50 things to do in Metro Vancouver on Thursday, March 2

Looking for something to do on Thursday? The Straight’s got you covered. Here are 50 events happening in or around Vancouver on Thursday, March 2.

 

CONCERTS

Tanzanian-Canadian singer-songwriter and producer Alysha Brilla plays Coquitlam's Evergreen Cultural Centre.

David Bowie's longtime keyboardist Mike Garson performs with the Langley Fine Arts School Orchestra at Chief Sepass Theatre.

Seattle acoustic duo the Alkis, composed of singer-guitarist Carly Calbero and drummer Nika Wascher, plays Falconetti's East Side Grill.

Surfing the Solar System features psych-rock, surf, and indie-pop music by Mother Upduff, Tofeeno, Kin Kanyon, and the Sandcastle Kickers at the Astoria Pub.

 

BENEFITS

Reviving Hope and Home at SFU Harbour Centre features a screening of Clouds Over Sidra, presentations, and live and silent auctions, with proceeds to the HIPPY Canada and the HIPPY program at Immigrant Services Society of B.C.

 

ETCETERA

Paul Anthony hosts a variety show at the Rio Theatre featuring Vancouver duck lady Laura-Kay Prophet, comedian Katie-Ellen Humphries, live oil paintings by Bonnie Gaskin, and local band Dumb.

 

FORUMS

Pollster Nik Nanos presents his latest research on how Canadian attitudes toward the United States have shifted in recent months at Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema.

Microsoft's Tommy Lewis leads a discussion on the future of conversational bots and the risks and rewards of AI at Brainstation Vancouver.

At the Vancouver Convention Centre's Study and Go Abroad Fair, meet with representatives from the world's top-ranking universities to learn about undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and certificate programs.

Learn more about podcasts, the best ways to find and listen to them, and how you can make your own at Vancouver Public Library's Inspiration Lab.

SFU's Latin American Studies program presents a free lecture on "Lima's Anti-Architecture of Modernity" at SFU Segal Graduate School of Business.

 

TAKE ACTION

Discussion of Metro Vancouver's role in regards to topics like climate change and refugee settlement at SFU Harbour Centre.

Peacetalk at the Hive Vancouver aims to uncover how women and girls around the world are disproportionately impacted by mega-projects and resource extraction.

Matthew Etherington discusses what is required for reconciliation with indigenous people beyond knowledge, understanding, and a renewed mind at Richmond's Trinity Western University.

 

COMEDY

Vancouver standup comedian Kevin Banner performs the first of three nights at the Comedy Mix.

Opening night at the Improv Centre of Vancouver TheatreSports' #NoFilter, an interactive improv-comedy show using live-stream social-media feeds and audience suggestions to drive the action.

Standup comedian Brett Martin performs the first of three nights at Yuk Yuk's Comedy Club.

Australian standup comedian Jim Jefferies performs the second of three nights at the Orpheum Theatre.

New dark-comedy show at Guilt and Co. explores different mental-health disorders as told by comedians who experience them firsthand.

 

ARTS ETCETERA

The Chutzpah Festival, a celebration of Jewish performing arts featuring dance, theatre, comedy, and music by local, Canadian, and international artists, continues at various Vancouver venues.

Cavalia presents Odysseo, a multimedia performance that uses equestrian arts, stage arts, and high-tech theatrical effects to examine the centuries-old relationship between human and horse, under the white big top at Olympic Village.

Vancouver-based artist Scott Billings discusses both his past and current artwork at the Surrey Art Gallery.

 

DANCE

The Vancouver International Dance Festival continues, featuring performances at various venues by Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Kitt Johnson, Kaeja d'Dance, Cie Virginie Brunelle, Kinesis Dance, Karen Jamieson, Margaret Grenier, Jane Osborne, Kim Stevenson, and Dairakudakan.

Kinesis Dance somatheatro presents the world premiere at Scotiabank Dance Centre of In Penumbra, a new multimedia work inspired by the search for utopia. Part of the Vancouver International Dance Festival.

The Coastal First Nations Dance Festival continues at the Museun of Anthropology at UBC, featuring new Indigenous stories, songs, and dances from a diverse array of Indigenous performance groups from Canada, Alaska, New Zealand, and the Pacific Rim.

 

LITERARY

Author Anosh Irani leads a short-fiction workshop at New Westminster's Anvil Centre.

Scholars from UBC and SFU gather at Irving K. Barber Learning Centre for a discussion on and celebration of Jane Austen, in honour of the 200th anniversary of her death.

Printmaker, painter, carver, and author Roy Henry Vickers presents his latest book Peace Dancer at the UBC First Nations Longhouse.

Royal City Literary Arts Society presents a monthly idea-generating drop-in series for writers of all kinds at New Westminster's Buy-Low Foods Community Room.

 

GALLERIES

Susan Point: Spindle Whorl at the Vancouver Art Gallery surveys Point’s entire career through more than a hundred artworks that take the spindle whorl as their starting point.

Oh, How I Long For Home Marianne Nicolson's installation at the Teck Gallery, addresses a persistent idea of the city as a conflicted promise for indigenous people.

Sonny Assu creates a new series of digital tags on a body of Emily Carr paintings at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

 

MUSEUMS

Layers of Influence: Unfolding Cloth Across Cultures at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC features more than 130 diverse cultural garments, from Japanese kimonos, to colourful Indian saris, to the elaborate feather cloaks of the Maori people of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

At the Museum of Vancouver, you can explore the cultural power and significance of collecting through wall-to-wall displays of unconventional objects.

 

THEATRE

Theatre for Living presents a preview at Firehall Arts Centre of šxʷʔam̓ət (home), director David Diamond's production about what reconciliation really means.

Zee Zee Theatre presents opening night of Elbow Room Cafe: the Musical, a candid look inside Vancouver’s most iconic eatery. Contains mature content.

The School for the Contemporary Arts at SFU presents its version of Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet at Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre.

Théâtre la Seizième presents a performance at Studio 16 of Bonjour, la, bonjour, Quebec playwright Michel Tremblay's tragic story of forbidden love, directed by Gilles Poulin-Denis. 

Performance at Jericho Theatre of Liz Lochhead's Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, a raw telling of the familiar tale of the enmity between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots.

Writer-director Emilio Merritt presents the openig of his play Transit, set in an immigration holding centre at Vancouver International Airport, at Blake Snyder Theatre at Go Studios.

 

ATTRACTIONS

Grouse Mountain resort features a Skyride to the peak with views of Vancouver and the Pacific Ocean, as well as skiing and snowboarding, snowshoeing, ice skating, mountain ziplines, and the Peak of Christmas.

Edgewater Casino offers 24-hour gaming, over 60 table games, a poker room, a high-limit section, 500 slot machines, restaurants and lounges, and live entertainment, including concerts and televised UFC events.

The Capilano Suspension Bridge features seven suspended footbridges offering views 110 feet above the forest floor.

At the Bloedel Conservatory you can take in more than 200 free-flying exotic birds and 500 exotic plants and flowers.

Cypress Mountain features skiing and snowboarding lessons, snowtubing park, cross-country ski trails, downhill skiing and snowboarding trails, and snowshoeing tours.

Mount Seymour features skiing and snowboarding lessons from the Mt. Seymour Ski and Snowboard School, tubing and tobogganing, and snowshoe trails.

The Vancouver Aquarium features almost 800 animal species in galleries ranging from Canada's Arctic to the Amazon rainforest.

 

MOVIES

Screening at Vancity Theatre of I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck's documentary examines the issue of race in America through the too-short lives of Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X.

Retrospective on Japanese filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi at the Cinematheque features screenings of The Life of Oharu and Sisters of the Gion.

Vancouver filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming presents a screening of her animated feature Window Horses at Vancity Theatre.

For all the latest Metro Vancouver event announcements and updates follow @VanHappenings.