We are at the intersection of Black History Month and the first days of MLB’s Spring Training, with baseball on the horizon. It is a time for celebrating America’s most-storied game, and a time celebrating great black Americans. Baseball, earned through the privilege of its history serves as a uniquely qualified sport to tell the […]
Two more pieces had their opening at Progress Festival on Valentine’s Day. While they couldn’t be more different, they did share something in common. Dis Merci When it comes to creating healthy inclusive communities, let face it, sometimes even our best intentions give way to tension and friction amongst neighbours. Sometimes we even end up […]
Jennifer Fell Hayes’ hauntingly beautiful new play Rosemary and Time explores the painful and joyous revelations that a middle-aged woman, Rosemary, makes about her past after a serendipitous meeting with a sister she had all but forgotten. With a backstory that could easily be a plot line on television’s Call the Midwife, Hayes explores the impact that relationships […]
The Shakespeare Bash’d production of Richard III at the Monarch Tavern was just the thing for one of these wintry February nights. In contrast to the weight of the play, the atmosphere is cozy as we walk into the space: the narrow space has been transformed into a stage – chairs line the sides of the […]
MDLSX, produced by Italian theatre company Motus, bravely opened the Progress Festival at Toronto’s Theatre Centre. It certainly lives up to the festival’s intentions. Just like Progress brings together theatre collectives with a contemporary focus from across the world, MDLSX itself has been developed in collaboration with many European collectives and festivals, extending from Paris […]
Calpurnia is a meta play written and directed by Audrey Dwyer, a black Torontonian woman, about Julie, an upper class black Torontonian woman who is writing an updated version of To Kill a Mockingbird from the perspective of the Finch-family maid Calpurnia. It is a co-production by Nightwood Theatre and Sulong Theatre companies at Buddies […]
Declarations, a new show by celebrated Toronto Playwright Jordan Tannahill, is yet another testament to the author’s ability to present innovative, new theatre. A fascinating meeting of text and movement—of the ephemeral and what remains—Declarations is a thoughtful, evocative exploration of form, body, text and grief. “This is the thing; This is not the thing.” So begins Declarations, as […]
In Ise Lyfe and Matt Werner’s new play Agnus, everything about 2047 feels unnervingly familiar. A soothing artificial intelligence called “Sequoyah” relays information upon command, screen-obsessed citizens are stirred into fervors by corporate media sensationalism, privately run prisons become breeding grounds for unethical behavior and the government seeks ways to control both the content and distribution […]