The Cultch announces lineup for sixth annual Femme Festival
Fierce female-identifying artists in circus, dance, music, theatre, and comedy perform throughout April and May
Raven. Photo by Andy Phillipson
THE FEMME FESTIVAL is back for its sixth year at The Cultch, with seven performances spanning music, theatre, dance, comedy, and circus by fierce. female-identifying artists throughout April and May.
Kicking things off on April 15 is Jill Barber at the York Theatre. The Vancouver-based singer-songwriter will perform songs from her new Homemaker, which marks the first time she has co-produced her own album. The release is a reflection on marriage, motherhood and self-identity.
Running April 18 to 22 at Vancity Culture Lab is Bird by Kylie Vincent. After touring the U.S. and hitting the Edingburgh Fringe Festival, the 22-year-old New York-based stand-up comedian comes to Vancouver to present her memoir/comedy show, which offers big laughs about the difficult topic of her personal childhood abuse.
Little Thief Theatre’s In Response to Alabama begins streaming online and on demand from April 21. Filmed by The Cultch’s video director Cameron Anderson during its 2022 run in the Vancity Culture Lab, this RE/PLAY presentation is an intimate, powerful, and incredibly timely show featuring three performers sharing the stories of their abortions. In doing so, they take on the myth and stigma surrounding abortion and open a door for audiences everywhere to inhabit their lived experience.
Headlining the Femme Festival is Raven, running April 26 to 30 at the York Theatre. Based on the performers’ own experiences as artists and mothers, the contemporary circus show from Germany’s still hungry dives into the concept of rabenmutter (raven mother—a selfish, neglectful mother) with high-flying acrobatics.
Veteran Vancouver artist Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg brings Body Parts to the Historic Theatre May 3 to 6. Part stand-up comedy, part kinetic gesture and dance, the solo show is an intimately personal account of body dysmorphia and self-loathing, which Friedenberg conveys with her signature biting humour, absurd social commentary, and honesty, addressed directly to the audience.
New Age Attitudes: Live in Concert, Amanda Sum. Photo by Reagan Jade
Running May 4 to 13 at Vancity Culture Lab is ūtszan (to make better). The one-woman performance by Ucwalmicw playwright-actor Yvonne Wallace, produced by Ruby Slippers Theatre, looks at Indigenous language reconnection and reclamation. Here’s how the show is described in a release: “Auntie Celia is at the end of her days. She has suffered from a heart attack and realizes that she has very little time left in this world. She makes a decision to have others accommodate her by refusing to speak English. Margaret, her niece, is about to discover that a lifelong path is starting to unfold. Taken to task, Margaret learns how to think and speak in her Ancestral first language, Ucwalmícwts. Love will give her the strength she needs to let go as she realizes that the language is easy and it’s the life that is hard.”
New Age Attitudes: Live in Concert at the Historic Theatre, from May 11 to 14, brings the fest to a close. Juno nominee Amanda Sum, a theatre-maker, actor, and singer-songwriter, offers “part pop-up book, part performance” with Theatre Replacement, with each audience member given a personalized book based on her indie-pop album to silently read together. Neither a musical nor a concert, it is a low-fi performance that “prioritizes introvertedness and celebrates awkwardness”.
Tickets, from $25, and more details are at thecultch.com/femme-festival.
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