Nakai Theatre’s Pivot Festival will return to Whitehorse January 2-26, 2024, featuring a visit from the Filipina Spice Girls of Comedy, otherworldly sun bathing, fire breathing and more.
For the Yukon’s theatre and live performance community, 2024 is set to start on a strong note, with Nakai Theatre’s Pivot Festival returning to Whitehorse from January 2-26. This year will feature even more events and performances than last year’s edition, and among the programming is a visit from the Filipina Spice Girls of Comedy, Toronto sketch and musical troupe, Tita Collective.
“We’ve traveled to a couple different places outside of Toronto to do shows, but never as far as Whitehorse,” says Tita Collective member Maricris Rivera. “We love performing in Toronto, but we’ve always been really intrigued and excited about the idea of performing outside of our home city.”
While Rivera and the rest of the Tita Collective, consisting of Ann Paula Bautista Belinda Corpuz Ellie Posadas and Alia Rasul are bracing themselves for the cold January weather, they’re also looking forward to beginning their unique brand of comedy to a whole new audience, and getting to see the northern lights.
In addition to Tita Collective’s performance, this upcoming edition of Pivot Festival will feature a Kids’ Week at The Sun Room with music, movement and storytelling in the Sun Room, decorated to look and feel like an otherworldly beach planet and Riverfront Poetry Crawl, an annual tradition of stomping through the snow to meet local poets in unusual places, which ends at the Old Fire Hall where crawlers will be treated to hot cocoa and the unveiling of this year’s Old Fire Hall TV, which features five short video works from artists near and far share the joys, challenges, and weirdness of northern life. Old Fire Hall TV will be streaming each morning and evening from the corner of Front and Main. Additionally, Pivot Festival will include Burn Things!, a short parade to Shipyards where fire artists will dance and breathe flames, and Short Works which will span across two nights–one quiet and intimate, one loud and lively–and feature live
performances from local musicians and storytellers.
“I’ve always loved Pivot Festival,” says Festival Director Claire Ness. “My participation with the festival foes back to when I was a kid because my dad was involved when Nakai was born.”
Claire Ness will be leading the Kids’ Week at the Sun Room as her clown persona, teaching movement classes, and facilitating musical performances, storytelling time and craft making sessions for the young attendees–and there will even be a kids’ rave.
“There’s lots going on,” says Ness. “It’ll be a jam-packed hour-and-a-half or two hours for that week.”
Ness is also looking forward to seeing and meeting the Tita Collective, as well as Burn Things! and the fire spinning show that will be part of that and the chance to hang out in the Sun Room, since she wasn’t able to make it there last year.
For Rivera and the rest of the Tita Collective, being part of a festival with such an eclectic host of programming is another exciting component to their participation, as they’ve never been part of anything quite like Pivot Festival before. With a strong focus on community in the Yukon’s arts scene, the Tita Collective will fit right in.
“Whenever people come to a Tita Collective show, we want to make sure that they feel welcome,” Rivera says. “There’s going to be a lot of heart, a lot of joy and a lot of laughs and silliness.”
Rivera says the Tita Collective’s brand of humour is as heartfelt as it is funny, and can be a good way for people to learn about Filipino culture.
“We want the audience to feel welcome and loved,” Rivera continues. “You’re going to see some really weird things, but you’re also going to feel a lot of feelings throughout an hour or an hour-and-a-half comedy show.”
Pivot Festival takes place January 2-26 at various venues around Whitehorse. To learn more and buy tickets, visit https://nakaitheatre.com.
“I feel like I don’t need to say a lot because the programming speaks for itself,” says Ness. “I think it’ll draw a lot of people.”
