Madeleine Copp saw her first show when she was four years old and it was love at first sight. She pursued a bachelor’s in theatre production and design and English literature, culminating in a love for flexible, innovative, and diverse theatre artists that challenge all our preconceived notions of the stage. Her thesis, Printed Voices: Women, Print, and Performance pushed for new interpretations of closet drama from the early modern to modern period in the hopes of seeing more female playwrights included in the performance canon. Since graduating, Madeleine continues to seek out unexpected, startling, and challenging works that leave her angry, speechless, and wonderfully confused.
Playwright Kaitlyn Riordan had Shakespeare’s women—or lack thereof— on her mind when she constructed Portia’s Julius Caesar for Shakespeare in the Ruff playing in Withrow Park. She decided to create “a new Shakespearean play where we meet all kinds of women” using a mixture of Shakespear’s language from plays, sonnets, poetry and her own writing.
The result is an attempt to flesh out women’s roles that doesn’t quite succeed for me in the execution.
Despite excellent parts, Picnic in the Cemetery feels it should be better than it actually is. Moreover, as an audience member, I feel like I should have liked it better than I did. It’s a show where all the excellent smothers what’s actually good.
At least, that’s how my guest and I felt leaving the theatre. We were haunted, terrified, and struck by just how important it was to hear this specific story in this day and age.
Measure for Measure doesn’t break molds but delivers stellar performances, playing in Toronto
Picnic in the Cemetery is beautiful but lacks cohesion, at the Berkeley Theatre in Toronto
Théâtre français de Toronto’s new play Le Menteur is a fast-paced, hilarious romp
A dark comedy of a woman’s life pre birth control, on stage at Streetcar Crowsnest in Toronto