From December 21, 2021, to February 1, 2022, the Massy Arts Gallery will host a new window installation by Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator Laiwan. In How Water Remembers, Laiwan collaborates with Karlene Harvey, Yao Xiao, T’uy’tanat-Cease Wyss, Angela Danyluk, and Sean Cao in a project that explores the path of water and future rising sea levels, with relation to cultural stories, and includes a socially engaged, site-specific exploration through 2022 in Vancouver’s Chinatown, to build imagination and consciousness for a return of possible False Creek mudflat inhabitants to find a home among us.

Laiwan is a visual artist, writer, activist, thinker, speaker, and educator in Vancouver, British Columbia. It has been said that she is reticent and modest, shying away from the spectacular, and these traits may belie the cosmopolitan and eclectic sources of her thought, as what she produces is so often surprising, even in its exploration of the ephemeral.

More exhibition information here.

December 21, 2021, to February 1, 2022
Massy Arts Gallery
23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver, BC

Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists highlights the artist’s attention to the material and symbolic vocabularies of print and lens-based media between 1980 and 2000 and features her early interventions into the logic of the book form and the ideology of historical and encyclopedic genres. The exhibition title references processes related to printmaking, while at the same time speaking to the absent narratives, redacted perspectives, and critical refusals that are latent in official publications.

This exhibition is presented by the University of British Columbia’s Belkin Art Gallery from January 7 to April 10, 2022, and is guest curated by Amy Kazymerchyk. Find out more information here.

Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists
January 7 to April 10, 2022
Belkin Art Gallery

From January 27 to February 20, 2022, Fado: The Saddest Music in the World by Elaine Ávila returns to the Firehall stage after its wildly successful, sold-out run in 2019. Part concert, part theatre, the story of a young woman confronting her country’s Fascist past and her own identify is interwoven with the heartbreaking national music of Portugal, known as Fado, which means “fate.”

Fado: The Saddest Music in the World is produced by the Firehall Arts Centre and Puente Theatre.

Click here for more information and ticket purchase.

Fado: The Saddest Music in the World
January 27 to February 20, 2022
Firehall Arts Centre

Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer, by writer and director Kevin Loring, is coming to The Cultch Theatre in March 2022.

Little Red Warrior is the last remaining member of the Little Red Warrior First Nation. One day he is arrested for assault and trespassing on his own Ancestral Lands after he discovers construction there and attacks the developer in a fit of rage. In jail he meets his court-appointed lawyer, Larry, who agrees to help Little Red get back his Lands. Larry convinces his wife, Desdemona, to allow Little Red to move into their basement while they sort out his case. Desdemona and Little Red strike up an uneasy relationship as, despite herself, Desdemona is increasingly hypnotized by Little Red’s “Indigenous charisma.” While sparks fly between them, Larry prepares to fight for Little Red’s Land Rights. When an unexpected intervention by a greater power occurs in the court case, nothing will ever be the same.

The play will be showing March 3 to 13, 2022. Find out more information and grab your tickets here.

Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer
The Cultch Theatre
Vancouver, BC
March 3 to 13, 2022

Shadow Theatre in Edmonton presents Cottagers and Indians by Drew Hayden Taylor from March 9 to 27, 2022.

Cottagers and Indians explores the politics and issues surrounding a real-life event still occurring in the Kawartha Lakes region of Central Ontario. An Indigenous man, Arthur Copper, has taken it upon himself to repopulate the nearby lakes with wild rice, known amongst the Anishnawbe as Manoomin, much to the disapproval of the local non-Indigenous cottagers, Maureen Poole in particular. She feels the plant interferes with boating, fishing, swimming, and is generally an eyesore that brings down the property values of her cottage and those of her neighbours. Drew Hayden Taylor’s play is a powerful dramatization of contemporary confrontations taking place between environmentalism and consumerism, Indigenous and non-Indigenous sensibilities.

Cottagers and Indians
Shadow Theatre
Edmonton, AB
March 9 to 27, 2022

In April 22, the Nanaimo Theatre Group presents Jacob Richmond‘s Legoland, a contemporary Vaudeville routine complete with puppets, multimedia, and gangster-rap.

Click here for more information and ticket purchase.

April 2022
Legoland
Nanaimo Theatre Group

Theatre Orangeville presents Drew Hayden Taylor’s Crees in the Caribbean from June 1 to 19, 2022. This play tells the story of two middle-aged First Nations’ seniors, Evie and Cecil, on their very first trip out of the country to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary. Cecil is sure that everyone is being nice to him because there is more to this trip than he has been told. Evie has her own agenda. The story of two imperfect people who are perfect together and an unlikely friendship that takes them back to their younger days. A heart-warming comedy from one of Canada’s leading First Nations playwrights and humourists.

More information and ticket purchase here.

Crees in the Caribbean
Theatre Orangeville
Orangeville, ON
June 1 to 19, 2022