Shadowplay offers a short and delightful taste of experimental Toronto Theatre
If you had the power to choose, would you grow up? This is the main theme that Shadowplay is centred around. The Humber Theatre presents Third Panel’s Shadowplay: The Peter Pan Variations, a theatrical piece developed by Production and Performance students. Inspired by Peter Pan, this production combines acting, dancing, singing all through the eyes of young children.
I read in the program that the play began without a script, something that was apparent as I watched this performance. It felt very disjointed but the actors were mostly able to make it work since they were portraying children, who by nature are flighty, volatile, indecisive and fragile. Through costumes and hair and makeup, each actor really did look like a child, something that generally proves difficult for a group of 20-somethings to do. And most actors nailed the childish voices and mannerisms that used to come second nature to all of us. Continue reading Shadowplay: The Peter Pan Variations (Humber Theatre Third Panel)→
It’s Toronto’s chance to get on stage with the Canadian Opera Company with an open casting call for supernumeraries
I’m happy to say that I attended my first opera not too long ago when I saw Tristan & Isolde on opening night at the Four Seasons Centre. As much as I loved it, I still felt like I had so many questions about the opera and the mechanics of creating such an intense production. For a show that was as minimalist in terms of set, costume and sheer number of bodies on stage as Tristan was, I wondered how even bigger productions function.
Enter the leaflet for the open casting call for supernumeraries at the Canadian Opera Company. I saw it at nearly the same time that my editor asked me if I would be interested in developing a story about the supernumeraries, or “supers”, of the opera world. Continue reading The World of Supernumeraries→
Love and war get hairy at Toronto’s Papermill Theatre
If you’re anything like me, you assumed that Hair: The American Tribal-Love Rock Musical was going to be about heavy metal rock bands in the 1980s. I couldn’t have been more off. The title Hair represents the subculture of young men and women who grew their hair long, rejecting mainstream society and everything their parents’ generation stood for. The musical debuted as an Off-Broadway production in 1967 and has such a fun time highlighting the counterculture and free love movements that the 1960s have long become associated with. Continue reading Review: Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical (First Act Productions)→
Real Christmas magic with Opera Atelier’s Magic Castle at Toronto’s beautiful Casa Loma
Mozart’s Magic Castle is put on in the beautiful Casa Loma and features several interactive activities and performances that are inspired by Mozart’s famous opera, the Magic Flute. The actual opera performance is a short snippet of three arias that is more like a preview for Opera Atelier’s upcoming spring performance of the Magic Flute.
The performance took place in the Great Hall, a huge room with a gigantic Christmas tree that would surely astound Buddy the elf. It was filled with dozens of children; Girl Guides with their leaders, kids with their parents and a just few adults without children. The children somehow knew -or perhaps I missed the instructions- to form a large circle on the floor so that the two performers could leap into the centre to sing their songs as close to their audience as possible. Continue reading Review: Mozart’s Magic Castle (Opera Atelier)→
