We’ve all heard that age-old addage: Those who can’t do, teach (and those who can’t teach, teach gym). Below you’ll find this week’s selection of affordable performance endeavours, each featuring an element of learning. From educational discussion relating to theatre, to students producing their own works, to teachers showing off their own skills. It’s never too late to hitch a ride on the theatrical learning curve.
Here is what’s going on in Toronto theatre this week. There are several great shows to catch for the week of March 18th, 2013. ** Shows marked with the double asterisks and in red are the ones that make Wayne, our Managing Editor, wish he could exist in multiple parallel universes so he could check them all out.
You may not be aware, but Toronto has a fairly thriving community of comedians and comediennes. Ranging from stand-up to improv to sketch, you can find these hilarious humans peering around many a corner. Their singular intent? To make you pee yourself (figuratively of course) with laughter. There are plenty of opportunities to see these folks in action, but we thought we’d highlight one in particular. The Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival is happening right now and has some very impressive talent. If you enjoy laughter, laughing, side-splitting fun, beer, jokes, comedy, wit, and other related items, it’d be a favour to yourself to see what it’s all about.
Here is what’s going on in Toronto theatre this week. There are several great shows to catch for the week of March 11th, 2013: ** Shows marked with the double asterisks and in red are the ones that make Sonia, our Editor, wish she could quit her evening job so she could check them all out.
LEAR gets new life thanks to Philip McKee and Harbourfront Centre World Stage in Toronto
‘A show built out of moments’ is the first method I could think of to describe World Stage’s latest production of LEAR at the Harbourfront Centre Studio Theatre. An adaptation of Shakespeare’s irreverent drama King Lear, brought to the stage with great care by director Philip McKee, and performed with gentle power by three women. That’s right, King Lear is a she.
To flesh out my explanation of this piece, I’d further posit that it’s an intricate performance of subtleties, built upon the success of moments of interaction between characters. Basically, what you can expect to occur on the Harbourfront Centre Studio’s mostly barren stage is a closer inspection of the singular moments within Shakespeare’s text as opposed to the whole story arc itself. McKee takes the story of Lear and, in a way, puts it under a microscope –or in this case, a microphone- amplifying the relationships between Lear and his daughters and cutting out the extra bits of story.
