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Sensing Silence: Ars Mechanica’s “Show and Tell Alexander Bell” at SummerWorks
Reviewed in this essay: Show and Tell Alexander Bell, Ars Mechanica. Ran August 8-18, 2013 at the SummerWorks Performance Festival. I need to start this review with an apology to Mary, the lovely telephone operator played by Sasha Kovacs who politely, if a little desperately, asked for my digits upon entering the theatre. I obliged,…
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Futuristic species love irony too: A review of Marie Chouinard’s “The Golden Mean (Live)”
Reviewed in this essay: The Golden Mean (Live), Compagnie Marie Chouinard, which ran May 8 – May 12, 2013 at Canadian Stage Canadian Stage recently welcomed Compagnie Marie Chouinard’s The Golden Mean (Live), a repertory piece first mounted at the 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad. This was the first presentation of a major Marie Chouinard work in Toronto…
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Streamed Theatre, History Mapped Online, and James Reaney’s First Play: Inbox No. 1
We get lots of notices about intriguing events and projects each week. Here’s a sampling. ▶ Nathan Ng describes the Historical Maps of Toronto as follows: “If you’ve ever wondered what ‘Muddy York’ looked like 200 years ago, and then wanted to trace the city’s development over the following century, this ought to pique your…
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Hell in the Round: Soup Can Theatre’s A Hand of Bridge and No Exit
Reviewed in this essay: A Hand of Bridge & No Exit, Soup Can Theatre, which ran Mar. 27-30 at the New Tapestry Opera Studio Soup Can Theatre’s double bill of A Hand of Bridge and No Exit in theatre-in-the-round style emphasizes the blunt reality that we can never get away from other people. No Exit…
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Diplomacy in the doghouse: Dachshund UN
I am a fully grown adult. At 24 years of age, I read heavy books, pay taxes, drink whiskey and, when called upon, can grow a very serious beard. Even so, I have absolutely no immunity to wiener dogs. I find them highly adorable. In their presence, my insides go all fluttery. I make noises along…
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People We’ll Never Meet: A dance on the topic of strangers
Eiden: Eidos See: Know Hail, Mary, Jean-Luc Godard’s film about the immaculate conception was banned by the Vatican because it imagined what it might have been like to be Mary. I saw a woman lay her head over the streetcar tracks. We spy on strangers. Bodies leaping from…
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Banachek’s The Alpha Project and the One-Person Theater Show
Reviewed in this essay: Banachek’s The Alpha Project, The Fleck Dance Theatre, Luminato Festival, 8-10 June 2012 Do certain individuals have the ability to see the future, to read the thoughts of others, or to communicate with the spirit world? Whatever your answers to these questions might be, in his show The Alpha Project an…
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As Store or Play, Kim’s Convenience is Canonically Canadian
Reviewed in this essay: Kim’s Convenience, from Soulpepper Theatre Company. Written by Ins Choi and directed by Weyni Mengesha. Until February 11th at Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill Street, Building 49, Toronto. Reopens May 17–June 9, 2012. 416-866-8666 or www.soulpepper.ca. Building a play around a racial stereotype is risky business, especially when…
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Ecce Homo Theatre’s Loving the Stranger… Examines the War that Never Ends
Reviewed in this essay: Loving the Stranger or How to Recognize an Invert, from Ecce Homo Theatre. Written and directed by Alistair Newton. Until January 15th at Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst Street, Toronto. Part of The Toronto Fringe’s NextStage Festival. 416-966-1062 or www.fringetix.ca. One of the final slides projected onto the screen hanging onstage during…
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Much Ado in Theatre Brouhaha’s Titillating Commentary LoveSexMoney
Reviewed in this essay: LoveSexMoney, from Theatre Brouhaha. Written and directed by Kat Sandler. Until January 15th at Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst Street, Toronto. Part of The Toronto Fringe’s NextStage Festival. 416-966-1062 or www.fringetix.ca. If hotel rooms could talk, what stories would they tell? And would you really want to know what they have to…
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“Sally Forth, Comrades!”: Jesus Chrysler Drives Full Force into Toronto’s Progressive Theatre Scene
Reviewed in this essay: Jesus Chrysler, at Theatre Pass Muraille, 16 Ryerson Ave., Toronto. Runs until Dec. 11th, 2011. “Sally forth, comrades!” – with these three words you are likely to be ushered into Theatre Pass Muraille’s intimate backspace by a friendly-faced, trouser-clad woman named Jim. You’ll shuffle to your seat while she bickers with…
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Rothko on a Canadian Stage: a Review of Red
Reviewed in this essay: Red, at the Bluma Appel Theatre at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street East, Toronto. Runs until Dec. 17. Canadian Stage’s audience has been the topic of many news stories since Matthew Joceyln took over as Artistic Director two years ago. Jocelyn, a Canadian director who has…