Our Mission

Our work is focused on fostering possible futures: the next generation of artists, the next wave of companies. We work with emerging theatre makers because fostering new talent is the best guarantee of a healthy future. Our work explores new ideas. Through our productions we have a unique focus on speculative fiction: exploring important ideas about what is happening in the world right now, through an intelligent eye on the near future or alternate past. Through the rEvolver Festival we present new work by emerging artists with a focus on formal innovation expressed through experimentation in untried or risky content, issue or idea, writing style, genre, and staging.

About UPINTHEAIR THEATRE

Upintheair Theatre was formed by Daniel Martin and David Mott in 1999. After producing a series of sell-out Fringe hits, the company launched the Walking Fish Festival in 2003 as a way of developing links and relationships among emerging theatre makers in Vancouver. Walking Fish became a key event in the Vancouver calendar for artists at the beginning stages of their careers. In nine years, over 400 artists participated in the production of 80 original, Canadian works. In 2010, we launched a larger two-week festival with a national scope, Neanderthal Arts. Neanderthal incorporated the Walking Fish Festival and full length shows from local and national emerging professional companies and artists. Its success spurred a period of intense growth, bringing onboard new and increased public and private investment, and launching the company onto the national stage. In 2013 Upintheair reinvented Neanderthal as the rEvolver Theatre Festival and moved from July to May. There is no other platform in Vancouver uniquely dedicated to offering professional presenting opportunities to emerging theatre makers.

Upintheairs second major activity stream is the creation and production of new work. We have created shows for theatres, parking lots, abandoned warehouses, and campervans. Notable hits have included Wedgie (the only original, locally created script to win Presentation House Theatre's On The House co-productionaward), Men of the World, 120bpm,and Wagabondi Ho! In October 2013 we were professionally presented for the first time, as our production of Inside The Seed by Jason Rothery opened The Cultch’s 2013-14 season to strong houses and rave critical reviews, and garnered five Jessie Richardson Theatre Award Nominations, winning for Outstanding Direction and Best New Play. We are currently in the process of adapting British “Weird Fiction” writer China Mieville’s acclaimed detective novel The City and The City as an audience-interactive-site-specific roving performance, to be produced in the fall of 2015 in partnership with The Only Animal.