Vancouver’s Ensemble Theatre Festival returns to the stage after a three-year break with Bloodlines, running July 8–18 at the Jericho Arts Centre.This year’s festival, its first since 2022, will feature two new productions, the hilarious and unhinged dark comedy Peerless by Jiehae Park, directed by Keltie Forsyth, and the iconic A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, directed by Chris Lam.
“After the COVID hiatus which created a time of pause and reflection, this return marks an invigorating and renewed commitment to live performance bringing back inspiring and entertaining theatre productions to Vancouver,” says Director Keltie Forsyth.
with thanks to Ayako Karasawa and Alison Chang
Both plays offer similar themes, sisters navigate ambition, illusion, and survival within systems beginning to fracture and worlds where identity must be performed, defended, and reinvented – asking what it means to define yourself and what it costs to hold on to a fading world.
Peerless is a darkly comic, razor-sharp reimagining of Macbeth, set in the pressure-cooker world of elite college admissions. Hilarious, magnetic, and unhinged, the play follows twin sisters M and L as ambition spirals into obsession. In a moment when debates around affirmative action and “merit” continue to be reshaped and weaponised in public discourse, The play skewers those narratives with comedic precision maintaining Macbeth’s suspenseful thrills, exposing how quickly “meritocracy” becomes mythmaking.
Photot: Chelsey Stuyt
with thanks to Christine Reinfort
A Streetcar Named Desire, one of the most enduring and performed works in American theatre continues to resonate with contemporary theatre nearly eighty years after its premiere. Tennessee Williams’ essential piece of Americana looks at desire, illusion, and collapse as Blanche DuBois arrives in New Orleans to stay with her sister Stella and brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, laying bare the fragility of identity under pressure.
Together, these works explore Bloodlines: a festival tracing the invisible threads between past and present, family and system, survival and self-invention. Together, these works ask: What happens when the pressure to succeed, or simply to belong, pushes us past our moral limits?
Forsyth returns to ETC after directing Superior Donuts (2019) and In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) (2017), bringing her sharp comedic sensibility to Peerless. Lam, who previously directed Dark Road (2018) and appeared in A Prayer for Owen Meany (2017) and The Drawer Boy (2019), takes on Streetcar with a focus on its enduring theatrical force.
The 2026 Ensemble Theatre Festival, Bloodlines featuring Peerless and A Streetcar Named Desire runs July 8–18, 2026 at Jericho Arts Centre, 1675 Discovery Street. For tickets and more information on the festival visit ensembletheatrecompany.ca