A multimedia production of David Yee’s new play takes the stage at Toronto’s Theatre Centre

As I watched No Foreigners, a co-production between fu-GEN Theatre Company and Hong Kong Exile produced in association with Theatre Conspiracy and presented at The Theatre Centre, I was reminded of an essay by Wayson Choy, “I’m a Banana and Proud of It,” wherein he describes his long road to accepting “the paradox of being both Chinese and not Chinese.”

This is the same paradox the play explores, using the setting of Chinese shopping malls as “racialized spaces of cultural creation and clash.” Text writer David Yee asks us: what does it mean to be Chinese? What is it like to feel like a foreigner in your own country, or to your own background? Do you belong everywhere, or nowhere? The questions are universal; the way the play deals with them is unique, fascinating, and thoroughly amusing.

Continue reading Review: No Foreigners (fu-GEN/Hong Kong Exile) →

Peggy Baker presents a unique evening of dance at Toronto’s Theatre Centre

Peggy Baker has been one the major figures in Canadian modern dance for many years, but I had never see her work. So I was excited by the opportunity to see Peggy Baker Dance Projects’ Map By Years, currently being performed at The Theatre Centre. This evening of solo performances features four very different works that all showcase strong dancers and that share a common thread of longing and mysticism. Continue reading Review: Map By Years (Peggy Baker Dance Projects) →

Criminal Girlfriends present Canadian playwright George F. Walker’s play Fierce in Toronto

Fierce is a new play written by Canadian playwright, George F. Walker, about the tug-o-war relationship between therapist and patient.

Continue reading Review: Fierce (Criminal Girlfriends) →

Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre presents Drew Hayden Taylor’s play; an uplifting piece of Canadiana

Drew Hayden Taylor’s Cottagers and Indians, currently playing at the Tarragon Theatre, is a light and warm take on the conflict between native culture and bourgeois property owners. From the first moment we see Arthur Copper in his canoe and Maureen Poole on her cottage dock, we know exactly who each of them is and the audience can settle in for an uplifting piece of current Canadiana.  Continue reading Review: Cottagers and Indians (Tarragon Theatre) →