DBLSPK hosts up to three multilingual artists per year and highlights the linguistic and cultural diversity of our theatre community.

By collaborating with artists who work with elements of translation and/or multilingual creation, we examine the relationship between language and culture within performance. During DBLSPK, resident artists have the opportunity to work in the studio with a team of collaborators and then present excerpts of their new multilingual/translated work at a workshop-setting public performance. The artist then engages with the audience in a conversation post-show, taking a deep dive into the research topics related to their project.

Since its inception, DBLSPK has featured 17 languages, such as Cantonese, Spanish, Punjabi, Hungarian and more!

Do you have an idea for DBLSPK? Let us know!

Are you a multilingual artist interested in doing a DBLSPK residency? Click here.

UPCOMING DBLSPK

Join us on December 4th for a work-in-progress reading of Draw Me a Home by elika mojtabaei, followed by a community discussion. Draw Me a Home is a poetic retelling of memories of a war, surrealist stories of lives lived elsewhere, a peeling away of the dust blanketing a shared history. Based on interviews with people who experienced the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) as children, the piece explores themes of displacement, survival, and the echoes of a fractured homeland. Through fragmented narratives swaying between English and Farsi, Draw Me a Home evokes the resilience of a people caught between the violence of history and the tenderness of personal remembrance with moments of joy buried just beneath the rubble—an invitation to witness, imagine, and feel the weight of a past that is both distant and ever-present.

Date: December 4th, 2024 at 6pm
Location: The Montalbano Family Theatre (Level 8)
of the Vancouver Public Library, 350 W Georgia St, Vancouver.

Please note that this event will be ASL interpreted!