Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards…
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Stephen Joffe has the sort of unique intense energy that, when casting the role of unpredictable cousin Ziggy in the Storefront’s site-specific epic Tough Jews, both the writer and director had the same “it has to […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. For about ten years, I only knew Luis Fernandes as the most memorable beer guy at the Skydome (the man knows his baseball). In 2016, I discovered that he’s actually a theatre creator- a co-founder of […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. As business-minded (and brilliantly besuited) Ben, Blue Bigwood-Mallin quietly anchored the rambunctious Outstanding Ensemble-nominated cast of the Storefront Theatre’s site-specific indie hit Tough Jews. Though he claims that he doesn’t “generally come across as super friendly”, […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The wonderful Anne van Leeuwen is a force in Toronto indie theatre. She’s got this crazy indomitable spirit that manifests itself in pure ambition and prolific output as a director, a performer, an artistic director, and […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The delightful and versatile G. Kyle Shields is one of the great staples of the Toronto indie theatre scene. He’s delivered memorable performances in some of my favourite productions of all time but he stepped up […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The endlessly engaging James Smith is a rare triple nominee this year. As the composer and lyricist of the Storefront/Soulpepper musical, he gets a heap of the credit for Chasse-Galerie‘s Outstanding Production nod in addition to his role in […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. One of the great indie theatre fairy tales of the last few years was Kabin/Storefront Arts Initiative’s Chasse-Galerie, a collaboratively created feminist folklore musical that soared from its rough and tumble roots to win a Dora and eventually land […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. A true MVP of the Toronto indie season, Prince Amponsah gave no fewer than three incredible performances in 2016- romantic quadriplegic Freddie in Safeword’s Contempt, enigmatic antihero Alistair in Storefront’s Hangman, and complex victim-turned-villain DeFlores in Desiderata Theatre […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. I have a theory that Danny Pagett is the Kevin Bacon of Toronto indie theatre (in the six-degrees sense). He works constantly- in multiple capacities, on different types of projects, in various venues, with a sprawling array of collaborators. […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The founding Artistic Director of the Storefront Theatre, Benjamin Blais has produced, directed and appeared in many productions in the company’s time at 955 Bloor Street West. With the recent announcement that the space will be closing, Contempt […]
Kelly Bedard
Blue Remembered Hills (Good Old Neon) This dark, unpleasant, uncompromisingly strange piece of physical theatre is born out of a British teleplay in which a group of children play and torture each other, as children do. The children are meant to be played by adults but director Nicole Wilson has fully grown the characters up, […]
Kelly Bedard
Original musicals are hard to develop and expensive to produce so you don’t see that many of them crop up in the Canadian theatre landscape. Chasse-Galerie (both its quality and its trajectory) is a reminder that it can be done and why it’s worth doing. James Smith’s music and lyrics are toe-tapping delights, many of which […]
Kelly Bedard
Secrets of a Black Boy (Playing with Crayons/Theatre Passe Muraille) A constantly evolving mix of storytelling and narrative theatre, playwright Darren Anthony’s moving and evocative Secrets of a Black Boy brings five very different black men together for one last game of dominoes before their community centre closes. The play begins with a theatrical montage […]
Kelly Bedard
Kill Your Parents in Viking, Alberta (Storefront Arts Initiative & Blood Pact Theatre) A vibrant, fraught, fast-paced new tragi-comedy from playwrights Bryce Hodgson & Charlie Kerr, the oddly named Kill Your Parents in Viking, Alberta plays out in real-time in the kitchen of young mother Susan (Allie Dunbar, hilarious in her immovability) as she attempts […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Jakob Ehman was last year’s winner for Outstanding Supporting Actor (for Theatre Brouhaha’s Cockfight). He wore a rope belt to the ceremony (it was the talk of twitter) and we grilled him about the new play he was […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Known for his kind, affable nature, indie star Tim Walker shocked and astounded in his black-as-pitch tour de force performance in Red One Theatre Collective’s production of David Mamet’s Edmond, a brutal portrait of a disturbed man battling […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Boundary pushing indie playwright Brandon Crone won the MyTheatre Award for Outstanding New Play back in 2013, the first time he was nominated. Now celebrating his third nomination in a row, he returns to the Nominee Interview Series to […]
Kelly Bedard
Toronto Theatre is killing it so far in 2016. Here’s the lowdown on the latest, starting with the best. Mustard (Tarragon Theatre) The first non-indie offering from indie Toronto’s most prolific mainstay is a great introduction for the many unfortunate individuals who have managed to make it this far without seeing a Kat Sandler play. […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. At the helm of Severely Jazzed Productions’ take on Canadian cult classic Trout Stanley, Daniel Pagett reframed the larger-than-life play as a twisted fairy tale recounted by a snarky narrator, raised the absurdity, and focused on the poetry […]
Kelly Bedard
Edmond (The Storefront Arts Initiative) In David Mamet’s bleak one-act Edmond, nearly every actor plays multiple roles. Director Benjamin Blais has his large, diverse cast nearly omnipresent and in perpetual motion, creating a swirling, oppressive crowd through which Tim Walker’s frantic Edmond has to constantly fight to make his way to each of the 23 […]
Kelly Bedard
The latest indie company to take the stage at the Storefront Theatre is the excellently named Severely Jazzed, headed by improvisers Tess Degenstein and Hannah Spear. We spoke to Tess and Hannah about their inaugural production Trout Stanley which hits Bloor West this Thursday. Tell us about Severely Jazzed Productions and how the company got […]
Kelly Bedard
The latest productions from Coal Mine and Safeword share a common goal: to leave you shaken. They share some other things too (small casts, hip tones, interesting spaces) but it’s that shared goal that stands out. That’s not what all theatre artists are doing; most want to entertain you, to move you, maybe even inspire […]
Thea Fitz-James
John Patrick Shanley’s A Woman is A Secret opened at the Theatre Centre last Friday to an enthusiastic audience. Though what brought audiences to their feet at the end of the show is not clear to me. For while A Woman is a Secret was beautifully staged, actors were bogged down by Shanley’s overly poetic […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The entire leading trio from Cockfight, Kat Sandler’s superb testosterone-fuelled ode to the makeshift family, is nominated for a My Theatre Award this year (see also: Jakob Ehman and Benjamin Blais). In a fast-moving, hyper-physical, intensely dramatic and […]
Kelly Bedard
Before we announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. A key member of ace improvisers Bad Dog Theatre Company (our reigning Honorary Award Winners), it was actually Colin Munch’s scripted performances that first caught our attention. We saw him in two non-improv shows in 2014 and […]