I am an actor. Since graduating from theatre school almost four years ago, I have also become (in order and to greater or lesser degrees) an acting coach, a director, a stage combat choreographer and teaching assistant, a producer, an adaptor, and finally, a writer. One of the joys of being a young Canadian actor […]
For their inaugural production, socially conscious Clock Tower Theatre chose a contemporary Canadian play limited neither by its time nor its place. Rather, The Harrowing is one of those no-frills political thrillers that could just as easily be about Jesus as about Maziar Bahari or a dystopian hero of the future. Designer/AD Justin Büyüközer embraces […]
At the Papermill Theatre last week, the East Side Players premiered one of the most ambitious and beautiful works in the Canadian theatrical canon- Timothy Findley’s Elizabeth Rex. The complex hypothetical places the “virgin” Queen rather outlandishly in the barn where Shakespeare’s troupe The Lord Chamberlain’s men are lodging after performing Much Ado About Nothing […]
It’s with Jules Massenet’s gorgeous setting of the classic story of an “errant knight” that The Canadian Opera Company closes out a truly exemplary season. This was the season when I finally learned to love The COC, when I finally felt like I had a favourite opera composer (Donizetti) and a favourite soprano (Adrianne Pieczonka), […]
Out from the looming shadow of Peter Sellars’ agonizing Hercules, The Canadian Opera Company is crawling back to the light as they close in on the end of their generally strong 2013/14 season. Said light is shone by thoughtful director Stephen Lawless onto Donizetti’s emotionally mature and structurally sound opera about the great and confounding […]
Of Human Bondage For the first ever stage adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s titanic novel Of Human Bondage, Vern Thiessen has made the bold choice to excerpt the story he was most interested in telling from the 800 page life-spanning tale of Philip Carey. He smartly has streamlined and simplified his chosen plot- the tragedy […]
As you likely already know (because we talk about it All The Time), earlier this month we hosted Toronto’s inaugural My Theatre Awards ceremony. The awards have been around since 2010, but this was the first party. Because it was the first party, it took a ton of planning. In the process of all said […]
Alumnae Theatre closes its 2013-2014 season in impressive fashion with David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning-play-turned-blockbuster Rabbit Hole. A scintillating …