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Weekend Planner: July 10–11, 2010
Urban Planner is Torontoist’s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to [email protected].
Protesters inside the kettle at Queen and Spadina on June 27. Photo by Pat Tapia from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
This weekend: fine dining, a G20 protest, moustache mayhem, a screening of Annie, The Shakespearience Festival, and Everything Is Terrible!
FOOD: Ladies and gentlemen, whet your taste buds! Summerlicious is back until July 25, allowing the simple folk to sample the goods from Toronto’s most delectable (and often expensive) restaurants. Three-course, prix-fixe menus range from $15 to $45 for lunches and dinners, and participating restaurants include Canoe, North 44, Bymark, and Mistura. Vincor Canada returns as the festival’s official wine sponsor, and new this year will be beer sponsor Kronenburg. Various locations, various times, $15–$45.
PROTEST: Still fired up about the grisly events that took place during the G20? You’re not the only one. A number of Canadian civil liberty organizations (including the Canadian Peace Alliance, Canadian Labour Congress, Ontario Federation of Labour, and more) are calling for a Day of Action this Saturday in cities and towns all over Ontario and Quebec. Rally attendees will continue to demand a public inquiry into the use of police force and denial of civil rights that marked Toronto’s most notorious weekend. Queen’s Park, Saturday 1 p.m., FREE.
PARTY: Is it a coincidence that so many great artists have had such distinctive facial hair? We think not. From Walt Whitman to Leo Tolstoy to Charlie Chaplin to Edgar Allan Poe to Frida Kahlo, a thick beard or coiffed ‘stache has been the mark of creativity. Tonight, the Scream Literary Festival honours the noble scruff at Wax & Comb, the festival’s moustache gala, featuring music (from Henri Fabergé and the Adorables, Maylee Todd, and DJ Green) and raffles. Contests will abound, including Best Moustache, Best Beard, Scariest Facial Hair, and Best Original Creation, and for those of us unable to sprout a soul patch, the party will provide strap-ons. Hugh’s Room (2261 Dundas Street West); Saturday 7 p.m.; $10/advance, $12/door.
FILM: Take a plucky orphan with a ginger ‘fro, a bald billionaire, and a diabolical orphan mistress, and what have you got? The latest selection in Councillor Joe Mihevc’s (Ward 21, St. Paul’s West) series of family-friendly outdoor movie nights. That’s right, the councillor will be screening Annie this weekend. If you’ve got kids, bring them along so they can see how much fun it was to be an orphan during the Great Depression. If you don’t, come to envy Daddy Warbucks’ personal bodyguards (Punjab and The Asp, natch), or to see Lorelai Gilmore’s dad play FDR. Ben Nobleman Park (1405 Eglinton Avenue West), Saturday 8:30 p.m., FREE.
THEATRE: Can’t make it to Stratford this year? The Shakespearience Festival is coming to town to satisfy all your classical theatre needs. Brush up on your Shakespeare with a series of Bard-themed symposia from renowned U of T professor Jill L. Levenson and theatre artists Joe Ziegler and Cathy MacKinnon. The rest of the afternoon will offer a number of workshops, including a collaboration with youth-targeted theatre company Shakespeare in Action for kids (including games and performing their own scenes), refresher courses on Twelfth Night, and a playwrights’ workshop. Finally, the day will be capped off with the Driftwood Theatre Company’s opening night production of Twelfth Night, before the troupe heads off on The Bard’s Bus Tour, a province-wide traveling production. Todmorden Mills (67 Pottery Road); Sunday, events begin at 1 p.m., performance at 7:30 p.m.; FREE (performance is PWYC).
COMEDY: A cross between Sesame Street and the Found Footage Festival, Everything is Terrible! is a blog and live show featuring seven furry-headed monsters living in a cave furnished by VCRs. (Remember those? With the rewinding?) To occupy their time, they splice and dice VHS tapes into hilarious, madcap viral videos—perennial favourites include Cat Massage and Singing Babies. The monsters also cobble together super-compilations, which they parade around North America and play in movie theatres. Toronto gets two nights of EIT (Sunday and Monday), so don’t miss the launch of their latest DVD, 2Everything 2Terrible: Tokyo Drift! (And don’t miss our article about their Toronto arrival.) The Drake Hotel (1150 Queen Street West); Sunday 8:30 p.m., Monday 6:30 p.m.; $10.
FRINGE: Overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the Fringe Festival? Daunted by the overflowing program? We are here to help! Our guide to some of the very best of this year’s Fringe shows will help you have a better festival experience.
