Our goal

We regularly support independent projects at various stages of their development. Curious about that? Join our free public presentations at the end of a work-in-progress residency, and meet the artists!

Double Vie

November 20, 2026

Mainstage audience

▶ By Mateusz West

Double Vie is a bilingual, interdisciplinary performance featuring projections and artistically integrated surtitles. Drawing from 90s cyberpunk and sci-fi fan culture, it explores how fantasy, kink and language act as sites of rebirth.

A trans surgeon leads a reclusive, paranoid existence while seeking out BDSM roleplay online. When they are mailed a cassette tape by a Francophone femdom, they discover rêVelateur — a simulation where they can explore their most transgressive fantasies without ever leaving their room. In an increasingly isolated and fascist world, Double Vie follows characters who are revisioning themselves at the intersections of kink, transness and bilingualism.

In English and French, fully surtitled.

Double Vie is supported by PTC’s Company Collaborations and Théâtre La Seizième‘s Artistic Incubator programs.

Playwright: Mateusz West – Dramaturgy: Joanna Garfinkel – Video designer: Nancy Lee 李南屏 – Performance: Anahita Monfared, Rae Takei – Production management: Karter Masuhara – Stage management: Melanie Thompson – With the support of Playwrights Theatre Centre

Content warnings: depictions of anxiety, OCD and intergenerational trauma. Scenes of explicit, consensual sex featuring alternative practices including role-play, dominance and submission, impact play, needle play, degradation, and consensual non-consent.

Free presentation on November 20, 2026
Location: Progress Lab 1422
Time: 7:00 pm

Cholestérol… et autres tendresses (working title)

November 21, 2026

Mainstage audience

▶ By and with Marie-Josée Bastien, Caroline Bélisle, Joey Lespérance, Robert Marinier, France Perras

If our first love stories have often been told on stage, what happens as we grow older in our hearts (more bruised) and our bodies (a little less firm) when it comes to love and desire remains largely taboo.

Through a mosaic of relationships, Cholestérol… et autres tendresses (working title) explores that stage of life when life is no longer just beginning, but continuing, enduring, unraveling, and transforming. By turns absurd and piercing, these vignettes shine a light on the challenges waiting for us around life’s next corner. Between heartbreaks, heart attacks, aching knees, and children who refuse to mind their own business, the trials and the tenderness of growing older are many.

A celebration of time’s passing, each piece explores a couple’s relationship caught in a ménage à trois with time itself, while tackling some of our most pressing questions: how do we cope when the life we planned begins to change? In what order should we rank our regrets? How many survival strategies does it take to keep everything from falling apart? How do we keep desire alive? Has the countdown already begun? And, like mangoes, do we actually get juicier with age?

One thing is certain: dancing is harder than it used to be. But trust us, we’ve still got the beat.

 

Creation and performance: Marie-Josée Bastien, Caroline Bélisle, Joey Lespérance, Robert Marinier, France Perras – Original idea: Jean-Marc Dalpé, France Perras – Direction: Marie-Josée Bastien 

 

Free presentation on November 21, 2026
Location: Studio 16
Time: 7:30 pm
In French

604 736-2616
info@seizieme.ca

226-1555, West 7th avenue
Vancouver, BC, V6J 1S1

We are fortunate to live, create and gather on the traditional, ancestral and stolen lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.

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