Things to Do in Vancouver This Weekend: May 18, 2017

Happy long weekend, for which we can thank the birth of Queen Victoria, who was once quoted saying “give my people plenty of beer, good beer, and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them.” So if you’re looking to avoid a revolution, and re-live the age of Queen Victoria at the same time, Fort Langley is the place to go this weekend for their Beer + Food festival. There’s also a comic festival, Twin Peaks cabaret, comedy, and symphony that is dedicated to altered states of mind.

Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Ongoing

Friday May 19

The Vienna Model: Housing for the 21st Century City
Where: Museum of Vancouver
What: Explore housing in Vienna, Austria, through its portrait of the city’s pathbreaking approach to architecture, urban life, neighborhood revitalization, and the creation of new communities.
Runs until: Sunday July 16, 2017

Children of God
Where: The Cultch
What: In this powerful musical, the children of an Oji-Cree family are sent to a residential school in Northern Ontario. This is a story of redemption: for a mother who was never let past the school’s gate, and her kids, who never knew she came.
Runs until: Sunday June 3, 2107

Bianca Del Rio: Not Today, Satan
Where: The Vogue Theatre
What: Bianca Del Rio, the season 6 winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, is a self-professed “clown in a gown.” This hilariously hateful comic is known for her foul mouth and unapologetic humour, but her victims hardly have time to feel the sting before she zips on to the next topic. The NY Times calls her “The Joan Rivers of the Drag World,” and Joan herself called Bianca’s humour “So funny! So sharp!”

Pictures From Here
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Featuring photographs and video works from the early 1960s to the present that capture the urban environment of the Greater Vancouver region, its citizens and the vast “natural” landscape of the province.
Runs until: September 4, 2017

Too Many Zooz
Where: The Biltmore
What: They gained fame when a video of one of their subway performances, recorded by a passer-by at Union Station, went viral on YouTube in March 2014. The band is acclaimed for their originality, the members’ playing abilities and Leo Pellegrino’s characteristic dance moves while playing the sax.

Outside Mullingar
Where: Pacific Theatre
What: A pair of introverted misfits, Rosemary and Anthony’s families have lived on neighbouring farms as far back as anyone can remember, where they battle over property lines and childhood stories but never what matters most. A quirky story of flawed love and some kind of happiness told with effortless wit and poetic Irish lyricism.
Runs until: Saturday June 10, 2017

Twin Peaks Cabaret
Where: The Fox Cabaret
What: Live music, costumes, performance, coffee, and pie. An evening of tribute to David Lynch’s iconic TV series.

Expressions Theatre Festival
Where: Granville Island
What: Five diverse and distinctive productions by gifted young artists.
Runs until: Saturday May 27, 2017

Jonathan Biss plays Mozart
Where: The Chan Centre
What: Alexandre Bloch makes his return to the VSO, conducting a program that includes fascinating pianist Jonathan Biss performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, with its famous and beloved “Elvira Madigan” second movement, and Symphony No. 92 by the “father of the symphony,” Franz Joseph Haydn.

Deconstructing Diaspora: Institute of Asian Art Inaugural Symposium: Speaker Presentations
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: In the early 1990s, it was finally being understood that artists from the non-western world had a special place in the east-west exchange of ideas and values, because of the unique capacity of art to be both a place and to be timeless. Now, more than twenty-five years later, a sense of retrenchment—the building of walls and barriers, physically and virtually—is pervasive on many shores. In these contested times, how can artists (and art institutions) continue to push boundaries and flourish in societies that may want to push them aside?

East Side Flea
Where: 1024 Main St.
What: Over 50 local vendors, food trucks, a live deejay, artisan showrooms, seasonal drink specials, pinball and more.
Runs until: Sunday May 21, 2017

Whistler Go Fest
Where: Whistler, BC
What: Music, clinics, and outdoor adventure.
Runs until: Monday May 22, 2017

Saturday May 20

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Britannia Mine Family Fun Day
Where: Britannia Mine
What: A family-friendly event focused on fun, hands-on and educational activities recognizing the contributions of modern mining to British Columbians.

Vancouver Comic Arts Festival
Where: Roundhouse Community Centre
What: A two-day celebration of comics and graphic novels and their creators, including an exhibition and vendor fair featuring hundreds of creators from around the world.
Runs until: Sunday May 21,2017

Fred Armisen
Where: Commodore Ballroom
What: From Portlandia, spend an evening listening to Fred Armisen.

Comedy on Wheels: Celebrating Canada’s Birthday with Belly Laughs
Where: Performance Works
What: In celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, Comedy on Wheels will showcase members of the disability community in performances that capitalize on one of their greatest assets – the ability to use humour and storytelling to cope with life’s challenges. Audio Description provided by VocalEye. All performances are accessible through ASL (American Sign Language).

Fort Langley Beer and Food Festival
Where: Fort Langley
What: The first-annual festival is bringing together 18 of the best craft breweries from the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley, as well as local food and wine vendors and entertainment.

Vancouver Whitecaps vs. Kansas City
Where: BC Place Stadium
What: Watch some soccer, yell, cheer, and wave things in the air maybe.

Sweet Air
Where: The Annex
What: Named for David Lang’s mesmerizing Sweet Air, which refers to the peculiar yet pleasant effects of laughing gas, this concert brings together music that mimics, was created in, or perhaps even causes an altered state of mind. Lang’s music creates a hypnotically pleasurable, yet ever-so-slightly uneasy environment.

Sunday May 21

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Love Shack: Live Band and Burlesque Tribute to the B52s
Where: The Biltmore
What: Beehives, miniskirts and shagadelic, swingin’ fun abound as our Hot & Heavy Band kicks out your favorite B-52’s hits live onstage at The Biltmore accompanying the wild antics of a bevvy of fun-lovin’ burlesque beauties.

East Side Live!
Where: The Cultch
What: The Cultch presents Louise Burns, Old Man Canyon, Leisure Club and David Vertesi in the debut of East Side Live!

Vancouver Comic Arts Festival
Where: Roundhouse Community Centre
What: A two-day celebration of comics and graphic novels and their creators, including an exhibition and vendor fair featuring hundreds of creators from around the world.
Runs until: Sunday May 21,2017

Ongoing

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Circle Game: Re-imagining the Music of Joni Mitchell
Where: Firehall Arts Centre
What: The heartbreak of a failed love affair in “River”, the fear of imminent ecological disaster in “Big Yellow Taxi”, and the promise of a generation gathering to ‘get back to the garden’ in “Woodstock” are topics that resound as heavily today as they did fifty years ago. The enduring music of Canadian icon and renowned singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell is reimagined in this energetic musical experience.
Runs until: Saturday May 20, 2017

End of the Rainbow
Where: Staircase Theatre
What: This gritty play with music is based on the true events of Judy Garland’s last comeback attempt in England in 1968.
Runs until: Sunday May 20, 2017

The Show at Emily Car University of Art and Design
Where: Emily Car University
What: Featuring more than 300 works from this year’s Design, Media and Visual Arts graduates.
Runs until: Sunday May 21, 2017

Whistler Go Fest
Where: Whistler, BC
What: Music, clinics, and outdoor adventure.
Runs until: Monday May 22, 2017

Family Lines in Landscape
Where: Kimoto Gallery
What: Veronica Plewman examines how time and memory are rooted in a location, from childhood. She reconstructs and paints her journey and portrait of BC, from the place she grew up to the old family photos of her parents early lives, and the stories she can recall. This series is about migration, how a family gets there and the unknown mysteries of our family history.
Runs until: Saturday May 27, 2017

Expressions Theatre Festival
Where: Granville Island
What: Five diverse and distinctive productions by gifted young artists.
Runs until: Saturday May 27, 2017

Susan Point: Spindle Whorl
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Since the early 1980s, Susan Point has received wide acclaim for her remarkably accomplished oeuvre that forcefully asserts the vitality of Coast Salish culture, both past and present. She has produced an extensive body of prints and an expansive corpus of sculptural work in a wide variety of materials that includes glass, resin, concrete, steel, wood and paper.
Runs until: Sunday May 28, 2017

Pacific Crossings: Hong Kong Artists in Vancouver
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: June 2017 marks the 20-year anniversary of the transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty from the United Kingdom to mainland China. In the lead up to the handover, tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents immigrated to Canada, many choosing to settle in Vancouver, and among them were a significant number of artists. Pacific Crossings presents works from well-known Hong Kong artists created after their relocation to Vancouver throughout the 1960-90s.
Runs until: May 28, 2017

Retainers of Anarchy
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: A solo exhibition featuring new work from Howie Tsui that considers wuxia, a traditional form of martial arts literature, as a narrative tool for dissidence and resistance.
Runs until: May 28, 2017

Children of God
Where: The Cultch
What: In this powerful musical, the children of an Oji-Cree family are sent to a residential school in Northern Ontario. This is a story of redemption: for a mother who was never let past the school’s gate, and her kids, who never knew she came.
Runs until: Sunday June 3, 2107

Caroline Mesquita The Ballad
Where: Centre 221A
What: A sculptural practice that intertwines the materiality of altered, oxidized, and painted copper and brass sheets with theatrical playfulness.
Runs until: Saturday June 3, 2017

Outside Mullingar
Where: Pacific Theatre
What: A pair of introverted misfits, Rosemary and Anthony’s families have lived on neighbouring farms as far back as anyone can remember, where they battle over property lines and childhood stories but never what matters most. A quirky story of flawed love and some kind of happiness told with effortless wit and poetic Irish lyricism.
Runs until: Saturday June 10, 2017

Song of the Open Road
Where: Contemporary Art Gallery
What: Bringing together artists from Canada, Eritrea, Ireland, Sweden, and the US, the exhibition includes works that combine thematically to interrogate ideas rooted in photographic histories, engaging ideas such as veracity, recollection, remembrance, belonging, staging, and how the image documents and records these or is evidence of differing realities.
Runs until: Sunday June 18, 2017

Up Close
Where: VanDusen Botanical Garden
What: All the artists represented in this group exhibition find their inspiration while painting on location at VanDusen Garden. The Vancouver en plein air group, initiated in April 2011, zooms-in to the lush vegetation that provides a new dimension of foreground details. The subjects are varied, and so is the medium.
Runs until: Tuesday June 27, 2017

Million Dollar Quartet
Where: Arts Club Theatre
What: Inspired by true events, this rocking jukebox musical takes you into Sun Records Studio on December 4, 1956, to witness the famed recording session that brought together rock and roll legends Presley, Cash, Lewis, and Perkins—for the first and only time.
Runs until: Sunday July 9, 2017

The Vienna Model: Housing for the 21st Century City
Where: Museum of Vancouver
What: Explore housing in Vienna, Austria, through its portrait of the city’s pathbreaking approach to architecture, urban life, neighborhood revitalization, and the creation of new communities.
Runs until: Sunday July 16, 2017

Xi Xanya Dzam – Those Who Are Amazing At Making Things
Where: The Bill Reid Gallery
What: Xi Xanya Dzam (pronounced hee hun ya zam) is the Kwak’wala word describing incredibly talented and gifted people who create works of art. The exhibition is both a showcase and a critical exploration of ‘achievement’ and ‘excellence’ in traditional and contemporary First Nations art.
Runs until: Sunday September 4, 2017

Pictures From Here
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Featuring photographs and video works from the early 1960s to the present that capture the urban environment of the Greater Vancouver region, its citizens and the vast “natural” landscape of the province.
Runs until: Sunday September 4, 2017

Panda International Night Market
Where: Richmond, BC
What: A diverse market in Richmond, with shopping, food, beverages, and a game zone.
Runs until: Monday September 11, 2017

Shipyards Night Market
Where: Lonsdale, North Vancouver
What: Food, art, music, entertainment, shopping, a beer garden, and you can bring your dog!
Runs until: September 29, 2017

Traces of Words: Art and Calligraphy from Asia
Where: UBC Museum of Anthropology
What: Words and their physical manifestations are explored in this insightful exhibition, which will honour the special significance that written forms. Varied forms of expression associated with writing throughout Asia is shown over the span of different time periods: from Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions, Qu’ranic manuscripts, Southeast Asian palm leaf manuscripts and Chinese calligraphy from MOA’s Asian collection to graffiti art from Afghanistan and contemporary artworks using Japanese calligraphy, and Tibetan and Thai scripts.
Runs until: Monday October 9, 2017

Richmond Night Market
Where: Richmond, BC
What: There’s a dinosaur park! Anamatronic dinosaurs! Also – live performances, carnival games, over 200 retail stalls and over 500 food choices from around the world.
Runs until: October 9, 2017

Onsite / Offsite Tsang Kin-Wah
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: This large-scale composition transforms English texts to form intricate floral and animal patterns. The work draws from discriminatory language that appeared in newspapers and political campaigns in Vancouver during the 1887 anti-Chinese riots, the mid-1980s immigration influx from Hong Kong and most recently, the heated exchanges around the foreign buyers and the local housing market.
Runs until: Sunday October 15, 2017

Trout Lake Farmers Market
Where: Trout Lake
What: This is where you’ll find the vendors who have been doing it since the beginning; what started as 14 farmers ‘squatting’ at the Croatian Cultural Centre back in 1995 has grown into Vancouver’s most well-known and beloved market. Visitors come from near and far to sample artisan breads & preserves, stock up on free-range and organic eggs & meats, get the freshest, hard-to-find heirloom vegetables and taste the first Okanagan cherries and peaches of the season.
Runs until: Saturday October 21, 2017 (Saturdays)

Kitsilano Farmers Market
Where: Kitsilano Community Centre parking lot
What: A great selection of just-picked, seasonal fruits & vegetables, ethically raised and grass fed meat, eggs, & dairy, sustainable seafood, fresh baked bread & artisanal food, local beer, wine, & spirits, and beautiful, handmade craft. Kids and parents alike can enjoy entertainment by market musicians, a nearby playground and splash park, and coffee and food truck offerings each week.
Runs until: Sunday October 22, 2017 (Sundays)

The Lost Fleet Exhibit
Where: Vancouver Maritime Museum
What: On December 7, 1941 the world was shocked when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour, launching the United States into the war. This action also resulted in the confiscation of nearly 1,200 Japanese-Canadian owned fishing boats by Canadian officials on the British Columbia coast, which were eventually sold off to canneries and other non-Japanese fishermen. The Lost Fleet looks at the world of the Japanese-Canadian fishermen in BC and how deep-seated racism played a major role in the seizure, and sale, of Japanese-Canadian property and the internment of an entire people.
Runs until: Winter 2017

Bill Reid Creative Journeys
Where: The Bill Reid Gallery
What: Celebrating the many creative journeys of acclaimed master goldsmith and sculptor Bill Reid (1920–1998), this exhibition provides a comprehensive introduction to his life and work.
Runs until: Sunday December 10, 2017

Amazonia: The Rights of Nature
Where: UBC Museum of Anthropology
What: MOA will showcase its Amazonian collections in a significant exploration of socially and environmentally-conscious notions intrinsic to indigenous South American cultures, which have recently become innovations in International Law. These are foundational to the notions of Rights of Nature, and they have been consolidating in the nine countries that share responsibilities over the Amazonian basin.
Runs until: January 28, 2018

Emily Carr: Into the Forest
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Far from feeling that the forests of the West Coast were a difficult subject matter, Carr exulted in the symphonies of greens and browns found in the natural world. With oil on paper as her primary medium, Carr was free to work outdoors in close proximity to the landscape. She went into the forest to paint and saw nature in ways unlike her fellow British Columbians, who perceived it as either untamed wilderness or a plentiful source of lumber.
Runs until: March 4, 2018

What are you up to this weekend? Tell me and the rest of Vancouver in the comments below or tweet me directly at @lextacular