PuSH lineup includes Ride the Cyclone, King Lear in Mandarin

Next year's PuSh International Performing Arts Festival will include a blindfolded walking tour of the city, the return of Atomic Volcano's hit production Ride the Cyclone, and an appearance by New York Times media guru David Carr.

The full festival line-up was announced on Thursday.

The innovative Vancouver festival includes theatre, dance and musical performances – including many outside-the-box events, and is a highlight of the cultural calendar.

Among the edgy offerings for 2013:

Human Library, where “readers” can choose from titles such as “Drag Queen” and “Refugee” and be connected with a “human book” for an informal discussion designed to challenge prejudice.
Mariano Pensotti’s Sometimes I think, I can see you will install Vancouver writers at public stations equipped with laptops connected to projection screens, allowing them to create “spontaneous fictions” about what they’re seeing, displayed in real time.
Taipei’s Contemporary Legend Theatre will bring King Lear – a one-man show performed in Mandarin in the style of Beijing Opera.
And from Seattle, A Crack in Everything is a multimedia work which explores the questions of justice posed in the Greek tragedy The Oresteia.

PuSh will also present Boca del Lupo's Photog: An imaginary look at the uncompromising life of Thomas Smith, which was written largely using verbatim text from interviews with four war photographers, including Tim Hetherington, co-director of the documentary Restrepo, who was killed in Libya last year.

That blindfolded walking tour, Do You See What I Mean? is a 2 1/2-hour tour of city streets, storefronts and city spaces that promises to be a "deeply transformative experience of the everyday."

David Carr: Truth and Lies in Life and Art on Feb. 3 at Capilano University is sure to be a popular choice for media types.

And Ride the Cyclone will run for almost a full month at the Arts Club's Granville Island Stage.

In all, the festival features more than 160 performances and events, beginning Jan. 15.