Challenging Stuff at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille.
The first time I saw Offers of Home by Stephen Joffe (currently playing at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace), I was struck by its mundanity. The stories it explores are so earthy and realistic that the experience has a voyeuristic quality: the audience isn’t watching a play, they’re walking down a suburban street–and peering through the letterboxes as they go.
This expanded version–a longer script and a fully-mounted production–maintains that intimate feeling, while also sandpapering off some of the rougher edges. A better framing device, a grittier staging and some stronger character work all make for a great evening.
It’s a sad day when the exhilarating rush of the Fringe festival comes to a close. When else are you going to find such a great variety of theatre and dance without having to empty all four of your piggy banks? To help out with your Fringe withdrawal, here are some shows that keep the spirit of affordability alive.
Toronto’s F/ presents an iPhone app-based roaming dance-theatre performance
A heist is going down in Toronto and you’re invited to infiltrate a secret world of operatives, agents, and radicals. All you need is your iPhone. F/, a Toronto-based dance company, has created Jacqueries; a promenade-style dance/theatre hybrid layered with digital elements that audiences experience via an iPhone app.
Here is what’s going on in Toronto theatre this week. There are several great shows to catch for the week of July 15th, 2013. ** Shows marked with the double asterisks and in red are the ones that make Wayne, our Managing Editor, wish he could exist in multiple parallel universes so he could check them all out.
Tucked away in an alley behind Toronto Landmark, Honest Ed’s, there’s a celebration of art and life going on. Now in its third year, Visual Fringe is a collection of 16 art vendors and exhibitors that showcase the non-theatrical creativity of Toronto Fringe.
With subject matter dealing from more traditional paintings to hand-crafted jewelry as well as one vendor that retails one-of-a-kind lapel pins modeled after caricatured human faces -it’s the perfect place to enjoy visual masterpieces and shop for truly unique pieces of art. Many vendors are also donating a portion of their proceeds back to the festival.
Everything is based around the concept of pop-up-shops, so vendors and exhibitors alternate the time and dates they’ll be occupying the Fringe Club. For a full listing of times and dates, check out this PDF.
Challenging Stuff at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille.
