Opening next week, Urban Ink and The Cultch welcome new works and past favourites to a free, all-digital TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival, March 28 – May 28, 2023.
TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival focuses on empowering Indigenous artists and encouraging collaboration with non-Indigenous artists to build relationships and bring communities together to create lasting social change and ground-breaking performances. Over the past three years TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival has presented new works from some of the most exciting talents from Vancouver and around the world. Now in its fourth year, the international festival is being presented online, free to watch for all.
Debuting in 2019, TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival introduced over a dozen in-person shows, a cabaret club, artist talks and workshops during its successful inaugural festival. Urban Ink and the Cultch were excited about the 2020 festival until the pandemic caused them to innovate and pivot to a digital festival to hungry at-home audiences. This digital festival was a welcome respite for the hard-hit theatre community and gave TRANSFORM a reputation for being a place for some of the best digital performance in the world.
The 2023 TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival offers a selection of new shows, including powerful works from local artists—Kim Senklip Harvey’s Making The Mystics: An Artistic Ceremony Documentary and Urban Ink’s Guide My Way, a concert film by Corey Payette—as well as some big Canadian and international shows including a new show from Manitoba’s Darla Contois (The War Being Waged), and powerful interdisciplinary cabaret and circus shows from Australia’s Polytoxic and Aotearoa New Zealand’s Te R?hia Theatre and The Dust Palace (Demolition, and the documentary Te Tangi ? te T??).
On top of the 2023 new shows, this free digital TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival will offer viewers the option to revisit some of the festival’s past favourites. People can watch the digital Opening Night Bash that brought TRANSFORM online in 2020, a compilation show of some select moments of the late Candy Palmater’s The Candy Show, contemporary drag from Vancouver’s favourite non-binary drag collective, The Darlings, and Connective T/issue – Classical Cirque, collaborations between contemporary classical musicians and circus artists.
With an exciting line-up of shows available offered at no cost, Urban Ink and The Cultch hope TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival—The Digital Remix 2023 gives people, everywhere, the opportunity to experience world-class performances including:
NEW WORKS
The War Being Waged By Darla Contois
Prairie Theatre Exchange (Winnipeg), in partnership with Native Earth Performing Arts
Te Tangi ? te T??
Te R?hia Theatre (Aotearoa New Zealand) in partnership with The Dust Palace (Aotearoa New Zealand), Commissioned by Urban Ink and The Cultch
Making The Mystics: An Artistic Ceremony Documentary
A Kim Senklip Harvey and Green Thumb Theatre Production
Demolition Created and written by Lisa Fa’alafi & Leah Shelton (Polytoxic)Polytoxic (Australia)
Two digital offerings:
DEMOLITION: Live
Tick Tick Boom … Time’s Up Motherlovers!
DEMOLITION: Staging A Protest
Take a peek behind the curtain in this fast-paced yet intimate film documenting Polytoxic’s radical and inclusive process as they bring their production “DEMOLITION” to the stage.
Guide My Way A Concert Film By Corey Payette
Produced by Urban Ink (Vancouver)
RETURNING FAVOURITES
TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival 2020 Opening Bash
A collective creation hosted by Lisa Fa’alafi and Busty Beatz
The cabaret that launched TRANSFORM into the digital world returns! Hosted by renowned cabaret artists Lisa Fa’alafi and Busty Beatz (Hot Brown Honey), the 2020 Opening Bash brought together 14 interdisciplinary artists and challenged them to create explosive performances across three continents to celebrate the creativity and resilience of contemporary Indigenous artists and their collaborators. This is a joyful outpouring of creativity that you don’t want to miss!
The Best of The Candy Show
Produced by Victor Pokinko and Archipelago Productions
Connective T/issue – Classical Cirque
Curated and hosted by Cris Derksen and Sido Adamson
A reprise of the 2021 TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival production
The Darlings III
The Darlings (Vancouver)
A reprise of the 2020 TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival production
TRANSFORM Cabaret Festival runs online March 28 – May 28, 2023
All shows are available for free, find more details and show descriptions online at transformcabaret.com