Don’t be fooled: Kids’ theatre can really pack an emotional punch

by Jenna Rocca

The Invisible Girl is a poignant and charming look at peer pressure and bullying. It’s pretty meditative and psychologically driven for a children’s show, and the fact that it’s a one-woman show is already a pretty clear obstacle to keeping a group of fifth graders’ attention sustained for over 40 minutes. But it succeeds.

Amy Lee plays Ali with vulnerability and force which makes for some great physical comedy but also some scary internal conflicts. Michele Riml ‘s challenging piece follows Ali over the course of a week, over which she must make some serious choices on her path to independence. Continue reading The Invisible Girl (Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People) →

by Dorianne Emmerton

Homeland, by Godot Art Productions, is a multi-media piece. On one level it is a documentary film featuring interviews on the concept of “home” with people who now live in Toronto but originally came from somewhere else. Some of them consider Toronto their home now and some of them will always consider their native land home.

Homeland is also a music and dance number. Composer Reza Moghaddas has crafted a lush soundtrack of electronic and live music, performed by himself and Lorenzo Castelli. The dance is performed by Megan Nadain, a lovely young woman with admirable physical prowess.

Megan enters the stage through the audience which is very intimate given the small venue of the Theatre Passe Muraille backspace. This entry signifies a journey, foretelling the stories of travelling to Canada we then see, projected onto a crumpled screen hung on the stage.

Megan’s outfit is a similarly crumpled white, adorned by a crude rope around her waist. Reza and Lorenzo wore similar shirts, however the effect was compromised for me by the fact that both men wore contemporary casual jeans and shoes. Continue reading Review: Homeland (Godot Art Productions) →

By Mira Saraf

The Merchants of Bollywood premiered on November 4, the day before Diwali, at The Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. Although I grew up on Bollywood films and have witnessed it through various evolutions of costume, plot line and flesh exposure, the only professionally staged show of the same sort of theme I’d ever seen was Bombay Dreams. Continue reading The Merchants of Bollywood →

by Dorianne Emmerton

The Girls Who Saw Everything is presented by Ryerson Theatre School with a cast of their fourth year graduating class and guest director Ruth Madoc-Jones. Madoc-Jones has been involved in some of the most intriguing new theatre in the city so I was intrigued to see both her work and the fresh crop of actors about to be loosed into the Toronto theatre scene.

Ryerson’s Abrams Studio (46 Gerrard St E) can be a little hard to find, so if you’re heading there be sure you know it’s on the north side of Gerrard in the Ryerson Theatre School academic building, second floor (across the street from the large Ryerson theatre.)

Before the play even started I was impressed with the simple and elegant set. Wooden cross beams at odd angles allow the audience to see into a hallway running along the back of the stage. Large wooden crates provide levels and surfaces used to make different scenes within the play but which also evoke the feeling of a warehouse, the setting of the main action. A corner draped with coloured scarves is an exotic portal where mythical elements of the play enter and exit. Continue reading Review: The Girls who Saw Everything (Ryerson Theatre School) →