The classic RnB revival gets a boost later this month with Toronto band YUKA‘s fourth release – their first on vinyl – called From the Ancients. For Yuka, the RnB/soul sound is anything but a trend. “Everyone in the band likes that kind of music,” says guitarist James Tayor. “The sound of that music is […]
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What happens when you can no longer trust the accuracy of your reality? When unfamiliar faces invade your home and parts of your life that you hold dear suddenly disappear? These are questions faced by the more than five million estimated Americans living with dementia. While a great many artistic works have been created from […]
There are similarities between this play and the school of naive art: both are flawed, though so conspicuously it must be intentional; yet, unfortunately (and often), this intention is to make a point so obvious the artist’s recourse to bad technique wastes the good. While I cannot speak for the naive artists, In the Bar […]
*originally published 03/12/2016 Let’s take a minute to talk about fantasy. As a rule, your heroes are displaced, usually by circumstances seemingly out of their control. Occasionally, they are revealed to be “chosen one” types, figures of myth/destiny/legend that come on the scene to save/destroy/etc the world. More often than not, fantasy stories are bildungsroman, […]
A Tamaskan dog prowls on a deserted set adorned with toppled student desks – a “wolf” relishing the eerie atmosphere (and undoubtedly sensing the unease of the audience members who missed the warning sign by the Box Office notifying them of the dog’s non-wolf lineage). Anyone familiar with director Ivo Van Hove’s recent work in […]
I hate plays with fake accents. Unless your name is Oliver Dennis (or you work at the Shaw Festival), your British accent is not as good as you think it is and I’d really rather you just not use it. And a British accent (usually a posh one, sometimes cockney) is the accent most Canadian […]
Part of the mission statement for the Seventeenth Annual Midtown International Theatre Festival is to “offer a safe environment to develop innovative theatre.” Held at the WorkShop Theater’s Main Stage and Jewel Box Theaters, the festival featured over thirty performances. The productions are typically about a half hour, and many even shorter than that, which […]
A research base orbits Pluto. There has been no communication with Earth for three months, far longer than normal. A crew member is hallucinating and time is not as linear as it first appeared to be. Rather than ambitious, Alistair McDowall’s X is a misunderstanding of theatre’s capabilities. Although some Beckett exists—the characters’ defining action […]