Tag: free

PuSH festival: La Marea opens tomorrow

Boca Del Lupo, one of Vancouver’s most spectacular theater companies, has a free outdoor show for PuSH this year, La Marea. It starts tomorrow:

A man has just had a motorbike accident… An insomniac tries to get to sleep… A couple has their first kiss… A man stands on a balcony escaping the party that rages on behind him…

When strangers walk past you on the street, do you ever start imagining what they are thinking? Where they come from? Or what they are doing there at the very moment you glance upon them?

At night and in real time, moving from the pavement to illuminated windows, from balconies to café terraces, La Marea presents nine different stories—intimate snapshots that bring the zero hundred block of Water Street in historic Gastown to life for the opening of the 2011 PuSh Festival. These fictional scenes are repeated over the course of the evening in shop windows and on street corners, where audience members can observe the characters’ inner thoughts through projected subtitles.

"It’s an adventure… like a visit to a film set, without the camera crew getting in the way. This isn’t just a play in multiple episodes, it’s an experience touching on the beginning of love, the end of love, and everything in between." – Montreal Gazette

January 18-22, 7pm – 9pm.
Outdoors / Site-specific.
The zero-hundred block of Water Street in Gastown (between Abbott St and Carrall St).

free music & trading fantasy novels for grocery monies

Mood-altering cat parasites make women friendly and men into jerks.

Tomorrow is the longest day, the summer solstice, officially celebrated through France, and in cities such as Barcelona, Berlin, Sydney, and London, as La Fete de la Musique. This year Vancouver’s making a start in public places and needs participation. Here’s part of an entry on the official website fetedelamusique.culture.fr:

Completely different from a music festival, Le Fete is above all a free popular fiesta, open to any participant – amateur or professional. Launched in 1982 by the French Ministry of Culture, the Fete de la Musique is now held in more than 100 countries every June 21st. … This Music Day allows for the expression of all styles of music. it takes place in the open air, in streets, in gardens, in squares, in courtyards.

For practical and legal reasons there are no stages, no crews, no amplification. Just people making live acoustic music for free in the open air, whether performing or practicing, rehearsing, jamming, playing solo or in a group, it doesn’t matter.

While participants are invited to create their own event where and when they want, there are several “official” areas which are particularly suitable for people to gather and make music. Some activities are tentatively programmed for these places in the late afternoon and evening

From east to west the more official venues are:

  • Commercial Drive, especially Grandview Park and the Britannia School playing field below it (all day)
  • Trout Lake in East Vancouver (evening)
  • The Ceperley picnic area just behind Second Beach in Stanley Park near Denman St. (mid afternoon to evening) where there will have an African ‘village’.
  • The Prospect Point picnic area (evening), where there will be a Celtic gathering of the clans
  • The wooded slope at the north end of Kits Beach (evening), where there will be English folk music and Morris Dancing

    There will also be free performances for La Fete de la Musique at the Alliance Française de Vancouver, 6161 Cambie from 4-8 pm.

    I’ll likely be hanging out at Grandview park, easy to find. I’ll be the girl on the blanket covered in terrible novels, trying to trade them for high denomination pocket change.
    —

    Nicholas has just informed me that earlier today there was a Vancouver Island bomb scare on the Pat Bay Highway. In response, they closed the highway down and, (this is the good bit), “rushed” the Vancouver Bomb Squad in. On BC Ferries. For those who don’t know, the ferry ride takes two hours. They’re on the 3 PM sailing, so if the bus hasn’t blown up they’ll deal with it around 5:30. GO CANADA!