Seven more 10-minute plays arrive on the Toronto stage through InspiraTO Festival
On Thursday night I saw blueShow at the InspiraTO Festival. On Friday I saw redShow, which is the same format as blueShow – seven 10 minute plays in 70 minutes. The sets are minimal, and the backdrops are projections.
The difference between blue and red? According to the website, if you like your plays “full of passion,” this (redShow) is for you. blueShow is for you if “you like your plays sublime.” On Friday, I learned that I’m a blueShow kind of girl. Continue reading Review: redShow (InspiraTO Festival)→
Daisy Productions present a series of four one-act plays at the Tranzac Club in Toronto
Fourplay may be a show with a naughty name, but every thing else about it is nice. Fourplay by Daisy Productions is a collection of four comedic plays: Sure Thing written by David Ives; When I’m Gone, Will Anyone Notice? written by Lisa Hagen; Much Ado About Cooties written by Maddox Campbell; and Dial L for Latch Key written by Scott Fivelson. Each play brought a little something different to the stage. Continue reading Review: Fourplay (Daisy Productions)→
Space Interrupted is a Dance Show with Something for Everyone
What better way to examine the complex landscapes of people than through dance? The Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre‘s Space Interrupted, playing at the Fleck Dance Theatre, uses linear and abstract themes to deliver a series of pieces that are both illuminating and familiar about the spaces between.
InspiraTO Festival brings seven strong 10-minute plays to the Toronto stage
Sometimes you get a gift that you weren’t expecting. After a long and frustrating day, I went to the opening night of the 10th season of the InspiraTO Festival at Alumnae Theatre to see blueShow, a show comprised of seven ten-minute plays in 70 minutes.
This was the first time that I had been to InspiraTO, and I think I was expecting something a bit like Fringe. Sort of ‘you pay your money and you take your chances,’ but it wasn’t like that at all.
Really, though, the play is so much more than a mere perspective-flip: the myth acts as a framing device for Ruhl, the playwright, to explore lofty themes such as loss, memory, and connection. When paired with Soulpepper’s understated staging, this adaptation of Eurydice is both powerful and provoking in its depiction of death as a kind of cerebral Wonderland.
