nanny: maroon warrior queen is being workshopped at Lower Ossington Theatre as part of SummerWorks. As usual, I like to minimize the amount of research I do on a show before I see it. I chose to review nanny: maroon warrior queen based on the themes of feminism, anticolonialism, history and spirituality as laid out in the program description.

Because this is a work in progress, every night’s performance is different. The mythologized historical figure Nanny begins the performance by  silently taking us through her daily ritual. She wears a mask behind which her wide eyes peer her audience and we really feel that she sees us.

There is no fourth wall; Nanny acknowledges all latecomers. Nanny addresses the audience and asks very difficult questions: Why have you come here? Are you burdened by something? What is your greatest fear? Continue reading nanny: maroon warrior queen (anitafrika dub theatre) 2013 SummerWorks Review →

Broken, performed at Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace at SummerWorks, is a solo show about memory, family, family stories and how the details of our lives are captured and transmitted for posterity.

The performer, Brian Fidler, introduces himself as Will, not his real name, and invites the audience to adopt aliases for the show. Parts of the show, he tells us, are true. Parts are not. Will asks the audience a series of questions about our memory and informs us that we may very well be at one of the seven stages of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Will shows us a box he finds in his parents’ basement full of his grandfather’s possessions. He proceeds to tell us about his relationship with his grandfather and how as a child, he revelled in the stories his grandfather told based on the slides he projected for the boy. Continue reading Broken (Ramshackle Theatre) 2013 SummerWorks Review →

There is a lot going on in Camila’s Bones, Maloka Theatre Collective’s current production playing at Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace at SummerWorks.  Think Brave New World meets The Handmaid’s Tale with a bit of District 9, Children of Men and No One Is Illegal activism thrown in for extra spice.

Camila’s Bones is a dystopic play set in the foreseeable future. Camila is an immigrant from South America who flees hardship and disaster to survive in a new environment where her citizenship status is very low.

Concurrently, Devin, a genetic engineer (read eugenicist) and his evangelical wife Chloe cannot have children. Devin is hard at work trying to engineer a genetic class of disconnected and emotionless workers while his depressive wife wants to have a baby. Continue reading Camila’s Bones (Maloka Theatre Collective) 2013 SummerWorks Review →