Vancouver has a long and rewarding history of DIY theatre, from the scrappy origins of the Fringe Festival and PuSh’s enthralling winter takeover, to the site-specific nuances of smaller festivals like the immersive BC Buds Festival or the newly defunct In The House festival (RIP). If there is a restless theatre community, a local festival has historically emerged to give it a home. And it was in this same spirit of support that the earliest incarnation of the rEvolver Festival was born.
“In the early 2000s, the theatre community was more ‘Balkanized’ than it is now,” says rEvolver co-founder and theatre artist Daniel Martin. “People who went to Studio 58 worked with people who went to Studio 58, and people who went to SFU worked with people who went to SFU. There just wasn’t any real opportunity for us.”
So, in their mid-20s, Martin and business partner David Mott decided they would fill the void and start a festival that presented the work of fellow outliers like themselves.
“It means so much when somebody gives you an opportunity,” says Martin, now 40. “It’s a cutthroat business – a really hard business to get a career going and to get momentum. Whenever anybody has put a hand out to me or helped me in my career it has meant so much. So you try and give back.”
And they have: In the past 15 years, the duo has gone from running the Walking Fish Festival – a wide open place for new artists to dabble – to Neanderthal Arts, for more established artists, to rEvolver – a place for young Canadian theatre artists to be showcased amongst a curated selection of other innovative and adventurous souls.
Since its inception in 2013, rEvolver – landing conceptually between the heady risk of Fringe and the assured acclaim of PuSh – has strived to present the full spectrum of what’s out there in contemporary theatre.
“We have that curatorial vision and an identity and we’re trying to guarantee a particular level of artistic achievement, “ says Martin, “but there’s still some risk in that, yeah, they’re emerging artists and they’re trying new things.”
This year Martin and Mott have put a topical piece like Half Girl/Half Face by Zoë Erwin-Longstaff, exploring the dark side of the Internet and the loss of personal identity through technology, alongside the exquisite shadow puppetry of Caws and Effect (a second chance to see this 2014 Vancouver Fringe Fest hit sell-out), next to the comedy of The Progessive Polygamists and a 26 song-cycle cowboy-noir opera by Jeff and Ryan Gladstone.
“I’m not a genre person…” says Martin, slyly. “I love variety and that spark of the new, and that thrill you get from seeing something that you’ve never quite seen before … We don’t really do a lot of ‘kitchen sink’ drama,” he adds with a laugh.
Martin hopes, given the right opportunity, that many of these artists leave rEvolver primed for bigger and broader things. Shows like Stationary: A Recession-Era Musical and Kayak, which have recently made the main stage rounds in Vancouver, got their start with Neanderthal, and Martin adds that many of the misfits from the Walking Fish days have also gone on to renowned things.
The best measure of success, says Martin, is to see artists get too big for their little festival.
“Everybody outgrows us, or outgrows the festival at least, which is what you like to see,” says Martin. “A lot of the people who were in the Walking Fish festival the first year are now running big organizations in Vancouver and across Canada. And I think, last year, something like 25 people that had been in our festival were nominated for Jessie Awards. And you’re stoked,” he says humbly. “You’re like, ‘Oh good. It’s working.’”
• rEvolver Theatre Festival runs May 20-31. Tickets and showtimes at UpInTheAirTheatre.com.
