Promoters hustle new venues

Some shows, festivals move; others stumped

Stuart Derdeyn
The Province

The closing of Vancouver civic theatres due to the city workers' strike has arts festivals and concert promoters trying to decide whether to stay put and hope for a speedy settlement or hustle to find replacement venues for scheduled performances.

Among major cultural events affected -- or likely to be -- by the closures are Festival Vancouver, the Pride In Art Festival, Illuminares Lantern Procession and rock gigs.

The first local arts group to react to an impending strike was the Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre company, which moved its production Cowboy Versus Samurai from the Roundhouse Community Centre to the Firehall Theatre earlier this month.

Public Dreams Society, producers of this Saturday's Illuminares Lantern Procession at Trout Lake, also relocated its lantern-making workshops from community centres to other non-disputed outlets. The procession will still take place Saturday night without the use of Trout Lake Community Centre. The fireworks over Trout Lake that traditionally close the event have been cancelled.

Yesterday, Festival Vancouver announced a number of changes.

"We're not planning on cancelling anything at this time," said Festival Vancouver's George Laverock. "We're moving Bobby McFerrin from the Orpheum to the Centre [for the Performing Arts] on Friday night and we're phoning all ticketholders to assign them new seats.

"The other two events that are affected are our gala opera opening and our Sounds of Asia weekend at the Roundhouse. We're just in the process of finding new venues for these events and should be announcing it sometime tomorrow and on www.festivalvancouver.ca. The availability of venues becomes pretty tight."

The lack of alternatives has the inaugural Pride In Art Festival with nowhere to go if the Roundhouse Community Centre stays closed.

"The board of Pride in Art is meeting to discuss what to do and re-evaluate the situation," said Joanne Ursino. "We remain hopeful and won't make any firm decisions for another few days as we've been given very different pieces of information, depending on who we talk to."

Ursino advised people to visit the event website at www.prideinart.ca for updates.

The Powell Street Festival's production schedule also will be affected, but the event will go on.

Civic theatres closed due to the strike are the Orpheum, Queen Elizabeth, Centennial Theatre and community centres such as Britannia and Riley Park.

© The Vancouver Province 2007