Results tagged “passemuraille”

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

A critic once famously said of seminal Canadian playwright Judith Thompson that it was typical of her to include a gang-rape in one of her plays when only a rape was necessary. It's a flip and condescending remark about one of our country's most respected playwrights; at the same time, Thompson's plays are known for their dramatization of extremely unpleasant, if realistic, incidents. Recently, Thompson's writing has turned political with her critically-acclaimed Palace of the End, probably the writer's strongest work to date. But theatre company Staged and Confused are reaching way back into Thompson's repertoire with their production of The Crackwalker, currently playing at Passe Muraille. It's Thompson's very first play, and it's certainly not without its share of extremely unpleasant incidents.

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.)

Look at how cute the cast of The Drawer Boy is! And yes, that is the much-ballyhooed inflatable cow in the background. Have you continued to miss your chance to catch this new Canadian classic? Well, somebody must keep seeing it, because it's already been extended a couple of times and now plays until December 2. But if that somebody wasn't you, don't despair! The lovely people at Passe Muraille have decided to give back to the community, and tonight's performance of The Drawer Boy is going to be completely free for all those who attend. This is a great chance to see Michael Healey's poignant and funny rural drama on the cheap-as-free. It's a good idea to show up early, though. Tickets become available at 6 p.m. and are strictly first come, first served.

Passe Muraille has been pushing its remount of the hugely popular Michael Healey hit The Drawer Boy with considerable fanfare, including leaving giant, inflatable barnyard animals outside the theatre for a few days last week. And why not? It's the most successful play to ever come out of that theatre this side of The Drowsy Chaperone, which has definitely grown a bit too gigantic for a return trip. But The Drawer Boy, with its Farm Show-inspired plot and its allusions to Rochdale College, remains a perfect fit at Passe Muraille, even if its last major appearance in Toronto was at the considerably swankier Elgin. It could be just the hit the place needs.

Hannah Moscovitch's play East of Berlin is familiar territory for Tarragon's extra space. Remember Rosa Laborde's Léo, which was remounted last season? Well, here's another show in the same space that's set in South America, has political subject matter, spans the life of its main character, and features only two other actors, a man and a woman, both of whom he has sex with. This may be a bit of a tangent, but Torontoist...

A Good Idea (In Theory) is a new play currently running at Passe Muraille that, as its title implies, is trying to do things a little differently. For starters, in lieu of a program, audience members are given a soundtrack CD. As the play's website explains, the idea behind the project came from the question: "What would happen if an award-winning stage play by a young Canadian was supported by a group of independent...

This weekend, Passe Muraille kicks off its new season by remounting one of its most successful shows ever: Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy. To celebrate the seminal piece of theatre's homecoming, Passe Muraille will be displaying a two-story-high inflatable cow outside the theatre tomorrow at noon.

Nicole Stamp's absolutely charming one-woman show BETTER PARTS plays tonight and for tonight only at the brand-new Bread and Circus Theatre Bar in Kensington Market at the corner of Baldwin and Augusta (we hadn't heard of it either!). You might recognize Stamp as the host of totally amazing kid quiz show Reach For The Top, but she's also an accomplished theatre artist who has been working BETTER PARTS for a few years now. The...

If one thing can be learned from the seedy-yet-tragic life of John C. Holmes, it's that bigger is not always better. So don't dismiss the SummerWorks Theatre Festival (which opens today) as a month-late, poor cousin of the Toronto Fringe simply because its complete playbill boasts only 40 shows, rather than Fringe's 140. There are a few reasons why SummerWorks is a grower and not a shower. For one thing, while successful Fringe applicants are chosen through random lottery, SummerWorks is entirely juried, which means that each and every script and proposal is read by a committee who decides which shows will be a part of the festival. And no, that doesn't necessarily mean any SummerWorks show you see will be better than any Fringe show you see, but the smaller festival (which is housed at Factory, Passe Muraille and Tarragon) is often a safer bet in the theatre festival crapshoot. To help you out a bit, Torontoist has enlisted three of its most theatre-savvy dudes to give you their picks for the fest.

In a bold move on Tuesday night, city council voted in favour purchasing 16 Ryerson Avenue, the historic building which currently houses Theatre Passe Muraille. As part of the deal, Passe Muraille will lease the space from the city, ensuring that it is able to remain open indefinitely. The well-respected alternative theatre (the first of its kind in the city) has been experiencing financial difficulties of late, so this new deal allows it to retire its significant deficit and focus on producing new works. Although the company itself will no longer own the building, all day-to-day running of the theatre will be left to the company and kept free from City Hall meddling.

As the Luminato Fest continues, two more George F. Walker plays open at the Factory. Escape from Happiness is the sequel to already-opened Better Living, while Tough! is another one of Walker's East End Plays, focusing on a different group of characters. The entire play, which is only about an hour and twenty minutes long, is composed of a single scene: a confrontation between three young people in a park. Tina knows Bobby cheated on her at a party, which makes her especially mad because she's pregnant with his child, something Bobby is about to discover. Tina brings her friend Jill along for back-up, who has a long-standing grudge against Bobby and could happily "kick him to death".

Some biggish news announced this week in regards to two of this city's major theatres: Passe Muraille and CanStage (oh, I'm sorry, I mean "The Canadian Stage Company"—more on that later). Let's start with Passe Muraille, the plucky underdog.

You may remember a recent Torontoist Valentine's Day contest, the prize for which was tickets for two to a Valentine's peformance of The Sheep and the Whale, currently playing at Passe Muraille. So, we'd be rather remiss not to provide any sort of review of the show after the fact. It is perhaps worth pointing out, though, that Torontoist had not seen the play at the time of the contest and had little notion as to its V-Day appropriateness. We certainly hope the winning couples had a great night, but unless you're the kind of person who makes out at Schindler's List, it's understandable if you weren't particularly put in "the mood" by the performance.

Valentine's Day is less than a week away - are you still stuck for date ideas? Well, Torontoist, along with Theatre Passe Muraille and Random House, are here to help you out. We have five pairs of tickets to give away for the The Sheep and the Whale, the new play at Passe Muraille, for the night of February 14th at 8:00pm.

Are you excited to see this fall's Hysteria Festival? Gearing up for Rhubarb! in February? Well, stop already, because they aren't happening. Buddies in Bad Times, Toronto's favourite theatre/gay dance party, has scrapped its entire usual season in favour a series of performance creations, put into groups called Wave One, Wave Two and Wave Three (reminds us a little of what Passe Muraille did last season with Stage 3). But don't worry! This is a good thing. Hysteria and Rhubarb! will return from their hiatuses next season (Torontoist is sad too, but we'll manage) and some pretty exciting things are happening in their place. Not least of which are the remounts of three of Daniel MacIvor's one-man Da Da Kamera shows, beginning with Here Lies Henry, running through this Sunday.

news and reviews, go visit JKelly - he saw the show on Broadway a few weeks ago and he hasn't been able to shut up about it since.

is a pretty awesome play. And for all the zillions of productions we've seen of it, good and bad, we have never seen one man attempt the whole enchilada all by his lonesome.

Seems like it's just bad news piled upon bad news for the city's small theatres this fall...

After a whirlwhind, SummerWorks-filled weekend (we saw nine shows in three days for Eye - whew!), Torontoist needed a couple of days to recover from the theatre marathon. But it was all worth the risk of brain implosion, for there are some really stellar pieces playing this at this year's festival, and you still have a whole weekend left to catch them. Here are our top three:

Judging from a workshop production Torontoist saw last year at Passe Muraille, Half Life could be Mighton's most emotionally-satisfying and well-balanced work to grace the rhombus-shaped platform we call the stage. There’s hardly any theoretical musing in it at all… Well, except for the fact that one of the main characters is a judge in a Loebner Prize-esque Turing Test competition where computer scientists try to create artificial intelligence. But, for the scientophobic, that little fact is easily forgotten.

Tonight is the 2005 Toronto Fringe lottery party, the event where the plays that will be appear in the theatre festival next summer are selected at random. Torontoist will be at the Tranzac club at 7 p.m. crossing her fingers that her one-woman show – Adventures of a Blog Girl in Search of God – gets picked and wishes best of luck to all local theatricals in the draw.

Well, fear not! You're just a hop, skip and a jump away from Super Queen Market, the convenience store located at 596 Queen St. W. Conveniently close to both Theatre Passe Muraille AND Factory Theatre (still showing Claudia Dey's faboo Trout Stanley), Super Queen Market is one of a dozen or so places where Western Canadian immigrants and the men and women who love them can procure Old Dutch Chips in Toronto. A full list of these stores follows, but it should also be noted that you can order a box full of Old Dutch chips online at www.olddutchfoods.ca and get it delivered right to the door of your basement apartment.

But what about the show? The first act of Small Returns -- a surreal my-worst-job-ever tale about debt and Dieppe that closes this weekend -- was decent with some really charismatic performances by Jordan Pettle and Rosemary Dunsmore. Alas, Torontoist can’t tell you how the second act was because Ghandi’s on Queen closes at 10 p.m. and we had a real hankering for some Saag Paneer and Butter Chicken.

There’s no guarantees with this show, Richmond’s second to make it down the 401. But with a title like Small Returns, it’s an investment that you know will at least live up to its billing.