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Promo photo for Gemini, playing at this year's Next Stage Theatre Festival. iPhoto caption: Photo by Marc Chalifoux.

At Next Stage 2024, two shows complicate the meaning of a night out

Gemini, by Louise Casemore, and Prude, by Lou Campbell, explore the hospitality industry and bar culture from different perspectives.

By Nathaniel Hanula-James / Oct 11, 2024
iPhoto caption: Photo by Ian Jackson

REVIEW: In Ronnie Burkett’s darkly intelligent Wonderful Joe, gentrification hits like a meteor

When Siminovitch-winning puppet virtuoso Ronnie Burkett chose the focus of his latest play, was he thinking of TO Live’s $421-million plan to redevelop its St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts?

By Liam Donovan / Oct 9, 2024
Promo photo for Gemini, playing at this year's Next Stage Theatre Festival. iPhoto caption: Photo by Marc Chalifoux.

At Next Stage 2024, two shows complicate the meaning of a night out

Gemini, by Louise Casemore, and Prude, by Lou Campbell, explore the hospitality industry and bar culture from different perspectives.

By Nathaniel Hanula-James / Oct 11, 2024
iPhoto caption: Photo by Ian Jackson

REVIEW: In Ronnie Burkett’s darkly intelligent Wonderful Joe, gentrification hits like a meteor

When Siminovitch-winning puppet virtuoso Ronnie Burkett chose the focus of his latest play, was he thinking of TO Live’s $421-million plan to redevelop its St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts?

By Liam Donovan / Oct 9, 2024
13 plays about adhd iPhoto caption: 13 Plays About ADHD All At The Same Time graphic courtesy of Circlesnake Productions.

REVIEW: 13 Plays About ADHD All At The Same Time is true to its title

While the play’s structure may occasionally leave you feeling as scattered as its protagonists, its heart, humour, and raw honesty will keep your thoughts churning well into the night.

By Caroline Bellamy / Oct 8, 2024
byron laviolette iPhoto caption: Headshot courtesy of Byron Laviolette.

Speaking in Draft: Byron Laviolette

“Right now, the creation-to-production process for a lot of people is from the Toronto Fringe to — hopefully — some theatre recommender grants, to a workshop production, to maybe an actual production,” says What The Festival co-founder Byron Laviolette. “But the realities of mounting a show at the Fringe don’t translate to a two-week run at the Extraspace at Tarragon. Peoples’ appetites are different. Yet we don’t train or support people to translate their shows into those different contexts."

By Nathaniel Hanula-James / Oct 8, 2024

Reviews

iPhoto caption: Photo by Ian Jackson

REVIEW: In Ronnie Burkett’s darkly intelligent Wonderful Joe, gentrification hits like a meteor

When Siminovitch-winning puppet virtuoso Ronnie Burkett chose the focus of his latest play, was he thinking of TO Live’s $421-million plan to redevelop its St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts?

By Liam Donovan
13 plays about adhd iPhoto caption: 13 Plays About ADHD All At The Same Time graphic courtesy of Circlesnake Productions.

REVIEW: 13 Plays About ADHD All At The Same Time is true to its title

While the play’s structure may occasionally leave you feeling as scattered as its protagonists, its heart, humour, and raw honesty will keep your thoughts churning well into the night.

By Caroline Bellamy
goblin macbeth iPhoto caption: Goblin:Macbeth production still by Jae Yang.

REVIEW: Goblin:Macbeth might just leave you gobsmacked 

While most of the entertainment comes from the goblins’ antics whenever the Shakespearean text is paused or subverted for comic effect, the secret sauce to this whole endeavour is that it really is an honest-to-goodness staging of that text, designed to showcase the performers’ near-virtuosic mastery of the material.

By Ryan Borochovitz
the thanksgiving play iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

REVIEW: The Thanksgiving Play wriggles in performative wokeness

In 2024, is there a way to produce an engaging, culturally sensitive play about the first American Thanksgiving for elementary schoolers? The Thanksgiving Play, penned by Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse and now playing at Mirvish’s CAA Theatre, poses that question in its first five minutes, then throws the query out with the cranberry sauce in its madcap exploration of a devised theatre piece at an unnamed primary school.

By Aisling Murphy
ernest and ernestine iPhoto caption: The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine production still by Curtis Perry.

REVIEW: The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine simmers just below the surface

While the show certainly induces laughter, some of its strong design elements paint the actors into a corner, at times making the comedy feel a touch manufactured.

By Luke Brown
samca iPhoto caption: Samca production still by Barry McCluskey.

REVIEW: Samca is a disturbing, unique production that explores folklore and womanhood

The feminist folklore play, written by and starring Natalia Bushnik and Kathleen Welch, is an engrossing and sometimes frightening experience, perfect to kick off the scary season.

By Gabrielle Marceau

Spotlight

iPhoto caption: Norm Foster in an undated headshot.

Spotlight: Norm Foster

“I'm really proud that people want to see my work and want to see my new stuff,” says Foster, whose new play "Lakefront" plays at Lighthouse Festival Theatre through the end of the summer. “That makes me want to keep writing. Whenever I think, ‘Oh, maybe I’ve written my last play,’ I go, ‘No, I think I've got a few more in me. Let's keep going.’”

By Michael Ross Albert
actor vanessa sears stands on a waterfall in a sparkly blue evening dress. iPhoto caption: Vanessa Sears for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Spotlight: Vanessa Sears

“If I want to be the most expansive, detailed, versatile artist I can be, the only way to do that is to keep learning, questioning, exploring, and working,” says Sears, currently starring as Juliet in the Stratford Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet. “If that’s not where the open doors are, then I will go elsewhere.”

Written by Fiona Raye Clarke, Photography by Dahlia Katz
iPhoto caption: Philip Akin at home. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Spotlight: Philip Akin

“I don't know why it is being placed on Black people to change minds,” says Akin. “I ain't here to pick your intellectual cotton.”

Written by Fiona Raye Clarke, Photography by Dahlia Katz
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Artist Perspectives

George Bernard Shaw, Dungeons & Dragons, and me

I love George Bernard Shaw. This is my 11th season as an actor at his namesake festival. I think so much of what Shaw wrote could have been written yesterday. But some people aren’t interested in hearing what Shaw has to say to them 74 years after his death.

By Travis Seetoo
kailin brown iPhoto caption: Kailin Brown in the Broadway National Tour of Chicago. Photo by Jeremy Daniel.

I’m not a woman, I just play one

“As a performer, my job is to play a character, and if that character is right for me it doesn’t matter what gender they are,” writes non-binary actor Kailin Brown. “What matters is that I can make a difference in someone’s life who can relate to the character, or to me as the actor.”

By Kailin Brown
A photo of Uoft's University College. iPhoto caption: Photo by Robert Motum

Why would anyone do a PhD in theatre?

In an industry where stagnant government funding and tuition freezes have contributed to increasingly rigorous competition for fewer full-time positions, I’ve found myself reflecting: why do a PhD in theatre today?

By Robert Motum

Will female stories ever have a place in Canadian theatre?

A season of less than 50 per cent female playwrights, directors, and actors means the female-identifying population is not being fully represented. Programming becomes a question of this play or that play, as opposed to this and that, resulting in some narratives receiving short shrift. 

By Lezlie Wade

The spectacle of suffering: Toronto theatre’s addiction to trauma porn

Trauma is everywhere in Toronto — on the streets, subway, and stage — and maybe that’s why I’m so bored by it.

By Stephanie Fung
iPhoto caption: Rose Napoli appears as Margaret in her play Mad Madge. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

What is a feminist rom-com?

Rose Napoli reflects on Mad Madge, rom-coms, and the undeniable power of Patrick Swayze.

By Rose Napoli