Salt Baby, playing as part of the Next Stage Festival, is a story inspired by playwright Falen Johnson’s own experiences as a young First Nations person who looks white. The main character in the play, given no name other than “Salt Baby” (played by Paula Jean Prudat), has left her home on the Six Nations reservation to live in the city and has started dating a Caucasian man. She feels these things pulling her away from her heritage and desperately wants to stay tied to her ancestry. She is so desperate that she takes advice from quacks, risks alienating her father, and sets her relationship on fire. Continue reading 2013 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Salt Baby (Salt Baby Productions)
Next Stage Festival
Everything to do with the Next Stage Festival which happens in January in Toronto
2013 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: The Peace Maker (Pomme Grenade Productions)
The Peace Maker, playing as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival, follows the parallel stories of one woman, Sophie – a Canadian-Jewish musician, and her highly enthused and idealistic desire to forge her own bridge between two warring nations. Using elements of live music, song, and comedy to offset what could be a controversial tale, this is a performance that will get you laughing in your seats while being continuously moved.
2013 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Pitch Blond (Convection Productions)
Seeing Pitch Blond at Factory Theatre’s intimate Antechamber is a lot of fun. It’s a bit like sneaking away from Next Stage Theatre Festival, finding a cozy bar and sharing an intimate drink with a new friend.
Pitch Blond is based on the life of Judy Holliday. Holliday made a career out of playing dumb blondes. She won an Oscar and several other prestigious awards doing so. Meanwhile, she possessed an almost super-human intelligence. It was hard not to be reminded of Gracie Allen or even Lucille Ball while enjoying a drink with Judy, or should I say, watching the play.
Laura Anne Harris wrote the one-woman play and plays Holliday. Harris doesn’t play Holliday so much as she becomes her. It is a fascinating and startling transformation. She adopts Holliday’s mannerisms, smile, voice, awkwardness and persona.
Continue reading 2013 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Pitch Blond (Convection Productions)
2013 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: With Love and a Major Organ (QuestionMark-Exclamation Theatre)
There’s a very good reason that QuestionMark-Exclamation Theatre’s initial Toronto Fringe Festival run of With Love and a Major Organ sold out basically every single show. I would be terribly surprised and possibly even appalled if the same didn’t happen with its Next Stage Theatre Festival remount. If you’ve ever dabbled in love, heartbreak, the physical manifestations of feelings, therapy sessions, speed-dating, social media and/or public transit, you will have no qualms surrendering yourself for an hour to playwright Julia Lederer’s whimsy. Continue reading 2013 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: With Love and a Major Organ (QuestionMark-Exclamation Theatre)
2013 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Post Eden (Suburban Beast)
Post Eden, playing at the Factory as part of the Next Stage Festival, is a multi-media show set on the aptly-named Neighbourly Lane in Richmond Hill, Ontario. This is a real street, and the program claims that while Post Eden is “a work of fiction from the imagination of the playwright” (Jordan Tannahill) it also is “inspired by, and incorporating verbatim excerpts from, interviews with five families” who actually live there.
The story involves a family where the husband (Sean Dixon) and wife (Linnea Swan) have broken up, and the husband moved four doors down so as to still be close to his daughter (Sascha Cole.) This sounds like a plausible scenario to take place in the real suburbs. It also involves a boy who may be a coyote (Kevin Jake Walker) and a dead dog (Lindsey Clark) who is very articulate in English and strongly wants to be buried in a place where her soul can be free. This seems more likely to be the work of imagination. Continue reading 2013 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Post Eden (Suburban Beast)