A Pirate adventure on the open waters sure to please grown-ups and older children

Pan’s Outcasts, is produced by Pirate Life and The Pirate Life venue is a swashbuckling, family-friendly good time on a real ship. Pirate Life is a company that puts on plays, pirate-related games, and private events. Pan’s Outcasts is still a work-in-progress and is having a limited run this weekend.

We landlubbers boarded the boat and were pirated out to sea (i.e. the Lake Ontario harbour) for an hour on the Jolly Roger, Captain Hook’s infamous pirate ship. The ship is licensed so you can enjoy a beer during the production. There is also some pirate merchandise you can purchase with your ticket.

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Immersive theatre meets dance in this piece set in a technological surveillance State

Exciting and immersive, Jacqueries Part 2 transforms the Citadel + Compagnie theatre into a stark surveillance state. Mixing technology, dance and audience engagement; coder and choreographer Jacob Niedzwiecki leads the audience through this beautiful yet grim world.

Harsh lighting and strict paths made of banker boxes and barrier belts lead you to stern-faced performers. They ask if you are comfortable giving up your phone and passcode.

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Annual Dance Festival Features Performances and Workshops

random acts of dance has taken their third annual Your Dance Fest to Wychwood Theatre at Artscape Wychwood Barns. The event offers accessible, intimate views of various styles of dance, and is a wonderful ode to the possibilities of expression through movement.

The event features dance workshops and two dance performances repeated throughout the festival: Program 1 and Program 2. Each of these consists of four original dance pieces choreographed and is performed by a roster of artists. I watched Program 1, which featured contemporary dance.

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Acting takes centre stage in this many-charactered play

The Ends of the Earth – playing at Alumnae Theatre – is a bold choice for Don’t Look Down Theatre Company’s first on-stage production of 2019. Written by Morris Panych and first produced in 1992, it’s a Canadian play that isn’t particularly Canadian. The setting isn’t specified; it could be anywhere with a coastline. This production is set in the present, but it could as easily be set in the early 1990s when it was first produced, or in the 1950s or even the 1920s.

There are a couple of things that date the play. It’s two hours long, 2 hours and 15 minutes with an intermission. In this day of 60 to 90 minutes plays and short attention spans (mine included), that’s a long play. There are 20 characters with lines in the play; 20! That’s a lot of characters.

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In Soulpepper‘s production of Art, Yasmina Reza’s 1994 one-act play which won the 1998 Tony for Best Play, friendships are threatened and the nature of art and creativity is questioned. Serge (Diego Matamoros) buys a very expensive painting that is the epitome of modern art: it appears to be, essentially, a blank, painted-white canvas, with a few white lines running across its expanse. Serge loves his painting, while Marc (Oliver Dennis) derides it. Yvan (Huse Madhavji) plays both sides, desperate to be the peacemaker and to be liked by both men.

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