Arts and Culture

‘Extraordinary experiences for adventurous people’ as Living Things Fest returns

Arts event back after year of cancellation

A festival of inspiration, entertainment, and performance to provoke thought and conversation returns to Kelowna next month after it was cancelled last year due to COVID-19.

The Living Things Festival returns for its sixth installment in January. It is put on by UBCO's Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and Inner Fish Performance Co.

“It’s for the adventurous, it’s people who are interested in the unfamiliar, curious about something that looks exciting but don’t know what it is,” Founder Neil Cadger said. “It’s extraordinary experiences for adventurous people.”

Various elements will be on show downtown from Jan. 14 to Jan. 30 at the Mary Irwin Theatre, Black Box Theatre, and outdoors in front of the Rotary Centre for the Arts.

It will feature performers and artists from France, Montreal, Vancouver, the U.S., and Okanagan Valley, delivering work in theatre, music, dance, and performance art.

Cadger said some of the performances and exhibits address pressing and important issues right now.

“That’s part of the terrain of the artist, is engaging with the present moment in a way that captures our attention,” he said. “We’re curious about this other way of seeing things that someone brings, that’s what artists bring, they allow us to look at things differently.”

Cadger said having this festival return and allowing in-person interaction creates both excitement and curiosity.

“When we gather together and we look at art together we ask questions together. That accountable physical presence, sitting beside someone who you may not know from the same city experiencing something that might be challenging, there’s an excitement to that but it’s risky too,” he said.

“It’s not about breaking your head or trying to learn something, you’re going to experience something you haven’t experienced before, and it will be a good experience."

All relevant public health guidelines to COVID-19 will be in effect.

This year’s lineup features Something is Rotten, The Living Things Cabaret, Sounds Like Things – An Experiment in Music, an Improvisational Dance & Music Workshop, Capitalism Works for Me, TRUE/FALSE, I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron 我咽下一枚铁做的月亮, Mutatis Mutandis and Looks Like Sounds.

Tickets can be found online.

Published 2021-12-29 by Connor Chan

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