With another year of spectacular performances I had the good fortune to take in, I realize how hard it is to compare the apples to, I don’t know, mangosteen fruit that is various types of art performances.
Maybe in future years I’ll do a best of each genre, but for now, please enjoy my unranked honourable mentions and my best stab at a top ten. Honestly, ask me tomorrow and the list might be different – they are all SO good!
Congratulations to all the artists in town making art!
Honourable Mentions:
Artcade (Monkey C Interactive)
In their new home on Fort Street, a perfect addition to any night out is a visit to the funkiest art gallery in town. With buttons to push and music to groove out to, this playful art gallery invites repeat visits and a real sense of play and wonder.
Stars (Ensemble Laude)
This all-female choral ensemble was a beautiful experience from start to finish. It was almost a meditative experience, an absolutely beautiful experience. They used the space wisely, moving into different configurations for different songs.
An absolutely beautiful choral experience!
Another performance will take place January 25th. If you can, I recommend you visit.
Paper street continues to delight our community with new and innovative ways of approaching improv and what improv can be. Annual favourites of course include Yes and Yesteryear (an improvised Jane Austen) and Piano Man (an improvised holiday musical), but have explored death and grieving, ancient myths, and authors such as Sylvia Plath. Paper Street’s enthusiasm for new and creative, along with a few tried and true, there will without a doubt, be something for everyone to love.
They Promised Her the Moon (St. Luke’s Players)
St. Luke’s players really punched above its’s weight with this biographical play about a should-have-been female astronaut. This show featured a clever use of projections allowed for the full gamut of locations, despite tight staging options.
Equal parts touching and inspiring, this show had much to offer! The actor playing the lead especially must be commended for her nuanced portrayal of aviator Jerrie Cobb.
A Wonderheads Christmas Carol (Wonderheads)
One of the most wonderful gems in our community continues to be Wonderheads! Their innovative and exciting mask work is heartwarming and utterly captivating, and no better example is their production of Christmas Carol – sweet and lively, this show is a credit to the canon of carol tellings.
I saw it last year and this year too, and I loved it both times!
The Haunted Life of Francis Ratenbury (BC Legislature Special Events)
Do you want to get a tour of the legislature buildings? Want to know more about the characters who were key to the early days of Victoria? Perhaps you want something a little spooky too? And a freebie to boot? This is the show for you!
This is an incredible program that is open for free for all members of the public! We had an absolute blast seeing all the behind the scenes including the legislative library, and learning along the way as well!
The actors used the space to their full advantage, hiding from us at times, using loud booming echos to introduce the next characters, and taking us room to room on an exceptionally cool tour.
I’m not sure if this is an annual event, but keep your eyes peeled on the special events page, there’s lots of cool events to check out!
40 year old puberty (Ti Malik at Victoria Fringe)
Ti Malik’s story is so touching and uplifting and simply profound. I touched on this show in my Victoria Fringe 2024 Roundup:
The joy of watching Malik become himself is so beautiful, and the journey to get there is filled with heartbreak that touches so deeply to the core of who he is, and the core of what being a human being is. The euphoria he experiences is life affirming for everyone in the audience, and it feels like we are so close to him to hear so much of his story. His journey is uplifting and cuts straight through so much of the political rhetoric swirling around without even trying.
One line I will never forget: “He’s cute!” If you saw it, you get it.
Free kittens (Megan Milton at Victoria Fringe)
Free Kittens stayed with me… well it’s still hanging on up there.
A no holds barred look at reproductive choices that face women, especially women in poverty, and told through Megan Milton’s own personal life story.
I truly believe that even if you hold strong pro-life beliefs, Milton’s performance begs you to ask questions, honest, heartbreaking questions, of what the ramifications of those beliefs are on real people.
Funny and blindly truthful, I couldn’t do a roundup without mentioning this show. It’s a gut punch (and again, very funny at times), and adds a unfiltered and much-needed voice to the discussion around women’s rights.
Top Ten
10 – Sea Shanties with La Nef (Victoria Symphony)
The sea shanty trend may be mostly over on the internet, but sea shanties remain SO much fun and this was a spectacular concert.
Even with my personal dislike of matinee performances, this matinee show was full energy, lively, and kept our toes tapping start to finish. An incredibly good time with musicians who filled the space!
I’ll give my sincere recommendation for anyone who wants to have a fun time, go check out La Nef!
9 – Nothing Crazy’s Gonna Happen (Alectoria Productions)
When was the last time you went to a house party?
For me, it had been … a while.
The premise that you show up at a house for a party and follow people around is cool enough, but the show is layered enough that you need to listen in and lean around doorways to catch the gist of it, I give this young company all the kudos for trying something fun and new and having it work basically right out of the gate.
Sure, the issues presented in the show are a few (many) years in the rear view of mine and my friends lives, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter or aren’t presented in a compelling and real way. Charming and young, this production welcomed us all to the party.
(A note: I caught the first run of this. This show was a bit of fringe darling this year, I’m assuming but do not know if the fringe production was the same.)
8 – Drowning Girls (Hapax Theatre)
What could a modern audience have in common with three women who died at the turn of the last century?
When brought to life, it’s clear these were women who worked hard, who looked for love, and hoped for wonderful things.
Turns out when we get to know these women beyond their sad endings, they were brilliantly, beautifully human.
This incredible production gave us a chance to know these women as real people unto themselves. The actors all wore many hats, jumping from time to place yet still clearly telling us who these women were and the world they lived in. The production design focused on three bathtubs filled with water which all the actors not only navigated through, but made a key part of their storytelling.
While there was certainly strength in the lyrical, moving, spectacularly-written script, the staging and powerhouse trio of performers was what brought this show into the stratosphere.
(A note: I’m pals with artistic director and actor Heather Jarvie-Laidlaw, but this show stands on it’s own two feet regardless of who I know)
7 – Tango: It Takes Two (PointeTango at Victoria Fringe)
The movement in this piece is unlike anything I have seen before. Dancing tango on ballet pointe shoes, this duo brings new angles to established forms of dance.
When I the fringe guide came out, an excited ripple went out: Pointe is coming back! While I love that a show is hyped up, I’m always suspicious if a show can live up to that sort of expectation.
It’s hard to explain the visceral experience that is watching these two incredible artists. As an audience, we gasped, burst into spontaneous applause, moved to tears at points, and leapt to our feet at the end of the show. A wholly engaging and visually stunning experience.
6 – International Guitar Night
Fusion is a tricky thing. How can you marry disparate styles together and still make for a cohesive evening?
Enter the well loved International Guitar Night. From the first moment when the lights came up, this was a wholly unexpected and invigorating evening!
Four guitarists were brought together from all around the world, all with their own styles from classical to steel guitar to rock, and took turns playing together and separately. This is beyond simple concert, it’s fusion at its best. I cannot think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy this!
Oh and hey, it’s coming up quick (like, January 29th quick), you can still get tickets!
5 – Rat Academy (Batrabbit Productions)
As a born and raised Albertan, and a fan of theatre, I absolutely LOVED this show.
There is so much fun and love and heart in this playful show! An incredible bit of clowning that is sure to delight anyone, even if you think you don’t like clowning.
And the one liners? You’ll be quoting them for months!
4 – Barbarian Nights (Compagnie Hervé KOUBI)
Totally unique, unapologetically their own style, I can definitively say I had never seen anything like this troupe before, hands down! This spectacular form of dance is born from street dancing, but with masks inspired by Swarovski crystal, aerial lifts rarely seen outside of a circus, and musical scoring that is innovative and exciting, it is wholly a unique genre of dance unto itself.
A heart stopping performance beginning to end, this troupe has put together a dance performance that is so spectacularly thought out and balanced, it truly is inspiring.
Take a look here to get an idea of their work.
3 – Knotted (Broken Rhythms)
A brand-new addition to the Broken Rhythms repertoire, this stunning performance focused on the themes of chronic pain, recovery, injury, and invisibility around invisible illness.
Broken Rhythms is a local company that has defined their own incredible, spectacular style that has to be experienced firsthand.
Without saying a word, the dancers convey so much, using breath work, movement styles inspired by a wide range of disciplines, and constantly challenging and improving over shows they have done before.
There is so much emotion and evocative storytelling in this piece, it was a spectacular piece of dance that I hope to experience again soon.
2 – This much I know (Theatre Inconnu)
I tried to explain why I liked this show so much in this post, but I don’t think I did it justice. I just really, really liked this show. I just really liked it so much, I saw it twice.
An incredibly ambitious script that on its face just shouldn’t work. It’s weird and loping and not funny in the traditional sense. Something akin to lightening in a bottle, the creative elements of this show came together with a cast who so fully embodied their roles with precision and commitment.
Inconnu is constantly giving us the opportunity to see shows that we might not otherwise have a chance to see, and I appreciate them for that!
1 – Playlist (Ivan Coyote)
This show was so perfectly crafted, to talk about it almost feels like a waste of time, what could I say to improve on this excellent, touching show?
Coyote tells their life story through their favourite songs. It is a journey that feels far away but also so relevant to today, wherever you grew up, or whoever you grew into, Coyote is so generous and welcoming in their storytelling that you can’t help but be drawn in.
Coyote’s storytelling is so friendly and playful, and feels off the cuff, but is so perfectly polished from moment to moment.
You’ll go on a journey if you see this show, and it is a beautiful one. If you want to catch Playlist for yourself, you can do so at the Mary Winspear on January 30th, or at intrepid again Jan 31-Feb 1!
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