Hip-hop-driven Can I Live? looks at how people of colour have been excluded from climate activism, online to May 15

Artist Fehinti Balogun on hand for watch party at The York Theatre, May 14

The Cultch presents Can I Live? digitally until May 15, with a live watch party at the York Theatre on May 14 at 8 pm

STREAMING THIS WEEK via The Cultch, Complicité's Can I Live? trails a heap of positive reviews.

In a show driven by hip-hop, spoken-word, animation, and science, artist Fehinti Balogun explores the connection between the environmental crisis and the global struggle for social justice. In other words, Balogun doesn’t just look at climate activism, but how people of colour have been excluded from it.

As The Guardian put it in a review last year, “This powerful cri de coeur grapples with the question of inclusivity in environmental activism not only by connecting it to class and race but to geopolitics, imperial history, and his own journey into activism in the context of his British Nigerian family’s cultural attitudes.”

Those messages resound loud and clear here, where Vancouver has struggled recently with heat domes and atmospheric rivers—as well as racial reckoning.

You can tune in on your home screen, but we recommend you head to the Watch Party at the York Theatre on May 14. That’s because it’s followed by a talkback with the artist who created it.

The show marks the final event of The Cultch’s busy 2021-22 season. You can find more info here.

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Janet Smith

Janet Smith is founding partner and editorial director of Stir. She is an award-winning arts journalist who has spent more than two decades immersed in Vancouver’s dance, screen, design, theatre, music, opera, and gallery scenes. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle.

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