“The sadness. It gets in your fabric.” The Doll Play: A Miniature Revolution, presented by Witchboy Theatre and Blood Pact Theatre at the recently opened Grand Canyon, sounds disarmingly simple: a bunch of dolls in a child psychologist’s office, fed up of being by jostled and torn by damaged young brats, resolve to reclaim their […]
Theatre company Shakespeare BASH’d “is an actor initiative that… produces Shakespeare’s plays in social settings”, “with simple staging, clear and sympathetic language, and an emphasis on the text and actors telling the story”. (This is all cribbed from their program.) They stage their work in pubs and bars, in the round, and have progressively gotten […]
“It’s so simple: I need to know you’re listening…” It’s not just a plea to an assailant: it’s a message to audiences at The Assembly Theatre and society at large. The toughest conversations around sexual assault occur behind closed doors, too late to spare one party. By dramatising these so vividly, playwright Amy Lee Lavoie […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2018 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Most theatre artists have to slog for a long while at the start of their professional careers before getting any faint public praise, or even mention of their work. Few would dare hope to be cited […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2018 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The indefatigable Anne van Leeuwen is the Artistic Director of Leroy Street Theatre and co-founder of The Assembly Theatre, the young Parkdale venue that won an Honorary Critics’ Pick Award last year for its entrepreneurial spirit and […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2018 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Wesley Berger had a hand in four different nominations for this year’s Critics’ Pick Awards. As the director of Outstanding Production nominee Kill the Poor with Leroy Street Theatre, he shepherded Outstanding Leading Performance contender Anne van […]
Many Shakespeare plays present an imposing barrier to entry even for educated audiences. Directors devise increasingly inventive ways to make them accessible or relevant – or at least to have their own fun and leave their own mark on the work in the guise of doing this. Othello weds a simple plot, touching on familiar […]
Gruesome Playground Injuries is all about variations on themes. Director Chris Bretecher writes that, in following the characters through their unlikely and unlucky journey, “we acknowledge topics of mental health, sexual consent, substance abuse, self harm, and risk taking behaviours”. This is far clearer in the literature than the text: the playbill explains the production’s […]