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.
Toronto theatre mixes wit with cynicism in Soulpepper’s production of David Mamet’s Speed the Plow.
Speed the Plow is David Mamet, so it’s full of fast paced banter full of witticism and cynicism. What makes the dialogue believable is that it is also written in the same way people actually speak: not in full sentences but instead in overlapping, in trailing off, in cutting off, in fits and starts.
As you can also expect from Mamet, the characters are trying to manipulate each other for their own personal gain. The game for the audience is to figure out what motives, if any, are underlying the obvious ones, and to predict who will come out on top. Continue reading Review: Speed The Plow (Soulpepper)→
Fort Awesome is part of the Visual Fringe at the Toronto Fringe Festival but is also put on by WORKhouse Theatre and there is a performative element to it. That is how I got ensnared in the Fort: a lovely young woman who appeared to be dressed in nothing but a red raincoat sashayed up to me and, in her most seductive voice, offered me a poem in return for two dollars.
She is one of the working girls of the Poetry Brothel, one of Fort Awesome’s features and a brilliant way to ensnare passers-by. Since I support the work of escorts of all kinds, I gave her a toonie and she gave me a comedically vampy recitation of a poem. I no longer remember who the poet was, but I did think it was quite a good piece of writing. Continue reading Fort Awesome (WORKhouse Theatre ) 2012 Toronto Fringe Review (Visual Fringe)→
With Love And A Major Organ, playing at the Toronto Fringe Festival, is a quirky love story with so much heart that it’s never too twee. Writer Julia Lederer also plays one of the three characters, a girl obsessed with a man she sees every day on the subway. I found this really relatable, as once upon a time I had a crush on a gorgeous man I saw every day on the streetcar reading the Sheltering Sky on my way into a temp job.
