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iPhoto caption: Members of the company of 'Katma.' Photo by Anna Kucera.
At the 2026 Luminato Festival, performance gets up close and personal
“It would be so weird for people to be sitting two feet away, watching other people have a good time,” says Katma creator Azzam Mohamed. “In the party environment, there’s nothing between me and you. You’re so close to me that I can’t fake it."
iPhoto caption: Members of the company of 'How to Catch Creation.' Photo by Dahlia Katz.
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.
iPhoto caption: Members of the company of 'Katma.' Photo by Anna Kucera.
At the 2026 Luminato Festival, performance gets up close and personal
“It would be so weird for people to be sitting two feet away, watching other people have a good time,” says Katma creator Azzam Mohamed. “In the party environment, there’s nothing between me and you. You’re so close to me that I can’t fake it."
iPhoto caption: Members of the company of 'How to Catch Creation.' Photo by Dahlia Katz.
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.
iPhoto caption: Ryan Hollyman and Monica Dottor. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
cicadas, a new eco-thriller by David Yee, begins previews at Tarragon
In a near-future version of Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood, a house turns on its inhabitants. Unsettling phenomena begin to surface: unexplained leaks, invasive moss, and a persistent, otherworldly hum.
iPhoto caption: Janet McMordie in 'Vitals.' Photo by Nate Colitto.
REVIEW: In Rosamund Small’s Vitals, Toronto becomes a map of private catastrophes
The play cuts through the glossy image of health-care workers as haloed heroes, bringing us closer to people working through exhaustion, hypervigilance, and horror.
Reviews
iPhoto caption: Members of the company of 'How to Catch Creation.' Photo by Dahlia Katz.
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.
iPhoto caption: Janet McMordie in 'Vitals.' Photo by Nate Colitto.
REVIEW: In Rosamund Small’s Vitals, Toronto becomes a map of private catastrophes
The play cuts through the glossy image of health-care workers as haloed heroes, bringing us closer to people working through exhaustion, hypervigilance, and horror.
iPhoto caption: Meilie Ng, Wai Yin Kwok, and Sophie Gee in 'Bonnes Bonnes.' Photo by
Eden Graham.
REVIEW: Nervous Hunter’s Bonnes Bonnes combines laid-back ingredients to flavourful effect
Bonnes Bonnes is a nice reminder that productions can think, play, chill — and chili — all at once.
iPhoto caption: Members of the company of 'On Native Land.' Photo by David Cooper.
REVIEW: In Vancouver, the new musical On Native Land shimmers with hope
Corey Payette’s On Native Land unfolds as something layered and multi-perspectival, moving between individual stories and a more panoramic awareness of larger forces at play.
iPhoto caption: Daniel Maslany and Karl Ang in 'The Division.' Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: Andrew Kushnir’s The Division confronts the impossibility of fully knowing the past
Playing at Crow’s Theatre, The Division is a thorny, intimate work of theatre that examines inherited guilt, the relentlessness of eye-for-an-eye justice, and the seductive promise of being able to clearly define and banish evil forever, if only you could choose and label the correct side.
iPhoto caption: Sophia Walker in 'Clyde's' at Canadian Stage.
REVIEW: At Canadian Stage, Clyde’s reflects on the value of negativity
Clyde’s is particularly interesting because of the risks Lynn Nottage takes with both its form and structure. With five characters on stage for 90 minutes, Nottage writes the play to be as compact and pressurized as possible.
Spotlight
iPhoto caption: Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
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.”
iPhoto caption: Ma-Anne Dionisio for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Tim Nguyen.
“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
iPhoto caption: Photo of Jordan Laffrenier by Sandro Pehar.
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?
iPhoto caption: 'Delirious Night' at the Festival d'Avignon. Photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage.
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.
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.