Living Things International Arts Festival

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The Living Things International Arts Festival in Kelowna, British Columbia, is an annual winter festival of celebrated contemporary live performances/art and animated films from across Canada and around the world. In keeping with the festival title these performances frequently involve the use of theatrical objects. Festival performances, installations and events are selected based on a curatorial priority focusing on the use of objects – both theatrical objects (masks and puppets) as well as non-theatrical objects (found, utilitarian and others) – combined with the degree and nature of the audience interactivity proposed by the artist. Whether it’s theatre, dance, music, puppetry, mask, animated objects or visual art, we present work that profiles the artist’s relationship with the non-human environment and the audience. Regardless of the ‘content’, these acts-with-objects enact a deeply human drama: the animate and inanimate interpenetrate and objects come to life, or life comes to an object. From death to life and back. With our collective imagination we gently dismantle barriers and exercise a playful feeling of awe and respect for all that is non-human. Serious play.