Dorianne is a graduate of the Theatre and Drama Studies joint program between University of Toronto, Erindale campus and Sheridan College. She writes short stories, plays and screenplays and was delighted to be accepted into the 2010 Diaspora Dialogues program and also to have her short story accepted into the 2011 edition of TOK: Writing The New Toronto collection. She is also a regularly contributing writer on http://www.sexlifecanada.ca. You can follow her on twitter @headonist if you like tweets about cats, sex, food, queer stuff and lefty politics.
the dreamer examines his pillow explores marred and broken relationships at Toronto’s Box Theatre
JR Theatre is presenting the dreamer examines his pillow at The Box Theatre, a small studio space with a lot of gritty character – think exposed pipes and painted-over brick. Since this is another 1980’s John Patrick Shanley play produced in an unconventional space, like Danny & The Deep Blue Sea which I reviewed in November, it’s impossible not to draw comparisons. Both plays feature working class characters trapped in their circumstances but while in Danny & The Deep Blue Sea two people meet and struggle with their histories and situations to let themselves fall in love, in the dreamer examines his pillow we see people whose relationships are old and twisted and torn and no longer resemble love at all.
Free Outgoing is a tale of sexual assault lived through a family steeped in tradition, at Toronto’s Factory Theatre
In Free Outgoing (from Nightwood Theatre), disgrace ruins the lives of the widowed Malini and her children after her fifteen year old daughter, Deepa, is filmed sexually by her boyfriend on his phone and the recording spread until it reaches the public internet. It’s set within a Tamil family in the very conservative city of Chennai in India, which means the level of censure from the community is beyond what we would expect in North America. This extremity works to highlight some of the same issues we face here, possibly in subverted or insidious ways. The most striking thing about the play is that Deepa herself is not a character.
Tween-friendly theatre dealing with death and race, Pacamambo is playing at Toronto’s Citadel
I was pleased to be able to borrow a real live young person to attend The Canadian Rep Theatre’s production of Pacamambo, by Wajdi Mouawad. It’s a play written for young people – advertised as being for ages 9 to 99 – but it deals with some very dark subject matter. Julie, played by Amy Keating, is a young girl who adores her grandmother, played by Kyra Harper. She is staying at her grandmother’s apartment one night when the old woman dies. Julie barricades herself into the basement of the building with her faithful dog Growl, the corpse, and a backpack full of perfume that she uses over the next nineteen days to mask the stench of decay. The story is told in flashbacks as she relates it to a psychiatrist. Continue reading Kid +1 Review: Pacamambo (Canadian Rep Theatre)→
The Ugly One takes a darkly satirical look at superficiality, playing at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre
The Ugly One is a dark satire about superficiality in the age of consumerism. It nips at the edges of society’s current idea of physical beauty until we laugh, and then it bites into the battle raging in our psyches between the desire to belong and the desire to stand out. And that bite digs too deep to laugh.
Lette is an engineer who has invented a most useful industrial plug, but he is far too ugly for his boss to let him be the one to sell it at conventions. That job goes to his young and handsome assistant. He asks his wife about his looks and she, unable to lie to his ugly, ugly face, tells him the truth. He goes to a plastic surgeon for a full reconstruction and comes out of it the most beautiful man in the world. He immediately gets put on the job of doing all the speaking at conventions and women line up for his autograph. His new admirers include a septuagenarian millionaire who’s had a lot of work done herself, buys a lot of industrial hardware, and has an obsequious son who follows her around – even into the bedroom. Continue reading Review: The Ugly One (Tarragon Theatre/Theatre Smash)→
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