What does it mean to be Black? Is it better to have an ill-informed conversation about race or no conversation at all? How do you feel when you hear (or hear yourself saying) the word diverse? Why did Rachel Dolezal feel the need to be Black- to go one step beyond cultural appropriation into something else? What does the desire to be polite play in racism? What were you expecting from a piece called Race Cards? Selina Thompson, the creator of Race Cards, an ever-expanding installation and archive taking place at The Theatre Centre as part of the Progress Festival, invites you to answer one of the previous questions on race. Continue reading 2018 Progress Review: Race Cards (curated by The Theatre Centre & Little Black Afro Theatre Company)
Yearly Archives: 2018
2018 Progress Review: LOST in TRANS (FADO Performance Art Centre)
LOST in TRANS, conceived and performed by Dickie Beau, curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre, is currently running at The Theatre Centre as part of Progress Festival. Taking found audio recordings, Beau channels disparate personae and weaves them together to create an offbeat and haunting universe of misplaced characters. Their voices seem to flow through his body, revealing their desires and suggesting rich interior lives that have become lost in space and time. Continue reading 2018 Progress Review: LOST in TRANS (FADO Performance Art Centre)
Review: Jewel (Shotgun Juliet)
Jewel, a one-woman play about the aftermath of the Ocean Ranger disaster opens in Toronto
Shotgun Juliet’s production of Jewel opened on Wednesday at Red Sandcastle Theatre. It’s a perfect venue; small and intimate, the audience could reach out and touch the actors – if that wasn’t an incredibly inappropriate thing to do.
Jewel is an intimate, one woman play written by Joan MacLeod. It looks at the aftermath of the Ocean Ranger disaster through the eyes of the young widow of one of the 84 men killed when it sank on February 15, 1982. It was written in 1987 when it wasn’t as common as it is now to look at disasters through the eyes of the survivors. It’s poignant without being maudlin. I really liked everything about it. Continue reading Review: Jewel (Shotgun Juliet)
Review: Ipperwash (Native Earth)
Harsh history and present day reality are explored in a new play now playing in Toronto
Ipperwash, onstage now at Native Earth, is a fictional story based on the true events of the Stoney Point reserve, which was forcibly moved to the neighbouring reserve of Kettle Point in 1942 by the federal Department of Defence. There they established Camp Ipperwash, a military training base, with the promise to return the land after the war was over. However, the area was left contaminated, riddled with land mines.
In the play, set in the present day, an army veteran who is also Indigenous named Bea (PJ Prudat), arrives, employed on the clean up. As she develops relationships with two of the people who live there, Tim Cloud (Jonathan Fisher) and his nephew Slip (James Dallas Smith), while also being visited by the ghost of Tim’s sister Kwe (Samantha Brown), she grows aware of the history of the land and the powerful toll it took on the people of Stoney Point. Continue reading Review: Ipperwash (Native Earth)
Cheap Theatre in Toronto the Week of February 6th, 2018
Five Shows Under $25 in Toronto this Week
Live theatre shows in Toronto with ticket prices of $25 or less, playing the week of February 6th, 2018. Perfect for the budget-conscious theatre-goer. This week’s selections feature a festival, a children’s classic, and historical pieces. Check them out below the cut:
Continue reading Cheap Theatre in Toronto the Week of February 6th, 2018