The Cultch announces the inaugural Warrior Festival, which will take place on all three Cultch stages from April 16 to May 11, 2025.

This spring, The Cultch is thrilled to present a new festival with five innovative, status-quo toppling shows from some of Canada’s most boundary-breaking artists and companies. These five shows are powerful, courageous works of theatre which strengthen acts of defiance with radical joy. They embody the spirit of the new Warrior Festival—a festival created to spotlight the brave, liberating and political work of theatre artists.

The Warrior Festival will begin April 16–19, 2025, with Katey Hoffman and Cheyenne Rouleau’s sketch comedy show Lxdy Parts: Babes—which goes on sale today! Known for their irreverent and bodacious comedy, Hoffman and Rouleau return to their popular series with brand new life experiences after becoming parents.

Close on its heels, the festival’s headlining show Dance Nation will fill the York Theatre from April 23–May 11, 2025 (newly extended dates released today). This 2019 Pulitzer finalist has its Vancouver premiere with Mindy Parfitt’s The Search Party—an award-winning Vancouver company known for its impactful stagings of contemporary works. This exploration of ambition, adolescence, and friendship is a raucous theatrical experience featuring an ensemble cast of Vancouver’s best actors.

Québec’s acrobatic duo Agathe et Adrien join the festival for a limited run, April 24–27, 2025. Their show, N.Ormes, flips the script on gender conventions in the circus world. This show presents a unique opportunity for audiences to get up close and personal—playing in The Cultch’s intimate Historic Theatre.

Finishing the festival with laughter and conversation, Toronto’s Bad Muse Collective presents Love You Wrong Time in the Historic Theatre. In contrast, Vancouver’s Zee Zee Theatre presents Every Day She Rose in the Vancity Culture Lab. Both shows run May 1–11. These two personal and political shows examine perception bias and stereotypes through the lens of friendship and shared experience. They are natural conversation pieces with each other, filled with compassion, wit and laughter.

Come and be a part of the Warrior Festival at The Cultch, where joy is an act of resistance, and every artist is a warrior!

Cue the rebellion; the show is about to begin.

“Since our founding in 1973, The Cultch has been celebrating the work of women and gender-expansive artists. This year, we continue that work by launching the Warrior Festival—a festival to celebrate artists creating powerful, liberating work that elevates the conversations happening on and off the stage. This festival, an evolution of our Femme Festival, will be a platform for radical creativity that challenges the status quo, redefines power, and amplifies voices that have been marginalized.” —Heather Redfern (Cultch Executive Director) and Nicole McLuckie, (Cultch Associate Executive Director)