All posts by Heather Bellingham

Heather studied film at Humber College and English and Theatre at UTSC. She works as a stage manager, usually watching from the booth or lurking backstage. She has written for various websites since 2009. Unofficially, she’s also a total nerd with an obsession with sci fi TV series, fantasy novels, Dungeons and Dragons, and and video games. Follow her on Twitter at @bluealbow4eva.

My High-Heeled Life: Or, How I Learned to Keep Worrying and Love My Stilettos – Toronto Fringe 2013 Press Release

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Hot off the plane from NYC, Sparking Fuse Presents:
My High-Heeled Life: Or, How I Learned to Keep Worrying and Love My Stilettos

Have you ever had an accidental orgasm in the shoe department? Or wondered when Uggs and flip-flops became acceptable dinner attire? In a world full of options, why do we opt to cope rather than celebrate? And how do we navigate our obsession with finding True Happiness? Perhaps it begins one pair of impossibly high stilettos at a time…

Sparking Fuse is proud to present the debut of Katharine McLeod’s solo play My High-Heeled Life: Or, How I Learned to Keep Worrying and Love My Stilettos as part of the 2013 Toronto Fringe Festival, opening July 4, 2013 at The Solo Room at the Tarragon TheatreA Canadian actress living and working in NYC, McLeod brings her blend of story-telling, observational comedy, and wry humor to the festival in a play about “shoes, women and making it through the 21st century.” Originally developed at the University of Washington in Seattle, earlier versions of the show also appeared in NYC’s United Solo Festival and the Network One Act Festival, where it was a Semi-Finalist in 2012.

New York acting credits for McLeod include Wonder of the World, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, the DARE Project and Dear Harvey: A Play About Harvey Milk, winner of FringeNYC’s 2010 Overall Excellence Award for Ensemble Acting.  Regionally, McLeod has appeared in Pride and Prejudice (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Private Lives (Two River), Comedy of Errors (Vermont Shakespeare), Twelfth Night and All’s Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare in the Square/Flower City Festival).

My High-Heeled Life was developed in collaboration with Rod Ceballos, a veteran American director now based out of Toronto. He has worked at theaters as varied as Shakespeare Festivals of Chicago, Cincinnati and Idaho, Virginia Shakespeare Festival, Rose Theatre/Flower City Theatre Festival, The Empty Space Theatre, Fly on the Wall Theatre, and BirdLand Theatre.

A Canadian living in the US, and an American living in Canada, McLeod and Ceballos have been collaborating for over 10 years, and bring a unique perspective to their observations on society, women and what it means to be a 21st century global citizen. Additionally, they will also be working together on Mr. Ceballos’ Toronto Fringe Production, INGE SNAPSHOTS: MID-AMERICA MID-CENTURY, BUS RILEY’S BACK IN TOWN and GLORY IN THE FLOWER, presented by The Remnants Theatre Company.

For further information visit www.katharinemcleod.com or www.fringetoronto.com

Sparking Fuse

in association with The Toronto Fringe Festival presents

My High-Heeled Life: Or, How I Learned to Keep Worrying and Love My Stilettos

Written and performed by Katharine McLeod

Directed by Rod Ceballo

Opens July 4, 2013 and runs to July 14, 2013

THE SOLO ROOM at the Tarragon Theatre (2nd Floor) 30 Bridgman Ave

Performances:

July 4, 6:00pm                       July 7, 6:15pm                           July 10, 6:30pm                        July 13, 6:15pm

July 6, 3:15pm                       July 8, 7:30pm                           July 12, 7:00 pm                       July 14, 12:30pm

 

Please note that there is absolutely no latecomer seating.

Tickets:

At-the-door tickets: $10

At-the-door tickets are available at THE SOLO ROOM (Tarragon Theatre) starting one hour prior to show time – cash sales only.

Advance tickets: $11

50% of tickets are available for sale in advance.

Advance tickets go on sale June 15th, 2013.

Purchase online: fringetoronto.com.

By Phone: 416-966-1062, ext 1.  In Person: During the Festival Box Office in the parking lot behind Honest Ed’s (581 Bloor St W)

Review: rihannaboi95 (Suburban Beast)

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Suburban Beast streams theatre in their latest live internet production based in Toronto

Suburban Beast refers to rihannaboi95 as “a viral performance”. The show invites viewers to watch a live performance from the privacy of their own computers, broadcasted as it is on Ustream. rihannaboi95 will be streamed nightly from a Toronto bedroom at 8pm from April 23rd – April 28th, 2013.

Owais Lightwala plays Sunny, a teenager who creates YouTube videos based on Rihanna’s music videos. He makes himself up and emulates her dance moves. Sunny deals candidly with bullying, queer identity, and the pain of self-invention via art. Lightwala performs the piece wonderfully, embodying the character completely. It’s much like film, as the performance is all in the eyes. With a lesser actor the show would read false.

Continue reading Review: rihannaboi95 (Suburban Beast)

Preview: Paprika Festival

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Toronto’s 12th Annual Paprika Festival for emerging young and local theatre artists

The Paprika Festival, Toronto’s only theatre festival celebrating the work of young and emerging artists, returns to the Tarragon Theatre Extra Space March 27th to April 6th, 2013 with an ambitious programming line-up.

Celebrating its twelfth birthday, the Paprika Festival will showcase work by some of Canada’s most exciting young artists under the age of twenty-one. This year’s Festival features eleven full productions and six staged readings. All productions are original work created by over one hundred young artists selected from every corner of the Greater Toronto Area, and even as far afield as Ottawa.

Continue reading Preview: Paprika Festival

Preview: The Next Stage Theatre Festival

It’s that time of year again, The Next Stage Theatre Festival is almost upon us. Now in its seventh year, Next Stage showcases local and national independent theatre artists ready to take their performances to the next stage of development.

The Next Stage Theatre Festival launched in 2008. Held at the Factory Theatre, Next Stage was created to encourage artists who have previously participated in any Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals member festivals to move beyond the summer production model and showcase their work to a wider audience, including discerning artistic decision makers who could be interested in programming their shows on main stages across the country.

Continue reading Preview: The Next Stage Theatre Festival

Review: It’s A Wonderful Toronto: The Rob Ford Holiday Spectacular! (National Theatre of the World)

For the politically minded, It’s A Wonderful Toronto offers up some holiday chuckles at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille

The premise of It’s a Wonderful Toronto: The Rob Ford Holiday Spectacular! is that of a show within a show, as it is actually the dress rehearsal for a musical of the same name. Mayor Ford (Paul Bates) has agreed to the musical, comprised of a variety of sketch and musical parodies of classic Christmas music and films, in an attempt to improve his public image – but he ultimately decides that the songs and sketches paint him in a negative light. When Ford becomes convinced that the show is not only going to tank but smear his political career, he threatens to jump from the balcony of the theatre and end it all.

Continue reading Review: It’s A Wonderful Toronto: The Rob Ford Holiday Spectacular! (National Theatre of the World)