Vancouver performing-arts visionary Norman Armour passes away, but his legacy on cultural scene lives on
The founder of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and Rumble Theatre is being remembered for his generosity, mentorship, and infectious passion for the arts
Norman Armour was a cofounder of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.
A GIANT ON the Vancouver arts scene has died. Norman Armour passed away peacefully on November 19, his family confirmed today.
He had been engaged in a battle with lung cancer. He’s survived by his partner Lorna Brown and extended family.
Arts fans know Armour best as the cofounder of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, the ground-breaking, midwinter, multidisciplinary celebration of dance, theatre, music, and interdisciplinary performance. With Katrina Dunn, from Touchstone Theatre, he sought to fill a gap in the Vancouver scene in January and February, and they saw a need for more interdisciplinary, challenging work, from here and around the world.
At the time, art forms were siloed in Vancouver, and national, Ontario-based media barely covered this city’s arts—let alone emerging West Coast artists. As Armour reflected recently in the Paramedic for the Arts interview on SFU’s Below the Radar Podcast with Am Johal on November 7, “We had to take it into our own hands to establish our own identity and our relationships with the rest of the country.”
In the ensuing years, PuSh moved from a small series to a citywide happening that continues today—Armour becoming synonymous with the event, passionately introducing its mind-expanding, offbeat programs and stretching Vancouverites’ tastes for boundary-pushing arts. Now artists in places as far-flung as Melbourne and Brussels instantly recognize the fest’s name—and Armour’s, too.
“The vision that Norman and Katrina had for the role that PuSh would play in the local, national, and international artistic community is what continues to drive the people who are involved in the festival,” PuSh Festival board chair Camilla Tibbs said at the 2024 launch on November 20 that paid tribute to Armour’s legacy. “Norman was passionate about keeping that vision alive and he was tenacious about doing it. At the same time he was curious, generous, and thoughtful. He was and will continue to be an inspiration for all of us.”
Prior to PuSh, Armour also founded Rumble Theatre in 1990 with Chris Gerrard-Pinker, with a focus on creating, performing, and producing multidisciplinary work. Under his leadership, the company fostered a nascent emerging scene, encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration between artists and promoting a national theatre dialogue.
Along the way, Armour acted for television, film, and the stage, directed shows, created site-specific works, and much more—winning 37 Jessie Richardson Award nominations, the City of Vancouver Civic Merit Award, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, and the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award.
After leaving PuSh in April 2019, he led the development and implementation of the Australia Council’s international strategy in North America, while continuing important work on the Vancouver scene, such as sitting on an advisory committee for Vancouver’s new Creative City Strategy.
On top of his many accomplishments, he also was a main force in setting up the Post at 750, a shared location, studio, and administrative space for arts groups in the CBC buildings in downtown Vancouver.
In 2019, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts from SFU. More recently, he worked freelance, as an independent curator (putting together the Vancouver International Film Festival’s most recent VIFF Live program), as well as a consultant and producer.
Among the tributes the family is collecting from here and around the world today, Leslie Hurtig, artistic director Vancouver Writers Fest said, “The way in which he championed artists and arts organizations in Vancouver (and beyond) was unique in that he was continually aware of ways that he could make connections between them, and willing to take the time to see those to fruition.” Theatre artist Kathryn Shaw wrote: “Norman’s huge heart, sharp eye, wit, ability to both encourage and positively challenge at the same time, crazy smile, friendship and profound love for every aspect of performance will always live with me. He changed the cultural landscape in Vancouver. I feel privileged to have known him.” And U.K. PuSh performer Tim Crouch wrote: “Your support for independent art was everything. Your cool was everything. Your friendship was everything. You lifted artists up with such loyalty and intelligence and vision. You changed the world for the better. I cite PuSh as the festival of all festivals—driven by your boundless energy, collective endeavour and your LOVE. I see you in so many people’s work.”
Armour’s roots weren’t always in the arts. In fact, he famously first came to B.C. from Ontario as a semi-professional frisbee-ultimate player, later driving cab to work his way through Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts.
In many ways, Armour got a second chance at life—one he embraced. In 2012, at a Mary Margaret O'Hara concert at Club PuSh during the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, he suffered a full cardiac arrest, when the then 52-year-old’s heart and breathing stopped. Luckily, Michael Boucher, who heads up SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and happens to be a former emergency medical technician, was standing right there and immediately administered CPR to save Armour’s life.
Armour will be remembered for his infectious passion for the arts. When you asked him what his favourite PuSh show was, he’d overflow with memories. One of them was the “power of theatre” in a 2016 production of Jack Charles v. the Crown, in which an aging member of Australia’s Aboriginal Stolen Generation recounted his traumatic past. He was also proud of 2005’s locally created Crime and Punishment, which turned the Fyodor Dostoyevsky novel into musical theatre, integrating a cast of mature artists, theatre students, and people from the Downtown Eastside—and brought it alive. He often spoke fondly about the 2011 fest’s La Marea, a giant logistical undertaking that required the shutdown of Gastown’s Water Street, where, inside trendy heritage storefronts and upstairs windows, a series of vignettes played out with live actors and surtitle screens that revealed their stories and innermost thoughts. Thousands turned out to the live installation over several nights.
Whatever the show, Armour developed a taste for the adventurous in a growing PuSh audience that trusted his and his team’s choices. “If the festival wasn’t felt to be owned by the local community it would have died long ago,” he reflected this month on the Under the Radar podcast. “If people can stick with you, and they can trust the choice or or the reason you made the decisions, they can live through work that is not to their taste at all….But if you’re choosing things in cynical ways and presenting them as if ‘Oh, don’t worry, they’ll be fine and if they don’t like it it doesn’t matter,’ then I think people will get onto you.”
Whether it was here in Vancouver or across the world, Armour had a way of parlaying his personal connections into unique artistic partnerships—and lasting memories for audiences who saw the shows that resulted from those alliances.
As Astrolabe Theatre’s Heather Pawsey Tweeted when Armour announced he was stepping down from PuSh in 2018: “Norman Armour reshaped so much of what I thought about theatre, music, dance and everything in between.” Said Vancouver theatre artist Marcus Youssef around the same time: “PuSh under Norman’s leadership has had an immeasurable impact on Vancouver arts and culture scene and on so many of us artists. It connects us to the world.”
When friends and colleagues remembered Armour at the PuSh launch this week, the words “generosity” and “generous” came up again and again. For many accomplished artists or artistic directors in the room, he was a mentor who changed the course of their careers.
“Norman was an amazingly generous colleague who had a huge impact on Boca del Lupo over the years starting from the very beginning,” recalled Boca Del Lupo’s Jay Dodge. “In our founding days, he offered us the constitution and bylaws from Rumble to help us build our own, and from there, we worked together on See 7, partnered on projects including PuSh commissioning My Dad My Dog and co-presenting the enormously ambitious La Marea. Norman was a passionate art maker in every way, from deep artistic discussions to disrupting the systems and conventions that underpin creation.
“Above all though, Norman was fun to be around, fun to talk to, and fun to work with,” Dodge added, echoing the sentiments of many. “He will live on with so many of us in so many different ways. He lived a life that should be celebrated.”
“He worked with grace, grit, care, and passion,” Indian Summer Festival said in its tribute to Armour this week. “A hilarious and inspiring colleague, Norman truly loved the arts and believed genuinely in the transformative power of cultural production.”
The family has said that a memorial will be held at a future date. In the meantime, artists' condolences and memories are now flooding onto social media; we'll keep adding to the collection below. Please watch Stir for ongoing coverage.
Related Articles
