Results tagged “dramaclub”

While most people cheered the announcement of Brendan Healy as new artistic director of Buddies, NOW pointed out (albeit a tad awkwardly) that this meant seminal queer Canadian writer/director Brad Fraser didn't get the job. These days, he seems to be more popular with Factory Theatre, where his newish play, True Love Lies, has just received its Canadian premiere and opened their fortieth anniversary season. And Fraser isn't the only one returning to Factory: he's bringing David, a regular character in his work often considered the author's own alter ego, along for the ride. In this show, David returns to Toronto and to the life of erstwhile lover, Kane, who has since switched back to hetero and now lives with his interior-design partner/wife Carolyn, and their two teenage children, Madison and Royce. When Madison tries to get a job at David's restaurant, it sets into motion a string of events that leads to old family secrets being unearthed, new ones being buried, and a big, sexy mess where a family used to be.

Today's edition of Drama Club is brought to you by sex and gender politics. A couple of very interesting shows opened in the city last week, both of which approach aspects of sexuality and gender identity from very different perspectives. In the girl corner, we have Sasha Von Bon Bon's Neon Nightz, a two-woman burlesque(-ish) cabaret about the 90s Montreal strip club scene directed by outgoing Buddies Artistic Director David Oiye. Over at the boy's club, there's Darren Anthony's Secrets of a Black Boy, heavily promoted as the male answer to his sister's trey's hugely successful Da Kink in My Hair, which promises to let us all know what it's really like to be a black man in the city.

This has been a week for big announcements in theatre. First off, Brendan Healy has been appointed as new artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, taking over from the departing David Oiye. And just this morning, Tarragon Theatre announced the winner of their inaugural Under 30 National Playwriting contest: Evan Placey for his play Mother of Him.

We're back! Drama Club's been taking it easy over the summer, but now that September has rolled around, it's back to school (ew, as if!) and back to the theatre. Not that theatre picks up and leaves town for the summer the way it used to. Sure, most of the playhouses go on hiatus, but between Fringe, SummerWorks, Luminato, and independent productions, there's always something you can go see. Which brings us to Soulpepper, a local oddity in its decision to program a February–December season, rather than a September–May one. The poor ushers at the Young Centre barely had any cottage time at all this year, what with the summertime productions of Loot, Awake and Sing!, Of the Fields, Lately, and Billy Bishop Goes to War.

Hello, Toronto! Drama Club has been taking it easy ever since a certain mid-July theatre festival, but we're back in action to give you the scoop on SummerWorks, August's indie answer to the Fringe. Some of you may remember how the festival got revamped and re-branded last year thanks to then-new Artistic Producer Michael Rubenfeld, who added such elements as a Music Series and a "Performance Gallery" at the Gladstone Hotel to the theatre festival, and also limited it to the Queen West strip. All this and more continues at the fest this year, and while we're not entirely sure about this year's roadkill visual motif (or the now annual tradition of sexist and kind of indulgent promotional videos), it's exciting to see the festival grow and develop.

It's official: Fringe has taken over the city. And while we aren't sure about numbers yet, attendance this year has seemed especially high. In past years, getting tickets during the opening weekend of the fest has been a cinch; this year, we noticed a ton of shows that were opening-night sellouts, and many have continued to pack houses, even in tough time slots such as weekday afternoons and Sunday nights. Once again, Drama Club forsakes its usual format to bring you a special Fringe edition to tell you what's been going on in the Fringe venues (and at the beer tent).

Don't try to fool us, Canada Day! While this Hump-Day Holiday means a day off work for some, it means the exact opposite for tons of theatre folks, since it also happens to be the opening of the twentieth annual Toronto Fringe Festival. Gadzoooks! Drama Club is abandoning its usual format today to bring you a special Fringe edition, with all the hot tips and cool buzz we can muster. Check back during the festival for Torontoist's coverage of the festival, running until July 12, where our team will be bringing you fresh reviews daily.

Jaded queers will complain that Pride has become little more than a SKYY Vodka ad come to life, a commercial, de-politicized faux-hedonistic throw-back that gives people an excuse to have sex with strangers and pretend they're still teenagers. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But for those of you who are over the parade and think Church Street is a snore, but still want to celebrate Pride, there are a few cool events, hidden away in the festival's abysmal website. And yes, Drama Clubbers, there is theatre to see!

Because you're worth it, Toronto, L'Oréal's Luminato Festival has descended upon your fair city, bringing things such as Neil Gaiman, Randy Bachman, and religious controversy to Hogtown. But worry not, dramaphiles, there's theatre too! From faux-punk rock shows, to nine-hour epics, to children's operas, to Edgar Allan Poe, there's something for everyone (who can afford the mostly expensive ticket prices) to enjoy.

May 26 marked the fortieth anniversary of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's famous Montreal Bed-In, the site of the recording of "Give Peace a Chance." Over in the M-Dot, the Musée des beaux arts has been holding a popular exhibit about what may have been the world's most famous sleepover. Closer to home, draft89 Theatre Collective has been mounting The John/Yoko Bed Piece at the Theatre Centre, which dramatizes the event.

Crows Theatre has Toronto under siege. First, there was the company's much-ballyhooed remount of I, Claudia, which has just been extended due to popular demand. Then, last weekend, the company hosted The Directors' Showcase & Exchange, which involved a fascinating panel discussion by some of the country's most prolific and accomplished theatre directors. It also featured the performance of several plays, including a reading of Caryl Churchill's controversial new work Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza. Written in January as a response to the recent attack on Gaza, the ten-minute piece has been highly acclaimed by some, and dismissed as anti-Semitic propaganda by others, including B'nai Brith, which tried to protest the work's being performed in Toronto. We found the piece powerful, tragic, and ultimately very human, less interested in pointing fingers than drawing attention to the complexity and the sadness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The sun is shining, the blossoms are out, and snow is all but a distant memory. It's officially day-trip season! And while slot-junkies and wax museum enthusiasts may find themselves drawn to the siren song of Niagara Falls, we suggest you might also consider its more demure cousin, Niagara-on-the-Lake, home of the well-loved Shaw Festival. While slightly beyond the reaches of the TTC, many Torontonians rent a car or hop a bus to this quaint little burg to catch a play, have some tea, and maybe visit that jam store.

Claudia may be Canada's favourite official pre-teen. The star of Kristen Thomson's one-woman masterpiece, I, Claudia, has been delighting audiences for the better part of a decade. Since the play's 2001 premiere at Tarragon Theatre, it's toured the country, won multiple awards, been adapted into a wonderful film for CBC's (now defunct) Opening Night series, and, most recently, been performed by actors other than Thomson. Now, it's back to Toronto with a remount that opened last week at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts.

Rick Miller has made a name for himself through his explorations of two of our society's most important (and ever-present) icons: Jesus Christ and Homer Simpson. MacHomer, his one-man version of Shakespeare's Scottish play as performed by the cast of Matt Groening's yellow-skinned dysfunctional family, has toured the world to great acclaim. His follow-up to that show was Bigger Than Jesus, a collaboration with accomplished director Daniel Brooks, which examined everyone's favourite carpenter from several different angles. In the duo's latest co-creation, HARDSELL, familiar cultural figures are absent. Instead, they give us an entirely new face. Literally.

The last time Birdland Theatre's production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot came through town, it won five Doras and the reputation of being "the best show nobody saw." With only five performances at The Distillery District's enticingly named Fermenting Cellar, there wasn't much of a chance to. This time around, they doubled the number of performances, but sadly, this still doesn't mean a very long run, and if you didn't make the trip to Mill Street and Parliament last night, you missed your last chance at catching this fabulous show.

There's a certain kind of boy—and we're not saying it's every boy—who can recite all the words to the Will you go to lunch? scene from Glengarry Glen Ross from memory. Although the 1992 film, featuring an all-star, all-machismo cast filled with the likes of Alan Arkin, Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon, and Kevin Spacey, was more of a cult-hit than a blockbuster, it has still inspired a pretty devoted (and probably pretty male) group of followers, who have nicknamed the cuss-filled real-estate-agent drama "Death of a Fuckin' Salesman." In the past couple of years, there has been a serious glut of popular (and in some cases, not-so-popular) movies finding their way onto the Toronto stage. CanStage has been a pretty serious offender this season, with one show based on a popular movie, and two others whose runs coincided with their Oscar-nominated adaptations' screen dates. Mirvish's upcoming season seems to be almost entirely populated with shows based on existing popular movies and TV shows. And last night, Soulpepper's stage version of Glengarry Glen Ross opened at the Young Centre. To be fair, David Mamet's Pullitzer Prize–winning play the film was based on debuted on Broadway almost a decade before the film was made, so it may not be entirely fair to include it as an example of this movies-on-stage trend. However, we're sure that more than one person in the crowd last night was wondering when Alec Baldwin's character was going to show up.

There's a moment in Small Wooden Shoe's Dedicated to the Revolutions, which opened last night at Buddies in Bad Times Theate, where Erin Shields talks about the Scientific Method as she remembers it from her high school education: Hypothesize, Experiment, Observe, Report. For Small Wooden Shoe, this show represents their own version of the "Report" stage. In 2006, the company began work on a series of shows, each devoted to one of seven scientific/technological revolutions: Gutenberg, Copernican, Newtonian, Industrial, Darwinian, Nuclear, and Information. This new show is a culmination of those other shows, bringing together everything they've learned about how these revolutions have shaped our society with the help of dry-erase markers, some string-cup telephones, and a ukulele.

Here at Drama Club, we generally consider Mirvish shows to be outside our purview (although that certainly doesn't stop them popping up elsewhere on Torontoist). But when we heard that the much ballyhooed Broadway darling Spring Awakening was coming to the Canon Theatre, we couldn't help feeling...intrigued. Maybe it was our geeky theatre-school memories of the scandalous Wedekind play the new musical is based on. More likely, it was Lucille Bluth singing "Mama Who Bore Me" on 90210. Regardless, it was with a healthy amount of curiosity (and perhaps a soupçon of dread) that we went to the theatre on opening night.

Since last week's Drama Club, two very interesting shows have opened near Queen and Bathurst. Katherine Mansfield opened at Factory on Friday, while Tijuana Cure had its debut at Passe Muraille on Wednesday. Both shows use very minimal props and costumes, often relying on physicality to aid their storytelling. Both shows are rentals from impressive local companies (if ones at different stages in their careers). Theatre Smith-Gilmour, whose current play is a reworking of last year's The Mansfield Project, have been critical darlings since the 1980s and have wowed audiences with their stage adaptations of Chekhov's prose fiction. Theatre Smash is a much younger company that's only been producing plays since 2006, but it has already started getting attention for solid productions such as Norway, Today.

Each week, Drama Club looks at Toronto's theatre scene and tells you which shows are worth checking out.

Each week, Drama Club looks at Toronto's theatre scene and tells you which shows are worth checking out.

Each week, Drama Club looks at Toronto's theatre scene and tells you which shows are worth checking out.

Each week, Drama Club looks at Toronto's theatre scene and tells you which shows are worth checking out.

Each week, Drama Club looks at Toronto's theatre scene and tells you which shows are worth checking out.

Each week, Drama Club looks at Toronto's theatre scene and tells you which shows are worth checking out.

Each week, Drama Club looks at Toronto's theatre scene and tells you which shows are worth checking out.

Each week, we take a look at Toronto's theatre scene and tell you which shows are worth checking out.

Each week, we take a look at what's going on in Toronto's theatre scene and tell you which shows we think are worth checking out.

Drama Club is a new feature on Torontoist. Each week, we'll take a look at what's going on in Toronto's theatre scene and try to figure out which shows are worth checking out.