All posts by Samantha Wu

Samantha is both a writer and a fan of the arts and has been able to find numerous ways to pair the two. Aside from being an editor here at Mooney on Theatre, she's a photojournalist for Been Here Done That, a travel, dining and tourism blog that focuses on Toronto and abroad and previously for  Lithium Magazine, which got her writing and shooting about everything from Dave Matthews Band to Fan Expo. She's passionate about music, theatre, photography, writing, and celebrating sexuality -- not necessarily in that order. She drinks tea more than coffee, prefer ciders over beers, and sings karaoke way too loudly. You can follow her on various social media including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Exposure – Toronto Fringe 2015 Press Release

“Exposure is imaginative, eccentric, surprising and fun.”

Exposure - Greg Wanless
Excerpted from press release:
Paris, spring, 1838. The collision of three lives — inventor Louis Daguerre, his ex-mistress, and a suicidal young man — leads to the birth of photography as we know it in this bright new comedic fantasy from award-winning Canadian playwright John Lazarus. Imaginative, eccentric, surprising and fun, EXPOSURE features an all-star creative team and plays July 1-10 at the Robert Gill Theatre as part of the 2015 Toronto Fringe Festival.
EXPOSURE: A bright spring morning in Paris. Inventor Louis Daguerre is struggling to photograph a living being, but his camera speed is far too slow — the pictures he takes from his office window still make the bustling Boulevard du Temple look utterly deserted. Everyone goes by too fast to register on the plate, and his colleagues laugh at him and say it can’t be done – until one day a chance meeting with his ex-mistress Mme. Brilliante leads to an opportunity that changes our world in ways they could not have imagined.
Playwright John Lazarus is well known for his iconic plays Babel Rap, Dreaming and Duelling, and Village of Idiots. He is the recipient of a Chalmers Award, a Writers’ Guild of Canada Top Ten Award, the World Gold Medal for children’s radio drama, and the International Association of Film Critics FIPRESCI Grand Prize at the 1998 Montreal Film Festival (Village of Idiots, National Film Board). Lazarus made waves atthe Vancouver Fringe as the writer/performer of smash hit (and “Best of the Fringe” pick) Medea’s Disgust, lauded by the press as “Great” (The Vancouver Province),“Brilliant” (The Georgia Straight) and “Perfect” (The Vancouver Sun).
Directed by Kathryn Mackay (The Drowning Girls, The Russian Play/Essay, The Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, Thousand Islands Playhouse; Women Who Shout at the Stars, Summerworks 2014/Critics Choice Award at The Ottawa Fringe; Theatre Orangeville; PeerLess Productions), EXPOSURE features veteran actor/director Craig Walker (The Turn of the Screw at Tarragon Theatre and The Winter’s Tale at Harbourfront Centre, both for Theatre Kingston; St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival; Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival) as ‘Louis Daguerre’, Gemini Award Nominee Laurel Paetz (Wendy Lill’sSisters, Primedia Productions; ten seasons Blyth Festival; Prairie Theatre Exchange) as ‘Mme. Brilliante’, and introducing up-and-coming actor/producer Christopher Blackwell(of Theatre Mies) as ‘Anonyme’. Set Design by Bill Penner (Soulpepper). Video design by Kevin Tanner. Stage managed by Kathleen Harrison.
Showtimes:
  • Wed July 1 @ 10:30pm
  • Sat July 4 @ 12:30pm
  • Sun July 5 @ 11:00pm
  • Mon July 6 @ 5:15pm
  • Wed July 8 @ 7:45pm
  • Thur July 9 @ 9:15pm
  • Fri July 10 @ 4:30pm

Venue: Robert Gill Theatre (214 College St, 3rd floor)

Tickets for all Fringe productions are $10, $12 in advance. Tickets can be purchased online, by phone (416-966-1062, business hours only), in-person from the festival box office located in the parking lot behind Honest Ed’s, (481 Bloor West), or — if any remain — from the venue box office (cash-only), starting one hour before showtime.

The festival offers a range of money-saving passes for committed Fringers; see website for details.

Be advised that Fringe shows always start exactly on time, and latecomers are never admitted.

Photo by Greg Wanless

Two Girls, One Corpse — Toronto Fringe 2015 Press Release

“[T]he women are always on the same team; even when one of them might be a killer. And you can never hear enough Angela Lansbury impressions.”

Two Girls One Corpse - Monique Elliott

Excerpted from press release:

For twenty-something best-friends-slash-failures, weddings can be killer.
When two girls attend an old flame’s wedding, the next morning they’ve got bigger problems than major hangovers: there’s a corpse in the apartment. And it’s the groom. What follows is a true whodunit for the newly adult and barely functional.
Two Girls, One Corpse is making its world debut this summer in the micro-miniest Fringe tour ever; starting in Ottawa on June 19th, and finishing in Toronto on July 12th.
Created by the founders (and only members) of Lazy Sunday Theatre, Two Girls, One Corpse has been a labour of love for Michelle Blanchard and Marissa Caldwell over the past year. The company was founded in 2013 and still exists three years later, despite Blanchard’s move to Toronto, and Caldwell’s insistence on surviving law school in Ottawa. Since Lazy Sunday Theatre is a long distance relationship, Two Girls, One Corpse was created mostly over the internet. A true marvel of modern technology, the script was entirely formed through solo and collaborative writing sessions on Google Drive.
The idea for Two Girls, One Corpse came out of Blanchard and Caldwell’s love of two things: each other, and Murder, She Wrote. Tired of the one-dimensional roles available to young women, the creators sat down over a beer to craft a story of genuine female friendship, where the women embrace each other’s flaws from a place of love and support. In Two Girls, One Corpse, the women are always on the same team; even when one of them might be a killer. And you can never hear enough Angela Lansbury impressions.
Under the direction of Fringe veteran Dave Dawson, Blanchard and Caldwell of Two Girls, One Corpse have become: “the next-next-next Tina and Amy,” “Bridesmaids if it starred Jessica Fletcher,” and “those weirdos.”
Showtimes:
  • July 3 10:30pm
  • July 5, 2:45pm
  • July 7, 6:30pm
  • July 8, 9:15pm
  • July 9, 6:00pm
  • July 10, 12:00pm
  • July 12, 7:30pm

Venue: Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse (79 St George St, #302)

Tickets for all Fringe productions are $10, $12 in advance. Tickets can be purchased online, by phone (416-966-1062, business hours only), in-person from the festival box office located in the parking lot behind Honest Ed’s, (481 Bloor West), or — if any remain — from the venue box office (cash-only), starting one hour before showtime.

The festival offers a range of money-saving passes for committed Fringers; see website for details.

Be advised that Fringe shows always start exactly on time, and latecomers are never admitted.

Photo by Monique Elliott

Waiting for Alonzo — Toronto Fringe 2015 Press Release

“Waiting for Alonzo is an outrageous comedy for anyone who sometimes forgets to recycle, and offers a feminist take on surreal forms of theatre.”

Waiting for Alonzo - Courtney Mulligan

Excerpted from press release:
Doctor Zanita is waiting. Surrounded by a menagerie of marvellous machines, a handsome talking statue and her faithful assistant Bielke, this mad scientist is aimlessly drifting through space – on a mission. But after six hundred days, two thousand coats of lipstick, and countless re-ordinated matrixes, time is running out. Will this mad scientist and her igor be Waiting for Alonzo forever? This
surreal satire is brimming with bizarre behaviour and seasoned with the tears of the unrepentant patriarch.
To reduce the environmental impact of our production, we’re creating our set and costumes from reused or recycled items. And we want our audience to join in! Audience members are invited to bring their old or expired makeup and beauty products to the theatre so that we can recycle them – we’ll be collecting them right after the show.
Waiting for Alonzo is an outrageous comedy for anyone who sometimes forgets to recycle, and offers a feminist take on surreal forms of theatre. Come for the pulchritudinator, the spaceship or the physical comedy, and stay for the infamous vajazzling scene. The script was developed through the Paprika Festival’s Playwrights-in-Residence program under the mentorship of Erica Kopyto.
Showtimes: 
  • July 3rd @ 5:45pm
  • July 4th @ 8:00pm
  • July 5th @ 1:45pm
  • July 6th @ 3:00pm
  • July 9th @ 4:00pm
  • July 10th @ 7:30pm
  • July 11th @ 5:45pm

Venue: Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace (16 Ryerson Ave.)

Tickets for all Fringe productions are $10, $12 in advance. Tickets can be purchased online, by phone (416-966-1062, business hours only), in-person from the festival box office located in the parking lot behind Honest Ed’s, (481 Bloor West), or — if any remain — from the venue box office (cash-only), starting one hour before showtime.

The festival offers a range of money-saving passes for committed Fringers; see website for details.

Be advised that Fringe shows always start exactly on time, and latecomers are never admitted.

Photo by Courtney Mulligan

The Orchid and the Crow — Toronto Fringe 2015 Press Release

“[A] tragi-comedy about faith, sex, identity and ritual.”

The Orchid and the Crow - Andrew Wuttke

Excerpted from press release:

When death looks you in the eye, whom do you turn to? Your psychologist? God? … Or Lance Armstrong?

Fresh from critical success as part of the The Coopers Malthouse resident artist initiative, Salvador Dinosaur Presents the ‘The Orchid and the Crow’ – a tragi-comedy about faith, sex, identity and ritual, created and performed by Daniel Tobias and directed by Christian Leavesley.

Reflecting on Daniel’s real life (and almost death) experiences, The Orchid and the Crow is a solo performance that features original songs from the award-winning writers of Die RotenPunkte – the lipstick-smeared, tantrum-loving, sonic collision that has gone down a storm at various international Festivals.

At eight days old Daniel’s secular Jewish parents chose to have him circumcised. Having not read the fine print in the Old Testament, this unknowingly triggered God’s ongoing contract with the Hebrews. In return for following his rules, God promised to look after the Israelites.

At 29, Daniel is an atheist, single and living the life of a bohemian artist in Melbourne. And lo, God was not pleased! Appalled with Daniel’s lifestyle choices, God makes an example of him and appears on earth to smite him with stage four testicular cancer. Stage five is death.

As Dan prepares for his upcoming treatment he is left in a spiritual vacuum. He is reaching for faith in something, but he’s certainly not going to find it in a deity who has already stolen one of his balls. Instead, Daniel finds salvation in an unlikely modern messiah, seven-time winner of the Tour de France and testicular cancer survivor Lance Armstrong.

Showtimes: 

  • Thu 2 Jul–8:15pm
  • Fri 3 Jul–3:00pm
  • Sun 5 Jul –3:00pm
  • Mon 6 Jul –10:15pm
  • Tue 7 Jul –10:30pm
  • Fri 10 Jul – 11:30pm
  • Sat 11 Jul – 5:45pm

Venue: Al Green Theatre (750 Spadina Ave)

Tickets for all Fringe productions are $10, $12 in advance. Tickets can be purchased online, by phone (416-966-1062, business hours only), in-person from the festival box office located in the parking lot behind Honest Ed’s, (481 Bloor West), or — if any remain — from the venue box office (cash-only), starting one hour before showtime.

The festival offers a range of money-saving passes for committed Fringers; see website for details.

Be advised that Fringe shows always start exactly on time, and latecomers are never admitted.

Photo by Andrew Wuttke

She Said Yes — Toronto Fringe 2015 Press Release

“OkCupid. Match.com. Plenty of Fish. eHarmony. Tinder. A comedy about people meeting people and sometimes, almost, maybe, sort of, falling in love.”

She Said Yes - Calwyn Shurgold

Excerpted from press release:

OkCupid. Match.com. Plenty of Fish. eHarmony. Tinder.  Dating in the 21st century is complicated.  A comedy about people meeting people and sometimes, almost, maybe, sort of, falling in love.  “She Said Yes” follows Liz as she navigates dating websites, apps, and “traditional” meet-cutes, and all of the hilarious situations that come with using today’s dating technology.

After a few years of the single life and some pretty comedy-driven real-life dates with many quirky messages, Virginia was inspired to share this experience on stage, and that’s how Liz’s story began.  When Dv8 Productions was drawn in Fringe’s lottery, she knew it was time.  Though the story of dating and the search for love is universal, the options for how to meet new people, especially in a new city have evolved.  It’s time for the traditional love story to have its modern retelling.

The cast features Jamie and Jon Champagne, stars of Teletoon’s “Double Play” (and identical twins), together portraying over 30 of Liz’s romantic candidates. Using their background in sketch and improv, they bring each unique character to life in She Said Yes, just like they do on TV.

Audiences should watch “She Said Yes” to see what it means to connect with each other in a technological age, to find the comedy in these everyday situations and to be able laugh at our shared experiences in the crazy world that is not only dating, but dating on your own terms.

Showtimes:

  • July 2, 9:15pm
  • July 5, 7:00pm
  • July 6, 1:00pm
  • July 8, 11:00pm
  • July 9, 1:45pm
  • July 10, 9:45pm
  • July 12, 3:30pm

Venue: Tarragon Theatre Extraspace (30 Bridgman Ave)

Tickets for all Fringe productions are $10, $12 in advance. Tickets can be purchased online, by phone (416-966-1062, business hours only), in-person from the festival box office located in the parking lot behind Honest Ed’s, (481 Bloor West), or — if any remain — from the venue box office (cash-only), starting one hour before showtime.

The festival offers a range of money-saving passes for committed Fringers; see website for details.

Be advised that Fringe shows always start exactly on time, and latecomers are never admitted.

Photo by Calwyn Shurgold.