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Photo of Karen Hines as Pochsy iPhoto caption: Promotional still for Citizen Pochsy (2003). Photo by Gary Mulcahey.

Pochsy’s back! At VideoCabaret, a Canadian underground theatre icon returns to Toronto

“There are opposites at play at all times — in the show, in the writing, in the performance,” says playwright-performer Karen Hines. “When something gets dark, Pochsy might be super light in the delivery of it. When she’s being facetious or giggly, it might even be as she’s destroying a species."

By Liam Donovan / Apr 2, 2025
Production still from Studio 180's A Public Display of Affection at Crow's Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

REVIEW: A Public Display of Affection simultaneously holds your hand and breaks your heart

Like a disco ball shimmering to a Donna Summer hit, playwright-performer Jonathan Wilson illuminates and refracts detailed memories about absent friends whose names, struggles, and lives have otherwise vanished, while walking through modern streets where a little gay hand-holding in Starbucks goes completely unnoticed.

By Ilana Lucas / Apr 2, 2025
Photo of Karen Hines as Pochsy iPhoto caption: Promotional still for Citizen Pochsy (2003). Photo by Gary Mulcahey.

Pochsy’s back! At VideoCabaret, a Canadian underground theatre icon returns to Toronto

“There are opposites at play at all times — in the show, in the writing, in the performance,” says playwright-performer Karen Hines. “When something gets dark, Pochsy might be super light in the delivery of it. When she’s being facetious or giggly, it might even be as she’s destroying a species."

By Liam Donovan / Apr 2, 2025
Production still from Studio 180's A Public Display of Affection at Crow's Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

REVIEW: A Public Display of Affection simultaneously holds your hand and breaks your heart

Like a disco ball shimmering to a Donna Summer hit, playwright-performer Jonathan Wilson illuminates and refracts detailed memories about absent friends whose names, struggles, and lives have otherwise vanished, while walking through modern streets where a little gay hand-holding in Starbucks goes completely unnoticed.

By Ilana Lucas / Apr 2, 2025
Production still of Gavin Crawford in Fully Committed at Theatre Aquarius. iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

REVIEW: Theatre Aquarius’ Fully Committed playfully satirizes the world of fine dining

The play’s back-and-forth premise makes for an excellent showcase of Gavin Crawford’s substantial comedic chops.

By Charlotte Lilley / Apr 1, 2025
Production still of Riot King's Red at The Theatre Centre. iPhoto caption: Photo by Damon McLean.

REVIEW: Riot King’s Red examines Rothko’s uncompromising legacy

While Red cannot unseal the legacy of its paintings, this iteration conjures an immense compassion for the arts workers who try.

By Saffron Maeve / Mar 31, 2025

Reviews

Production still from Studio 180's A Public Display of Affection at Crow's Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

REVIEW: A Public Display of Affection simultaneously holds your hand and breaks your heart

Like a disco ball shimmering to a Donna Summer hit, playwright-performer Jonathan Wilson illuminates and refracts detailed memories about absent friends whose names, struggles, and lives have otherwise vanished, while walking through modern streets where a little gay hand-holding in Starbucks goes completely unnoticed.

By Ilana Lucas
Production still of Gavin Crawford in Fully Committed at Theatre Aquarius. iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

REVIEW: Theatre Aquarius’ Fully Committed playfully satirizes the world of fine dining

The play’s back-and-forth premise makes for an excellent showcase of Gavin Crawford’s substantial comedic chops.

By Charlotte Lilley
Production still of Riot King's Red at The Theatre Centre. iPhoto caption: Photo by Damon McLean.

REVIEW: Riot King’s Red examines Rothko’s uncompromising legacy

While Red cannot unseal the legacy of its paintings, this iteration conjures an immense compassion for the arts workers who try.

By Saffron Maeve
Kayla Sakura Charchuk, Jay Leonard Juatco, Kimberly-Ann Truong, Jun Kung, and Raugi Yu in Cambodian Rock Band. Set design by Jung-Hye Kim, costume design by Stephanie Kong, lighting design by Itai Erdal. Photo by Moonrider Productions. iPhoto caption: Kayla Sakura Charchuk, Jay Leonard Juatco, Kimberly-Ann Truong, Jun Kung, and Raugi Yu in Cambodian Rock Band. Set design by Jung-Hye Kim, costume design by Stephanie Kong, lighting design by Itai Erdal. Photo by Moonrider Productions.

REVIEW: Cambodian Rock Band makes scintillating Canadian premiere at Vancouver’s Arts Club

Jumping back and forth through time, it weaves the story of a father-daughter relationship together with high-energy musical performances and meditations on the traumatic effects of the Cambodian genocide.

By Reham Cojuangco
Production photo of Tara Sky in The Born-Again Crow at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo of Tara Sky by Jeremy Mimnagh. Set design by Shannon Lea Doyle, costume design by Asa Benally, lighting design by Hailey Verbonac.

REVIEW: The Born-Again Crow is an ardent ode to unproductivity

Director Jessica Carmichael’s Toronto premiere production trucks along with the passionate force of an early-2000s emo rock hit, imbuing this systemic critique with rousing, playful life.

By Liam Donovan
Production photo of House + Body's Measure for Measure at Crow's Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo by Kendra Epik.

REVIEW: House + Body’s Measure for Measure weds the beautiful with the troubling

House + Body provides few answers about how to resist (or further, dismantle) a corrupt government. But layered portrayals of the play’s central characters convey the emotional stakes of a system that allows for egregious abuses of power.

By Ferron Delcy

Spotlight

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
aurora browne iPhoto caption: Aurora Browne for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Spotlight: Aurora Browne

“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.”

Written by Anne T. Donahue, Photography by Dahlia Katz
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
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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