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.
Stockholm takes place in a gorgeous kitchen that seems fully functional – i.e. it has running water and a light in the fridge – but actually has more uses than one would initially expect, as its many surfaces become planes and angles that the two lithe performers, Melissa-Jane Shaw and Jonathon Young, use to twist and turn against in moments of dance.
I won’t call these “dance numbers” as this isn’t in the genre of musical theatre. Stockholm has seamlessly integrated movement that furthers the action. These scenes-with-dance are often heavily erotic, showing us depths of the couple’s sexual connection that otherwise could not be shown on stage (not without becoming very controversial, at least.) Continue reading Review: Stockholm (Nightwood Theatre and Seventh Stage)→
Kids on TV are well known in the queer community as a band who plays catchy electropop music with flashy costumes and video projections. Their shows have always been very theatrical, so it’s fitting for them to have been involved with Hatch, an incubator program at Harbourfront that develops multi-disciplinary performances. Pantheon is more of a concert than a play; in fact it is the name of Kids on TV’s upcoming album, and the event at Harbourfront is the beginning of what will become the show they take on tour. Continue reading Review: Pantheon by Kids on TV (Hatch at Harbourfront)→
Notable indie musicians are part of the intriguing work-in-progress, Paper Laced With Gold
Hatch at Harbourfront is an incubator program that allows multi-disciplinary performance artists to develop new work. Each show is a work-in-progress, and is followed by a Q&A and then a reception so the artists can gather feedback from the audience to improve their work. I sawPaper Laced With Gold, a musical set in a small town truck stop on the Trans Canada highway, and it was a perfect example of the purpose of Hatch. It incorporates different mediums, theatre and music, in a different way from your standard musical; the story is resonant and ever so Canadian; the script needs work, but that work will likely expand it to a full length show. (It was about an hour long.) Continue reading Review: Paper Laced With Gold (Hatch, Harbourfront Centre)→
Bliss at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times is abstract theatre at its best
For the majority of the first part of Buddies In Bad Times’production of Bliss it isn’t clear why the characters are dressed as Wal-Mart employees. But the show doesn’t come together in a way that makes sense at all until its final quarter, which is one of its finest features.
The premise is about celebrity, using the personage of Céline Dion as a vehicle; that much is clear from the outset. The set is sparse, just a platform and a bed where the pregnant Céline Dion is ordered to rest by her doctor and attended to by her family. All roles are played by the ostensible Wal-Mart employees who are devoted Céline fans. Continue reading Review: Bliss (Buddies In Bad Times)→
Theatre dance piece Varenka, Varenka! is currently playing at The Citadel in Toronto
Varenka, Varenka! just opened at The Citadel, the new space for the Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie dance troupe. I knew the address, 304 Parliament street, would be close to my house but I was surprised when I Google-mapped it and found that it was a building I had always known as a Salvation Army soup kitchen. The transformation to a dance theatre is impressive, but the historic use of the space is somewhat fitting to an interpretation of Dosteovsky’s first novel Poor Folk, an epistolarytale of two isolated and impoverished individuals who form a relationship through letters.
