The Cultch unveils 2025-26 season packed with physical feats, big local premieres, and East Van Panto: West Van Story
Treadmill antics, nostalgic-’90s circus, and new work by the likes of Corey Payette, Carmen Aguirre, Anais West, Veda Hille, and Maiko Yamamoto
Shows from The Cultch’s 2025-26 season, clockwise from top left: East Van Panto: West Van Story (photo by Emily Cooper); Sophie’s Surprise 29th; and Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project.
THE CULTCH’S JUST-ANNOUNCED 2025–26 season puts the emphasis on homegrown content, with four locally created world premieres, including Carmen Aguirre’s latest multidisciplinary work Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project and Corey Payette’s new musical On Native Land. Veda Hille and Maiko Yamamoto’s new play End of Greatness and frank theatre’s Tomboy (Chłopczyca), a queer dance-theatre work by Anais West, also join a roster packed with Vancouver-made shows.
At the same time, The Cultch unveiled the theme for the next ever-popular East Van Panto, the holiday hit produced by Theatre Replacement: West Van Story, cowritten by Panto newcomer Pedro Chamale and playwright Marcus Youssef, who returns after penning East Van Panto: Wizard of Oz and East Van Panto: Pinocchio. The Romeo and Juliet–West Side Story retelling finds Vancouver director Chelsea Haberlin helming her first Panto.
In another twist on the Bard’s greatest love story, the U.K.’s Lost Dog presents Juliet & Romeo, a comedic dance-theatre production that resets the plot so the star-crossed lovers don’t die, at the Historic Theatre next spring.
Australia’s hit circus-arts company Circa returns to The Cultch to kick off the entire season with Wolf at the intimate York Theatre, from October 1 to 18. The groundbreaking company took the Vancouver Playhouse stage in January with its acrobatic Swan Lake parody Duck Pond.
Elsewhere in a season filled with circus arts, Hungary’s Recirquel brings Paradisum to the Vancouver Playhouse from January 21 to 24, 2026, in a copresentation with DanceHouse. And Sophie’s Surprise 29th features top-notch performers from La Clique, the 7 Fingers, Cirque du Soleil, and more as the U.K.’s Three Legged Race Productions rolls out acrobatic feats amid a nostalgic ’90s house party, with music by Sugababes, Basement Jaxx, and the Killers, June 10 to 28, 2026, at the York.
Jam-packed with its own wild physical feats, Burnout Paradise by Australia’s Pony Cam finds four performers mounting treadmills to push multitasking to its limits (cooking pasta, anyone?), November 20 to December 7 at the Historic Theatre.
Indigenous creations coming up in the new season include Santee Smith’s The Mush Hole and UPU, a Māori and Pasifika poetry show from Aotearoa/New Zealand, set to join The Cultch’s 2026 Warrior Festival. The four other shows in the fest are Batshit, a story of madness created by Leah Shelton and directed by Olivier Award–winning performance artist Ursula Martinez; Governor General’s Award–winning playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s Red Like Fruit; the Search Party’s presentation of Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places & Things (about an actor whose life spins out of control); and The Horse of Jenin, by Palestinian actor and comedian Alaa Shehada (copresented with Rumble Theatre).
End of Greatness’s Veda Hille and Maiko Yamamoto. Photo by Chelsey Stuyt
Meanwhile, TRANSFORM Festival, presented by Urban Ink in collaboration with The Cultch, returns November 6 to 15 at the Vancouver Playhouse.
Other Canadian theatre to watch out for includes Hazel Venzon and Darren O’Donnell’s Everything Has Disappeared, a copresentation with the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and Live Biennale, and the return of Vancouver storyteller and lighting designer Itai Erdal’s Soldiers of Tomorrow, a solo performance about the trauma of military service.
As for the local premieres: Aguirre’s Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project, a copresentation by Electric Company Theatre and the Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre, is the second show of the season, debuting October 15 to 26 at the Historic Theatre. In it, the well-known theatre artist, actor, and author explores art and revolution through the life and art of Italian-American photographer, model, actor, and revolutionary Tina Modotti. Payette’s On Native Land, produced with Raven Theatre in collaboration with Urban Ink, will premiere April 8 to 19, 2026, at the York Theatre, blending music with “contemporary Indigenous narratives”. Hille and Yamamoto’s End of Greatness hits the Historic Stage April 16 to 19, blending songs and stories about “moss, mushrooms, sisterhood, motherhood and a few big cosmological ideas.”
Find more details on ticket packages at The Cultch website. 
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