PuSh Play

PuSh Artistic Director Gabrielle Martin chats with Luanda Casella & Pablo Casella about Trouble Score, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: February 7 at the Vancouver Playhouse. Show Notes Gabrielle, Luanda and Pablo discuss:  Discussion of Indigenous peoples and their struggles in North and South America Returning to the storytelling concert form, and how the project began The importance of experiencing everything that occurs on the stage Incorporating ritual into practice and performance Research threads of misleading discourse, cult of story, the unreliable narrator and how they evolved through Trouble Score Exploring trauma through ritual and archetype The fully-realized mythology built into the text The musical compositions in the piece and how music can carry narrative and organize elements Using sounds as triggers of memory Working with text, sound and light to construct a world How the character of the Healer evolved into a provocative voice The shadow self created via one's experience About Trouble Score Part ritual, part pop concert, Trouble Score is a hallucinatory portrait of family myth refracted through the lens of magic realism. Weaving multi-layered text, vocals, sound samples, and live music within an otherworldly lighting composition that turns each scene into a luminous portal, this one-night-only performance is a storytelling séance that's as witty as it is disruptive. Trouble Score revisits an old family scandal—a web of fragmented criminal stories that unravels into an impossible plot, where childhood innocence collides with the distorted reality of trauma, set against the backdrop of racial segregation and a military dictatorship. Blending humour and complicity, Trouble Score captures the fantastic, mysterious, and often surreal nature of family dynamics. Luanda Casella, known for her incisive deconstruction of language and fascination with the unreliable narrator, crafts text that is both razor-sharp and darkly funny. Pablo Casella composes intricate landscapes of melodic intimacy and rhythmic resonance. Nick Verstand, whose work explores the edges of light, space, and human perception, sculpts immersive architectures that breathe with the performers. Together, they turn family legend into a ritual of reinvention—a storytelling alchemy of music, language, and light. About the Guests Luanda Casella is a writer, performing artist, and theatre director from São Paulo, based in Ghent, Belgium. A resident artist at NTGent, her work is internationally acclaimed and known for its ingenious storytelling and incisive deconstruction of language. She is currently a teacher at the drama department at the KASK Conservatory, Ghent, and a PhD candidate examining "deceptive discourse" in communication processes and "unreliable narrators" in classic and contemporary works of fiction. Casella has also been a guest lecturer at leading institutions, including DAS Graduate School (Amsterdam), KABK (The Hague), P.A.R.T.S, School for Contemporary Dance (Brussels), Toneelacademie Maastricht Institute of Performative Arts, Universität der Künste Berlin, Cité Universitaire de Paris, and Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. Pablo Casella is a composer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His ear for harmonies is unique in contemporary music. With his skills and virtuosity, he knows how to paint landscapes with sound, emotions with melody and power with rhythm. In the theatre world, he is active as a composer of soundtracks, producer and live musician; he has collaborated on Antigone in the Amazon (Milo Rau/NTGent/MST), Ferox Tempus, KillJoy Quiz and Elektra Unbound (Luanda Casella & NTGent), and BAM!, Saperlipopette and LOS (Ultima Thule). Casella is currently touring internationally with Antigone in the Amazon and has already performed the show in ten different countries and at renowned performing arts festivals such as Wiener Festwochen and Festival D'Avignon. Casella has has played at prestigious festivals such as Dour, Les Ardentes, Dranouter, Gent Jazz and Jazz Middelheim. With his own band, Little Dots, he has released two albums on V2 Records (2014 and 2018), for which he was responsible for the compositions, arrangements and co-production. Little Dots was artist in residence at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. The band toured as the opening act for Gabriel Rios and Hooverphonic in venues such as AB (Brussels), De Roma (Antwerp) and Paradiso (Amsterdam), and at festivals such as Gent Jazz and Eurosonic. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Luanda joined the conversation from Belgium, and Pablo joined from the countryside of São Paulo, Brazil, home to the Tupinambás, Tupiniquins and Carijós, with Macro-Jê speakers in the interior. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Guest host Chipo Chipaziwa chats with Cherish Menzo about JEZEBEL, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: January 22 and 23 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre in Vancouver, BC. Show Notes Chipo and Cherish discuss:  How Jezebel was developed Representation and presentation of black women in western culture, including tendencies of visual hypersexualization Use of various elements to highlight juxtaposition of beauty and the grotesque Negotiation between performance and how it is consumed by the audience How to be careful not to misrepresent anyone in performance work through stories or images How has the work changed from its first performance to today? Jezebel's position in a trilogy of work The use of distortion and its cultural significance Navigating between caricature and authenticity What references did you call upon in creating the work? About JEZEBEL Through a collision of physical performance, hip hop visual language, and the slowed, distorted flow of chopped-and-screwed sound, JEZEBEL reclaims the hyper-sexualized image of the "video vixen" that defined hip hop's golden age. Once framed through a male gaze that fetishized and vilified Black femininity, the vixen now steps into her own frame—stretching the image until its artifice becomes her authorship. Drawing from the glossy aesthetics of MTV-era music videos and the syrupy deceleration of Southern hip hop remix culture, this electrifying solo work deconstructs the myths of the "hip hop honey," refracting her through feminist, racial, and cultural awakenings. What emerges is a portrait of a woman both muse and maker: unapologetic and self-possessed. With a bass-heavy soundscape and arresting physicality, JEZEBEL asks—who gets to look, and who gets to define what they see? About Cherish Menzo Cherish Menzo (°1988, The Netherlands) is a choreographer and dancer, who works from Brussels and Amsterdam. In 2013 she graduated from The Urban Contemporary (JMD) at the 'Hogeschool voor de Kunsten' in Amsterdam. Cherish has appeared in the work of Lisbeth Gruwez (THE SEA WITHIN), Jan Martens (THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER, any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones), Nicole Beutler (6: THE SQUARE), as well as collaborations with the likes of Akram Khan, Ula Sickle, Olivier Dubois and Eszter Salamon. Her powerful movement language also comes into its own in her own work, which tours internationally. In 2016, she and Nicole Geertruida made EFES, an exhausting duet in which perfection and fallibility raise intriguing questions about how we like to see human beings. Sorry, But I Feel Slightly Disidentified... (2018), a solo made by Benjamin Kahn for (and with input from) Cherish, was an attempt to create a cartography of how we experience and meet the other. The seeds for this production were laid within the framework of Fraslab, after which an artistic dialogue between Cherish and Frascati Producties was initiated. Hereafter, Cherish made LIVE (2018), a cross between dance performance and pop/rock concert in collaboration with musician Müşfik Can Müftüoğlu. In 2019 Cherish worked at Frascati Producties on JEZEBEL, a dance performance inspired by the phenomenon Video Vixen from the hip-hop clips of the 90s. Jezebel, a contemporary hip-hop honey, refuses to be defined by others and shakes off her image by deconstructing and redefining it. In May 2022, during Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER premiered, a duet in which she and Camilo Mejía Cortés, with the help of the distorted rap choir, search for ways to detach their bodies and the daily reality in which they move from a forced perception. In the context of D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER , Cherish also gives workshops on the chopped & screwed technique, a process from hip-hop music that Cherish applies to the moving and performing body in the performance. As part of Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam's research programme Welcome To Our Guesthouse, Cherish made KILLED AND EXTENDED DARLINGS: SUBTLE WHINE in autumn 2023, an audiovisual performative landscape that embraces the subtle nuances and mechanics of gyration. Cherish is currently touring with FRANK (premiere May 2025, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels). In continuation of JEZEBEL and D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER, in FRANK, distortion is once again one of the main ingredients to generate material. In addition, Cherish looked into the action of decay and discovered how something gradually breaking down and getting less or worse can be another attempt to distort a form or information. Cherish received the Amsterdam FRINGE and FRINGE International Bursary Awards 2019 with JEZEBEL. JEZEBEL was selected in 2020 for both the Dutch and Flemish Theaterfestival, which presented a jury selection of the best performances of the season and received the prestigious Charlotte Köhler award by the Prins Bernhard Foundation (Amsterdam) in 2022. D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER was selected for both the Belgian Theater Festival and its Dutch counterpart. With D̶A̶R̶K̶MATTER, Cherish received the BNG Bank Theater Prize (2023) and the Dutch Drama Jury prize for best direction (2023). For her artistic work, she is interested in the transformation of the body on stage and in the "embodiment" of different physical images. Implementing distortion, decay, and dissonance, Cherish 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, the lexical of the speaking being, she seeks the Uncanny, the Enigmatic, and the Monstrous to give shape to – and materialize speculative forms and fictions. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Cherish joined the conversation from the Netherlands. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Cecilia Kuska about her work as a producer as well as Wayqeycuna, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival and co-presented by Latincouver: February 6 and 7 at the Roundhouse in Vancouver, BC. Show Notes Gabrielle and Cecilia discuss:  The work of Tiziano Cruz and how Cecilia's understanding has been shaped by his process and artistry How performance can be political without losing its complexity of creativity What it means to hold the space with theatrical work How community engagement is realized and makes sense of each locality Previous times at PuSh Cecelia's own practice to find what is on the margins Different barriers and cultural policies within other countries The approaches that guide your own model and curatorial thinking How curation is about asking and listening How to support new producers and artists The wider landscape and artistic futures of contemporary Latin American performance About Wayqeycuna Like a quipu—the intricate system of knotted cords used by Andean peoples to record memory and knowledge—Wayqeycuna traces Argentinean artist Tiziano Cruz's path back to his childhood in the Andean north. Through a poetic layering of testimony, ritual, and performance, Cruz reassembles fragments of collective and personal history, each knot an invocation of ancestry, each gesture a measured rebellion against erasure. Drawing from archival research and community memory, the work reflects on the violent devastation of cultural and communal life under neoliberalism and enduring racial hierarchies.  As the final piece in Cruz's trilogy Tres Maneras de Cantarle a una Montaña (Three Ways of Singing to a Mountain), which includes Soliloquio (I woke up and hit my head against the wall) presented at the 2023 PuSh Festival, Wayqeycuna unfolds as an act of return and repair: a lament for what has been taken, and a celebration of what persists. About Cecilia Cecilia began her career in the arts as an independent photographer, cinematographer, and combined arts student, producing exhibitions and short films. This personal exploration soon expanded into a collaborative impulse: she found herself increasingly drawn to supporting others in bringing their artistic visions to life, always guided by a sensitive and creative eye for detail. Over the past 15 years, she has developed and produced cultural projects across the globe, working at the intersection of disciplines and identities, with a strong commitment to international collaboration, contemporary creation, and institutional transformation. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Cecilia joined the conversation from Brussels, Belgium. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with James Gnam and Natalie LeFebvre Gnam of Plastic Orchid Factory about Catching Up to the Future of Our Past, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: January 30 and 31 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre in Vancouver, BC. Show Notes Gabrielle and Renae discuss:  The ways in which interdisciplinary fluidity shapes choreography How trust and dialogue forms the core of collaboration The power of "dancer magic" and its ability to pull together a performance The development of Catching Up with the Future of Our Past The use of the physiology of memory as a choreographic tool How do we remember and embody future dances? The continuous tending to of small things that is present in mid-life and in the work itself Creating work together at the same time as being life partners and parents How do you know that you're doing it right? The tension between memory, desire and the fantasy of progress Capturing the possibility and optimism of the 60s, especially the space race The emotional and scenographic landscape, and how that changed when the piece grew from a solo piece? Learnings from other collaborators and artists The Slow Social coming up at PuSh 2026! About Catching Up to the Future of Our Past Two bodies meet, orbiting between what was and what might be. Catching Up to the Future of Our Past invites audiences into the strange terrain of midlife—where time gathers, stretches, and folds back on itself. Inside a Mary Quant–inspired, retro-futurist astral bubble, their movements trace the pull of time: measurable yet fluid, finite yet elastic. Through intimacy, repetition, and reflection, the dancers chart midlife not as a pause or checkpoint, but as a living exchange between memory and possibility. The work unfolds as a meditation on the place where nostalgia and anticipation coexist, where every choice carries echoes of what was and what could be. This work summons us to witness not only the passage of time, but its elastic potential—to feel how memory propels possibility, and how possibility reshapes what we remember. About the Artists Plastic Orchid Factory (POF) is an interdisciplinary organization led by dance artists James Gnam and Natalie LeFebvre Gnam, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver). For over twenty years, POF has created work that dissolves the boundaries between dance, theatre, installation and digital media. By inviting audiences to reconsider how movement, space and technology intersect, the company cultivates experiences that are both site-responsive and immersive. Committed to risk-taking, POF embraces experimental rigour while foregrounding collaboration with local and international partners to build bridges between artists, communities and contexts. POF has created more than twenty original works presented in galleries, theatres, studios and community halls across Turtle Island and beyond. Recent highlights include Entre Chien et Loup, presented at The Citadel (Tkaronto/Toronto), MAI | Montréal, arts interculturels (Tio'tia:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal) and The Fluid Festival (Mohkínstsis/Calgary); Digital Folk, shown at Omineca Arts Centre (Lheidli T'enneh/Prince George), Mile Zero Dance (Amiskwaciy Waskahikan/Edmonton), Swallow-a-Bicycle (Mohkínstsis/Calgary) and Crimson Coast (Snuneymuxw/Nanaimo); and The Door Project at Left of Main (MST Territories/Vancouver). plasticorchidfactory.ca James Gnam (he/him) is a Vancouver-based dancer and choreographer whose work  explores the reciprocal tensions between embodiment, technology and social exchange. A graduate of Canada's National Ballet School, he has interpreted repertoire for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Ballet BC, EDAM Dance and 10 Gates Dancing, performing landmark creations by Crystal Pite, Twyla Tharp, Jiří Kylián, Mark Morris, Kurt Jooss, Peter Bingham and Tedd Robinson. Gnam is Artistic Director of Plastic Orchid Factory, a founding member of Left of Main, and an associate artist with Mélanie Demers' MAYDAY and Jacques Poulin-Denis' Grand Poney. James' choreography positions the body as both subject and analytic instrument, extending dance into gaming environments, gallery contexts and civic spaces. Across more than twenty works with Plastic Orchid Factory, he has cultivated a practice that oscillates between meticulous introspection and architecturally scaled spectacle, consistently interrogating the conditions under which meaning—and community—are produced. His research and productions have been supported by Opera Estate (Bassano, Italy); Circuit-Est (Montréal); Centre Q and the National Arts Centre (Ottawa); and, in Vancouver, The Dance Centre, Electric Company Theatre, The New Forms Festival, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Burrard Arts Foundation/Facade Festival, The Belkin Gallery and SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. In 2010, the late Lola Maclaughlin nominated Gnam and his partner and collaborator Natalie LeFebvre Gnam for the City of Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award for Dance. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Renae Shadler about SKIN, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: February 4-6 at the Annex in Vancouver, BC. Show Notes Gabrielle and Renae discuss:  How did this project first begin? What did you discover about your own assumptions and movement in this process? How did the presence of caregiving and support structures change your thinking and development of the show? How did this project deepen or challenge the framework of modern life, including the textures of the anthropocene? How did the image of sea amoeba influence the show, and allow for merging without suppressing difference? How do you craft a dramaturgy that resists normative readings of the body on stage? What is your wider practice beyond SKIN? What questions continue to animate your work? About SKIN Every body tells its story through the skin.  Constantly shifting through contact, the skin transforms—between bodies, and in its exchange with the earth, whose surface we are changing ever faster in the Anthropocene. Performed by Roland Walter, a dancer with full-body spastic paralysis, and Renae Shadler, a non-disabled choreographer, SKIN creates a universe where their distinctly different bodies move toward one another. Through touch, habitat, and imagination, they develop a shared movement language inspired by sea anemones, liquid states, and the shifting textures of the earth. This duet is not about access, but excess—a space where multiple lived experiences coexist. Between contraction and expansion, Walter and Shadler explore new ways of relating, dissolving the idea of "more" or "less" able bodies. SKIN becomes a meditation on contact and transformation—on how our environment both shapes us and is shaped by us. About Renae Renae Shadler is an Australian choreographer, performer and researcher based in Berlin who experiences her life and work as a web of interrelations. Since 2015, she has been developing her Worlding choreographic practice, which seeks to dissolve the perceived border between internal and external processes, between bodies and worlds. Her work spans diverse contexts: from dance on stage and major festivals, to museums and outdoor public engagement projects. Alongside performances, she has created lectures, the Worlding podcast series, and the ongoing knowledge lab Moving across Thresholds, which hosts online/live gatherings and festival events. As founder of Renae Shadler & Collaborators, she has presented and developed work at venues such as Dancehouse (Australia), Palais de Tokyo (France), Tanzhaus Zürich (Switzerland), Radialsystem and HELLERAU (Germany), among others. She is a recipient of the George Fairfax Memorial Award and the Marten Bequest Theater Fellowship. SKIN — her duet with Roland Walter, a performer with spastic paralysis — was selected for Perform Europe 2024/25, Tanzplattform Deutschland 2022, and Aerowaves 2021. Roland Walter was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1963 with a lack of oxygen, which caused his spastic paralysis. Walter lives with full-time assistance in Berlin. In 2010 Roland started working as an artist. As a performer he experiments with his body and works with artists worldwide, showing the audience a change of perspective. Roland also holds lectures and workshops in schools. So far Roland has worked and researched in Berlin at Theaterhaus Mitte and in the Sophiensaele, among others. With his paralysed body he fascinates the audience. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Renae joined the conversation from Berlin, Germany. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Bilal Alkhatib about Khalil Khalil, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: January 23-25 at the Nest in Vancouver, BC. Show Notes Gabrielle and Bilal discuss:  How did you translate the story into movement and performance? How did the project start, as your first theatre project coming from film? What kind of conversations or tensions shaped the balance between personal and formal approaches? How did the interplay between mediums shape the audience's understanding of grief and becoming? What responsibilities did you feel as an outsider to Khalil's interior experience, but also in relationship to his political reality? What is the difference between the film and the play, and why have both? What's next for you? About Khalil Khalil How does a name shape a destiny? Khalil Albatran was named for his brother, a martyr of the First Palestinian Intifada. In a family where the name carries both honour and grief, he has lived as a continuation of another life—one that ended before his began. Through movement and music, Khalil Khalil becomes a dialogue between presence and absence. The artist places his body in direct conversation with memory, confronting what it means to live as both an echo and an original. Each movement negotiates the distance between what is remembered and what is alive now. Beyond one man's story, the work opens a window onto a shared experience for many who bear the names of the fallen. A performance in which the artist confronts an existential question: can a body exist beyond the history it inherits? About Bilal Bilal Alkhatib is a Palestinian filmmaker. He holds a bachelor's degree in media and television and began his career in film as a cinematographer. Bilal has written and directed several documentary and short films, including Palestine 87 (2022), which was selected for the International Competition at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival and received the Audience Award. His latest documentary project, My Name is Khalil, received grants from the Qattan Foundation and the British Consulate. He is currently developing his first feature film while pursuing a master's degree in cinema. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Bilal Alkhatib joined the conversation from Ramallah, in the West Bank of occupied Palestine. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Justine A. Chambers about The Brutal Joy, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle and Justine discuss:  How did you develop this work? What is the significance of and approach to the presentation of the black body? How is this work an anticolonial imagining? What kinds of knowing and being become possible through the act of dance? What is bodily sovereignty and why is it important around the figure of the black dandy? What is the importance of style and the expression of the self through fashion and clothing? How does the call-and-response structure of the show affect collaboration and its meaning? About The Brutal Joy Dance as archive. Style as philosophy. The Brutal Joy slides between ritual and rebellion—part groove, part revelation, all liberation. An improvisational act of devotion to Black-living, The Brutal Joy merges Black vernacular line dance and sartorial gesture, transforming social dance and self-styling into an embodied living library of self-determination. Within its scored improvisation for dance, light, and sound, performers riff, vamp, and break—tracing the syncopations between individuality and collectivity, ritual and rebellion. As light carves the body and shadows echo back, The Brutal Joy unfolds as both performance and inquiry: a living counter-archive where gesture becomes knowledge and attire holds history. At once reverent and radical, it embodies the bodily sovereignty of the Black dandy and the communal vitality of the Electric Slide. What emerges is a choreography of becoming—radiant, self-determined, and alive to the possibilities of another future. About Justine Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist and educator.  Her practice is a collaboration with her Black matrilineal heritage, and extends from this continuum and its entanglements with Western contemporary dance and visual arts practices. Her research attends to embodied archives, social choreographies, and choreography and dance as otherwise ways of being in relation. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Tyson Houseman about askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle and Tyson discuss:  Where does askîwan sit in your recent work? How does bringing in live image-making evolve your experimentation with form? What made you start working in film after studying theatre and visual arts? What was the initial concept of askîwan? How have you translated the scale of ancestral and deep time into this performance? Is there a connection between the intergenerational teachings in Caustics and the current explorations of askîwan? What are the resonances between the different ecologies of relation in your work? What was it like to collaborate on the music, and how did sound become a vessel for cosmology in this piece? How do you subvert the colonial instrument of the voice? What have the technologies you have used revealed to you about artistic creation? About askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ Part live cinema, part ecological opera, askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ conjures a cosmology of land, memory, and time. This operatic multimedia performance transforms a miniature film set—complete with cameras, mylar, mirrors, and bowls of water—into vast dreamlike mountainscapes that unfold in real time. Through live video projection, electroacoustic sound, and baritone vocals sung in nehiyawewin (Plains Cree), creator and director Tyson Houseman (nêhiyaw) invites audiences into an Indigenous vision of deep, cyclical time: where rivers breathe, fire regenerates, and childhood memories ripple through vibrating water. Viola da gamba and electronics entwine ancient and digital frequencies as landscapes shift from winter ice to aurora skies. At once cinematic and ceremonial, askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ reveals how land remembers—and how, even amid ecological crisis, the earth continues to sing through us. About Tyson Tyson Houseman is a nêhiyaw video artist, performer, and filmmaker from Paul First Nation. Tyson's practice focuses on aspects of nêhiyaw ideologies and teachings – speaking to land-based notions of non-linear time and the interwoven relations between humans and their ecologies. He has exhibited at various galleries, screenings, and festivals worldwide. Most recently he participated in artist residencies at MacDowell, Wassaic Project, Vermont Studio Center, and Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University. Tyson is a recipient of the 2025 "Open Call" commission at The Shed in NYC, a 2025 Forge Project Fellow, a COUSIN Collective Cycle IV Fellow, and a 2025 MacDowell Fellow. Along with producing his own works, Tyson is a touring performer on various live cinema performances created by DJ Kid Koala. Tyson has an MFA in Fine Arts from School of Visual Arts in NYC and a BFA in Theatre Performance from Concordia University in Montreal. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Tyson joined the conversation from Toronto, also known as Tkaronto, on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger about SLUGS, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle S.E. and Sam discuss:  How did this piece start and develop into what it is today? What is your creation process like? How did you incorporate a dramaturg? How did you "make it punk enough"? What was the origin of Creepy Boys? How have your interests, creative approach and themes evolved? Your influences are wide and wild; what do these forms mean to you and how do they coexist in your world? How has your practice developed by touring your work around the world? What is the Fringe model and what draws you to it? About SLUGS It's about nothing. We promise. From the award-winning performance/comedy duo Creepy Boys (S.E. Grummett & Sam Kruger), this anarchic fever dream is a techno-punk concert, a play, a clown show, and a basement puppet nightmare all rolled into one. In a neon haze of chaos and charm, two performers attempt to make a show about nothing—until meaning starts leaking in through the cracks. SLUGS spirals from DIY absurdity into something strangely profound, fusing electronic comedy songs, trash puppetry and live camera magic into a meltdown of meaning. It's "brilliantly smart and beautifully stupid" (The Guardian), and it might be the most fun you'll have while the planet burns. For tonight, at least, we are free. About the Artists S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger proudly make joyful, deliciously funny, big-hearted, queer comedy and theatre for the intrigued. Real-life lovers, the pair perform under the duo name CREEPY BOYS, recently nominated for an Edinburgh Comedy Award.  As CREEPY BOYS and with their own solo works, they have toured extensively around the world including across Canada (Buddies in Bad Times, Summerworks Festival), US (Twin Cities Horror Festival), UK (Soho Theatre, Latitude Festival, Edinburgh Fringe), Europe (Prague Quadrennial, LiteraturHaus Copenhagen) and Australia (Midsumma Festival, Adelaide Fringe, Fringe World). Their work has also been featured on the BBC Radio 4 and CBC Radio.  S.E. Grummett (they/them) is a queer, transgender theatre artist from Treaty 6 Territory. Over the past 5 years, Grumms has created a body of original queer work and toured it around the world, including Canada, US, UK, Europe and Australia. Their solo-show, "Something in the Water", which won Best Theatre at the Adelaide Fringe, has toured around the world to queer audiences young and old. Recently they created, "The Adventures of Young Turtle", a puppet musical for queer and trans youth created with indie music icon, Rae Spoon, which won 2 Sterling Awards in Edmonton for Outstanding TYA Production. Grumms is the recipient of the inaugural 2SLGBTQIA+ Multidisciplinary Artist Award presented by the Sask Foundation for the Arts and the 2022 RBC Outstanding Award in recognition for their contribution to the queer and trans community across Saskatchewan. Outside of self-creation, Grumms also works as a director, puppeteer & video artist.  Sam Kruger (he/him) is a performer, sound designer, and recent immigrant to Canada. His solo works "Fool Muun Komming! [BeBgWunderful/YEsyes/ 4sure.Hi5/TruLuv;Spank Spank:SOfun_Grate_Times", "Bat Brains or (let's explore mental illness with vampires)", and duo comedy Creepy Boys, have toured throughout Canada, the US, the UK, Europe, and Australia since 2018 to acclaim and various awards. Kruger's emphasis is in the creation of original theatre that draws on Lecoq-style physical theatre, Gaulier-esqe clown, performance art, and surrealism. Often exploring themes of isolation, loneliness, and the performativity of everyday life, Kruger's work is funny, physical, stupid, sincere, wiggly and proudly weird. He holds a BA from the University of Minnesota, and is a graduate of the Ecole Philippe Gaulier, in Étampes, France. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. S.E. and Sam joined the conversation from Copenhagen, Denmark. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Hazel Venzon about Everything Has Disappeared, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle and Hazel discuss:  The Lapu Lapu tragedy in Vancouver, April 2025 What is the special impact of Philipinos in the world? How do we cope with tragedy and violence? Can visibilization be a form of celebration? How did values of intercultural exchange shape this work? About Everything Has Disappeared Through digital interactive technology (and a touch of magic), Everything Has Disappeared exposes the hidden architecture of the global economy: a system sustained by the labour, care, and migration of Filipino workers. From ships and oil fields to hospitals, factories, and care homes, Filipino hands keep the world turning—often without acknowledgment or visibility. In a blend of illusion, narrative, wit, and exploration, erasure transforms into revelation, confronting how our socioeconomic construct renders some lives essential yet unseen. Equal parts conjuring act and quiet celebration, Everything Has Disappeared illuminates the dignity and cultural spirit that persist within globalized structures, inviting us to contemplate how intricately necessary each and every one of us is, in order for the whole to fully exist.  About the Artists Based in Germany and Canada, Mammalian Diving Reflex is dedicated to investigating the social sphere, always on the lookout for contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences. They create site and social-specific performance events, theatre productions, participatory gallery installations, videos, film, art objects and theoretical texts, collaborating with non-artists to create work that recognises the social responsibility of art, fosters a dialogue and dismantles barriers between individuals of all ages, cultural, economic and social backgrounds. Mammalian brings people together in new and unusual ways around the world, to create work that is engaging, challenging, and gets people talking, thinking and feeling. They make ideal entertainment for the end of the world. U  N  I  Together  (UNIT) Productions is a multi-media producing company for theatre, film, television and the web. Combining the producing, directing, writing, dramaturgy and artistic design talents of duo Hazel Venzon and David Oro, UNIT produces culturally bending content that brings new stories to the forefront. UNIT is passionate about amplifying POC stories and voices and are especially interested in narratives that illuminate Filipino-Canadian experience and diaspora. The Chop is a company that brings together artists to create new Canadian theatre. It was founded in 2006 in Vancouver, BC by Emelia Symington Fedy and Anita Rochon. The Chop is recognized for work that is sophisticatedly "simple" – that is, the artistic propositions are spare and clear so that complexities come from the depth of the investigation. Productions are characterized by an intentionally live and direct connection with the audience. Now led by Emelia Symington Fedy, The Chop has moved our creation hub to the Shuswap BC. The touring of new works starts from our office space in Vancouver, but all creation, mentorship, residencies and community involvement happens rurally. With 19 new works toured nationally and a strong international profile for our "carbon lite" programming, we're enjoying this additional role as rural artistic support system Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Dr. Reneltta Arluk, Alon Nashman and Rawdna Carita Eira about Kiuryaq, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle, Reneltta, Alon and Rawdna discuss:  What brought you together around the aurora borealis? How did the conversations and collaborations begin? Why should you never whistle at the northern lights? How does technology intertwine with theatre, concert and immersive projection as well as land-based knowledge? What is our relationship with the digital world? How does elemental, personal relationships form the core of this work? What thoughts of belonging surfaced in directing the key relationship? Across indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, this is both a creative and a political act. How did the process shape your understanding of shared sovereignty, reciprocity and kinship in the north? Did your relationship to the northern lights change during this process? About Kiuryaq The Northern Lights have always carried stories—frightening, spiritual, epic, and playful. Kiuryaq is a circumpolar performance exploring our relationship with the Northern Lights—"kiuryaq" in Inuvialuktun—created through collaboration among Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists from Canada, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), and Sápmi (Norway). At its centre are two siblings born in the North: one raised beneath the Aurora with their grandparents, the other adopted south and unaware of their origins. Through ancestral connection, choices are made that alter both their worlds. Blending theatre, live music, and video design, Kiuryaq weaves northern stories into a landscape of light, memory, and cosmology. A performance of transformation and return, Kiuryaq is an invitation into the wisdom, warnings, and humour of the circumpolar region. This one-night-only performance is preceded by an artist talk with co-creators Reneltta Arluk and Rawdna Carita Eira, and a reception hosted by the Royal Norwegian Embassy. Come early for complimentary refreshments and a conversation about the artistic practice and cultural worldviews informing this landmark circumpolar collaboration. About Dr. Reneltta Arluk Writer/Director/Producer. Reneltta is an Inuvialuk, Denesuline, Gwich'in, Cree mom from the Northwest Territories. She is founder of Akpik Theatre. Raised by her grandparents on the trap-line until school age, this nomadic environment gave Reneltta the skills to become the multi-disciplined artist she is now. For nearly two decades, Reneltta has taken part in or initiated the creation of Indigenous Theatre across Canada and overseas. Under Akpik Theatre, Reneltta has written, produced, and performed various works creating space for Indigenous led voices. Reneltta is the first Inuk and first Indigenous woman to graduate from the University of Alberta's BFA Acting program and is the first Inuk and first Indigenous woman to direct at The Stratford Festival. There she was awarded the Tyrone Guthrie – Derek F. Mitchell Artistic Director's Award for her direction of Governor Award winning playwright, Colleen Murphy's The Breathing Hole. She also directed The Breathing Hole at Canada's National Arts Centre. She co-directed award winning Messiah/Complex with Against the Grain Theatre, with soloists from every region of Canada, including many Indigenous performers singing in their language. In 2024, Reneltta received an Honourary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Alberta for her commitment to decolonial change. About Alon Nashman Writer/Producer. Alon is a performer, director, creator, and producer of theatre. Selected acting credits include: The Breathing Hole (National Arts Centre), Birds of a Kind, Hirsch (Stratford Festival), I send you this cadmium red (Art of Time Ensemble), Much Ado About Nothing, Forests, Scorched, Democracy, Remnants, Alias Godot (Tarragon Theatre), Hamlet, All's Well That Ends Well, Botticelli in the Fire/Sunday in Sodom, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, THIS (Canadian Stage), The Wild Duck (Soulpepper), Hedda Gabler (Volcano/Buddies in Bad Times), If Jesus Met Nanabush (De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre), and Tales of Two Cities (Tafelmusik). Alon established Theaturtle in 1999 to create essential, ecstatic theatre that touches the earth and agitates the soul. With Theaturtle, Alon has been involved with the creation and touring of numerous theatre pieces, such as Adam Nashman's The Song, Wajdi Mouawad's Alphonse, Kafka and Son developed with Mark Cassidy of Threshold Theatre, and The Snow Queen, scored for string quartet and narrator by Patrick Cardy. Alon wrote the libretto for Charlotte: A Tri-coloured Play with Music which premiered at Toronto's Luminato Festival and has toured to Taiwan, Israel and Europe, including the Czech National Opera. About Rawdna Carita Eira Writer/Cultural Envoy. Rawdna is a Sami/Norwegian writer and playwright, born in Elverum and raised in Brønnøysund. She writes in Norwegian and Northern Sami. As a playwright, Eira debuted with the monologue Elle muitalus / Elens historie in 2003, where she played the lead role. She has since written several plays for the Sami National Theater Beaivváš. In 2012, her play Guohcanuori šuvva / Sangen fra Rotsundet, was staged at Beaivváš Theater. The play was nominated for the Ibsen Prize. Eira now lives in Guovdageaidnu and works as a director at Beaivváš Sami National Theater. Eira is also a lyricist and vocalist in the band Circus Polaria with musicians Roger Ludvigsen and Kjetil Dalland. Eira has written the text in the Sami part of the opera Two Odysseys: Pimooteewin / Gállabártnit. In 2020, the opera was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for "Outstanding Opera Production" and was awarded the prize for "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble". Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Reneltta joined the conversation from Ottawa, which is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence reaches back to time immemorial. Alon joined from Toronto, also known as Tkaronto, on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Rawdna joined from Stockholm, Sweden, but usually resides in Sápmi, Sweden. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Lara Kramer about Remember that time we met in the future?, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle and Lara discuss:  What are the starting seeds and core concepts of this particular work? How does intergenerational knowledge fit into your work? How do you navigate between remembrance and futurity? How are generational connections present in the work? What is the "hollowing feeling in the gut"? How is creating your work like a living canvas? How do ideas arise through collaboration with other artists with diverse points of entry into the arts? What compelled you to make this leap in scale and collaboration? About Remember that time we met in the future? Remember that time we met in the future? moves through a world in transformation—where land, light, sound, and memory converge. Within a shifting terrain of salvaged materials and spectral landscapes, four Indigenous artists journey through nonlinear time, where body and land, spirit and matter are inseparable. Each movement is a trace of ancestral memory, of futures unfolding, of a pulse shared between beings and worlds. Through intimate physicality, layered imagery, and atmospheric force, the performers navigate a landscape of story, ritual, and resonance. This is not dance as spectacle, but as invocation where stillness holds weight, sound becomes breath, and tenderness meets storm. In this durational dreamscape, the dancers walk with more-than-human kin, carrying the gravity of lived experience and the glow of emergent futures. Remember that time we met in the future? invites audiences into a present stretched by memory, a space of becoming, of heartbeats carried forward. About Lara Kramer Lara Kramer is a performer, choreographer, and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Oji-cree and settler heritage, raised in London, Ontario. She lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/ Montreal. Her choreographic work, research and field work over the last fifteen years has been grounded in intergenerational relations, intergenerational knowledge, and the impacts of the Indian Residential Schools of Canada. She is the first generation in her family to not attend the Residential schools. Kramer's relationship to experiential practice and the creative process of performance, sonic development and visual design is anchored in the embodiment of experiences such as dreams, memories, knowledge, and reclamation. Her creations in the form of dance, performance and installation have been presented across Canada and Australia, New Zealand, Martinique, Norway, the US and the UK. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Lara joined the conversation from what is now known as Montreal, on the traditional territory of the Kanien'kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien'kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg, . It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin chats with SoKo Jena about Kamwe Kamwe ("One by One"), coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle and SoKo discuss:  What does Kamwe Kamwe mean and why is it important to the show? What are the origins of this production? How does the political factor into your work, and how do you navigate the space between the body, voice and spiritual? How do you approach the political significance of the black body on stage? Why do you define your work as being a spiritual practice? What is the Soko totem? What is your process of incorporating all the various aspects into the visual world of the piece? How does Kamwe Kamwe connect or depart from your other work? What is your company's role in cultivating contemporary dance in Zimbabwe? About Kamwe Kamwe Kamwe Kamwe (One by One) is a force of movement and song—a meeting of ancestral rhythm and contemporary resistance. On a sand-covered stage, four Zimbabwean dancers move through a terrain of poles, elastics, and projected images, their bodies speaking what history has silenced. Echoes of those disappeared through colonial and ongoing violence are carried in the haunting truths revealed through body and voice. Choreography that transforms dance into testimony, this is a reckoning on racism and human rights—a body-to-body reminder that liberation is built in motion, and that no one moves forward alone. Kamwe Kamwe (One by One) is both protest and prayer: a dance of solidarity rising from the dust. About SoKo Jena SoKo Jena is a Zimbabwean multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, and founder of jena_practice, a platform bridging traditional Zimbabwean performance with contemporary artistic expression. A graduate of the University of the Arts (Philadelphia, USA) and the Dance Trust of Zimbabwe, Jerahuni has collaborated with influential mentors such as Peter John Sabbagha, Nora Chipaumire, Ja Willa Jo Zollar, Boyzie Cekwana, and Mamela Nyamza. His work investigates identity, resilience, and spirituality through movement, sound, and ritual, often combining live singing with contemporary dance. His creations, including Kamwe Kamwe / One by One and The Architecture of Blackness, have been presented internationally at festivals and venues such as SPIELART Theatre Festival (Germany), In2IT International Dance Festival (Norway), Atelier Automatique (Germany), and Festival de Dança Itacaré Danse (Brazil). Through his practice, Jerahuni continues to expand Zimbabwean cultural heritage into a global dialogue, offering audiences powerful performances that merge tradition, innovation, and political urgency. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. SoKo joined the conversation from Brazil. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Arthur Amard Rémi Fortin about Le Beau Monde, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle, Arthur and Rémi discuss:  What questions does this show bring into focus for you, and how does that relate to your other projects? What is the importance of memory in Le Beau Monde? Is the interpretation of meaning a theme in your work, or something specific to this project? How do we represent a thing we used to know? How do you approach authorship within shared creation, and what anchors your collective language? What is the importance of having the right people involved in the creative process, and why do you avoid stubbornness?  How do you handle music in the show? What can you say about the creative process lab you are hosting at PuSh? What inspired this project and what do you hope will emerge from it? The work feels like both archaeology and prophecy. What did your process reveal to you about why we make theatre? Is memory the only true subject of theatre? About Le Beau Monde In the future, theatre no longer exists. Neither do elections, football, or kissing. Or, at least not as it used to be. Three people stand before us—awkward, uncertain, sincere. They've heard rumours of these ancient rituals and are doing their best to recreate them. What emerges is both ridiculous and strangely touching: a ceremony of imitation, a eulogy for everyday life. A collective creation initiated by actor Rémi Fortin, with polyphonic songs by Arthur Amard, Le Beau Monde resurrects our present as if it were already a ghost. Between laughter and melancholy, a contemplation: what will we leave behind for those who come next? What, if anything, is precious? A sci-fi theatre of tenderness and absurdity, built from the debris of our daily lives. About the Guests The École Parallèle Imaginaire (ÉPI) is a nomadic space that invents experiences in theaters, museums, public spaces, and for territories. Playing on the boundary between reality and fiction, it works to expand our imagination and create contemporary rituals. It is directed by Simon Gauchet who is an actor, director and scenographer.  Le Beau Monde (The Beautiful World) has been initiated by Remi Fortin who has gathered Arthur Amard, Blanche Ripoche and Simon Gauchet to create this show. Rémi Fortin trained with the 2013 promotion of the TNS (Théâtre National de Strasbourg) drama school. Since graduating in June 2016, he has performed under the direction of Mathieu Bauer, Simon Delétang, Adèle Gascuel, Thomas Jolly, Frédéric Sonntag, Christophe Laluque, Anne Théron, Cendre Chassanne, and Olivier Martin-Salvan. He also collaborates on the radio with Blandine Masson, Chris Hocké, Laure Egoroff, and Juliette Heynemann In cinema, he has worked under the direction of Loïc Barché, Clément Schneider, Anna Luif, Arnaud Khayadjanian, Clemy Clarke, and Arnaud Simon. Alongside his acting career, he also enjoys creating his own projects in which he performs and crafts the original idea. Without being a director himself, he offers to fellow actors to embark on a theatrical experiment together, like his first solo project, Ratschweg, a walking performance inspired by Büchner's, Lenz, rehearsed in itinerancy with director Charlie Droesch-Du Cerceau and dramaturge Pierre Chevalier during a journey on foot through the Vosges from Strasbourg to the Théâtre du Peuple in Bussang. From 2018 to 2021, he was an associated actor at the Théâtre Public de Montreuil. He is currently working on his next creation, La Peur (The Fear), for which Adèle Gasquel will write the script. It will be premiered in the autumn of 2025. Arthur Amard graduated from the 27th class of La Comédie de Saint-Étienne, sponsored by Pierre Maillet. He has worked with Élise Vigier and Marcial Di Fonzo Bo on the creation of M comme Méliès, and more recently with Pierre Maillet on Le Bonheur (n'est pas toujours drôle) and Théorème(s). Since 2012, he has been a member of the Compagnons Butineurs, based in Eure. During the 2018/19 season, he was in a co-residency at La Cascade, Pôle des Arts du Cirque, where he joined the itinerant workshop, a collective interdisciplinary working group. There, he continued his research on circus performance. In 2019, he co-founded the collective La Dernière Baleine, with which he created Tant qu'il y aura des brebis - portraits de tondeurs et de tondeuses at the Comédie de Caen, along with Léa Carton de Grammont and choreographer Cécile Laloy. Since 2020, he has been dancing under the direction of Mathilde Papin in Serein. As an accordionist and pianist, he regularly incorporates music into his work. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Rémi joined the conversation from Montreuil, near Paris, and Arthur joined from Strasbourg, France. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin chats with Alan Lake about his show, Orpheus, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle and Alan discuss:  What drew you to the myth of Orpheus? Why do some old stories continue to return to the present? How are your artistic interests evolving? How does each element develop in conversation with the other? How does your relationship to camera and frame differ from your relationship to the stage? About Orpheus Orpheus reimagines the myth of descent as a visceral dance through darkness toward connection and renewal. Choreographer Alan Lake constructs an immersive world of image and movement where body, matter, and light converge—oscillating between dream and reality. Within this charged landscape, the performers navigate rupture and transformation, their physicality both raw and transcendent. Lake's choreography merges the mythic and the human, urging us to face the fractures of our humanity—division, conflict, isolation—and to reach for one another. Both intimate and monumental, Orpheus is dance as myth, as mirror, as act of faith—inviting us to drink from the fire and emerge changed. About Alan Lake Alan Lake approaches movement through the accumulation of experience and a multidisciplinary practice. His artistic approach lies at the intersection of dance, film, and visual art, with the goal of merging these disciplines into a common space in service of dance. An associate artist at La Maison pour la danse in Québec City, Alan Lake regularly presents his choreographic work in Québec, across Canada, as well as in Belgium, Mexico, and the United States. He is also an active teacher and guest choreographer in various institutions throughout Québec. About Alan Lake Factori[e] Founded in 2007 and based in Québec City, Alan Lake Factori[e] is dedicated to choreographic research and creation, as well as the production of both stage works and dance films. With its multidisciplinary approach, the company offers an expanded vision of choreographic art. Whether through in situ projects in unconventional spaces, stage productions, or cinematic works, the company embraces artistic hybridity to develop its own distinct aesthetic and physical language. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Alan joined the conversation from Quebec City, on the traditional territories of the Huron-Wendat, Innu, and Abenaki Peoples. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Ondřej Hrab, Anastasiia Kosodii and Jana Svobodová about their show, Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle, Ondřej, Anastasiia and Jana discuss:  What makes your location so important to your work? What drew you to the non-musical form, and how does silence become part of the work's meaning? How do you approach staging texts so that they speak across borders without diluting their intimacy or specificity? What is documentary theatre and what is your particular approach with this new work? What questions are raised about authorship and collective responsibility? What did the title "for western audiences" mean and how did it impact the work? What is the importance of language and how do you deal with multiple languages in a performance? About Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience In Eight Short Compositions on the Lives of Ukrainians for a Western Audience, the political becomes profoundly personal.  Drawn from the words of Ukrainian playwright Anastasiia Kosodii, this delicate yet piercing work meditates on the ordinary moments that fracture under the weight of war—boiling water, harvesting fruit, sleeping in one's own bed. Across languages and borders, five performers gather to honour the small acts of living that survive in the shadow of war. Through text projection, music, movement, and light, they weave a collective reflection on distance, empathy, and responsibility—how to stand beside those whose lives are under siege. In its quiet sincerity, the piece invites us to listen: to the grain of a voice, the tremor of solidarity, the fragile beauty of life persisting against the noise of devastation. About the Guests Archa – Centre for Documentary Theatre continues the work its founders Ondřej Hrab and Jana Svobodová carried out for over 30 years at the renowned Archa Theatre in Prague. The Centre operates both locally and internationally. It actively collaborates with international theatres and artists, as well as with the rural community in the village of Dvakačovice, where it now focuses much of its activity. The Centre produces theatre performances, organizes the International Summer School of Documentary Theatre, hosts artistic residencies and workshops both in the Czech Republic and abroad. Its work focuses on documentary and socially specific theatre projects that emphasize collaboration between professional artists and representatives of diverse social groups. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Jana and Ondřej joined the conversation from Dvakačovice, Czechia, and Anastasia joined from Broumov, Czechia. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Cole Lewis, Patrick Blenkarn and Sam Ferguson about their show, 2021, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival!  Show Notes Gabrielle, Cole, Patrick and Sam discuss:  How does the form of the game highlight and confront the deep personal stories on which the piece is based? How is the video game form related to the practice of acting? How do the technical aspects, including data and AI, affect the piece? How did you come together as a team and what are your different roles in creating the piece? How does the audience member play or embody the central character, and what is the difference between becoming and influencing? Where does witnessing end and participation begin? How do personal artifacts influence the game, and the choices within it? How do you navigate the line between technological wonder and moral discomfort? What does consent mean for someone who has passed on? About 2021 Under the glow of a flickering screen, a daughter reconstructs her deceased father. Pixel by pixel, contradiction by contradiction. 2021 is a live performance where theatre, AI, and video-game storytelling converge, blurring the boundary between human remembrance and machine logic. An audience member steps into the role of Brian, an unhoused veteran reliving his final weeks inside a looping digital hospital: a labyrinth of corridors, bureaucratic dead ends, and fleeting human contact. Guided by his daughter's narration, fragments of data become playable memory. Each decision glitches reality a little more. How do we provide dignity in death to those we fundamentally disagree with? Part elegy, part experiment, 2021 exposes the tenderness and terror of digital resurrection. It asks not whether machines can think, but whether memory itself is a kind of simulation. About the Guests Guilty by Association (GbA) is an interdisciplinary performance collective that shifts its process with each new project. Led by Co-Artistic Directors, Cole Lewis + Patrick Blenkarn, they seek to expand what theatre can do, devising work from design ideas, exploring modes of storytelling, and scheming to fuse media to the stage. The Elbow Theatre dissects the human condition. We develop shows that question accepted truths. Our productions engage our audiences with the realities of our world. Through process and production, The Elbow presents theatre that promotes caring for, and understanding of, each other. The Elbow was founded in 2012 by Itai Erdal and is based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Cole Lewis (she/her) is a mom and mad theatre artist from St. Catharines, Ontario. She specializes in creating live performance from design ideas, exploring new modes of storytelling, and fusing technologies to the stage. Her practice includes directing, playwriting, and the design of moving image works. Twice nominated for Dora-Awards, Cole's practice uses humour, design, and technology to explore notions of class and violence, expose questions of bias, and unsettle standard conceptions of 'truth' to explore alternative futures. She has an MFA in Directing from Yale and her thoughts on performance have been shared at LMDA, Howlround, FOLDA, Yale CCAM, and Canadian Theatre Review. Patrick Blenkarn (he/him) is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. His research-based practice revolves around the themes of language, labour, and democracy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books, with subjects as diverse as the labour of donkeys to the valuation of art to historical date farming practices in Iraq. He is a polyglot, programmer, animator, musician, and stage director. He is also the co-creator of asses.masses and co-founder of videocan, the national video archive of performance documentation. Sam Ferguson (he/him) is an award-winning sound designer/composer from Toronto. After moving to Vancouver to study under acclaimed electroacoustic music composer Berry Truax he returned to Toronto where he became involved with theatre. This experience led him to enroll in the Yale School of Drama where he received an MFA for sound design. Since graduating he has returned to Toronto and has been working in the industry ever since. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Cole, Patrick and Sam joined the conversation from Münster, Germany. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  

Gabrielle Martin chats with Andréane Leclerc of Nadére arts vivants for the Season 3 Finale of PuSh Play! Throughout the Festival, Andréane will be sharing her practice through a variety of workshops and consultations for students and professionals as part of a PuSh Festival Artist Residency. Show Notes Gabrielle and Andréane discuss:  How do you integrate difficult contortion movements with somatic practices? What is the relationship between your practices 20 years ago and those you have today? How do you write circus? What does it mean to deconstruct and body and language of contortion? What is dramaturgy in this context? How are you working in the community? How does contortion inform non-contortionist bodies? What does relational ecology look like in the rehearsal process and onstage? What are you currently researching? About Andréane Leclerc A conceptual and performance artist, Andréane Leclerc is interested in human encounters that guide her towards interdisciplinary and interartistic processes. Trained as a contortionist (National Circus School of Montreal, 2001), she draws inspiration from her 20 years of circus practice to reflect on contortion as a philosophical posture and to develop her scenic language. Her approach, focused on listening, relational ecology and perceptive attention, is part of new body practices emerging from the somatic and performance fields. In 2013, she completed a master's degree on the dramaturgy of prowess at the UQAM theater department. That same year, with her partner Geoffroy Faribault, she founded the company Nadère arts vivants in order to pursue her exploration of a body/matter evolving in sensation rather than in sensationalism. She created the conceptual pieces Di(x)parue 2009; Bath House 2013; Mange-Moi 2013; Cherepaka 2014; The Whore of Babylon Featuring The Tiger Lillies 2015; Sang Bleu 2018; À l'Est de Nod 2022 and (X) currently in creation. Her pieces have been presented in Tokyo, Florence, Cairo, Tenerife, Sao Paolo, Guadalajara, Chicago, Rouyn-Noranda and Montreal, on contemporary stages, as well as in museums and galleries. In parallel to her artistic career, Andréane Leclerc is a teacher and offers contortion classes to physical artists since 2015. She also develops interdisciplinary dramaturgy workshops for circus, dance, theater and performance artists (Studio 303, En Piste, Playwrights workshop Montreal in Montreal, La Gata Cirko in Bogota, La Grainerie in Toulouse, Fabbrica Europa in Florence). In 2017, she participated in the creation of Cirque OFF, a living manifesto for the biodiversity of circus arts in Montreal (Studio 303).  She also occasionally act as a dramaturgy and movement consultant (Dialogue of Disobedience & Black light, white noise by and with Dana Dugan, 2018 & 2022) and performs for various international projects (Variations pour une déchéance annoncée by Angela Konrad, 2012; The Tiger Lillies Perform Hamlet since 2016).  Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Majula joined the conversation from what is now known as Montreal, on the traditional territory of the Kanien'kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien'kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  00:02 Hello, and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Artistic Director, and today's episode highlights the dramaturgy of the circus body and relational ecology. I'm speaking with Andréa Leclerc of Nadir Arvivant, a performer, director, researcher and pedagogue. Andréa Leclerc has developed a somatic practice inspired by contortion for over 25 years. She creates transdisciplinary scenic works based on cooperation, listening and relational ecology. She's also a 2025 Push Artist in Residence, and will be sharing her practice through a variety of workshops and consultations for students and professionals throughout the festival.Find out more at our Push in the Community page. Here is my conversation with Andréa. I am thrilled to be in this conversation with you today. We're going to be talking about your practice and what you'll be up to at Push and what brings you here, what's brought you to this point in your career and what you're thinking about next. And just as we are about to get into that, I really just want to take a moment and acknowledge the land I'm on today. And, you know, this morning I was reading an article about PFAS or forever chemicals in our water, and I know we're all really aware of the signs of our extractive dynamic with the earth. And these signs are all around us and they seem to be pressing in daily. And I just I'm really incredibly grateful to live in this rich nature of so-called Vancouver, these unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Coast Salish peoples. And to reflect on what it means to be a citizen of these lands and to live in reciprocity, which, you know, a totally different posturing than this extractive dynamic that's got us here today.And again, where are you where are you calling from? And I would love you just to I would love to hear you share your relationship to the land you're on. Yes, thank you, Gabrielle. I would like to acknowledge that the dramaturgy called Spirit, which runs through another of the event creation, has been shaped by contact with various unceded indigenous territories where beings and their memories coexist. So I'm joining this conversation from Jojagi Mounia in Montreal, which has long been a meeting place for diplomatic activities between indigenous nations. You started practicing contortion over 25 years ago, and this has evolved into your own unique somatic practice and pedagogy. And many many people would not associate contortion with its references to circus, virtuosity, the extreme, you know, painful looking positions with somatic practice, which tends to refer to more internal mind body methodologies. I would love it if you can describe how you made the connection between contortion, the contortion you were practicing, you know, when you started 25 years ago and the contortion you practiced today.     03:13 Yes, that's a very good question, because it's actually at the core of my problematic that has been leading my research from all that disconnection between what I perceived and live and embody my contortion body and all the perceived from and the perception from the audience that they were projecting upon my body when I was doing more classical circus forms. So since I was very young, contortion always have been for me a place for breath and accessing imaginary landscape and other sphere that were for me very fertile in terms of creation. And I always wanted and so new narratives and so on. So I was really traveling throughout my body and it was a way to resonate with the world and a way to be and live, experience the world. And so that always have been something I wanted to share with the audience.But then I'm starting from a very classical approach of contortion. So I was I did my education at the National Circus School in Montreal and I graduated in 2001. So a few years ago now, I've been really, fun, highly skilled, like contortion practice. So sitting on the head on handstand with very precise code and codification from spectacular, I would say, marketing law, when I'm understanding that. And so by, but that was just a way to do. And so by traveling the world working as a contortionist, at some point, even though, like, I was also formed as a contemporary circus artist, I always felt so unsatisfied by the impossibility to reach the audience with what I wanted to express.So then I was like, okay, so then how can I do that? And at some point, I did one creation in Germany. And we it was the first time I was doing like, proper, I would say, research on quantum physics. And it was a show inspired by quantum physics. And we had talks with researchers and scientific and scientists. And there was like an opening on new possibilities. And so there was very clear dramaturgical choices that has been made in matter to be linked with the subject. And so for me, there was a before and an after, because with that creation, there was a possibility to question the codification of how to write circus.And so art did not add to happen in between the circus technique. But the technique and the body and the circus body could talk itself out. Then there was some limitation of my research by was I opening door to actually come back to the university in theaters studying dramaturgy of the body, where I really passed few years to deconstruct the language of spectacular deconstruct the language of contortion deconstruct the body of contortion to try to make this body a matter for scenic representation.And how does that body through contortion, of course, because that is my first entrance door, how does that body can generate imagination and stimulate the true sensation and kinetic kinesthetic, and also composition of the stage, stimulate the imaginary role of the audience? So how can it become a language that audience can read? And that is really dramaturgy, right? Like just for our listeners who may not be as familiar with that term, or when you talk about dramaturgy of the body or dramaturgy of the circus body.     08:00 I can also reflect on how I interpret that. But can you kind of outline that a little bit more? A

Gabrielle Martin chats with Majula Drammeh and Joseph K Kasua. They are presenting a special studio showing and discussion of What is already here? at the 2025 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Check out the show on February 7 at the VIVO Media Arts Centre.  Show Notes Gabrielle, Majulah and Joseph discuss:  For your show, What is Already Here, which stemmed from a 2022 installation, what was the evolution of the project and what were the themes explored? How did it start? How did the pandemic influence the creation process? How have themes of extraction, colonialism and digital technology weave into the work? Why did you choose to call this a "futuristic afro-play" and what do you mean to achieve with this form? What is your collaboration like, given your different points of departure? What drew you to work together, and how do your practices complement one another? About Majula Drammeh I am a performer, dancer, dramaturg and performance maker based in Stockholm and Malmö, Sweden. My main focus is on interactive, participatory immersive work within the fields of dance and performance as well as somatic practices. I am looking to explore how these can act as a bridge for people to participate and discover themselves in an open, permissive and inclusive way. In the interpersonal. I am interested in giving space for both audience/ participants and performers to deal with their own bodily identity and the political baggage it carries. And I strive to present interactive performing arts where the body of the minority is the norm, and hopefully contribute to the decline of history-less of which the non-white body is consigned too. As a performer and dancer my focus is on using somatic practices and experiences to create a focus that is vulnerable, present and invites the participant to be present with themselves too. I use my choreographic and improvisational experiences to find methods of meeting the room, space and objects to create a relational bridge to them. These are also methods I communicate in my teaching. I work as a dramaturg for mainly dance artists and I am intrigued with processes and the path they lead the work on. How, with close attention, the process reveals the very core of an artist's work and clarifies what decisions need to be made when we listen closely. I grew up in Hjulsta/Tensta suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. I studied at the Dance and Circus School in Stockholm in 2006 and received my bachelor's degree in dance from Laban Center London (2009) and in 2021.I received a master's degree in performing arts from Stockholm University of the Arts. I have been teaching at Stockholm University of Arts and The Royal Danish Art Academy amongst others. About Joseph K. Kasua Born in Lubumbashi in 1995, Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe is a visual artist, filmmaker and author based in Lubumbashi. He holds a degree in Information and Communication Sciences from the University of Lubumbashi, specialising in Performing Arts (Audiovisual, Cinema and Theatre).His passion for art started very early in Lubumbashi's cinemas, and was nourished by multiple visual influences that later formalised in his artistic practice, which is situated at the intersection of cinema, video art, photography, creative writing and addresses in his work the complexity of memory and identity in a postcolonial urban context. He is a fellow of the Trame 2022 residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, of the Delfina Foundation residency programme in England on food politics, of the Tri-continental Quilombo project (DRC - SWITZERLAND - BRAZIL) from 2021 to 2023. Kasau Wa Mambwe also works as a Fixer, Assistant Director, Editorial Assistant and as a Communication Officer for African and Western structures and collectives, among others Les Films de la Passerelle (Belgium), the Lubumbashi Biennale (2019), Museum of Tervuren (Belgium), PODIUM Esslingen (Germany) and GROUP50:50 (DRC - SWITZERLAND - Germany). Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Majula joined the conversation from Stockholm, Sweden, and Joseph joined from Lubumbashi in the DR Congo. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  00:02 Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and today's episode highlights interpersonal processes and works that give birth to themselves. I'm speaking with Majula Drammeh and Joseph K. Casao-Wamambue, Push artists in residence who will be developing their work, what is already here, in residency during the festival and sharing the studio showing and conversation on February 7th, 2025.  In a world fixated on unyielding technological progress, this interactive theater installation in development urges audiences to reconnect with the tangible through a resounding affirmation of collective belonging. Set in a subterranean laboratory built from discarded electronic waste, the work in development draws on ancestral wisdom and Afro-futurist divisions, inviting participants to challenge their digital dependencies and rediscover what it means to be human in a time of digital alienation. Born and based in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Joseph K. Casao-Wamambue holds a degree in information and communication sciences from the University of Lubumbashi with a specialization in performing arts. From theater and cinema to photography, installation and creative writing, Joseph's work addresses the complexity of memory and identity in a post-colonial urban context. Rooted in dance and choreography, Majula Drammeh's artistic practice explores how the performing arts can provide spaces for interpersonal relationships, addressing vulnerability and challenging societal norms. Her work often exists in non-traditional theater spaces and asks the participants to fully emerge themselves in topics such as time consumerism in a capitalist age.  Here's my conversation with Joseph and Majula. It's really nice to be in conversation with you today. I'm really looking forward to chatting with you more about this project, about your practice. Thank you for joining me. I know it's evening where you are, it's morning where I am. I'm going to start by just acknowledging where I am joining this conversation from. So I am on the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh. And as a settler here, it's important. I'm responsible to continue my thinking and education on what the history of colonization looks like here and its implications and ongoing effects today. And I think something that's really interesting is thinking and learning I've done around the different types of colonialism and their impacts today and how that affects what colonization looks like today or neocolonialism based on where we are.    03:01 With my own background, my father coming from Zimbabwe, colonization now looks much different than it has here in Canada. And so, you know, I think that's important in framing the difference specifically between settler colonialism, where large numbers of settlers claim land, become a majority, and often employ a logic of elimination, engineering the disappearance of the original inhabitants versus an extractive colonialism where colonizers, you know, destroy or push away indigenous inhabitants to access resources, but more typically depend on mediation and the labor of the indigenous peoples.  And and then other forms like planter or trade colonialism, and this is there's one kind of very simple and nice reference, a typology of colonialism by Nancy Shoemaker. That's a great reference. And so that's kind of some of my thinking today that I wanted to share. And Joseph and Majula, could you please share where you are joining the conversation from?    04:11 So I'm joining the conversation from Lumbashi. Lumbashi is, I can say, the second biggest city in the Republic Democratic of Congo. It's a city full of mining and exploitation, so it's really related to the colonialism history that you were talking about.  And I was born here, and I've always acknowledged that Lumbashi, as a qualification, they say that it's a copper city. And for all my life, I haven't really been in touch with the copper, so that's symbolized the fact that our land don't really belong to us. So there are so many people, so many countries that are under us, and taking all the decisions that belong to us. So yeah, I'm joining from this territory.    05:24 and I am joining from Stockholm, Sweden, and actually I have no roots to this country because my mother is from Finland and my father is from Gambia and they ended up here because of work in the 70s. So in Sweden we call people that have a parent of colour and a parent from another country people of in betweenesship. So we're in between wherever we are basically.  So yeah and I think this has coloured my experience as a human throughout my entire life and I mean Sweden is a very rich and very social democratic country or it has been until quite recently it's more right-wing now and I mean it's not dealt so much with its past in terms of I mean it actually still has in one sense a colony in the far north with the Sami people who are the Swedish indigenous people and it's still a very very hot topic here and it's just recently passed maybe I would say eight to ten years that Sweden has actually also acknowledged the fact that they were dealing with slave trade and owned a colony in St. Bartelemy. So yeah I

Gabrielle Martin chats with Clayton Lee, who will be presenting The Goldberg Variations at the 2025 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Check out the show on January 30 at the Waterfront Theatre, supported by CMHC Granville Island.  Show Notes Gabrielle and Clayton discuss:  Why do you only perform the Goldberg Variations once per engagement? What does it mean to identify as a performance artist and not just a musician? What are your thoughts in relation to care and consent in your work? To what extent is your own story the subject of your artistic projects? How do you use performance to actively reshape your life? What is allowed and not allowed in different performance contexts, and how do you respond to this? What did it mean to get married as part of a performance? What contexts are you currently playing with in your future work? How do we continue this work beyond? About Clayton Lee Clayton Lee is a Canadian curator, producer, and performance artist. He is currently the Artistic Director of Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK and, as part of the Living Room Collective, will be representing Canada at the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Clayton joined the conversation from Toronto, on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript  00:02 Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabriel Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and today's episode highlights a future conjuring and adding texture to the conversation.    00:17 I'm speaking with Clayton Lee, artist behind the Goldberg Variations, which is being presented at the Push Festival January 30th, 2025. Through an unapologetic investigation of desire, power dynamics, and identity, Clayton Lee explores his childhood obsession with the professional wrestler Bill Goldberg and the impact it has had on his sexual and romantic history.    00:38 The perplexing crossroads between dominance, submission, heartbreak, and vulnerability are laid bare in this candid and thoroughly unconventional performance, where fantasies are both indulged and deconstructed.    00:50 Clayton Lee is a Canadian curator, producer, and performance artist. He is currently the Artistic Director of Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK, and as part of the Living Room Collective will be representing Canada at the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture.    01:06 Here's my conversation with Clayton. A thrilling to be talking to you, thrilling to be part of the festival. Before we dive right into it, I would like to acknowledge that I'm on the stolen, ancestral, and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh.    01:29 And I think today it's important to acknowledge the recent passing of Murray Sinclair, the Anishinaabe Senator, and renowned Manitoba lawyer, who led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He passed on November 4th.    01:44 And he served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba and directed the pediatric cardiac surgery inquest into the deaths of 12 children at a Winnipeg hospital before taking the reins of the TRC, one of the...    02:00 important bodies in Canada's recent history, which released its final report in 2015. And his work with the TRC, well with his work, his conclusion was that residential schools amounted to a cultural genocide, or his conclusion with his collaborators.    02:19 And this conclusion, this document has reshaped Canadians' understanding of the government-run boarding schools that devastated generations of Indigenous communities. And I'd just like to share a quote from him.    02:32 We have described for you a mountain. We have shown you the path to the top. We call upon you to do the climbing. And Clayton, where are you joining this conversation from today? Well, normally I'd be in Birmingham, UK, but today I'm calling from Toronto, which is the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat, as well as the treaty territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit.    02:59 Unlike many artists, you prefer to only perform the Goldberg gradations once during an engagement. So for example, you requested to perform only one show at the Push Festival. Why is that? Oh, there's so many reasons for that.    03:17 You know, I think the kind of major difference between the ways in which I approach making versus other folks is I identify as a performance artist. And whereas I think most of the folks in the festival or in the festival circuit come from theater or dance kind of lineages and theater and dance, you know, have this kind of tradition of repeatability, right?    03:39 Where they make the work and then they kind of repeat it over and over again, hopefully on tour or over multiple weeks in a single city. And I'm, you know, for any number of reasons, I've framed Goldberg, the Goldberg variations as kind of a one-off live encounter event.    03:58 What this means for me is one, that the work is never the same twice. So the work is always being built and added onto it's iterative process. I kind of vaguely shape the conceptual framework for the piece is box sculptor variations with his 30 variations.    04:18 And the idea is every time I perform, I add one or two new variations to the work. And I'm interested simultaneously in what it means to present large scale work and to think about the spectacle of the live encounter and how to do this in ways of, ways within scarcity mindsets, right?    04:39 Where we don't have ton of money, but how do we pull all our resources into a way that feels big and bold and, you know, more daring than a kind of two or three performance run could be. So I really throw all the excitement into one basket and do it.    04:59 in that way for this. The stakes are high. The stakes are high and I think that's the way I like to kind of frame it, right? I really think about this performance as a score that I've built and I have no idea how it'll work and then the minute the performance starts the roller coaster begins and you know you can't get off of it and whatever happens happens and that's the kind of level of chaos slash controlled chaos I really thrive in.    05:29 Yeah and I really and I think the audience can feel that too, right? Because it's this one-off thing. They are kind of learning and experiencing it at the same time as I am. It is super exciting and you use the element of surprise and one result of this can be audience members yourself or your collaborators and or collaborators faced with the unexpected.    05:51 What are your thoughts on care and consent in relation to your work given this kind of the unexpected? Yeah, I think consent, of course, is key in all cases. And care, I have a funny relationship with care in the context of live performance, right?    06:11 And there's an artist named Bruno Gio who talks about how care is often a strategy to kind of maintain the status quo, that if we're never unable to kind of feel discomfort, how do we actually find new ways of being, right?    06:25 Not to say I'm explicitly interested in kind of abandoning care or kind of rejecting it, but for me, the work is not just about care. And I think when you or the audience experiences it, you'll kind of see very quickly that that's not part of the work.    06:43 And simultaneously, I'm interested in this kind of question around how artists of color are positioned within contemporary performance, right? This kind of critical need for representation, but the kind of limits of it.    06:58 And what I mean by that is, artists of color are often meant to be the kind of spokesperson for their communities. They're kind of intersecting communities. And for me, I'm not interested in doing that at all.    07:10 What if we don't position ourselves as forces of good necessarily, but forces that are kind of complex and are asking these kind of tangly, often unethical, often problematic questions, right? And what if we make that the starting point of the work and go from there?    07:29 And then I think the other kind of conversation around consent is, and perhaps this goes back to this kind of fine distinction between dance theater and performance art, but I think audiences often forget that there is inherent agency in their role as an audience member, that they can get up whenever they want, that they can leave whenever they want, that if they're gonna talk during the performance,    07:49 no one's gonna really stop. There are kind of these kind of standard practices in place, but also who's gonna stop them, right? And actually, I'm interested. interested in the ways in which audience members can or cannot exercise their own agency in the performance, and I can invite that in, right?    08:10 When I, you know, said earlier about kind of creating the score, it's like the kind of audience is in a way co-creating it with me, and if they want to kind of respond in any number of ways, that's invited, right?    08:23 You know, there are elements, there are kind of lines I don't cross, like, you know, this is not explicitly, this works not by, you know, it's not whatever, whatever, but it