Join Max Wyman in supporting the PuSh Festival
April 15, 2010
As someone who has spent a lifetime as a critic and commentator on the arts scene in Vancouver, I have always turned down invitations to join the boards of the organizations that put performance on the stage. But when I was asked last year to become part of the PuSh Festival´s board, the opportunity was too tempting to resist.
Like a growing number of arts enthusiasts, I am hugely excited by what PuSh does, and I want to do whatever I can to spread the word and help move it into the public mainstream. In a nutshell, PuSh is at the forefront of something quite transformational – a world movement that is fostering a radical rethinking of the whole idea of performance.
In Europe, Asia, Australia and across North America, visionary artists are reformulating the experiences we have when we enter a theatre. Traditional boundaries between the arts disciplines are melting. Dance, music and theatre come together in a common space. And traditional boundaries between audiences and performers are melting as well. Even traditional notions of what constitutes a performer are up for debate. What is emerging is a vigorous, refreshing and often startling new exploration of the possibilities of theatrical experience that invites the involvement of the adventurous and the open-hearted.
PuSh has its finger on the pulse of this new movement – and each midwinter, Vancouver audiences are privileged to be able to get an up-to-the-moment reading of the living heart of this seismic global shake-up.
The PuSh experience is something that can touch the emotions and enrich the sense of imagination and adventure in every one of us. Of course, not everything is to every taste, and some of the most heated debates I’ve had recently have been about the relative merits of PuSh shows. But that’s good. Ultimately, that’s what it’s all about. Consistently, PuSh explores new ways to do what good theatre always does – provoke us, engage us, delight us, enrage us. Change us.
You will find the means by which you can become a contributing part of this exciting adventure on the PuSh website. If you are already part of the team, I commend you for your perspicacity. If you have been toying with the idea, well, let me suggest that now is the time to go ahead. We all know government funding isn’t going to guarantee that something as visionary as PuSh continues to, well, push the theatrical envelope. That’s up to us.
Best regards,
Max Wyman