Half Theatre, Half Party: The Vancouver Fringe Festival is Here

The internationally-renowned Vancouver Fringe Festival returns for its thirty-ninth edition to push the limits of live performing arts in true Fringe fashion. Over eighty-five blistering new acts take the stage at various Granville Island venues and beyond from September 7-17 for eleven days of boundary-pushing theatre.

From emerging local artists to trailblazing talent from across the Canadian Fringe circuit, this year will see more theatre, comedy, dance, drag, spoken word, and music than ever before.

Venues

Based in and around the creative hub of Granville Island, Vancouver Fringe brings its innovative brand of live theatre to cultural venues like Arts Umbrella, Carousel Theatre, The Nest, Performance Works, Revue Stage, and the Waterfront Theatre in addition to the nearby Ballet BC studio space, Pacific Theatre, Leap Creative Studios, and Studio 16. The festival also offers a robust online selection for audiences to watch from anywhere.

Festival Lineup

Vancouver Fringe highlights include jaw-dropping dramas like Direct Theatre Collective’s musical tale of Medusa’s personality Monster, Concrete Drops Theatre’s head-spinning two-person play Long Night of the American Dream, and Steel Wolf’s musical of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s life story, TrudeauMania.

For laughs, check out Candy Roberts’s gut-busting comedy Larry, Monster Theatre/RibbitRePublic’s side-splitting The Fool, Ragmop Theatre’s surrealist physical comedy Underbelly, and Push Physical Theatre’s absurd circus riff Generic Male. Don’t miss the death-defying rhythmic midnight dance of PointTango in Tango in the Dark or Club Culturel Inkinzo’s traditional Burundi song and dance show Agasimbo.

Special Events

Kicking it all off is the Festival’s inaugural buffet-style Fringe4All (Sept. 16 @ Performance Works), where artists have just two minutes to tease their productions in a riotous evening. Further special events include Cameryn Moore’s dirty spoken-word Smut Slam (Sept. 7 @ Revue Stage), a screening of the award-winning documentary On the Fringe (Sept. 10 @ Arts Umbrella), and the unabashedly bonkers closing party, the Cabaret of Bulls#!t (Sept. 16 @ Performance Works).

Enhancing the Fringe experience is the ever-bustling Fringe Bar, which acts as a meeting ground for artists and audiences alike. There, you can find nightly entertainment like team trivia, devilish drag, and live music from the likes of Balkan Shmalkan or DJ O Show. Geeky ska punk band The Wavebirds will also take over the space alongside a selection of food trucks.

The Vancouver Fringe Theatre Society was formed with a mission to produce “theatre for everyone” while striving to break down traditional boundaries and encourage open dialogue between audiences and artists by presenting live, un-juried, and un-curated theatre that’s accessible. It has since become the largest theatre festival in British Columbia.

Fringe revels in its identity as half theatre, half party with dozens of artists, audiences of over 40,000 annually, and 500 volunteers all invited to take part in an array of live music and performances.

To browse the full lineup and purchase tickets, visit the Vancouver Fringe Festival’s website.