All New at Vancouver Pride: The Queer Improv Festival

Image submitted by Daniel Dumsha

By Rachel Rosenberg

Brand new this Pride Season is The Queer Improv Festival, which is running from July 10th to August 7th. All the shows are being held at The Junction (1138 Davie Street), and have been curated by Michael Sousa, a 4-year-strong-member and the current Artistic Director of the QueerProv troupe. We spoke to Michael about QueerProv and this new festival.

What is QueerProv?

QueerProv has been around as a troupe for about 13 years…all of the members are queer identifying individuals.

For the whole month of July we’re raising funds for Rainbow Refugee’s Circle of Freedom.

This is the first year of The Queer Improv Festival — how did it finally come about?

I mentioned to our board of directors that we could put together our own festival and invite other groups to showcase their queer talent as well. There’s another local improv festival called VIIF (Vancouver International Improv Festival) which is a play off of VIFF (Vancouver International Film Festival). We decided that it would be funny if we called our festival QuIF (pronounced “queef”).

QuĪF is made up of all locally sourced talent from around Vancouver, though eventually we do hope to expand and invite out of town groups.

So the festival has already begun, but can you tell us about some of the shows still coming up?

Musical ft Daftwoork // Queer Ensemble
July 24 at 8pm

QueerProv is bringing their own musical ensemble to the forefront, with short form and long form musical improv games. And at 10pm, I’ve put together an ensemble of queer improvisors from around the city to perform together in one show.

Queery! // Coming Out Stories
July 31 at 8pm

Queery! The QueerProv Gameshow. It’s queer trivia meets improv, and the audience members get in on the action and can win all sorts of prizes! Following that at 10pm is Coming Out Stories, which is a nice intimate show where the cast of improvisors are interviewed about their Coming Out Stories before each game, we then get audience suggestions and play improv games inspired by the stories that the performers told.

Pride Hangover // Brendan’s Birthday
August 7 at 8pm and 10pm

We do a Pride Hangover show every year following the Vancouver Pride Parade.

At 10pm, there is our closing show and it happens to be our Head Technical Improvisor/Associate Artistic Director’s birthday, so we’ve let him put together his favourite improvisors, and we’re gonna celebrate him as well as the closing of our festival!

Tickets can be purchased here.

 

Rachel Rosenberg is a writer and library technician who is a proud member of the LGBTQ2+ community. She writes for Book Riot and can be found on Twitter @LibraryRachelR

Sign up for the Out In Vancouver newsletter if you are interested in hearing about more non-heteronormative and diverse news, events, and culture that are part of Vancouver–and to be notified on the latest contests.

Tagged: , , ,

Comments are closed for this post

Comments are closed.