Big Shot “I wish life were more like an action movie.” This is the plea of our young narrator at the beginning of Big Shot with Surreal SoReal Theatre out of Montreal. This solo show, written and performed by Jon Lachlan Stewart, weaves the story of four strangers who meet on a subway car, in […]
Theatre is alive at host venue Factory Theatre as patrons showed little fear, braving the cold winds at the outdoor ticket booth – huddling closely but with great anticipation of the shows on the inside. Both shows I viewed my first night at the festival were relatable in that they dealt with relationships and loss, […]
The title was the first thing that caught my eye. If you browse the program notes of New Repertory Theatre’s latest production, Muckrakers, written by Zayd Dohrn, directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary, you’ll find many references to contemporary whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. We are prepped to think this show will be about […]
2014 was so much fun for us at My Theatre (Toronto). We hosted our first-ever My Theatre Award Party on April 7th, hired a handful of new part-time reviewers, and saw upwards of 200 productions between January 1st and December 31st (literally, the last one was at 8pm on New Years Eve). We started the […]
2014 ended much the way it began for many Americans – watching Idina Menzel give a cringe-worthy performance of “Let It Go” to a large crowd.* My 2014 ended in a dark theatre – a movie theatre, actually. As I waited for Breakfast at Tiffany’s to start, I recounted my rather whirlwind year of theatrical […]
It’s hard to be an artistic pessimist in Boston. Sure, theater attendance can be a tenuous issue; sure, it’s easy to overlook a seemingly small cultural hub like Beantown. I don’t want to downplay the serious challenges the theatre community faces in light of higher audience distractability and greater pressure to procure profits. But the theatrical […]
Toronto-based comediennes Gwynne Phillips and Briana Templeton (winner of the 2011 My Theatre Award for Best Actress) are the sketch duo behind some of the indie circuit’s most inventive and emotionally resonant work. Together they make up the perfectly named Templeton Philharmonic, the award-winning team who brought the fantastic site-specific roller-coaster An Evening in July to last […]
“The dog did nothing in the night-time. That was the curious incident.” -Sherlock Holmes in Silver Blaze The novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon landed on my bookshelf back in 2003. As a junior in high school, Haddon’s fictional story of 15-year-old Christopher was unlike anything […]