Back for another year and celebrating its 9th season of diverse performances, PuSh Festival is about to kick off (starting January 15th), bringing with it more than 100 exhibits, shows and performances featuring artists from all over the world. With a variety of different acts set to take over various venues, theatres and stages around Vancouver for nearly 20 days straight, we’ve rounded up a few of our top picks.
We’ve attended performances in the past and always like to read-up on what’s in store for this year’s upcoming festival. Read on for a few of our notable picks and purchase tickets in advance as shows regularly sell out.
Photog: An Imaginary Look at the Uncompromising Life of Thomas Smith
This unique performance draws from the real life accounts of conflict photographers and examines the internal struggles many global photographers experience between complete immersion on foreign soil and the troublesome return to home turf. Through the use of computer animation, physical theatre and video, the performance aims to uncover the occupational hazards that come with documenting humanity at its darkest point: the juxtaposition between suffering and privilege.
A Crack in Everything
Brought to Vancouver by Seattle choreographer Zoe Scofield and visual artist Juniper Shuey, the two have created a visually stunning examination involving a fusion of dance, sound and visual art that explores the gap that exists between cause and effect, before and after, and action and reaction. The resulting show is one that is a uniquely layered multi-media experience that explores the enduring questions of justice posed in the Greek tragedy The Oresteia through dramatic video and costumes, atmospheric installations and lighting, and Scofield’s ritualistic movement.
Sometimes I think, I can see you (Free)
Mariano Pensotti’s ingeniously voyeuristic work Sometimes I think, I can see you places writers in public spaces and uses them as literary surveillance cameras for three weekends during this year’s PuSh Festival. A collection of Vancouver-based writers will be stationed in prominent public areas with projection screens, imagination and laptops. Their task: to script a live accounting of everyday observations in their urban surroundings and uncover the various characters and stories that exist just below the surface of daily life.
Winners and Losers
Setting the stage for debate, this thought-provoking performance consists of long-time friends and fellow artists Marcus Youssef and James Long as they simply play a game they made up, called winners and losers. The two name a variety of people, places or things (it can range from Pam Anderson to microwave ovens, to their fathers) and debate whether they are winners or losers through all means – and rationale – necessary. What is worth noting is that as they try to defeat the other, the debate becomes personal and a more intimate dissection of each other.
And if all the show-going isn’t enough and you’re on the lookout for a place to unwind (pre or post performance), be sure to check out Club PuSh for a beverage or two. Hosted at Granville Island’s Performance Works building (1218 Cartwright Street), it opens the doors an hour before show time to provide a laidback social hub. Rub elbows with PuSh performers and plot out your list of plays to see. Be sure to take a look at their schedule of nightly on-site performances (a variety of theatre, multi-media and music) as well and catch live pop-up musical acts like The God That Comes: With Hawksley Workman (January 16-18).
Be sure to check out the full line-up of performances at 2013 PuSh Festival here.
Photo: Turning Point Ensemble