PuSh Industry Series - Jan 29-Feb 5, 2023 - Presented with Talking Stick

2024 Industry Series

January 23-28, 2024 | Registration closes January 19

The PuSh Industry Series brings together 200+ visionary arts workers to imagine possible futures through exchange that invites generative friction, collective reflection, and creative response.

For a third year, PuSh partners with Talking Stick Festival to host Indigenous delegates from Turtle Island and beyond for ceremony, feast, and weaving deeper connections within our communities.

Schedule Overview

Detailed Schedule

All Day / Weaving Connections: Indigenous Arts Leadership Symposium

For Talking Stick Delegates. Indigenous artists and leaders, please reach out directly to info@fullcircle.ca for more details.

Over two days, we will highlight Indigenous Leadership in the arts through a series of gatherings. Here, established and emerging Indigenous arts leaders from Turtle Island and beyond, share their wisdom and vision with one another. These sessions offer a platform to exchange knowledge, foster mentorship, and discuss the vital role of leadership in sustaining cultural vitality and community wellbeing.

Talking Stick Festival Logo

All Day / Weaving Connections: Indigenous Arts Leadership Symposium

For Talking Stick Delegates. Indigenous artists and leaders, please reach out directly to info@fullcircle.ca for more details.

Over two days, we will highlight Indigenous Leadership in the arts through a series of gatherings. Here, established and emerging Indigenous arts leaders from Turtle Island and beyond, share their wisdom and vision with one another. These sessions offer a platform to exchange knowledge, foster mentorship, and discuss the vital role of leadership in sustaining cultural vitality and community wellbeing.

Talking Stick Festival Logo

12 – 5pm / Drop-in Coffee and Industry Pass Collection

The Post at 750 [See Map]


2:30 – 4:30pm / Artist Walks

Artist Walks invite visiting delegates to slow down, go for a walk, and get to know local spaces through the lens of a local artist. Within the frame of this informal guided “tour”, participants get to know each other while exploring a corner of the city that has informed one artist’s sense of locality. An opportunity to expand inter/national community and stretch your legs! Dress warm. Umbrellas will be available if needed.

Photo of Alexis Fletcher

Alexis Fletcher

I am a dance artist, creator and producer based in Vancouver, Canada. I danced with Ballet BC for 14 years, toured internationally with the Company, and spent time as rehearsal assistant, guest artist and Artist in Residence before becoming independent in 2020.

Myself and my husband, Sylvain Senez, are the founders and Artistic Directors of Belle Spirale Dance Projects. The Company is a 2023/24 recipient of The Chrystal Dance Prize and holds the position of Artist in Residence at Chutzpah! Festival. It has been generously supported by Dance Victoria, Ballet BC, Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, Presentation House Theatre, New Works, Vernon Performing Arts Centre, The Gordon Smith Foundation, Dancing on the Edge, InFrinGing Festival, Shadbolt Centre and Dance: Made in/fait au Canada. As a freelancer, I have most recently performed with Re:Naissance Opera, zoe | juniper, and Wen Wei Dance.

bellespirale.ca

Arash Khakpour (آرش خاکپور)

A dancer and choreographer from Tehran and based in Vancouver. Arash has been practicing performance for the past 14 years and has been a company member of the EDAM ensemble since 2017. He tends to invest in the nuances of prejudices in the body as a way of inviting the unconscious to the conscious, and as a doorway to confront unknown emotions. He sees dance as a process of physical, emotional and spiritual discovery and a mode of transformation. He works with dance as a language that researches the human condition through mythical, historical, social, political and existential interpretations. As a first-generation immigrant, he continuously considers what healing he can bring to the land and communities he works with. He is building a culture of relationality and reciprocity that celebrates the multiplicity of presences and approaches. Arash is the co-founder and artistic director of the dance-theatre-film company The Biting School (alongside his brother Aryo Khakpour).

Brian Postalian (Բրայն Փոսթալյան)

A performance creator, educator, and producer born and raised in Toronto/Tkaronto by way of Armenia, Ireland, UK, and the Czech Republic.  With their company Re:Current Theatre, they make work that reconsiders how we share space together in communal places, blurring the divide between audiences and performers.  Their work extends beyond traditional stages and use the communal form as an intervention of the private self in public space. Their work New Societies used immersivity and interactivity with a focus on game theory and social engagement to create idyllic societies. It has been presented across Canada and Internationally; where it has been translated into Mandarin with the National Theatre of Taipei. Brian’s recent work co-creating Access Me with the Boys in Chairs collective was published by Playwrights Canada Press as part of Interdependent Magic: Disability Performance in Canada. 

www.brianpostalian.com

Photo of Fay Nass

Fay Nass

Fay Nass (She/He/They) is a Vancouver-based theatre director, curator, dramaturg, producer and multi-disciplinary artist. They are the Artistic Director of the frank theatre company and the founder/AD of Aphotic Theatre. Their work often examines questions of race, sex, and culture, and the challenges these pose to notions of identity. Being an Iranian-Canadian immigrant and a non-binary queer artist, in their work they shine light on liminal spaces in order to shift meanings and create space for cultural exchanges. Fay was the recipient of Gina Wilkinson’s award in 2021. 

www.thefranktheatre.com

Marissa Wong

A Chinese-Canadian dance artist who has the privilege to create, play and share on the unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Səlílwətaɬ, and xwməθkwəyəm Nations, also named Vancouver, BC. She is the Artistic Director for The Falling Company and her engagement in the Vancouver dance community demonstrates her capability to educate, produce, perform, and host works. Marissa strives to change the systemic structure in dance through facilitating inclusive and sustainable arts spaces. She is invested in continuous learning and her work reflects her observations of the human experience. 

www.thefallingcompany.com

Pegah Tabassinejad

An interdisciplinary artist, educator, and wanderer living and working as a stranger—an uninvited guest—on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) people, in what is so-called Vancouver.

Her interest is in creating intermedial performances, interactive performances, cyberformances, digital theatre, multi-channel video installations, and city projects. While focusing on the notion of identity, she has been exploring presence and absence, the real and the virtual, here and there, and the absence inside the two worlds that she inhabits in. While interested in body and body movements, she also questions the borders and boundaries of private and public space. Pegah is interested in the aesthetics of CCTV cameras, cell phone cameras, laptops, monitors, and the Internet. 

She holds MFA in Interdisciplinary Art at Simon Fraser University and BA in Stage Directing from the Art University in Tehran. She also studied Visual Art at Azad University of Tehran and Contemporary Dance in Paris at Conservatoire de la Danse. Currently, she holds the Phil Lind Multicultural Artist residency at UBC Theatre and Film.

www.pegahtabassinjead.com

Portrait photo of Sylvain Senez

Sylvain Senez

Sylvain Senez has been active on the professional Canadian dance scene for over 45 years and danced for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Judith Marcuse Dance Company and Coleman Lemieux Company among others. From 1991 to 2016 he worked with Ballet BC as a dancer, Ballet Master and Rehearsal Director. As a photographer specializing in dance and portraiture, Sylvain is also a set/visual designer, filmmaker and dramaturge. 

He and his wife Alexis Fletcher are the founders and Artistic Directors of Belle Spirale Dance Projects. The Company is a 2023/24 recipient of The Chrystal Dance Prize and holds the position of Artist in Residence at Chutzpah! Festival. It has been generously supported by Dance Victoria, Ballet BC, Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, Presentation House Theatre, New Works, Vernon Performing Arts Centre, The Gordon Smith Foundation, Dancing on the Edge, InFrinGing Festival, Shadbolt Centre and Dance: Made in/fait au Canada.

bellespirale.ca

Register for Artist Walks

5 – 7pm / Opening Cocktail

The Post at 750 [See Map]

Enjoy a beverage and refreshments with your fellow delegates at the PuSh Festival studio space.

Sponsored by

New Works Dance logo
Belsher Arts Management logo

7:30pm / Industry Track Performance: Sound of the Beast

This performance will be followed by an artist talk back. See show details for venue and other information.

9:30 – 10am / Coffee and Tea

Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre [See Map]


10 – 12:30pm / Territorial Welcome 

Presented with Talking Stick. Open to all delegates.

Begin the Industry Series with our Territorial Welcome, a sincere acknowledgment of the local Indigenous customs and traditions. As we gather on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations, we do so with mindfulness and respect for their history and ongoing relationship with their ancestral lands. This ceremony not only sets the tone for the Industry Series but also embodies the collaborative spirit and shared learning that will define the days ahead.

Talking Stick Festival Logo

12:30 – 1:30 / Welcome Lunch

Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre [See Map]

This meal is included with your Industry pass.


1:30 – 3:00pm / Weaving Connections: A Conversation

Presented with Talking Stick. Open to all delegates.

Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre [See Map]

This session marks the culmination of the Weaving Connections symposium, featuring Indigenous arts leaders who will share the collective wisdom and insights developed over the preceding days. As they lead the conversation, the wider community is invited to join in a capacity that respects the format of the session—whether that means active engagement or attentive listening. This gathering is designed to honor the leadership of Indigenous voices, ensuring their narratives and perspectives are at the forefront of this enriching exchange.


4:00 – 6:00pm / Ceremonial Fire

Presented with Talking Stick. Open to all delegates.

Second Beach, Stanley Park [See Map]

As the sun dips below the horizon, join us at Second Beach for a fire ceremony, deeply rooted in Coast Salish tradition. This gathering is a time for community reflection, storytelling, and connection, embraced by the natural harmony of land, sea, and fire. It’s an occasion to come together around the fire to share knowledge, music, and camaraderie.

Warm drinks and light refreshments provided.

6:00 – 7:00pm / Industry Cocktail

Stanley Park Brewing [See Map]

Keep the conversations going with a casual drink at Stanley Park Brewing. 


7:30pm / Industry Track Performance: because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude, we all have it)

This performance will be followed by an artist talk back moderated by Indian Summer Festival’s Pawan Deol. See show details for venue and other information.

9:30-10:00am / Coffee and Tea

The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts [See Map]


10-10:45am / Artist Talk: Theatre and Democracy 

With Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim of asses.masses

The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

Do our practices and systems within the performing arts sector support or hinder a strong democracy? Join the co-creators of asses.masses, Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim, in a dialogue about the intersections of democracy and theatre. With reference to their own collaborations and those of others working within the domains of participation and interactivity, they’ll reflect on the impact of contemporary technology on our conceptions of ‘public gathering’ and political assembly, and whether or not the growing desire for maximum audience ‘agency’ is enough to make one’s artistic work ‘democratic’.

Arguing against the fetishization of performance’s ephemerality, they’ll also turn their reflections towards their own 2019-founded initiative, videocan, a national video archive of Canadian performance documentation, and discuss its potential for fostering new forms of democratic practices within our industry through peer-to-peer education.

Milton Lim and Patrick Blenkarn in the foreground, in the background are books on shelves and an escalator

Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim

Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim are conceptual artists exploring urgent questions around the social value of art, digital labour, and the political potential of games. Mixing their backgrounds in performance, philosophy, psychology, and digital media, their collaborations have manifested in video games, participatory installations, digital archives, and card games.  

In addition to their asses.masses, Patrick and Milton are also the co-founders of the Canadian national video archive of performance (videocan) and the co-creators behind a performing arts economy trading card game (culturecapital). Their projects have been presented across Canada, as well as in Argentina, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, in English, French, and Spanish.

patrickblenkarn.com / miltonlim.com


11:00 – 12:30pm / Talk and Discussion: Decolonization; How the Personal Becomes Organizational 

With Stan Chung

The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

How do we implement decolonization in our organizations? In this conversational interactive session, you will rehearse practical strategies for implementing 1) cultural safety, 2) EDI-A informed policy, 3) governance transformation, and 4) jurisdictional transition. For IBPOC (Indigenous, Black, People of Colour), we offer a debrief conversation immediately afterward.

Sae-Hoon Stan Chung, PhD

(he/him)

Chung is a Korean Canadian scholar/researcher/EDI-A adviser serving primarily Indigenous First Nations in unceded Ktunaxa territory. He holds a PhD re: quantum improvisation and Pauline Oliveros. He is currently the twice-appointed Chair of the BC Arts Council where he co-leads Indigenous-informed EDI-A policy and funding transformation.

He is widely published on Decolonization, Reconciliation, and Newcomer Identity including two books on autoethnography and memoir.


11:30 – 12:30pm / One on One Grant Chats with BC Arts Council Program Advisors

Room 2295, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

BC Arts Council program staff will be available to answer questions about funding programs in brief individual or small group conversations.

Register for a Grant Chat

12:30 – 1:30pm / Lunch

To join this lunch, please purchase your Three-Lunch Package before January 12.


12:30 – 1:30 / Decolonization Safe Zone: A Special Debrief Space for Racialized People

With Stan Chung

Room 2205, The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

This session will occur over lunch directly after the preceding session, with the aim of providing culturally-responsive and safe space to debrief. 


1:30 – 2:30pm / Panel: Ethics of Retelling and Representation 

With Catherine Bourgeois, Donna-Michelle St Bernard, and Gabrielle Martin.
Moderated by Marcus Youssef

The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

Representation is what we build our entire theatrical craft from, but who has the right to represent another? Do we need to be experts on the subjects we dramatize, and how do we determine expertise? What is our contribution to the lived reality that we fictionalize? What is our responsibility to the source? How do we establish a shared ethic of research?

Portrait of Catherine Boureois

Catherine Bourgeois

After studying scenography at Option-Théâtre in Ste-Thérèse, Catherine Bourgeois completed a BA in scenography at UQAM, and a Master’s degree in directing at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

In 2003, she co-founded Joe Jack & John, where she has since designed and directed most their productions. During this time, she has also worked as assistant to choreographer Margie Gillis and Associate Director for Imago Theatre. Her creations have found diverse audiences both nationally and internationally. Catherine has also taught at the National Theatre School of Canada since 2017, where her aesthetic research and the inclusivity of her processes have earned her a reputation as a leader within the performing arts community.

A member of Women for Equity in Theatre and the Steering Committee of the Feminist Workcamp, she works and actively campaigns for greater recognition of the practice of women and artists with disabilities.

Catherine Bourgeois completed a BA in scenography at UQAM, and a Master’s degree in directing at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. In 2003, she co-founded Joe Jack & John, where she has since designed and directed most of their productions. Her aesthetic research and the inclusivity of her processes have earned her a reputation as a leader within the performing arts community.

Portrait of Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, aka Belladonna the Blest, is an emcee, playwright, and arts administrator.  Her works for the stage include The First Stone, Diggers, Give It Up, The Smell of Horses, A Man A Fish, Cake, They Say He Fell, Salome’s Clothes, and Gas Girls. DM’s work has been recognized with a SATA nomination, Herman Voaden Playwriting Award, Enbridge PlayRites Award, Patrick O’Neill Award, Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, and three nominations for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Co-creation includes The Only Good Indian with Pandemic Theatre, 501:Toronto in Transit with Bob Naismith and Justin Manyfingers, Bag of Stones with Clare Preuss, and On The Hill with Pulga Muchochoma and Vivine Scarlett. For Playwrights Canada Press she is co-editor with Yvette Nolan of Refractions: Solo and Refractions: Scenes, as well as editor of Indian Act.  She is a true believer. 

Portrait photo of Gabrielle Martin

Gabrielle Martin

Gabrielle Martin is a cultural producer and live art curator, and is currently Director of Programming at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. She has a BFA in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University (Montréal), a Certificate in Dramaturgy from the Centre National des Arts du Cirque (Châlons-en-Champagne), and an MA in Arts and Cultural Management from Rome Business School.

Before joining PuSh, Gabrielle worked as Festival Manager with the Vancouver International Dance Festival. She currently furthers her creative practice as Co-Artistic Director and choreographer with Corporeal Imago. 

As a former contemporary dance and circus artist, Gabrielle performed over 1,400 shows internationally with Cirque du Soleil’s TORUK and Cavalia, participated in choreographic residencies in Belgium, Sweden and France, and presented her work in the UK, US, and across Canada.

Marcus Youssef

Marcus’ fifteen or so plays have been produced in multiple languages in more than twenty countries across North America, Europe and Asia. His work is often collaborative, usually highly personal, and almost always investigates questions of difference, belonging and dissent.

Marcus is a recipient of Canada’s largest theatre award, the Siminovitch Prize for Theatre, for his body of work as a playwright and mentor, as well as the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, Berlin, Germany’s Ikarus Prize, the Rio-Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Chalmer’s Canadian Play Award, and the Vancouver Critic’s Innovation award (three times).

Marcus is also well-known in Canada as an advocate for central role culture can play in making our worlds more humane, just and joyful. He co-founded the artist-run production centre Progress Lab 1422, where he led Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre for fifteen years. Marcus was also the inaugural chair of the city of Vancouver’s Arts and Culture Policy Council and implemented Canada’s first mutli-institutional Bachelor’s of Performing Arts program, at Capilano University.


2:30 – 4:00pm / Creating, Knowing and Sharing

Canada Council for the Arts

SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

Let’s Talk Arts Funding

Join Noel Habel, Program Officer, for an informative session on the ‘Creating, Knowing and Sharing’ program at the Canada Council for the Arts.

This session will provide essential insights into arts funding, focusing on the support for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples’ arts and cultures. Learn about application processes, artist CVs, profiles, and budgeting. The ‘Creating, Knowing and Sharing’ program is dedicated to reaffirming and revitalizing relationships with Indigenous communities, respecting their cultural sovereignty and artistic expression. It offers support for creating new art, retaining and innovating cultural knowledge, and sharing artistic works. This program is rooted in Indigenous values and worldviews, promoting collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, led by Indigenous communities.

Dive into how Canada Council empowers Indigenous artistic practices and communities through this vital program.

Talking Stick Festival Logo

3:00 – 4:00pm / 3 Events

1. Off-Programming: Work-in-development Outdoor Showcase: Playing Fields

Presented by The Chop

Strathcona Park [See Map]

Playing Fields uses sport as an entry point, but the focus of this show is on where the game takes place: the field itself. Recorded audio interviews with teens from four cities (Dublin, Hong Kong, Richmond and Whitehorse) about belonging, ownership and what keeps them up at night are interspersed with prompts for the audience on the field – each wearing individual headsets – who are led through a series of movements that will accumulate into something resembling a game. 

Approximately 50 mins. This performance is outdoors and involves moving on an uneven field; dress accordingly.

Free: Registration required due to limited capacity.

Register for Playing Fields

2. Off-Programming: Biannual Meeting of Presenting Circus in Canada; an International Market of Contemporary Circus Working Group

Room 2205 at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

The International Market of Contemporary Circus (MICC, for its French acronym) convenes a global community of professionals dedicated to the creation, presentation, and touring of contemporary circus in North America and around the world, both in-person each July in Montréal and online year-round through its working groups.

The working groups are discussion and collaboration groups led by members of the community who meet regularly. Each working group focuses on a specific issue related to the creation, presentation and touring of contemporary circus. The “Presenting Circus in Canada” working group, made up of Canadian circus presenters, aims to increase the circulation and dissemination of contemporary circus throughout Canada.

Join us to explore the workings of this group and discover collaborative opportunities in contemporary circus tour routing, along with insights into the MICC Annual Market and the Montréal Complètement Cirque Festival.

3. Off-Programming: Dance West Network Mainstage Showcase 

Presented by Dance West Network and The Dance Centre

Birmingham Studio at the Scotiabank Dance Centre [See Map]

Dance West Network and The Dance Centre present BC-based dance artists:  

  • MASCALL DANCE – The Impossible Has Already Happened
  • ACTION AT A DISTANCE – Core Us
  • MARCO ESCCER  – Aeropuertos Llenos de Esperanza (Excerpt: Passportless Butterfly)
  • O DELA ARTS & Pepper’s Ghost New Media Collective – Maamawi (ᒫᒪᐏ): Together Through The Fire
  • ALEXIS FLETCHER & ARASH KHAKPOUR – all my being is a dark verse
  • DANCERS OF DAMELAHAMID –   Raven Mother
  • FAKE KNOT – PIÑA
  • THE FALLING COMPANY – Family Room

Free: Registration required due to limited capacity.

Register for Mainstage Showcase
The Dance Centre


5:00 – 6:00pm / Off-Programming: Left of PuSh

Presented by Plastic Orchid Factory

Left of Main [See Map]

A platform for experiments in process by local and national dance artists, produced by plastic orchid factory at Left of Main in Vancouver’s Historic Chinatown. Running parallel to the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, the 2024 edition features work by LIVONA ELLIS & REBECCA MARGOLICK / ANYA SAUGSTAD / VENUS ART GALLERY (V.A.G.) 

Refreshments available (tap to pay only please). 

This venue is regretfully only accessible by stairs. Please get in touch at plasticorchid@me.com if you require assistance. 

By donation. Advance registration highly recommended.

Register for Left of PuSh
Plastic Orchid Factory logo

6:00 – 7:00pm / Industry Cocktail

Six Acres [See Map]

Grab a drink and join your fellow delegates upstairs at Six Acres for casual conversations and introductions.


8:00pm / Industry Track Festival Performance: Same Difference

See show details for venue and other information.


10:00 – 11:30am / Pitch Sessions 

Cinema at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts [See Map]

Hear about exciting new works from local and national artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form.

Carmen Aguirre – Electric Company Theatre

Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project

Carmen tackles the dialectic between art and revolution by excavating Italian photographer Tina Modotti’s life and work. Raised in a working-class family, Tina’s legacy is one of dedication to justice and equality and the four hundred photographs she left behind. Carmen is compelled by Tina’s struggle to reconcile her artistic practice and intimate life with her political commitment.

Carmen Aguirre (she/her) is a Vancouver-based Theatre Artist and Author who has written and co-written over twenty-five plays and two bestselling memoirs, including the #1 international bestseller Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter. She is a Core Artist at Electric Company Theatre and a 2020 Siminovitch Prize Finalist. 

carmenaguirre.ca / electriccompanytheatre.com

info@electriccompanytheatre.com

Ryan LewisMammalian Diving Reflex / UNIT Productions

Everything Has Disappeared

What would happen if every Filipino person in our society suddenly…disappeared? Using digital interactive technologies – and a little magic – Everything Has Disappeared  focuses on the very unique relationship the Filipino diaspora has to the global economy: they are everywhere. Central threads in a tapestry that defines human dignity itself. 

Mammalian Diving Reflex creates site and social-specific performance events, theatre productions, participatory gallery installations, videos, art objects and theoretical texts to foster dialogue and dismantle barriers between individuals of all backgrounds. UNIT Productions combines the producing, directing, writing and artistic design talents of duo Hazel Venzon and David Oro, producing culturally bending content that brings new stories to the forefront.

mammalian.ca / unitogether.ca

ryan@mammalian.ca

Portrait photo of Diana Lopez Soto

Diana Lopez SotoUarhi Creations

NOMADA

NOMADA is a solo performance that brings together aerial dance, rigging design, installation art and Contemporary Mexican indigenous dance. A journey inspired by personal stories of displacement, rituals of water, cycles of sustainability and the connections of our bodies to land.

Uarhi Creations is a multidisciplinary performance art company that creates transformative experiences and opportunities to strengthen the relationships between arts, ecology and healing traditions. Artistic Director, Diana Lopez Soto is interested in movement as an act of full awareness. Her work connects landscape and energy journeys in a dialogue with sculpture, space activation, ritual and film.

Dianalopezsoto.com

lopez.di@gmail.com

Portrait photo of Bettina Szabo

Bettina SzaboPetrikor Danse

Habitat

Habitat is a multidisciplinary solo inspired by the life cycle of hermit crabs, serving as a metaphor for the artist’s emigration journey from Uruguay. As hermit crabs grow, they look for new objects to house themselves in. A paper sculpture serves as the performer’s shell, her habitat. With visual effects reminiscent of aurora borealis, Habitat is a hypnotic poetic experience with an aquatic eerie atmosphere.

Uruguayan dancer and choreographer, Bettina Szabo is based in Montreal and Paris. She studied with Hebe Rosa (Uruguay), and Rami Be’er (Israel) the EDCM and Concordia University(Canada). She founded Petrikor Danse in 2016, and concentrates on interdisciplinary collaborations with music and visual arts. 

petrikordanse.com/habitat

bet.szabo@gmail.com

Portrait photo of Christine Genier
Portrait photo of Jacob Zimmer

Christine Genier & Jacob ZimmerNakai Theatre

Dear Star Trek: A Love Letter with a Side of Beef

A story-telling event with Christine Genier and memes. A life long Trekkie, Christine journeys through the pleasures, impact and obligations in pop culture media. A fun, teasing breakdown of Star Trek, Representation, and The Problem with Chakotay. In development for premiere in 2025.

Christine Genier is a Wolf Clan citizen of the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council. A broadcaster, journalist, writer, poet, performer, and language and culture worker, she’s navigated a career spanning northern theatre, broadcasting, writing, and performing. Christine has a passion for culture and taking a look at what informs us. 

Jacob Zimmer is a theatre maker, facilitator and dramaturge. Born in Cape Breton, growing up in Halifax, studying in Vancouver at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and spending fifteen years in Toronto, Jacob lives in Whitehorse when he isn’t at UBC completeing his MFA in Theatre Directing.

nakaitheatre.com/dear-star-trek

cwgenier@gmail.com / jacob@nakaitheatre.com

Gavan Cheema & Jivesh ParasramTheatre Conspiracy & Pandemic Theatre

SWIM

It’s an 8km swim from Güzelçamli, Turkey to the Greek island of Samos. That’s 160 lengths of an Olympic sized swimming pool. Inspired by this migration path, seven hours across a treacherous channel, Swim is a live immersive audio meditation. The project guides us through to the finish: 8km, the length to cross into Europe in search of asylum.

Founded in 2009, Pandemic Theatre is a performing arts collective that creates, develops, and produces work from critical and underrepresented perspectives, that engage social and political themes. 

Founded in 1995, Theatre Conspiracy creates theatrical events that activate discussion on vital contemporary themes in the international conversation. The company is committed to enhancing a rich dialogue between our city, the province and the international community.

conspiracy.ca

pandemictheatre.ca / gavan.cheema@gmail.com

Portrait of Jeanette Kotowich

Jeanette Kotowich

Kisiskâciwan

A creative return to the fast-flowing landscape of Saskatchewan, the robust and undulating land of Jeanette’s great-grandmothers and great-great-grandfathers, Kisiskâciwan is a journey to one’s self. It speaks through dance to a Métis cultural narrative of identity and home.

“Memories of my childhood summer, embraced by the Kah-tep-was valley, the vast prairie and gently rolling landscape has echoed its lasting impression and whispered a language of inspiration. It is an untamed remembering of ancestral homeland and lineage.” 

Originally from Treaty 4 territory Saskatchewan [Turtle Island], I create work that reflects Nêhiyaw/Métis cosmology within the context of contemporary dance, Indigenous performance, and Indigenous futurism. Fusing interdisciplinary collaboration, de-colonial practices and embodied research methodologies; my work references protocol, ritual, relationship to the natural/spirit world and Ancestral knowledge. My practice is intergenerational and vocational; it’s a living and lived experience. I reside as a guest on the Ancestral and unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ/, and Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territories, colonially known as Vancouver.

movementhealing.ca

j.kotowich@gmail.com

Portrait photo of Johnny Wu

Johnny Wu

Hymn of the Weaver Birds

Hymn of the Weaver Birds is a multilingual interdisciplinary theatre performance conceived by Johnny Wu and Jocelyn Yuchia Chang. Employing Taiwanese nostalgia and traditional Chinese opera forms, it tells the tale of five men finding a sense of belonging through confronting their fears of the Divine Feminine, Yin.

Johnny Wu is a bilingual Taiwanese-Canadian interdisciplinary artist. His work investigates humanity through story-telling with social consciousness. Unvarnished, audacious, and intimate, Johnny’s practice utilizes language, Taiwanese nostalgia and queer culture to explore notions of love, unsettle the concept of “normalcy” and uncover East Asian wisdom in modern discourse.

johnny1203242@hotmail.com

Portrait of Catherine Boureois

Catherine BourgeoisJoe Jack & John

Cispersonnages en quête d’auteurice

A century after Pirandello’s famous play, it’s Joe Jack & John’s turn to gum up the works of theatrical artifice in this play featuring a group of actors in search of meaning. As ethical concerns proliferate, creative possibilities disintegrate, and soon the group seems trapped in the solitary domain of reality, in all its complexity.

For the last 20 years, Joe Jack & John has been devising and producing innovative theatrical works in Montreal. The company favours accessible devised creation processes, drawing on interdependence and collective writing, and centring on current social issues. Their closely-knit team approaches the work with thoughtfulness and humour.

joejacketjohn.com

catherine@joejacketjohn.com

Portrait photo of Daniel O'Shea
Portrait photo of Nancy Tam
Portrait photo of Conor Wylie

Daniel O’Shea, Nancy Tam, Conor Wylie – A Wake of Vultures

SEEING DOUBLE

A spooky double-bill of Asian diaspora speculative fiction.

Walking At Night By Myself—twinned performers, afterimages, and confounding patterns…a simple nighttime walk devolves into something more sinister.

K BODY AND MIND—maximalist anime, minimalist theatre: two broken androids replay the story of a body-sharing utopia…and the ghost in their machine.

A Wake of Vultures is an interdisciplinary collective featuring Nancy Tam, Daniel O’Shea, and Conor Wylie. Our work is marked by ritual, formal experimentation, perceptual trickery, and a mix of retro and new technologies. We blend lowbrow inspirations with high-concept ideas, creating surprising convergences and hybrid visions of the future.

Wakeofvultures.com

wovperformance@gmail.com

Photo of Marilyn Daoust and Gabriel Lager-Savard standing by a wall

Marilyn Daoust & Gabriel Léger-Savard

Le temps des fruits/L du Déluge/Entre nous sommes pris entre nous/Vivaces

Four works embody Marilyn Daoust & Gabriel Léger-Savard’s artistic vision, sharing fundamental themes and visual quality: Le temps des fruits (2021), L du Déluge (2022), Entre nous sommes pris entre nous (2025) and Vivaces (working title). 

Our work focuses on real encounters between human beings. We deploy collective experiences by playing with the visceral, spatial and allegorical charge of bodies and words. This innovative blend of theater and dance, in both form and content, enables us to grasp the multiple dislocations of our times by exploring the human being on the brink of ruin. 

letempsdesfruits.com

letempsdesfruits@gmail.com

Portrait photo of Gerry Morita

Gerry Morita Mile Zero Dance

The Disaster Show

The Disaster Show is a site specific, interdisciplinary performance. It 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. Live music and video augment the performance with immersiveness and nuance.

Mile Zero Dance is an Edmonton-based company on Treaty Six Territory that has been developing and producing site specific dance works since 2007, with a strong social and political focus. Artistic Director Gerry Morita’s works have toured Canada, and shown in Japan, Poland, Estonia, and Turkey.

www.milezerodance.com

info@milezerodance.com


11:30 – 12:30pm / Lunch 

The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

To join this lunch, please purchase your Three-Lunch Package before January 12. You’ll receive a boxed lunch to take on the move.

11:30 – 12:30pm / One on One Grant Chats with BC Arts Council Program Advisors

Room 2295, SFUs Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

BC Arts Council program staff will be available to answer questions about funding programs in brief individual or small group conversations.

Register for a Grant Chat

12:00 – 1:00pm / Off-Programming: Work-in-development outdoor showcase: Playing Fields

Presented by The Chop

Strathcona Park [See Map]

This location is 7 minute walk from the venue for HOLD ON LET GO (600 Campbell Ave). Audience members wishing to attend the 1PM programming at HOLD ON LET GO will be guided to that venue where hot drinks and snacks will be provided.

Playing Fields uses sport as an entry point, but the focus of this show is on where the game takes place: the field itself. Recorded audio interviews with teens from four cities (Dublin, Hong Kong, Richmond and Whitehorse) about belonging, ownership and what keeps them up at night are interspersed with prompts for the audience on the field – each wearing individual headsets – who are led through a series of movements that will accumulate into something resembling a game. 

Duration: approximately 50 mins. This performance is outdoors and involves moving on an uneven field; dress accordingly.

Free: Registration Required due to limited capacity.

Register for Playing Fields

12:30 -1:30pm / BC Arts Council Information Session

Cinema at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

BC Arts Council program staff will share information about funding programs and grant writing tips. Bring your questions about specific programs, accessibility supports, writing grant applications and BC Arts Council funding priorities and processes, along with any other inquiries.


1-5:30pm / Off-Programming: HOLD ON LET GO (Formerly PushOFF)

Presented by Theatre Replacement in partnership with Company 605

Russian Hall [See Map]

If attending The Chop’s Playing Fields, you’ll be guided on the short walk to The Russian Hall. Warm drinks and snacks will be available, and the first show will be held until your arrival.

An annual festival of contemporary performance work by Vancouver and Canadian artists.

Featured Artists:

For full program details, visit holdonletgo.ca.

Available with an Industry Showcase Pass ($25) or an ALL ACCESS Pass ($45) for Hold On Let Go.

Buy Pass to Hold On Let Go

5:30 – 6:30pm / Off-Programming: HOLD ON LET GO Mixer 

Russian Hall [See Map]

Join the artists and teams of HOLD ON LET GO and the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival for the return of the HOLD ON LET GO Mixer!

Free. No pass/registration required.


8:00pm / Industry Track Performance: Deciphers

This performance will be followed by an artist talk back moderated by Cathy Levy. See show details for venue and other information.


9:00pm – Late / Club PuSh

Presented with Talking Stick

See details for venue and performance information. Free entry with your Industry Pass.

Talking Stick Festival Logo

9:00 – 10:00am / Coffee and Tea

Cinema at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts [See Map]

10 – 10:30am / Artist Talk: DISTORTION – DISSONANCE – DECAY 

by Cherish Menzo of DARKMATTER

The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

Implementing distortion, decay, and dissonance, DARKMATTER artist Cherish Menzo attempts to detach bodies from forced perceptions and their daily corporeal realities, underlining the complexity and contradictory nature of images that seem recognizable at first glance.

Glitching the ‘’common’’ lexical, she seeks the Uncanny, the Enigmatic, and the Monstrous. In this talk, Cherish provides context and artistic methodology for the play that characterizes her work.

Portrait of Cherish Menzo

Cherish Menzo

Cherish Menzo (Brussels/Amsterdam) is one of the four artistic leaders of the dance organization GRIP, together with Femke Gyselinck, Jan Martens and Steven Michel. 

Dancer/performer – Cherish has appeared in the work of Lisbeth Gruwez, Jan Martens, Nicole Beutler, Eszter Salamon, Benjamin Kahn, Akram Khan and others.  

Choreographer – Her powerful movement language comes into its own in her own work, which tours internationally. 

Cherish seeks out forms of movement and being, while placing beauty and the grotesque on an equal footing. She consciously seeks out an alienating effect to guide both the viewer and herself away from the known. Away from the familiar that we sometimes too easily equate with ‘the (only) truth’. She floats between the nostalgia of 90s and 00s hip-hop and the realms of industrial hip-hop, rap lyrics, manga and speculative fiction. 

She created JEZEBEL (’19) and DARKMATTER (‘22) with GRIP and Frascati Producties, both productions were selected for both the Theaterfestival in Flanders and its Dutch counterpart.  


10:30 – 11:30 / Panel: Conditions for International Creative Exchange

With Natacha Melo, Quito Tembe, Aaron Fernandes, and Rakesh Sukesh; moderated by Celia Smith

The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

From challenging aesthetic hegemony to collaborating across economic disparity; how do we facilitate equitable, international projects and platforms? What conditions can translate value systems? How do we promote meaningful intercultural exchange given a legacy of colonial extraction? From Montevideo, Maputo, Mumbai and Brussels, four curators, creators and producers discuss what it means to realize international projects across socio-aesthetic-political contexts. 

Portrait of Alen Dominguez

Aaron Fernandes

Aaron is the founder of Aaron Fernandes Entertainment (AFE) an international arts management organization based in Mumbai. His expertise lies in building long term relationships with partners as well as finding immediate solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems.

Aaron’s aim is to promote artists’ work from countries that have limited representation internationally, and is constantly working to connect various Indian artists and arts organizations to their counterparts globally with the goal of developing meaningful & engaging collaborations. He is currently the Project Manager for CINARS in India and a three time ISPA Global Fellow. 

AFE specializes in contemporary dance but also works across all genres. They offer services from international representation, consulting, production, tour production and management and tailors the services to the needs of each individual artist and organization. With a strong focus on efficiency, quality and personalized service, AFE assures a valuable and enriching experience for all.   

Celia Smith

Celia Smith is the CEO of Luminato Festival Toronto, Canada’s leading multi-disciplinary, international festival of arts, culture and creativity that takes over the GTA region with big, bold, contemporary work every June. She is also chair of the Toronto Arts Council; faculty at Schulich School of Business, co-founder of the League of Toronto Festivals, along with the leaders of Pride Toronto, Salsa on St. Clair and Toronto Caribbean Carnival; co-founder of LEAN (Leadership Emergency Arts Network), a national pro-bono response to help arts organizations across the country during COVID.

In former lives, she was the COO of TAS, a community-focused mixed-use private developer; President of Artscape, a non-profit housing and community hub creator; and General Manager of the Canadian Stage Company.

Natacha Melo

Artist, curator, cultural manager, teacher. 

With studies in dance and performing arts, she focuses on researching the relationship between art and social organization, promoting collaborative projects such as the South American Dance Network (2000-2013), which promotes regional meetings, residencies, mobility programs and training spaces for the sector, articulating thousands of professionals in the region.

Understanding these practices as complex spaces for the creation of meaning, she has promoted since 2014 to date the construction of public policies for dance in two associative processes: the conformation of the Ibero-American Dance Platform, integrated by the ministerial representations of the region, and the construction of the National Dance Plan of Uruguay, which articulates state and organized sector. As an advisor and curator she has collaborated with several programs, awards and festivals such as PICE (Spain), Linha de Fuga (Portugal), FIDAE (Uruguay), Mentor-Protegé de Rolex (Switzerland), IPAM (Barcelona), Southern Exposure (USA), Conexiones Danza (Iberescena-PID), Sadler’s Wells (London) and Tanzmesse (Germany).

Quito Tembe

Born in Maputo – Mozambique, holds a Bachelor Degree of Arts in Cultural Management and Cultural Studies. Tembe started his career as a dancer and theatre actor, where he found interest in the technique and therefore decided to do studies in scenography and lighting. He worked as a light designer at the Mozambican French Cultural Center between 2001 and 2007, where he was responsible for creating and implementing local and international artistic projects.

Quito had collaborated in numerous productions in light design and scenography and had been working (and sporadically continues to work) as light and/or set designer with various choreographers and dance companies in Mozambique and abroad. In film he participated in short and long local and international movies.

As a curator, he has continuously curated tours form Mozambican and South African region groups. Since 2005, he is the artistic director of the Maputo based performing arts organization Kinani, running a creative residencies as well as a biennial international performing arts, the KINANI Festival.

Rakesh Sukesh

Rakesh Sukesh, a versatile artist from Bharat (India) currently residing in Belgium, is a performer, choreographer, teacher, and producer. With a foundation in dance education in India, specializing in Kalaripayattu, yoga, and contemporary techniques under Jaychandran palazy, he has studied improvisation composition under Katie Duck and David Zambrano. Currently performing with Ultima Vez, Roosana & Kenneth Company, and Bollwerk, Rakesh has choreographed noteworthy productions like A Dream of Silence, Yatra, and May Us Bless the I. His upcoming solo production, because I love the diversity, (this micro-attitude we all have it) is premiering at Push Festival 2024.

Over 14 years, he developed the globally acclaimed Intact Method, blending yogic principles, Kalaripayattu, and contemporary dance. Holding a Master’s in Arts and Culture Management, Rakesh is the co-director of the international dance festival Sanskar and a curator for the Dance Screen film festival in Switzerland.


11:30 – 12:30pm / Lunch 

The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

To join this lunch, please purchase your Three-Lunch Package before January 12. You will be provided with a boxed lunch to take on the go.


11:30 – 12:30pm / Sincere Intelligence (SI): Building an Audience/Community with Data, Experience, and Humanity

Beatty and Cambie Room, Sandman Hotel [See Map]

People are the core of any entertainment organization. They are the audience, the staff, the volunteers, and the allies – the community. This Lunch’n’Learn will be a discussion about ways to build and leverage a community through data, communication, and institutional knowledge.

Register for the Lunch’n’Learn
Artsman logo

1:00 – 9:00pm / Industry Track Performance: asses.masses

See show details for venue and other information.


9:00pm – Late / Club PuSh

Presented with the frank theatre co

See details for venue and performance information. Free entry with your Industry Pass.

the frank theatre co. logo

10:00 – 10:30am / Closing Coffee and Refreshments

The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts [See Map]


10:30 – 1:30pm / Dramaturgy Dialogues 

In partnership with Playwrights Theatre Centre

The Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts

Hear how local artists are framing the role of the dramaturg at this forum featuring dramaturgs and their artistic collaborators speaking on process. Representing a variety of artistic disciplines and perspectives, they will offer an insider look at the craft of dramaturgy.

Anais West

​Anais (they/he) is a queer and trans writer, actor and producer, as well as a Polish settler on occupied xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓wətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) lands.

Anais’ work is transdisciplinary, merging theatre, film, poetry, and music to explore the multiplicity of gender, sexuality and culture. His playwrighting includes Kill Your
Lovers (Buddies In Bad Times Theatre’s Rhubarb Festival, Toronto, and the Fresh Fruit Festival, NYC); Poly Queer Love Ballad (Queer Arts Festival, the frank theatre and Zee Zee Theatre, Vancouver, and Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto); and The Café (Aphotic Theatre, ITSAZOO theatre and the PuSh Festival, Vancouver). His work has been nominated for two Jessie Richardson Awards, including Outstanding Original Script, and he was the 2023 winner of the Wildfire National Playwriting Competition.

As an actor, they’ve performed with the National Arts Centre, Orange Noyée, Savage Society, Firehall Arts Centre, Théâtre La Seizième, and more. Most recently, his writing was published in This is Beyond: A Time
Capsule of Queer Experience with Playwrights Canada Press. Anais is the Artistic Producer at the frank theatre company.

Photo of David Geary

David Geary

David Geary is of Taranaki Māori, English, Irish and Scottish blood. He grew up immersed in the Polynesian trickster tales of Māui and now lives on the lands of the Coyote and Raven Tricksters of Turtle Island/Canada. He is an award-winning playwright, dramaturg, director, screenwriter, fiction writer and poet. David works at Capilano University, where he teaches in the Indigenous Digital Filmmaking, Documentary and Playwriting programs. He also teaches playwrighting and dramaturgy for PTC Playwrights Theatre Centre. He’s a member of LMDA Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and does script consultation for theatre, TV and Film. He lives by the yogic mantra: Life is short, stretch it, writes haiku on twitter @gearsgeary, and takes comedy very seriously.

Portrait photo of David Mesiha

David Mesiha

David Mesiha is a Toronto and Vancouver based, award-winning music composer, interactive designer, sound/video designer and co-artistic director of Theatre Conspiracy in Vancouver. David’s practice centres around examining questions of form in interactive and performance arts. He is intrigued by the relationships between form and medium. His work utilizes multi channel immersive audio, interactive design and Digital Performance.

He has worked on shows such as Project (X) by Leaky Heaven, Terminus by Pi Theatre, Foreign Radical by Theatre Conspiracy, and You Should Have Stayed Home by Spiderweb Show. He has been nominated and won Jessie Richardson Awards in multiple categories and has received a Dora award nomination for his sound design work on Oraltorio by IFT theatre.

David’s music has spans multiple mediums and formats such as video games, film, theatre and interactive media. 

Chosen credits: Theatre: Sound designer for The Humans (Arts Club Theatre), Antigone (YPT), Sound of the Beast (Theatre Passe Muraille), You Should Have Stayed Home (VR Performance, SpiderWebShow), asses.masses (video game performance), 15 Dogs (Crow’s Theatre) and Szepty (Rumble/Pi Theatre).

Portrait photo of Esau Rabadi

Esar Rabadi

Esar Rabadi is a BFA Creative Writing student at the University of British Columbia where she specializes in writing for the stage, writing for the screen, and graphic forms. A majority of her work focuses on themes of capitalism and its impact on a local and global scale, self-identity, and the many dynamics at play in interpersonal relationships. It is her hope to initiate conversations surrounding these scopes and to inspire others to act with the means of resolving these issues that intersect within audiences’ and readers’ lives. Literary work Esar has completed includes her participation in the 2023 Brave New Playwrights Festival where she wrote a one-act comedy play titled “The Debate” and a zine titled “to be human”. Esar plans to produce another play for the Brave New Playwrights festival in March 2024, as well as transform her zine into a stand-alone graphic novel. In her free time Esar loves to bake banana bread, karaoke to Lana Del Rey, and play with Gremlin, her friend’s Bengal cat.

Gavan Cheema

Theatre Conspiracy

Gavan Cheema is a director, writer, producer, dramaturg and co-Artistic Director of Theatre Conspiracy. She is based out of Vancouver: the traditional, unceded, and occupied territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is a first generation Canadian, with roots coming from the five rivers of Punjab. She is a recent recipient of the Sam Payne Award for Most Promising Emerging Artist at the Jessie Richardson Awards.

Gavan’s play Himmat premiered in Vancouver at The Cultch in May 2022 and will be presented at the Surrey Civic Theatres in Spring 2024. She holds a double major from the University of British Columbia in Theatre and History, as well as a high school teaching certification. She has created work and directed for various local, national and international stages and has extensive experience in youth engagement, theatre education and workshop facilitation.

Select directing credits: Conspiracy Now (Theatre Conspiracy), Rishi & d Douen (Carousel Theatre), Danceboy (Tremors Festival/ Vancouver Art Gallery Fuse), Burqa Boutique (Revolver Festival), Marie’s Letters (Shift Festival).

conspiracy.ca

Portrait photo of Joanna Garfinkel

Joanna Garfinkel

Joanna Garfinkel (she/any) Dramaturg, Creative Engagement at Playwrights Theatre Centre and co-founder, with Yoshie Bancroft, of Universal Limited. Current dramaturgy: National Queer & Trans playwriting unit; UL’s To the Sea; Kamila Sediego’s Engkanto, José Teodoro’s Binary Star, Christina Cook’s PTMYTS, Tara Cheyenne’s Pants, and Anais West’s Tomboy. Co-creator, with Yoshie Bancroft, of JAPANESE PROBLEM, a piece about the Japanese Canadian Incarceration, performed site-specifically in Vancouver, at Soulpepper in Toronto, and more. Joanna is struck by the systemic inequities that repeat in Canada, and commits to trouble those patterns through performance. Other credits: Berlin: The Last Cabaret (PuSh), PQLB, (Passe Murailles) Nominated for three

Jessie awards; Pure Research grant (Nightswimming), Sydney Risk award for directing. Joanna moved to Unceded Coast-Salish territory to get an MFA in directing at UBC, and focus since has been primarily in new play development, multidisciplinary, and site-specific work. She has trained with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York.

Portrait photo of Josh Martin

Josh Martin

Originally from Alberta, Canada, Josh Martin is dance maker/performer who now lives and works in Vancouver, on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples. Inspired by the overlap of urban and contemporary forms, he received his diverse training across North America and Europe, studying in many genres.

In his ongoing career as an interpreter and collaborator, he has worked with many dance companies and independent choreographers such as: Justine A. Chambers, Dana Gingras (Animals of Distinction), Wen Wei Wang (Wen Wei Dance), Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond (Out Innerspace Dance Theatre), Helen Walkley, Martha Carter (MMhop), Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, Amber Funk Barton (the response.), Rachel Meyer, Serge Bennathan (Les Productions Figlio), Vanessa Goodman (Action at a Distance), Karen Jamieson, and as a past company member of Ottawa’s Le Groupe Dance Lab under the direction of Peter Boneham.

June Fukumura

June Fukumura is a Japanese-Canadian inter-disciplinary theatre artist with a BFA in Theatre Performance and a Certificate in Sustainable Community Development from Simon Fraser University. June is also the Co-Artistic Director of Popcorn Galaxies an experimental theatre company interested in re-enchanting the everyday through unconventional site-responsive and site-specific works. She was the Associate Dramaturg at the Banff Playwrights Lab from 2019-2021. From 2019 – 2021 June worked as the Emerging Dramaturg/Producer/Curator for Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s MSG Lab program. She was the Resident Dramaturg of vAct in 2022-23. Her freelance artistic practice includes: experimental theatre creation, acting for theatre/film, performance, clown/bouffon, dramaturgy, directing, and producing.

Marcus Youssef

Marcus’ fifteen or so plays have been produced in multiple languages in more than twenty countries across North America, Europe and Asia. His work is often collaborative, usually highly personal, and almost always investigates questions of difference, belonging and dissent.

Marcus is a recipient of Canada’s largest theatre award, the Siminovitch Prize for Theatre, for his body of work as a playwright and mentor, as well as the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, Berlin, Germany’s Ikarus Prize, the Rio-Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Chalmer’s Canadian Play Award, and the Vancouver Critic’s Innovation award (three times).

Marcus is also well-known in Canada as an advocate for central role culture can play in making our worlds more humane, just and joyful. He co-founded the artist-run production centre Progress Lab 1422, where he led Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre for fifteen years. Marcus was also the inaugural chair of the city of Vancouver’s Arts and Culture Policy Council and implemented Canada’s first mutli-institutional Bachelor’s of Performing Arts program, at Capilano University.

Photo of Paige Louter

Paige Louter

Paige Louter is a theatre creator and producer living and working on the traditional territories of the the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (Vancouver). She holds an MA in Theatre from the University of Galway, works as ITSAZOO Productions’ Co-Artistic Producer, and is pursuing certification as an Intimacy Director.

Credits include co-producing and acting in The Wolves (With a Spoon /Rumble; Jessie Nomination: Outstanding Production) and performing in The Lonesome West (Cave Canem), Twelfth Night (Tottering Biped) and Coarse: The Brontes (Sarah Deller/Edinburgh Fringe). She loves creating strange pockets of time and space in which to share stories.

Registration

Registration for PuSh Industry 2024 is now closed.

Weaving Connections

Indigenous Arts Leadership Symposium produced in partnership with

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Special Offer for Industry Delegates

Sandman Hotel Vancouver Downtown logo

A special rate of $154CAD/night is available from the Sandman Hotel Vancouver Downtown from mid-January to mid-February 2024.

Upon registration and purchase of an Industry Pass, delegates will receive booking details from PuSh to book their room directly with the hotel.

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