Local Arts

The Coast's longest running festival opens this week with a host of community support and an estimated 126 performers, not including the members of various bands, ensembles and choirs.

The skirl of the bagpipes and the boom of the drums will once again be heard over Sechelt when the Robert Malcolm Alumni Pipe Band takes its third annual retreat to the Coast on the weekend of March 11 to 13.

Picture this - you set up a gig at The Club in Gibsons and you ask a couple of singers, new to the group, to join in. The day of the performance, one singer falls ill with the flu and the second breaks her arm leaving the rehearsal.

Driftwood Players' new thriller I'll Be Back Before Midnight is in the final stages of rehearsal and set to open Thursday, March 3, at the Heritage Playhouse Theatre in Gibsons.

"A kitchen party to share with the world" - that's what the Polyjesters are all about.

Though the audience size was smaller than expected, the organizers of the first Canadian Heritage Film Festival held last weekend in Gibsons say they are more than satisfied with the four-day run of vintage movies.

Russell Thornton will give a poetry reading on Friday, Feb. 25, at 8 p.m. at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt.

Canadian playwright Peter Colley's I'll Be Back Before Midnight has been described as the most popular stage play in Canadian history.

There is a pocket of groove reverberating out of Vancouver's east side. Anything goes, from punk to funk, live to sample, structure to stream.

Local artist Kat Kosiancic hopes her documentary Be My Junkie Shadow will change perceptions, challenge stereotypes and debunk myths about women living on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside when it shows at the Gibsons Heritage Playhouse Saturday, Feb.