The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival has appointed an interim managing director who embraces its vision of expanding audiences’ sense of the world. Boomer Stacey, a former executive director of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, is filling in for Annie Clarke during her one-year parental leave.
Stacey is a former executive director of International Performing Arts (2007-2010) and the Milk International Children’s Festival of the Arts (2000 to 2006). From 2023 to 2025, he was artistic producer at Boca del Lupo.
“I’ve been very fortunate to have worked so much of my career in national and international pools,” Stacey said on the PuSh festival website. “I think a global context is vital in order to be able to better understand our own selves, to provide a reflection point on how we exist in this world, and as an entry point into a diversity of lived experiences. And it takes a certain kind of bravery to open yourself to that—which is inherent in the ’26 tagline of ‘culturally fearless’.”
At the same time, Stacey maintained that it’s also “essential to provide an opportunity to provide an opportunity for local and national artists to have their work experienced within a global context”.
He pointed out that the festival has a responsibility to “present the gifts of global artistic expression” to help audiences navigate a world in a constant state of flux.
“I think a large part of my role is to figure out how to solve and support the logistical puzzles of what it takes to bring this work, these artists to Vancouver, with the realities of ever increasing expenses, a fragile cultural ecosystem, global political tensions and pluralistic ideologies, etc.,” Stacey added.
He describes himself as “a mixed-blood settler/immigrant with roots extending to Cornwall (England), Sri Lanka, and the Nederlands”.
PuSh adds board members
In 2003, Norman Armour, then of Rumble Productions, and former Touchstone Theatre artistic director Katrina Dunn co-founded the PuSh festival to bring international and local artists together. The board appointed Gabrielle Martin to oversee programming 2021 following the departure of Armour’s successor, Joyce Rosario. An aerial dance artist and choreographer, Martin successfully steered the festival’s programming through the pandemic while retaining its global orientation.
Stacey served on the board of the PuSh festival prior to becoming interim managing director.
Meanwhile, the PuSh festival has announced the appointment of three directors: Reneltta Arluk, Susan Bennett; and Vanessa Kwan.
Arluk is the founder of Akpik Theatre—the only professional Indigenous theatre company in the Northwest Territories. She is an Inuvialuk, Gwich’in and Denesuline, Cree artist, as well as the senior manager for policy, protocols and strategic initiatives of Indigenous ways and decolonization at the National Gallery of Canada. She became the first Inuk and Indigenous woman to direct at the Stratford Festival.
Bennett is the author or editor of nine books and a professor emeritus at the University of Calgary. A past president of the Association of Canadian Theatre Research, she is considered a leading scholar on contemporary performance and women in theatre.
Kwan is director and curator of galleries and exhibitions at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. In this role, Kwan has expanded perceptions about what a gallery can be by introducing live performances, supporting educational opportunities, and providing a platform for artists working across different disciplines at the on-campus Libby Leshgold Gallery.
For more information about the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, visit the website. Follow Pancouver on X @PancouverMedia and on Instagram @PancouverMedia.
