Category: Event Archives

Painted Stories from Self Identified LGBTQ2SI Migrants & Refugees.

Co-produced with the Rainbow Refugee Committee and PeerNetBC. An intimate participatory painting workshop creating and claiming  space for queer refugees and migrants, sharing stories and building community through visual arts, facilitated by Mira Ghattas (Jordan) with social artist Melanie Shambach (Colombia).  Produced in partnership with Rainbow Refugee Committee and PeerNet BC, this project taps into the power of the arts to build a sense of belonging and community among participants, offering a safe and inclusive space to share their personal stories and perspectives on the queer refugee experience, exploring art as a tool for social justice. Participants met weekly through April/May of 2014; Melanie put the finishing touches on the painting in June. The finished work will be exhibited at the Queer Arts Festival 2014, from Jul 23 – Aug 9, bringing to light the hidden stories of queer refugees, provoking questions through a medium where language poses no barrier. Please join us for an informal reception on Jul 24 at 5:30 to meet the participants, raise a glass, and learn about the process. A great way to spend time with community before the Cor Flammae show! Check out the facebook event page here

Photo credit: belle ancelle photography

Cor Flammae [kor ‘flam.maj] flaming heart

Ignite your evening with the ravishing, soaring voices of Cor Flammae, Canada’s only professional choir of queer singers who illuminate the rich and furtive queer spaces typically left out of classical choral concerts. Composed from the ranks of Canada’s top-flight choral ensembles, the choir seeks to reveal the hidden queer heritage within the rich history of music, and change the ways we listen to the works of well-known historical figures to celebrated contemporary composers.

Cor Flammae co-founders Missy Clarkson, Madeline Hannan-Leith, and Amelia Pitt-Brooke have brought together a large swath of local queer choral talent, including 2014 Guest Conductors Peggy Hua (Conductor of Vancouver Orchestra Club Symphony Orchestra & Choir) and Hussein Janmohamed (Choral Director, Composer & Community Music Designer). Hua and Janmohamed’s talents have been involved in a wide range of choral acts, including having worked together as colleagues in conducting the UBC Women’s Choir.

corflammae.com

Come early, share a drink among friends, and take in QAF’s visual arts exhibitions. Bar opens at 6pm.

This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

NEW THIS YEAR: Due to licensing changes, attendance at QAF events requires valid membership in the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are only $2 during the festival, and can be purchased with your ticket. Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card.

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers &more!

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers & more!

Presented in partnership with the Vancouver Early Music Festival

A giant among the first generation of musicians who brought the idea of historically informed performance to the general concertgoer, world-renowned keyboardist Colin Tilney turned 80 this year. Join us as we celebrate his legacy with a solo harpsichord recital. Tilney’s wide repertoire stretches from the English virginalists through Mozart to Louis Andriessen. He plays the fortepiano and clavichord in addition to his main instrument, the harpsichord, and has made a single organ recording, Elizabethan music on a seventeenth-century chamber organ. In his concerts and recordings he tries as far as possible to use historical instruments or modern replicas in an attempt to match the music with the sounds the composers heard as they wrote. Colin Tilney’s program will include Bach’s monumental sixth English Suite; a prelude and dances by Louis Couperin, the uncle of François; five sonatas by Scarlatti; and Quinque by South African lesbian composer Priaulx Rainier (1903-1986).

This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers & more!

With community partner Genderfest (July 26)

Ever seen a drunk puppet?

Sex. Booze. Facebook. Carbs, Fess Up: what’s your guilty pleasure? Stunning stop motion animation, whimsical puppets, and sharp live performance meld in this fast-paced one-man show. X is a magical, imaginative and honest look at addiction, particularly struggles with alcohol, as well as sex and pop star obsession. The work is grounded in but not limited to queer and trans experiences and is partially informed by over forty interviews with community members. Sold out shows in San Francisco. Rave reviews in Australia. Festival award winner, including the RBC Arts Professional Award at SummerWorks 2013.

Don’t miss out on this unique and transgressive performance by artist Sunny Drake!

www.sunnydrake.com

“Beautiful, articulate, well considered and very sophisticated…Complex and difficult subjects are delivered in the most accessible and authentic way. It’s light hearted, fresh and wank free…. Sunny Drake is a progressive queer visionary.” (Samesame.com, Australia)

“Charming and disarmingly clever… Drake is one of those rare provocative performers who are uber smart but ultra cosy at heart… one of the most interesting and touching performances I’ve seen in a while. I learned something too, and I loathe learning when I’m out, unless it’s done with subtle talented panache….Mr Drake. I’m a fan.” (Eric Page, Gscene, Brighton)

“Sunny Drake’s show was a pleasure to behold, a sparkly moment in a life.” (Wotever World, London Oct 2013)

To see this show with ASL interpretation, please buy tickets for the July 26 showing (Confirmed).

This event is ASL interpreted, scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers & more!

So you wanna tour the world with your art or performance?

Step-by-step considerations for self-producing and touring independent performance, including being presented by venues, festivals or community groups, hiring venues and/or Do-It-Yourself style (warehouses, youth centres, living rooms…). Workshop facilitator Sunny Drake has toured his work extensively including in Canada, the USA, Europe, Puerto Rico and Australia. He’s toured to international arts festivals, queer festivals, universities, schools, community centres, squats and underground venues, backyards, conferences and deserts.

Don’t miss out on this one-of-a-kind workshop opportunity with performance artist Sunny Drake!

If you like this, check out Sunny’s show X at QAF July 26-28.

www.sunnydrake.com

This event is fully wheelchair accessible. This event is fully wheelchair accessible. Unfortunately this event is not suitable for people living with MCS due to chemicals in inks being used in another workshop.

For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com.

For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers & more!

Co-presented with frank theatre

Everything is better in bed.

Curated by frank theatre, Clean Sheets was created in 2008 by Seán Cummings and Chris Gatchalian as a new national queer playwriting workshop, and premiered at the 2009 Queer Arts Festival with the support of the City of Vancouver and Pride In Art. Now in its sixth year, Clean Sheets has become a renowned national play-reading series of new queer-themed plays in development. Each year, Clean Sheets selects two to four plays and pairs the playwrights up with Vancouver’s top dramaturges in order to further develop the play for a public reading at the Festival.

This year, we are proud to present:

6pm: Nicola Harwood’s Buffalo Girls, a collision of absurdist comedy and cabaret, where we find three mannish women performing as freaks of nature in a circus on the plains.

7:30pm: Bill Marchant’s Husk follows urban hermit Sully as he vies for survival after environmental and social collapse; an unwanted visitor arrives at his door in distress, and an unlikely alliance forms between the two men.

9pm: Rafael Antonion Renderos’ Salvador, a mash of verbatim theatre, story-telling, and drag performance, follows a young man who travels to El Salvador in order to investigate gay rights violations. 

This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible.For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

NEW START TIME 7:30PM

With event partner Genderfest ASL Interpretation provided by BCRAD

Tentacles wrestle the sexual status quo; secret identity exposes itself; and the Empire is challenged by authentic expression in a work that mixes whimsy, savage poetry, heartbreaking vulnerability and B-movie joy.

Get your alien on in this transdisciplinary evening for the Queer Arts Festival, featuring the work-in-progress presentation of Alien Sex. Come dressed in an outfit original to your planet of origin! Prizes will be awarded to the best dressed queer aliens.

Actor/director and Alien Sex instigator David Bloom conspires to bring together an exciting and diverse team in a multi-genre, multi-generational feast. The all-star cast features Vancouver genderqueer creators Olivia B (performance poet/tap dancer) and Floyd VB (performance poet/visual artist), propelled by the visceral and immutable life force of Taiko drummer Eileen Kage, composer/dancer/video artist Sammy Chien, actor/dancer/visual and performance artist Robert Leveroos, and photo-based artist/actor SD Holman (of BUTCH: Not like the other girls).

Drawing upon energetic interpretations of the transgressive BDSM poet Linda Smukler/Samuel Ace and the divisive heterosexual playwright David Mamet, gay, lesbian, bi, queer, straight, vanilla, kinky and yet-to-be-named perspectives collide in a speculative fiction that fearlessly explores the strange, beautiful, and sometimes inexplicable territory of human sexuality.

Hang around after the show to mingle with the artists and find out more about Alien Sex!

** NOTE: Workshop presentation starts at 7:30pm, talk-back and reception to follow. For more information contact: Jessa Agilo (jessa@prideinart.ca)

This event is ASL interpreted (confirmed), scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers & more!

Sponsored by Vancouver Creative Space and Progress Labs 1422

Co-presented with the Erato Ensemble

Just in time for Pride weekend, Erato Ensemble’s I Sing the Body Electric celebrates the Queer spirit of Walt Whitman and the Beat Generation, who dared to express an individual language and lifestyle in the midst of the conservative social mores of their times, changing our culture forever.

Walt Whitman’s poetry is the basis for an emotional love story of two men – from meeting , to falling in love, to separation by war and death. Music by Kurt Weill, Charles Naginski, William George and world premieres by Lloyd Burritt and Ben Schuman.

The Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Diane Di Prima inspire colorful new works by David Del Tredici, David Sisco, Jerome Kitzke, Steven Ebel, Anthony Ocaña, a “Beat Madrigal,” and a world premiere by Catherine Laub.

Erato Ensemble:

Catherine Laub, soprano

Melanie Adams, mezzo-soprano

Will George, tenor

Peter Alexander, baritone, percussion

Michael Park, piano

Cicely Nelson, violin

Mark Haney, double bass

This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers & more!

Co-presented with the Vancouver Men’s Chorus

The perfect post-parade pairing — round out your Pride Sunday with a Queer Arts Festival’s mainstay, Big Gay Sing!, a festive, participatory, music-making spectacle led by the Vancouver Men’s Chorus.

Described as “Karaoke with Glitter,” this post-parade sing-a-long is one of our most popular annual events now in its fifth year! Whether you’re winding down your festivities, or revving up for the night ahead, the Roundhouse will be alive with “The Sound of Music”. This interactive audience event takes you out of the spectator’s seat and puts you right into the performance. Don’t even think about sitting back and enjoying the show!

Always a sold-out show, Big Gay Sing! is led by choral conductor Willi Zwozdesky, pianist Stephen Smith, and the Vancouver Men’s Chorus. A perfect way to keep your Pride celebrations going after watching the parade.

So come early to the Roundhouse and mingle — oogle at the fabulous outfits, meet your fellow queers, have a few beverages, and take in the curated art exhibition, Queering the International!

This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible.For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers & more!

Co-presented with the Kickstart Society for Disability Culture and REVERB: a queer reading series

The dog days in August bring languid evenings, raw mornings, hot afternoons. This year, as part of the Queer Arts Festival, they also bring an alchemical collaboration between Kickstart Disability Arts and REVERB: A Queer Reading Series, with words from communities united against normalcy, the best of strange bedfellows. Kickstart produces and presents work by artists with disabilities in a variety of disciplines. REVERB is a quarterly reading series with an anti-oppressive framework that showcases emerging and established queer writers on unceded Musqueam, Sḵwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh land.

On August 6th, join us for an evening of literary readings from queers with and without disabilities. Presenting work by Irit Shimrat, Seema Shah, Jotika, romham padraig gallacher, Katrina Elisse Caudle and Alex Lu.

Like they say, expect the unexpected, because the seas might boil.

ASL interpretation is confirmed. This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

3rd of 3 sessions: July 26, 27 and August 2, 1 – 3pm

A Memoir Writing Workshop for trangressive voices led by author Amber Dawn, Tough Language, Tender Wisdoms invites participants to write under-told and boundary-pushing stories from their personal experience, and to develop strategies to creating safe and celebratory spaces for these stories to be heard. Whether participants are interested in formally writing their memoirs or writing is a part of self-discovery, this workshop will offer foundational memoir writing exercises.

Amber Dawn will use source material from her book “How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustlers Memoir” and select other text to lead participants through a series of free-writing exercises, small group work, and discussion. Participants should come prepared to share, listen and take risks.

Amber Dawn is a writer from Vancouver, Canada. Author of the memoir How Poetry Saved My Life and the Lambda Award-winning novel Sub Rosa, and editor of the anthologies Fist of the Spider Women: Fear and Queer Desire and With A Rough Tongue. Amber Dawn was 2012 winner of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT writers. This is her second year leading the Tough Language, Tender Wisdoms writing workshop with QAF.

Registration was so great for Amber Dawn’s memoir writing workshop in 2013 we had to turn many hopefuls away, so we are bringing her back with priority registration for those who were wait-listed last year.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a progressive writing workshop. Space is limited to 16 participants; only register if you can participate in all three classes. Please check that dates and time carefully to ensure you can commit to all three.

Intended outcomes: a DRAFT of 1-5 poems, or DRAFT of a 2,000 word short story
Requirements: pen and paper
Workshop time: 2hrs + ½ hour debrief time, per class. 6 hours total

Registration cost is sliding scale, $25-225. Please pay what you can, to help QAF keep our workshops accessible to all, regardless of income level. Registration fees for a workshop of this kind are typically $225 per person.

This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers & more!

Co-presented with the Vancouver Pride Society

Join the Bobbers’ all-queer improv comedy troupe for a special edition of QueerProv! The well-loved weekly improv show at Heaven’s Door moves on up to the Roundhouse for Pride. Featuring local performers in a fabulous showcase Vancouver’s LGBTQ comedic talent. QueerProv: Special Pride Show is a 105 minute comedy tribute to Pride! Featuring an all-queer cast of 7 of Vancouver’s top improv comedians, we’ll create hilarious scenes and play rapid fire games based on pride suggestions and stories from the audience. A rip roaring good time! Proudly presented by The Bobbers and their weekly QueerProv comedy show – Vancouver’s very own queer improv troupe. 

This event is scent-reduced and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers and more!

Co-presented with the grunt gallery and Dazibao

Co-presented with the grunt gallery

Initiated by the filmmaker Rodrigue Jean, Épopée is a collection of short films written and made in collaboration with male drug addicts and sex trade workers in Montreal. Set in the district known to residents as “the box,” an area bounded by the streets St. Denis, De Lorimier, Viger and Sherbrooke, the project was initiated following the shooting of the film Men for Sale (2008), whose participants expressed the desire to create fictional works in addition to the documentary.

Épopée followed from a series of writing workshops held at a drop-in centre for sex workers. The Fictions and Trajets (traces) are stories that often closely relate to the participant’s lives, blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction. The two genres merge to yield a raw on-screen truth whose symbolic power gives meaning to the individual events they relate. The films provide us with a picture of our society, which is often impossible to grasp and ruled by exclusion. Translated as “epic poem,” Épopée is both a poetic and political gesture of resistance.

Two selections will be shown in Vancouver as part of QAF:

L’État des lieux (The State of the Moment) will be installed as an alternating projection at grunt gallery over the course of July 21-Aug 9, 2014. Attend the closing reception at grunt gallery on August 6, members of Épopée will be present at this event.
350 E 2nd Ave – Unit 116 Vancouver, BC V5T 4R8
Free admission

L’État du monde (82 m, 2013)
Theatre screening in the Roundhouse Performance Centre, Aug 5 7:30pm
Post-show talkback with filmmaker Rodrigue Jean and Serge-Olivier Rondeau, a member of the Épopée collective.
TICKETS $10 General Admission | $8 Youth/Seniors/Underemployed

This event is scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers & more!

Join the BC Rainbow Alliance of the Deaf (BCRAD) and the Queer Arts Festival as we embark on a collaboration to explore the dynamics of Deaf-Queer identities! Our facilitator and four panelists from various backgrounds of Deafness explore the intersections of Deaf and queer culture, deliver heavy-hitting personal treatises on ableism and accessibility, and answer your own questions about the joys and tribulations of Deaf-queer identities. Be prepared to shock preconceptions of accessibility, and explore what it means for Deaf and queer communities to work hand-in-hand in challenging ableism and discovering accessibility as a united front.

English interpretation will be provided for non ASL-signers. English Language Real-Time Captioning is currently being arranged (to be confirmed.)

BCRAD is an education, social recreation, and administrative organization for Deaf, deaf, deafened, hard of hearing, Deaf-blind people who are gender and/or sexual minorities, and their hearing allies. Find more information go to BCRAD.com.
We are committed to supporting new and old signers alike, and encourage all to attend our frequent social events!

This ASL event is English interpreted, scent-reduced, and fully wheelchair accessible. For more information on how to support a scent-reduced event, please visit PeggyMunson.com. For a full accessibility audit of the space, visit Building Radical Accessible Communities.

The Radical Accessibility Mapping Project performed an accessibility audit for the Roundhouse in August 2011, and the space has remained the same since.

Access Overview: Just the Basics.

Full Access Audit.

You can learn more about the Radical Access Mapping Project here.

Register online for this event HERE

ARE YOU A QAF FAN? Buy a 4-show QAF Pass for only $69 / $20 for youth. Price includes membership. Get advance seating, invitations to parties, special passholder offers & more!