Adam Lazarus’s play Daughter is about masculinity. Or rather: it is a play about toxic masculinity. Or, even more accurately: it is a play about the ways in which the patriarchy molds men into defective moral agents. This is a very intellectual description for a theatre review, and of a very visceral experience. So let me […]
Blind Date (Tarragon Theatre) I’ve already reviewed this wonderful improvised clown show and its creator Rebecca Northan won the 2015 MyTheatre Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for her work alongside a random audience member who became her spontaneous date for the evening. After a succesful same-sex run at Buddies in Bad Times last year, this […]
The final offering of the Canadian Stage Spotlight Festival: Australia was The Return by Circa, a genre-defying combination of cirque and opera. The stage is shared equally between the circus artists and the live chamber ensemble, with the former occupying stage right, and the latter stage left. An imposing black wall spans the width of […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. A celebrated educator and theatre-maker, Adam Lazarus specializes in bouffon, the satirical dark side of clown (he explains it better below). In his Outstanding Solo Performance-nominated work Daughter (which played at SummerWorks last summer), Adam capitalized on a landscape full […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews Denmarked (B-) Carina Gaspar takes on Elsinore in her clown-based reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In the spirit of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (with fewer verbal fireworks and more physical exertion), Gaspar zeroes in on minor characters from the original play and pushes them […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews Peter Vs Chris (A+) I remember my first Peter n’ Chris experience. I was sitting in the back of a large venue in Winnipeg utterly delighted at what I’d stumbled in on. I was laughing so hard at the duo and recall thinking to […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Strictly speaking, Rebecca Northan‘s hilarious and affecting clown show Blind Date (which played at Tarragon this fall) is not really a “solo performance” as there are always at least two people on stage. But since we […]
The old art form known as commedia dell’arte appears infrequently in modern U.S. theatres. With masked, clown-like actors engaging in loud, brazen and eccentric sketches, commedia dell’arte relies heavily on lowbrow humor and audience participation to entertain, uninhibited by carefully scripted and staged material. When done well, commedia dell’arte can bring a smile to even […]