Vancouver Moving Theatre (VMT) is an award-winning professional multi-arts company co-founded in the Downtown Eastside
(1983) by Terry Hunter (Executive Director) and Savannah Walling (Artistic Director), co-founding members of the Mime Caravan
(1973-74) and the avant-garde movement collective Terminal City Dance
(1975-83) which went on to became the Vancouver Dance Centre.
Situated on unceded Coast Salish territories, the Downtown Eastside is made up overlapping historic districts and is home to one of Canada’s largest Indigenous “unofficial urban reserves”, the second largest historical Chinatown in North America, and to a succession of immigrant residential communities.
PRODUCTION HISTORY
For over fifteen years, VMT toured with drum dances and masked dance-dramas
The Festival Characters, Drum Mother’s Gifts, Samarambi:
Pounding of the Heart, Ab audire and
Blood Music. Seasoned professionals on the festival and school touring circuits, VMT presented over 4,000 performances to over half a million spectators
(North America, Australia, Asia, and Europe), Drum Dance Workshops and Integrated Performer Training.
VMT has co-produced with partners: Young People’s Theatre (
Luigi’s Kitchen, Hot Music/Cool Tales: The Art and Science of Sound); innovative interdisciplinary mainstage adaptations of classic literature,
Bah Humbug! (2010-2020), Bharata Natyam-based
Tales from the Ramayana; and award-winning and nominated
The Good Person of Setzuan, Sucker Falls: A Musical about Demons of the Forest and the Soul, Crime and Punishment and
The Idiot.
After 2000, VMT shifted focus to professionally produced, pioneering arts-based community development projects tailored with, for and about the Downtown Eastside community, and co-presented with local, regional and national partners. Highlights include the
Strathcona Artist at Home Festival (1999-2004); multi-disciplinary annual flagship
Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival (2004-present), a twelve day festival that features hundreds of artists and residents at over one hundred events at over forty-five venues throughout the Downtown Eastside
; In the Heart of a City: The Downtown Eastside Community Play (2003)
, co-produced with Carnegie Community Centre, over eighty community actors performed to sold-house houses and standing ovations; the giant shadow screen production
We Are All In This Together:The Shadows Project – Addiction and Recovery (2005-07); clown-based
A Downtown Eastside Romeo and Juliet (2008); puppet and promenade-style
The Minotaur Dreams (2011); tributes to the East End’s Black, Indigenous, Japanese, and Ukrainian communities:
Spirit Rising Festival (2011),
East End Blues and All That Jazz (2008-2018);
Storyweaving (2012);
Bread & Salt (2013)
; Against the Current (2015);
The Big House community gatherings and cultural feasts (2010-2015);
Realms of Refuge evolving gallery (2016); and the national tour of
Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way (2018), in collaboration with Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners across the country.
VMT’s wide-ranging activities include partnering with multiple arts and non-arts organizations including
Train of Thought national tour,
TRACKS: 7th Canadian Community Play Symposium (Vancouver and Enderby),
Downtown Eastside Artfare Institutes leadership training in community-engaged arts;
Artists in the Atrium Indigenous Art Market & Showcase;
Black Strathcona interactive media project; public art installations
Survivors Totem Pole (Sacred Circle Society), canoe landings with protocol (Pulling Together Canoes Society). As an associate partner, VMT has partnered on innovative productions: the chamber opera
MISSING (City Opera Vancouver and Pacific Opera Victoria), teen suicide prevention play
Beneath the Surface (Imagi’Nation Collective), and
Inheritance: A Pick the Path Experience (Alley Theatre and Touchstone Theatre).
Over its thirty-seven year history, VMT has partnered with hundreds of arts and non-arts organizations: from the
Canada Project and
Nordisteaterlabattorium/
Odin Teatret (Denmark) to the
LA Poverty Department (Los Angeles); from
Jumblies Theatre + Arts and
Native Earth Performing Arts (Toronto) to
Théâtre Cercle Molière (Winnipeg); from
Runaway Moon Theatre to the
En’owkin Centre,
Penticton First Nation (BC); from
SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and
Full Circle First Nations Performance to
Alley Theatre, Firehall Arts Centre, NeWorld Theatre, Ruby Slippers, and
Touchstone Theatre; from
Mandala Arts & Culture to the
Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden and
Powell Street Festival; from the
Carnegie Community Centre and the
Association of United Ukrainian Canadians to the
Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre and
Centre of Integration of African Immigrants; and from
City Opera Vancouver to the
Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation (Metro Vancouver).
AWARDS
VMT co-productions and its directors and partners have received multiple
Jessie Richardson Awards, including Outstanding Production (
The Good Person of Setzuan and
Crime and Punishment), Significant Achievement; Significant Achievement in Spectacle Design; Outstanding Innovative and Immersive Storytelling
(Inheritance) and a nomination for Outstanding outreach and community engagement demonstrating the importance of culture, tradition, community, family and identities
(Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way).
Savannah Walling was the inaugural recipient (1988) of the
Halla Kaiulani Keali’inohomoku Memorial Research Choreographer-in-Residence (Cross-Cultural Dance Resources, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA).
VMT's co-production
Bread & Salt was shortlisted for the 2014 Governor General’s History Awards for Excellence in Community Programming.
Vancouver Moving Theatre received the 2008
City of Vancouver Cultural Harmony Award in recognition for their significant contribution to arts, community bridge building and cultural harmony, and co-awarded the 2016
TELLUS Innovation Award (Beneath the Surface). VMT’s Terry Hunter and Savannah Walling are recipients of the 2008
British Columbia Community Achievement Award, the 2009
Vancouver Mayor’s Award – Community-Engaged Art, and the 2013
Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.
PUBLICATION
From the Heart of a City: Community-engaged Theatre and Music Productions from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside: 2002-2013