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REVIEW: cicadas is a jam-packed eco-thriller experiment with a dual personality
Hauntings (of people and land), climate anxiety, existential uncertainty, family history, and mathematics all collide, leaving the audience with a tremendous amount of story to digest.
REVIEW: Ex Machina’s leather-clad Macbeth is slick, current, and unmistakably Quebecois
Given that this production premiered in English at the Stratford Festival last year, I was curious how Robert Lepage might adapt the work for a Francophone context. By layering narrative adaptation, rich linguistic translation, and visual elements of mass media, Lepage delivers a Macbeth that is current and compelling.
REVIEW: cicadas is a jam-packed eco-thriller experiment with a dual personality
Hauntings (of people and land), climate anxiety, existential uncertainty, family history, and mathematics all collide, leaving the audience with a tremendous amount of story to digest.
REVIEW: Ex Machina’s leather-clad Macbeth is slick, current, and unmistakably Quebecois
Given that this production premiered in English at the Stratford Festival last year, I was curious how Robert Lepage might adapt the work for a Francophone context. By layering narrative adaptation, rich linguistic translation, and visual elements of mass media, Lepage delivers a Macbeth that is current and compelling.
REVIEW: COC’s Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung is a hypnotic exploration of light
Rather than retread the ground of an overall analysis, I’d like to zoom in on an element that particularly interested me: Simonovitch Prize-winning designer Robert Thomson’s expressionistic lighting for Bluebeard’s Castle, which nicely enriches the opera’s ambiguous psychological landscape.
Through the Eyes of God makes noise at the 2026 Toronto Theatre Critics’ Awards
The jury of the Toronto Theatre Critics’ Awards (TTCAs) has announced its 2026 results — 26 winners across 20 categories, plus a special citation.
REVIEW: At Buddies, take rimbaud blends critical theory with glorious theatrical mess-making
REVIEW: It’s a Good Life — but is it a good time? Three critics weigh in.
At the 2026 Luminato Festival, performance gets up close and personal
REVIEW: Soulpepper’s How to Catch Creation has plenty to offer a Canadian audience
cicadas, a new eco-thriller by David Yee, begins previews at Tarragon
Reviews
REVIEW: cicadas is a jam-packed eco-thriller experiment with a dual personality
Hauntings (of people and land), climate anxiety, existential uncertainty, family history, and mathematics all collide, leaving the audience with a tremendous amount of story to digest.
REVIEW: Ex Machina’s leather-clad Macbeth is slick, current, and unmistakably Quebecois
Given that this production premiered in English at the Stratford Festival last year, I was curious how Robert Lepage might adapt the work for a Francophone context. By layering narrative adaptation, rich linguistic translation, and visual elements of mass media, Lepage delivers a Macbeth that is current and compelling.
REVIEW: COC’s Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung is a hypnotic exploration of light
Rather than retread the ground of an overall analysis, I’d like to zoom in on an element that particularly interested me: Simonovitch Prize-winning designer Robert Thomson’s expressionistic lighting for Bluebeard’s Castle, which nicely enriches the opera’s ambiguous psychological landscape.
iPhoto caption: Julian De Zotti, Ruth Goodwin, and Thomas Mitchell Barnet in 'take rimbaud.' Photo by Wade Muir.
REVIEW: At Buddies, take rimbaud blends critical theory with glorious theatrical mess-making
While Susanna Fournier’s script despairs about the political limits of art, ted witzel's production induces the anarchic sensation that anything is possible on stage.
iPhoto caption: Members of the company of 'It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken.' Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: It’s a Good Life — but is it a good time? Three critics weigh in.
So much of Canadian identity is a sense of place and the actual, physical spaces that we're in. One song where this jumped out for me was "Bobcaygeon," where they’re walking around in falling snow. It put me right into a moment of walking across a frozen lake in Northern Ontario, seeing stars in a dark sky. It almost made me cry to see someone on stage experience that, and have that sort of connection with a physical place in Canada.
REVIEW: Soulpepper’s How to Catch Creation has plenty to offer a Canadian audience
From its Black feminist ethics to its ideas about making art and living a good life, How to Catch Creation stands out most of all as a bold intellectual and affective challenge.
Spotlight
Spotlight: Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu
“I always question: ‘How am I going to do it?’ But the moment I get in the room with actors, it becomes clear," says Tindyebwa Otu. "We need to tell stories; we need to be in community. Every show I do, I feel like, ‘This could be the last one.’ I’ve felt like this since I became a mom. And yet, 10 years later, I’ve produced more artistic work than ever.”
iPhoto caption: Nora McLellan for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz. Styled by Sonia Lewis and Dahlia Katz. Hair by Anne May. Makeup by Katelyn O'Neil.
“It’s still always that same technicolour feeling for me," says McLellan. "That little girl and this much older person are pretty much the same. I really do all of my living on stage.”
“Art has a very significant healing aspect to it,” says Ma-Anne Dionisio. “The performance aspect, for me, always comes secondary.”
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Artist Perspectives
Preparing to direct Slave Play: A travel guide to Richmond, Virginia
Since reading Slave Play, I’ve asked every romantic partner whether or not they experience a racial dynamic between us in the bedroom. No one has given the same answer. What is it that I am asking them to acknowledge in these scenarios? Who is it that I am asking them to hold? What does it mean to hold someone’s history?
At the 2025 Festival d’Avignon, politics were never far off
I’d performed and directed for festivals in Canada and elsewhere, but it wasn’t at all the same as being on the bum-in-seat side. There I was, in Avignon, rubbing shoulders with the umpteen visitors hungry for a good show. I came away feeling that here, theatre mattered. A lot. In the stony fields of Toronto, that can be easy to forget.
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.
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.
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.