Olympic Village Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre to November 1, 2026
Tickets (limited availability) from $59 at 604-687-1644 or www.artsclub.com
Posted October 25, 2026
This Arts Club presentation is one sweet show and you should do yourself a favour and see it – if you can get your hands on a ticket. They’re going fast.
Big Stuff comes to Vancouver after a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it won the International Fringe Encore Series Edinburgh Prize. Written and performed by Canadian comedy duo Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus and co-written and directed by Kat Sandler, Big Stuff deals with ‘stuff’ – the things we hang on to for purely emotional reasons or for no apparent reason at all. Stuff we end up with when our parents die. Their stuff, now our stuff. Stuff. We all have it.
Naomi is a keeper; Matt is a dumper but they love each other regardless: “We love each other. We do.” They say it often and they really mean it. But there are those seven toasters – or is it twelve – that Naomi can’t seem to part with. Her late mother’s many, many tubes of lipstick, all one shade. Matt appeals to the audience: “Keep them or dump them?” And the item or items either go back on the huge stack of cardboard floor-to-ceiling boxes or go into the Dump Box. The audience decides.
But Big Stuff is so much more than that. Naomi and Matt tell their own story, how they met (Boy meets girl/girl meets boy/girl is already married/boy is already married) and various moves to LA and back to Canada with all their stuff. Death of parents. Interspersed with their own history, they ask for stories from the audience. One couple, at the matinee I attended, said they had been married for 60 years. “Sixty years? IN A ROW?” quipped Naomi. “He was good looking – at the time!” explained the audience member.
And that’s another thing about Big Stuff. These two performers are quick on the draw coming out of Second City and comedy clubs around the world. When Naomi pleaded with us to let her keep an ugly stuffed monkey from her childhood and Matt wanted it gone, the audience demanded, “Keep it” to which Matt said, in surprise, “Wow, I’m not reading this room right.” But believe it, they are reading the room.
I’m not a huge fan of audience participation. I’d say I mostly hate it. And there were times when it wore a little thin; some audiences are more inventive than others, after all. And you don’t have to participate; it’s up to you. But Big Stuff also goes deep and there came a point when I actually spoke up and nearly burst into tears. It started quietly and slowly but it caught me completely off-guard. I’m still surprised how this very funny couple could bring me to tears. If you see the show, you will know exactly when that happened and it might happen to you, too. Take a hankie just in case.
Big Stuff takes you places where it might hurt a little or a lot and then it provides comfort, an emotional Band-Aid, a sense that we are all in this together. And then it makes you laugh.
When Snieckus and Baram were apart – she got a gig in Vancouver, he stayed home with the dog – he wondered, as he looked at the sky, “Do we see the same moon?” “We do”, he explains, “that’s the way the moon works.” But not only do we see the same moon, we experience many of the same joys and sorrows. That’s the human condition.
And we all have stuff – real and emotional – to keep or get rid of. It’s all about hanging on and/or letting go. Dumping or keeping.
Big Stuff. Made in Canada. Go see it.