In Conversation: Annie Clarke and Boomer Stacey on Transition, Connecting Across Borders, and the Year Ahead

March 19, 2026

As PuSh’s Managing Director Annie Clarke steps into an exciting new chapter with her growing family, we send her our warmest wishes for a joyful parental leave. Working alongside Artistic Director Gabrielle Martin, Annie’s thoughtful leadership over the past year has helped guide PuSh through a moment of momentum, care, and cultural urgency—and we’re deeply grateful for all she’s brought to the Festival and the PuSh community.

We’re equally thrilled to welcome Boomer Stacey as Interim Managing Director. Having already spent the past year closely connected to PuSh on the Board of Directors—and more recently embedded in the rhythm and complexity of the 2026 Festival—Boomer steps into this position with deep insight, curiosity, and commitment.

What follows is a conversation between Annie and Boomer: a passing of the torch, a reflection on a remarkable Festival year, and a shared belief in the power of culturally fearless performance to connect us across borders, perspectives, and lived experiences.

ANNIE: We’ve been working together in your board capacity for more than a year now, and that’s included a sort of luxurious amount of time knowing this transition was coming. This is a conversation we started five months ago now, and I’ve been so grateful for your willingness to be more and more woven in over time, because it just feels like all of the context you have—especially having been so present at the festival this year—is invaluable. 

I was hired just as the Festival was starting last year, and I felt like the ability to experience the Festival as a fly on the wall, knowing what I was about to step into, helped so much with my learning curve once I started in February. How was it for you to have one foot inside the Festival this year with your “Incoming Interim Managing Director” hat on?

BOOMER: Thanks Annie – I’ve loved being able to work and learn from you, both as a Board member and now transitioning into this role. And I don’t think your timing for your leave could have been any better. It has been such a remarkable privilege to be a fly on the wall for this festival—from lead up to opening to Industry Series to closing night, and everything in between—and truly helped to give a broad spectrum sense of what the many things the festival is, who the team are, what it means to be in the audience and what it takes to pull off such a complex and dynamic event. I have, of course, experienced PuSh in the past, but only a few days or few shows at a time, so to have the luxury of really being immersed both as audience and as incoming staff, and to watch you and Gabrielle, and the amazing staff and volunteers (and Board, if I may say), is really awe-inspiring, and really psyches me up to jump in. Functionally and practically, it has also been so invaluable and enlightening to be getting this incredible download of the inner workings, to see firsthand what the challenges are and the scope of the work for the year ahead.

Now that you’ve had one full year in the fray of it and a hugely successful festival under your belt, what do you see looking back?   

ANNIE: This past year has been a reminder of how quickly the ground can shift. When I started with PuSh last winter, we were at the very beginning of tariffs being part of the national economic conversation, and we also thought we were heading into a very different kind of federal election outcome than the one we got—those things impact the work we do, both directly and indirectly. The suppression of cultural expression and diversity has literally hit closer to home than ever before for so many people, and I think we feel that in the urgency we sense with the work we present. One of the biggest things that’s loomed in the past year is this push towards cultural nationalism, and as proud as I am of the artistry inside of Canada, and as vital to PuSh as Canadian artists are, I don’t think our path forward is one where we turn inwards. I think there’s tremendous power in continuing to look outwards, to centre cultural exchange and connection across borders, and I feel very lucky that PuSh can be a place where the world feels a little closer.

BOOMER: This is definitely one of the main reasons I love PuSh and why I’m excited about taking on the complexities of bringing a myriad of artists and stories here to Vancouver. I’ve been very fortunate to have worked so much of my career in national and international pools. I think a global context is vital in order to be able to better understand our own selves, to provide a reflection point on how we exist in this world, and as an entry point into a diversity of lived experiences, perspectives and narratives. And it takes a certain kind of bravery to open yourself to that—which is inherent in the ‘26 tagline of “culturally fearless”. Having said that, it’s also essential to provide an opportunity for local and national artists to have their work experienced within a global context—as you say, something PuSh is so ideally situated to do. As we know too well, the world(s) we live in is in a constant state of flux and I feel it’s our responsibility to present the gifts of global artistic expression that help to navigate that flux and how it might connect to us “here”, whatever “here” might mean to you. I think a large part of my role is to figure out how to solve and support the logistical puzzles of what it takes to bring this work, these artists to Vancouver with the realities of ever increasing expenses, a fragile cultural ecosystem, global political tensions and pluralistic ideologies, etc. 

But that’s all very macro. What are some lingering thoughts you have on this past festival?

ANNIE: There was so much to celebrate with the 2026 Festival. One thing you and I have talked about is how different the audience looked at almost every show—it really felt like each show found its own community, in a way that was really exciting to see and that spoke to the breadth of Gabrielle’s programming. There were also just so many powerful moments onstage, and then afterwards, when people connected a show to lived experience or to a discovery, that made me so proud to be part of presenting this work. 

Now that we’re more than a month out from the Festival and well into planning for next year, what kinds of things are you thinking about as you step into this role? 

BOOMER: Wow—so much—everything really. It’s so important to me to be able to support and engage the many stakeholders and people that care about PuSh. It’s something that so many people care about with so many different points of intersection. It’s personally, really special to have this opportunity to be involved in this storied artistic lighthouse and to still feel Norman’s presence, and at the same time, feeling privileged to be part of supporting our current leadership—you, Gabrielle, Yvette Nolan, etc. I was so proud of the team in action during the festival, and have really been thinking about how to continue to support, lead, and inspire. I know I’m going to learn so much from this experience and also incredibly excited about what I bring to the table and how I can contribute to the personal growth of staff and to the evolution of the team as a whole. 

I’m also jazzed to start to unpack the Future Planning work that the Board and staff engaged in over the past year. It feels like the best possible timing to start now after a full year of peering into the soul of the festival and dreaming about where we want to be and how we might get there. 

I’ll admit to a healthy bit of fear about it all and feeling brave and so ready to jump right in! Huge thanks to the work you have put in to prep me for this and for the amazing job you’ve done this past year—I’ll do my best to have things in solid shape for your return!

ANNIE: Thank you for the gift of leaving this role in such trusted hands for the year! I’m so excited for you and Gabrielle to steer this ship together and for you to bring next year’s Festival to life with the PuSh team—I can’t wait to cheer along.