4 immersive, interactive events to participate in at this year's PuSh Festival

Why just watch a show when you can be part of the experience?

PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Vancouver’s mid-winter festival, returns for its 16th year of groundbreaking work in the live performing arts kicking off today and running until Sunday, February 9, 2020.

The 2020 event includes 27 works from 24 companies from nine different countries, including six world premieres. It’s a chance for attendees to discover local artists, watch international performers, and even participate in one-of-a-kind artistic experiences.

Here are four interactive, immersive events that are taking place at this year’s festival:

The Fever

The Fever – PuSh Festival (Waleed Shah)

The Fever, performed by 600 HIGHWAYMEN, questions how much we trust other people, how we form conceptions of them, and what it takes for individuals to collectively work together.

The performance takes these issues and transforms them into theatre, beginning with the character of Marianne, who just held a party; from there, the performance turns into a study of community, caring, and mutual reliance.

Gardens Speak

Gardens Speak – PuSh Festival (Jesse Hunniford)

In today’s Syria, oppression and violence are so far-reaching that even burial and mourning have become subversive acts.

Artist Tania El Khoury uses an immersive sound installation to pay tribute to that subversion, and to 10 people whose lives were lost in the regime’s brutal response to dissent.

In groups of 10, audience members are guided to a garden space marked by graves. At each grave, one person will hear a story sharing the reconstructed history of an individual killed in the conflict.

Monday Nights

Monday Nights – PuSh Festival (Dahlia Katz)

Monday Nights by 6th Man Collective and The Theatre Centre is an interactive basketball and theatre mashup, sharing the story of five men who played basketball together every Monday night for over a decade.

Along the way, friendships were born, bonds were hardened, and triumphs and heartbreaks were shared.

Not to mention — the basketball-theatre mashup invites audience members to lace up their sneakers and join in the game.

A User’s Guide to Authenticity Is a Feeling

A Users Guide to Authenticity is a Feeling – PuSh Festival (Leontien Allemeersch)

After 20 years with PME-ART, co-artistic director Jacob Wren decided to mark the occasion with something special — so he wrote a book.

In keeping with the collective’s practice, A Users Guide to Authenticity Is a Feeling blurs the lines between several genres: a personal memoir, official history, and manifesto. In the end, Wren and his co-conspirators decided to turn this book about performance into a performance itself.

PuSh International Performing Arts Festival 2020

When: January 21 until February 9, 2020
Time: Various times
Where: Various venues
Tickets and Passes: Online

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Daily Hive is a proud media partner of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.