Festival season gets its art on
Murals, movement, and gong music: here’s your guide to the summer roster of events, both inside and out in the sun
For Vancouver, Shakespeare on the beach, plein-air competitions, and gallery walks have become as essential to summer as beer and barbecues. And as the following roster shows, there’s no shortage of arts festivals to choose from.
BARD ON FESTIVAL THE BEACH SHAKESPEARE
(At Vanier Park to September 22) In the main-stage tent, the fest plays a heavyweight classical rendition of the tragedy Macbeth off a Beatles-infused, ’60s-set As You Like It. On the more intimate Howard Family Stage, Colleen Wheeler upends Timon of Athens by taking the title role and turning it into a modern fable about greed; and Jennifer Wise and Lois Anderson adapt a cheeky, female-powered Lysistrata to address 2018 Vancouver. Snapshot: As You Like It’s Jacques performing his famous “All the world’s a stage” speech while twilight sets in over the North Shore mountains out the back of the tent. Essential Accessory: A sweater.
QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL (At the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre and various other venues from June 16 to 28) The multidisciplinary fest celebrates 10 years of arts and activism, starting with DECADENCE, a curated visual-art exhibition that remembers the trailblazers and tracks the progress of LGBTQ artists. Elsewhere, don’t miss frank theatre company’s new Camera Obscura (hungry ghosts), a play inspired by Vancouver multimedia art star Paul Wong and written by Leslie Ewen (June 20 to 23 at the Roundhouse). And catch the musical-theatre works of Skin & Metal: Homoerotic by Barry Truax at the same venue on June 24, with the Erato
LITTLE CHAMBER SOLSTICE CELEBRATION
(At Mountain View Cemetery on June 16 and 23) On the first night of this atmospheric happening, Little Chamber Music welcomes Montreal’s Paper Beat Scissors for haunting songs by singer-songwriter Tim Crabtree in the Celebration Hall (5455 Fraser Street). Then Little Chamber’s free Summer Solstice Celebration takes place on June 23, a collaboration with the Birds! Birds! Birds! project that takes wing with stiltwalkers, birdsong, and masks. Lil’wat composer-musician Russell Wallace opens it all 7 p.m. with First Nations singers. Snapshot: A giant heron puppet bobbing through the rows of the cemetery’s Masonic section. Essential Accessory: A lawn chair or blanket.
(Along Gallery Row on June 16) Ten art galleries between West 5th and 15th avenues on Granville host one-day special events, with exhibits, artist’s talks and demos, coffee tastings, and much more. Styles and media range from Gordon Wiens’s fleeting, brushy abstracts in Nature Transformed at the Bau-xi to Uno Langmann Limited’s expansive look at the history of Indigenous art in Canada. Snapshot: Philippines-raised Beatrix Syjuco’s performance-art “moving painting” at 2 p.m. at the Kurbatoff Gallery, in which she uses found objects, spontaneous movement, and live sound. Essential Accessory: Your comfiest walking shoes.
SOUTH GRANVILLE ARTWALK
VANCOUVER BIENNALE (At various locations from June through September) The open-air publicart fest opens June 20 with the installation of Saudi artist Ajlan Gharem’s welcoming Paradise Has Many Gates at Vanier Park. In July, watch for Colombianamerican visual artist Jessica Angel’s monumental, blockchain-tech-inspired Dogethereum Bridge at