The Cultchivating The Fringe Award

As part of a longstanding relationship between The Cultch and The Vancouver International Fringe Festival, The Cultch created the “Cultchivating the Fringe Award”. This unique award is granted once a year to a performance from the Vancouver Fringe Festival that demonstrates a strong potential for further development. 

Founded in 2009, the award includes a presentation of the winning production in the following season of The Cultch’s performance series, as well as rehearsal time in The Cultch’s Vancity Culture Lab. The award has been a huge success in providing opportunities for artists to develop their existing work, while providing the community a chance to experience what these performers have to offer.

2011 Winner: Grim and Fischer – a deathly comedy in full-face mask

Created by Wonderheads

Death meets his match in Mrs. Fischer, a tenacious granny not ready to breathe her last. In this surreal work of imagination and whimsy, one woman’s will to survive takes imaginative flight in a showdown with Death himself!

2010 Winner: Wicked Shorts

Presented as part of The Cultch’s 11/12 Season, Wicked Shorts is comprised of four short plays set at a local Vancouver coffee shop:
Matador Love: the blind date you never dreamed would happen to you.
Rendez-Vous: the inner dialogue of a waiter serving helpless couples on date nights.
You’ll Probably Come Back: all about “families, death and nose bleeds.”
Monsters in the Closet: answers the question: Do you tell your date that your father is a Cyclopes? 

From playwrights Morwyn Brebner, Kathleen Oliver, Christopher Cook, and Seth Soulstein in a performance from Alley Theatre, directed by Marisa Smith, Wicked Shorts mixes outrageous plots with intriguing characters to deliver a unique journey through romance, comedy and suspense.

2009 Winner: Fish Face

Fish Face, as presented in The Cultch’s 10/11 Season, is a tale of healing, forgiveness and above all else, transformation. A young woman, about to be wed, loses her magical ring at sea. In her journey to get it back she finds she must first battle the sea’s evil forces before eventually finding the road to her destiny.

In this one woman show from The Quickening Theatre, playwright and performer Ginette Mohr combines dance, music and puppetry to transform into the six characters that make up Fish Face. Under direction of co-creator Kate Fenton, Ginette creates a magical world of fantasy to awe and inspire adults and children of all ages.