Megan loves being in the thick of all things theatre, but her ultimate goal is to promote theatre to the world of non-theatre people. It was the same when she was the theatre writer for blogTO, or the Fringe Correspondent for CBC Radio One‘s Here and Now, as it is as the founder of Mooney on Theatre. Her basic belief is that there is theatre/performance out there for everyone to love, they just need to find it. This is not to be confused with the idea that everyone should love theatre for theatre’s sake, in fact, as obsessed as she is with theatre, even *she* doesn’t love all types of theatre.
It likely doesn’t come as a surprise to you that I like to take my kids to plays when I can. Well, the nine month old doesn’t get much from it, but the three and a half year old LOVES it.
It’s one of the reasons I love FringeKids! at the Toronto Fringe Festival. It’s only $6 for a kids ticket to a show at FringeKids! I am feeling compelled now to indicate that the exclamation point is part of the branding of FringeKids!, not just me being very excited, although, it is exciting. There are eight shows that play during the day at the Palmerston Library in the very kid-friendly theatre downstairs.
For me, the small paragraph description of a show available in the Toronto Fringe Festival program is more of a teaser than a description. A really great resource to pique my interest, but not quite enough information to help me decide amongst the 155 shows on offer at this year’s festival.
While 155 shows are far too many to do actual previews on, we are able to publish the press releases we receive. I highly recommend checking them out for more information on what’s available out there. The listing of all the releases we’ve published (we publish more each day) can be found here.
In a lot of ways Fringe Festivals embody what Mooney on Theatre holds dear, theatre accessibility. They are cheap theatre that is attended by a wide range of people, many of whom are not theatre goers the rest of the year.
With this in mind, we put a lot of effort into providing as much coverage of the festival as we can, including: covering each show in a relatively substantive way; running contests for free tickets; reporting on the buzz surrounding the fringe and more. If you want an idea of what the coverage will likely look like, check out the Fringe Festival category on this site. To make this happen, we need to bring on more contributors.
The man wrote over 30 full length plays. This is why it was a treat to hear that Hart House Theatre is producing a Tennessee Williams play that is not one of the aforementioned three. The Night of the Iguana is playing at Hart House Theatre until March 10, 2012.
War Horse is a visual feast and is on stage at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto
I was blown away by beauty of the staging and effects while watching War Horse at Mirvish’s Princess of Wales Theatre.
When it comes to visual elements and design, this is one of the most spectacular shows I’ve seen. My show partner for the piece, Mooney on Theatre’s Managing Editor Wayne Leung, remarked that “Since they weren’t going for a hyper-realistic effect it opened them up to the exploration of amazing stagecraft.” I totally agree.
