After 3 years of being postponed the Briefs Factory is finally bringing their larger than life show Dirty Laundry to the York Theatre June 9 – 25, 2023. Dirty Laundry is a new show from the world-renowned Australian cabaret collective Briefs Factory. You can expect a mix of circus, drag, dance, burlesque, music and comedy. Led by Briefs Factory director and co-founder Fez Faanana, the show is performed by a collective of talented performers from many disciplines. This is a sexy ensemble that is perfect for a night out for men and women alike. The Cultch’s Executive Director Heather Redfern says “Dirty Laundry is a show that will really heat up everyone’s summer!” To grab your tickets for this sizzling show, visit The Cultch.
What others around the world are saying about their shows:
★★★★★ “The perfect blend of flesh, acrobats, dance, boylesque and brilliance.” FRINGEWORLD 2019
★★★★★ “Briefs is the drag party you always wish you’d be invited to!” Glam Adelaide
The Cultch and The Search Party YVR (Vancouver) bring a contemporary adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, STUPID F*ING BIRD to the stage April 12 – 23. This is a whip smart comedic tragedy about unrequited love, missed connections, lost dreams and the pursuit of happiness. The production features original songs, live music and multi-generational tales that reveal the danger in our own desires and the elusive pursuit of happiness. Tickets are now on sale and start at $25. To purchase tickets online, visit The Cultch.
The much loved Vancouver based singer/songwriter, Jill Barber, invites you to an evening of live music at The York Theatre Saturday, April 15th. Jill will be featuring songs from her new album, Homemaker. This album, which she helped co-produce, is very personal and reflects on marriage, motherhood and self-identity. Jill Barber is a three-time Juno Award nominated singer-songwriter who has an unforgettable voice once. Her critically acclaimed repertoire includes songs in both French and English. Tickets are $45 and available online at The Cultch.
The Cultch, Urban Ink & Raven Theatre present the world premiere of Corey Payette’s Starwalker, which comes to the unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl’ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations February 16 until March 5, 2023, at the York Theatre.
The story follows Starwalker, an Indigi-Queer Two-Spirit drag queen learning the ropes of the East Van Drag community. When Starwalker is introduced to Drag at the House of Borealis, their whole world changes, introducing them to a home they never knew they needed, creating a new persona that blends their grounded Indigenous cultural spirit with drag performance, resulting in an empowering and celebratory experience that only tearing down the patriarchy can provide.
Award-winning interdisciplinary storyteller, writer, composer, and director Corey Payette has gained acclaim for his large-scale contemporary musicals, which bring his Indigenous perspective to mainstream spaces—including Children of God, and Les Filles du Roi (which Payette co-wrote with Julie McIsaac). Both powerful musicals had their premieres at The Cultch’s York Theatre, and have toured extensively, receiving accolades wherever they go.
In 2021, Payette received the inaugural BC Reconciliation Award for his work and commitment to inspiring and making lasting change to reconciliation through the arts. His highly acclaimed musical production, Children of God, has brought conversations on truth and reconciliation to audiences throughout Canada.
Starwalker was commissioned and developed by The Musical Stage Company (Toronto). Their blank canvas offer gave Payette the freedom to explore a side of himself that he hasn’t spent as much time within his other work. It allowed him to express the joy he finds in his Two-Spirit and queer identity.
Starwalker will share a familiarity of style and scope with Payette’s past work, but brings to life a more modern story, presented with a contemporary score combining pop/rock music, with pulsing drums, and powerful vocals from some of Vancouver’s most talented.
The cast includes Dillan Chiblow (known as Tommy/Tom in Children of God), Stewart Adam McKensy (known for his portrayal of Lola in Kinky Boots), and Jeffrey Follis (Drag Queen Urupa)—bring Starwalker’s story to life with choreography from Ralph Escamillan, and musical direction from Sean Bayntun. “I really wanted to look at uplifting some of these voices in a way that was joyous and wasn’t tied to their trauma,” says Payette. “While the characters have experienced hardship, the show is actually about how they are working their way through those issues to find joy, to find love, and to find family and home.”
Tickets for Starwalker are now on sale starting from $25. Note, for self-identifying Indigenous patrons, there $15 tickets available. For tickets, visit The Cultch.
“Starwalker is a brilliant and unique piece that expertly and unexpectedly blends musical styles to tell moving stories in innovative ways.” Playwrights Guild of Canada, Tom Hendry Awards Jury
The Daisy Theatre is back with their take on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Little Willy. If you haven’t attended one of Ronnie Burkett’s shows, you are missing out on fun night out. Burlesque star Dolly Wiggler starts the show with an Elizabethan striptease in this riotously funny improvised mash-up of one of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays. All the leading ladies of the Daisy ensemble battle for the role of Juliet, including faded diva Esme Massengill in a boozy interpretation of the lovesick ingénue. Beloved audience favourites Schnitzel and Mrs. Edna Rural are back in supporting roles, and adding to the fun and mayhem, The Bard himself joins The Daisy Theatre cast for a twisted retelling of this timeless tale. Tickets start from $35 and are now available online at The Cultch. The production runs from January 10 – 29, 2023. Tickets to this show would make a great gift of experience this holiday season.
The Cultch and Theatre Replacement are thrilled to present East Van Panto: The Little Mermaid, November 16, 2022 until January 1, 2023, at the York Theatre.
For a decade, Theatre Replacement and The Cultch have partnered to bring this holiday tradition like no other. It transforms well-known stories with an East Van twist and has something for all ages. This year, East Van Panto is going under the sea with a wild East Van-centric adventure to the bottom of the Burrard Inlet and back.
In East Van Panto: The Little Mermaid, Ariel is busking with her girl band at New Brighton Beach, when she falls in love with a teenage mer-person. She dives into an ocean adventure, where she makes a questionable deal with a devilish octopus named Ursula, fights off evil electric eels with her trash crab BFF, Sebastian, and has to help save the ocean from a mysterious purple slime of despair.
The writer-director duo from last year’s East Van Panto: Alice in Wonderland, Sonja Bennett and Meg Roe, return to create this year’s 10th anniversary production with Veda Hille, who has been writing the music and fun parodies of popular songs since East Van Panto began. For those that have attended past shows, you will know the music is great every year. Tickets start are $35 and are now available online for in person shows with audience participation encouraged. If you prefer to take in the show from the comfort of home, The Little Mermaid is available to watch online on-demand from December 17, 2022 – January 31, 2023 through RE/PLAY, The Cultch’s digital playground. To learn more, visit The Cultch.
“It is the silliest, most wonderful of traditions. And for me, it has become essential.” The Globe and Mail
“If the East Van Panto isn’t part of your holiday tradition yet, what are you waiting for?” Georgia Straight
“East Van Panto has earned its place as one of the best-loved holiday traditions in Vancouver…” Colin Thomas
The Cultch hosts a heart wrenching cabaret, The Cave, from Tomson Highway, music from John Millard and book from Martha Ross from November 10 – 20, 2022. It’s an important one to see that shows the climate crisis through the eyes of a group of animals trapped together in a bear’s cave as a forest fire draws near. As they await their inevitable demise, they sing. Their tales—reflections on their lives, their ‘lost garden,’ and their impending doom—slowly reveal the reality of a land exploited by humans. At times hysterically comical, at times dramatic and tragic, the four performers—Andrea Koziol, Derek Kwan, Alex Samaras, Maryem Tollar—sing seventeen stirring songs in English and Cree, playing abstractions of Bear, Moose, Beaver, Skunk, Snake, Wolf, Crow, and Fox. And presiding over everything, the cabaret is hosted by a wry and charming MC played by the composer, Millard, himself.
An online version of The Cave was part of The Cultch’s 2021 digital season. It was an immediate hit with critics and audiences alike, who expressed their desire to see it in person when it became possible. The newly staged in-person version comes to Vancouver with new animations.
“I was born and raised in a completely natural environment,” recalls lyricist Tomson Highway. “It was completely safe, and a blissful experience to live in that ‘garden’. And a true garden it was. Now, a half-century later, it is no longer safe to live up there. The reason? Forest fires. Hundreds of them every summer. In Fort McMurray’s fire some 2,000 people lost their homes. How many animals lost theirs? The destruction was, and is, gargantuan. That is to say, the current state of global warming is THEIR eviction from the garden. And it is ours.”
Tickets are available online now at The Cultch. What people are saying about The Cave:
“Messages on climate crisis delivered in a creatively charged cabaret that defies expectations” Janet Smith, Stir
“Playfulness abounds… But there are operatic thrills, too, and heartbreaking lyricism.” Colin Thomas, colinthomas.ca
“The Cave is never preachy, always entertaining.” Jo Ledingham, joledingham.ca
Just in time for Halloween, The Cultch hosts a crime thriller from October 27th to November 5th. Yaga is a play that features a mysterious disappearance and suspected murder of a college bad boy. The disappearance finds a small-town sheriff, a young private detective and a university professor with a taste for younger men into a labyrinth of secret lives, ancient magic and multiple suspects. You are invited to check out this genre-bending crime thriller that we hear conjures up the dark magic of a wicked old witch, BabaYaga. Yaga will lead you on an unforgettable world of trickery and revenge. Tickets are on sale now and available online at The Cultch.
For anyone that has grown up with immigrant parents, you will likely find something relatable when the Portuguese Kids come to town Saturday, October 22nd with Faz O Relax! The Portuguese Kids are an ethnic based comedy group from Massachusetts, USA. For nearly two decades, they have been highlighting the funnier side of growing up as first generation kids of immigrant parents. The show is a mix of sketch comedy and improv comedy. They say it’s like SNL meets Who’s Line is it, Anyway? but with an ethnic twist. The show is performed in English 90% of the time. Joining them on stage will be Luso-Canadian standup comedian Mike Rita and from California, comedian Taylor Amarante. The show is for one night only, Saturday, October 22nd at the York Theatre. Tickets are $35.25 and $45.25 and available online at The Cultch.
The Cultch and vAct (Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre) present Bad Parent, a brand new play from renowned award-winning playwright, Ins Choi. Bad Parent will have its Vancouver premiere at The Cultch Historic Theatre, October 13-23, 2022. It was originally scheduled to run in the spring of 2022, but had to be postponed due to COVID.
The production features Norah and Charles who are trying to navigate their lives as parents of a toddler, but are figuring out who they are in relation to their son, to each other, and to the audience. Bad Parent, is a billed as a hilarious new feel-good comedy from Ins Choi, the creator of the hit CBC sitcom and play Kim’s Convenience, is an honest, no-holds-barred portrait of young parents struggling to find their way through the messy reality of parenthood.
Like all the best fiction, Bad Parent was born of true experience. “There was a turbulent time, early in our marriage, when my wife and I argued a lot. I began writing long unfiltered rants in an attempt to clarify how I was feeling and why,” says playwright Ins Choi. “Many years later, I came across those rants and felt sorry for that couple back then trying to make ends meet, meet each other’s needs and the needs of a newborn.”
Renowned award-winning Vancouver theatre company vAct has gained a reputation in the city for premiering groundbreaking works by some of the biggest names in Canadian theatre. They are one of the only theatre companies in the country to focus on Asian Canadian creators, and they have been responsible for creating and producing some of the most exciting theatre on Canadian stages. Bad Parent, the latest of their Mainstage productions, written by one of Canada’s most famous contemporary playwrights continues the legacy of telling great stories from incredible Asian Canadian talent. “Stories disarm by inviting us into the lives of others wholly different from ourselves only to help us realize how similar we all are,” says Choi. “Through stories, we’re entertained as a group and comforted to know we’re not alone both in our struggles and what we find funny.”
Bad Parent takes the stage in the Historic Theatre at The Cultch from October 13 to 23, 2022. Tickets start at $29 and are available online at The Cultch.
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