Reviews of theatre, dance, opera, comedy and festivals. Performances can be in-person or streamed remotely on the web for social-distancing.
Have you ever had a moment in your life that was so traumatic you wish you could forget? Or have you ever tried to recall a great memory but couldn’t remember all the details? Through fascinating multimedia, strong performance and versatile movement, Sook-Yin Lee and Benjamin Kamino explore these questions of remembering and forgetting as they bare it all in the SummerWorks show, How Can I Forget?.
It’s great to see a whole range of Theatre at this year’s 2013 SummerWorks, and I was delighted to see a secondary school production included in the festival. The play, Love at the End of the World, playing at the Scotiabank Studio Theatre, is a great example of how the next generation of performers is workshopping innovative ways of storytelling.
Continue reading Love at the End of the World (Fr. John Redmond C.S.S.) 2013 SummerWorks Review
girls!girls!girls! by Present Danger Productions is playing at the Scotiabank Studio Theatre for SummerWorks 2013. The play, written by Greg MacArthur, is a wild depiction of the ways youth cope with small town life. To sum up the premise, the pamphlet says: “It’s Friday night. It’s a small town. It’s a booze up. It’s time for revenge.”
It’s Friday night and several friends (Splitz, Jam, Puss, and Little Bucky the Fag) gather in the woods with nothing to do. The solution is to create a mission out of something that only a bored and angry small-town teen could come up with. Splitz placed forth in a gymnastics competition and can’t handle the fact that she is not wearing that first place red ribbon. Jam, Puss and Little Bucky the Fag promise to do whatever it takes to get their chum the ribbon that she wants. The things teens will do for a ribbon made me squirm in my seat.
Continue reading girls! girls! girls! (Present Danger Productions) 2013 SummerWorks Review
Jackie’s Not A Real Girl (running at Theatre Passe Muraille as part of SummerWorks) is just about as dark as dark can be; almost a sort of torture porn, carried out live on stage. But Nicki Ward’s script doesn’t deal with things that lurk in shadows, or in tiny rural villages, or malevolent forces from beyond the veil. Her horrors are real: they dwell in the sunlight; they live in our neighbourhoods; they walk among us.
The plot of this show must be seen to be understood. But in short form, Sadie–a charismatic bartender and a survivor by nature–mourns the death of a dear friend, Jackie. Jackie hasn’t actually died, mind you–it’s much worse than that. Jackie’s been snuffed out. Her humanity, identity, realness have been completely stripped away, leaving only a physical shell behind. So Sadie walks us back to the very beginning, and together we journey through Jackie’s ongoing trauma. It’s not a pretty sight, but this story must be told.
Continue reading Jackie’s Not A Real Girl (Ground Queero) 2013 SummerWorks Review
There is a lot going on in Camila’s Bones, Maloka Theatre Collective’s current production playing at Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace at SummerWorks. Think Brave New World meets The Handmaid’s Tale with a bit of District 9, Children of Men and No One Is Illegal activism thrown in for extra spice.
Camila’s Bones is a dystopic play set in the foreseeable future. Camila is an immigrant from South America who flees hardship and disaster to survive in a new environment where her citizenship status is very low.
Concurrently, Devin, a genetic engineer (read eugenicist) and his evangelical wife Chloe cannot have children. Devin is hard at work trying to engineer a genetic class of disconnected and emotionless workers while his depressive wife wants to have a baby. Continue reading Camila’s Bones (Maloka Theatre Collective) 2013 SummerWorks Review