This week features a great array of freebies and budget-friendly choices, and a great selection of themes. From infant-targeted shows, to true stories, to women in contemporary theatre, this is a great chance to experience the wonderful diversity and richness of Toronto’s indie scene. Check out the listings below the cut.
Continue reading Cheap Theatre in Toronto for the Week of September 20
Foxglove Theatre presents a tale of envy and ego on stage in TorontoHaving made its off-Broadway debut in 2008, Itamar Moses’ hit play The Four of Us is now in the capable hands of Toronto’s new indie theatre company, Foxglove Theatre, at The Attic Arts Hub.
This comic drama is a tale of envy, ego, and the stress that success can put on friendship. Two aspiring young writers, David (Šimon Mizera) and Benjamin (Michael-David Blostein) seem only to have a relationship of convenience, obligation and curiosity. Having been ‘frenemies’ at summer camp, their adult companionship now seems only to exist so that they can check in with what the other is up to in their career, and then compare.
This week features a great selection of cheap shows and openers! Whether you fancy love stories, music, story-driven theatre, or even something your baby will enjoy, Toronto has you covered this week. To help you narrow down your choice(s), our assistant editor Jess is here to pick out her most-anticipated shows in red text!
Continue reading Playlistings in Toronto for the Week of September 19th
Shadowtime Productions’ Aunt Dan and Lemon, playing at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace, is a play with a message. It’s delivered by the title characters with a subtle smirk so as to have us contemplate our personal morality – and that of the human race as a whole – long after we leave the theatre.
In a 1986 essay by playwright Wallace Shawn – excerpted in the program – the message is explained clearly in his own words: “I’ve written a play in which it’s hard to say whether you like some of the people or you don’t like them…the things people say are a complex jumble of lies, truth, half-truth, rationality, and irrationality.” Shawn ends the paragraph saying these are the same things he encounters when speaking with his friends and interacting with the world at large. Continue reading Review: Aunt Dan and Lemon (Shadowtime Productions)
She Said/He Said is ” important exploration of identity and hardship,” now on stage in TorontoThe lights dim and the voice of Anne-Marie Woods, the all-encompassing SHE of She Said/He Said, fills the theatre. Through spoken-word, she announces that as a black woman, she hopes that she can make a connection with a black man in Toronto. So far she has had no luck, but she refuses to open up her dating pool to men of different races. She will not strike off black men as a dating option, or (as she calls it) suffer from a condition she calls “blacktose intolerant.” At soon as that line came out, I was hooked. Continue reading Review: She Said/He Said (Imani Enterprises)