I’ve taken an interest in site-specific theatre recently and have chosen to see a few site-specific works at this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival. Big Metal Box is one of the shows that piqued my curiosity. It’s an anthology of four mini plays staged inside a large storage locker.
The four performances that make up Big Metal Box aren’t really related in any way other than the fact that they share a setting. Starting off with a specific location and then writing a series of short plays set in that location feels like the type of play writing exercise you’d undertake in theatre school. Continue reading Big Metal Box (Apocryphal Productions) 2013 Toronto Fringe Review→
I was worried about The Hystericon, which is playing in the Fringe Festival at Theatre Passe Muraille. These themes–madness, the dark history of psychiatry, medical sexism–are so well-trodden that, as a reviewer, I basically roll my eyes when I happen across them. “Oh, look. Another newly-minted theatre-school graduate who thinks they can improve upon Marat/Sade. How adorable.”
I tell you this because the ladies who inhabit The Hystericon blew my mind. They’ve taken a genre positively filled with hoary old tropes and predictable dullness, and they’ve somehow cobbled together a fresh, innovative, interesting and utterly worthwhile play.
Erotic Tales from the Old Testament from Inque & Quille Productions begins with a very sexy man and a very sexy woman dancing an intense seduction/repulsion scene. At that point I didn’t know who in the Old Testament these characters were supposed to be but the sexiness compelled me to watch, transfixed, and to hoot and holler as the clothes came off.
Unfortunately, not many other people were doing that along with me. Perhaps many of them were Fringers who were unaccustomed to burlesque. Perhaps the lack of a bar played a part, as alcohol tends to aid in hooting and hollering. And I know from personal experience that the more raucous the crowd, the more empowered a burlesque dancer is to strut their stuff.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream…A Puppet Epic! Put on by Shakey-Shake and Friends at The Palmerston Library Theatre as part of FringeKids, combined my love of both Shakespeare and puppets. I have been working with puppets for the past year and have fallen in love with these furry and odd creatures. To see new ones of different shapes, sizes and colours, created by Tom McGee, was like meeting new friends. Walking into the theatre I was surrounded by very young children and their parents. I sat beside a wonderful little girl wearing pink hippo rain boots, quite darling.
I’ve taken an interest in site-specific theatre recently and have chosen to see a few site-specific works at this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival. Big Metal Box is one of the shows that piqued my curiosity. It’s an anthology of four mini plays staged inside a large storage locker.
I was worried about 
