Theatre SKAM’s family-friendly live performance festival in Victoria
SKAM’s biggest live performing arts festival to date! Now with four separate tours
SKAMpede, Theatre SKAM’s annual performing arts festival in Victoria, returns this summer on July 16th – 18th. Now in its 13th year, this will be the biggest SKAMpede Festival yet. Sixteen Vancouver Island/Vancouver theatre companies, each offering their own flavour of fresh theatrical experiences, will perform in various venues spread around central Victoria, the inner harbour, and along the Galloping Goose Trail. Festival attendees will take in a range of site-specific, family-friendly performances and live theatre in Victoria, including dance, puppetry, comedy, and more! We are thrilled to bring live theatre to Victoria once again, and showcase brand new works from amazing independent West Coast talent.
Individuals or groups of up to 12 people can pre-book tickets to any of the four physically-distanced tour options listed below. Here’s how to pre-book your tickets:
- Review the tour options listed below.
- Select which tour(s) you want to see.
- Click “TICKETS” button. Choose whether you want to do a cycling or pedestrian tour.
- Select which date/time slot you want to go on the tour.
- Select how many tickets you wish to purchase beside the dollar amount you wish to pay. We are operating on a Pay What You Can ticket model, with a suggested price of $10 per person for each tour ticket or $20 in total per family.
- Your tour ticket(s) will be emailed to you. Show up to the launch point location listed on your ticket at the showtime you choose. The physical ticket is not required to get into the event – we just need you to give us your name and you’re in! We look forward to seeing you enjoy the show!
We would like to acknowledge the wonderful support in funding from the City of Victoria, the Province, the BC Arts Council, the Victoria Foundation, and the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Make sure to check out our SKAMpede Guide to make the most of this year’s festival!
Cecelia Ravine Tour
Launch point: Cecelia Ravine Park, 475 Burnside Rd E.
Tour time: approx. 1 hour (cycling & pedestrian)
Trail distance: 800 m
Map
See all tour times
Shows:
Site 1 – Little Fish Productions’ Fantastic Fun Zone. A contemporary dance, physical theatre and musical performance that follows two neighbours as they meet and enter a circle made of colourful rope. The work is a quest for human connection and joy, derived from a time where physical distancing from others was a necessary reality.
Site 2 – Regina Rios’s A Distancia. Can we ever see ourselves for who we truly are? What if we step away to see things from a distance? A Distancia is a one-woman show that explores identity as a Latina woman living away from home. Piñatas, nopales and Spanglish, what more could we ask for?
Site 3 – Finally Grand Productions’ Look It Up. Nearing the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, two ex-lovers return to their lives in Victoria. Justine is back from staying with family. Steph is back from prison. Equipped with masks, measuring tape, and a trash-picking team of unsuspecting witnesses, Steph plans a meetup to say her final goodbyes. You can’t catch feelings from six feet away, right?
Site 4 – Mystery Theatre Squad’s The Great Ascent. Two little mortals set out on an adventure: one hopes to save a life, the other just wants to pay his rent! Join these mountaineers as they tackle the big questions of Faith, Pharma, and The Sound of Music on their quest for divine intervention!
Drop-in art installation: POLLINATORS’ PLANTING. Shaped by those who tend them, this drop-in participatory gardening installation series playfully invites urban humans to build an ecosystem. In Selkirk Green Park, perform acts of public gardening with the plants of a Doug Fir Forest. Snap a bee-utiful photo of pollinators in action. Who is at home here?
Note: Ticket sales for each festival day will close at midnight the night before. Ex. ticket sales for Saturday will close Friday at midnight. There may still be walk-up tickets available at the launch points. Contact the SKAM Hotline 250.386.7526 for more info.
Central Tour
Launch point: 860 Central Spur Rd (at The Goose)
Tour time approx. 1 hour (cycling & pedestrian)
Trail distance: 500
Map
See all tour times
Shows:
Site 1 – Over the Moon Productions’ In Orbit
A tale of missed connection unfolds through fabric, puppetry, and physical theatre. A whimsical celebration of summer moments and star-crossed lovers.
Site 3 – Bragi’s The Search for the Great Black Salamander follows cryptozoologist Mallory Sturgeon, whose quest for a fabled creature has alienated her from the love of her life, Stephanie. Convinced she has trapped a never-before-seen tadpole, she invites journalists to witness its debut. What she finds instead is even more magical.
Site 4 – SNAFU’s Atmosphereis a short and sweet piece of speculative fiction. SNAFU Artists will design a “Possible Future” that responds directly to what is going on right now, presenting an unexpected spectacle in an unusual space. Surreal, hand-crafted set pieces that merge with the natural environment.
Drop-in art installation: POLLINATORS’ DISRUPTING. Shaped by those who tend them, this drop-in participatory gardening installation series playfully invites urban humans to build an ecosystem. Under the Bay Street Bridge a forgotten garden of invasive plants asks you to decide what stays and what goes. When can disruption make space for change?
Note: Ticket sales for each festival day will close at midnight the night before. Ex. ticket sales for Saturday will close Friday at midnight. There may still be walk-up tickets available at the launch points. Contact the SKAM Hotline 250.386.7526 for more info.
Songhees Tour
Launch point: Songhees Walkway
Left side Parking Lot beside 75 Songhees Rd
(48.4264385, -123.3801680)
Tour time approx. 1 hour (pedestrian only)
Trail distance: 500 m
Map
See all tour times
Shows:
Site 1 – SYC’s End of Term. In the year 2070, four young students stage a play set fifty years ago. By staging today’s problems reflected in the funhouse mirror of tomorrow, “End of Term” explores important questions about what it means to be good in an age of mass selfishness.
Site 2 – Jayne Walling’s The Big Wail. Bertha, a fish from the ocean floor, is a sea cleaner. She eats all she sees. It runs in her family. But the food is changing and it’s changing the fish. A ten minute excerpt from a tragic-comic play about a fish from the bottom that rises to the top.
Site 3 – EmilyCase Prods’ Curiosity is on a mission to explore Gale Crater for signs of life. On the way, Curiosity chats with the stars about anything they can think of: other rovers, the mission they’ve been sent on, loneliness, and the constant pressure to save the whole human race.
Site 4 – Visible Bodies Collective’s Mother Tongue encounters deep reflections of languages, bodies, and vibrations. Engaging the physical culture of our times, Global Indigenous woman are pulsing onward in power and truth. We gather in radical performance circles, we reverberate together and make old languages sing again through our Mother Tongue
Drop-in art installation: POLLINATORS’ SEEDING. Shaped by those who tend them, this drop-in participatory gardening installation series playfully invites urban humans to build an ecosystem. Thriving on the fringes of Songhees Point, hardy wildflowers crop up on the tideline, inhaling the sea mist. Meet the characters and cast seeds where you think new blooms will thrive. How do we seed our future?
Note: Ticket sales for each festival day will close at midnight the night before. Ex. ticket sales for Saturday will close Friday at midnight. There may still be walk-up tickets available at the launch points. Contact the SKAM Hotline 250.386.7526 for more info.
Harbour Downtown Tour
Launch point: Downtown, Lot 900 at 900 Wharf Street (near Harbour Air)
Tour time approx. 1 hour (cycling & pedestrian)
Trail distance: 1 km
Map
See all tour times
Shows:
Site 1 – Vitor Freitas Dance’s Dancing Voices, Traveling Bodies reflects how dance artists carry with them a knowledge of the body through borders and over geographies.
Site 4 – Bottled Theatre –When prodigal son Thomas is summoned home for an important family reunion, he must confront the archway into Chinatown and do battle with a gatekeeping old 婆婆 (grandma) who believes he is her shot at redemptive parenting. Should he fail, he’ll be left outside on a bench with nothing but a melancholy bottle of yogurt juice.
Drop-in art installation: POLLINATORS’ CARETAKING. Shaped by those who tend them, this participatory gardening installation series playfully invites urban humans to build an ecosystem. In a bustling parking lot at Victoria Harbour, enter the cocoon, inspired by leaf cutter bees in a Gary Oak Meadow. Take time to tune in to your senses, contemplate your role, and notice what is absent. What does stewardship mean to you?
Note: Ticket sales for each festival day will close at midnight the night before. Ex. ticket sales for Saturday will close Friday at midnight. There may still be walk-up tickets available at the launch points. Contact the SKAM Hotline 250.386.7526 for more info.
Shipyard Wrap Up
Location: Point Hope Shipyard, 345 Harbour Rd.
Runs 3:00 – 8:00 pm Saturday July 17, and Sunday July 18
Shipyard entertainment schedule
After you’ve been SKAMpeding all day, you’re going to want to sit back and relax. Join us for some entertainment and drinks at the Shipyard Wrap Up! Running 3:00 – 8:00 pm on both Saturday and Sunday, the Shipyard will have scheduled entertainment, non-alcoholic beverages for you to sip on, and snacks to chow on (for purchase). Due to restrictions, there will only be 100 tickets available each day, so snag yours fast.
Those who book tickets to the Shipyard Wrap Up can show up and leave at any time between 3:00 – 8:00 PM.
Thank you, Point Hope, for sponsoring SKAMpede Festival!
NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN PERFORMANCES
SKAMpede is a festival in Victoria of new short works by top performers who have been selected through a formal submission process. Each of the shows are different and the range of performances encompasses spoken word, dance, story telling and much more! The local performers have all worked as professional artists, including at Craigdarroch Castle, Atomic Vaudeville, The Belfry Theatre and Butchart Gardens. SKAMartists are paid for their work.
SAFETY FIRST
SKAMpede Festival has been a popular summertime festival in Victoria since 2008. Theatre SKAM staff have worked diligently to ensure a COVID-19 Friendly Festival this year. This is our second year running the festival with distanced tours, each with a limited size audience. Due to the event selling out last year, we’ve expanded our roster to include four separate tours and more shows to enjoy!
SUSTAINABLE APPROACH
Like many people who regularly use the Galloping Goose, we also consider ourselves stewards of the trail. We have worked with city and regional officials, community groups, and other professionals to ensure the footprint of the event is minimal. We’re proud to say that thanks to help, especially from local company The Sustainable Fox, our 2019 festival left almost zero waste. We plan to minimize the waste we create this year, including waste from our additional safety protocols.
Thank you to our 2021 sponsors:
We acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia.