Mike was that kid who walked into the high school stage crew booth, saw the lighting board, and went ooooooooooooh. Now that he’s (mostly) all grown up, Mike keeps his foot in the door as a community-theatre producer, stage manager and administrator. In the audience, he’s a tremendous sucker for satire and parody, for improvisational and sketch-driven comedy, for farce and pantomime, and for cabaret of all types. His happiest Toronto theatrical memory is (re) Birth: E. E. Cummings in Song.
Linnea Swan is candid: her Re-View Project is not going as planned. This ambitious attempt to launch a critical conversation about criticism and its impact upon theatre artists, theatre festivals and theatre audiences is gasping for attention, swamped out by a million and one other SummerWorks projects. (On the night I stepped into her Re-View Booth, I was one of only three names on her four-hour appointment list.)
As she expressed it to me, her project is as much about conversations as about criticism: we already have plenty of forums for artists to talk to and about other artists, but how often do we hear laypeople talking about theatre? When we talk about “audience development”, are we talking about engaging these people in conversation, or just treating them as potential butts for our seats? Continue reading The Re-View Project (Linnea Swan) 2014 SummerWorks Feature→
Walking out of If Hearts Could Bloom, one hears the inevitable remark: “I felt like my heart did bloom!”
I’m sure the cast — students at Burr Oak Secondary School— have heard that line plenty. They probably heard it at school; they probably heard it at the Sears Ontario Drama Festival, then again at the Sears Festival finals; and now they get to hear it at SummerWorks, where their bouffon play about individuality and identity is driving audiences to tears and laughter.
GASH! is real-life psychobiddy, a SummerWorks tribute to old melodramas about grotesque women sliding into madness. Clearly a labour of love on the part of writer David Benjamin Tomlinson and director Clinton Walker (with Alfred Hitchcock and Vincent Price looking on!), the result is a crisp, snappy, hilarious play which creeped me right out of my seat.
But I’ve got good news: while GASH! is layered with cinematic treats, even if you know nothing of Baby Jane, Sunset Boulevard, Sister George or Auntie Roo, you’ll find plenty to tickle and terrify you in this marvellous little murderpile.
The title tells you everything you need to know about El Jinete. It’s a mariachi opera: a tribute to mid-century Mexican cinema, filled with soulful ballads, enormous hats, cheesy acting and the power of love. If that sounds like a good time, then this SummerWorks show will make your month; if that description sets your teeth on edge (“90 minutes of Mexican folk music? Ay dios mio, kill me now…”), you should run far away.
And in the unlikely event that you’re still on the fence, let me nudge you off: this is a very, very good show, and — if you aren’t turned off by the Mariachi angle — it’s entirely worth a ticket
Paradise Red is a slow-burn telenovela, set in that curious soap-opera universe where every conversation ends with a pregnancy scare, a room-shaking slap to the face, or a lamentable assignation behind the bike shed. Dialing it up even higher, Alameda sets their SummerWorks show in post-coup Chile, where the death of a patriarch — a highly-placed military official — leaves his family in political and economic decline.
What secrets lie beneath the study wallpaper? Who is pregnant with whose child? Who is this mysterious “Captain Schnauzer”? And how much further can this family fall before they hit rock bottom?
Linnea Swan is candid: her Re-View Project is not going as planned. This ambitious attempt to launch a critical conversation about criticism and its impact upon theatre artists, theatre festivals and theatre audiences is gasping for attention, swamped out by a million and one other SummerWorks projects. (On the night I stepped into her Re-View Booth, I was one of only three names on her four-hour appointment list.)
GASH!
The title tells you everything you need to know about 