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iPhoto caption: Braeden Etienne in 'Believe In It Alive.' Photo courtesy of Treading Theatre Festival, taken by Phi Doan.
Running at the Schneider Haus National Historic Site in downtown Kitchener, the festival features five site-responsive productions in intimate and unconventional performance spaces.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Hans Ravn.
A sand dune rises under the Gardiner for Sand Flight, a dance show premiering this June
This spring, the Bentway will present the world premiere of Sand Flight, a large-scale outdoor performance by Norwegian choreographer Ingri Fiksdal and theatre director Jonas Corell Petersen. The production features eight dancers and a 50-person community choir performing atop a constructed sand dune.
iPhoto caption: Braeden Etienne in 'Believe In It Alive.' Photo courtesy of Treading Theatre Festival, taken by Phi Doan.
Running at the Schneider Haus National Historic Site in downtown Kitchener, the festival features five site-responsive productions in intimate and unconventional performance spaces.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Hans Ravn.
A sand dune rises under the Gardiner for Sand Flight, a dance show premiering this June
This spring, the Bentway will present the world premiere of Sand Flight, a large-scale outdoor performance by Norwegian choreographer Ingri Fiksdal and theatre director Jonas Corell Petersen. The production features eight dancers and a 50-person community choir performing atop a constructed sand dune.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Nanc Price.
REVIEW: Mirvish’s Made in Italy dishes a pleasant but lengthy family feast
Made in Italy is a feat of physical comedy, with creator-performer Farren Timoteo seamlessly taking on the distinct voices and mannerisms of about 10 different characters.
iPhoto caption: Louise Lambert in People, Places & Things. Photo by Elana Emer.
TAPA reveals 2025 Dora Award nominees
This morning, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA) announced the nominees for the 45th annual Dora Awards, which will be given out at Meridian Hall on June 30.
Reviews
iPhoto caption: Braeden Etienne in 'Believe In It Alive.' Photo courtesy of Treading Theatre Festival, taken by Phi Doan.
Running at the Schneider Haus National Historic Site in downtown Kitchener, the festival features five site-responsive productions in intimate and unconventional performance spaces.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Nanc Price.
REVIEW: Mirvish’s Made in Italy dishes a pleasant but lengthy family feast
Made in Italy is a feat of physical comedy, with creator-performer Farren Timoteo seamlessly taking on the distinct voices and mannerisms of about 10 different characters.
iPhoto caption: 'Lacrima' photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage.
REVIEW: Montreal’s boundary-pushing Festival TransAmériques wrestles with art’s larger purpose
While I only saw a small portion of FTA's deftly constructed, 20-show lineup, I observed in this year’s programming a definite commitment to platforming artists interested in questioning theatre’s relationship to the real world.
iPhoto caption: Mary Antonini as Reno Sweeney with the cast of 'Anything Goes' (Shaw Festival, 2025). Photo by David Cooper.
REVIEW: Shaw Festival’s Anything Goes is a fizzy, old-school tonic
As the script pivots between romance and farce, director-choreographer Kimberley Rampersad rides the stylistic waves, creating a production that’s sometimes grounded, sometimes cartoonish.
iPhoto caption: Zorana Sadiq and Noah Grittani in Comfort Food. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: World premiere of Comfort Food is anything but comfortable — and that’s why it works
In an era of endless broadcasts, Comfort Food questions what it means to truly connect. The show skewers the spectacle-hungry media machine, but also explores how adults contort themselves for approval, how networks co-opt authenticity, and how algorithms radicalize kids in real time.
iPhoto caption: Kelly Wong as Aslan and Élodie Gillett as the White Witch with the cast of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.' Photo by David Cooper.
REVIEW: Shaw Festival’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe needs a louder roar
Sometimes, theatre transports you to a fantastic new world. Other times, you get a wardrobe full of coats.
Spotlight
iPhoto caption: Photo by Blaire Russell.
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.
iPhoto caption: Steven Gallagher for Intermission. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
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.
iPhoto caption: Aurora Browne for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
“It’s a joy just to be in the room with a bunch of people,” says Browne, who returns to the stage this fall in The Bidding War at Crow’s Theatre. “I love working. I love theatre. I love the whole process. I love being at the read. I love the coffee and the rehearsal. I love the smell of the theatre. I love the feeling of opening night.”
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.