THEATRE PREVIEW

APRIL 2025 | Volume 250

 

Join the Joyful Resistance!

The Cultch launches a new festival to spotlight theatre artists' brave work.

The Cultch announces the inaugural Warrior Festival, taking place on all three Cultch stages from April 16 – May 11, 2025.

This spring, The Cultch is thrilled to present a brand new festival with five innovative, status-quo toppling shows from some of Canada's most boundary-breaking artists and companies. These five shows are powerful, courageous works of theatre which strengthen acts of defiance with radical joy. They embody the spirit of the new Warrior Festival—a festival created to spotlight the brave, liberating and political work of theatre artists.

The Warrior Festival will begin April 16–19, 2025, with Katey Hoffman and Cheyenne Rouleau's sketch comedy show Lxdy Parts: Babes—which goes on sale today! Known for their irreverent and bodacious comedy, Hoffman and Rouleau return to their popular series with brand new life experiences after becoming parents. 

Close on its heels, the festival's headlining show Dance Nation will fill the York Theatre from April 23–May 11, 2025. This 2019 Pulitzer finalist has its Vancouver premiere with Mindy Parfitt's The Search Party—an award-winning Vancouver company known for its impactful stagings of contemporary works. This exploration of ambition, adolescence, and friendship is a raucous theatrical experience featuring an ensemble cast of Vancouver's best actors.

Québec's acrobatic duo Agathe et Adrien join the festival for a limited run, April 24–27, 2025. Their show N.Ormes literally flips the script on gender conventions in the circus world. This show presents a unique opportunity for audiences to get up close and personal—playing in The Cultch's intimate Historic Theatre.

Finishing off the festival with laughter and conversation, Toronto's Bad Muse Collective presents Love You Wrong Time in the Historic Theatre, while Vancouver's Zee Zee Theatre presents Every Day She Rose in the Vancity Culture Lab. Both shows run May 1–11. These two personal and political shows examine perception bias and stereotypes through the lens of friendship and shared experience. They are natural conversation pieces with each other, filled with compassion, wit and laughter.
Come and be a part of the Warrior Festival at The Cultch, where joy is an act of resistance and every artist is a warrior!

Cue the rebellion, the show is about to begin.

"Since our founding in 1973, The Cultch has been celebrating the work of women and gender-expansive artists. This year, we continue that work by launching the Warrior Festival—a festival to celebrate artists creating powerful, liberating work that elevates the conversations happening on and off the stage. This festival, an evolution of our Femme Festival, will be a platform for radical creativity that challenges the status quo, redefines power, and amplifies voices that have been marginalized." —Heather Redfern (Cultch Executive Director) and Nicole McLuckie, (Cultch Associate Executive Director)

WARRIOR FESTIVAL IN BRIEF

Lxdy Parts: Babes—April 16–19, 2025
Dance Nation—April 22–May 11, 2025 
N.Ormes—April 24–27, 2025
Love You Wrong Time—May 1–11, 2025
Every Day She Rose—May 1–11, 2025

Full details can be found on the festival webpage

TICKETS: SEE MORE, SAVE MORE Save 20% when you buy tickets to more than one show!* *This discount is automatically applied when you add more than one show in the Warriors Festival to your cart.  JOYFUL WARRIOR FESTIVAL PASS Save 30% with our all-access festival pass and see all five shows! SECTION A+: $171 SECTION A: $162 SECTION B: $140

WARRIOR FESTIVAL LINE-UP

LXDY PARTS: BABES
By Katey Hoffman and Cheyenne Rouleau (Vancouver)
APR 16–19, 2025, VANCITY CULTURE LAB

The newest instalment in Katey Hoffman and Cheyenne Rouleau's sold-out sketch show featuring true stories and special guests. Katey and Chey are not the only babes anymore... Sketches and stories will be inspired by their new ridiculous roles as mothers.

"I think I lost my voice because I was laughing so hard. What a f!*king gift these womxn are."
— Kim Senklip Harvey, Actor, director, and Governor General's Award-winning playwright

Dance Nation
The Search Party (Vancouver)
APR 23–MAY 11, 2025, YORK THEATRE

A Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama, Clare Barron's ferocious exploration of ambition and friendship. 

"Conjures the passionate ambivalence of early adolescence with such being-there sharpness and poignancy that you're not sure whether to cringe, cry or roar with happiness"
—The New York Times

N.Ormes
Agathe et Adrien (Québec)
APR 24–27, 2025, HISTORIC THEATRE

Provocative, dysfunctional and tender, the circus duo invites the viewer to question their assumptions and pushes the limits and expectations of bodies and gender norms.

"It is at once a shared celebration of strength and an incredibly vulnerable act—a direct provocation of gendered conventions onstage and off"
—The Scotsman

Love You Wrong Time
Bad Muse Collective (Toronto)
MAY 01–11, 2025, HISTORIC THEATRE

Using music, true stories, bar games, and stand-up comedy, Maddie Bautista and Deanna H. Choi's inventive, interactive show serves as a battle cry in the wake of mass violence against Asian femmes.

"Sharp, urgent, engaging social commentary in the tradition of Margaret Cho, Ali Wong"
—Glenn Sumi, theatre critic

Every Day She Rose
Zee Zee Theatre (Vancouver)
MAY 01–11, 2025, VANCITY CULTURE LAB

After the Black Lives Matter protest at the 2016 Toronto Pride Parade, two best friends find their racial and queer politics aren't as aligned as they first thought.

"A blazingly intelligent play that challenges our perceptions of race, communication, friendship, respect and how we deal with uncomfortable situations"
—The Slotkin Letter

ABOUT THE CULTCH:
Since 1973, The Cultch (formally the Vancouver East Cultural Centre) has been one of Vancouver's most diverse and innovative arts and cultural hubs. The organisation operates three theatrical venues, a gallery, various ancillary spaces in the heart of East Vancouver, as well as digital programming through The Cultch Online that reaches international audiences. The Cultch offers dynamic contemporary programming in theatre, dance, music, and the visual arts, bringing world-class cultural presentations to thousands of citizens each year through its own programming and through providing rental opportunities for community users. Our purpose is to provide a venue for performance that serves a diverse and engaged public and provides space for artistic experimentation and development, building an audience for local companies and presenting cutting-edge national and international work. 

thecultch.com | Box Office: 604-251-1363

The Cultch is located on the unceded Indigenous land of the xwməϴkwəýəm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil‑Waututh) Nations.

 

 

 

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