Tremors Festival 2025

About Tremors ’25

Rumble Theatre is proud to announce the return of Tremors Festival, a three-night bash of experimental and interdisciplinary live performance happening June 6–8, 2025. Five daring new works from across Canada converge at Progress Lab 1422, inviting you into an evening of sci-fi, fantasy, hip-hop, and the thing of dreams. With a vibe that’s equal parts theatre, community shindig, and art party, this biennial festival will light up East Vancouver with new and in-progress works by some of the country’s most exciting theatre makers.

From poetic space memes to absurdist spirits, immersive lullabies to fun dream-games, this year’s festival asks audiences to explore transitions, dreams, and the space in between.

It all kicks off with TREMOLO: Tremors Launch Party on May 25, featuring excerpts from a new experimental work from Elio Zarrillo (If We Be Friends) followed by a special cross-disciplinary presentation with Little Chamber Music of Fantasy Vignettes by Erin James.

Featuring New Works by

Cameron Peal
Christine Genier
Kern Albert & Donna-Michelle St. Bernard
Howard Dai
Paige Louter

Ticketing – How to watch shows at Tremors?

Each show is performed every night of the festival; audiences can choose between one of two tracks that run simultaneously:

Track 1

Dear Star Trek (Christine Genier)

Nod (Paige Louter)

Dream Machine (Howard Dai)

Track 2

Panoptikon (Kern Albert & Donna-Michelle St. Bernard)

Pelmet & Sables (Cameron Peal)

Dream Machine (Howard Dai)

One ticket gets you three shows (Dream Machine is experienced by the entire audience)

Can’t decide on which track? Choose “SURPRISE ME” and roll the dice when you pick up your ticket to leave it all to fate.

Want to see them all?  Attending two nights will allow you to catch all the shows.

Performances begin at 7:00 pm (but come early for the bar and games!).

Launch Party: TREMOLO

Date: May 25, 2025
Location: Progress Lab Studio
Time: Doors open at 4:30 pm
Tickets: pay-what-you-decide (each event sold separately)

• 5:00 pm – If We Be Friends by Elio Zarrillo (excerpts) 
• Break – FREE TACOS FOR ALL! 
• 7:00 pm – Fantasy Vignettes by Erin James, a concert presented by Little Chamber Music

For more information on TREMOLO please click here.

Festival Programming

Pelmet and Sables by Cameron Peal

~”A brief moment that would make sense (if it could) but it can’t (even though there is effort).” ~

This is a play for two actors. The characters are two non-human spirits who set out to discover what it means to be human by experiencing death. For them, death is only a vague concept because neither of them can die, despite how hard they try to find out. And they definitely do try. The show is an absurd, surrealist comedy looking to express grief, life, death, and the way that language falls short of the experiences of life.

Cameron Peal – Writer, Director
Ivy Charles – Co-director
Sherine Menes – Performer
L Danger – Performer

About the Creator

Cameron Peal (he/they) is a Vancouver based (Musqueam, Squamish, and Tseil-Waututh territories) theatre artist, from the Nisga’a Nation of Northwest BC. He is currently the Indigenous Outreach Coordinator at The Cultch. His current passion is in exploring the abstract; “how can I express something beyond the boundaries of what’s literal, what’s already clear?” His work looks to blur the boundaries between art forms and genres.

To date he has worked as an actor, director, writer, dancer, in community outreach, some minor producing, and offered dramaturgical support to friends and colleagues for film and theatre from time to time. Studio 58 graduate.

Dear Star Trek by Christine Genier

~A teasing breakdown of Star Trek, Representation, and the promise of the Prime Directive.~

Dear Star Trek. A love letter with memes. And some notes. Christine Genier takes us on a journey through the pleasures and pains of pop culture and the final frontier from an Indigenous perspective. A life long Trekkie, Christine mixes her powerful and humourous storytelling with memes in a fun, teasing breakdown of Star Trek, Representation, and The Problem with Chakotay.

Christine Genier – Writer/Performer
Jacob Zimmer – Collaborator
Nora Paton – Tech Director

About the Creator

Christine Genier – Poet, performer, writer, broadcaster, and language keeper – takes us on a journey through the pleasures, impact and obligations in pop culture media from her perspective as a fan and Indigenous woman.

A life long Trekkie, Christine mixes her powerful and humorous storytelling with memes in a fun, teasing breakdown of Star Trek, Representation, and the promise of the Prime Directive.”

Panoptikon by Kern Albert & Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

~Lend me some sugar. I am your neighbour.~

Panoptikon aims to illuminate the experience(s) of incarceration. Based on first hand accounts, the composition comprises monologue, spoken word and hip hop in a series of snapshots about isolation, aggression, softness and sandwiches.

Donna-Michelle St. Bernard – Producer, Performer, Co-Creator
Kern Albert – Co-Creator, Performer
Shanae Sodhi – Director, Producer
Makambe K. Simamba – Dramaturge
Stephon Smith – Sound Designer
Brianna Bernard – Lightning Designer
Nawa Nicole Simon – Movement Coordinator
Kareem Vaude – Performer
Nicci Pryce – Performer

About the Creators

Donna-Michelle St. Bernard aka Belladonna the Blest is an emcee, playwright and agitator. Her playwriting is focused in the 54ology: The First Stone, Diggers, Give It Up, The Smell of Horses, Just Now, Click Click, Cake, Sound of the Beast, A Man A Fish, Salome’s Clothes, Dark Love and Gas Girls. Other offerings include theatre for young audiences, opera libretti, collaborative works and weird reflections. As director, she has worked on The F Word (Cheesman/Miranda), Our Fathers, Sons, Lover and Little Brothers (Simamba), Job’s Wife (Nolan), Oops! (Feld). DM is currently an associate artist at lemonTree Creations, artistic director of New Harlem Productions. She is co-editor with Yvette Nolan of the Playwrights Canada Press anthologies Refractions: Solo and Refractions: Scenes, as well as editor of Indian Act: Residential School Plays.

Kern Albert is a poet, emcee and actor. Originally from Trinidad, Kern comes to Toronto by way of London, England and Brisbane, Australia where he spent time both among the colonizers and the native Aboriginals. He has lent his world-worn gaze to the stage as an actor in The Dutchman (lemonTree), Prison Skin (New Harlem). As a playwright his works include The Last Pig in Afghanistan and Roominhouse (with DM St. Bernard). As a vocalist, Kern ran with hip hop ensemble The Dope Poet Society, then with Seeds Sown, followed by a stint as a drummer with the Awakening. He has been known to operate lights, build sets and offer dramaturgy.

Dream Machine by Howard Dai

~In this world, dreams are your currencies and imagination is your most useful tool; the more you dream, the richer you are! But is it all as simple as it seems?~

This show is heavily inspired by Taiwanese variety / game TV shows. Through the gesture and form of a lottery draw, the work seeks to explore the parallel between immigration and gambling: The process of immigration, the immigrant’s wish for their children, and the sacrifice they have to make. It is an immersive experience that will directly summon the audience’s dreams and aspirations that may be present in their life, or have long forgotten about. I want to curate a space where players meet each other through their dreams, and uplift each other with their ambitions.

Howard Dai – Creator, Performer

About the Creator

Howard Dai is a Taiwanese actor and theatre artist based in so-called Vancouver whose work has been seen across Canada. His performances and creations have existed in theatre, films, public spaces, Zoom screens, Google Sheets, automated phone calls, interactive websites, and virtual reality. He was most recently seen onstage in Halifax, Ottawa, and Stratford. Howard was mentored by Charles Douglas in movement and performance capture. He is a member of the Five Blessings Collective, an associate artist with rice & beans theatre, and holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from SFU School for the Contemporary Arts (www.howarddai.com)

Nod by Paige Louter

~An immersive theatre experience to lullaby your brain, caffeinate your heart, and manifest your dreams. Hopefully they’re nice ones.~

I am drawn to creating work that has a seed in my own life but that grows into something bigger and weirder that can delight, arrest, transform, and sometimes challenge.

I’m deeply interested in experimenting with processes that are responsive to my shifting health and energy capacities, and how that can positively impact the quality of my work and the way an audience experiences it.

I’m also interested in poking at the idea of comparative suffering, and how we can better support both the people in our lives who are struggling daily with health issues such as fatigue, and those who might just be having a really bad day after a sleepless night. I think there’s room for both!

Paige Louter – Creator/Performer
June Fukumura – Dramaturg
Shona Struthers – Sound Designer/Composer
Phil Miguel – Lighting Designer
Karen Hines – Outside Eye

About the Creator

Paige Louter is a queer theatre creator and producer based in so-called Vancouver. She holds an MA in Drama and Theatre from the University of Galway, and is pursuing an intimacy direction practice alongside her work as a dramaturg, performer, and writer. Credits include producing The Café (ITSAZOO/Aphotic) and Sunrise Betties (ITSAZOO), and performing in Twelfth Night (Tottering Biped) and Coarse: The Brontes (Sarah Deller). Year-round, they work as ITSAZOO Productions’ Co-Artistic Producer and Currently Arts’ Operations Manager. Upcoming: solo show God Joke Play and assistant directing Meeting (ITSAZOO/Pacific Theatre/Neworld Theatre.)