🎪 rEVOLVER 2025: CURATORS, CHAOS & COMMUNITY🎪
For 13 years, Upintheair Theatre’s rEvolver Festival has been the antidote to polite theatre. Nestled in The Cultch’s graffiti-kissed halls at 1895 Venables St.; where East Van’s industrial grit meets artistic ferocity
As someone who witnessed last year’s Silent Howl (Sarah Hin Ching U’s Deaf-affirming dance poem mapping neurological tremors through light and shadow), I returned this year expecting an experience that once again blurs the lines between spectator and survivor. 2025’s curatorial manifesto says it all:
“In a world that feels heavy and off-balance, we celebrate, laugh, and cry together—holding space to share stories and be truly understood.”
No platitudes. Just raw, communal alchemy.
From May 21 to June 1, rEvolver flooded The Cultch with 12 mainstage productions, 6 works-in-progress, and 5 offsite explosions of genre-defying art. Satanic birthday parties (Creepy Boys), climate-anxious campfire musicals (Camp Goneaway), and a flamingo puppet battling heteronormativity (Untitled Flamingo Play).
Managing and artistic director Dave Mott, resident curators Sarah Roa and Kelsi James, Vancouver’s trifecta of artistic insurgency—built this lineup to mirror our city’s complex heartbeat.
Dave is a University of Victoria BFA graduate, founding member of Upintheair Theatre, and lead curator of rEvolver Theatre Festival who works as an actor, director, performance creator, and playwright. Born in North Vancouver on Coast Salish territories, he embraces non-hierarchical approaches and deep respect for Indigenous cultures while mentoring emerging artists and presenting new theatrical works.
Beyond theatre, Dave co-owns Brandywine Bartending School, works as a competitive mixologist, teaches at VanArts’ William Davis Centre, and serves as Artistic Lead for The Fox Queen Collective, with credits spanning innovative productions like The Array series, A Brief History of Human Extinction, and appearances in iZombie, Supernatural, and King Lear.
Sarah is a Filipino Canadian artist working as an actor, creator, producer, teaching artist, and arts administrator. She holds an Acting Diploma from Douglas College and a BFA in Acting from UBC, with notable performance credits including Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bard), Mary’s Wedding (The Firehall Arts Centre), In Wonderland (Alberta Theatre Projects), and Pride & Prejudice (Arts Club).
As a BIPOC artist, Sarah is dedicated to supporting emerging and developing artists by creating environments where they feel valued and respected. She maintains a commitment to continuous learning and growth, drawing inspiration from her artistic community while enriching her skills through ongoing collaboration and adaptation.
kelsi james (they/she) is a white queer and asexual theatre creator, producer, and performer working primarily from the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓wətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, and from traditional lands in Toronto. They hold an honours degree in Musical Theatre Performance from Sheridan College and ASL & Deaf Studies certification from VCC, with performance credits including Alice in Gertrude and Alice, Helena/Quince in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Alex in Catfish.
kelsi has composed for Driftwood Theatre, Theatre Rusticle, and Coquitlam Heritage while serving as Creative Producer at Dreamwalker Dance since 2021. They annually produce a micro-festival for asexual communities during Art For Ace Week and have had their work performed in over 30 Canadian cities plus internationally in China and the Philippines. kelsi believes deeply in new work’s capacity for meaningful social change and joins rEvolver as Resident Curator for 2025 and 2026.
Sculpted by a collective heartbeat, Dave, Sarah and Kelsi fuse their distinct sensibilities into a unified mission:
“Formal innovation. Transformative opportunity. Community as compass.”
No hierarchy, no siloed visions. Just Vancouver’s most daring artistic synapses firing in concert. These values permeates every corner of The Cultch; Mott’s North Van roots inform his non-hierarchical ethos. Roa’s Vancouver-stage pedigree (Arts Club, Firehall Arts Centre) drives her commitment to BIPOC voices. James’ ASL/Deaf Studies training (VCC) and Art for Ace Week micro-festival shape disability-forward access.
Yet their power lies in synergy (forgive me for this corporate jargon), not “who curated what.” The trio’s programming rejects tokenism. Instead, they build ecosystems:
- Radical Accessibility: ASL-integrated performances, relaxed shows, Pay-What-You-Choose tickets ($18–$33), and One Night Choir (Kelsi James’ no-prep singing ritual).
- Place as Partner: Offsite warehouses host apocalyptic grief rituals (Apocalypse Reimagined); Chinatown’s history bleeds into a bilingual Romeo & Juliet.
- Community Weaving: Local legends like rice & beans theatre and Rumble Theatre co-present works. Indigenous Protocol Advisor Quelemia Sparrow ensures land acknowledgments live beyond words.
Volunteers, local producers, and even the box office staff (shoutout to The Cultch’s team) are threads in this tapestry. When you grab a Pay-What-You-Choose ticket, you’re joining a pact. As Mott would say: “No spectators. Only participants.”
Which brings me to the show that clawed deepest into my ribs…
💃 BY OUR SIDE: DIALYSIS, TAP SHOES & THE SECOND CHANCE THAT REWROTE VANCOUVER’S HEART🩺
Andrea Conway and Wayne Doba, who form the Vaudeville Comedy Tap Dance Duo “Dik and Mitzi,” bring their deeply personal show “By Our Side” to rEvolver; a romantic docu-drama, tap dance comedy about kidney failure and transplant, drawn from Conway’s experience as a transplant recipient.
Conway, originally from Pointe-Claire, Quebec, is a John Abbott College Creative Arts graduate who represented Canada at the 1987 Pan-American Games, winning bronze in gymnastics before spending eight years touring with Cirque du Soleil’s “Saltimbanco” as a Chinese poles performer and becoming the only woman to solo jump 35 feet from the Russian swing. She created one of that show’s most memorable characters, “Fiona” the enticing and sexy Baroque. During this time she was honored to perform with the late Michael Jackson (my idol growing up as a breakdancer..well much like everyone else), with Peter Gabriel at the Grammy Awards, the Queen Majesty in London and featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Doba has performed professionally for over four decades, sharing stages with tap legends like the Nicholas Brothers and Honi Coles, appearing in films like “Scarface” and “The Funhouse,” and serving as the original Crazy Crab anti-mascot for the San Francisco Giants. The duo met in 2001 at Teatro Zinzanni in San Francisco, where both were cast members, and have been creating vaudeville comedy shows together ever since.
I’ll unpack its genius below, but know this; Conway and Doba’s saga of survival epitomizes why this festival matters. In a city often accused of coastal complacency, rEvolver drags Vancouver into the light, whispering
“Look. Feel. Dance anyway.”
Dialysis meets vaudeville
I’ve seen Vancouver’s stages grapple with illness soliloquies, PTSD monologues, but never with this cocktail of vaudeville and vérité.
Amidst the festival’s high-octane experiments, this Sutton, Quebec import arrives trailing accolades (Montreal Fringe’s 2024 Outstanding Choreography win) and a premise only platforms like these would embrace.
The premise sounds impossible: a Cirque du Soleil veteran and her tap-legend husband navigate Stage 4 kidney failure. At 45—mid-European tour, career peaking—hereditary disease strikes Conway. Overnight, their world shrinks to a Sutton, Quebec home rigged with dialysis machinery. “Plugging into a machine nine hours every night for two years,” she recounts. The absurdity becomes art: 30 boxes of medical supplies, 700 pounds monthly, transformed into clown props. Doba, then 73, shelved retirement: *”Now I have to get up every day and dance at 73. But she’s non-stop.”* His lifeline? “Every day that we dance is a good day.”*
What unfolds isn’t a sob story. It’s a genre-defying rebellion that chronicles every aspect of Andrea’s transplant experience—from the phone call announcing an available kidney, to packing hospital bags, to the arduous chore of home care dialysis with its miles of plastic tubing, through the actual operation and recovery phase, to the strict protocols governing contact with the donor’s family. But it’s not approached as a downer. Rather, it’s uplifting, as Andrea and Wayne face this difficult period with humor and heart, punctuated by personal reflections drawn from her private journal entries and columns she produced for a local community newspaper.
Beeping machines sync with tap routines; hospital bureaucracy fuels rom-com tension. Conway’s Cirque-honed physicality turns IV poles into dance partners; her acrobatic background transforming medical apparatus into props for an impossibly graceful dance with mortality. Doba’s feet click staccato hope against despair, his effortless rhythm and energy contrasting poignantly with Andrea’s struggles, yet testifying to their shared resilience. The vaudevillian elements add nostalgic charm while the performance balances gravity with romantic, slapstick, light-hearted entertainment. Then, the gut-punch:
Marta
One of the most powerful scenes occurs the night before Andrea’s surgery. Wayne climbs into her hospital bed, holding her hand as they confront the terrifying possibility of death. His quiet reassurance, “I will never forget your face,” resonates with profound tenderness and devotion, revealing the couple’s shared love and endurance against the omnipresent specter of mortality.
After Conway’s transplant, she exchanged anonymous letters for four years with her donor’s mother; a woman who opposed organ donation until her son’s “unexpected medical emergency” changed everything. When a Sutton community paper revealed Conway’s identity, Marta became an advocate. “She can’t imagine her life without her son having made that decision,” Conway shares. “It’s brought her joy under tragic circumstances.”*
Critics crowned it “skillfully crafted, with snappy pacing and a seamless blend of humour and heartbreak” (Forget the Box). But in Vancouver; a city where healthcare battles rage and art fights for scraps, By Our Side cuts deeper. It’s a stiletto-sharp plea to sign your donor card. “It’s as simple as a sticker on your health care card,” Conway insists, “yet people put it off.”*
Watching Doba’s 73-year-old feet defy time, I remembered last year’s performance, where Sarah Hin Ching U’s tremors mapped neurological storms. Both performances embrace vulnerability. Both scream, “The body is a battleground; dance anyway.”, Conway and Doba have created a work of art that is as uplifting as it is heart-wrenching, a testament to the human spirit, the life-altering power of organ donation, and the reminder that love is a shared journey, making Sutton’s survival saga feel like East Van’s own.
🎟️ rEVOLVER 2025: YOUR TICKET TO THE TRANSFORMATIVE 🎟️
As I write this on May 30th, this year’s festival enters its climactic phase. For By Our Side devotees craving more visceral storytelling, three standouts pulse with similar urgency:
1.Santosh Santosh 2 Go
Unleashes a Toronto clown/drag king fever dream tonight and tomorrow at 7:30PM. Software engineer (just like me fr fr), “Tosh” battles immigrant parental expectations through Kollywood dance-offs and anime boss battles – a kinetic explosion of cultural collision directed by Umbrella Academy‘s Ken Hall. Fresh from Toronto Fringe, it mirrors By Our Side‘s genius for mining trauma for comedy gold.
2. WROL
Sunday’s 5:15PM gut-punch in The Cultch’s Green House. Four adolescent girls forge survivalist bonds in a bunker, screaming against a world that deems them “too much” – a darkly comic counterpart to Conway’s medical isolation.
3. The Body Shop (Vancity Culture Lab)
Physiotherapy meets pop-video glam as dancers morph maintenance into spectacle. “Can lunges be sexy? How would Britney Spears do a calf raise?” May 31–June 1. A perfect thematic bookend to Doba’s mantra of dancing through pain.
rEvolver’s radical accessibility remains unwavering. Pay-What-You-Choose tiers ($18–$33) still dismantle financial barriers. For deeper immersion, the 3-Show Pass ($54) unlocks combinations like the shows above.
THE ART THAT STITCHES US BACK TOGETHER
Walking home, I passed by a poster on Commercial St; a neon explosion wheatpasted on a grey wall, “YOUR VULNERABILITY IS YOUR SUPERPOWER.” This festival is that phrase incarnate. In Sutton’s tap routines, warehouse grief spells, and femme-flamingo rebellions, this is Vancouver’s antidote to coastal chill. Art that grabs you by the collar and hisses,
“FEEL THIS”
rEvolver ends June 1st. But its truth lingers. Jaysuits, sign your donor card. Scribble hope on a health-care sticker. Then book that ticket, to the show, to the choir, to the satanic birthday party. Let East Van remind you..
We heal louder together
❤️
➡️ Festival Details: revolverfestival.ca