Episodes

  • Ep. 39 - Transpofagic Manifesto (Renata Carvalho)

    Ep. 39 - Transpofagic Manifesto (Renata Carvalho)
    Nov 22 2024
    Gabrielle Martin chats with Gabi Gonçalves, producer from Corpo Rastreado of Renata Carvalho’s piece, Transpofagic Manifesto, at the 2025 PuSh Festival, January 23 - February 9. Transpofagic Manifesto will be presented with Latincouver at the Waterfront Theatre on February 7 and 8. A special film marathon of Renata Carvalho’s work will also be shown at SFU during the Festival on February 9. To listen to an interview with Renata in Portuguese, please check out the Latinos en Canada podcast. Show Notes Gabrielle and Gabi discuss: What does it mean for your work to give voice? How did Corpo Rastreado come to be, and what does it do? What is the difference between an artist and a producer? What does it mean to be a producer in terms of enabling art and artists? What is the difficulty of using the word “project”? What is the “tree philosophy” of art? What makes a Corpo Rastreado artist? What does it mean to be a “political act of great courage?” How did you start working with Renata Carvalho? What has led to Renata’s international success? How do we approach trans rights across countries with such different laws, such as Brazil and Canada? How do we take care of the audience? How do we learn to work on the micro-political level? About Gabi Gonçalves Paulistana, articulator of the whole zorra for 14 years and our doctor in Communication and Semiotics (Communication and Cultural Production in Brazil - a study on the operators of helplessness and firefly artists - 2016), Gabi Gonçalves is one of the main responsible for this melting pot that is Corpo Rastreado. Working with production, in her opinion, is studying, researching and mainly a political act and a lot of courage, with a pinch of madness! For this premise, she brings in her experience the production in the biggest national and international festivals, knowledge in all the notices and forms of sponsorship (direct or not) as well as full experience in all areas of culture. 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. Gabi Gonçalves joined the conversation from São Paulo, Brazil, home to the Guarani, Guarani Mbya, Guarani Nhandeva, and Tupi-Guarani Indigenous peoples. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript 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 building relational foundations and plants as inspiration for micropolitical actions. I'm speaking with Gabby Gonzalez, the producer and longtime friend of Renata Carvalho, who is the artist behind Trans -Pothagic Manifesto. This work is being presented at the Push Festival, February 7th to 8th, 2025. And on February 9th, we will also be presenting a marathon of Brazilian films starring Renata, including her own film, Body, It's Autobiography. Trans -Pothagic Manifesto is a courageous and thought -provoking work that challenges perceptions of gender non -conforming and trans -feminine people. Through a radical expression of empowerment, Renata Carvalho subverts the obsessive scrutiny of trans bodies, distilling this gaze and transforming it into art, literature, and education. Gabby Gonzalez holds a PhD in Communication and Semiotics and is one of the main people responsible for the melting pot that is Corpo Hestriado. Working with production in her opinion is studying, researching, and above all, a political act of great courage with a dash of madness. Here's my conversation with Gabby. So just before we get into speaking about your work with Corpo Hestriado and with Renata Carvalho, I just want to start by acknowledging the Indigenous lands that I'm on, that I'm on, stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh, and as a settler here, I continue to educate myself and engage in thinking on what that means that looks like different things every day. today, today that looks like reflecting on indigenous futurisms, largely thanks to a podcast episode by Riley Esno called Land Back to the Future on CBC Gem. And in it, she quotes Nehiya scholar Erika Violet Lee, talking about reconciling the apocalypse. And I found it really evocative with regard to the role of artists and the role of imagining futures as part of a decolonizing practice. So she quotes this scholar in saying that the job of writers and artists is to be the mirror for the people That we build what could have been what should have been that we find the knowledge to recreate all that our world would have been if it wasn't for the...
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    45 mins
  • Ep. 38 - SWIM (Pandemic Theatre and Theatre Conspiracy)

    Ep. 38 - SWIM (Pandemic Theatre and Theatre Conspiracy)
    Nov 19 2024
    Gabrielle Martin chats with Tom Arthur Davis and Jiv Parasram, co-creators of SWIM by Pandemic Theatre and Theatre Conspiracy. SWIM will be presented at the upcoming PuSh Festival, January 23 - February 9 in Vancouver. SWIM runs from January 30 to February 2 at VanCity Culture Lab and is presented with Touchstone Theatre and The Cultch. Show Notes Gabrielle, Tom and Jiv discuss: What was the beginning of your relationship with PuSh? What was the process of developing and realizing “Daughter” at PuSh in 2018? What role does Bouffon clown play in your work? Why is post-show after-care so important with some of your work? Where are you at in the process of developing SWIM? How are you using sound to emphasize the themes of your work? How has your practice evolved, or stayed true, over time? What is the importance of local and hyper-local work? What is your experience of the cultural context of PuSh? About Tom Arthur Davis Tom is a theatre artist, producer, and project manager. Originally from the unceded territory of the Algonquin nation (Ottawa) with colonial lineage from the ancestral homelands of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq peoples (Newfoundland), he has recently relocated to Lekwungen territory (Victoria), after spending most of his career in Mississauga-Anishinaabe-Haudenosaunee territory (Toronto). In 2009, he co-founded Pandemic Theatre (then less distastefully named), for which he has acted as the Artistic Director since its inception. From 2018-2022, Tom worked with Why Not Theatre, acting as a Managing Producer where he led artist support programs such as RISER, Space Project, and ThisGen Fellowship. From 2014-2019, Tom worked with the Toronto Fringe in multiple capacities, including as the inaugural director and program designer of TENT, an educational program that teaches entrepreneurial skills to emerging theatre artists. From 2022-2023 Tom worked with PuSh International Performing Arts Festival as the Interim Director of Programming. Currently, he is working with the BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres, helping to organize their annual Indigenous youth conference, Gathering Our Voices. About Jiv Parasram Jivesh is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist, and facilitator of Indo-Caribbean descent. His work has toured Nationally and Internationally. Jiv is the founding Artistic Producer of Pandemic Theatre, and became the Artistic Director of Rumble Theatre following three years as the Associate Artistic Producer at Theatre Passe Muraille. He was a member of the Cultural Leader Lab with the Banff Centre and Toronto Arts Council. His public service work has included collaborations with the Ad Hoc Assembly, The Canadian Commission for UNESCO, and as an advisor to the National Arts Centre. His current cultural practice centres decolonization through aesthetics. 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. 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 I'm speaking with Tom Arthur Davis and Jiv Parisram, the artists of pandemic theatre who, along with theatre conspiracy, have created Swim. 00:20 But today's episode goes further back, reflecting on their 2018 Push show Daughter and the trajectory of their practice to Swim. Swim will be presented at the Push Festival January 30th to February 2nd, 2025. 00:34 Swim is an immersive, sensorial experience that imagines challenges endured by refugees who brave the treacherous crossing between Turkey and asylum on the Greek island of Samos. Harnessing cutting -edge technologies to stimulate audio and tactile sensations, Swim invites the audience to meditate upon the emotional toll of displacement and sacrifices made in pursuit of new beginnings. 00:56 Jiv Parisram is a multidisciplinary artist of Indo -Caribbean descent based on the unceded Coast Salish territories. He grew up in Mi 'kma 'ki and spent the first decade or so of his artistic career in Taq Aronto, where he co -founded Pandemic Theatre with Tom Arthur Davis. 01:13 Tom is an arts and culture worker who is based on unceded Lekwungen and Songhee territories. He was also Push's 2023 Interim Director of Programming. Here's my conversation, recorded on location near the studio where they recorded the sound for Swim with Tom and Jiv. 01:32 Just to start out, to give some context, we're here on the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh. We are also next to ...
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    33 mins
  • Ep. 37 - A New Aesthetic of Participation (2024)

    Ep. 37 - A New Aesthetic of Participation (2024)
    Nov 12 2024
    Gabrielle Martin chats with Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim, co-directors of asses.masses. Show Notes Gabrielle, Patrick and Milton discuss: How did your relationship with PuSh start? What are the importance of youth programs across various festivals? What is asses.masses and what was the process of creating it and bringing it to PuSh? What is the place for participatory work? What are the other patterns and ways of showing work? Who is the live body on stage and how does it interface with the digital world? What is a performing arts festival now, especially after Covid? What is the future of asses.masses? About Patrick Blenkarn Patrick Blenkarn 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 economy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books. His work and collaborations have been featured in performance festivals, galleries, museums, and film festivals, including Festival TransAmériques (Montréal), PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (Vancouver), Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, the Humboldt Forum (Berlin), Festival of Live Digital Art (Kingston), STAGES Festival (Halifax), Banff Centre for the Arts, Risk/Reward (Portland), SummerWorks (Toronto), rEvolver (Vancouver), RISER Projects (Toronto), and the Festival of Recorded Movement (Vancouver). In 2020, he was nominated for Best Projection Design at Toronto’s Dora Awards. In 2022, his work with Milton Lim, asses.masses, received a National Creation Fund investment from the National Arts Centre of Canada. Patrick has frequently been an artist in residence at galleries and theatres around the world, including USC Games (Los Angeles), The Arctic Circle (Svalbard), the Spitsbergen Artist Center (Svalbard), GlogauAIR (Berlin), Fonderie Darling (Montreal), Malaspina Printmakers (Vancouver), Skaftfell Center for Visual Art (Iceland), VIVO Media Arts (Vancouver), and The Theatre Centre (Toronto). Patrick is also the co-founder of and a key archivist for videocan, Canada’s video archive of performance documentation. He has a degree in philosophy, theatre, and film from the University of King's College and an MFA from Simon Fraser University. His writings on the politics of theatre have been published in Performance Matters, Theatre Research in Canada, GUTS, SpiderWebShow, and Canadian Theatre Review. He is based out of Vancouver and Los Angeles. About Milton Lim Milton Lim (he/him) is a digital media artist, game designer, and performance creator based in Vancouver, Canada: the traditional, unceded, and occupied territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His research-based practice entwines publicly available data, interactive digital media, and gameful performance to create speculative visions and candid articulations of social capital. This line of inquiry aims to reconsider our repertoires of knowledge aggregation and political intervention in the contemporary context of big data and algorithmic culture. Often cheeky and audience/participant driven, his work challenges standard performance traditions including duration, linearity, and repeatability. Milton holds a BFA (Hons.) in theatre performance and psychology from Simon Fraser University. He has created works for and performed in various international festivals and venues including PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (Vancouver), CanAsian Dance Festival (Toronto), Festival TransAmériques (Montréal), Carrefour international de théâtre festival (Quebec City), IMPACT Festival (Kitchener), Seattle International Dance Festival, Risk/Reward Festival (Portland), Festival Internacional de Teatro Universitario / FITU at Teatro UNAM (Mexico City), Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, Mayfest (Bristol), artsdepot (London), Battersea Arts Centre (London), New Theatre Royal (Portsmouth), Strike a Light Festival (Gloucester), Teatre Lliure (Barcelona), Inteatro (Ancona), Hong Kong Arts Festival, soft/WALL/studs (Singapore), and Darwin Festival. Performance credits include The Arts Club’s The Great Leap, Gateway Theatre’s King of the Yees at Canada's National Arts Centre, and Theatre Conspiracy’s award-winning immersive show: Foreign Radical at CanadaHub (Edinburgh Fringe). Milton's media artworks have been presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery, San Francisco State University, F-O-R-M, VIVO Media Arts Centre, and The New Gallery. In 2016, he was awarded the Ray Michal Prize for Outstanding Body of Work at the Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards. He is a co-artistic director of Hong Kong Exile, an artistic associate with Theatre Conspiracy, a co-founder and key archivist with the videocan national video archive of performing arts documentation, a recent ...
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    28 mins
  • Ep. 36 - Lighting is Story (2023)

    Ep. 36 - Lighting is Story (2023)
    Nov 5 2024
    Gabrielle Martin chats with lighting designer, photographer, writer and performer Itai Erdal. Show Notes Gabrielle and Itai discuss: How did your relationship with PuSh start? What inspires the effects and choices in your work? What is the world of international touring like? What was the genesis and process of How to Disappear Completely? What is Soldiers of Tomorrow and why does it need to be told today? What is the role of the lighting designer? What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh? About Itai Erdal An award winning lighting designer, photographer, writer and performer, Itai is the founder of The Elbow Theatre in Vancouver, for whom he co-wrote and performed in Soldiers of Tomorrow, Hyperlink, This Is Not A Conversation and A Very Narrow Bridge. Itai has designed over 300 shows for theatre, dance and opera companies in over fifty cities around the world. Some of the companies he worked with include: Arts Club Theatre (16 shows), The Stratford Festival (11 shows), New Victory (Off Broadway), The Vancouver Opera, Vancouver Playhouse, Bard on the Beach, The Electric Company, National Arts Centre, Soulpepper, Tarragon, Factory, The Citadel, MTC, The Segal Centre, The Jerusalem Lab, Haifa Theatre, Tamasha, Box Clever and Teatro Villa Velha in Salvador, Brazil. He worked with such choreographers as: Crystal Pite, Nigel Charnock, Noam Gagnon, Robert Hylton, Serge Bennathan, Kate Alton, Chick Snipper, Noa Dar, Susan Elliot, Idan Cohen and Toru Shimazaki. Itai has won six Jessie Richardson Awards, a Dora Mavor Moore Award, a Winnipeg Theatre Award, the Jack King Award, a Guthrie Award, Victoria’s Spotlight Choice Award and the Design Award at the 2008 Dublin Fringe Festival. He was shortlisted to the Siminovitch Prize in 2018. Itai’s first one-man show: How to Disappear Completely (The Chop, directed by James Long), premiered in 2011 and had 25 remounts in 21 cities. It won the best director award at the Summerworks Festival in Toronto, and was shortlisted to the Dublin Fringe Award, the Brighton Fringe Award and the Total Theatre Award at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Soldiers of Tomorrow received Summerhall’s Lustrum Award and was nominated to an Offfest Award at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 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. Show Transcript Gabrielle Martin 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 in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. Gabrielle Martin 00:23 Today's episode features Itai Urdao and the 2023 Push Festival. Itai is a local lighting designer, playwright, and performer. He is the artistic director of the Albo Theater. His first play, How to Disappear Completely, has toured to 26 cities and won the Directional Award at the Summer Works Festival in Toronto. Gabrielle Martin 00:42 His latest play, Soldiers of Tomorrow, won the Lustrom Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and is touring today. Here's my conversation with Itai. I am here with Itai Urdao, and we're gonna be chatting about your relationship with Push. Gabrielle Martin 00:59 You've been involved in many capacities as a lighting designer on some really iconic shows that we've already spoken about with some of our other interviewees. Also, Push's co -commission of one of your works in more recent years, but I just wanna start by acknowledging that we are here on the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh, Gabrielle Martin 01:23 and we are incredibly privileged to be on these lands. And in so -called Vancouver, yeah, we are in your home because we went to a cafe to shoot on a patio, but it was raining and loud and... Here we are. Gabrielle Martin 01:36 Yes, here we are. So just to, yeah, recap. So your relationship started with Push from the very first festival. So you were a lighting designer on the Empty Orchestra of Theatre Replacement for 2005. Itai Erdal 01:51 Yeah, it was 2005, the first one, I think maybe it was the second. Gabrielle Martin 01:54 So the series, the performance series, started 2003 and then officially it became a festival in 2005. Itai Erdal 02:00 Yes, yes. Gabrielle Martin 02:03 And then you were also a lighting designer on Crime and Punishment, New World. Itai Erdal 02:07 Both of them iconic shows...
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    28 mins
  • Ep. 35 - Staging Solitude (2021-22)

    Ep. 35 - Staging Solitude (2021-22)
    Oct 29 2024
    Gabrielle Martin chats with composer Njo Kong Kie. Show Notes Gabrielle and Njo Kong Kie discuss: How did your relationship with PuSh start? What was the process of presenting work at PuSh? How do you interpret and react to the source material? How did you pivot to digital work during Covid? How does the work transition back to the live stage? How has your artistic practice grown over time? About Njo Kong Kie Njo Kong Kie (composer) is a composer for dance, opera and theatre. His works include music for the play Infinity by Hannah Moscovitch, the same-sex rom-com opera knotty together (with Anna Chatterton), and the music theatre work Mr. Shi and His Lover (with Wong Teng Chi) - the first ever Chinese language production at SummerWorks, Tarragon Theatre and the National Arts Centre English Theatre. Long-serving music director of La La La Human Steps in Montreal, Kong Kie has further worked with choreographers Anne Plamondon, Aszure Barton, Shawn Hounsel and others, providing original music to their productions for companies such as Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet National de L’Opera du Rhin, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Singapore Dance Theatre and Ballet BC. His soundtrack for TV documentaries includes Fisk: Untitled Portrait and China Rises. In development: The Year of the Cello, a play with solo cello music set in Hong Kong in the 1920s (with Marjorie Chan); The Futures Market, an opera exploring the complex moral dimensions of the trade in human organs (with Douglas Rodger) and I swallowed a moon made of iron, a song cycle set to the haunting poems of Chinese poet Xu Lizhi (Canadian Stage, May 2019). Kong Kie is the artistic producer of Music Picnic. More at www.musicpicnic.com. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded in Tkaronto (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. Tkaronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle Martin 00:02 Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and play with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. Gabrielle Martin 00:23 Today's episode features Neo -Conkey and the 2022 Push Festival. Born in Indonesia of Chinese heritage, Neo -Conkey is a Toronto -based musician and composer who creates and produces music theatre works in various forms. Gabrielle Martin 00:37 Here's my conversation with Conkey. Gabrielle Martin 00:43 I'm here with Nyo Kanki, good morning. Good morning. Yeah, and we are here in Takaranto, which is the home of many, traditional home of many First Nations, including the Mississauga of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee. Gabrielle Martin 01:00 And today is also the home of many other nations, including the Inuit and the Métis. And we're also at the Theatre Centre on the garden patio. Njo Kong Kie 01:11 yes wonderful yes my my neighborhood theaters well center of theaters i guess and also a favorite cafe in the neighborhood yeah so we are here in the rooftop of the theater center Gabrielle Martin 01:23 Yeah, thanks for recommending this place. And we'll talk about this neighborhood a bit more in a moment because it's your home where you've shot the digital version for the 2021 presentation of I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron. Gabrielle Martin 01:36 So that's the project that was presented by Nyo at Push. But I just want to rewind a little bit and talk about how your relationship with Push began. Can you take us to the next thing? Njo Kong Kie 01:48 Um, I'm like, yeah, I've, I've known about the push festival, of course, sometimes like before I even started creating work, you know, and, um, just, and I've met Norman a number of times through, um, at receptions or, you know, performing, uh, performing arts platform and arts market, those sort of situations that I've kind of always known about the festival. Njo Kong Kie 02:11 And I've been to Vancouver with a lot of human stuffs quite a few times in the past, uh, as, as performer, uh, or musicians. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just to distinguish, I'm not quite a dancer, not at that level anyhow. Njo Kong Kie 02:24 And yeah. Uh, and so, so I think our paths, I, yeah, I've crossed paths with Norman quite a few times and yeah. But, uh, and, uh, when I first started sort of making work, of course, that ...
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    31 mins
  • Ep. 34 - Exchange (2020)

    Ep. 34 - Exchange (2020)
    Oct 22 2024
    NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, the audio quality for this episode is not at the usual standard for PuSh Play. Gabrielle Martin chats with Fay Nass, Artistic and Executive Director of the frank theatre and Artistic Director of Aphotic Theatre. Show Notes Gabrielle and Fay discuss: How did your relationship with PuSh start? How do we explore the relationship between form and content? What is the importance of public and private spaces for performance? How has your artistic practice grown and evolved? Why is the concept of exchange important in theatre? What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh? About Fay Nass Fay Nass is a community-engaged director, writer, dramaturg, innovator, producer and educator. They are the Artistic Director of the frank theatre company and the founder/Artistic Director of Aphotic Theatre. Fay has over 17 years of experience in text-based and devised work deeply rooted in inter-cultural and collaborative approaches. Fay’s work often examines questions of race, gender, sexuality, culture and language through an intersectional lens in order to shift meanings and de-construct paradigms rooted in our society. Fay’s work celebrates liminality and trans-culturalism, and blurs the line between politics and intimate personal stories. Fay’s work has been presented at PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, SummerWorks Festival, Queer Arts Festival, the CULTCH and Firehall Arts Centre. Her readings and experimental work have been presented at various conferences and artist-run galleries in Spain, Berlin and Paris. Their co-creation project Be-Longing was part of the 2021 New York international Film Festival, NICE International Film Festival and Madrid International Film Festival. Their most recent credits include: co-creating Be-Longing (the frank theatre), co-directing Trans Script Part I: The Women (the frank theatre and Zee Theatre at Firehall Arts Centre), directing She Mami Wata & the Pussy WitchHunt (the frank theatre at PuSh Festival 2020), co-directing Straight White Men (ITSAZOO productions at Gateway Theatre), and dramaturgy for Camera Obscura (Hungry Ghosts) (the frank theatre & QAF). Fay holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University. Currently, they are doing the Artistic Leadership Residency at the National Theatre School of Canada. As an artistic leader and a practitioner, Fay has deep and involved relationships—both creative and organizational—with a wide spectrum of artists across generations and stylistic practices. As an educator and facilitator, their philosophy and pedagogy are rooted in anti-racism and anti-oppression. 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. Show Transcript Gabrielle Martin 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 in this special series of Push Play, we are revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. Gabrielle Martin 00:23 Today's episode features Feynas and is anchored around the 2020 Push Festival. Feynas is a community -engaged director, writer, dramaturg, innovator, producer, and educator. They are the artistic director of the Frank Theatre Company and the founder artistic director of Ophotic Theatre. Gabrielle Martin 00:40 Feynas has over 17 years of experience in text -based and devised work deeply rooted in intercultural and collaborative approaches. Established in 1996, the Frank is the oldest professional queer theater company based on the occupied stolen lands of the Musqueam Squamish and Tsleil -Waututh First Nations, collonially called Vancouver. Gabrielle Martin 01:01 It's one of the few theater organizations in the country led by a gender -queer immigrant woman of color and collaborates with a large community of 2SLGBTQ -plus artists and arts workers. Ophotic Theatre is committed to creating vital and innovative performance. Gabrielle Martin 01:16 With an emphasis on developing new plays written and or created by women, women of color, queer, queer trans people of color, its approach is distinguished in prioritizing who tells the story and what story they want to tell. Gabrielle Martin 01:30 Here's my conversation with Feynas. Gabrielle Martin 01:35 We are here in the stolen and traditional ancestral territories of the post -anish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh. It's an absolute privilege to be on these islands and in so -called Vancouver we are downtown, we are ...
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    18 mins
  • Ep. 33 - Impulse and Iteration (2019)

    Ep. 33 - Impulse and Iteration (2019)
    Oct 15 2024
    Gabrielle Martin chats with Miriam Fernandes, co-artistic director of Toronto’s why not theatre. Show Notes Gabrielle and Miriam discuss: What was the process of creating Prince Hamlet and bringing it to Vancouver? What does it mean to create work with and for those hard of hearing? How do you take a huge show that isn’t built to tour on tour? How did your relationship with PuSh start? What was it like to collaborate with David Suzuki? How do you work with performers who don’t have professional experience? How did why not theatre’s artistic approach evolve, and how did your own artistic evolution fit into that? How do you incorporate stumbling into live art? What have you brought to why not theatre that has informed its direction? About Miriam Fernandes Miriam is a Toronto-based artist who has worked as an actor, director, and theatre-maker around the world. Acting credits include Jungle Book (WYRD/Kidoons), Animal Farm (Soulpepper Theatre), Prince Hamlet (Why Not Theatre), Dinner with the Gods (Wolf and Wallflower, Sydney AU), The Snow Queen and A Sunday Affair (Theatre New Brunswick), The Living (Summerworks Performance Festival), and Soliciting Temptation (Tarragon Theatre). She has trained with the SITI Company, and is a graduate of Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Directing and creation credits include Nesen, (MiniMidiMaxi Festival, Norway) The First Time I Saw the Sea (YVA Company, Norway). She is currently in development for a few new pieces that she is co-creating including an adaptation of the Mahabharata, Three Pigs, and a new play called Partition. Miriam is the recipient of the JBC Watkins Award and was nominated for the inaugural Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize. About why not theatre When a well-respected global performer couldn’t get an audition in Toronto, we knew it was time for a change. Ravi Jain moved back to Toronto after building a career in theatre in New York and London. After years of growth and creativity, his ambitions came to a standstill when traditional companies wouldn’t welcome his voice. When adversity pushed, Ravi pushed back and launched Why Not. Since 2007, Why Not has taken on modern social issues and redefined what it means to be an independent theatre company. Ravi was later joined by Owais Lightwala and Kelly Read, in a unique tri-leadership team that was key to Why Not’s success. Today, this leadership structure is being further expanded into a more collaborative model, with Ravi, Karen Tisch, and Miriam Fernandes at the helm. Together, we are forcing doors open, inventing, encouraging and building a creative community, welcoming stories that look and feel like Toronto, and sharing it all with the world. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded in Tkaronto (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. Tkaronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle Martin 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 in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. Gabrielle Martin 00:23 Today's episode features Miriam Fernandez of Why Not Theatre and is anchored around the 2019 Push Festival. Miriam is a Toronto -based artist and Why Not Theatre co -director who has worked as an actor, director, and theatre maker around the world. Gabrielle Martin 00:39 She has trained with the Citi Company and is a graduate of École Automacional de Tiâtre Jacques Le Coque in Paris. Miriam is the recipient of the JBC Watkins Award and was nominated for the inaugural Johanna Metcalfe Performing Arts Prize. Gabrielle Martin 00:55 Since 2007, Why Not has taken on modern social issues and redefined what it means to be an independent theatre company. Its mission is to make things better through art, to reinvent how stories are told, to inspire new ways of thinking about creativity and civic engagement. Gabrielle Martin 01:12 Here's my conversation with Miriam. And we are in Tkaranto, which is the traditional home of many First Nations, including the Mississauga of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Wendat, the Chippewa, and the Haudenosaunee. Gabrielle Martin 01:30 And it is currently also the home of nations, including the Inuit and the Métis. And we are also in ...
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    27 mins
  • Ep. 32 - Find Your Place and Transcend It (2018)

    Ep. 32 - Find Your Place and Transcend It (2018)
    Oct 8 2024
    Gabrielle Martin chats with performance artist Ralph Escamillan. Show Notes Gabrielle and Ralph discuss: How did you come to know about PuSh and get a commission for Hinky Punk? How do you elevate the performer into the visually iconic? What is Hinky Punk? How do you embody aspects of queerness in one performer? How do you work with restriction? What role can costume play? What is the value of ballroom culture in other artistic practices? How do you find your place in society like you find your category in ballroom—and then transcend it? Does the collective community ethos of ballroom translate into your other work? What does it mean to have a true open door with the community? What is the cultural context and significance of PuSh? How do we continue building bridges between the different artistic communities? About Ralph Escamillan Ralph Escamillan is a queer, Canadian-Filipinx performance artist, teacher and community leader based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations - on so called Vancouver, BC. Starting at age 14, Ralph trained first in Breakdancing then explored a multitude of other street dance styles such as HipHop, Popping, House, Waacking and Locking. His passion for dance expanded to include training in Vogue, Ballroom, Ballet, Modern, Jazz and was a graduate of Contemporary Training Program Modus Operandi in 2015. Ralph has worked/toured with Vancouver companies: Company 605, Co. Erasga Dance, Kinesis Dance Somatheatro, Out Innerspace Theatre, Wen Wei Dance, Mascall Dance, apprenticed with Kidd Pivot in (2014) and and was a guest dancer with Ballet BC (2020). In the commercial industry, he’s worked with choreographers including AJ Aakomon, Luther Brown, Kenny Ortega, Tucker Barkely and Mandy Moore as well as artists Victoria Duffield and Zendaya Coleman, and was a guest dancer for Janet Jackson’s “Unbreakable” tour in 2015. With his company FakeKnot he creates work that strives to understand the complexities of identity using sound, costume, technology and the body. Ralph is currently premiered his all philippine cast work inspired by the queen of Philippine textile Piña in Vancouver May 4-6 2023 (Co-Presentation with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and The Dance Centre). Ralph ‘Posh’ Gvasalia Basquiat has been in the Ballroom Scene since 2014, founding his own Kiki House of Gvasalia in Vancouver and joined the Mainstream House of Basquiat in 2021. The founder and Artistic/Executive Director of the non-profit organization VanVogueJam, Ralph shares his passion for Vogue/Ballroom culture at his weekly pay-what-you-can classes and vogue balls, acting as a beacon for the queer dance/culture in Western Canada. Ralph was recently awarded the Inaugural Miriam Adams Bursary fund at the DCD Hall Of Fame in October 2022 in Toronto, aswell as the Inaugural RBC Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Governor General Performing Arts Awards in Ottawa. 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. Show Transcript Gabrielle Martin 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 in this special series of Push Play, we're revisiting the legacy of Push and talking to creators who have helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming. Gabrielle Martin 00:23 Today's episode features Ralph Eschimulen and is anchored around the 2018 Push Festival. Ralph, aka Posh, Visalia, Basquiat, is a queer, Canadian, Philippine ex -performance artist, choreographer, and teacher based in Vancouver. Gabrielle Martin 00:40 As the Artistic Director of Fake Knot, he develops collaborative performance works that have been presented both nationally and internationally. His work questions notions of identity, tradition, and clothing, and the influence of pop culture in a globalizing world. Gabrielle Martin 00:54 Ralph is a recipient of the inaugural Miriam Adams Bursary Fund at the DZD Hall of Fame in October 22 in Toronto, as well as the Inaugural National Arts Centre RBC Emerging Artist Award at the 2023 Governor General Performing Arts Awards in Ottawa. Gabrielle Martin 01:11 Here's my conversation with Ralph. I have been acknowledged that we are here on this stolen traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh. Gabrielle Martin 01:25 I am unbelievably privileged to be on this land. And we're downtown, we're close to your offices. ...
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    31 mins