Intermission Magazine Home
iPhoto caption: Production image of The Livrarian. Photo by Anita Murphy.
Inaugural Bealtaine Theatre Festival brings contemporary Irish theatre to Toronto
Toronto audiences will experience a diverse selection of Irish theatre, music, and storytelling as the Bealtaine Theatre Festival debuts from April 25 to May 25.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: How does the American musical Waitress land in today’s Canada? It’s complicated
The Theatre Aquarius and Grand Theatre co-production is fascinating for its attempt to harness the pleasures of the Broadway musical form, while casting an awkward-stepping jaundiced eye at fantasies of American identity.
iPhoto caption: Production image of The Livrarian. Photo by Anita Murphy.
Inaugural Bealtaine Theatre Festival brings contemporary Irish theatre to Toronto
Toronto audiences will experience a diverse selection of Irish theatre, music, and storytelling as the Bealtaine Theatre Festival debuts from April 25 to May 25.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: How does the American musical Waitress land in today’s Canada? It’s complicated
The Theatre Aquarius and Grand Theatre co-production is fascinating for its attempt to harness the pleasures of the Broadway musical form, while casting an awkward-stepping jaundiced eye at fantasies of American identity.
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."
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.
Reviews
iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: How does the American musical Waitress land in today’s Canada? It’s complicated
The Theatre Aquarius and Grand Theatre co-production is fascinating for its attempt to harness the pleasures of the Broadway musical form, while casting an awkward-stepping jaundiced eye at fantasies of American identity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Spotlight
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.”
iPhoto caption: Norm Foster in an undated headshot.
“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.’”
Donate
Since you’re here, we have a small favour to ask.
Donate NowWe have big plans to grow and are committed to being a reliable platform for the performing arts in Canada. But to help us get there, we need support. Please consider donating so we can keep working hard to give you the performing arts journalism that is needed and wanted across Canada.
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.