Jackie Houghton

Clowning is an art. A wise woman who has spent most of her adult life performing as a both a theatre and a circus clown once told me that clowning is an impossible art to perfect because a true clown must be able to balance wearing a variety of hats all while acting the fool. […]

  Amy Strizic

The return of Slava’s Snow Show to Toronto, staged at the Bluma Appel Theatre, is a resounding success. The show is everything it promises to be – truly a night of wonder, magic, and childlike joy. Although there were many families with happily giggling children in the audience, Slava’s Snowshow is by no means a […]

  Mary-Margaret Scrimger

Pearle Harbour’s Chautauqua- presented at Theatre Passe Muraille, written and performed by Justin Miller in his Critics’ Pick Award-winning role- is what’s been missing in theatre. With the political climate, we are starving for a noble leader and Pearle Harbour steps up to fill that role. The show is set in a mid-century wartime tent, similar to what […]

  Thea Fitz-James

The antechamber shows are short, 30 mins pieces, and some of my favourite Next Stage offerings. This year brought two high-energy clown pieces. Leila Live A self-described “real life Persian Princess,” Leila Live (pronounced with a short /i/), offers a 30 min clown/drag cabaret, with singing, puppetry, original song writing, rapping, and of course, lots of laughs. A […]

  Lisa McKeown

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 […]

  Kelly Bedard

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 […]

  Kymberley Feltham

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 […]

  Kelly Bedard

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 […]