Ensemble Theatre Festival Returns This Summer
Vancouver's Ensemble Theatre Festival returns July 8–18 at Jericho Arts Centre with "Bloodlines," featuring Peerless and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Ensemble Theatre Festival
By Elke Porter | WBN News Vancouver | June 9, 2026
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After a highly anticipated three-year hiatus, a staple of the local summer arts scene is officially back. Vancouver’s Ensemble Theatre Festival returns this July with Bloodlines, a compelling full production series running from July 8 to 18 at the iconic Jericho Arts Centre.
Co-led by artistic forces Keltie Forsyth and Chris Lam, this year’s festival centers around a profound theme: tracing the invisible, often volatile threads between past and present, family and system, survival and self-invention. To explore these complex dynamics, the company is staging two drastically different yet equally electrifying productions in repertory format.
First on the marquee is Jiehae Park’s Peerless, directed by Forsyth. A darkly comic, razor-sharp reimagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the play transposes the classic tragedy into the high-stakes, pressure-cooker world of elite college admissions. Audiences will follow twin sisters M and L as their academic ambitions spiral into an unhinged, hilarious, and magnetic obsession. Forsyth, who previously helmed Ensemble favorites like the Jessie-nominated Superior Donuts, brings her signature sharp comedic sensibility to this wild modern satire.
Contrasting the contemporary chaos of Peerless is Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece, A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Lam. Nearly eighty years after its premiere, this giant of the American canon remains a searing portrait of illusion, desire, and psychological collapse. The story follows the fragile Blanche DuBois as she arrives in New Orleans to stay with her sister Stella, laying bare the shattering weight of identity under pressure. Lam, a longtime Ensemble collaborator both on stage and in the director's chair, aims to capture the enduring, raw theatrical force of the text.
The return marks a exciting new chapter for the Ensemble Theatre Company (ETC). Originally founded in the late 1990s in Victoria by LAMDA graduates Tariq Leslie and Elvy Del Bianco, the artist-driven company has long been celebrated for delivering powerful, ground-breaking work to Vancouver audiences.
Don't miss the return of this vital summer tradition. For tickets and scheduling information, visit: https://www.ensembletheatrecompany.ca/.
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