Kelly Bedard

Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Daren A. Herbert is a two-time MyTheatre Award winner for his musical work with Acting Up Stage Company (now The Musical Stage Company). He took home 2011’s Outstanding Supporting Actor trophy for his performance in Jason Robert Brown’s […]

On back-to-back nights in Toronto, I saw one of the best representations of what musical theatre can be, and one of the worst…

  Kelly Bedard

How We Are (Workshop Production) Written with complex, moving insight by Polly Phokeev and directed with sensitivity and detail by Mikaela Davies, How We Are explores the consequences of taking a friendship to the next level. A drunken night between two best friends (played by Sochi Fried and Virgilia Griffith, both brave, exposed and extraordinary) […]

The Casting In Acting Up Stage/Obsidian’s current production of Michael John LaChiusa & George C Wolfe’s gin-soaked narrative poem The Wild Party, two principal roles always or often played by white actors are being played by black actors. This one choice has dominated the majority of the conversation around the distant but moodily effective production. […]

  Kelly Bedard

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 […]

Before we announce the winners of the 2013 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Stephen Patterson was the heart of what we think was Acting Up Stage Company’s best production to date: William Finn’s Falsettos in 2013. As Marvin- a young father coming out to his wife and son and navigating […]

  Kelly Bedard

Read Part I HERE.   London Road (Canadian Stage) Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork’s verbatim musical is a strange beast. It tells a very docutheatre story in a very docutheatre way (which you know I’m not that into) but then incorporates another theatrical medium that stands generally on the complete opposite end of the spectrum […]

  Kelly Bedard

Acting Up Stage Company has, over the last few years, become one of the most powerful players in the Toronto musical theatre scene, despite only producing a handful of pieces a year. Their spring mainstage is a Dora magnet and this year’s opening brought an impressive crowd of movers and shakers to the great but […]