“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. 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 […]
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 […]
Two small, run-down apartments are the settings for two new George F. Walker plays, which taken together complete his Parkdale Palace Trilogy (begun with last year’s The Chance, which I must confess to not having seen), which are being staged at the Assembly Theatre in a double bill. Put on by Low Rise Productions and […]
The cryptic title of this Tom Noonan two-hander refers to a story within the play. Taken as a suggestion as to what the play itself might be, it hints that something is coming, pulling the audience to the edge of our seats as we await the inevitable devastation. What actually happens is mostly fairly mundane, […]