Theatre Centre’s Progress Festival is one of my favourite annual festivals in Toronto. The programming is always sharp and smart, bringing cutting edge international performances to the Queen West theatre. I was only able to see a few shows in this year’s festival; this represents only a sliver of the festival’s programming. CAFÉ SARAJEVO Café […]
805-4821 (A) “805-4821 is a trans coming out story made out of other stories: a dialogue from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a half-remembered swim lesson, and an 80,000 word Facebook correspondence” This is how the promotional material introduces Davis Plett’s work, directed by Gislina Patterson. I added it to my roster expecting a show that could be […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of SummerWorks Reviews Café Sarajevo episode 1 (A+) A surprising diversion from the usual SummerWorks lineup, Café Sarajevo is a live SummerWorks LAB podcast discussing the nature of humanity, the implacable human spirit, the importance of language and the heartbreaking struggles of war. Inspired by a famous […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of SummerWorks Reviews Third World (B+) & ZAYO (A) Movement and stories of obstacles overcome merge in these two fascinating, viscerally performed dance pieces. dancer FLY LADY DI opens Third World with a brief, funny and insightful summary of her relationship to dance as a discipline. What […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of SummerWorks Reviews … And You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next (A) The sneaky dissonance of this latest storytelling show from Pressgang Theatre’s Graham Isador adds an intriguing layer of unspoken complication to an already rich and rewarding hour. Demonstrating once again his uncanny knack for structure, […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of SummerWorks Reviews fantasylover (A+) fantasylover was weird and wonderful. The characters presented onstage were so clear and defined, and had the audience in peals of laughter. The show had a good flow throughout, rising and falling in energy, and the amount of thought and work that […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of SummerWorks Reviews 4inXchange (A) Warning in advance, if you are not into heavy audience participation experiences, 4inXchange may be a bit difficult to handle. Without spoiling too many surprises, performing group xLq have set up a personalized game show experience meant to explore how we think […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of SummerWorks Reviews Body So Fluorescent (A+) Desiree and Gary are close friends. Very close. Until one night in a club leads to an explosive fight. Lets just say that Desiree is black and Gary is white, but sometimes takes on the mask of a black woman […]
August 9-19th, our writers reviewed nearly every show in Toronto’s annual SummerWorks Festival. The full list of shows with letter grades and links to our reviews is below. Check out our Twitter and Instagram @MyEntWorld for more from our SummerWorks 2018 experience. Reminder to SummerWorks Artists: If your SummerWorks show scored an A+ or A, you can […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. When Pearle Harbour walked…
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE Icône Pop (A) The scene for Icône Pop is set as the audience walks into the blackbox theatre at The Theatre Centre with singer Mykalle Bielinski crooning in the most beautiful ghostly way, and with dancer Mélanie Demers silhouetted in the doors of the studio thrown open onto Queen West, […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE The Only Good Indian (B+) It’s difficult to grade this solo show from Pandemic Theatre because half its runtime is just a “long table” discussion that will surely be completely different every day (the one I attended was heady and somewhat confrontational though smartly moderated by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard) […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE Explosions for the 21st Century (A-) My favourite SummerWorks show this year, Christopher Ross-Ewart’s philosophical and practical lecture on sound design is both an inventive theatrical presentation and a simply fascinating subject engagingly explained. With direction and dramaturgy by expert storyteller Graham Isador, Explosions for the 21st Century is […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE Pearle Harbour’s Chautaqua (A+) [Ed. Note: A+ is the highest grade we give but, just for the record, MM’s official submission was “A+++++++”] This is everything I want to see, want to hear, want to be. Pearle Harbour’s stage presence is strong enough to cause you to fall in love, […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE Erased: Billy and Bayard (A) Created and performed by the Queer Songbook Orchestra, featuring Andrew Broderick and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, the show weaves together the narrative threads of two 20th century musicians. Billy Strayhorn and Bayard Rustin were both black and queer and who contributed significantly to the Civil Rights […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE August, Augusta (A) Created, choreographed, and directed by Jocelyn Mah, and winner of The Winchester Prize, this piece depicts two musicians and a trio of female dancers. The first dancer comes out dressed as a man, dancing not unlike how I recall male characters dancing in old Warner Brothers […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE White Man’s Indian (A) This is a story that needs to be told and should be told but is not for the faint of heart. Writer Darla Contois explores identity on multiple fronts, the first being the lack of recorded history for Canadian First Nations which causes Eva, the […]
The 2017 SummerWorks Performance Festival runs August 3-13 and our staff is on hand to cover pretty much everything. Check back at this page throughout the festival for all of our reviews and be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter accounts for all the latest updates. The MyTheatre Artists Advertising Discount Program If your SummerWorks show scores […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. This is our third audio interview of the year and the reason it’s audio really comes down to the fact that playwright/Outstanding Solo Performance nominee Thomas McKechnie and Outstanding Direction nominee Michael Reinhart wanted to come in together […]
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 […]
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 […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Anahita Dehbonehie is not only a double nominee this year in the Outstanding Set & Costume Design categories but she’s nominated for two vastly different projects. In the large theatre division, she’s nominated (with costume designer Yannik Larivée) for Stratford’s […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Smart, detailed, and ambitious, Julia Matias has started to carve out a really interesting career as a performer, director and designer in Toronto by seeking mentorship from established artists and leaving a trail of excellent impressions in her […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of SummerWorks Reviews Situational Anarchy (A) This was a very succesful SummerWorks and a lot of the credit for that goes to the vast array of excellent storytelling shows. Graham Isador’s evocative punk rock solo show is yet another strong showing in that category. Filled with rage […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of SummerWorks Reviews Trompe-La-Mort, or Goriot in the 21st Century (A) The great success of Trompe-la-Mort lies in the unexpected pairing of director Ted Witzel (an avant-garde intellectual with a strong visual aesthetic and Brechtian sensibility, known for mining timely poignancy from classical texts) and playwright Anthony […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of SummerWorks Reviews Goggles Must Be Worn at All Times (B+) Strange, arcane, and with a level of technical wizardry that can be nothing but impressive, Goggles is a show with a lot of pieces, and keeping an eye on all of them is next to impossible. […]