The Vancouver Fringe Festival wraps up this weekend, but we’ve got the scoop on the big winners from this year’s event.
On Friday night, the Vancouver Fringe Theatre Society announced this year’s award winners, which include recognition for outstanding artistic performance and popular choice votes by volunteers and patrons.
The Vancouver Fringe Festival’s top honour is called the Best of the Fest, and this year, that honour goes to Popurri by Plastik Theatriks.
The PG-rated comedy show is a physical theatre piece, using clowning, puppetry, masks, and opera to create a series of short vignettes.
Fringe says the show was developed through workshops and performances across Victoria, B.C. The show has been described as surreal and strange.
The society also announced the runners-up, which include:
- MoonSwine: To-Dance-To-Dream-To-Poem-To-Pig by Maria Yanagisawa
- Coming of Rage by Cosmic Theatre
- The Grown-ups by Lexacon
Additionally, the Artistic Risk Award, an award sponsored by the society, provides a $450 prize to the show that takes the biggest risks in content, form, structure, or financial commitment.
This year’s winners include the aforementioned MoonSwine and My Big Break on Broadway by Joni Summerton.
The society has named this year’s Popular Choice Awards too, including Coming of Rage, which was the Patrons’ Pick, and BRUNCH: The Musical by C. + M. MacEwan, which was the Volunteer Choice.
Coming of Rage (Vancouver Fringe)
This year’s Kathleen Flaherty Prize went to Female Listeria, which was written by Dorothy Droste and directed by Amélia Simard. It will be presented at the 2027 festival.
Finally, Vancouver Fringe has also announced six holdover performances for the festival’s best-selling shows. They’ll all take place on the final night, this Sunday, Sept. 20.
They are:
- Matt and Ben by Veenu Sandhu and Missy Cross (9 p.m.)
- The Lucky Life of a Black Cat by Lobo-Guara Productions (9:15 p.m.)
- Colonial Circus by Two2Mango (9:15 p.m.)
- Solovela by Diane Jorge (9:40 p.m.)
- Ickoholics Anonymous by Lucy Lucia (9:45 p.m.)
- The Truth and Dares by Ginko and Co. (10 p.m.)
You can find more information about these shows on the Fringe website.
Amir Ali/Daily Hive
Also, if you haven’t been to a Fringe show, you’re really missing it. For all the flak Vancouver gets about being a no-fun city, Fringe is one of the most fun, funny, and entertaining festivals that the city puts on and is more than deserving of your attention and money, considering how affordable most of the shows are.