Live Acts | 2026
12 PROGRAMS // 30 SHOWS
Week 1: March 17 – 21 // Week 2: March 31 – April 5, 2026
Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre and Assembly Space
SFU School for the Contemporary Arts
149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
Tickets: Students: $10 // SFU Faculty, Staff & Alumni: $15 // Seniors: $15 // General: $20
HOW TO BUY TICKETS: Each program has its own ticket link! Just click the + sign and the ticket link will open along with information about the program.
The culmination of creative research over two semesters, the Live Acts Festival 2026 is a presentation of BFA capstone projects created by SCA Theatre & Performance and Dance Majors, with support from students in Performance Production & Design. Over two weeks, 30 artists present solo or group works in a series of double or triple bill programs, across three unique stage configurations — Proscenium, Alley, and in-the-Round — all presented in the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre.
Featuring: Hermella Araya, Inkara Askar, Teddy Brubacher, Lauren Butterfield, Sarah Carter, Vivien Dang, Daisy de Kroon, Oliver Fusio, Stephen Hass, Maralee Joyner, Sonja Kwantes, Hannah Latta, Emily Lee, Vanessa Lefan (樂凡), Yulia Liu, Reese Magnayon, Claire Martin, Soleil Mousseau, Naz Özlü, Angela Peng, Elijah Sam, Ashley Sankaran-Wee, Mavrik Sun, Jeya Thiessen, Tamara Trbaric, Sara van Gaalen, Michael Waddell, Avery Warren, Sarah Wilson, and Maddy Woodley.
Production Management Team: Rue Larson and Sally Mao
Week 1 Craft Team: Sarah van Wouw and Marianne Benoit-Gagnon
Week 2 Craft Team: Stefanie Infantino and Czarina Agustines
Special Thanks
Production & Events Manager: Emily Neumann
Faculty Advisors: Kyla Gardiner, Rob Kitsos, James Long, Wladimiro Woyno Rodriguez
Teachers’ Assistance: Jaeden Walton (MFA)
Technical Assistance: SFU LIVE
Audience Services By: SFU LIVE
The Live Acts Festival was created and is presented on the ancestral and stolen land of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Week 1: March 17 – 21
PROGRAM ONE | March 17 & 20 | 7:30 PM | The End Stage
Assembly + GIVE US A SMILE
Assembly
Assembly takes the structure of an elementary talent show that examines early fantasies of becoming. A bizarre lineup of performances exposes the tension between sincerity and spectacle, innocence and overidentification. Through character-driven movement and humor, the work traces how childhood aspirations are performed, exaggerated, and eventually outgrown. What emerges is a collage of characters trying earnestly—and unsuccessfully—to live up to promises made too early, asking what remains once the fantasy of “growing up” begins to unravel.
Choreographer: Maralee Joyner
Technical Director: Nolan McCartan
Lighting Designer: Hannah Azam
Music/Sound: Big Mouth by Santigold, Necessary Evil by Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Y'all Ready for This by 2 Unlimited.
Stage Manager: Sally Mao
Assistant Stage Manager: Angelina Wang
Lighting and Sound Operator: Zoé Lemay
Performers: Maralee Joyner
Maralee Joyner (they/she) is a dancer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish Nations (Vancouver, BC), where they are pursuing a BFA at Simon Fraser University (’26). Originally from Durham, NC, Maralee has trained with a variety of institutions including American Dance Festival, Ponderosa Tanzland, Ohio University, Gibney Dance Center, Bates Dance Festival, and Bearnstow. Their work starts with writing and character-building, using humor and absurdity to collage movement, text, and voice, troubling linear narratives through queerness, excess, and embodied knowledge.
GIVE US A SMILE
In recent years, Maddy Woodley has watched many loved ones—both young and old—lose prolonged health battles. Reflecting on the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief, she has wondered why she felt nothing at funerals while everyone around her cried. GIVE US A SMILE is a solo performance exploring the question: "How does grief shapeshift around our lives?". Through dark humor, performative self-degradation, and the manipulation of voice and found audio footage, the work traces unexpected patterns of mourning. This project creates a space for mutual grieving and collective healing. With this work, Woodley seeks to connect with those who have endured loss but found that traditional methods of grieving never quite fit.
She dedicates this piece to her loved ones who are no longer here physically: Maragret and David Woodley, Donald Lam, Bailey, Cody, and Megan.
Director/performer: Maddy Woodley
Main collaborator/sound designer: Adam Smith
Lighting designer: Hannah Azam
Costume designer: Rowan Adams
Stage manager: Sally Mao
Assistant Stage Manager: Angelina Wang
Technical Director: Nolan McCartan
Lighting and Sound Operator: Zoé Lemay
A big warm hug to my loving family: Stephanie Lam, Susan Lam, Kevin Woodley and Livy Woodley, my beautiful friends who held me together through this process, and all my outside eyes for rehearsals.
Maddy Woodley is a queer Chinese-Irish freelance Stage Manager and Lighting Designer creating on the stolen lands of so-called Vancouver. Her art draws on her relationships with the world. She is passionate about bridging the fun and the uncomfortable, challenging traditional views of grief, and celebrating LGBTQIA2S+ joy. Collaboration with friends and those who inspire her is central to her practice, treasuring these small communities. Her recent credits include assistant lighting designing and stage-managing UNIVERSUS by Alexis Fletcher and Fernando Hernando Magadan (2025/26), stage-managing Neworld Theatre’s Eyes of the Beast (2025), and stage-managing Carry The One by Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg.
PROGRAM TWO | March 17 & 20 | 8:45 PM | The Alley Stage
Omnimedial + Get this party started + Is Time In The Room Beside Us? + undone
Omnimedial
This piece explores looping as both a physical and conceptual score, using acrobatic aerial hoop as a physical structure. The piece tests looping as a feedback system between body, hoop, and sound, where both movement and sound share responsibility as input and output. As movement inputs force, the hoop outputs momentum and resistance; motion produces sound, and sound re-enters the body, feeding back as altered coordination and shifting decision-making. The work remains inside this feedback loop, where cause and effect are continuously blurred, examining how systems continue to operate through the ongoing circulation between input and output.
Choreographer: Soleil Mousseau
Sound designer: Manoah Epp
Alley Technical Director: Jessica Kwon
Stage Manager: Czarina Agustines
Lighting Designer: Rue Larson
Lighting and Sound Operator: Katelyn McDonald
Assistant Stage Manager: Sunny Lee
Assistant Stage Manager: Tina Shi
Soleil Mousseau is an emerging Vancouver-based dance artist and educator. She lives, creates, and studies with respect for the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her practice includes acrobatic dance, choreography, and contemporary movement work, with an emphasis on process, care, and accessibility. As a Black, mixed-heritage artist, Soleil brings a diasporic perspective to her developing practice, informed by lived experience and community engagement.
Get this party started
...Spending a lifetime working, as a method of waiting for the win, will only waste the work, as the satisfaction and memories are formed through a present mind and heart.
Get this party started explores the unending consequences of an action, when each “thing” leads to another, and the cumulative sequence in an event can feel unrealistically important. The similarities between rumination and dreaming are investigated through repetition, duration, and intersections of experience. Framed around the event of a night out, Get this party started follows the trajectory of a single day, including pre-event, during-event, and post-event happenings. The lasting fulfillment and resentment at each stage of a night out mirror the non-linear arc of pursuing a goal: anticipation, vulnerability, regret, commitment, poignancy, celebration, and reminiscence. The framework of the piece is a reoccurring situation that is overcomplicated as we age and discover more about ourselves.
Choreographer: Ashley Sankaran-Wee
Alley Technical Director: Jessica Kwon
Stage Manager: Czarina Agustines
Lighting Designer: Rue Larson
Music/Sound: First Steps Upward by M83, edited by Ashley Sankaran-Wee
Lighting and Sound Operator: Katelyn McDonald
Assistant Stage Manager: Sunny Lee, Tina Shi
Performers: Christina Evans, Grace Byman, Ashley Sankaran-Wee
Ashley Sankaran-Wee is a Singaporean-Canadian dancer in her fourth and final year of a double degree in Dance and Communication, with a minor in Gerontology. She lives and learns on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwxw̱ ú7mesh (Squamish), Coast Salish Peoples and the SəlíRlwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Ashley dances to fulfil the vivid scenes in her mind: to realize a given or innate soundtrack through movement. She wishes to explore her past, present and future through dance and media – to interpret, learn and appreciate our mercurial world.
Is Time In The Room Beside Us?
Have you ever been so deeply embedded in a sensorial action that your surroundings fade and you warp into your own fixation? Is time an internal pulse, or a silent companion walking beside us? This work interrogates the friction between human consciousness and the relentless forward motion of time. Through intricate, ever-changing spatial arrangements and rigorous repetitive movement, the performers test the limits of focus, pulling the observer into a shared state of distortion. Here, time is explored as a living state capable of consuming one's consciousness. As the body becomes a vessel for cycle and rhythm, the boundary between "the self" and "the clock" dissolves. We invite you to lose your bearings and inhabit a space where movement doesn't just represent time but begins to rewrite it.
Choreographer: Hannah Latta
Dancers: Hannah Latta, Sienna Allen, Angelina Bertin, Xinxin Zhou
Alley Technical Director: Jessica Kwon
Stage Manager: Czarina Agustines
Lighting designer: Rue Larson
Lighting and Sound Operator: Katelyn McDonald
Assistant Stage Manager: Sunny Lee
Assistant Stage Manager: Tina Shi
Hannah Latta is a 22-year-old white female artist working in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her work is characterized by rigorous repetitive movement and intricate spatial arrangements that challenge the observer’s perception of reality, specifically through the concepts of distortion and time dilation. She aims to actively confuse the audience—visually and spatially—by disrupting the anticipated physical stability and thematic certainty. Hannah’s work invites you to come along for a ride and explore what it means to exist both within and outside of time.
undone
undone is a performance art piece exploring intimacy and the human body through body art approaches, analog projectors, and nakedness. Each artist working on the project has been asked to actively engage with the question: How can I blur different types of intimacy? undone addresses parental intimacy, familial intimacy, platonic intimacy, romantic intimacy, sexual intimacy, and every less definable form of connection in between. Majority of the material within undone is archival: bedroom curtains, a grandfather’s slide projector, familial stories, and more. We invite you to witness the real people on stage alongside them.
Director: Sara van Gaalen
Technical Director: Jessica Kwon
Lighting Design: Rue Larson
Music/Sound: Indah Del Bianco
Stage Manager: Czarina Agustines
Assistant Stage Manager: Sunny Li and Tina Shi
Lighting and Sound Operator: Katelyn McDonald
Performers: Indah Del Bianco, Theo Seto, and Sara van Gaalen
Costume: Linda Marchet
Set Construction: Steve van Gaalen
Special Thanks: to James Long, Carlo Marchet, Nadine van Gaalen, and all the lovely humans who supported the work and/or the humans making the work.
Sara van Gaalen (they/she) is an interdisciplinary artist focused on performance creation and production. When making work they are particularly interested in bodies, duration, and subversiveness. Recent credits include stage managing and performing in The Last Resort (Dreamqueen Immersive, 2026), performing in Eyes of The Beast (Neworld Theatre, 2025), choreographing and performing Mouf (2024 & 2025), and production managing and performing in SCA Candy Van (rEvolver, 2025). She thanks her loved ones and mentors who continually support her in becoming the seriously silly artist and micro-manager she is today.
PROGRAM THREE | March 18 & 21 | 7:30 PM + 1:30 PM | The Round Stage
Selkie + Enfoldeding + Stille
selkie
selkie explores the use of world-building through the lens of fantasy and whimsy
drawing on Scottish folktales of women who shapeshift into seals and woodland faeries dancing through the mist
making the unseen seen through the slow-motion body, obscuring perception, sudden vs. gradual extremes, resistance and tension
bringing to life a world unique to each viewer through careful observation
Choreographer: Claire Martin
Technical Director: Miranda Collard
Lighting Designer: Miranda Collard
Music/Sound: Manoah Epp
Stage Manager: Dean Thivierge
Lighting and Sound Operator: Vania Ngok
Assistant Stage Manager: Jordyn Young
Performers: Claire Martin
before anything else i am a performer
i do not aim for my work to achieve one sole purpose
i bring to life the worlds that emerge from my imagination and let the work act on its own to reach those it will
Enfolding
Enfolding explores shared empathy as a way of being together coexisting in a space. The work examines how connection can exist through parallel experience, how two bodies may hold space for one another while remaining distinct, out of sync, and unresolved. Movement begins in small, detailed gestures that slowly reveal a shared pattern, emerging through secondary impulses and overlapping trajectories. As the work unfolds, the dancers move in and out of unison, shifting between individual pathways and moments of alignment. These shifts reflect the fluid nature of empathy: sometimes visible, sometimes subtle, and often incomplete.
Choreographer: Sarah Wilson
Technical Director: Miranda Collard
Lighting Design: Miranda Collard
Music/Sound: Lift Off by Tom Misch, Yussef Dayes, Rocco Palladino
Stage Manager: Dean Thivierge
Lighting and Sound Operator: Vania Ngok
Assistant Stage Manager: Jordyn Young
Performers: Soleil Mousseau, Sarah Wilson
Sarah Wison is a dancer from British Columbia, residing on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her practice is informed by formal training in ballet and martial arts, alongside academic study in kinesiology. Through an integration of movement science and embodied practice, she is interested in biomechanics, efficiency, and relational movement. Her work bridges analytical and intuitive approaches, using physical research to inform choreographic structure and performance.
Stille
Stille explores the relationship between emotion and the structures in the body. Emotion and feeling carve into the body through poses and postures that speak for themselves. Working with the idea of observation, how do we act and move when being watched, admired or witnessed? Moving as a statuesque figure, the details within the joints, bones, skin and eyes shift between qualities and temporalities to express how perception is internalized and externalized. How do control and loss of control expose vulnerability as an embodiment? Stille explores these themes through isolations, trajectories and movement sequences.
Choreographer: Lauren Butterfield
Technical Director: Miranda Collard
Lighting Design: Miranda Collard
Music/Sound: Lauren Butterfield
Stage Manager: Dean Thivierge
Lighting and Sound Operator: Vania Ngok
Assistant Stage Manager: Jordyn Young
Performers: Lauren Butterfield
Lauren Butterfield (she/her) is a fourth year Dance major at Simon Fraser University, and lives on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səlílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Lauren grew up primarily training in ballet, jazz, contemporary, modern and acro. Her practice now explores high intensity movement and tonal qualities in her work, which is accompanied by her interest in sound. She is curious as to how these disciplines work together to create atmospheres within space. She values the processes that are experienced when working with collaborators of various forms and how the work continues to evolve.
PROGRAM FOUR | March 18 & 21 | 8:45 PM + 2:45 PM | The Alley Stage
Unfolding + After After Image + Forks
Unfolding
At first glance, a Cubist painting resists understanding. Forms appear fractured, disoriented, refusing a single point of view. Nothing settles. But as the eye lingers, lines begin to speak to one another and angles soften. What once felt discombobulated slowly assembles itself; not into clarity yet, but into recognition.
Choreographer: Emily Lee and dancers
Technical Director: Jessica Kwon
Lighting Design: Jessica Kwon
Music/Sound: Manoah Epp
Stage Manager: Kady Brandel
Assistant Stage Manager: Ellis Cho
Lighting and Sound Operator: Jesse Jiang
Performers: Amaru Seki, Hannah Jajic, Sarah Wilson, Soleil Mousseau, Yuri Hong
Special Thanks: Liz Kiss (Outside Eye)
Emily Lee is a Chinese/Taiwanese emerging dance artist currently completing her BFA in Dance Honours at Simon Fraser University. After immigrating to Vancouver in 2013, she trained in multiple styles before shifting her focus to contemporary dance. Outside of school, she has worked as an apprentice with NiNi Dongnier and Company 605. In January, she worked with Dance//Novella as a dancer in their 2026 Emerging Artist Program. As Emily is passionate about developing as a performer and maker, she’s interested in how movement can be physically expressive and viscerally affecting.
After After Image
It gathers itself slowly, wrapped in colour and brimming with curiosity. Tangled in ruffles and momentum, it analyzes, reorganizes, and re-emerges. It isn’t better, nor is it worse, it’s simply… different. Still curious as ever.
Draped in cumbersome layers, After After Image explores transformation and the subtle differences that exist from one moment to the next. Focusing on weight, movement, and an ever-shifting identity, the work presents a creature shaped by natural change and ongoing evolution. Adapting, responding, and evolving within a fragile, interconnected environment, the creature mirrors the delicate balance of ecosystems. Moments of shedding and accumulation leave traces, highlighting what persists and what changes, reminding us that transformation is continuous, never complete, and always alive.
Choreographer: Avery Warren
Technical Director: Jessica Kwon
Lighting Design: Jessica Kwon
Music/Sound: Avery Warren
Stage Manager: Kady Brandel
Assistant Stage Manager: Ellis Cho
Lighting and Sound Operator: Jesse Jiang
Performers: Avery Warren
Avery Warren is a multidisciplinary dance artist based in Vancouver whose practice moves between dance, circus, photography, and more. Raised in Merritt, BC, she began performing through ballet, figure skating, and multiple instruments, attuning herself to rhythm and artistic explorations from a young age. Her work is deeply connected to the outdoors. Summers as a wildland firefighter and years of scuba diving inform her understanding of the body, endurance, and movement through space. Avery is currently pursuing a BFA at Simon Fraser University, with recent projects including dance performances, photography, theatre production, and live event production.
Forks
Forks is a contemporary, text-based work that asks “How does one wrestle with their own contradictions?” In a dressing room, a 90’s-style boyband grapples with their life trajectories while preparing for a concert.
The logic of Forks is a twisting mess of back and forth, this but not that, but also this, and sometimes it’s not. This performance explores religion, dating, sexuality, friendship, and violence alongside the Backstreet Boys, Wepsi (wine and Pepsi) and you guessed it, forks.
Director: Stephen Hass
Technical Director: Jessica Kwon
Lighting Design: Jessica Kwon
Music/Sound: Stephen Hass
Stage Manager: Kady Brandel
Assistant Stage Manager: Ellis Cho
Lighting and Sound Operator: Jesse Jiang
Choreographer: Samantha Li
Performers: Gabriel Garza, Matteo Giannetta, Jackson Naunheimer, Stephen Hass
Special Thanks: Kyla Gardiner, James Long
Stephen Hass is a theatre maker studying contemporary theatre and performance in his fourth year at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts in Vancouver, B.C. He is trained in improvisation, dramaturgy, viewpoints, social practice and site-specific theatre. His ongoing research revolves around boy bands, sincerity and social psychology. Stephen usually works within the realms of comedy, improv and text-work, seeking to make performances that find novel connections in unusual places.
PROGRAM FIVE | March 19 & 21 | 7:30 PM | The End Stage
The Fragile Mind + We Love You Too, Barry
The Fragile Mind
The Fragile Mind is a one-woman show that explores a slow descent into self-destruction driven by perfectionism. The work is guided by the central question: What does it mean to be perfect? It examines vulnerability, obsessive thought patterns, internalized pressure, and the relentless pursuit of the unachievable. Audiences are drawn into the protagonist's psychological and emotional world through a fusion of conventional performance and abstract moments. Direct audience engagement, surreal interjections, and embodied realism blur the boundary between performer and spectator. As the spiral deepens, the performer and character begin to merge, dissolving distinctions between person and role—the act of performing itself becomes part of the character's unraveling. The colour pink functions throughout as both visual anchor and symbolic device, representing femininity, softness, desire, and emotional exposure. Its hyper-saturation suggests artificiality, constraint, and suffocating expectation. Set against stark black and white, the palette heightens the tension between beauty, control, and chaos. Combining intimate storytelling with visceral performance, The Fragile Mind invites reflection on the emotional cost of perfection—an intense, thought-provoking theatrical experience that confronts what it means to be deeply, vulnerably human.
Director: Tamara Trbaric
Technical Director: Nolan McCartan
Lighting Design: Sarah van Wouw
Music/Sound: Tamara Trbaric
Stage Manager: Sunny Lee
Assistant Stage Manager: Nicole Wang
Lighting and Sound Operator: Zoe Maschmann
Performers: Tamara Trbaric
A huge thank you to my parents for their unwavering love and support. To James, thank you for your continued guidance and encouragement. To Emily, Wlad, and my brilliant tech team, thank you for your tenacity and dedication. Lastly, thank you to six-year-old me for falling in love with performance; I carry you with me always.
Tamara Trbaric is a Croatian-Serbian-British emerging performance artist, singer, writer, and director based in Vancouver. Her practice bridges traditional and contemporary theatre, emphasizing authentic storytelling and embodied performance. Drawing from personal experiences with perfectionism and internalized pressure, she explores themes of vulnerability, identity, and the inner workings of the human mind. She aims to craft performances that inspire empathy, reflection, and dialogue, transforming deeply personal experiences into shared, emotionally resonant theatrical moments that reveal the complexity of internal struggles.
We Love You Too, Barry
We Love You Too, Barry is a narrative performance piece that explores technological addiction, AI dependency, and virtual versus real-life identity through text, video projection, and sitcom tropes. The performance is driven by the question: "How do AI chatbots impact human interaction?" The performance transforms pro-AI and anti-AI sentiment into a linear storyline, examining how developments in AI draw in individuals seeking profit, companionship, or simply satisfying curiosity. Through this narrative, the work encourages audiences to reflect on their own personal usage of AI—whether for organizing thoughts, seeking advice, generating images, correcting grammar, or casual conversation. As technology develops at an increasingly rapid pace and generative AI follows suit, the performance serves as a reminder that AI's efficiency can come with dangerous implications. The piece invites audiences to consider the balance between technological convenience and authentic human connection in an age where artificial companionship becomes ever more sophisticated and seductive.
Director: Mavrik Sun
Technical Director: Nolan McCartan
Music/Sound/Video: Mavrik Sun
Lighting Design: Sarah van Wouw
Stage Manager: Sunny Lee
Assistant Stage Manager: Nicole Wang
Lighting and Sound Operator: Zoe Maschmann
Performers: Mavrik Sun
Mavrik Sun is a multidisciplinary performance artist based in Vancouver, specializing in experimental and narrative theatre. As a Chinese immigrant, his work explores the intersection of performance and identity through fourth wall breaks, stillness, and multilingual text. Drawing on experience in theatre performance, film acting, editing, animation, digital art, and voiceover, Mavrik creates projects that blend diverse artistic practices. He uses his work as an outlet to inspire others to seek their own creative voices and push the boundaries of what performance can be.
PROGRAM SIX | March 19 & 21 | 8:45 PM | The End Stage
Prismatic + A Magical Garden
Prismatic
Choreographer: Elijah Sam
Music/Sound: Graysen Braun
Stage Manager: Dominic Santorelli
Assistant Stage Manager: Chloe Ng
Technical Director: Miranda Collard
Lighting Design: Stefanie Infantino
Lighting and Sound Operator: Stefanie Infantino
Performers: Lucy Price, Ellen Harris, Reanna Ayranto
Prismatic investigates the role of character frames, models and customs by delving into specific movement qualities in the body of the performers. Using the model of a prism, this performance features three performers and highlights them distinctly through their highly physical ways of being. Stemming from an exploration into dramatic theatre and gestural acts, Prismatic explores how the individual can bring out a character in a movement-based exploration while still retaining their sense of mutual understanding for each other. This piece will show how characters, despite their differences, are alike with each other and hold instinctive knowledge about how each exists in the world.
Elijah Sam is a queer, mixed-race, Chinese Canadian choreographer and performing artist. He grew up in Coquitlam, BC, which is the shared, ancestral territory of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Stó:lō (Stolo), and sq̓əc̓iy̓aɁɬ təməxʷ (Katzie) First Nations. Elijah enjoys working in many disciplines, including motion capture, dance, and musical theatre. In addition to being a performer, Elijah engages with the community, enjoys a good book, and teaches dance to kids. Elijah has a passion for exploring movement and is doing a kinesiology minor at SFU alongside his BFA. Thank you for coming out to support local artists!
A Magical Garden
A Magical Garden follows a heuristic mode of working—a process of making through discovery, openness, and the unknown. The performers are rooted in shared togetherness, blending actions and gestures with objects, dance, music, and text. The project highlights our lived experiences and acknowledges each other's stories as both owned and relational. Scenes drawn from daily life function as compositional materials through which meaning emerges, creating a performance language open to interpretation. This situates our view of the world as a site of reflection, emotional resonance, and appreciation for our insignificance.
Director: Oliver Lim Fusio
Technical Director: Miranda Collard
Lighting Design: Stefanie Infantino
Music/Sound: Oliver Lim Fusio
Stage Manager: Dominic Santorelli
Assistant Stage Manager: Chloe Ng
Lighting and Sound Operator: Silvana Restrepl
Collaborators/Performers: Alycea Wood, Audrey Leung, Jazal Amiri, Kyanne Lawrence, Phillip Espinosa, and Vince Jason Amit.
I’d like to thank my mom. I am alive because of her. My dad, for his lifelong labor, committed to providing a life for me and my family. To James Long, Erika Latta, and Ryan Tacata for helping me shape my worldview in the arts and being my guiding force beyond the four walls of SFU. Ultimately, to the people who make my home its own Magical Garden, Deryck, Jaeda, and Pelluchi. To every person I hold close in my life, not half of who I am would be possible without you.
Oliver Fusio is a Filipino-born performing artist living, learning, and working on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaɬ Nations. Trained in singing and movement (folk/cultural, hip-hop, contemporary, and choreography), he pairs his performance background with academic studies in performance making and devised theatre. His practice follows a heuristic mode of working––an inquiry-driven process where meaning emerges through embodied research, improvisation, and dedicated not-knowing. Rooted in themes of memory and the everyday, Oliver creates performances that draw from personal and relational experiences, inviting collaborative discovery, connection, and quiet recognition of what persists in ordinary life.
Week 2: March 31 – April 5, 2026
PROGRAM SEVEN | March 31 & April 4 | 7:30 PM | The End Stage
Think of them when the water boils + LET
Think of them when the water boils
Director: Inkara Askar
Stage Manager: Amelia Chong
Assistant Stage Manager: Anisha Tang
Lights and Sound Operator: Tina Shi
Lighting Design: Theo Seto
Performers: Xzana Nesbitt, Emery Legault
Set Construction: Miranda Collard,Czarina Agustines, Stefanie Infantino, Uroš Šanjević, and Inkara Askar
Think of them when the water boils examines the erosion of home through time, distance, and farewells. It traces the gap between memory and the present, where attempts to recreate home begin to fail. As time advances, the piece shifts from reconstruction to acceptance, revealing home not as a place that can be preserved, but as something that must be carried from within.
Inkara Askar is an interdisciplinary artist who blends acting, movement, and installation. Living and learning on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaɬ Nations. Drawing inspiration from 20th-century art movements, especially the boldness of early pop art, she explores how everyday objects can take on new and unusual emotional resonance through experiments with scale, color, and material. Her practice examines the tension between inner and outer: between personal desires and external expectations. At the heart of her work is the belief that art should interrupt routine, spark curiosity, and invite audiences to see themselves in new, unexpected, and vivid forms.
LET
Let go of the societal impositions around what it takes to walk through the world. This piece is built on the posit that it’s not about adding to ourselves, it’s about stripping away what we don’t need. How do we connect to our raw existence as a species and re-direct our attention to our core, to experience, to sensation.
Choreographer: Vivien Dang
Technical Director: Amelia Chong
Lighting Design: Theo Seto
Music/Sound: Sascha O'Neill
Stage Manager: Amelia Chong
Assistant Stage Manager: Anisha Tang
Lighting and Sound Operator: Tina Shi
Assistant Stage Manager: Anisha Tang
Vivien Dang (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian emerging dance artist who was raised and works on the traditional, ancestral, and stolen lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, otherwise known as Vancouver. She is in her 4th year of SFU's Dance program. She moves with a background in Chinese Classical dance.
PROGRAM EIGHT | March 31 & April 4 | 8:45 PM | The Alley Stage
BUFFED + Through the eyes of the blinded + JAM
BUFFED
Feel the burn. Let your sweat turn into glitter and your effort shine. BUFFED is the original program that started it all. This high-energy, total-body experience transforms athletic gesture into spectacle, breaking down strength, stamina, and showmanship one repetition at a time. Set in a glossy, VHS-tinted training space that echoes the past yet is detached from time. The work wrestles with how perception can reveal the fragility of strength and vibrancy of form. Each repetition becomes an opportunity to show off, reconsider, fight, pause, synchronize – or simply pump it up.
Choreographer: Jeya Thiessen
Technical Director: Dean Thiviege
Lighting Design: Vania Ngok
Music/Sound: Adam Smith
Stage Manager: Jesse Jiang
Assistant Stage Manager:
Lighting and Sound Operator: Oliver Medrano
Performers: Gabrielle Johnson, E(Liz)abeth Kiss, Claire Martin, Esther Silverton
Jeya Thiessen is an emerging interdisciplinary dance artist in her fourth year at Simon Fraser University, located on the unceded and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her work explores the reorientation of gesture through sensorial experience, generating immersive performance environments that engage ideas of perception, athletic culture, and bodily incoherence. Rooted in her bilingual Latin heritage, she experiences translation as a bridge to the embodied process of shifting between form and meaning. Her work continues as an evolving living inquiry into the body’s capacity for connotation, disintegration and transformation.
Through the eyes of the blinded
Choreographer: Reese Magnayon
Technical Director: Dean Thiviege
Lighting Design: Vania Ngok
Stage Manager: Jesse Jiang
Assistant Stage Manager:
Lighting and Sound Operator: Oliver Medrano
Performers: Reese Magnayon, Teddy Brubacher, Amaru Seki, Jennifer Yang, Maya Buller, Judith Hsieh, Sean Nacar
Some people of religion have doubts about their faith. Framing religion as a cult, Reese works with group choreography to convey hive mind mentality: giving into the majority or to fit within the standards. As the piece progresses, each congregant starts straying from the group as they struggle within the confines of their devotion uncovering the church's corrupt values.
Reese Magnayon (She/They) is an emerging Filipino dance artist from Burnaby, BC. Reese was raised and continues her artistic practice on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She has a background in ballet and hip hop and hopes to incorporate her training in many of her contemporary works. Reese’s works use the concept of physical and visual interaction within the dancers and the audience. Through the Eyes of the Blinded explores the thin line between her identity as a devout Christian and being a queer artist. She uses her experience within the church and displays it through movement.
JAM
JAM moves through traffic as it merges structure and sensation. Inspired by patterns on Highway One, the work interchanges through cloverleafs and diamonds. Driven by zipper merging, congestion and phantom stopping as it navigates flow, density, and speed. What appears consistent is always swiftly replacing itself. An elusive private space travels within these larger public systems, where jamming out sometimes outweighs the awareness of its open display.
Choreographer: Daisy de Kroon
Technical Director: Dean Thiviege
Lighting Design: Vania Ngok
Music/Sound: Adam Smith, Daisy de Kroon
Stage Manager: Jesse Jiang
Assistant Stage Manager:
Lighting and Sound Operator: Oliver Medrano
Performers: Lauren Butterfield, Riordan Fisher, Aleni Koorjee, Jeya Thiessen
Daisy de Kroon (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist living, working, and learning on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her practice is rooted in social dynamics and observation. As a choreographer and performer, she considers energy and vibe; in space, in body, between body and space and bodies. Driven by connections that are both specific and universal-ish, her work creates space for community and individuality. Through patterns, structure, and flow, she investigates how we move and coexist within systems. Some moments she creates are not meant for everybody to understand in the same way
PROGRAM NINE | April 1 & 5 | 7:30 PM +1:30 PM | The End Stage
Failure to Act + Girl, Dance
Failure to Act
Director: Michael Waddell
Lighting Design: Kady Brandel
Stage Manager: Ellis Cho
Assistant Stage Manager: Ayessa Macalling
Lighting and Sound operator: Chelsea Thistle
Performers: Michael Waddell and Kherl Atienza
Failure to Act (2026) is a minimalist theatre piece exploring self-reflection and professional actualization. Inspired by feelings of personal and academic stagnation, the work embodies these emotions and their accompanying anxiety. Through the medium of text, two actors examine unrealized roles within the timeline of their professional experiences. With only two performers and three beams of light, they journey toward self-forgiveness and artistic renewal.
Michael Waddell is a mature student and a multidisciplinary artist who resides in Port Coquitlam. He has worked with the Millennium Players, Foolish Productions and Newworld Theatre community groups, completed the Theatre Diploma program at Douglas College and studied at the Lyric School of Acting. He takes pride in his own particular blend of improvised and text-based compositions and is an avid boardgame collector.
Girl, DANCE!
Girl, DANCE! is an interdisciplinary work that combines film and live performance. The piece explores questions of self-belief and persistence when faced with impossible odds. Taking heavy inspiration from absurdist cinema like The Lobster and blending it with the mockumentary style of The Office, the performance follows a character named Ella—a dancer whose struggling company desperately needs funding. The ability to secure this funding falls on Ella's shoulders, leaving her to choose between the success of her company and dance career or its complete collapse. For this work, Araya draws inspiration from Bob Fosse and Fred Astaire, who transformed their perceived shortcomings into distinctive styles of expression. Following their lead, she uses her own lack of flexibility as a form of expression and liberation.
Director: Hermella Araya
Technical Director: Amelia Chong
Lighting Design: Kady Brandel
Music/Sound: Hermella Araya
Stage Manager: Ellis Cho
Assistant Stage Manager: Ayessa Macalling
Lighting and Sound Operator: Chelsea Thistel
Performers: Hermella Araya
Film Cast and Crew: Megan Battad, Greta Brand, and Calliope Chen
Special Thanks: For my family for being supportive of my dream, እወዳችኋለሁ!
Hermella Araya is an interdisciplinary performer and artist currently based in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her work explores concepts like defamiliarization and durational performance, tackling societal pressure, conformity, and expectation. Through her practice, Araya seeks to examine how these themes intersect and create art that questions and confronts the world we live in.
PROGRAM TEN | April 1 & 5 | 8:45 PM + 2:45 PM | The Alley Stage
Heirloom + Ecdysis + POV: Y/N
heirloom
Choreographer: Sonja Kwantes
Technical Director: Dean Thivierge
Lighting Design: Marianne Gagnon
Music/Sound: Sonja Kwantes
Stage Manager: Katelyn Mcdonald
Assistant Stage Manager: Dominic Santorelli
Lighting and Sound Operator: Cheryl Hsu
Performers: Sonja Kwantes
Grieving domesticity and sounds from a time in which we have not lived. Nostalgia is a form of grief. Inheriting these metaphysical concepts like an heirloom. We are heirs to grief, nostalgia, love, anger, dances. We are not given a choice in our inheritance; we carry them as we carry our bones. We cannot put them down, give them away, or destroy them. We must carry them.
Sonja Kwantes (she/her) is an emerging dance artist born in and currently residing on the Kwantlen, Katzie, Matsqui, and Semiahmoo first nations in Langley BC. Sonja grew up dancing competitively and is currently in her fourth year at Simon Fraser University’s contemporary dance program to earn her BFA. She has trained in various contemporary and modern techniques and has created over 5 choreographic works during her undergrad. Sonja’s work is grounded in the embodied archive, and she is particularly interested in the transmission of information between bodies and the memories held.
Ecdysis
Ecdysis [’ekdǝsǝs], the process of shedding old skin or casting off one’s outer layer. Under the light of the moon, between ancient trees and creeping moss, a whimsical pyre takes place. A ritual, not rooted in religion nor spirituality, but in the desire to release oneself from the physical confines of skin and bone. Exploring release as recovery, the emerging figures forgo their bodies to recover what has been lost behind the physical veil
Choreographer: Teddy Brubacher
Technical Director: Dean Thivierge
Lighting Design: Marianne Gagnon
Stage Manager: Katelyn Mcdonald
Lighting and Sound Operator: Cheryl Hsu
Assistant stage manager: Dominic Santorelli
Performers: Teddy Brubacher, Reese Magnayon, Sophie Riedl, Claire Whiteclaw, Avery Warren, Kaliyah States, Lucy Price, Rachel Brown, Riordan Fisher, Penelope Patterson, Hannah Jajic, Emillie Peer
Teddy Brubacher (he/they) is a gender-queer movement and visual artist with a fascination for the odd and unsettling arts. Teddy was born and raised in Squamish, BC, and continues his artistic practice on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tseil-Watuth Nations. Inspired by all things whimsical and queer, Teddy hopes to create art that explores the limits of the audience's imagination—and maybe discover new definitions of queer movement choreographies along the way.
POV: Y/N
You look at your screen, your own shining orbs reflecting back at you. A block of text catches
your eye: “POV: Y/N,” it reads. You raise an eyebrow. Interest piqued, you decide to
read on…
POV: Y/N is a performance about teen angst, pulled from collaborators past writing. Using cringe performance and archive-based material, this show transports you to the life of a teenager in the early 2010s. With text serving as a time machine, audience members watch performers confront past versions of themselves. POV: Y/N explores the minds of awkward teens still present in old writing and asks why do we cringe at our past?
Director: Sarah Carter
Technical Director: Dean Thivierge
Lighting Design: Marianne Gagnon
Stage Manager: Katelyn McDonald
Assistant Stage Manager: Dominic Santorelli
Lighting and Sound Operator: Cheryl Hsu
Performers: Megan Battad, Sarah Carter, Calliope Chen, Jae Gonzales, Jaime McNaughton
Special Thanks: Rosemary Morrison (collaborator, outside-eye), TJ Tan, Rose Esplen, James Long, and to the evil exes of the cast
Sarah Carter is an interdisciplinary performance artist from 100 Mile House and Vancouver. Their interests lie in exploring the audience-performer relationship and how breaking the fourth wall can be used effectively to invite audience participation and interaction, especially through immersive theatre. They love exploring the world of cringe theatre: What makes us cringe and why? Sarah is currently completing their BFA in Theatre & Performance at Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts. They are part of the Cariboo Players Theatre Troupe, and founded the 100 Mile Youth Theatre in 2024.
PROGRAM ELEVEN | April 2 & 5 | 7:30 PM | The End Stage
Emotions Embraced + Guai Shou 怪獸
Emotions Embraced
Emotions are an indispensable part of people's lives and work. The relationship between emotions and individuals is not simply one of “possession” or “expression,” but rather a dynamic, mutually constructed, and mutually fulfilling symbiotic relationship. Emotions are not “problems” to ignore but rather constitute the richness of our lives. Establishing a friendly, curious, and cooperative relationship with emotions is an important path to wisdom and an ideal life. Emotions Embraced captures those unnoticed, unexpressed emotional moments in daily life: a struggle against one's own willpower, a low point, a moment of conflict, a moment of reconciliation with negative emotions. True wisdom and meaning lie not in being unaffected by emotions, but in finding harmony between emotions and the self.
Choreographer: Yulia Liu
Technical Director: Amelia Chong
Lighting Design: Nolan McCartan
Music/Sound: Yulia Liu
Stage Manager: Hannah Azam
Assistant Stage Manager: Jordyn Young
Lighting and Sound Operator: Darwin Miller-Hogg
Performers: Yulia Liu
Yulia Liu is a dance artist who came to Canada from China four years ago to pursue advanced studies in dance at Simon Fraser University. She is proficient in classical Chinese dance, ethnic dance, and contemporary dance, with a focus on exploring the chemical reactions that emerge between different dance genres. As a dance performer who centers her practice on the development and awakening of the body, she uses dance to convey emotions and thoughts. She aspires for her dance to be unrestricted and diverse, relishing collaborations across disciplines and regions. For her, dance is the most honest manifestation of existence.
Guai Shou 怪獸
Inspired by Antonio Gramsci's words, "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters," Guai Shou 怪獸 drifts between myth, memory, movement, puppetry, music, and video projection. Comedy, combat, and ceremony intertwine as the work asks: What happens in the places between chaos and order?
The performance unfolds inside a teahouse owned by Grandma Huang and her granddaughter Rongmei. Drawing from the historical significance of "third spaces" and their representation across genres—from wuxia restaurants and Western saloons to fantasy taverns and sci-fi space cantinas—the Guai Shou Teahouse becomes a meeting point where rebels, dreamers, and survivors from different factions gather, negotiate, and rebuild amid decay.
Outside its doors, the world is shaped by decades of crisis and rebellion. The Current flows weaker each day, seized by the Tamungs and sowing resentment between different groups, including the Dongren and the Westerners. Inside, tea spills under glowing lanterns as stories weave and unravel.
The audience enters as guests of the teahouse, witnesses and participants in the slow collapse of something familiar. They find themselves immersed in a theatrical experience that feels both ancient and urgent, absurd and deeply human.
Director: Vanessa Lefan Yuen
Technical Director: Amelia Chong
Lighting Design: Nolan McCartan
Music/Sound: Vanessa Lefan Yuen
Stage Manager: Hannah Azam
Assistant Stage Manager: Jordyn Young
Lighting and Sound Operator: Darwin Miller-Hogg
Performers: Vanessa Lefan Yuen, Dawn Ka
Costume Design: Stephanie Kong, Vanessa Lefan Yuen
Special thanks for outside eyes: Cindy Kao, Erika Latta, James Long, Stephanie WongSpecial thanks movement collaborators: Vivien Dang, Aaron Klassen
Vanessa Lefan (樂凡) is a Taiwanese interdisciplinary artist based in so-called Vancouver, BC, working across sound, movement, theatre, and visual art. Blending voice, flute, and electronics with performance and storytelling, she conjures immersive worlds that function as rituals for processing, grieving, cultivating hope, and imagining new ways of co-creating the world. Through Guai Shou 怪獸, Lefan continues her exploration of myth, speculative fiction, and collective imagination, inviting audiences to suspend disbelief and despair and enter a feverish dream unfolding in the liminal space between chaos and order—not as an escape, but as a reminder of our human capacity to dream and bring those visions to life.
PROGRAM TWELVE | April 2 & 5 | 8:45 PM | The End Stage
Funky Funk + Return
Funky Funk
Funky Funk is a comedic dreamscape performance that puts a twist on traditional expectations. Working with amateurism, absurdist comedy, and audience interaction, the artist draws inspiration from Mission Impossible, The Play That Goes Wrong, comedy magician Tommy Cooper, and Britney Spears. The performance incorporates spy themes, magic tricks, circus acts, and pop star aesthetics into a research-based exploration of a central question: "When does failure become funny?"
Over months of development, the artist has analyzed audience reactions and documented the varying emotional responses throughout the performance. After endless trial and error, she invites audience members to discover the answer with her. The experience—best described as a runaway rollercoaster—guides audiences through happiness, confusion, shock, and annoyance, all wrapped in a comedic package. This research-based practice has involved careful observation of when mishaps transform into moments of delight, and how the performer's relationship with failure shapes the audience's experience. The performance challenges conventional ideas of polish and perfection, instead embracing the unpredictable energy that emerges when things go wonderfully wrong. The artist hopes every audience member arrives willing to embrace everything offered and leaves with a newfound appreciation for comedy's relationship with chaos and imperfection.
Director: Angela Peng
Technical Director: Amelia Chong
Lighting Design: Zoe Maschmann
Music/Sound: Angela Peng
Stage Manager: Darwin Miller-Hogg
Assistant Stage Manager: Oliver Medrano
Lighting and Sound Operator: Chloe Ng
Performers: Angela Peng, Megan Battad, Calliope Chen, Maryam Khosravi, Xzana Nesbitt
Special Thanks: Special thanks to my parents and Roy for always supporting me in pursuing my passion and career. To James, for providing me with insightful critiques. And myself, for my hard work and dedication.
Angela Peng's artistic identity is defined by her relationship with physical comedy, theatrical absurdity, and performative incompetence. Her performance methodology includes physical clowning, comedic timing, and anticipation. Working through research-based practice, she constantly experiments and analyzes audience responses to deepen her understanding of what makes failure funny.
Angela explores the excitement of spy films, the wonder of magic tricks, and the spectacle of pop star performances. At the heart of her work lies a personal motivation: she creates these performances as a gift to her younger self, fulfilling childhood fantasies and crafting the chaotic, joyful entertainment that would have delighted her as a child.
Return
Taking inspiration from solarpunk aesthetics, Naz explores her understanding and experience with “returning.” Returning on a personal level, as a collective, and as a species -belonging.
Choreographer: Naz Özlü
Technical Director: Amelia Chong
Lighting Design: Zoe Maschmann
Music/Sound: Naz Özlü, Adelya Mullasheva, "Kara Toprak" by islandman
Stage Manager: Darwin Miller-Hogg
Assistant Stage Manager: Oliver Medrano
Lighting Operator: Chloe Ng
Sound Operator: Chloe Ng
Performers: Neve Fivoranti, Naz Özlü, Madeleine Quennec, Kaliyah States, Claire Whitelaw
Special Thanks: Jennifer McLeish-Lewis, Samira Banihashemi
Naz Özlü is an emerging Turkish dance artist originally from Turkiye and Vancouver Island, and is currently based in the unceded territories of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh' (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səlílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xwməθkwəyə̓m (Musqueam) First Nations. Naz is interested in dance and art as a way of reimagining our futures through an environmentalist lens. She gets a lot of her inspiration from solarpunk, the cosmos, the Pacific Northwest landscape, traditional Turkish rug motifs and more-than-human beings. She is in constant experimentation of how her fiber arts practice finds its place in her dance practice.