Co-Curator/Producer

For six years running Vancouver’s east side Grandview Park was the perfect setting to celebrate the end of summer in style. Three enchanting evenings of film and original live music by Stefan Smulovitz’s Eye of Newt and invited guests. A Friday “classics” evening was followed by more experimental fair, then finishing up with Sunday’s grand finale; a monster orchestra, multiple conductors and voice over. A Labour Day classic presented by Eye of Newt Collective, Celluloid Drugstore, Radix Theatre and Rumble Productions.

Co-Producer

At night and in real time, moving from the pavement to illuminated windows, from balconies to café terraces, Argentinian theatre auteur by Mariano Pensotti’s La Marea presents nine different stories. These fictional scenes are repeated over the course of the evening in shop windows and on street corners, where audience members can observe the characters’ inner thoughts through projected subtitles.

An ambitious partnership between non-profit arts, local businesses, and three post-secondary theatre programs, La Marea was was produced by Boca Del Lupo and the PuSh Festival and staged in the heart of Gastown to 6,000 attendees, as part of a series of works commemorating the City of Vancouver’s 125th anniversary in 2011.

Executive Producer

A collection of short form documentaries (45-50 mins) directed/edited by Ian Barbour and Darren Heroux, featuring visionary artists and storytellers from Vancouver and beyond.

Kiss the Rabbit (2014) – A magical journey through Vancouver's nighttime streets to commemorate the PuSh Festival’s 10th anniversary. A gala performance orchestrated by Berlin’s legendary Gob Squad Collective.

Between the Lines (2015) – 70 everyday Vancouverites join the biggest dance project of their lives. Experience the joy of their journey as they rehearse for a remarkable, massive public dance, created by Sylvain Émard Danse.

Antonette (2016) – It’s been a long road for Antonette Rea, a trans* woman who journeyed from suburban dad to drug-addicted sex worker. With poetry to be heard by the world, when she speaks you’ll be riveted.

Being Read (2017) – The premise is simple yet profound: borrow a human book, discover a life. Human Library is a global phenomenon engaging people with the real-life stories told by fellow human beings. Produced by Zee Zee Theatre at Vancouver Library Downtown Branch.

Photo by Gob Squad Arts Collective

Director

The story of a man brought down by his own illusions and by the treachery of governments. A weapons scientist for America’s defence program is found dead outside a church. When his son attempts to piece together the truth behind his father’s death he is embroiled in a world of double agents, rogue states and global paranoia. Inspired by the real-life murder of Canadian ballistic weapons scientist Gerald Bull, Jason Sherman’s acclaimed play grapples with loyalty, betrayal and the elusive nature of truth as the action shifts across conflicting versions of the past. Winner of the 1994 Governor General’s Award for Drama.

Presented in November 2000 at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre. Jessie Richardson Award to Del Surjik (Lighting), and nominations to Andrea Kahre (Set), Norman Armour (Direction), Pi Theatre & Rumble Productions (Production).

Director

The Vancouver East Cultural Centre and Rumble Productions joined forces in 2002 to stage a new look at a western theatre classic. British playwright John Osborne’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler reached beyond its late nineteenth-century setting to reveal a surprisingly contemporary view into the complexities of human relations. A character tragedy unlike any other in modern drama, Hedda Gabler is the Norwegian dramatist’s most controlled and ruthless work, a play whose impact has not lessened since its premiere in 1890. The production earned five Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards nominations.

Featuring: Anouska Anderson-Kirby, Camyar Chai, Bernard Cuffling, Patricia Drake, Chris Gerrard-Pinker, David Marr, Wendy Noel, Donna White. Design: Barbara Clayden, Ilena Lee Cramer, Andreas Kahre, Chris Gerrard-Pinker, John Webber. Dramaturgy: Rachel Ditor

Photo by Tim Matheson featuring Patricia Drake & Bernard Cuffling

Actor/Proudcer

Music, shadows, close-ups, loss, aerial surveillance, video cameras, testimonies, confessions and phone calls. Three lives, various photographs, one day, many memories. Three men: one in a hotel room, working out of town; the second an actor preparing for an audition; and the third a photographer who no longer photographs.

The line between fiction and non-fiction is bent until it breaks and then pokes you in the eye with the stubby bit that remains. Written by Guillermo Verdecchia and Marcus Youssef, True Lies is rigorous, anarchic, fast, fearsome theatricality.

Collaborative team: Guillermo Verdecchia (direction), Norman Armour, Camyar Chai, Vince Gale, Marcus Youssef (performance), Amir Koushkani (live music), Gary Coward (video projections). A Rumble/Zababwa Theatre co-production, presented at Vancouver East Cultural Centre as part of the 1995 Vancouver Fringe Festival, the Firehall Arts Centre (1997) & High Performance Rodeo (1998).

Commissioner/Producer

Marie Clements’ searing play traces the journey of uranium from its origins in the Sahtu Dene earth, through water, over land and into fire—the bomb that dropped on Hiroshima. A vision unfolds over four see-er songs sung by a Dene medicine man in the late 1800’s. Commissioned by Rumble Productions and developed in residencies at Playwright’s Workshop Montreal and Banff Playwrights Lab. Staged by a team of the west coast’s finest actors and designers, with dramaturgy by Paula Danckert and direction by Peter Hinton.

Produced in association with Urban Ink Productions and premiered at The Firehall Arts Centre in April 2002, Burning Vision was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, shortlisted for The George Ryga Award for Literary Arts, awarded The Canada-Japan Literary Award for Excellence, and published by Talon Books. A national tour involved presentations at Festival Transamériques and Magnetic North Festival.

Photo by Tim Matheson featuring Erin Wells & Marcus Hondro

Co-Producer

In My Day is a verbatim work of contemporary drama that exists at the cross section of disability and memorial arts. Centred around HIV’s impact on Vancouver, it is a story of pandemic response with extraordinary victories and heartbreaking failure.

Inspired by a University of Victoria community-based research project encompassing interviews with long-term survivors and caregivers of the HIV pandemic’s first 15 years (1980–96) in British Columbia. Stories and reflections honour the voices of women, people of colour, Indigenous folks, gender diverse individuals, people who use[d] injection drugs, and others, alongside those of cis-gender gay men. Co-produced with Cameron Mackenzie and playwright Rick Waines, this Zee Zee Theatre production premieres in December 2022 at the Cultch.

Image by Isa Rodrigues

Co-Founder

A collocated, administrative and creative home to the PuSh Festival, Touchstone Theatre, Music on Main, and DOXA Documentary Film Festival.

The Post at 750 is located at the CBC’s downtown campus on the traditional, unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

A non-profit arts co-operative management model fulfills the dual nature of the founding tenants’ partnership and the space’s social enterprise business model that sustains operations and serves the needs of the city’s local arts, cultural and creative communities. Led by Simcic + Uhrich Architects, the $2.3 million project was occupied in 2014, with doors opening the following year to the broader artistic community — a fifth tenant, as it were.

Co-Curator

An ambitious suite of performances and events exploring questions of urban experience, the everyday, civic identity, and public/private history. New commissions and re-situated work for the stage and public spaces, local artists and visiting artists in residence, a symposium on mapping as creative practice, a multi-media installation, ambulatory podcasts, and two large-scale, community-engaged productions, this celebration of Vancouver’s 125th anniversary in 2011 was the PuSh Festival’s single most ambitious curatorial undertaking to date.

Curated with Dani Fecko, Veda Hille, Sherrie Johnson, Annabel Vaughan. Participating artists included Berlin, Boca Del Lupo, Alexander Ferguson, Volker Gerling, Amiel Gladstone, Veda Hille, Vanessa Kwan, Mariano Pensotti, Neworld Theatre, Lisa Ravensbergen, Peter Reder, Rimini Protokoll, Igor Santizo, Havel Venzon, Maiko Bae Yamamoto.

Photo by Michael Sider

Director

Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, playwright Alex Ferguson and composer Peter Hannan drew inspiration from the history of radio: the utopian fervour of its beginnings, the authority of its early to mid-century zenith, and the prank that foreshadowed the rise of fascism and the power of mass media. This multi-media collaboration revolved around an imaginary meeting of Russian electronics inventor Leon Theremin, wunderkind Orson Welles and his typist (and uncredited collaborator) Sylvia Breach.

Nine Jessie Richardson Theatre Award nominations, with awards to Wendy Van Riesen (Lead Actress), John Webber (Lighting), Barbara Clayden (Costumes), and Peter Hannan (Sound/Original Composition). Featuring Hiro Kanagawa, Patrick Keating, Kevin MacDonald, Paulo Ribeiro, and Jenny Young. Musical accompaniment by Standing Wave Ensemble, Jennifer Scott (vocals) and Peter Hannan (theremin). Production design by Andreas Kahre, foley by Noah Drew, and projections by Urban Visuals.

Co-Curator/Producer

A transmedia project initiated in 1991 with the goal of re-envisioning the performative possibilities of live radio. Exploring the medium while playing with its conventions, form and style, Wireless Graffiti included four, two hour live-to-air, remote broadcast events, preceded by 18 months of monthly programming on Vancouver Co-operative Radio (102.7 FM). Co-curated with Darren Copeland and produced by Rumble Productions and Vancouver Pro Musica.

June 1993 – Over 30 performers and artists, from various disciplines, conspired to create visual Radio with two live remote broadcasts hosted by the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Featured artists included Gordon Armstrong, Andrew McIlroy, Diane Brown, Ian McDonald, Gina Bastone, Stephen O’Connell, Jennifer Mascall, Hank Bull, Patrick Ready, Hidegard Westercamp, Susan Frykberg, Mark Douglas.

March 1994 – Listeners were led on a sonic adventure marked by laughter, tears, offbeat commentary, “on-the-edge” sound making, and an inside glimpse into the battery powered magic of the Grand ‘AA’ Ensemble. Experienced live in person at the Glass Slipper, as part of the 7th Annual Sonic Boom Festival of Composers.

Digital Executive Producer

Inside/Out is Patrick Keating’s real-life story of years spent in and out of Canada’s penitentiary system; a story about a man’s search for community: the community of the street, the community of prison, and of the theatre.

Access. Digital pivot. Underserved communities and the forging of art and social justice. Adapted in 2022 from the live production, an online version now tours within carceral institutions and academic research contexts, in partnership with Correctional Service of Canada and the University of British Columbia’s Transformative Health and Justice Research Cluster.

Photo by Jeff Topham featuring Patrick Keating

Producer

French choreographer Jérôme Bel’s delightfully subversive game of anticipation and expectation, spectator and spectacle. With an illustrious group of 20 local individuals, accompanied by a DJ with an extensive collection of pop tunes, Bel’s modern masterpiece is a spirited evening that lovingly combines humour, nostalgia and human frailty, with the immediacy of live performance.

The Vancouver cast united a community of live performing arts practitioners (with choreographic assistants Henrique Neves and Dina ed Dik) for the PuSh Festival’s christening of the Fei & Milton Wong Theatre in SFU Woodward’s.

Featuring: Marc Arboleda, Nyla Carpentier, Pedro Chamale, Trevor Chan, Susan Elliott, Noam Gagnon, Natalie Gan, Nickeshia Garrick, Linda Gorrie, Jim Green, Yasser Ismail, Jason Krowe, Elise Laroche, Heather Lindsay, Billy Marchenski, Tanya Marquardt, Harvey Meller, Jen Morris, Chancz Perry, Natalie Schneck, Savannah Walling, Adrienne Wong, Max Wyman.

Photo by Mussacchio Lanielloas

Director

Ray confronts a hidden past when Una arrives suddenly at his office. Guilt and raw emotions turn poisonous as they recollect a passionate but disastrous affair they had 15 years earlier. As tensions rise, we are left to question: where is the line between love and abuse? And can we ever break free from the shackles of the past?

Scottish playwright David Harrower’s award-winning play was featured on many London and New York critics’ top 10 lists and received the 2007 Oliver Award for Best New Play. The 2009 Vancouver production at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre won Jessie Richardson Awards (Small Theatre Category) for Jennifer Mawhinney (Lead Actress), Russell Roberts (Lead Actor), Norman Armour (Direction), and Rumble Productions/Theatre Conspiracy (Production).

Photo by Tim Matheson featuring Jennifer Mawhinney & Russell Roberts

Co-Producer

6 hotel rooms. 6 reels. 6 stories. 6 screenwriters.

An omnibus of short films tell the stories of people caught between one place and another, between closure and some undisclosed life crisis in Vancouver hotel one fine day in July.

Writers from across Canada, along with the region’s finest actors of the stage and screen. Premiere launch at Vancouver’s downtown Holiday Inn on Howe Street.

Director: Robert McDonagh. Concept/Story Editor: Chris Gerrard-Pinker. Screenwriters: Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Robert McDonagh, Michael MacLennan, Martha Ross, Veda Hille, The Electric Company. Featuring: Dimitri Cheopoveski, Babz Chula, Jillian Fargey, Hiro Kanagawa, Tom McBeath, Kevin McNulty, Laara Sadiq, Jonathon Young. Producers: Robert McDonagh (Fortress Films), Norman Armour (Rumble Productions)

Funded by Bravo!

Co-Producer

A smart and bittersweet script for adult audiences by Tim Etchells (UK’s Forced Entertainment) That Night Follows Day follows a cast of 17 performers ages 8–14 as they catalogue the many ways that adults use parenthood, upbringing, discipline, control and care to craft the worlds of children. As so often in his work, Etchells turns the spotlight on the actual situation of performance: Adults listen to children and adolescents on stage as they talk about the way that they — the audience — project their sense of the world onto them. This poignant play (in its first English language staging) not only gives a fresh slant on the old ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate, but also allows us to rediscover the sense of wonder as well as some of the darker fears we experience growing up. Directed and co-produced by James Long, Maiko Bae Yamamoto (Theatre Replacement) and Lane Czaplinski (On the Boards).

Director/Commissioner/Producer

Aaron Bushkowsky’s Soulless is a moving and often humorous tale of redemption at the crossroads of money, longing and contested ground.

A collaborative effort of Vancouver’s finest theatre artists, this Rumble Productions commissioned new Canadian play explores issues of urban development and displacement through an intricate interweaving of text, narrative, staging, imagery, light and sound. Nominated for six Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, including Outstanding Original Script.

Photo by Tim Matheson featuring Lois Anderson & James Long

Actor/Producer

A darkly humorous duet for text and cello built around the curmudgeonly introspections and self-destructive guilt of a reluctant, quasi-EveryMan adrift in Mexico City. A funny, melancholy musical look at the multifarious strains of deception from the pen of Governor General’s Award-winning author Guillermo Verdecchia.

Wireless Graffiti live-to-air broadcast on Vancouver Co-operative Radio (102.7 FM) from The Cultch (1996), with direction by the author. Later iterations included a tour to High Performance Rodeo, CD release, and mainstage production at Performance Works, earned three Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards nominations. Norman Armour (performance), Peggy Lee (cello performance/composition), Chris Gerrard-Pinker (direction), Andreas Kahre (production/sound design), John Webber (lighting).

Photo by Tim Matheson featuring Norman Armour & Peggy Lee

Commissioner/Producer

With the haunting face of actress Renée Falconetti playing the doomed Joan of Arc as inspiration, Vancouver-based composer Stefan Smulovitz wrote a luminous score to accompany Carl Dreyer’s 1928 silent film. Performed by the Eye of Newt Ensemble, this PuSh Festival-commissioned involved composers by Sefan Smulovtiz, poet/filmmaker Colin Browne, vocalist Viviane Houle, 10 of the city’s top instrumentalists and Christ Church Cathedral’s legendary pipe organ, in a sublime tribute to one of cinema’s most enduring performances.

A 2010 Cultural Olympiad presentation, featuring Jeremy Berkman (trombone), JP Carter (trumpet), Viviane Houle (vocals), John Korsrud (trumpet), Peggy Lee (cello), Giorgio Magnanensi (conductor), Michael Murray (Pipe Organ), Reg Quiring (violo), Daniel Tones (percussion), Rebecca Whitling (violin), Cam Wilson (violin).

Director

A lyrical and emotionally charged look at modern society and our universal longing for a sense of home, comfort and belonging. Scottish playwright David Greig weaves together a series of connecting and diverging stories that stretch around the globe into a single compelling narrative of tremendous scope: stories of illegal immigrants, of pilots, film stars and escort women, of the making of ‘Band on the Run’, and of Greig himself. Rumble Productions/Studio 58 co-production (2005).

Featuring: Joshua Dixon, Alexander Ferguson, Nicole Gordon, Allan Gray Patrick Keating, Daryl King, Cat Main, Lissa Neptuno, Stuart Pierre, Emma Slipp, Kyla Read, Hazel Venzon, Nathan Zeitner. Design: Craig Hall (set), Barbara Clayden (costumes), John Webber (lighting), Nick Powell (sound). Assistant director: Kris Nelson.