Dorianne is a graduate of the Theatre and Drama Studies joint program between University of Toronto, Erindale campus and Sheridan College. She writes short stories, plays and screenplays and was delighted to be accepted into the 2010 Diaspora Dialogues program and also to have her short story accepted into the 2011 edition of TOK: Writing The New Toronto collection. She is also a regularly contributing writer on http://www.sexlifecanada.ca. You can follow her on twitter @headonist if you like tweets about cats, sex, food, queer stuff and lefty politics.
Despite great performances, visual obstructions and hard plastic chairs make Richard III a drawn out discomfort
Richard III: The Pleasures of Violence, currently being produced by Kadozuke Kollektif, was billed in the press material as a “reimagining” of the classic, which made me expect alterations to the text and possibly plot changes as well. Instead this seems to be Shakespeare’s Richard III with some inventive staging. However, because I need to tell you about the experience of the show as well as about the show itself, I have to talk a bit about my bum.
Tales of… is a storytelling event that varies in theme from month to month, and on August 20th they’re getting raunchy with Tales of… NSFW – Not Safe For Work (acronym may not apply for those employed in the sex industry.) Co-producers Brian Finch and Erin Rodgers have got some big names from Toronto’s sex-positive scene to grace the stage with their true X-rated stories.
I asked a few of the storytellers to answer two simple questions:
Can you give us a teaser as to what your story will be about?
What do you like about storytelling and how is it different from/similar to other work that you do the realm of sex-positivity?
A Quiet Sip of Coffee , playing in the SummerWorks Festival, is subtitled “This is not the play we’ve written”, so it seemed obvious that there would be some meta-theatre involved. There is, and a whole lot more as well – it’s a meta confessional docu-drama about sexuality, the dark corners of friendship, and the fallibility of memory. It’s also a play within a play within a play. The story that the audience knows is true is that these two guys did experience some version(s) of the disturbing events of 2004 that they try to recreate during the show. Continue reading A Quiet Sip Of Coffee (AnimalParts) 2014 SummerWorks Review→
Graceful Rebellions, playing in the SummerWorks Festival, tracks experiences of (and with) queerness in war-torn Afghanistan to Canada through two generations and four characters. We start with an idealistic fourteen year old, probably around sixty years ago, imagining her own future wedding on the eve of her sister’s. She is so good-natured and naïve that it is hard for us, the audience, who know her reality will not be able to meet her fantasy. Continue reading Graceful Rebellions (Lapis Productions) 2014 SummerWorks Review→
In Tragedy: a Tragedy, playing as part of the SummerWorks Festival, a local news team is reporting on an unspecified but quiet apocalypse. At first it seems like it may just be some vague disaster, perhaps a train derailment devastating a small town. Soon it becomes clear that everyone is disappearing somehow, that night has fallen and the sun will never rise again, and that those left behind – namely, the reporters that we see onstage – will go slowly mad before everything is over and they too are gone. Continue reading Tragedy: A Tragedy (Nightfall Theatrics) 2014 SummerWorks Review→
