The seasonal sense of renewal that comes with spring seems to be tied this year to an anticipation of a return to “normal”.

Whatever the course of the pandemic in the near future, some of Vancouver’s theatre companies are banking on live audiences returning in front of stages.
(Please be aware that some theatre companies are still offering digital performances of select productions and that COVID-19 protection protocols can vary between venues. Check before you attend or purchase tickets.)

Here are some of the local in-person theatrical events in the offing for the next few months.

The Cultch’s ongoing fifth annual Femme Festival showcases works by and about “female-identifying voices and experiences” from Vancouver companies and others. According to the Cultch, its use of the word femme is inclusive of “all self-identifying female, trans, and non-binary folxs”.

Still on tap for February and March are Pi Theatre’s Beautiful Man (February 24 to March 5 at the Historic Theatre), Little Thief Theatre’s In Response to Alabama (March 3 to 12, Vancity Culture Lab), Neworld Theatre’s Clean/Espejos (March 10 to 19, Historic Theatre), the Search Party’s Bunny (March 17 to 27, Vancity Culture Lab), and, from Montreal, RD Creations’ Bow’t Trail Retrospek (March 23 to 29, Historic Theatre).

The Cultch is presenting two shows at the nearby York Theatre on Commercial Drive as well. The Savage Society’s Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer—by company artistic director and Governor General’s Award-winning playwright Kevin Loring—plays from March 3 to 13 after a February run at Victoria’s Belfry Theatre. And Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre brings The Invisible: Agents of Ungentlemanly Warfare to the York from April 29 to May 7.

East Vancouver’s only cultural centre housed in a renovated 1909 church is also hosting two world premieres at its Historic Theatre in April and May. The first, Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s Bad Parent—by playwright Ins Choi (Kim’s Convenience)—runs April 21 to May 1. Then Theatre Conspiracy’s Himmat, by Gavan Cheema, is scheduled from May 6 to 15.

Not to be outdone in historical significance, Strathcona’s Firehall Arts Centre boasts possibly the oldest venue for a performing-arts organization in the city: Vancouver’s first firehall, constructed in 1906. Those venerable walls will house audiences for its production of the multiple-award-winning Mary’s Wedding from February 25 to March 13, followed by Zee Zee Theatre’s culture-and-hockey comedy, Men Express Their Feelings, from March 18 to April 3. (Men will feature one performance with ASL interpretation and three pay-what-you-can dates, as well as a relaxed performance.)

The Firehall follows those two events with a Savage Society coproduction about internalized racism, White Noise, from April 16 to May 1, and its own production of Yellow Fever—a detective story set in Vancouver’s Firehall-adjacent postwar Japantown—from May 14 to 28.

Meanwhile, Vancouver’s almost half-century-old producer and presenter of Canadian works, Touchstone Theatre, is offering the world premiere of playwright Jason Sherman’s latest, Ominous Sounds at the River Crossing; or, Another Fucking Dinner Party Play at Granville Island’s Performance Works from March 6 to 13. The company describes the play—directed by its acclaimed two-time artistic director, Roy Surette—as “Pirandello meets Brecht meets the Twilight Zone”.

Touchstone is presenting another world premiere at spring’s end, June 10 to 19, at the Russian Hall. From writers Claire Love Wilson and Peter Lorenz, Morag, You’re a Long Time Deid is the result of a five-year “transnational collaboration” and is produced in association with Touchstone and with support from the frank theatre. The production, about a granddaughter who inherits both her grandmother’s piano and her mysterious history, is described as an experimental musical that “warps, disrupts, and reconfigures traditional Scottish storytelling, ballad singing, and participatory community dance”—and all from a queer perspective.

And Vancouver’s largest theatre company, the Arts Club, is putting on its version of Pacific Theatre’s 2018 production of Kim’s Convenience, the Ins Choi play that became a popular Canadian TV show with the same name. The classic play about a Korean shopkeeper in Canada dealing with his children and their changing neighbourhood will run at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage from February 24 to March 27.