This past weekend Mooney on Theatre sent its dedicated team of 30 writers and editors to cover all 147 shows* in this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival! With the sheer number of shows available at the festival, picking the ones you want to see can be a daunting task.
If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by the number of shows and you’re looking for a place to start, we’ve asked our staff to tell us about their favourite shows they’ve seen at this year’s festival. We hope our staff picks can help you navigate the Fringe.
If you’ve seen something you think is amazing that you think others should go see please let us know by leaving a comment.
Aluna’s Blood Wedding & Canadian Opera Company’s Falstaff win big at 36th Dora Awards
The Dora Mavor Moore Awards ceremony is the Toronto theatre community’s big night out to celebrate its own. This year the ceremony was hosted by comedian Gavin Crawford, who kept the pace swift and generally killed it with his material, injecting his wry observations throughout the proceedings. His opening musical song and dance number as Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne was a riot.
The Second City Training Centre in Toronto expands their facilities for more classes and students
Since its doors opened in 1973, The Second City has been a mainstay of the comedy and performance landscape of Toronto. It’s hard to take transit at all in the city without seeing at least one poster for the organization’s Mainstage shows and it seems at times that every other comedian or improviser in the city has taken at least one class from the organization. That’s not just a sweeping statement mind you, it’s also playing the odds.
The current Second City Training Centre has over 1100 people coming in at least once a week for classes, a number that has doubled over the past five years. It’s been an impressive growth for the company and now they’re looking to grow even more, with an expansion of not only their class options but also a physical expansion of their training facility.
SummerWorks launches Progress; a new festival bringing international performances to Toronto
This week marks the opening of Toronto’s newest festival; Progress. Produced by the SummerWorks performance festival, Progress is dubbed an “international festival of performance and ideas”. The focus is global but the size is more manageable than its summer counterpart; the programme features roughly a dozen performances, workshops, talks and exhibits, hosted in a single venue; the new home of The Theatre Centre on Queen West. Continue reading This is Progress→
Experimental improv, sketch comedy and stand-up at Toronto’s Comedy Bar’s Festival of New Formats
Over the first week of January the Comedy Bar presented their annual Festival of New Formats; a 5-day event of free theatre where sketch troupes, improv teams and stand-up comics pitched their ideas for new shows to be showcased at what could be argued is one of Toronto’s foremost locations for improvisational and sketch comedy. Sadly, I was only able to see the final night of the festival, but if what I saw was anything to go by the Comedy Bar is sure to have some exciting new shows in the near future.
Aluna’s Blood Wedding & Canadian Opera Company’s Falstaff win big at 36th Dora Awards
