Author: Capital Critics Circle

This section is reserved for Arts News that comes our way via press releases from theatres in the area, or newspaper articles about arts events that are not theatre reviews.
LE THÉÂTRE DU TRILLIUM PRÉSENTE « F**KING CARL »

LE THÉÂTRE DU TRILLIUM PRÉSENTE « F**KING CARL »

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Pour deux soirs seulement, la création acclamée par la critique et le public F**KING CARL revient à La Nouvelle Scène Gilles Desjardins.

F**KING CARL
de Louis-Philippe Roy et Caroline Yergeau
une production du Théâtre du Trillium
du vendredi 3 février au samedi 4 février 2017 à 19 h 30
dans le Studio B

Il y a eu une annonce sur Kijiji, une couple (de caisses) de bières, des Monster Trucks, des « festivaux » et un forain. Ça a donné un couple. Un couple mis devant une simple question : « Pourquoi pensez-vous être une bonne famille pour accueillir un enfant? ». F**k…

Ne ratez pas votre chance de voir « l’une des meilleures créations jouées sur les planches de l’Ontario français ces dernières années. » [revue Liaison #173]

THE CANADIAN MASTERS SERIES WELCOMES ALANIS OBOMSAWIN TO OTTAWA

THE CANADIAN MASTERS SERIES WELCOMES ALANIS OBOMSAWIN TO OTTAWA

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ao_original - Rafy, courtesy of NFB

Alanis Obomsawin, filmmaker.

The Canadian Film Institute, in partnership with Carleton University’s School For Studies In Art and Culture’s Film Studies section, is proud to announce the next edition of the Canadian Masters series, featuring beloved documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin!
The Canadian Masters series is an ongoing celebration of excellence in Canadian filmmaking, featuring onstage interviews, special screenings, and audience discussions with some of the greatest names in Canadian film history.
This event will take place in two parts.
On Thursday, January 26th, CFI Executive Director Tom McSorley will conduct an onstage one-on-one interview with Alanis Obomsawin, discussing her filmography, issues affecting Indigenous people in Canada, her artistic process, and her impressive career which spans 46 years. Following the interview, attendees are invited to stay for a reception in the Arts Court Studio, where Alanis will be in attendance.
Please Note: Seating for the interview is limited. Tickets are now on sale!

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8 by Mani Soleymanlou: What will it take to wake us up?

8 by Mani Soleymanlou: What will it take to wake us up?

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Photo: courtesy of the NAC

February 1–4 at 8 p.m., NAC Studio.
Additional show February 4 at 3 p.m.

Translation of an article from Le Devoir. January 12, 2017 – OTTAWA – Eight actor friends wind up at a party. Stripped of their masks and stage characters, oblivious to the audience, they engage in a frank and uninhibited conversation during an evening that will change them forever.

Mani Soleymanloui, a (young) theatre artist who documented his full-blown identity crisis in his earlier plays Un and Deux, returns to Ottawa with his gang of fellow artists with 8, an investigation of the emptiness of our supposedly modern, hyperconnected world, where paradoxically we all feel so far from each other.

8 is the story of a party. The party where eight friends hope they can forget their doubts and everyday cares by throwing themselves, for the space of an evening, into something bigger than themselves. But how can you get away from what you are? Surely any attempt to escape is futile … No, that’s not it. That makes it sound too corny.

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TEN – A New Exhibition at the CUBE! Works by 10 of our finest visual artsits/

TEN – A New Exhibition at the CUBE! Works by 10 of our finest visual artsits/

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Coming to the  Cube gallery. Tuesday January 3rd, 2017 to Sunday January 29th, 2017

Vernissage:

Sun Jan 8th, 2017 — 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm

TEN Talented Artists at CUBE
Cube Gallery is pleased to kick off 2017 with a curated show of seminal works by 10 of our finest visual artists.
Experience this show of painters and photographers who are shaping and informing the art world here at home, across the country and around the world:

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A christmas carol: A Spirited Tale of How Things Should Be

A christmas carol: A Spirited Tale of How Things Should Be

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Photo. Courtesy of the NAC. Nigel Shawn Williams (Bob Cratchit and Andy Jones as Scrooge)

I am a big Christmas sap. I watch all the Christmas shows. Of course there is probably no Christmas tale that has been retold more often with more approaches than Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, sometimes to great effect and sometimes less so. …

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Project: Humanity’s verbatim theatre piece examining homophobia and racism—and the ways they intersect— steps boldly outside the format’s usual bounds.

Project: Humanity’s verbatim theatre piece examining homophobia and racism—and the ways they intersect— steps boldly outside the format’s usual bounds.

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This article by Steve Fisher appearing in the Journal Torontoist, won the prize for best small article in the CTCA competition for the Nathan Cohen award.

By Steve Fisher

The cast of Small Axe Photo by Dahlia Katz

The cast of Small Axe. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Small Axe at The Theatre Centre (1115 Queen Street West ) Runs until February 1

Last week saw issues of racism and representation discussed and hotly debated in the Canadian media. MacLeans published an incendiary article labelling Winnipeg “Canada’s most racist city” and an op-ed entitled “Canada’s Race Problem? It’s Even Worse Than America’s.” Around the same time, Maclean‘s also published an op-ed defending the recent use of blackface on stage in Montreal, and so, too, did the Globe and Mail.

Both of these op-eds were written from positions of privilege: the outlets that published them are established and prestigious, and both writers are white and male. Patrick Lagace, who authored the Globe piece, attempted to circumscribe the discussion even more: he focused on fellow Globe writer Kelly Nestruck, who had condemned the blackface practice in an earlier column, saying Nestruck was “the only commentator of note” to give him a “cross-check to the face,” and setting Nestruck up as a “francophobic” straw man attacking Quebec’s “different culture.” He made no mention of the fact that Quebecois people of colour had already raised issues about the performance in a variety of online posts. Most disturbingly, the theatre that staged the offensive sketch, Rideau Vert, has responded not with an apology or a commitment to use actors of colour in the future, but with the announcement that they will no longer feature sketches involving anyone of colour.

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On the disappearing art of Theatre Criticism

On the disappearing art of Theatre Criticism

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After the decision by the Ottawa Citizen to remove its theatre critic, ( following the removal , in 2011, of the local theatre critic by CBC), we decided to publish this most timely article by our colleague Stephen Hunt.

Guest critic STEPHEN HUNT . CALGARY — Special to The Globe and Mail.  Hunt was the theatre critic at the Calgary Herald for  10 years. Published Friday, Oct. 14, 2016 7:16PM EDT

The Canadian cultural critical landscape – outside of Toronto – looks bleaker. In Calgary, there are many signs of the demise of an important industry: The Calgary Theatre Critics’ Awards, locally known as The Critters, recently threw in the towel. I was let go back in January, part of massive Postmedia layoffs, leaving just one Calgary critic who appears in print media.

Our 73-year-old Louis Hobson, whose reviews run in both the Sun and the Herald, is Calgary’s last theatre critic standing – and after suffering a heart attack a year ago, even Mr. Hobson say he needs to cut back. (There are still two young, emerging Calgary theatre bloggers: Jenna Shummoogum and Rodrigo Flores, who find the enthusiasm to review 80 shows a year, featuring over a dozen professional companies, for little or no money – futile for a realistic career opportunity.)

It’s hardly a Calgary thing – or a Canadian thing, or a Postmedia thing, either. It’s happening everywhere.

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The Maltese Falcon: A Family Reunion

The Maltese Falcon: A Family Reunion

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Play poster courtesy of Plosive Theatre

The Radio Play has been a staple of the Gladstone Theatre now for eight years. It is an interesting hybrid of theatre and radio that harkens us back to a simpler time when people would huddle around a box as a family to laugh and cry and listen to stories together.

There have been many different forms of the radio play, which allows the Gladstone to use the same basic set pieces every year with minor alterations in their placement. s Each year the set is familiar but different. That being said it is always CGLD radio; “Radio that makes you glad”.

This year director Terri Loretto-Valentik chose to recreate Dashiell Hammett’s classic detective story The Maltese Falcon. The detective yarn demands a little more concentration to follow the storyline than more standard holiday fair like Winnie the Pooh or Miracle on 34th Street. The Gladstone Sisters add the nutmeg and cinnamon to create a little seasonal flavour, peppering the interludes with lively period ditties.

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