According to CBC’s Chris Boyce, the goal of this weekend’s CBCMusic.ca Festival is twofold. First and foremost, the CBC wants to celebrate Canadian music. Second, it wants to celebrate CBC Music, the broadcaster’s online music service, which launched a little over a year ago.

In 1996, Theatre Columbus premiered playwright Michael O’Brien’s “freely adapted” take on the famous Beaumarchais play The Barber of Seville, which was written in 1775. O’Brien’s version mixed in music from the 1816 opera of the same name by Gioachino Rossini, as well as original tunes by composer John Millard. The adaptation also propelled the story forward a couple centuries, with pop culture references galore. With Theatre Columbus co-founder Leah Cherniak at the helm, the musical ended the season with six Dora Award nominations (it won three) and plenty of critical acclaim.

Seventeen years later, Soulpepper Theatre is remounting this zany reimagination of The Barber of Seville, updated once again by O’Brien, Millard, and Cherniak. But, for some reason—the change in decade, or company, or sense of humour—whatever had made the original so magical, has faded, save for a few key performances.

The International Indian Film Academy Awards, often described as the Bollywood Oscars, are coming to town later this month. It’s the 12th year for the awards, and the first time they’ll be held in North America. Official events run from June 23 to 25, and preliminary celebrations are already taking place in and around the city.
Of course, one of the things Bollywood cinema is most known for are the dance sequences that are peppered throughout so many films. And so we have: the Bollywood dance flash mob. They’ve been popping up in and around Toronto help build momentum for the awards; this one livened up an intersection in Port Credit yesterday.