In 1999, David Mott and Daniel Martin were just theatre kids, emerging artists who wanted to create but didn’t know how.

“We just wanted information,” Mott tells the Straight, over the phone from his office. “It was sort of the dawn of the Internet, so it wasn’t easy to get information at that point. We didn’t know how to produce plays. We didn’t know where to get materials, we didn’t know how to connect with other artists. So what we really needed was a network.”

That network began as Mott and Martin founded Upintheair Theatre, and in 2003, they launched their first theatre festival, Walking Fish, featuring short-form works by emerging artists over the course of a weekend. In 2010, they broadened the concept with Neanderthal Arts, accepting national emerging artists and companies on the cusp of touring, and expanding to two weeks. And then, in 2013, rEvolver Festival was born.

Mott sees rEvolver, which runs Wednesday (May 24) to June 4, as the pinnacle of what he and Martin hoped to achieve almost two decades ago.

“Our objective was to create a network of artists that came from different methodologies and schools of thought, different areas of the country, different practices, different art forms,” he says. “We were just trying to connect them because it felt very separated. What we really wanted was rEvolver, ultimately, and it took us this long to put it together.”

It’s the festival they wished had existed when they were kids, Mott says.

“If you look at other festivals across the country, you realize that ours is on par with things like SummerWorks [in Toronto] and Undercurrents, which is happening in Ottawa,” Mott says. “And we pay really well, as well as we can; we do performance guarantees as well as box-office splits. Not all of the other festivals do that. We’re working to give these opportunities that you just don’t see. I mean, an emerging artist gets a cheque to create a show and then they get a box-office split—that’s a unique thing on the West Coast. We’re proud of what we’ve done, and we wish that there were more opportunities like that.”

The festival hasn’t changed tremendously in its first five years, but one shift has been Mott and Martin’s decision to broaden the scope of the artists they support.

“REvolver has become more open in its definition of emerging to include emerging and midcareer artists that still need exposure and work,” Mott explains. He says that not only has this allowed them to bring in more sophisticated work, it’s helped with their commitment to diversity.

“We’re really keen to try to make sure that underrepresented groups are having an opportunity to be shown on stages,” Mott says. “For a really long time it’s been very Eurocentric and white, to be completely straight with you, and that has to change. And we’re doing our best to get that out. But it’s difficult to actually connect with those communities. It’s been difficult to convince them that we’re altruistic and we actually want to help them, as opposed to take advantage of them or take over their work. We don’t want to do that. We want to give them an opportunity.”

Mott says Upintheair has been a champion of gender parity since the Walking Fish days, when the majority of directors and writers were women. They have consulted with indigenouscommunities to increase representation and break down barriers. It’s also been important to them to present queer content and gay issues.

“We have always believed in equal representation, so we hope our actions speak louder than anything else,” Mott says. “We are here to help people, not hinder them or appropriate any of their culture or ideals. We are always looking to learn from our actions; we are human, so we sometimes need help and are willing to ask for it, and we are constantly trying to be better producers and members of the community at large.”

There’s a refreshingly broad spectrum of lived experience and wild imagination in rEvolver’s 2017 programming. Last Train In is a work by theatre artist and filmmaker Adam Grant Warren, who was born with cerebral palsy. The Princess Show is an adventure musical that cites RuPaul’s Drag Race, Dungeons & Dragons, and The Legend of Zelda as three of its influences. NeOn-ね音 is a Japanese and English piece by Mayumi Yoshida about her late grandmother. But Spawn, about a young pregnant woman haunted by a traditional Coast Salish story and the drowning death of her mother, is Mott’s biggest thrill.

“It’s the piece that is the riskiest of all,” Mott says. “It’s most exciting to me. The content is excellent. I personally love history and myth, I’ve always loved these two factors as they come together. It’s also by a really interesting emerging artist, Cheyenne Scott, who I met at the Yukon Arts Centre as part of Magnetic North [Theatre Festival] last year. She’s creating the show with Nyla Carpentier, who’s a local indigenous artist and dancer that we also have a long experience with. They’re trying to use traditional materials to do the development of all of the set, costumes, and prop pieces. They’re infusing their culture into this piece.”

It’s this kind of creativity and spirit that Mott hopes exemplifies rEvolver, ensuring the festival’s position as a purveyor and producer of innovation and opportunity, the likes of which he and Martin used to only dream about. Giving emerging artists this visibility and this showcase—that is Mott’s definition of success.

“When you produce at the high level of...the Arts Club, or those high-level, A houses, that’s a different kind of thing than the raw, energetic work that’s happening right now, that most don’t know is happening,” Mott says. “We believe so dearly in bringing those people together, and we’ve succeeded in doing that.”

REvolver Festival runs from Wednesday to next Sunday (May 24 to June 4) at the Cultch and the Russian Hall.