists such as Marie Chouinard, Dave St Pierre, Hildegard De Vyust, Guy Cools, Benoit Lachambre, and Clara Furey.

In 2006, Bettina formed the collective Jeli-Mien, with whom she was awarded the emerging choreographer award given by the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Uruguay. She also performed for the Ballet de Camara de Montevideo (2004-2007), the KCDC (2010), the collective Interlope (2013-2014) and for Jason Cutler in 2019.

She founded Petrikor Danse in 2016, which has allowed her to fully realize her multidisciplinary works mixing contemporary dance, music and visual arts. Bettina first created Noir=+ (2014) for dancer and vibraphone, and later presented Séquelles (2017), and Habitat (2020). Her work has been presented in Geneva, Paris, Lyon, Düsseldorf, Vienna, Seoul, Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto and Bilbao. She was invited on multiple occasions to work with musicians such as the Bakalari ensemble, the Architekt ensemble and composer Laurence Jobidon.

She is a member of Diversité Artistique Montreal (DAM) and a former elected board member of the Quebec Dance association RQD). She actively fights for a more culturally diverse art scene in Montreal.

Land Acknowledgement

Bettina joined the conversation from what is now known as Montreal, on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg..

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Jaha Koo, the artist behind The History of Korean Western Theatre.

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Access the transcript here

Gabrielle and Jaha discuss:

What is the role of drama and history in reclaiming the pre-colonial past?
Why hamartia, or tragic error, for the title of the trilogy of work?
What western or eastern influences do you perceive on your work? How do these aesthetics complement or come into tension with each other?
How do you see your practice evolving over the past eight years up to the current production?
What did it mean to become a father during the creation of this trilogy?
What creative risks and experiments are you embracing going forward? What’s next for you?
What are the differences between audiences and responses between east Asia and elsewhere?

About Jaha Koo

Jaha Koo (he/him) is a South Korean theatre/performance maker, music composer and videographer. His artistic practice oscillates between multimedia and performance, encompassing his own music, video, text, and robotic objects.

His most recent project, the Hamartia Trilogy, includes Lolling and Rolling (2015), Cuckoo (2017) and The History of Korean Western Theatre (2020). The trilogy represents a long-term exploration of the political landscape, colonial history and cultural identity of East Asia. Thematically, it focuses on structural issues in Korean society and how the inescapable past tragically affects our lives today. Currently, Koo is working on a new creation, Haribo Kimchi, scheduled to premiere in 2024.

Koo majored in Theatre Studies (BFA, 2011) at Korea National University of Arts and earned a master’s degree (MA, 2016) at DAS Theatre in Amsterdam.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Châu Kim-Sanh, the artist behind BLEU NÉON.

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Gabrielle and Châu Kim-Sanh discuss:

How is mobility a social determinant of health, specifically for Indigenous peoples?
Why the squat and what does it represent to you?
How does meaning change between places, such as Vietnam compared to the Philippines?
How do you deal with class differences in this particular work? What does it mean to have a chair compared to being on the ground in terms of sociopolitical status and meaning?
What do you mean by Asian body roots and what is being revealed through this work?
Where does pride fit into creating and developing this piece?
What is your experience performing this work in different contexts?
How is the birthing process related to this work?
How is this show related to or informed by your past?
Why Vietnamese rap, especially when you don’t speak Vietnamese?
What is the process of rap mentoring and why has it been important?
Why is the cheating of the squat interesting?
How can we do something together in performance without having the same abilities?

About Chau Kim-Sanh

Châu Kim-Sanh (she/her) is a choreographer-dancer, filmmaker, and cultural worker. Her stage creations have been presented at the MAI, Tangente, l’Arsenal, l’Écart (Canada), Krossing-Over (Vietnam), Performance Curator Initiatives (Philippines), and SIDance (Korea), among others. In 2023, she collaborates as a dancer with Ariane Dessaulles, Erin Hill, and compagnies Katie Ward, Carpe Diem /Emmanuel Jouthe. Châu is the artistic director at Studio 303. She was an associate artist at EQUIVOC’ from 2018 to 2024. In 2024 she founded her own company, MIDLAND, which supports her artistic practice.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Châu Kim-Sanh joined the conversation from what is now known as Montreal, on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Gabi Gonçalves, producer from Corpo Rastreado of Renata Carvalho’s piece, Transpofagic Manifesto.

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Access the transcript here

Gabrielle and Gabi discuss:

What does it mean for your work to give voice?
How did Corpo Rastreado come to be, and what does it do?
What is the difference between an artist and a producer? What does it mean to be a producer in terms of enabling art and artists?
What is the difficulty of using the word “project”?
What is the “tree philosophy” of art?
What makes a Corpo Rastreado artist?
What does it mean to be a “political act of great courage?”
How did you start working with Renata Carvalho?
What has led to Renata’s international success?
How do we approach trans rights across countries with such different laws, such as Brazil and Canada?
How do we take care of the audience?
How do we learn to work on the micro-political level?

About Gabi Gonçalves

Paulistana, articulator of the whole zorra for 14 years and our doctor in Communication and Semiotics (Communication and Cultural Production in Brazil – a study on the operators of helplessness and firefly artists – 2016), Gabi Gonçalves is one of the main responsible for this melting pot that is Corpo Rastreado.

Working with production, in her opinion, is studying, researching and mainly a political act and a lot of courage, with a pinch of madness!

For this premise, she brings in her experience the production in the biggest national and international festivals, knowledge in all the notices and forms of sponsorship (direct or not) as well as full experience in all areas of culture.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Tom Arthur Davis and Jiv Parasram, co-creators of SWIM by Pandemic Theatre and Theatre Conspiracy.

Listen to the episode:

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Access the transcript here

Gabrielle, Tom and Jiv discuss:

What was the beginning of your relationship with PuSh?
What was the process of developing and realizing “Daughter” at PuSh in 2018?
What role does Bouffon clown play in your work?
Why is post-show after-care so important with some of your work?
Where are you at in the process of developing SWIM?
How are you using sound to emphasize the themes of your work?
How has your practice evolved, or stayed true, over time?
What is the importance of local and hyper-local work?
What is your experience of the cultural context of PuSh?

About Tom Arthur Davis

Tom is a theatre artist, producer, and project manager. Originally from the unceded territory of the Algonquin nation (Ottawa) with colonial lineage from the ancestral homelands of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq peoples (Newfoundland), he has recently relocated to Lekwungen territory (Victoria), after spending most of his career in Mississauga-Anishinaabe-Haudenosaunee territory (Toronto).

In 2009, he co-founded Pandemic Theatre (then less distastefully named), for which he has acted as the Artistic Director since its inception. From 2018-2022, Tom worked with Why Not Theatre, acting as a Managing Producer where he led artist support programs such as RISER, Space Project, and ThisGen Fellowship. From 2014-2019, Tom worked with the Toronto Fringe in multiple capacities, including as the inaugural director and program designer of TENT, an educational program that teaches entrepreneurial skills to emerging theatre artists. From 2022-2023 Tom worked with PuSh International Performing Arts Festival as the Interim Director of Programming.

Currently, he is working with the BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres, helping to organize their annual Indigenous youth conference, Gathering Our Voices.

About Jiv Parasram

Jivesh is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist, and facilitator of Indo-Caribbean descent. His work has toured Nationally and Internationally. Jiv is the founding Artistic Producer of Pandemic Theatre, and became the Artistic Director of Rumble Theatre following three years as the Associate Artistic Producer at Theatre Passe Muraille. He was a member of the Cultural Leader Lab with the Banff Centre and Toronto Arts Council. His public service work has included collaborations with the Ad Hoc Assembly, The Canadian Commission for UNESCO, and as an advisor to the National Arts Centre. His current cultural practice centres decolonization through aesthetics.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Season 2: PuSh’s 20th Anniversary

Gabrielle Martin chats with Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim, co-directors of asses.masses.

Show Notes

Listen to the episode:

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Access the transcript here

Gabrielle, Patrick and Milton discuss:

How did your relationship with PuSh start?
What are the importance of youth programs across various festivals?
What is asses.masses and what was the process of creating it and bringing it to PuSh?
What is the place for participatory work?
What are the other patterns and ways of showing work?
Who is the live body on stage and how does it interface with the digital world?
What is a performing arts festival now, especially after Covid?
What is the future of asses.masses?

About Patrick Blenkarn

Patrick Blenkarn is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. His research-based practice revolves around the themes of language, labour, and economy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books.

His work and collaborations have been featured in performance festivals, galleries, museums, and film festivals, including Festival TransAmériques (Montréal), PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (Vancouver), Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, the Humboldt Forum (Berlin), Festival of Live Digital Art (Kingston), STAGES Festival (Halifax), Banff Centre for the Arts, Risk/Reward (Portland), SummerWorks (Toronto), rEvolver (Vancouver), RISER Projects (Toronto), and the Festival of Recorded Movement (Vancouver). In 2020, he was nominated for Best Projection Design at Toronto’s Dora Awards. In 2022, his work with Milton Lim, asses.masses, received a National Creation Fund investment from the National Arts Centre of Canada.

Patrick has frequently been an artist in residence at galleries and theatres around the world, including USC Games (Los Angeles), The Arctic Circle (Svalbard), the Spitsbergen Artist Center (Svalbard), GlogauAIR (Berlin), Fonderie Darling (Montreal), Malaspina Printmakers (Vancouver), Skaftfell Center for Visual Art (Iceland), VIVO Media Arts (Vancouver), and The Theatre Centre (Toronto).

Patrick is also the co-founder of and a key archivist for videocan, Canada’s video archive of performance documentation. He has a degree in philosophy, theatre, and film from the University of King’s College and an MFA from Simon Fraser University. His writings on the politics of theatre have been published in Performance Matters, Theatre Research in Canada, GUTS, SpiderWebShow, and Canadian Theatre Review.
He is based out of Vancouver and Los Angeles.

About Milton Lim

Milton Lim (he/him) is a digital media artist, game designer, and performance creator based in Vancouver, Canada: the traditional, unceded, and occupied territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

His research-based practice entwines publicly available data, interactive digital media, and gameful performance to create speculative visions and candid articulations of social capital. This line of inquiry aims to reconsider our repertoires of knowledge aggregation and political intervention in the contemporary context of big data and algorithmic culture. Often cheeky and audience/participant driven, his work challenges standard performance traditions including duration, linearity, and repeatability. Milton holds a BFA (Hons.) in theatre performance and psychology from Simon Fraser University.

He has created works for and performed in various international festivals and venues including PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (Vancouver), CanAsian Dance Festival (Toronto), Festival TransAmériques (Montréal), Carrefour international de théâtre festival (Quebec City), IMPACT Festival (Kitchener), Seattle International Dance Festival, Risk/Reward Festival (Portland), Festival Internacional de Teatro Universitario / FITU at Teatro UNAM (Mexico City), Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, Mayfest (Bristol), artsdepot (London), Battersea Arts Centre (London), New Theatre Royal (Portsmouth), Strike a Light Festival (Gloucester), Teatre Lliure (Barcelona), Inteatro (Ancona), Hong Kong Arts Festival, soft/WALL/studs (Singapore), and Darwin Festival.

Performance credits include The Arts Club’s The Great Leap, Gateway Theatre’s King of the Yees at Canada’s National Arts Centre, and Theatre Conspiracy’s award-winning immersive show: Foreign Radical at CanadaHub (Edinburgh Fringe). Milton’s media artworks have been presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery, San Francisco State University, F-O-R-M, VIVO Media Arts Centre, and The New Gallery. In 2016, he was awarded the Ray Michal Prize for Outstanding Body of Work at the Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards.

He is a co-artistic director of Hong Kong Exile, an artistic associate with Theatre Conspiracy, a co-founder and key archivist with the videocan national video archive of performing arts documentation, a recent artistic-leader-in-residence with the National Theatre School (Canada), one of the co-creators behind culturecapital: the performing arts economy trading card game, and one of the co-creators of asses.masses: the video game. In 2022, his work on asses.masses received the prestigious National Creation Fund from the National Arts Centre of Canada and it is now touring internationally in 5+ languages.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded in what is now known as Montreal, on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with lighting designer, photographer, writer and performer Itai Erdal.

Show Notes

Listen to the episode:

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Access the transcript here.

Gabrielle and Itai discuss:

How did your relationship with PuSh start?
What inspires the effects and choices in your work?
What is the world of international touring like?
What was the genesis and process of How to Disappear Completely?
What is Soldiers of Tomorrow and why does it need to be told today?
What is the role of the lighting designer?
What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh?

About Itai Erdal

An award winning lighting designer, photographer, writer and performer, Itai is the founder of The Elbow Theatre in Vancouver, for whom he co-wrote and performed in Soldiers of Tomorrow, Hyperlink, This Is Not A Conversation and A Very Narrow Bridge.

Itai has designed over 300 shows for theatre, dance and opera companies in over fifty cities around the world. Some of the companies he worked with include: Arts Club Theatre (16 shows), The Stratford Festival (11 shows), New Victory (Off Broadway), The Vancouver Opera, Vancouver Playhouse, Bard on the Beach, The Electric Company, National Arts Centre, Soulpepper, Tarragon, Factory, The Citadel, MTC, The Segal Centre, The Jerusalem Lab, Haifa Theatre, Tamasha, Box Clever and Teatro Villa Velha in Salvador, Brazil.

He worked with such choreographers as: Crystal Pite, Nigel Charnock, Noam Gagnon, Robert Hylton, Serge Bennathan, Kate Alton, Chick Snipper, Noa Dar, Susan Elliot, Idan Cohen and Toru Shimazaki.

Itai has won six Jessie Richardson Awards, a Dora Mavor Moore Award, a Winnipeg Theatre Award, the Jack King Award, a Guthrie Award, Victoria’s Spotlight Choice Award and the Design Award at the 2008 Dublin Fringe Festival. He was shortlisted to the Siminovitch Prize in 2018.

Itai’s first one-man show: How to Disappear Completely (The Chop, directed by James Long), premiered in 2011 and had 25 remounts in 21 cities. It won the best director award at the Summerworks Festival in Toronto, and was shortlisted to the Dublin Fringe Award, the Brighton Fringe Award and the Total Theatre Award at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Soldiers of Tomorrow received Summerhall’s Lustrum Award and was nominated to an Offfest Award at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with composer Njo Kong Kie.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Njo Kong Kie discuss:

How did your relationship with PuSh start?
What was the process of presenting work at PuSh?
How do you interpret and react to the source material?
How did you pivot to digital work during Covid?
How does the work transition back to the live stage?
How has your artistic practice grown over time?

About Njo Kong Kie

Njo Kong Kie (composer) is a composer for dance, opera and theatre. His works include music for the play Infinity by Hannah Moscovitch, the same-sex rom-com opera knotty together (with Anna Chatterton), and the music theatre work Mr. Shi and His Lover (with Wong Teng Chi) – the first ever Chinese language production at SummerWorks, Tarragon Theatre and the National Arts Centre English Theatre.

Long-serving music director of La La La Human Steps in Montreal, Kong Kie has further worked with choreographers Anne Plamondon, Aszure Barton, Shawn Hounsel and others, providing original music to their productions for companies such as Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet National de L’Opera du Rhin, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Singapore Dance Theatre and Ballet BC. His soundtrack for TV documentaries includes Fisk: Untitled Portrait and China Rises.

In development: The Year of the Cello, a play with solo cello music set in Hong Kong in the 1920s (with Marjorie Chan); The Futures Market, an opera exploring the complex moral dimensions of the trade in human organs (with Douglas Rodger) and I swallowed a moon made of iron, a song cycle set to the haunting poems of Chinese poet Xu Lizhi (Canadian Stage, May 2019).

Kong Kie is the artistic producer of Music Picnic. More at www.musicpicnic.com.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded in Tkaronto (Toronto), on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Tkaronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Episode Title: Ep. 34 – Exchange (2020)

NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, the audio quality for this episode is not at the usual standard for PuSh Play.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Fay Nass, Artistic and Executive Director of the frank theatre and Artistic Director of Aphotic Theatre.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Fay discuss:

How did your relationship with PuSh start?
How do we explore the relationship between form and content?
What is the importance of public and private spaces for performance?
How has your artistic practice grown and evolved?
Why is the concept of exchange important in theatre?
What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh?

About Fay Nass

Fay Nass is a community-engaged director, writer, dramaturg, innovator, producer and educator. They are the Artistic Director of the frank theatre company and the founder/Artistic Director of Aphotic Theatre.

Fay has over 17 years of experience in text-based and devised work deeply rooted in inter-cultural and collaborative approaches. Fay’s work often examines questions of race, gender, sexuality, culture and language through an intersectional lens in order to shift meanings and de-construct paradigms rooted in our society. Fay’s work celebrates liminality and trans-culturalism, and blurs the line between politics and intimate personal stories.

Fay’s work has been presented at PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, SummerWorks Festival, Queer Arts Festival, the CULTCH and Firehall Arts Centre. Her readings and experimental work have been presented at various conferences and artist-run galleries in Spain, Berlin and Paris. Their co-creation project Be-Longing was part of the 2021 New York international Film Festival, NICE International Film Festival and Madrid International Film Festival.

Their most recent credits include: co-creating Be-Longing (the frank theatre), co-directing Trans Script Part I: The Women (the frank theatre and Zee Theatre at Firehall Arts Centre), directing She Mami Wata & the Pussy WitchHunt (the frank theatre at PuSh Festival 2020), co-directing Straight White Men (ITSAZOO productions at Gateway Theatre), and dramaturgy for Camera Obscura (Hungry Ghosts) (the frank theatre & QAF). Fay holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University. Currently, they are doing the Artistic Leadership Residency at the National Theatre School of Canada.

As an artistic leader and a practitioner, Fay has deep and involved relationships—both creative and organizational—with a wide spectrum of artists across generations and stylistic practices. As an educator and facilitator, their philosophy and pedagogy are rooted in anti-racism and anti-oppression.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Miriam Fernandes, co-artistic director of Toronto’s why not theatre.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Miriam discuss:

What was the process of creating Prince Hamlet and bringing it to Vancouver?
What does it mean to create work with and for those hard of hearing?
How do you take a huge show that isn’t built to tour on tour?
How did your relationship with PuSh start?
What was it like to collaborate with David Suzuki?
How do you work with performers who don’t have professional experience?
How did why not theatre’s artistic approach evolve, and how did your own artistic evolution fit into that?
How do you incorporate stumbling into live art?
What have you brought to why not theatre that has informed its direction?

About Miriam Fernandes

Miriam is a Toronto-based artist who has worked as an actor, director, and theatre-maker around the world. Acting credits include Jungle Book (WYRD/Kidoons), Animal Farm (Soulpepper Theatre), Prince Hamlet (Why Not Theatre), Dinner with the Gods (Wolf and Wallflower, Sydney AU), The Snow Queen and A Sunday Affair (Theatre New Brunswick), The Living (Summerworks Performance Festival), and Soliciting Temptation (Tarragon Theatre). She has trained with the SITI Company, and is a graduate of Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Directing and creation credits include Nesen, (MiniMidiMaxi Festival, Norway) The First Time I Saw the Sea (YVA Company, Norway). She is currently in development for a few new pieces that she is co-creating including an adaptation of the Mahabharata, Three Pigs, and a new play called Partition. Miriam is the recipient of the JBC Watkins Award and was nominated for the inaugural Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize.

About why not theatre

When a well-respected global performer couldn’t get an audition in Toronto, we knew it was time for a change.

Ravi Jain moved back to Toronto after building a career in theatre in New York and London. After years of growth and creativity, his ambitions came to a standstill when traditional companies wouldn’t welcome his voice. When adversity pushed, Ravi pushed back and launched Why Not.

Since 2007, Why Not has taken on modern social issues and redefined what it means to be an independent theatre company. Ravi was later joined by Owais Lightwala and Kelly Read, in a unique tri-leadership team that was key to Why Not’s success. Today, this leadership structure is being further expanded into a more collaborative model, with Ravi, Karen Tisch, and Miriam Fernandes at the helm.

Together, we are forcing doors open, inventing, encouraging and building a creative community, welcoming stories that look and feel like Toronto, and sharing it all with the world.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with performance artist Ralph Escamillan.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Ralph discuss:

How did you come to know about PuSh and get a commission for Hinky Punk?
How do you elevate the performer into the visually iconic?
What is Hinky Punk?
How do you embody aspects of queerness in one performer?
How do you work with restriction?
What role can costume play?
What is the value of ballroom culture in other artistic practices?
How do you find your place in society like you find your category in ballroom—and then transcend it?
Does the collective community ethos of ballroom translate into your other work?
What does it mean to have a true open door with the community?
What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh?
How do we continue building bridges between the different artistic communities?

About Ralph Escamillan

Ralph Escamillan is a queer, Canadian-Filipinx performance artist, teacher and community leader based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations – on so-called Vancouver, BC.

Starting at age 14, Ralph trained first in Breakdancing then explored a multitude of other street dance styles such as HipHop, Popping, House, Waacking and Locking. His passion for dance expanded to include training in Vogue, Ballroom, Ballet, Modern, Jazz and was a graduate of Contemporary Training Program Modus Operandi in 2015.

Ralph has worked/toured with Vancouver companies: Company 605, Co. Erasga Dance, Kinesis Dance Somatheatro, Out Innerspace Theatre, Wen Wei Dance, Mascall Dance, apprenticed with Kidd Pivot in (2014) and was a guest dancer with Ballet BC (2020).

In the commercial industry, he’s worked with choreographers including AJ Aakomon, Luther Brown, Kenny Ortega, Tucker Barkely and Mandy Moore as well as artists Victoria Duffield and Zendaya Coleman, and was a guest dancer for Janet Jackson’s “Unbreakable” tour in 2015.

With his company FakeKnot he creates work that strives to understand the complexities of identity using sound, costume, technology and the body. Ralph premiered his all philippine cast work inspired by the queen of Philippine textile Piña in Vancouver May 4-6 2023 (Co-Presentation with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and The Dance Centre).

Ralph ‘Posh’ Gvasalia Basquiat has been in the Ballroom Scene since 2014, founding his own Kiki House of Gvasalia in Vancouver and joined the Mainstream House of Basquiat in 2021. The founder and Artistic/Executive Director of the non-profit organization VanVogueJam, Ralph shares his passion for Vogue/Ballroom culture at his weekly pay-what-you-can classes and vogue balls, acting as a beacon for the queer dance/culture in Western Canada.

Ralph was recently awarded the Inaugural Miriam Adams Bursary fund at the DCD Hall Of Fame in October 2022 in Toronto, as well as the Inaugural RBC Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards in Ottawa.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Owen Underhill, Artistic Director of Turning Point Ensemble.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Owen discuss:

How did your relationship with PuSh begin?
Why was interdisciplinary work important?
What was Norman Armour’s role in the early stages of Turning Point Ensemble?
How did the company evolve in terms of process, practice, points of interest and project choices from its inception until now?
What are the benefits of partnering with PuSh?
What is the cultural context of PuSh and its significance in Vancouver?
What are you excited about with upcoming projects?
Of all the Turning Point projects at PuSh, of which do you have the fondest memories?

About Turning Point Ensemble

Founded in 2002 by its musician members, Turning Point Ensemble (TPE) is a large chamber ensemble (16 instrumentalists and conductor) with a mandate to increase the understanding and appreciation of music composed during the past hundred years. The ensemble has built a strong reputation for outstanding musicianship and linking seminal 20th century repertoire to contemporary works through thoughtful programming and innovative presentations. Uniquely and flexibly sized between a small chamber ensemble and a symphonic orchestra, TPE presentations offer a symphonic palette with a chamber music sensibility. In addition to its concerts, tours and recordings, the ensemble has regularly mounted innovative interdisciplinary productions including operas, and collaborations with dance, theatre, visual art and moving image.

Turning Point Ensemble has released six CDs and one DVD on the Artifact, Centrediscs, Atma Classique, Redshift Records, Orlando, and Parma labels. We have presented a diverse range of repertoire, commissioned and performed works by Canadian and international composers, and partnered with a number of community and cultural organizations.

In 2010, TPE was awarded the Rio Tinto Alcan Award for Music 2011 – the largest production prize for music in Canada for its presentation of FIREBIRD 2011, resulting in 4 sold out performances in March 2011 at The Cultch in Vancouver.

Other significant large-scale interdisciplinary projects include Flying White -飞白 which was co-produced with Wen Wei Dance for the 2020 PuSh Festival with three sold-out performances and the premiere of air india [redacted] (5 performances November 2015). We have also had two major partnerships with Ballet British Columbia, and several projects with live music and moving image.

We are proud to have presented a diverse range of repertoire, commissioned and performed works by Canadian and international composers, and partnered with a number of community and cultural organizations. A highlight is our ground-breaking cultural collaboration with the Westbank First Nation in the Okanagan for an outdoor presentation of Barbara Pentland/Dorothy Livesay’s 1954 opera, The Lake at Quails’ Gate Winery, the original homestead of Susan Allison and her family.

The central artistic vision of the TPE is to bring to the public extraordinary music for large chamber ensemble written from the early 20th century through to present day. We draw audiences to this music through outstanding performances, and intelligent programming that creates a lively context for the music. We seek to create links from the music of earlier times to new music, to explore relationships and connections between composers and their music, to perform significant large-scale works from the Canadian and international repertoire, to collaborate with multiple art forms in extraordinary ways, and to establish meaningful long-term relationships with some of Canada’s most talented composers through commissioning and multiple performances.

Turning Point has toured internationally in 2018 to Asia and the Czech Republic, in addition to two Canadian tours. We have performed in many festivals and series including the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, New Music Concerts Toronto, ECM+ Montreal, groundswell Winnipeg, New Music Edmonton, MusicFest Vancouver, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the Sound of Dragon Festival and the Modulus Festival.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Dana Gingras of Animals of Distinction.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Dana discuss:

How did the relationship with PuSh start and develop?
The personal meaning of Dana Gingras’s work for Gabrielle
How was “Monumental” a culmination of previous work?
What does it mean to have a performing band’s live energy in rehearsals?
How did these collaborations evolve with artists in different media?
How do you make dance like going to see a concert?
How do we deal with and manage progress in our artistic practice?
How is the process of research changing?
How do you perceive the cultural context of PuSh and what has that meant for your work?
What is the power of being a creator on the outside of things?
What is liminality and why is it a powerful feature of your work?
Why is messiness an important part of developing work and the creative process?
Why was Monumental such a big step for PuSh?

About Dana Gingras and Animals of Distinction

Animals of Distinction (AOD) is the multimedia dance company of renowned choreographer and dancer Dana Gingras. Through AOD, Gingras has fostered the creation of numerous cutting-edge works that have involved innovative collaborations across diverse mediums and artistic practices, all shaped by the possibilities of new technologies and cultural shifts.

At the centre of the work is a belief that we can obtain critical knowledge from engaging with the physical and emotional risks inherent to dance and movement. It is through the body and choreography that this element of risk can be employed to explore a vision of the world that is larger than our individual isolated experiences. The goal is to stimulate audiences to become more aware of the elements of complexity, connectivity, and complicity within our physical, social, and emotional lives.

AOD’s work has been presented nationally and internationally across diverse platforms including live performance, film, design, visual art, and new media. In 2016, under the direction of Gingras, AOD produced The Holy Body Tattoo’s last work, monumental (2005), with Godspeed You! Black Emperor playing live. This expanded version of the piece premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver as part of the PuSh Festival in January 2016. Since then, monumental has been performed at the Adelaide Festival in Australia, Montreal’s Place des Arts, Grand Théâtre du Québec, as part of Luminato at The Hearn Generating Station in Toronto, the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland, BAM’s NEXT WAVE Festival in New York, the ROMAEUROPA Festival in Italy, MONA FOMA in Tasmania, Australia and, most recently, at London’s Barbican Centre.

In 2018 Gingras joined forces with group A, a Berlin-based Japanese avant-garde synthwave duo, and Sonya Stefan, a Montreal-based media artist. Together, they created anOther—a hybrid production, with performance, installation, and a live concert. anOther premiered at Agora de la Danse and made its international debut at MONA FOMA in 2019.

Free Fall/Chute Libre, her new immersive dance film, was created through a residency at the Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT). Using the Satosphère’s full-dome theatre, the work focuses on stimulating viewers’ senses in unexpected ways.  

In 2017 Dana Gingras/Animals of Distinction was granted a long-term residency at the Centre de Création O Vertigo (CCOV) in Montreal’s Place des Arts. Through this residency, Gingras/AOD produced a new large-scale work entitled FRONTERA with scenography by London based United Visual Artists and a live score by newly reformed Fly Pan Am. Recipient of support from the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund, FRONTERA premiered in Quebec City in November 2019 and has since been performed as a part of the Danse Danse season at Place des Arts in Montreal, at the Sydney Festival, Berlin’s CTM Festival, the PuSh Festival in Vancouver and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

Dana Gingras has collaborated with cultural icons like William Gibson and Jenny Holzer. Musical collaborators include underground legends like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Tindersticks, Warren Ellis of the Dirty Three, The Tiger Lillies, Roger Tellier-Craig (Fly Pan Am), Le Révélateur , and Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Multimedia works have been co-created with 3D animator Josh Sherrett, with animators and programmers James Paterson and Amit Pitaru, and, for her work on Arcade Fire’s award-winning Sprawl II video, with directors William Morrison and Vincent Morriset.

A registered non-profit society, The Animals of Distinction Arts Society is directed (in its activities and mandate) by artistic director Dana Gingras. AOD is produced and represented by international agent Sarah Rogers.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on ton the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Sylvain Émard of Sylvain Émard Danse.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Sylvain discuss:

How did your relationship with PuSh begin?
What was the impact and legacy of the show, Le Grand Continental?
How do you organize and prepare for a truly large project like Le Grand Continental?
How does line dancing fit into the origins and creation of the show?
How does a challenging project translate into a rewarding production for creators, crew and audiences?
What is the result of the fusion of popular and contemporary art?
How do you succeed in having the right representation of the community in the cast?
How is the context of PuSh and Vancouver significant to the work when brought to that community?
Why was the interaction of people in each cast of Le Grand Continental like a dream in its encapsulation of the world?
How has your artistic practice evolved over the past ten years?
Reconnecting with the sheer pleasure of dancing
What happens when the spectator is in the choreography, not outside?

About Sylvain Émard

A prolific and internationally respected artist, Sylvain Émard created his own dance company Sylvain Émard Danse in 1990, quickly establishing a reputation for a very original style. Highly theatrical at first, his work soon evolved into a more formal approach to dance. Ever since Ozone, Ozone (1987), his first solo, up to Rhapsodie (2022), he has been exploring the territory of human nature through the force and strength of the body. His repertoire now includes over thirty original pieces that have had a resounding impact all over the world.

Renowned for his refined style and precise movement, his presentation in 2009 of Le Grand Continental® at the Festival TransAmériques must have come to some as a surprise. Inspired by line dancing, this unique piece has featured 3,000 non-dancers in several performances across Canada, the United States, Mexico, South Korea, New Zealand, Chile, Germany and Austria, attracting some 125,000 spectators. In September 2017, Le Super Méga Continental boasted 375 dancers in Montréal to celebrate the city’s 375th anniversary in a monumental fashion.

Sylvain Émard’s unique style has led to invitations to work as guest choreographer in theatre, opera and cinema. These collaborations include his joining forces with Robert Lepage in 2005 to work on the opera 1984 by Lorin Maazel, presented namely at Covent Garden in London and at La Scala in Milan. At the behest of theater director René-Richard Cyr, Sylvain Émard is creating the choreographies for the musical Demain matin, Montréal m’attend at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde.

Sylvain Émard has received numerous prestigious awards, such as the Jean A. Chalmers Choreographic Award (1996). He is also co-founder of the Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Josh Martin, Artistic Co-Director of Company 605.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Josh discuss:

Collision between separate people, bodies and ideas
How did the relationship with PuSh begin?
What does it mean to be in the middle zone between emerging and landed as an artistic group?
How do collect work together, like different tracks in an album, instead of streamline on a singular vision?
What was PuShOFF (now Hold on Let Go) and how did that process work?
How do we show what Vancouver is and what’s happening beneath the surface?
Making a piece of choreography that is in constant repetition
How do you cope with the difficulty of consistency and structured improvisation?
What does it mean to find the true core of a work?
Bringing together different approaches and interpretations
It’s crucial to feel that we can put ourselves in relationship to the rest of the world

About Josh Martin

Originally from Alberta, Josh Martin is a diversely trained dance artist with a career-to-date that has led him across North America and Europe, studying and performing in many genres along the way. As a performer and collaborator, he has worked with many other dance companies and independent choreographers such as Wen Wei Wang (Wen Wei Dance), Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond (Out Innerspace Dance Theatre), Dana Gingras (Animals of Distinction), Serge Bennathan (Les Productions Figlio), Amber Funk Barton (the response.), Vanessa Goodman (Action at a Distance), Justine A. Chambers, Helen Walkley, Martha Carter, Karen Jamieson, and as a past company member of Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa under the direction of Peter Boneham. Josh’s independent work has been presented in Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Moncton, St. Johns, and through the National Arts Centre in Ottawa; as well as in the USA, Japan, and throughout Germany (Winning 1st Prize for Choreography at the Internatonal SoloTanz Festival in Stuttgart). Off the stage, he serves as Vice-Chair of The Dance Centre’s Board of Directors and Chair of its Artistic Advisory Committee. Josh was the recipient of Vancouver’s 2013 Mayor’s Arts Award – Emerging Dance Category.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Vancouver-based playwright, artistic director and author Marcus Youssef.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Marcus discuss:

Questions of difference, belonging and dissent
Dismantling systems of oppression
Crime and Punishment in 2005
How did your relationship with PuSh start?
How to bring vastly different perspectives, styles, forms, organizations, communities, agendas, etc. together in a united festival of theatre
How to grow a “scene” like PuSh has become?
Why discussing the piece, “My Name is Rachel Corrie”, is difficult today
How has social media changed the reception of theatre and the shaping of controversy?
How did PuSh create the place for complicated, provocative work?
How did the process of “Winners and Losers” unfold?
What was your own trajectory in the theatre?
Choosing collaboration over competition in the Vancouver indie scene

About Marcus Youssef

Marcus’ dozen or so plays, some of which were co-written with friends and colleagues, include Winners and Losers, Leftovers, Jabber, How Has My Love Affected You?, Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, Everyone, 3299: Forms in Order, Adrift, Peter Panties, Chloe’s Choice and A Line in the Sand. Though widely varied in terms of style and content, they often some way investigate fundamental questions of difference or “otherness.” They have been performed at theatres and festivals (and school gyms) across Canada, the US, Australia and Europe, including: the Dublin Theatre Festival, Soho Rep (Off-Broadway), Festival Trans Ameriques, PuSh Festival (four times), Foreign Affairs (Berlin), the Brighton Festival (UK), LOKAL (Reykjavik), the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canadian Stage, Wooly Mammoth and the Kennedy Centre (Washington, DC), Tarragon, Factory, the Caravan Farm Theatre, the Arts Club, the Citadel, Noorderzon (Netherlands), Ca Foscari (Venice), Brno Festival (Czech), Aarhus Festival (Denmark), On the Boards (Seattle) the Magnetic North Festival (five times), and many others.

Marcus’ work has been translated into multiple languages and is published by both Talonbooks and Playwrights Canada Press. He is the recipient of more than a dozen national and international awards, including the Chalmer’s Canadian Play Award, the Rio-Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Seattle Times Footlight Award, the Vancouver Critics’ Innovation Award (three times), a Governor General’s Award nomination, as well as multiple local awards and nominations in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. He has been playwright in residence at the Banff Centre, the National Theatre School, Neworld, and Touchstone Theatre. Currently Marcus is an editorial advisor to Canadian Theatre Review, Senior Playwright in Residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and a Canadian Fellow to the International Society of Performing Arts.

Also a writer in other forms, Marcus’ essays, journalism and fiction have appeared in Vancouver Magazine, the Vancouver Sun, Grain, Ricepaper, This Magazine, CTR, the Georgia Straight, The Tyee, on numerous blogs and web magazines and many programs on CBC Radio and TV.

Also well-known in Vancouver as a cultural advocate, Marcus has been artistic director of one of the city’s best-known indie producing companies, Neworld Theatre, since 2005. He was the inaugural chair of Vancouver’s Arts and Culture Policy Council, co-chaired the Vancouver municipal political party the Coalition of Progressive Electors. In 2009, Marcus co-founded of Progress Lab 1422, a 6,000 s.f., collaboratively managed rehearsal and production hub in East Vancouver shared by Neworld and three other established independent companies.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Canadian singer-songwriter and longtime PuSh collaborator, Veda Hille.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Veda discuss:

How did the relationship with PuSh begin in 2007?
How did Theatre Replacement and Neworld help with this introduction?
How does a company become a true ensemble over time?
How did Twenty Minute Musicals come to be?
How to be a theatre artist as well as a musician?
What is the cultural context of PuSh, and what is its significance to the city?
What was it like to curate Club PuSh?

About Veda Hille

Veda Hille is a Vancouver musician, composer, theatre maker, and performer. She writes songs, makes records, co-writes musicals, collaborates in devised theatre, and fulfills other interesting assignments as they arise. Veda performs in a wide of array of places, alone or with bands, ensembles, symphonies, and casts. Her career spans 30 years of working in Canada and abroad, and shows no sign of flagging.

Veda spent a few formative years in music school and art school in Vancouver, laying the groundwork for a pretty elusive sense of genre. Her first album, an independent cassette, came out in 1991. She spent the rest of that decade working primarily as a recording and touring indie art-rock artist, releasing 6 more critically revered albums and travelling extensively in North America, Europe, and the UK. In the 90s she also composed scores and played live with many dance works, as well as beginning to explore forms such as song cycles and more experimental production.

In the early aughts Veda began working in theatre in Vancouver, while still continuing to record and tour. At first she considered theatre to be a side hustle, but soon it became clear that she was spending most of her time in rehearsal halls working on devised theatre, new opera, and contemporary musicals. All that said, Veda’s albums continue to be the core of her practice; she has made more than twenty full length recordings. Some are cast recordings from theatre work, and others are collections of songs written around a theme or a time in her life.

Veda’s work circles around many recurring interests: above all she writes about the natural world, amazement and the unknown, and the intricacies of human relationships. She strives for an ecstatic connection through weird detail, the universe visible through a microscope. All fancy language aside though, Veda Hille chases down the songs that are in her head and does her best to deliver them to the world, beautifully.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with David Pay, Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Music on Main.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and David discuss:

How did David’s relationship with Push start and develop over the years?
How has Vancouver changed over the years?
“Terminal City Soundscape” in 2011: how did this project get realized for PuSh?
Importance of improvisation to Music on Main’s work
Power of aesthetic beauty in conjunction with the beauty of the city
How did PuSh give Music on Main the confidence and audience to produce its kind of music?
What did it mean to produce work through Covid?
What was David’s role in past productions beyond working as curator?
What does it mean to be an artistic and creative producer of music?
How does David value the intersection of different audiences and disciplines?
How has the contemporary and classical world changed since the inception of Music on Main?
How do arts organizations collaborate as members of larger initiatives?
Designing communal spaces for creative work
Why has Music on Main continued to partner with PuSh over the years? Why does it remain interesting?
How do you properly value the composer in music?
What is the difference between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary?

About David Pay

Dave is Music on Main’s founder and Artistic Director, earning a reputation as one of today’s leading-edge concert programmers. He is a frequent curator and speaker at conferences and festivals around the world and served as Artistic Director of ISCM World New Music Days 2017, the largest new music festival in Canada’s history.

About Music on Main

At a Music on Main concert, there’s always great musicians and interesting, engaging music. And there’s always the chance to make new friends, meet the artists, and escape from your to-do list for an hour or two.

Music on Main has produced more than 700 events featuring in excess of 1,800 musicians and 130 world premieres at Heritage Hall on Main Street, the now-closed Cellar Restaurant, the Fox Cabaret, the Jazz Club in Kitsilano, and venues throughout Metro Vancouver. The music has touched the souls of thousands of listeners, and we’ve helped artists from around the world connect with each other, and with Vancouver audiences.

In 2010 we launched the annual Modulus Festival, which “provides western Canada with one of the finest windows onto the post-classical scene” (Gramophone Magazine). In 2017, we co-hosted the ISCM World New Music Days 2017.

Our events take place in Vancouver’s most vibrant neighbourhoods. The Main Street Series happens at Heritage Hall, The Fox Cabaret, and other intimate spaces located in the heart of the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, in East Vancouver. Other events take place in unexpected and fun venues throughout Metro Vancouver.

At Music on Main, you’re always welcome.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Maiko Yamamoto and James Long, co-founders of Vancouver’s Theatre Replacement.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle, Maiko and James discuss:

How did Norman Armour support the company, which started the same year that PuSh started its first series in 2003?
How did Theatre Replacement emerge from Boca del Lupo?
What are “Chamber Works”?
How did crossing disciplines become key to the early work?
How did finding a bunch of photo albums in a back alley lead to the creation of new work (Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut), and potentially stop it with a lawsuit?
How amorphous nostalgia and memory can be
How using found material in theatre has changed over the years
How do you frame practice when you follow impulse creatively?
How does art intersect with the city?
Do you still have nerves before a premiere?
How has Theatre Replacement grown beyond the two co-founders?
The ideas that were interesting at the beginning remain so
How will things evolve over the next 5-10 years in the city?

About Maiko Yamamoto

Maiko Yamamoto is a Vancouver-based artist who creates new, experimental and intercultural works of performance. Many of these works are built through a career-long practice of collaboration and include theatre projects, public art works, and performance installations.

In 2003, Maiko co-founded the Vancouver-based performance company, Theatre Replacement. For TR she has created over 20 new works, many of which have toured to festivals and venues around the world. These include: BIOBOXES: Artifiacting Human Experience, Yu-Fo, Train, Sexual Practices of the Japanese, Dress me up in your love, Town Choir, MINE and Best Life. She also curates and produces HOLD ON LET GO (formerly PushOFF), and in 2018 began a new project-based artist residency program for experimental makers, COLLIDER.

In addition, Maiko teaches performance and mentors artists for a range of different companies and organizations, both in Canada and abroad. She has helped artists to develop new work through programs like MAKE, a residency initiative spearheaded by 4 arts organizations in Ireland, the National Theatre School of Canada’s Acting Program, Action Hero’s You Can Be My Wingman residency, and why not theatre’s ThisGen Fellowship. She also occasionally works as a curator and writes about performance for a variety of publications.

She holds a BFA in Theatre from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and a Masters of Applied Arts in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She’s currently working on a new work with longtime collaborator and friend, Veda Hille.

Find out more about Maiko at: thelocalbubble.org

About James Long

James Long is a director, actor, writer and teacher whose creative practice occurs in a wide variety of interdisciplinary and collaborative contexts, including as a co-founding Artistic Director of Theatre Replacement (2003-2022) and as an independent artist working in live performance, community engaged practice and public art.

James’s work has been presented across North America, Europe and Asia and includes Weetube, Footnote Number 12, Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut, Town Criers, BioBoxes: Artifacting Human Experience, King Arthur’s Knight, How to Disappear Completely, Morko, Winners and Losers and others. In 2019, he and Maiko Yamamoto were awarded the Siminovitch prize for their work at Theatre Replacement and as freelance artists, and in 2016 he and Marcus Youssef were nominated for a Governor General’s Award for playwriting for Winners and Losers.

Long graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Theatre Program in 2000 and received a Master’s in Urban Studies in 2018. He serves as the president of the organization that stewards Vancouver’s Russian Hall, a multi-purpose performance and gathering space, and is an assistant professor in Theatre and Performance at SFU’s School of Contemporary Arts.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with Tim Carlson, co-founder of Vancouver’s Theatre Conspiracy.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle and Tim discuss:

How did the relationship with PuSh begin?
What was the “PuSh aesthetic” in the early days?
How did Theatre Conspiracy’s practice and questions evolve over the years?
How did the surge of creative and entrepreneurial energy in 1990s Vancouver translate into an emerging performing arts scene?
What kind of work was created for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver?
How did the prospect and need for collaboration emerge with Theatre Conspiracy?
Norman Armour said that ““The best work in the world should be coming here”. How did that start happening?
What about the larger economics (ie, rent, bills) and their effect on the theatre scene?

About Tim Carlson

Tim Carlson is a playwright, songwriter, journalist who co-founded Theatre Conspiracy and served as artistic producer from 2008 to 2022. He led the creation of Foreign Radical, which won the 2015 Jessie Award Critics Choice Innovation prize and a 2017 Edinburgh Fringe First Award. The script was recently published in Canadian Theatre Review. Most recent show is the podcast series, Isolation Suite, and he is currently writing The Dynamics, set to premiere in the 2024/’25 season.

Carlson’s documentary play, Victim Impact, premiered at The Cultch in Vancouver in June 2018. He also co-created, wrote the music for, and performed in Tanya Marquardt’s Stray, seen at The Tank in New York and SummerWorks in Toronto in 2018, as well as Vancouver in 2019. He was researcher/ interviewer for Berlin-based Rimini Protokoll’s latest show, Top Secret International, seen at the 2017 Under the Radar Festival in New York as well as researcher/ dramaturg for Best Before (Rimini Protokoll, @ PuSh 2010) and 100% Vancouver (Rimini Protokoll / Theatre Replacement, @ PuSh 2011).

The 2013 show Extraction, won the Rio Tinto Alcan Award, Canada’s largest prize for new play development. His play Omniscience (Talonbooks, 2007) was produced in Vancouver, Berlin, Lisbon and Chicago. He founded Club PuSh with the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver and served as co-curator along with Veda Hille and Norman Armour from 2009 to 2016.

As a journalist, he worked on staff at the Halifax Daily News, Vancouver Sun and Georgia Straight. He holds an English degree from University of Regina, a journalism degree from University of King’s College, Halifax, and a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

Contact Tim Carlson at carlson@conspiracy.ca

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Gabrielle Martin chats with David Hudgins and Kevin Kerr, co-founders of Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle, David and Kevin discuss:

The beginnings of Electric Company Theatre and its early collective model
Why the fledgling theatre company had to “bite the bull by the horns”
The function of interchangeable roles in the creative process
The impetus behind early ECT shows at the PuSh Festival, such as Studies in Motion and Palace Grand
The rich physical-visual landscape that plays a role from inception of piece, and in dialogue with the text
How development of a company and its work corresponds to the process of aging
What’s it like when opening night is the same as your baby’s due date?

About David Hudgins

David Hudgins is a founder of the internationally acclaimed Electric Company Theatre in Vancouver. After more than two decades with this innovative company he has won numerous Jessie Awards. David received his BA Honours in English Literature at McGill University, a diploma in Acting from Studio 58 and a PDP Diploma in Education from Simon Fraser University. He teaches acting at Studio 58 and has directed nine shows there, including two Ovation-Award winning productions: Guys & Dolls (2007) and Spring Awakening (2012). The homegrown musical The Park (2010) which he directed and helped to dramaturge, garnered five nominations. His 5-year orchestral/physical-theatre hybrid experiment odyssey called Flee, with composer Peggy Lee, found its legs at the Fox Cabaret with Electric Company and Studio 58 in 2016. He has written song lyrics for a variety of Hollywood movies. David is also a father, musician and sailor.

About Kevin Kerr

Kevin Kerr is a playwright and founding member of Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre with whom he’s collaborated on the creation of more than a dozen full-length productions, including Brilliant!, Studies in Motion and Tear the Curtain!

He received the 2002 Governor General’s Literary Award for his play Unity (1918), which has been produced more than 100 times across Canada and around the world. Other plays include Skydive, Spine (both for Realwheels Theatre), The Remittance Man (Sunshine Theatre), Secret World of Og (Carousel Theatre for Young People), and The Night’s Mare (Caravan Farm Theatre). He also co-wrote the feature film adaptation of The Score for CBC Television (Screen Siren Productions) and collaborated with Stan Douglas on his interactive immersive National Film Board installation Circa 1948. His latest project is a suite of virtual reality Installations that accompany Electric Company Theatre’s newest production, The Full Light of Day.

Kevin joined the University of Victoria’s Department of Writing in 2012. He currently teaches playwriting and screenwriting, with a creative focus on cinematic/theatre hybrids, collaborative creation, site-specific theatre and interactive narratives.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.

Episode Title: Ep. 21 – Breakthroughs (2007)

Gabrielle chats with Julie-anne Saroyan, co-founder, artistic director and creative producer of Vancouver’s Small Stage, which broke through in the early PuSh Festivals.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle Martin and Julie-anne discuss:

The origin of Small Stage
The first few PuSh Festivals and how Small Stage suddenly found a wide audience
Beginning as a stage manager
The role of experimentation and the cabaret format
What it means to be a “Test Kitchen” in performance and production
How to mix genre and style in dance
How the formula of Small Stage has evolved and been tinkered with over the years
Evolution is curation: how Julie-anne has fostered other artists
The can-do attitude of the PuSh Festival

About Julie-anne Saroyan

The beating heart at the core of Small Stage is the co-founder, artistic director and creative producer, Julie-anne Saroyan.

A visionary leader with a keen eye for emerging talent, her spirit resides at the core of what has made Small Stage an iconic presence for over 20 years.

Saroyan’s artistic practice includes dance, stage and production management, lighting and costume design and digital software, media and design thinking.

More than 20 years after launching, Small Stage has evolved beyond a singular focus on dance to embrace a broader world of performance, visual arts and music and bring it to the public through non-traditional venues.

Small Stage productions blend live and digital platforms to create powerful and innovative mixed-reality performances in the public realm. The work is centred around reducing barriers and elevating dance, music, and performing arts to become more accessible to a broader audience. Simultaneously, Small Stage equips artists with opportunities to extend their reach beyond the limitations of a physical venue by embracing technology and innovation.

Saroyan’s work is recognized for fostering the growth of emerging dance artists and musicians and growing audiences with works in both live and digital realms. She continues investigating new technologies and digital strategies to tell stories and bring people as close to art as possible.

In 2001, Saroyan co-founded Movement Enterprises (MovEnt) and launched the long-running series Dances for a Small Stage in Vancouver. Dances for a Small Stage shows each featured a curated set of 5-7 minute dance performances that showcase a wide variety of styles and genres of dance, presented in non-traditional venues and beer halls better known for punk rock shows than sophisticated modern dance performances.

This innovative approach exposed new audiences to all forms of dance, including Contemporary, Ballet, Urban, Tap, Flamenco, Bhaṅgṛā, Indian Classical, Chinese and Japanese Classical and Contemporary, Scottish Highland, Burlesque and many others. The unique and compelling series was an instant classic, producing over fifty instalments over 20 years in Vancouver, including three shows in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre.

Since launching in 2001, Julie-anne has been the engine that drives the company forward. Her passion for dance and the arts and her deep knowledge of history and culture combine with her ability to coordinate, organize, and inspire others to rally for her cause.

Beyond Dances for a Small Stage, Saroyan has worked with a variety of dance artists and companies, including Ballet BC, Margie Gillis, Emily Molnar and Crystal Pite/Kidd Pivot, whom she toured with Internationally for more than ten years. She also was on Faculty at Simon Fraser University from 2005-2007 as the Production/Stage Management Instructor in the School for the Contemporary Arts.

Saroyan has also worked extensively in Corporate Special Events, creating and producing large-scale awards shows and team-building events in Vancouver and internationally, including Barcelona, Malta & Phoenix and Hawaii. Clients include BP International Engineering Conferences, Nike, Visa International and Buckingham Palace.

In 2014, Saroyan mentored under Farooq Chaudhry in London, UK. His ideas and concepts surrounding the role of the cultural entrepreneur in the dance world are fundamental to Saroyan’s approach.

Saroyan holds a BFA in Dance and Technical Theatre from York University in Toronto and trained at The Banff Centre in 1993 for Dance Stage Management, Executive Lab at Vantage Point in 2015 and New Fundamentals: Leadership for the Creative Ecology at The Banff Centre in 2016.

She is well known for her ability to build capacity for the arts through cross-sectoral collaborations, strategic partnerships, and mutually beneficial alliances.

Her work in the dance sector includes incubating new choreographic work and developing promising artists through uniquely designed workshops, mentorships, and hands-on residencies.

Julie-anne challenges artists to push boundaries and explore new styles and movements. Their dedication and passion are a continual source of inspiration for Saroyan.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.

Gabrielle chats with Sherry J. Yoon and Jay Dodge, Artistic Directors of Boca del Lupo, about their early productions at the PuSh Festival from 2006, and how they’ve witnessed change over the years.

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Show Notes

Gabrielle Martin, Sherry and Jay discuss:

Collaboration as a core tenet of creativity
Collision and confluence of difference
Norman Armour’s early influence and guidance of the work
How Vancouver’s performing arts scene was dynamic at the time and has evolved since
How Boca del Lupo’s 2006 show, “The Perfectionist,” was envisioned and created
The artistic impetus for Boca’s later shows, such as “My Dad, My Dog”
The power and importance of international collaboration
How has the artistic practice evolved over the years, and what has remained consistent?
What is the right container or shape for the content you want to show?
How has the cultural context of PuSh changed over the years?
What makes the PuSh Festival about relationships, not just transactions?

About Boca del Lupo

Led by Artistic Directors Sherry J. Yoon and Jay Dodge.

Sherry J. Yoon is a co-creator and director of the company’s original productions and Jay Dodge’s writing, performances and designs are central in Boca del Lupo’s shows. During the tenure of the pair, the company has received numerous awards including Jessies for Outstanding Design, Outstanding Production, Significant Artistic Achievement and Outstanding Performance; the Critic’s Choice Award for Innovation; and the Alcan Performing Arts Award.

For Boca del Lupo, collaboration is the core tenet of our creativity. Working across cultures and disciplines our productions are energized by the collision and confluence of difference. Since our inception in 1996, our artistic focus has been one that explores cultural hybridity and interdisciplinary through consciously convening artists from diverse backgrounds and giving them voice within the work through our established processes. We also have a well-established track record in touring, a strong level of engagement with our professional arts services organizations and meaningful outreach into the community. We proudly take our place as a theatre company that relentlessly expands creative possibilities through unprecedented innovations and partnerships with a repertoire that includes 60 original creations and unique presentations.

Boca del Lupo has a foundation in theatre but has evolved into a multi-disciplinary company often partnering with artists and organization that are beyond the conventional boundaries of our form and our sector.

About Sherry J. Yoon

Sherry J. Yoon, Artistic Director of Boca del Lupo, is a theatre creator and director with a passion for creating new performances through collaborative pursuits. With Boca del Lupo, Sherry has co-created more than 35 productions, including: Fall Away Home, an intergenerational site-specific production in the forest of Stanley Park; Photog, a large-scale show that toured across Canada and was created with interviews from prominent conflict photographers; and You Are It, as part of the Silver commissions from the Arts Club Theatre that investigates the complex dynamics between female friendships. During Sherry’s tenure, the company has received numerous awards, including the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, and Jessie Awards for Outstanding Production, Design, Actor, Ensemble, as well as the Critic’s Choice Innovation Award. Her productions have toured festivals and venues across Canada, Europe and Mexico. She co-created an online exhibition of Expedition, an iterative collaboration between Boca del Lupo and the Performance Corporation, and working on Net Zero, an interactive theatre installation about climate change that involves the audience charging a battery with a stationary bicycle. She is also a freelance director who has worked at the Richmond Gateway Theatre, Bard on the Beach, the Vancouver International Children’s Festival and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa Canada.

About Jay Dodge

The Artistic Producer of Boca del Lupo since 2001, Jay Dodge was also part of the founding collective in 1996. During his tenure, the company has won the peer-assessed Alcan Performing Arts Award, and several Jesse Richardson Theatre Awards including seven nominations for the Critic’s Choice Award for Innovation and the Patrick O’Neill Award for best anthology with Plays2Perform@Home. Jay is a passionate set and video designer with Jessie Richardson Awards in both of those categories as well as a published playwright including a contribution to Boca del Lupo’s Red Phone project. His artistry is one of innovation and daring and his one man show, PHOTOG. featured interactive video, stunt rigging and verbatim text, touring to World Stage, Prismatic, Festival Trans Amerique and PuSh. Currently serving on the national board of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, Jay also has special interest in creative space making including as co-founder of celebrated colocation space PL1422, co-founder of the Granville Island Theatre District, and as project consultant for Video In/Video Out and Left of Main.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.

Gabrielle chats about the early beginnings of PuSh with Camyar Chaichian, who helped create one of the shows from the first festival in 2005.

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Gabrielle Martin and Camyar Chaichian (Neworld) talk about:

Norman Armour’s influence in developing both PuSh and Vancouver’s theatre scene
The veritable artistic renaissance occurring in Vancouver at the time
PuSh’s role as a megaphone for local voices and artists, as well as a touchstone that brought international work to the city
How Camyar’s 2005 show, Crime and Punishment, was created with PuSh alongside from concept to realization
The artistic struggle of maintaining a core, original vision and how this was always treated as a priority
How we forget the past at our own peril
How art, as well as those who make it, must rise from the ashes and create something from nothing

About Camyar Chaichian

Actor, director, writer and producer, born in 1968 in Iran, and raised there and in England and the United States. His family moved to North Vancouver British Columbia in 1980, when he was 11 years old. He graduated from the University of British Columbia (Acting, 1992; M.F.A., 2007), and currently lives in Vancouver.

In 1993 he founded Neworld Theatre in Vancouver which produced the site specific collective Devil Box Cabaret (1999), based on Four Boxes by Iranian author Bahram Beyzaee; and an adaptation of Crime and Punishment by James Fagan Tait; and the cult hit that propelled its own company, The Leaky Heaven Circus (1999-2002). He served as Artistic Producer at Neworld until 2007.

He wrote and performed in I Am Your Spy: A Day In The Life of Mordechai Vanunu with Rumble Theatre. This production toured to Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto in January, 2001. His adaptation of Quest, Trail of Mystic Poets, Rummi and Attar was produced at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. He co-authored Hurl Hemmhorage and Heal, the Nurses Musical, which toured for the British Columbia Nurses Union.

His other plays include The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the Axes of Evil (Neworld Theatre and Cahoots Theatre Projects 2004) created with Guillermo Verdecchia and Marcus Youssef, published by Talonbooks; The Asylum of the Universe (Neworld Theatre 2003), published in Canadian Theatre Review 116 (Fall 2003); and Ali & Ali: The Deportation Hearings with Verdecchia and Youssef (Neworld 2010).

He returned to Neworld in 2016 for the twentieth anniversary of the theatre with a production entitled “Doost” (which means “friend” in Persian) that combines narrative, music and poetry to express his Sufi faith and its concepts of friendship and community.

In April 2019, his adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III, entitled King Richard and His Women, was performed at Seven Tyrants Theatre, with Chai as director and scenographer. As Richard lies dying on the battlefield, he is haunted by the women he has loved, hated, and destroyed.

Camyar Chai has also written two librettos, Rosa and Elijah’s Kite for Tapestry New Opera in Toronto. For the CBC he has written and broadcast sketches and commentaries. He has received a Jessie Richardson Awards for his writing.

As a director, he has worked for New Works, Touchstone Theatre, La Luna Productions and the Solo Collective Theatre. He received The Ray Michael Award for Most Promising New Director in 1999.

As an actor, he has worked for many Canadian companies including Vancouver Playhouse, Arts Club Theatre, Touchstone Theatre, Rumble Productions and Green Thumb Theatre for Young People, as well as appearing in many film and television productions. He has received a Jessie Richardson Award for his acting.

Camyar Chai is currently Program Manager, Community Cultural Development at the City of Richmond.

Land Acknowledgement

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.

Season 1: 2024 Festival

2022 Industry Series Panel Discussions

The 2022 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival Industry Series ran from February 2-6, 2022, and included panel and round table discussions, curated pitches, walks with local artists, artist talks and select studio showings. It highlighted touring from an Indigenous perspective, multilingual creation, experiments in concept touring, Indigenous performing arts protocols, and new curatorial perspectives.

PuSh Walks

An innovation for these times of COVID, and an invitation: walk safely with artists through the urban spaces that have given them inspiration. The artists have recorded audio for walks of 1-2 km, with given starting and ending points; armed with a pair of headphones, audiences can journey through the city at a time of their choosing, experiencing the terrain from fresh perspectives.

Think of it as a form of interior urban renewal, with streets, parks, and other stretches of land given new dimensions and imbued with new meanings. It’s a chance to hear the artists’ voices, directly and without mediation; it’s also a way to connect people across time and space, on the common grounds of geography, history, and art.

Latest releases

Sound in Space – A PuSh Walk with Ruby Singh and Gabrielle Martin

Listen in while old friends, interdisciplinary artist and composer Ruby Singh, and PuSh’s director of Programming Gabrielle Martin, stroll around their old East Van stomping grounds at Trout Lake.

The conversation begins with revelations about the youthful duo meeting at a poetry slam; a friendship which extended into adventures in fire dancing at the lost and lamented Illuminares Festival – one of the most popular festivals in Vancouver, until its untimely demise in 2013. This eclectic arts background and love of performing has informed both Singh and Martin’s careers since. As they traverse the muddy path around the lake on this winter walk, Singh talks about his interdisciplinary work, ambi-sonic installations and the inception and evolution of his work Vox.Infold into the compelling and exhilarating sound production it is today.

PuSh Festival presents Vox.Infold from January 20-30 at Lobe Studio.

A Community Evolves: A PuSh Walk with Gabrielle Martin and James Long from Theatre Replacement

In a Brave the weather alongside PuSh’s Gabrielle Martin and Theatre Replacement’s James Long as they defy the elements on a stormy day to take a stroll around historic Strathcona; or have a listen to this fascinating conversation from your sofa, either way, it’s an interesting ride.

Beginning at the Russian Hall, James recounts the backstory behind the Soviet film reels that were discovered in an old closet next to the Russian language classroom which now serves as the Theatre Replacement office and studio. These films, sent between the 1950s and the 70s, are an upbeat promotional campaign for The Soviet Union intended to lure back Russians who had fled Stalin, and they are the inspiration for Theatre Replacement’s newest work, Do you mind if I sit here? Other topics include the gentrification and cultural history of the neighbourhood, explored while walking in some very Vancouver weather.

Listen now on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Explore the entire PuSh Walks series.

Credits

For PuSh Festival:

PODCAST PRODUCER Ashley Daniel Foot

More walks

In a journey that begins on Victoria Drive, Anais West uses story and song to transport you to her mother’s homeland, Poland. From a punk concert in Praga to the bloc apartments of Communist Gdansk, she searches for queer belonging and family history. The through-line is a protest anthem, “Rota,” written by lesbian Polish poet Maria Konopnicka and then re-appropriated through the centuries by revolutionaries, nationalists, and now queer punks.

The songs and narration are part of Underground Absolute Fiction, a docu-fantasy film Anais has been writing and developing with the support of the Canada Council, the BC Arts Council, the frank theatre, Rumble Theatre and the Queer Arts Festival.

View KhattieQ’s website here.

Available on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen now on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Explore the entire PuSh Walks series.

Credits

Text by Anais West Performed by Anais West and Julia Siedlanowska

Musical credits:

“Przemoc, twoja przemoc”
Vocals: Julia Siedlanowska
Guitar & Back Up Vocals: Sara Vickruck
Keyboard & Back Up Vocals: Claire Love Wilson
Drums & Music Direction: khattieQ
Lyrics by Anais West
Translation by Łukasz Wojtysko
Arrangement by Sara Vickruck
Recording, Mixing and Mastering: Piotr Wieczorek
Adapted by Sara Vickruck, khattieQ, Julia Siedlanowska & Claire Love Wilson
from the folk song “Biedoż moja, biedo,” author unknown.

“Rota”
Sung by Julia Siedlanowska|
Written by Maria Konopnicka
Composed by Feliks Nowowiejski

Audio credits:

“【4K】Walk in Warsaw – Nowy Swiat and Chmielna Street | Warszawa Spacer | ASMR Street Sound” by Penguin Walk
“Aresztowanie Margot ze Stop Bzdurom i przemoc policji wobec osób demonstrujących” by Michał Szymanderski-Pastryk
“Marsz Równości 2019 w Białymstoku – relacja” by B K
“Old Radio Tuning into AM/FM Stations Sound Effect Free High Quality Sound FX” by Free High Quality Sound FX

For PuSh Festival:

AUDIO EDITING Ashley Daniel Foot PRODUCER Ben Lange

Podcasts

PuSh Play: New Episodes for 2024

Season 3: 2025 Festival

Episode 47: De glace (From Ice): Opening the Space Between Words

Episode 46: BOGOTÁ: The Future of Choreography

Episode 45: All That Remains: Call to Consciousness

Episode 44: OUT and THIRST TRAP: Complexities

Episode 43: Lasa Ng Imperyo (A Taste of Empire): Language Reclamation

Episode 42: Habitat: The Hermes Metaphor

Episode 41: The History of Korean Western Theatre: Reclaiming the Pre-Colonial Past

Episode 40: BLEU NÉON: Pride, Squats, and Vietnamese Rap

Episode 39: Transpofagic Manifesto: Stay with the Trouble

Episode 38: SWIM – What Begins When the Show Ends?

Season 2: PuSh’s 20th Anniversary

Episode 37: A New Aesthetic of Participation (2024) | Nov 12

Episode 36: Lighting is Story (2023) | Nov 5

Episode 35: Staging Solitude (2021-22) | Oct 29

Episode 34: Exchange (2020) | Oct 22

Episode 33: Impulse and Iteration (2019) | Oct 15

Episode 32: Find Your Place and Transcend It (2018) | Oct 8

Episode 31: Turning Point (2017) | Oct 1

Episode 30: Game Changers (2016) | Sept 24

Episode 29: Dancing in the Rain (2015) | Sept 17

Episode 28: Arriving while Happening (2014) | Sept 10

Episode 27: Collaboration over Competition (2013) | Sept 3

Episode 26: Local is International (2012) | Aug 29

Episode 25: How to Curate Partnership (2011) | Aug 27

Episode 24: The Ethos of Coexistence (2010) | Aug 13

Episode 23: Emergence (2009) | Aug 9

Episode 22: The Quest (2008) | (Jul 30)

Episode 21: Breakthroughs (2007) | (Jul 23)

Episode 20: Collaboration and Collision (2006) | (Jul 16)

Show Notes

About Boca del Lupo

About Sherry J. Yoon

About Jay Dodge

Land Acknowledgement

Show Transcript

Episode 19: The Beginning of PuSh (Jul 9)

About Camyar Chaichian

Land Acknowledgement

Show Transcript

Season 1: 2024 Festival

Episode 18: Rock Climbing and Vertical Dance (Jan 15)

Episode 17: NOMADA (Jan 11)

Episode 16: The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes (Jan 8)

Episode 15: DARKMATTER (Jan 4)

Episode 14: Deciphers (Dec 28)

Episode 13: L’Amour telle une cathédrale ensevelie (Dec 21)

Episode 12: Inheritances (Dec 18)

Episode 11: BLOT (Dec 14)

Episode 10: because i love the diversity (this micro attitude, we all have it) (Dec 11)

Episode 9: Same Difference (Dec 7)

Episode 8: Dear Laila (Dec 4)

Episode 7: asses.masses (Nov 30)

Episode 6: LORENZO (Nov 27)

Episode 5: Returns (Nov 23)

Episode 4: Sound of the Beast (Nov 20)

Episode 3: PLI (Nov 16)

Episode 2: The Runner (Nov 13)

Episode 1: Ramanenjana (Nov 9)

2022 Industry Series Panel Discussions

Roundtable Discussions

Creative Producing with Rob Thomson, Bek Berger, and Anthony Gray

New Curatorial Perspectives; Supporting Artistic Practice

Multilingual Creation; its dramaturgy and implications

Process Production and Touring

PuSh Walks

Singing at Sen̓áḵw: An audio walk with Xwechtaal and Claire Love Wilson

Underground Absolute Fiction: a musical wandering between East Van and Poland, memory and fantasy

Here, now, and grateful: a walk through Pacific Spirit Regional Park with KhattieQ

Night Walk of Abstraction

Ulksen Spirit: a westward walking sonic experience with Jeanette Kotowich

Finding Delight in Heartbreak: An audio walk with Jesse Del Fierro

DTES suite / burials underfoot — a furious journey with Q Lawrence

“Of peanuts and screws”, an audio walk with Njo Kong Kie

Procession to New Town: an audio walk through Vancouver’s Chinatown

Graveyards and Gardens: A walk through Mountain View Cemetery and the back alleys of Massachusetts

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