Image: Pedro Sandini

Vancouver pushes the envelope with daring theatre, and that’s never truer than during the Vancouver Fringe Festival.
 

VANCOUVER FRINGE

If you don’t know, Fringe is a theatre festival that started in Edinburgh but has since come to major cities all around the world. Fringe is built on a simple principle – anyone can submit a play. This basic tenement means that Fringe plays are sometimes provocative, sometimes wild, and always an experience you’ll never forget.

Artists from around the world come to Vancouver every September to put on plays that will challenge and entertain you. Here are just a few this year that we’re looking forward to:

My Name Is Sumiko: Vancouver based playwright June Fukumura explores and interrogates her own Japanese heritage in this sometimes raunchy, always hilarious send-up of what it means to be Japanese in North America. Acting out as her alter-ego, Sumiko, Fukumura embodies the often contradictory aspects of traditional and modern Japan and what it’s like to filter those cultural messages for a foreign audience.
SpinS: American performance Artist Janoah Bailin combines expert juggling with physical comedy, puppetry with hilarious improve, and daring theatre with a sense of wonder and joy. His latest show, SpinS, is sure to delight and astound.

AI Love You: Like a live performance of an episode of Black Mirror except with a sense of warmth and joy, AI Love You is the story of a man and a woman in love – except he is a computer AI. In this exciting performance, the crowd is able to influence the path of the narrative in an innovative combination of storytelling and computing.

There are countless other shows we’d like to see, but those stand out. Take a chance on the Vancouver Fringe. They say that if you see a great show, you’ll talk about it all day. If you see a terrible show, you’ll talk about it for the rest of your life.

And while in Vancouver, stay at a hotel that is provocative and daring in its own way. Hotel Blu provides a boutique stay experience with state-of-the-art hospitality in the heart of downtown Vancouver; book your stay today.