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IWC New Leaves Festival: PONY! Cabaret
March 8 at 7:00 pm - 11:00 pm
$15 – $45
Flip your leaf!
The New Leaves Festival of Arts and Culture returns to venues across Kelowna from March 6-8, 2025. New Leaves is an annual, three-day arts festival put on by Kelowna non-profit arts organization Inspired Word Cafe, featuring artists from the Okanagan and across Canada, as well as programming in English, French and other languages. Taking the idiom “turning over a new leaf” New Leaves focuses on an annually changing theme important to the Okanagan community. Last year, responding to a local rise in anti-LGBTQ2SIA+ sentiment in the Okanagan and beyond, the 2024 New Leaves theme was “Queer Art as Resistance.” In 2025, the 2nd annual New Leaves Festival theme is “Your Backyard.” While no literal backyards will feature, we are choosing to celebrate the vibrant literary and performance art right here in Kelowna, through both a focus on local artists and a celebration of Inspired Word Cafe’s 15th Season as a fulcrum of the arts scene. See you leaves on the flipside!
Closing out the festival is a New Leaves Fest favourite: the 9th annual PONY Cabaret. PONY is Kelowna’s premier queer cabaret and it only comes once a year. Featuring the sexy and hysterical hosting of Mister Sister, aka Ms. Cookie LaWhore and Erin Scott, and a rogues’ gallery of queer and allied performers including beatboxer Papa Nuge, storyteller Ed Wolf, drag performer Guido La Bido, writer Joshua Whitehead, and burlesque dancer Miss Ocean Squeeze. Get your tickets, now! Tickets sold out quickly for PONY last year at the Mary Irwin and this year there are fewer available due to the intimate nature of the Black Box Theatre.
Doors open at 7 pm. Tickets are $15–$45 (sliding scale). The event is 19+.
All proceeds from this year’s Pony ticket sales will be donated to the Inspired Word Cafe.
