Tue Jun 25 | 7pm | with The Frank Theatre | Pay What You Can

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The Frank Theatre presents a reading of Diaspora: an interdisciplinary, devised performance created by queer refugees and immigrants. This collaboration between the Frank’s Artistic Director, Fay Nass, and an ensemble of immigrant artists and community members explores the challenges and freedoms that come with living in exile. Through text, video and physical theatre, it asks audiences to look beyond the Western perception of LGBTQ+ identity, towards diverse notions of gender and sexuality. The personal stories in Diaspora reveal how language and culture shape queerness, and how many queer newcomers leave their country in search of community, only to be excluded from Western queer subcultures. Artistically innovative and emotionally authentic, Diaspora will move audiences and incite cultural exchange.

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NOTE: Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $2 online or $5 / $2 concession at the door (or included in passes). Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card.

Mon Jun 24 | 7pm | with Landon Krentz and re:Naissance Opera | Pay What You Can

JESSE – AN ASL OPERA is a workshop reading by Landon Krentz, Heather Molloy & Paula Weber resulting from a two-week experimental process that gathered Deaf and Hearing artists to explore how poetry, music, English and ASL intersect. Bi-cultural and bilingual, this experience reflects a creative process that was both riveting and uncomfortable.

Sun Jun 23 | 7pm | Multidisciplinary Music | $20 – $10

Performances by young artists from QAF’s Technical Knockouts music lab, mentored by Kinnie Starr,  DJ O Show and Tiffany Moses. QAF’s emerging artist program.

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NOTE: Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $3 online or $5 / $2 concession at the door (or included in passes). Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card.

Fri Jun 21 & Sat Jun 22 | 7pm | Multidisciplinary musical Performance | Amplified Opera and Theatre Gargantua | $30 – $20

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The Queen in Me explores the constraints of conventional opera roles and their reliance on gender and sex stereotypes, exploding operatic expectations of demure muses and femme fatales by turning the genre on its head.

“I had to tell her story, then I had to tell mine.”— Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野

The curtain rises mid-performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, as the Queen of the Night’s highly anticipated aria, Der Hölle Rache, begins. However, this time, the Queen rebels against her expected narrative, refuses to finish the opera, and tells her story in her own words for the first time – at a cost.

“Somewhere our truths collide, all sung unamplified.” — Queen of the Night

Kasahara, a biracial, masculine non-binary female artist, takes inspiration from their career as a professional opera singer alongside their lived experiences as a queer, feminist, person of colour to re-imagine the Queen of the Night, one of opera’s most infamous “fallen women,” and places her in the centre of a metaphor for silenced and discarded women everywhere.

Created and performed by Teiya Kasahara

Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, pianist

Directed by Andrea Donaldson

NOTE: Entry to all QAF events requires membership to the Pride in Art Society. Memberships are available for $3 online or $5 / $2 concession at the door (or included in passes). Please allow a few extra minutes at your first event to obtain your new card.

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Thu Jun 20 | 7pm | Led by Elwood Jimmy | 

QAF visual artists and curator Elwood Jimmy convene for a panel discussing the visual art exhibition.

Wed Jun 19 | 4pm | led by Elwood Jimmy | 

Curator Elwood Jimmy leads tour for LGBT2S youth to see their identities reflected in art, organized in partnership with Broadway Youth Resource Centre and Directions Youth Services.

Wed Jun 19 | 7pm | Literary Readings | Pay What you Can

Danny Ramadan brings his much-loved nights of readings to the Queer Arts Festival. Featuring Kai Cheng Thom, Mey Rude, Tash McAdam, Monica Meneghetti and Michael V. Smith.

A Night of Storytelling is back for its fourth year, showcasing the talented LGBTQ2+ voices in the CanLit scene. Danny Ramadan brings prominent voices from the Queer and trans community of words to the stage to read from their art as they explore their identities through adult fiction, nonfiction, poetry and YA novels.

Each author will be reading from their own work, centering the stage around their talents, and framing their public art through their personal lens, before joining each other for an open conversation on representation of the LGBTQ2+ community in the Canadian scene, and presenting an authentic and genuine image of queer and trans lives under a literary examination.

Tue Jun 18 | 7pm | Free

Gala Opening Reception

Join us for the Queer Arts Festival’s opening Art Party!, where art and conviviality converge at the grand opening.

Art Party! marks the opening night of QAF’s curated exhibition, Relational rEvolutions, curated by Elwood Jimmy; the Pride in Art Community Exhibition; and is the kick off for the incredible exhibitions, performances, and Satellite Academy outreach initiatives that make up the Queer Arts Festival.

Our opening night galas are one of Vancouver’s best attended visual arts events, making this a party you don’t want to miss!