Blind date is a particularly unique type of theatre. It is a world premier every evening in that the circumstances and the cast change. An improvisational adventure that involves a somewhat randomly selected cast member for each individual performance insures that no one knows exactly how the play is going to unfold.
Les 1 et 2 décembre 2017 (vendredi et samedi), à 19h30, Anne-Marie Gaston, mieux connue sous le nom d’Anjali, son nom d’artiste, va présenter Lady Macbeth, un spectacle unique de théâtre dansé à la Cours des Arts, dans la salle ODD, au 2 avenue Daly (près de l’université). …
Kellie MacDonald. Criticism class of Patrick Langston. November 18, 2017
From Israel-based dance company L-E-V, co-Artistic Directors Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar present OCD Love at the National Arts Centre’s Babs Asper Theatre. At roughly 55 minutes without intermission, the performance is an exploration of love and obsessive compulsive disorder set to the metronomic ticking of DJ Ori Lichtik’s soundscape. OCD Love keeps audiences on the edge with writhing choreography and repetitive bass-thumping house music. …
Emily Blake, November 26th 2017
In Patrick Langston’s criticism class.
Silence speaks louder than words, and in that silence is all the meaning in the world. LEV’s OCD Love is a powerful commentary on what it like to be plagued by OCD, shedding light on the realities of those who are faced with this disorder every day. LEV is an Israeli dance company founded by choreographer Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar. They are joined by techno musician Ori Lichtik, working together to create this hypnotic masterpiece. …
Patrick Langston, artsfile.ca preview
October 12, 2017
A scene from Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show produced by the NAC’s French Theatre department. Photo Johnathan Lorenge.
Gabriel Dumont would be intrigued. Dumont, the ally of Louis Riel and leader of the Métis forces during the 1885 North-West Rebellion against the Canadian government, fled Canada for the U.S. after the rebellion was quashed and Riel hung.
In the U.S., he joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, but he didn’t stick for long. However, it turns out he did dream of creating something similar in Canada to spotlight the struggle of the Métis people to reclaim their rights.
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Vigilante, Best professional production. Photo by David Cooper
Photo: Maria Vartanova Best Community production: Other Desert Cities
On November 14, about 200 members of the Theatre community of the nation’s capital gathered in the Salon of the National Arts Centre for the nineteenth annual theatre awards presented by the Capital Critics Circle, for plays presented in English in the National capital region. As Nathan Medd, managing director of the National Arts Centre English theatre stated, this is the only event in the city which brings together members of community, professional and student theatre groups who rarely mingle but who have equally strong traditions in Ottawa. …
Kellie MacDonald from the Theatre Criticism course of Patrick Langston, U of Ottawa
Widely considered the opera event of the season, this is the North American premiere of acclaimed British composer-conductor Thomas Adès’s newest work. With direction and libretto by Tom Cairns, The Exterminating Angel draws inspiration from the 1962 Luis Buñuel film of the same name. It is, at the same time, thrilling and torturously slow, depicting the descent into madness of a Sartrean dinner party nobody can leave. …
There have been some remarkable musicals already this early in Ottawa’s theatre season. We had the remarkable Jonathan Larson biographical musical Tick Tick Boom kicking off for Orpheus in the studio theatre at Centrepointe and the clever, innovative Ordinary Days at GCTC. We are now into the Christmas season and the more traditional musical formula is upon us.
Shrek, the classic story of ogre gets girl, ogre loses girl, ogre gets girl wrapped up in a message of inclusion and be true to yourself comes to the Centrepointe theatre from the dedicated and talented community of Orpheus. Oops, I forgot the spoiler alert. Oh well, I doubt that there would be more than two percent of the public that isn’t already familiar with the original DreamWorks animated film of the same name. …
Natasha Lomonossoff from the theatre criticism class of Patrick Langston at the University of Ottawa
With exceptional vocal performances and material inspired by letters of Canadian soldiers at the front of the two world wars, Plosive Productions’ work Voices from the Front strikes a tone that is both realistic and touching. The play, a work co-created by Teri Loretto-Valentik and John Cook and directed by the former, is presented in the tradition of the Gladstone’s annual radio play and narrates the experience of war in the format of a radio broadcast. The staging aspect of this format, however, takes a back seat to the letters and speeches which are read out loud to the audience; it is the delivery of these in which the show derives most of its emotional strength.
Taylor Stewart in the Theatre Criticism class of Patrick Langston.
Voices from the Front: The Radio Show is a pure, emotional power house that commemorates the brave men and women of the Canadian military. It delivers a performance as powerful as a a service at a Cenotaph yet is wholly different.
The show was written by John Cook and Teri Loretto-Valentik from the letters of Canadian Soldiers during World War I and II. This is a piece of verbatim theatre, meaning the majority of the text is preserved as it was written by the individuals who originally wrote the letters; however, they have been added to for the purpose of a flowing narrative or filling in details that would add to the fiction of the show. Using these letters Cook and Loretto-Valentik have created the characters of Will Cooper and his son, Wilfred Cooper. The two are enlisted men serving in WWI and WWII, respectively. The show consists primarily of the actors reading the letters that Will and Wilfred have written to their families. …