The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival (PuSh) is Vancouver’s vibrant, mid-winter cultural event, taking place January 21 to February 9, 2020 in theatres and venues across the city. Featuring 27 works from 24 companies from nine countries — including six world premieres — the festival line-up showcases creative risk-taking and dynamic interdisciplinary collaboration with its emotionally honest, politically daring program.

PuSh is offering readers the chance to engage with local and international communities through this premiere prizing package! The package consists of a $100 gift card to Forage or Timber Vancouver, plus a pair of tickets to the opening nights of the following visionary works:

Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story — 2b Theatre Company (Canada)
Presented with Touchstone Theatre and UBC Theatre and Film
Jan. 24 | Frederic Wood Theatre
Wild, witty and wonderfully inventive, this fusion of concert and drama tells the true tale of Chaim and Chaya, Jewish refugees from the pogroms of Romania. They meet in 1908, while awaiting medical inspection in Halifax’s Pier 21 immigration centre; the story moves forward to their lives as a couple in Montreal and backward to the horrors of the Continent.

FRONTERA — Animals of Distinction (Canada), Fly Pan Am (Canada), United Visual Artists (UK) 
Jan. 30 | Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Western Canadian Premiere
This powerhouse multimedia performance unites post-rock masters Fly Pan Am with choreographer Dana Gingras and her Animals of Distinction dance company. The remounted version of The Holy Body Tattoo’s monumental played PuSh 2016, and if you saw it, you surely remember its spectacular fusion of sound and motion; here, again, are live music and dance in the service of metaphor. The guiding ideas are borders and surveillance: how do they define us, and when do we dare challenge them?

Monday Nights — 6th Man Collective and The Theatre Centre (Canada)
Presented with Anvil Centre
Feb. 6 | Anvil Centre
Western Canadian Premiere
Who you are on the court reveals who you are off the court; in this basketball-theatre mash-up, we invite you to lace up your sneakers and get in the game! Every Monday night for over a decade, five men came together to play basketball. Friendships were formed, bonds were strengthened; they shared each other’s victories and losses, triumphs and heartbreaks. Born from those games, Monday Nights is an interactive basketball/theatre experience where those same men explore how a simple game can help us understand ourselves and connect to community.

In the spirit of inspiring conversations, PuSh and Forage present the very best in contemporary and culinary works for an innovative showcase of Canadian and global artistry.