Results tagged “nightwoodtheatre”

The Nightwood Theatre has set up shop at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre with an extraordinary production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist drama No Exit. In more traditional stage incarnations, No Exit is a fairly austere piece of theatre. Following the discussions of three strangers who find themselves trapped eternally in a sparsely decorated hotel room, Sartre’s play originally called for just three major characters, a mostly-mute valet, and one set. The drama arises from discussions between the three leads as they parse their various sins, deficiencies in character and weigh the morality of their mortal decisions.

ART: Andrea Stajan-Ferkul creates beautiful mixed-media paintings that are sleek and sexy on the surface and refined and evocative once you get to know them better. Many of the gowns she features on the canvas are also fit for the runway, which is appropriate given that one of her illustrations was used in the promotional material for Toronto Fashion Week shows at Nathan Phillips Square last week. Today, Stajan-Ferkul will open her solo show at the Art Square Gallery called "A Room With A View." The opening reception will be this Thursday at 6 p.m. Art Square Gallery (334 Dundas Street West), 5 p.m., FREE.

Last winter, CanStage was in a real crisis. Massive lay-offs, dodgy "resignations" and an upcoming season boasting not one single Canadian play had a lot of people pretty peeved. Enter The Berkeley Street Project. Co-productions with Nightwood, Studio 180, and Necessary Angel were announced to round out the season at the company's smaller theatre, keeping the Canadian Stage Company, well, Canadian, not to mention offering self-described "edgier" works. Up first is Nightwood with its adaptation of Helen Humphreys' novel Wild Dogs.

BENEFIT: Today is Sunnybrook's Underwear Affair, which is a 5k walk and 10k run in support of colorectal, prostate, ovarian, cervical, testicular, uterine, and other below-the-waist cancers. It's the first race of its kind in Toronto; Underwear Affairs have happened before in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, and Los Angeles. The course starts in Woodbine Park and goes through Tommy Thompson Park. Participants are encouraged to hit the road in their undies or other silly costumes, because really, nothing is sexier than a horde of nearly-exposed dudes with super sweaty balls. Woodbine Park (at Coxwell Road and Lakeshore Boulevard), 6 p.m., FREE (to watch).

Marjorie Chan's A Nanking Winter is a show about the 1937 genocide of the citizens of Nanking committed by the Japanese army. The atrocity, which claimed the lives of at least 300,000 Chinese, is an often-overlooked tragedy, and Chan's story focuses on a young woman named Irene who has written a book exposing the truth about the massacre. Chan's play is inspired by Iris Chang and her book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, which was a best seller in 1997. Chang suffered from depression and, in 2004, she took her own life. The first act of A Nanking Winter is set in the home of Irene and her Japanese husband on the eve of her Rape of Nanking-esque book's release. She is visited by her flighty sister, her publisher, Julia, and a mysterious guest that Julia brings along. The second act thrusts the action back into the past and explores the lives of two women, both named Mei, struggling to survive in the middle of the Nanking massacre.

Gossip no longer, culture vultures. We've finally got confirmation on CanStage's upcoming season. Like it or not, it looks like the rumours are true. As we reported before, the Bluma Appel Theatre's rather commercial lineup is entirely free of any Canadian-written shows, which has some folks in quite a tizzy. And as we suspected, CanStage is getting its CanCon through co-pros at the Berkeley Street Theatre. They're calling it The Berkeley Street Project, and it seems intended to supplement the Bluma's playing-it-safe season with "edgier, more provocative works." The first show, Wild Dogs (a co-production with Nightwood Theatre), is a stage adaptation of Helen Humphreys' eponymous novel. Up next, Studio 180 co-produces the Canadian premiere of Blackbird, a West End and off-Broadway hit by British (and consequently not Canadian) playwright David Harrower. The final co-production (with Necessary Angel) is the Toronto premiere of HARDSELL, a new work by Bigger Than Jesus team Daniel Brooks and Rick Miller. (Although, the only reason CanStage can claim "Toronto premiere" status is that the workshop presentation Brooks and Miller were going to present at Passe Muraille a month ago was cancelled due to illness.)

Leave it to CanStage to somehow, in the midst of extreme internal upheaval what is maybe their darkest financial hour, be simultaneously running two of their strongest shows by far in recent memory. In fact, Palace of the End (which closes tomorrow night) and The Clean House (which runs until March 8) aren't just good shows for CanStage, they would be amazing shows for anywhere. Hopefully, they can win the audiences they deserve, but it's certainly disheartening to finally see the company do something really, really right while knowing what's in store for the future. The abrupt departure of new Artistic Director David Storch a few weeks ago was enough of an unpleasant surprise. But further news reported in The Toronto Star was even more alarming. A total of 10 CanStage staff members have apparently been laid off, including dramaturge Iris Turcott, who, like Storch, will henceforth bear the dubious title of "consultant."

Nightwood Theatre's production of eccentric playwright Sarah Kane's Crave opened last week (starring the charming Michelle Monteith) and Torontoist wants you to get free tickets! One lucky contestant with the ability to answer the skill-testing question below will win a pair of tickets to see the show for a performance of their choice from May 7-11.

, a series of short readings by playwrights under 29.

Don't let that scare you off from going to see Cast Iron, though: You don't have to be fluent in Bajan like Torontoist (who speaks over 126 dialects and can lift a car with his bare hands) to get the story. Anyone who speaks English will understand most of it and get the rest intuitively. It's definitely worth seeing for a real stomper of a performance by Alison Sealy-Smith (pictured), the stellar actor who won a Dora for her work in Djanet Sears’ Harlem Duet and was recently seen in Sears’ The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God. (The sage-like Sears was in the house last night encouraging her friend.)