A love letter to Star Trek, game-show dreamscapes, and more as Tremors Festival unveils lineup for 2025

Rumble Theatre’s three-night biennial event set for June 6 to 8 at Progress Lab 1422

*Dear Star Trek.* Photo by Jivesh Parasram

RUMBLE THEATRE HAS unveiled the programming for the Tremors Festival of experimental and interdisciplinary live performance. Tickets are now live here.

Slated for June 6 to 8, the fest brings a collection of daring new works—with influences spanning sci-fi, hip-hop, and beyond—from across Canada to Progress Lab 1422.

Tremors Festival kicks off early on May 25 with TREMOLO: Tremors Launch Party, featuring excerpts from Elio Zarrillo’s If We Be Friends and a cross-disciplinary presentation with Little Chamber Music of Fantasy Vignettes by Vancouver violinist Erin James—the latter a piece that time-travels through 400 years of violin fantasias, brought to life with opulent costumes.

Amid the five early-June offerings is Vancouverite Cameron Peal’s absurd comedy Pelmet and Sables, about two nonhuman spirits who try (and fail) to die.

Joining it on the roster is Dear Star Trek by Whitehorse’s Christine Genier—a one-woman show that examines representation and fandom through the lens of an Indigenous Trekkie.

Elsewhere, Panoptikon, by Kern Albert and Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, draws on firsthand accounts of incarceration, and interweaves hip-hop and spoken word.

Dream Machine by creator-performer Howard Dai takes direct inspiration from Taiwanese variety-game TV shows and a lottery draw, exploring parallels between immigration and gambling.

Nod by Paige Louter, meanwhile, is an immersive theatre experience that explores “processes that are responsive to my shifting health and energy capacities”, according to the artist.

Exploring the theme of “transitions, dreams, and the space in between”, Tremors describes itself as hitting a sweet spot within “theatre, community shindig, and art party” celebrations.

Featured

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.

Articles

Theatre review: People, Places and Things dives inside the rehab bubble with bold theatricality

At The Cultch, The Search Party play’s strong performances, dry wit, and inventive staging capture the disorientation of addiction and the stories we tell ourselves about it

Fast-paced romance Shakespeare in Love lands at Metro Theatre, April 3 to 25

Story follows the passionate affair between penniless playwright Will and beautiful young woman Viola de Lesseps

Theatre review: Pyper retells folk tales to explore our relationship with AI and algorithms

Cyborg teenagers struggle with the same fears about technology that their human counterparts do in this visually spare, idea-charged production by UBC Theatre

Top-notch cast assembles for staged reading of The Stranger at PAL Studio Theatre, March 13 to 15

Based on an early Agatha Christie story, the play focuses on a woman’s impulsive marriage to a charming mystery man

Party atmosphere of Danceboy celebrates self-discovery and the joys of Bollywood

Multifaceted theatremakers Munish Sharma and Gavan Cheema bring an eight-year-long project to completion by working beyond stage conventions

Franklinland takes an irreverent look at one of the Founding Fathers of the United States

Actor Brian Markinson says Lloyd Suh’s script takes artistic liberties with the life of Benjamin Franklin

Theatre review: Fears about motherhood infuse poetic, darkly humorous Liste des enfants dévorés par les loups

With warped sitcom rhythms, Caroline Bélisle’s new play brings together two old friends to contend with contemporary ambivalence about bringing children into the world

Vancouver International Children’s Festival gets set to welcome everything from high-energy Danish dance to artful Korean doodling

Eighty shows in all, as Italy’s Teatro Telaio sets up an ARCHIPELAGO installation, plus pow-wow, hip-hop, and massive puppets

Pyper lives in world where AI-generated teens struggle with their own reality, at Frederic Wood Theatre from March 11 to 28

Award-winning play by Susanna Fournier offers an unsettling, witty update of fairy-tale themes as old as Pinocchio and the Pied Piper

Marlene Ginader's Canadian Psycho premieres at the Firehall Arts Centre, March 31 to April 12

Provocative solo show follows a woman who’s focused on fixing the lack of diversity in the serial-killer space

Munish Sharma’s Danceboy makes its world premiere at Pi Theatre, March 19 to 22

In the Theatre Conspiracy production copresented by Touchstone Theatre, a South Asian man finds self-expression through dance

People, Places & Things tackles addiction, despair, and hope at The Cultch

Director Mindy Parfitt finds inspiration with local implications in the darkness, wit, and honesty of Duncan Macmillan’s acclaimed play

Theatre review: Refreshingly buoyant Nunsense is blessed with charm and skill

In the endearing new Metro Theatre production, a five-sister team of performers creates an exceptionally strong and funny ensemble

The Golden Anniversaries tours to the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, March 24 and 25

Arts Club production centres a married couple that recounts the good, the bad, and the ugly of spending 50 years together

Playwright Caroline Bélisle addresses motherhood anxieties in Liste des enfants dévorés par les loups

Care of Théâtre la Seizième, the work examines how female friendships must adapt to the pressure of raising a new life

Kat Sandler's seductively funny Wildwoman comes to Gateway Theatre, March 26 to April 4

Based on the true story that inspired Beauty and the Beast, play centres Catherine de Medici and the man who awakens her wild side

Heist, Death of a Salesman, Elf, and more as Arts Club unveils 15 shows for 2026–27

Next season includes high-camp spoof Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, Tracey Power’s premiere The Elvis Christmas Comeback Special, and the newly named Lindsay Family Stage

Agatha Christie’s The Stranger comes to Western Gold Theatre, March 13 to 15

On Our Feet staged reading captures the slow-burning suspense of the famed author’s psychological thriller

Maud Andrieux performs Un Barrage contre le Pacifique at Alliance Française Vancouver, March 21

One-woman show draws on Marguerite Duras’s novel to tell the story of a French mother in 1930s Indochina

Theatre review: House of Folk evokes the spirit of the 1960s and the slippery nature of memory

Tracey Power’s musical revue poses open-ended questions at the Firehall Arts Centre

Theatre review: Red Like Fruit asks provocative questions about what it means to voice violence

In Hannah Moscovitch’s spare, blunt two-hander at The Cultch, tension lives not only in what is being said, but in how it is being said and who is saying it