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iPhoto caption: Sébastien Heins, Georgia Findlay, Isaiah Kolundzic, and Kiana Woo in The 39 Steps. Photo by Raph Nogal.

Kiana Woo clowns around in full-circle moment with Guild Festival Theatre

For Woo, coming back to the Guild for the first time in four years — after working at Shaw, Soulpepper, the Citadel Theatre, and Théâtre Français de Toronto — feels like a homecoming.

By Krystal Abrigo / Jul 14, 2025
iPhoto caption: "My Narrator" photo courtesy of the Lighthouse Festival.

Lighthouse Festival unearths rarely performed Norm Foster one-acts

“There’s not much time for character development, like there would be in a long play,” says Norm Foster of one-acts. “You have to… make it satisfying, and to have it come around to a plausible ending. It can’t just be a skit… So, it’s actually a little tougher to write.”

By Liam Donovan / Jul 11, 2025
iPhoto caption: Sébastien Heins, Georgia Findlay, Isaiah Kolundzic, and Kiana Woo in The 39 Steps. Photo by Raph Nogal.

Kiana Woo clowns around in full-circle moment with Guild Festival Theatre

For Woo, coming back to the Guild for the first time in four years — after working at Shaw, Soulpepper, the Citadel Theatre, and Théâtre Français de Toronto — feels like a homecoming.

By Krystal Abrigo / Jul 14, 2025
iPhoto caption: "My Narrator" photo courtesy of the Lighthouse Festival.

Lighthouse Festival unearths rarely performed Norm Foster one-acts

“There’s not much time for character development, like there would be in a long play,” says Norm Foster of one-acts. “You have to… make it satisfying, and to have it come around to a plausible ending. It can’t just be a skit… So, it’s actually a little tougher to write.”

By Liam Donovan / Jul 11, 2025
Marie Farsi for Intermission Magazine. iPhoto caption: Marie Farsi for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Spotlight: Marie Farsi

“I’ve learned how truth is revealed in translation, and I feel like that’s my job as a director,” says Farsi. “I have to translate the piece from the page to the stage, and all the meanings that can be derived from that process of translation.”

Written by Naomi Skwarna, Photography by Dahlia Katz / Jul 10, 2025
The company of 'The Comedy of Errors.' iPhoto caption: The company of 'The Comedy of Errors.' Photo by JVL Photography.

Let’s-a go: Embedded with the Fools’ Comedy of Errors

While I was preparing for the summer heat by shopping for lighter clothes, Kate Smith, artistic director of a Company of Fools, was getting ready for their next show. She called me while I was in the Rideau Centre and pitched an idea: “Would you have any interest in being an embedded critic?”

By Luke Brown / Jul 9, 2025

Reviews

Adam Francis Proulx, Elm Reyes, Kay-Ann Ward in a Toronto Fringe Festival promo photo by Joy Adeola. iPhoto caption: Adam Francis Proulx, Elm Reyes, Kay-Ann Ward in a Fringe promo photo by Joy Adeola.

REVIEWS: Toronto Fringe Festival 2025

This collection of Toronto Fringe Festival capsule reviews will be updated throughout the festival with writing from 20 different critics.

Masae Day, Landon Doak, Michelle Fisk in 'The Wind Coming Over the Sea.' iPhoto caption: Masae Day, Landon Doak, and Michelle Fisk in 'The Wind Coming Over the Sea.' Photo by Lyon Smith.

REVIEW: A new Emma Donoghue musical takes root at the Blyth Festival

As a resident of southwestern Ontario, what struck me most is how deeply rooted in the region The Wind Coming Over the Sea feels. It's a lively reminder of the cultural inheritances that continue to shape the area today.

By Deanne Kearney
The cast of 'Major Barbara.' iPhoto caption: The cast of 'Major Barbara.' Photo by David Cooper.

REVIEW: Shaw Festival’s metatheatrical Major Barbara is sharp and subversive

Director Peter Hinton-Davis draws on a light smattering of Brechtian techniques — acknowledgements of artifice that enrich and vivify Major Barbara’s clash of morals.

By Liam Donovan
The company of Talk is Free Theatre's 'The Frogs.' iPhoto caption: The company of 'The Frogs.' Photo by Dahlia Katz.

REVIEW: In Barrie, Talk Is Free Theatre delivers well-crafted outdoor staging of rare Sondheim musical The Frogs

Staged inches from the audience by director Griffin Hewitt, the show commendably captures the free-wheeling, anarchic spirit of the text. It’s a toad-ally great opportunity to see this rarity in the froggy flesh.

By Ilana Lucas
Jeff Lillico as Ralph with Yoshie Bancroft as Mitsue in 'Forgiveness.' iPhoto caption: Jeff Lillico as Ralph with Yoshie Bancroft as Mitsue in 'Forgiveness.' Photo by David Hou.

REVIEW: Stratford Festival’s Forgiveness tells a deeply personal story on a sprawling scale

Presented in an increasingly tense political moment, Forgiveness resonates on a level that is part reflection, part warning.

By Charlotte Lilley
Promo photo for Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree. iPhoto caption: Photo courtesy of Luminato Festival.

REVIEW: Is Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree worth seeing twice at Luminato?

Crouch tests the limits of theatrical representation, improvisation, and authorship. While I’m usually a sucker for exactly those types of experiments, I ultimately found An Oak Tree a bit underwhelming.

By Ryan Borochovitz

Spotlight

Marie Farsi for Intermission Magazine. iPhoto caption: Marie Farsi for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Spotlight: Marie Farsi

“I’ve learned how truth is revealed in translation, and I feel like that’s my job as a director,” says Farsi. “I have to translate the piece from the page to the stage, and all the meanings that can be derived from that process of translation.”

Written by Naomi Skwarna, Photography by Dahlia Katz
Alanis King. iPhoto caption: Photo by Blaire Russell.

Spotlight: Alanis King

The 40-year career of Alanis King began much the same way that so many careers in theatre do: in front of very small audiences. “The show must go on if you have the same amount of audience members as in the cast,” was King’s motto in the early days. But today, the multihyphenate Odawa artist has no difficulty finding people interested in her work.

Written by Frances Koncan, Photography by Blaire Russell
Steven Gallagher for Intermission. Photo by Dahlia Katz. iPhoto caption: Steven Gallagher for Intermission. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Spotlight: Steven Gallagher

A love of theatre runs so deeply through Gallagher’s bones that you’d think it was a path he began to follow as soon as he could walk and talk. But for a boy who came of age on a rustic farm in Quebec and favoured sports venues over stages in high school, an eventual career in theatre was hardly a given.

Written by Michael Kras, Photography by Dahlia Katz
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Artist Perspectives

iPhoto caption: Set design by Camellia Koo, Costume design by Judith Bowden, Lighting design by Leigh Ann Vardy, and photo by Dahlia Katz. Features Samantha Hill and Amaka Umeh.

A story with no expiry date: Adapting Fall On Your Knees

At this critical political juncture, as so many forces in the world try to mute and silence women, our Canadian stories merit our advocacy and fervent attention.

By Alisa Palmer

Armchairs, tattoos, and an online theatre magazine

When I started at Intermission, my world was limited to the confines of an armchair. Arts journalism was a high it felt dangerously fruitless to chase. The life stretched ahead of me was amorphous and frightening, a chasm filled with hand sanitizer and immigration concerns. It was worth crying over a spilled kombucha and scrubbing at the stain.

By Aisling Murphy
national ballet of canada iPhoto caption: Production still from The Nutcracker courtesy of the National Ballet of Canada.

Why should you go to the ballet?

My childhood memories of learning to dance were front and centre for me when I attended opening night of The Nutcracker, performed by the National Ballet of Canada at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.

By Martin Austin
iPhoto caption: Photo by Grace Mysak.

Want to see a magic show about race? Wait, what?

You’d be forgiven for the double-take. It’s a fairly common reaction when I tell folks about my work as a magician.

By Shawn DeSouza-Coelho

Why I’m tired of cripface in Toronto theatre

Cripface is when an able-bodied, or able-passing, person performs a disabled experience that isn’t their own. Local theatre companies large and small, indie and established, have engaged in this practice. 

By Sivert Das
sophie rivers iPhoto caption: Writer and theatre artist Sophie Rivers in Yellowknife, N.W.T.

What can Toronto theatre learn from Yellowknife?

Growing up in Toronto, the Northwest Territories were always a distant idea, a place I knew only from colouring in elementary school maps. But over the summer, I came to see Yellowknife in a different light.

By Sophie Rivers