World Arts Centre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (See map)
Start your day with coffee, conversation, and connection. A daily morning hub for delegates to gather, check in, and ease into the Industry Series together.
10AM—12:30PM // Pitch Sessions
Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
Hear about exciting new works from local, national, and international artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form.
Host: Brian Postalian
Pitch Projects
Ad Infinitum
Last Rites
Co-created by George Mann (he/him) and Ramesh Meyyappan (he/him) Bristol, UK
How do you say goodbye when words were never there?
Arjun’s father never learnt to sign – now that he’s gone, Arjun must find his own way to honour him. Travelling from the UK to India, Arjun sets out to create a farewell ritual for his father woven from memory, love, and loss.
Told through a Deaf man’s unique perspective, multi-award-winning Ad Infinitum’s (Translunar Paradise ★★★★★ The Observer, Light ★★★★★ The Times) Last Rites is a stunning fusion of visual storytelling and electrifying movement. With creative captions, Sign Language, & a soundscape that can be felt or heard, Last Rites is accessible to Deaf, deaf, hard of hearing & hearing audiences.
Ad Infinitum is a multi-award-winning, internationally acclaimed devising theatre company. Founded by Co-Artistic Directors George Mann and Nir Paldi in 2007, Ad Infinitum is based in Bristol and works internationally. A diverse-led company dedicated to making accessible, inclusive and captivating theatre, for over 18 years Ad Infinitum has championed marginalised voices in theatre and reached underserved audiences.
Fay Nass (They/them) in collaboration with Daisy Thompson (She/hers) and Vanessa Goodman (She/hers) Vancouver, BC, Canada
Another Birthis a multi-disciplinary dance performance that transforms personal and family histories of exile into a visceral, poetic language of movement. Inspired by the lives of my mother, my late aunt, and myself—woven through the fearless words of Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad—the piece fuses contemporary dance, ballet, and Persian-inspired movement with archival recordings, light, and sound. It is a work about resilience in the face of displacement, the beauty that survives censorship, and the universal longing for freedom.
Aphotic Theatre is an interdisciplinary company dedicated to illuminating stories often kept in the margins. Working across theatre, film, dance, installation, and community-engaged practice, the company spotlights queer, immigrant, BIPOC, and women-led narratives. Inspired by the deep-sea “aphotic zone,” it creates bold, experimental works that blend form and genre, offering space for underrepresented voices to lead, imagine, and transform contemporary performance.
Links: www.aphotictheatre.org
Email: aphotictheatre@gmail.com
Blackout Art Society
GRAFTING
Writer & Director: Amir N. Hosseini (he/him) Concept Designers: Soha Sanajou (she/her), Amir N. Hosseini (he/him) Vancouver, BC, Canada
Grafting is a powerful dance-theatre work that tells the courageous survival story of a Yazidi woman who escapes persecution and rebuilds her life in Canada as a refugee. Through a visceral fusion of movement, music, and light, the piece explores trauma, resilience, and rebirth. Featuring an ensemble of immigrant artists, Grafting transforms personal pain into collective strength, offering audiences an unforgettable journey of renewal and hope.
Blackout Art Society is a Vancouver-based not-for-profit theatre company founded by immigrant artists. Led by Artistic Director Amir N. Hosseini, it creates socially engaged, bilingual productions that amplify the voices of immigrants and refugees through contemporary theatre, dance, and multimedia storytelling. The company fosters cultural exchange, inclusion, and innovation in the performing arts.
GAME OF LIFE GAME OF LIFE IS TWO INTERCONNECTED PIECES:
ELEPHANT Created by Tony Chong, Lisa Humber, Erum Khan, Mariel Marshall, Stephen O’Connell, Carol Prieur, Lucy Simic, Michael Wanless
LUCY AI Created by bluemouth inc. and Reimagine AI
Toronto, ON, Canada
GAME OF LIFE is a two-part project based on the personal story of bluemouth inc. artist Lucy Simic, exploring mortality, time, and the connections that bring us together. ELEPHANT is an intimate, interactive performance set around a 32-foot banquet table, where audiences and performers navigate the ripple effects of a life-changing diagnosis.
LUCY AI is an evolving interactive video installation created after Lucy’s stage 4 cancer diagnosis, offering a poetic way to encounter her memories and voice. Together, the works invite audiences to consider presence, resilience, and the traces we leave with one another.
Formed in 1998 and based in Toronto (with ties to New York and Montreal), bluemouth inc. is a performance collective that makes original, immersive events blending dance, visual media, electronic music and lyric poetry. Their boundary-pushing work invites audiences into non-traditional spaces and participatory experiences. Driven by collaboration, interdisciplinarity and experimentation, the company has toured internationally and been recognized for redefining live performance in Canada and beyond.
Carlos Rivera (He/Him) Director and Choreographer Patricia Rivera (She/Her) Performer Fernanda Salas (She/Her) Swing Performer Francisco Carrera (He/Him) Composer, Sound Designer, and Technical Director Laura Dominguez (She/Her) Lighting Designer Montreal, Quebec, Canada
ROSA is based on Carlos Rivera’s paternal grandmother, Rosa Islas Lopez. At 99 years old, Rosa calls Carlos and tells him to visit her because she is about to die. Although she has some ailments, there is no life-threatening illness. She is simply ready to leave. Learning about this extraordinary woman and her courageous journey toward freedom prompts Carlos to create this piece. For him, this is also an opportunity to reconnect with his ancestry and roots – things Rosa had to give up to assimilate and survive. Like his grandmother, Carlos also leaves his home in México and moves to another land, Canada. This journey of displacement, assimilation, and adaptation to a new place brings about important artistic questions: what do we adopt from the new culture we settle into? What do we erase from our identity in order to assimilate? What do we keep and what do we let go of?
ROSA is a solo show for a female interpreter that permeates between dance, theatre, and performance. The body is the principal vehicle through which the piece’s themes are conveyed. The documentary video and the visuals establish a context for the relationship between woman and land and create an opportunity for interaction between the interpreter and the video, further examining other parallel migrations in Rosa’s lineage.
Carlos Rivera is an actor, dancer, choreographer, teacher, and director currently based in Montreal. Originally from México City, he identifies as a Nahua Indigenous descendant from the Sierra Norte region of Puebla, México. Carlos has toured nationally and internationally with various companies and served as the Associate Artist at Red Sky Performance for 16 years. He was part of the Banff Centre for the Arts Indigenous Dance Program, is a graduate of the Indigenous Residency Program at the National Theatre School of Canada, and attended the MFA Program in Directing for Theatre at the University of Ottawa.
Subject: Tim Alfred presents his MOD: Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw Artistic Spark response Event: Messages on Doors: Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw (Alert Bay) Credit: Sean Fenzl Photography
Messages on Doors
Artistic Leads: Tsatassaya White (she/her), Tamara McCarthy (she/her), Dave Mott (he/him)
This countercolonial theatre presentation dives deep into the Big Ideas: 1) We are responsible to take Action against the historical and present day dark messages of hate towards Indigenous Peoples; 2) In these times of Reconciliation, we need to connect more.
Messages on Doors (MOD) is a live and on-line reconciliation theatre workshop, commission, public feast and art presentation featuring Indigenous and non-Indigenous regional artists. Through active community engagement, MOD opens doors that have been closed to Indigenous peoples through systemic racism, transforming harmful messages to ones that are full of love and creative possibility.
Progressive Theatre Collective, The Fox Queen, was formed to connect, dismantle, (re)align artistic practices, and forge decolonized ways of theatre creation. Guided by shared Values: Love, Truth, Listening, Survival, Joy, Humour, Communication, Listening, Collaboration, The Fox Queen exists in the present moment, focusing on the heartbeats around us, and responding to the evolving needs of the people and communities with whom we engage.
Subjects L to R: Fox Queen Artistic Leads Dave Mott, Tamara McCarthy, Tsatassaya White Event: Messages on Doors: Snuneymuxw (Nanaimo) Credit: Sean Fenzl Photography
Guilty by Association
2021
Guilty by Association by Cole Lewis (she/her), Patrick Blenkarn (he/him), and Sam Ferguson (he/him)
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
Under the glow of a flickering screen, a daughter questions the worth of her father’s legacy.2021is a live performance where story, video games, and AI collide, blurring the line between memory and simulation.On stage, an audience member takes on the role of Brian, an unhoused veteran, reliving his final weeks in a New Jersey hospital. Each choice shapes his story, narrated live by his daughter. As the performance shifts, reality fractures. Brian’s voice returns—not quite human, not entirely gone. 2021 asks: If we could bring back the dead, even as data, should we?
Guilty by Association (GbA) is an interdisciplinary performance collective that shifts its process with each new project. Led by Co-Artistic Directors, Cole Lewis + Patrick Blenkarn, they seek to expand what theatre can do, devising work from design ideas, exploring modes of storytelling, and scheming to fuse media to the stage.
Playlist is a solo storytelling/ narrative-based show with projected hand-drawn artwork. It is eleven interlinked stories that together trace a linear timeline of the artist’s life growing up queer and trans in the Yukon in the 70’s and 80’s. Each story has a subtext of lyrics and melodies of the music of the era, mostly found on Ivan’s parents’ record collection and via the AM radio stationed on the kitchen counter of their childhood home in Whithorse. Playlist is funny, nostalgic, and heartbreaking in equal measures.
Ivan Coyote is the author of 13 books, the creator of three films, two albums that combine storytelling and music, and nine full-length multimedia stage productions. Coyote’s books have won the BC Book Prize Jim Deva Award for Writing That Provokes, the Stonewall Honor Book Award, and been short-listed for the Hilary Weston Prize for non-fiction and the Governor General Award twice. Coyote lives in Whitehorse, Yukon.
Justine A. Chambers (she/her) in collaboration with James Proudfoot (he/him), Mauricio Pauly (he/him), Vanessa Kwan (they/them)
Vancouver, BC
The Brutal Joy is a performance that wields the materiality of Black Vernacular line dance and Black sartorial gesture as physical cogitation, reverie, and devotion to Black-living.The Brutal Joy is a scored improvisational performance for sound, light, and dance performed by Justine A. Chambers, Mauricio Pauly, and James Proudfoot. The work is an antiphonal relational collaboration, an activation of The Electric Slide and Black dandyism to invoke the Black imaginary, and activate an embodied counter-archive—a reservoir for gestures, individual affective memories and under documented histories.
Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist and educator. Her practice is a collaboration with her Black matrilineal heritage, and extends from this continuum and its entanglements with Western contemporary dance and visual arts practices. Her research attends to embodied archives, social choreographies, and choreography and dance as otherwise ways of being in relation. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.
Kevin Matthew Wong (he/him) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Kevin has always wondered about his roots. Kevin is Hakka (客家)—one of the world’s most widely dispersed communities—he thinks. Out of the blue, Kevin receives a phone call asking him to write a play about Hakka identity. For seniors. In Markham, Ontario, where almost 50% of the population is Chinese. Vulnerable and epic, moving and playful, Benevolence is a powerful exploration of community, hybrid identities, and legacy. A charming and intimate storytelling experience that blossoms into a multi-layered Chinese-Canadian tale spanning continents, migrations, and generations. Tracing the roots of the Hakka (客家), Kevin Matthew Wong embarks on a journey to untangle these threads within himself.
Kevin Matthew Wong is a theatre creator, producer and video artist who has collaborated across Canada and internationally at organizations including Barbican Centre, National Arts Centre, Perth Festival, and Lincoln Centre. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Broadleaf Creative, which creates live performance inspired by social-justice and climate-justice. Kevin’s Dora award-winning “Benevolence” series is a multidisciplinary triptych celebrating Hakka culture.
Myriam Allard – choreography and coartistic director Hedi Graja – set design and coartistic director
Montréal, Quebec, Canada
It is from the ancestral Tunisian refrain Dawri (“turn, turn”) that the new choreographic creation by Myriam Allard and Hedi Graja emerges. Led by women, this refrain becomes the driving force behind a journey through the cycle of life. Blending contemporary flamenco, street dance, and Tunisian influences, Dawri is a field of forces, a collision space where movement is raw, explosive, and transcendent.
Rooted in the ethos of La Otra Orilla, based on hybridization and freedom, Dawri explores movement as an act of connection and survival: a way to gather, rise again, and keep turning so as never to cease existing.
Founded by Hedi Graja (Tunis) and Myriam Allard (Québec) in 2006 in Montreal, La Otra Orilla company is a space for expression, a vital stance, a living act ofresistance— both individual and collective. Together, Allard and Graja forge a singular, transdisciplinary language, where dance, music, physical theatre, and poetry converge and collide. Raw, necessary, and luminous, their creative work honors the urgency and the irrepressible need to think and live freely.
Louise Orwin she/her (conceived, written and performed by); in collaboration with other creatives named here
London, UK
FAMEHUNGRY is a helter-skelter nosedive through the TikTok universe, questioning the lengths we go to be seen, and what it means to be an artist now. Fusing performance art and Very Real and Very Live TikTok Experiences, join award-winning cult UK performance artist Louise Orwin in a sisyphean mission to make art and find beauty and hope in the relentless, Almighty Algorithm-feeding attention economy.
Anchored in Louise’s obsessive, gonzo-style research, FAMEHUNGRY is a wild (and occasionally messy) ride for two simultaneous audiences: a theatre audience, and an unsuspecting TikTok audience. Loud, fast, funny, and relentlessly unpredictable, this is theatre redefined for the brat generation (sort of).
Louise Orwin is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist working across text, performance, music, and video. She makes research-driven, participatory projects that ask what it means to identify as a queer femme in a fast-moving, media-saturated world that prizes patriarchal, heteronormative narratives. Louise’s work is cinematic, provocative, often filled with a heady dose of pop culture, and guaranteed to get under your skin.
The Disaster Show began during the pandemic as a live-edited digital performance statement on climate emergency. The present version premiered live in April 2022 in Edmonton, and at VIDF in Vancouver in 2025. All versions were set in open, found spaces- a warehouse , a film stage and the Roundhouse. The work explores the vulnerability of the human body facing climate change, pitted against fire, hurricane, and melting ice in a series of vignettes providing both a lament and a warning.
The piece features a dancer on a giant block of ice (representing melting glaciers), a dancer in a field of charcoal (representing forest fires), and one in a refuge of human household garbage with a giant fan (representing hurricanes). The three dancers work simultaneously while the musicians play live in the centre of the room. The audience is encouraged to flow through the different spaces more like a gallery. Video augments the whole event, adding to the immersiveness and nuance.
From rural Saskatchewan, Gerry Morita (BA Dance / MFA Theatre) has lived and worked in Vancouver, Montréal, and Tokyo as a dancer, choreographer, performance artist and teacher before moving to Edmonton and becoming Mile Zero Dance’s Artistic Director in 2006. Her work has toured Poland, Turkey, Estonia, Canada, and Japan.
Morita’s body of work involves continuous inquiry into new ways of seeing movement, the body, and the spaces between us, working with artists from all disciplines in a vast array of both conventional and site-specific venues. She has received the Mayor’s Award for Innovation in Artistic Direction, the Edmonton Salute for Excellence, Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund and was one of Alberta’s 25 Influential Artists recognized in 2016.
Playwright: Katherine Gauthier, Director: Chelsea Haberlin Vancouver, BC, Canada
Kathryn Gauthier’s taboo-busting, real-time sex addicts anonymous meeting is more than an 80-minute work whose stumbling, halting dialogue evokes the great American playwright Annie Baker. It’s a real-time, site-specific experience that takes its audience right to the edge of what is permissible to speak in public and yet lives among us every single day. That it does so with such grace, humanity and humour, is ultimately a testament not only to the play’s success, but the liberatory power of live performance itself.
“There’s a kind of radical empathy at work here” – Angie Rico STIR
Established in 1994, Neworld Theatre creates, produces, and tours new plays, performance events and digital works. Our work centers stories and perspectives that challenge systems of oppression. Our motto is ‘plays well with others’ which means that collaboration and working across perceptions of difference are vital to the way we work. We deliver community-engaged programs and are at the forefront of developing cultural infrastructure and sectoral capacity in Vancouver and across the country.
Part fantasy, part reality, with huge dollops of whimsy, Niall McNeil’s Beauty and The Beast: My Life (BBML) transports audiences into a vibrant realm that references Disney and Cocteau but charts its own unique narrative path through Niall’s experiences and multi-faceted art practice.
BBML is a celebration of movement and the power of imagination, combining Niall’s dialogue, lyrics and paintings, with the performers swirling through space and time, to a seriously catchy musical score by Veda Hille, that’s sure to challenge your perceptions and delight audiences of all ages. This is a highly original interdisciplinary performance, the likes of which you’re unlikely to experience on stage again any time soon.
Niall McNeil is an artist living with Down Syndrome who has been involved with theatre from an early age through his lifelong association with the Caravan Farm Theatre. From 1999-2006, Niall was an ensemble member of Vancouver’s Leaky Heaven Theatre. In 2010, he performed in A Christmas Carol with the NAC’s English Theatre Company. Niall and Marcus Youssef have co-written two Jessie Richardson Theatre Award winning plays, Peter Panties (2011) and King Arthur’s Night (2017) (Neworld Theatre). In 2018, Niall was awarded a Certificate of Honor from Studio 58.
David Raymond & Tiffany Tregarthen Vancouver, BC, Canada
Rhino features an unlikely constellation of characters past their heyday, asking if their best days are behind them. They fight for relevance, face opportunity for transformation and discover what they can bring into uncertain futures. A comedy and tragedy tightrope, Rhino prioritizes what is essential for enduring time and the threatened extinction of our dreams. Out Innerspace’s expressive and interactive production design creates a limitless “elsewhere” using transformation, ritual and humour to help connect human longevity to the necessary survival of creatures, concepts, values and things.
Vancouver-based Out Innerspace was founded by Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond on unceded Indigenous land of the Coast Salish peoples and has dedicated nearly 20 years to creating extraordinary dance experiences through uncompromising rigour and ingenuity. They have been named Associate Artists at Agora de la Danse and received support from the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund, the CanDance Network Creation Fund and commissions with Ballet BC, Netherlands Dance Theatre 2, Hessisches Staatsballett, Gibney Dance, and GöteborgsOperans Danskompani.
The meaning of dogma in ancient Greek is ‘something that seems true.’ Through this absurdist lens, We enter a world where rules are unquestioned, punishment is theatrical, and faith is an acrobatic act of endurance. Characters physically bound to one another through flawed beliefs are confronted by a shifting terrain of identity and transformation, exposing these illusions for what they are. Emphasized through the surrealist qualities inherent to circus, dance and physical theater – DOGMA leaves audiences unsettled yet alive, witnessing not just a performance, but a small poetic rebellion in the form of a circus.
People Watching is a Montréal-based collective creating at the intersection of contemporary circus, dance, and physical theatre. Founded in 2020 amid global isolation, the company has established a practice that seeks connection over grandiosity. Their work has reached national and international recognition in the performing arts community, and has fostered collaborations with a multitude of established venues, festivals, creatives and companies.
Time is running out for humankind. The Earth—tired, hot and desperate has decided to end it all. She begins to speak directly to a select few: first to be heard and understood, then to form a plan. Indigenous Peoples will once again become sovereign stewards of the land. Who will be chosen to stay? Climate Refugees flock to Indigenous Nations Globally to be vetted. Do they deserve to live on Earth?
Quelemia is a multi-disciplinary Indigenous artist from the Musqueam Nation. Though she works in various forms, much of Quelemia’s work centres Indigenous perspective, specifically her Musqueam knowledge and culture. Over the past 20 years, she has been disseminating sχʷəy̓em̓ (Musqueam history), knowledge of placenames, stories and teachings. With her own Musqueam-based creation methodology she has written and created: ‘Almost Real’ Necessary Tomorrows/Al Jazeera, ‘Salmon Girl’/RavenSpirit Dance, Co-writer ‘The Pipeline Project’ /Itsazoo and Savage Society, A podplay ‘Ashes on the Water’/Neworld/Raven Spirit Dance, Indigenous consultant and Indigenous content writer for ‘Lysistrata’/Bard on the Beach, Skyborn: A Land Reclamation Odyssey/SavageSociety.
KÒSA, meaning “this body” in Haitian Creole, emerges from Rhodnie Désir’s choreographic documentary methodology, grounded in testimonies from children, specialists in thanatology, theology, and astrophysics. Inspired by the Anmey — a Rèls, or lament, voiced in response to life-altering news — the work delves into emptiness, loss of grounding, and the invisible world through the moving body.
Performed by the powerful soloist Rhodnie Désir and her polyphonic, polyrhythmic Houseband (OKAN duo, drummer Jahsun, Peul Flutist Lasso), KÒSA weaves sacred resonance, ancestral force, and afro-contemporanaity.
Presented in two touring formats: KÒSA, a 75-minute choreographic work with Live music; and KÒSA Sòund, a 60-minute immersive musical performance featuring four musicians, affirming the company’s distinctive Afro-contemporary and spiritual signature inpired by the languages from Haïti, Cuba, Gabon and Burkina Faso.
Founded in 2017 by Artistic Director and Choreographer Rhodnie Désir, RD Créations (RDC) is the world’s only company dedicated to choreographic-documentary innovation, amplifying often-overlooked social realities. Its 29 productions, based on the testimony of over 250 individuals, include acclaimed works such as BOW’T TRAIL Rétrospek, and Symphonie de cœurs (2024 – created with three major orchestras). RDC has received numerous prestigious honors: Prix de la danse de Montréal (Grand Prix and Prix Envol 2020), Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” 2021, Sandra Faire Next Generation Award 2022, and a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination (2025 Outstanding Touring Production), cementing its international recognition.
Ruby Singh (he/ hymn), Priyanka Chakrabarti (she/ her), Tarun Nayar (he/him), Fiana Kawane (she/her), Laine Butler (he/him), Michelle La (she/her), John Stewart-Desoyners (he/him) Vancouver BC Canada
HYDRONE is an immersive, transdisciplinary performance by Ruby Singh that merges sound, movement, projection, and data sonification to explore humanity’s relationship with water and climate. Collaborating with Priyanka Chakrabarti (PIU), Tarun Nayar (Modern Biology), Fiana Kawane (Kathak), Laine Butler, and Michelle La (Ephemeral Objects), Singh transforms data from NASA’s GRACE satellite into real-time compositions of music, dance, poetry, and visuals. Rooted in Indian classical traditions yet propelled by digital innovation, HYDRONE flows through the elemental states of water — a sensory journey and poetic call to reawaken our ecological interconnection and shared responsibility for the planet.
Ruby Singh is a multi-award-winning composer, producer, performer, and educator whose practice spans music, poetry, film, and installation, exploring myth, ecology, justice, and speculative futures. He has been recognized with the Lt. Governors Jubliee Award, a JUNO nomination and multiple WCMA awards for his work in art and music. Singh believes in art’s ability to reimagine futures, to repurpose aesthetic freedoms toward civil and environmental justice.
Links: www.rubysingh.ca, Instagram: @rubysingh_
Email: rubysinghartist@gmail.com
Soeurs Schmutt
She and the other(s)
Elodie Lombardo, choreographer (she/her), Chi Long, performer (she/her)
Montréal, Québec, Canada
She and the other(s): This solo piece combines theater and dance, featuring performer Chi Long (Australian born Vietnamese immigrated to Canada) in an autofiction that intertwines real, fictional, and borrowed stories. Created by choreographer Élodie Lombardo in close collaboration with the performer, this solo explores the conscious and unconscious mechanisms of identity construction and transmission, invisible memories, our composite identities, and the relationships we have with physical or imaginary territories. Despite the intensity of the narrative, the piece reflects Chi’s personality: fresh, surprising, and unsettling. Chi, in complete mastery of her art, delivers a powerful solo with just the right touch of sensitive humor.
The CompanyLes soeurs Schmutt, founded in 2004 by the twin sisters Élodie and Séverine Lombardo, bases its choreographic ethics on cross-disciplinary collaborative work. The sisters bring together different disciplines, places, environments, artists, and cultures, with the aim of creating unique research contexts that question identity and human relationships. The spirit of collaboration and intercultural sharing are two dimensions that nourish and stimulate their creative work.
Split Tooth: Saputjiji is a new performance of Tanya Tagaq’s, drawing from her acclaimed book Split Tooth and her new album Saputjiji; these two projects are already married, let’s make it three. Tagaq’s vocal power collapses boundaries. Her performance summons genetic memory and future visions, bringing the now to audiences with a visceral and cyclonic power; and the eye of the storm allowing softness.
From Nunavut, Tanya Tagaq is an improvisational singer, avant-garde composer and author. A member of the Order of Canada, Polaris Music Prize and JUNO Award winner and recipient of multiple honorary doctorates, Tagaq is an original disruptor, a world-changing figure at the forefront of seismic social, political and environmental change.
Kaneza Schaal (New York, NY) works in theater, opera and film. Her work has shown in divergent contexts from NYC galleries, to courtyards in Vietnam, to East African amphitheaters, to European opera houses, to USA public housing, to rural auditoriums in the UAE. Schaal received a 2025 Doris Duke Artist Award, 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, United States Artists Fellowship, SOROS Art Migration and Public Space Fellowship, Ford Foundation Art For Justice Bearing Witness Award, and she directed the 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar.
Links: www.tanyatagaq.com
Email: sarahrogersaod@gmail.com
12:30—1:30PM // Catered Lunch
World Arts Centre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
Enjoy a catered lunch between sessions — menu and details will be shared in advance.
1:30—3:30PM // Navigating Shifting Grounds: Geopolitical Contexts and Adaptive Strategies
World Arts Centre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
In this open briefing session, we begin with short updates from invited international artists and arts workers, offering on-the-ground perspectives on the shifting geopolitical landscapes affecting artistic production and exchange. In the second half, the floor opens to all participants—local, national, and international—to share insights on how these global shifts are reshaping artistic practices, funding conditions, and presentation ecologies across regions. The session spotlights adaptive strategies and evolving organizational responses, creating space for mutual learning and cross-regional perspective building.
Facilitator: Boomer Stacey
About Boomer Stacey
Boomer Stacey
Boomer is a mixed-blood settler/immigrant with ancestral roots in Cornwall (England), Sri Lanka, the Netherlands, and Portugal, currently residing on unceded Squamish territory on the Sunshine Coast, BC. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University with a focus on photography, painting and drawing. A recognized global arts leader, manager, and producer, Boomer has served as Creative Producer at Boca del Lupo, Executive Director of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT), and Artistic Advisor at the New Victory Theater in New York City. He has also held leadership roles with the International Performing Arts for Youth (IPAY) in Philadelphia as Executive Director, and at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto as Artistic Director of the Milk International Children’s Festival of the Arts.
Beyond his professional work, Boomer exhibits nomadic tendencies, is a social introvert, loves to cook, excels at gazing into campfires, enjoys a good IPA or single malt, and lives to explore the world’s coastlines—usually with his dog Tilly.
Artists include:
Anne Routin // ONDA // Paris, France
Erin Boberg Doughton // PICA // Portland, Oregon, USA
Jisun Park // Producer Group DOT // Seoul, Republic of Korea
Julia Reist // Flanders Arts Institute // Brussels, Belgium
Kate Britton // Performance Space // Sydney, Australia
Louise Orwin // Louise Orwin & Company // London, United Kingdom
Left of PuSh is Plastic Orchid Factory’s platform intended for dance makers working in the margins to share “experiments-in-process” with a public. Established in 2018, Left of PuSh offers a responsive and meaningful opportunity for dance artists to introduce their work and practice to peers and networks of curators, programmers and visitors to PuSh from around the globe in a non-transactional context. This year POF has partnered with Mile Zero Dance, Studio 303, and the CanDance Network to facilitate RELAY, a tri-city handoff where three mid-career artists will carry their works from Montreal, to Vancouver and then Edmonton; Moving from seedling ideas, to full production — developing, and refining their propositions at each stop.
This performance will be followed by a casual industry mixer.
Founded by award-winning dance artists James Gnam and Natalie LeFebvre Gnam, Plastic Orchid Factory is an artist-run, organization committed to creating, supporting, and advocating for diverse art forms that embrace a pluralistic approach in practice and form. Using the body as a first line of inquiry, POF’s programming encourages collaboration and a blending of disciplines and approaches to create new frameworks for making and experiencing live art.
4:30—5:30PM // Community Programming: Carry the One (Tara Cheyenne Performance)
Presented by Tara Cheyenne Performance with support from Playwrights Theatre Centre
Carry The One is a performance lecture featuring Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg rewilding the self. The “lecture” winds through a performative practical exploration of emotional labour, filtered through a middle-aged femme body that’s in the process of trying to shed the chronic debilitating imposition to take care of the atmosphere, the group, the mood, and the needs of literally everyone else.
Tara Cheyenne Performance (TCP) creates kinetic theatrical expressions based on the wonderful human experience through exquisitely realized characters, crafted choreography, a healthy dose of comedy, and lashings of tragedy. Our work exists at the intersections of dance, text and unapologetic comedy. We have been creating and touring original content throughout BC, Canada and internationally since 2007 developing lasting community ties wherever we have travelled, especially in rural BC. The company is a leader in community engagement, audience and artist development, offering workshops, discussions, and mentorship opportunities with each project we create. Our work bridges different performance modes bringing about deeper understanding, exciting collaborations, and new audiences.
7PM // Reception and Artist Talk (approximately 45 minutes) 8PM // Performance Running Time: 80 minutes
The Northern Lights have always carried stories—frightening, spiritual, epic, and playful. Kiuryaq is a circumpolar theatrical performance exploring our relationship with the aurora borealis. Created by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists from Canada, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), and Sápmi (Norway), Kiuryaq blends theatre, live music, and video design to weave northern stories into a landscape of light, memory, and cosmology.
This one-night-only performance is preceded by an artist talk with co-creators Reneltta Arluk and Rawdna Carita Eira, and a reception hosted by the Royal Norwegian Embassy. Come early for complimentary refreshments and a conversation about the artistic practice and cultural worldviews informing this landmark circumpolar collaboration.
After last year’s hit debut, the Festival Lounge Bar returns! We’ve once again transformed our office studio into a cozy late-night hub just for artists and industry delegates. Come unwind after performances with music, games, cheap drinks, and good company — the perfect place to mingle, relax, and keep the conversations flowing. Open nightly during the Industry Series.
Additional Festival Performances Available
7PM // Performance: Remember that time we met in the future? (Lara Kramer)
Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (See map)
Running Time: 75 minutes
Remember that time we met in the future? unfolds within a transforming landscape of salvaged materials and shifting light—echoing both urban and land-based worlds. Four Indigenous artists travel through nonlinear time, guided by the intelligence of body, land, and spirit. Their movements and pulse trace connections across generations, an unfolding toward futures still forming.
On a sand-covered stage, four Zimbabwean dancers move through poles, elastics, and projected images, their bodies speaking what history has silenced. With live vocals that summon the disappeared, Kamwe Kamwe (One by One) transforms dance into testimony—a reckoning on racism, memory, and resilience. Both protest and prayer, it’s a choreography of solidarity rising from the dust.
Content note / advisories: Potential exposure to airborne dust due to sand; Archival images of racial and colonial violence
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