Jon Lachlan Steward’s one-man show, Big Shot, is stunning. I chose it because I thought the description sounded interesting, but I had no idea what a captivating seventy-five minutes lay in wait for me at the Factory Theatre Studio. As a lover of theatre, cinema, and fragmented narrative, this was a treat for me. If you’re considering anything from the Next Stage Festival this year, you must not miss this! Continue reading 2015 Next Stage Festival Review: Big Shot (Surreal SoReal Theatre)
Snack Music is SNAFU throwing a curious sort of house party. Grab a snack, tell a story — your first kiss? your first night away from home? your first time doin’ it? — and then watch co-creators Ingrid Hansen and Andrew Young act it out through off-the-wall puppets. It’s an acting exercise on steroids, and it’s a ton of fun.
Continue reading 2015 Next Stage Review: Snack Music (SNAFU)
Teatron Theatre’s Delimax playing at the Toronto Centre for the Arts‘s Studio Theatre is not the easiest play to watch. Following the enforcement of Bill 101 in Montreal, Harvey Ostroff’s play questions the meaning of oppression and how questions of sovereignty, independence, and power reveal darker truths.
While the subject is timely after recent events in Quebec, we actually travel back in time to confront an earlier vision of the province post-FLQ crises, after the rise and fall of the Parti Quebecois in the late eighties/early nineties.
Myth of the Ostrich, produced as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival, is a hilarious show about motherhood, female friendship, and weed cookies. The three women in it are stellar performers with fantastic chemistry, and the script tackles important issues with a light touch that still has firm values. Continue reading 2015 Next Stage Festival Review: Myth of the Ostrich (Offside Productions)
As Mine begins a confident, smooth-talking woman in tight pants approaches a charmingly awkward woman with overtly seductive intentions. Then they transform into the same confident smooth-talking woman, Abigail (Michelle Polak), who is a Teaching Assistant for a poetry class, and the charmingly awkward woman, Bea (Jenna Harris), who is a student. Discord and Din‘s production, presented as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival, traces these women’s romantic relationship with humour and honesty. Jenna Harris, who is also the playwright, said in NOW Magazine that she wrote this play based on “my own life experiences and what I observed around me” and the situations and dynamics in the play certainly felt familiar to me.
Continue reading 2015 Next Stage Festival Review: Mine (Discord and Din Theatre)