Mike was that kid who walked into the high school stage crew booth, saw the lighting board, and went ooooooooooooh. Now that he’s (mostly) all grown up, Mike keeps his foot in the door as a community-theatre producer, stage manager and administrator. In the audience, he’s a tremendous sucker for satire and parody, for improvisational and sketch-driven comedy, for farce and pantomime, and for cabaret of all types. His happiest Toronto theatrical memory is (re) Birth: E. E. Cummings in Song.
Oleanna offers an unflinching look at the monster in each of us, at Toronto’s Red Sandcastle Theatre
Jaybird Productions is launching their inaugural season with an ambitious start: Oleanna, David Mamet’s challenging and unflinching look at institutions, sexual harassment, and how ordinary people can be turned into complete monsters. As the scenario escalates, as lives are destroyed, and as characters find new depths of both desperation and isolation from one another, the whole play begins to feel more and more like a limbo dance: “How low will you go?”
Meet the finalists of Panfish Productions New Play Contest: Toronto theatre’s promising new playwrights
Panfish Productions is more than a theatre company. Yes, yes, they make theatre—but more importantly, they incubate it. Every Panfish production is an opportunity for emergent artists to mix with more established and professional mentors: to network, to polish, to develop and to grow. Results so far have been promising, and when Mooney on Theatre heard about their latest project, we got very, very excited.
The Panfish Productions New Play Contest (November 26th to 28th) showcases three young playwrights. Each of them will present a one-night-only workshop performance, and the most successful will receive a full mount as part of Panfish’s 2013 season. It’s an exciting opportunity for three of the city’s most promising new artists, and MoT is pleased to present an inside look at what’s in store for audiences.
Stage Centre Productions has a legacy of excellence with the English-language classics, and Twelve Angry Jurors does not disappoint.
One the very first things that happens in Twelve Angry Jurors is striking: the guard locks them in the room. Here they are, four women and eight men, all strangers, trapped in each other’s company until—and unless—they can reach a unanimous verdict. And as they stew in the humid New York heat, as tempers flare up and patience runs short, and as revelations and new discoveries spring forth from unexpected places, it’s only a matter of time until this tightly-sealed tinderbox ignites.
Hart House’s Romeo and Juliet is energetic and refreshing with a strong ensemble
The sentence “a fresh take on Romeo and Juliet” is a theatrical cliché. No matter how original you think you are, it’s been done before. An interracial cast? They were doing that before I was even born. Swapping the genders around? Downright overdone. A musical version? That’s West Side Story. This show has been produced so widely that there’s just not very much ground left to cover.
The Rocky Horror Show hits the community theatre stage thanks to Toronto’s Curtain Call Players
It’s late October, and you know what that means: time to slip on some fishnets, dust off your stripper heels, and make your way to the nearest theatre. It’s Rocky season, darling.
This year, you can pick from a good half-dozen productions all over the city: the LOT is running a revival downtown, the film is screening at the Bloor, and way up in North York, a community group is mounting a lo-fi but high-energy mount of The Rocky Horror Show.
Curtain Call Players have scads of experience with musicals. How well do they handle this modern classic?
