PuSh International Festival of Performing Arts announces 2013 roster

The fest is set to take place from January 15 to February 3 at venues around town. It will feature 160 performances and other events by troupes from Vancouver and countries as far away as Argentina, Denmark, and Taiwan.

Among the dizzying array of highlights are England’s Tim Crouch returning to the fest with his I, Malvolio; Sometimes I think, I can see you by Mariano Pensotti from Buenos Aires, Argentina, which finds Vancouver writers stationed in public spaces, projecting the words they write about their locales; Human Library, a chance to connect with “human books” with titles like Drag Queen and Refugee at the VPL Main Branch, by Copenhagen’s Stop the Violence; a lecture with David Carr, New York Times columnist and author of The Night of the Gun; a one-man King Lear performed in the style of Peking Opera by Taipei’s Wu Hsing-Kuo; the multimedia A Crack in Everything, exploring the Greek tragedy The Oresteia, by Seattle’s zoe | juniper; Do You See What I Mean?, a blindfolded tour of local streets by Lyon, France’s Projet in situ; Berlin’s She She Pop and Their Fathers, in which King Lear inspires a reflection on aging and parenthood by actors sharing the stage with their real-life fathers; and The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, rhyming-couplet storytelling inspired by Robert Burns and Robert Service, by Glasgow’s National Theatre of Scotland.

Musical offerings include Belgrade-born, Montreal-based Ana Sokolovic’s a cappella opera Svadba-Wedding; renowned pianist Vicky Chow’s performance of works by Steve Reich, Igor Stravinsky and Louis Andriessen; and the Turning Point Ensemble’s Cinema Musica, mixing live music and film, featuring the work of Stan Douglas, Arnold Schoenberg, François Houle, Judy Radul, and more.

Dance-based works include the wildly multimedia Haptic and Holistic Strata by Tokyo’s Hiroaki Umeda of S20; the biographical Cédric Andrieux by Belgian Jérôme Bel; and the rough, wrestling-dance Still Standing You by Belgium’s Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido.

See the PuSh Festival website or pick up a program starting Monday (November 12) at JJ Bean, Festival Cinemas, Terra Breads or Choices Markets.