Category: Theatre in Canada

A Space Divided: GCTC’s Cottagers and Indians, an evocative disavowal of white privilege

A Space Divided: GCTC’s Cottagers and Indians, an evocative disavowal of white privilege

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Photo Andrew Alexander, Herbie Barnes and Phillippa Domville,

 The split is clear upon first glance. 

He wears muddy jeans and rain boots, while she dons pristine khakis and purple Crocs. His space boasts shoots of wild rice, while hers stands testament to an outdoor grill. Between our two figures lies a shoreline, a dock, and a bright green Astroturf divide. 

Drew Hayden Taylor’s Cottagers and Indians, directed by Richard Rose (Artistic Director of Tarragon Theatre), is an empathetically-sharp look into the strident echoes of Canadian colonisation. Over the course of eighty minutes, we as an audience become acquainted with the Indigenous communities fighting to take up space in the ways they deem urgent, while also listening to those whose purchased, lakefront property has become implicated in this attempt at cultural reclaim. Taylor’s artistic voice is refreshing in its generosity to its audience; it does not take sides, and does not favour one character over the other in its navigation of difficult social issues. Taylor guides his listeners without preaching to them; as such, his points speak for themselves in a way that is oh-so-powerful. …

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Trace: Powerful Potrayal of Duty, Sacrifice and Strength through the Keys of a Piano

Trace: Powerful Potrayal of Duty, Sacrifice and Strength through the Keys of a Piano

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Trace Photo by Dahlia Katz

Written by Kennedy Fiorella, in Yana Meerzon’s theatre criticism class at the U of Ottawa

The story of familial sacrifice is one that runs through Canadian identity. In Jeff Ho’s Trace, he masterfully “traces” his family history through the three generations of women who came before him. As he physically embodies the characters of his mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Ho reveals not only his own family secrets, but completely immerses his audience through the music of their pasts. Through expert direction and captivating acting, Factory Theatre’s production of Trace at the National Arts Centre delivers a powerful evening of emotionally harrowing experiences which gives new life to Ho’s ancestors with every note played.  …

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Trace at the GCTC: play effictively traces impact of identity and family through time.

Trace at the GCTC: play effictively traces impact of identity and family through time.

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Jeff Ho wrote and stars in trace. “We are women who do what must be done.”So says the cigarette-puffing, mahjong-addicted great-grandmother in Jeff Ho’s one-man play trace, now at the NAC.  The fallout of doing what you must do, especially in fraught circumstances, is the subject of Ho’s taut, chamber piece about three generations of women in his family.

The nimble Ho plays his sharp-tongued great-grandmother, his icy grandmother and his hard-assed mother on a bare of any set except two pianos, which face each other. A scattering of items – lit cigarettes which appear in the great-grandmother’s fingers seemingly from nowhere, a few ashtrays, some sheet music, the clothes on the performer’s back – are the only props.

From this spare assembly of materials and a rich if occasionally confusing script, Ho fashions a textured world in which acute survival instincts, emotional defensiveness and a particularly tough form of love allow the three women to single-handedly raise their families as they struggle for a better life.

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Old Stock: a Refugee Love Story, an Exploration of Resilience.

Old Stock: a Refugee Love Story, an Exploration of Resilience.

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Photo: Stoo Metz Photography. Old Stock with Ben Caplan

By Kennedy Fiorella, a student in the theatre criticism class of Yana Meerzon

Lived experiences provide a foundation for the creation of theatre which is deeply personal, and far-reaching, allowing all types of audiences some ability to connect with what is onstage. In Hannah Moscovitch’s Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, she carefully examines her own family’s history of immigration while creating an inclusive story of fear, acceptance, and hope. Through intricate weaving of emotionally harrowing scenes and energetic, enchanting musical performances, Old Stockdelivers an evening of captivating exploration that encapsulates the resilience of the settler experience in Canada while shedding light on the horrors of the past.

Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, is more then meets the title. Based on the true story of Moscovitch’s paternal great-grandparents, the play centers on Jewish-Romanian immigrants, Chaya(Mary Fay Coady), who travels with her family, and Chaim(Eric Da Costa), who travels alone, as they each flee their native Romania to escape the pogroms and meet in Halifax in 1908. They meet again once settled in Montreal, where  Chaim proposes that they pursue a happy life together, a difficult task, due to each of them holding onto traumatic memories and snapshots of their former homeland. …

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Happy Days: Theatre Kingston’s rendition of Beckett is an enjoyable and engaging one

Happy Days: Theatre Kingston’s rendition of Beckett is an enjoyable and engaging one

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Happy Days with Rosemary Doyle as Winnie. Photo Oliver Hirtenfelder

The works of modern Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, largely absurdist and tragicomic in scope, are certainly not intended to be simple crowd pleasers. Rather, they display a depressingly monotonous view of life, with the protagonist often not achieving their goal or ending up trapped in the same cycle of rumination as before. Happy Days, the second play in Theatre Kingston’s line-up for this season, is very much in this vein – completed and first staged in 1961 years immediately following, Beckett presents us with a middle-aged couple leading a vicarious existence in sand mounds on a beach. This production, directed by Craig Walker (also the head of the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University) and with stellar performances by Rosemary Doyle and Richard Sheridan Willis as the main characters, plays up both Beckett’s humour and bleak outlook on life to high effect. Both actors amply communicate the small amusements and tortured waiting their characters undergo, amidst a backdrop that is effectively rendered by Andrea Robertson.   …

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Welcome to my Underworld: collective creation compellingly articulates the need for empathy

Welcome to my Underworld: collective creation compellingly articulates the need for empathy

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Dramaturged and directed by native Kingston and award winning  playwright Judith Thompson, the collective creation Welcome to my Underworld consists of nine character pieces based on the performers’ real life experiences. These performers, representing a diversity of abilities and backgrounds, articulate the struggles their characters undergo on account of their identity or state of life. The artistic goal of this production is informed by its affiliation with RARE theatre, an endeavour founded by Thompson, whose mission is to serve “communities that have expressed a need not only to be recognized, but to effect, systemic radical change through the art of theatre.” While one piece was excluded on account of a performer’s illness on the night I went, the show was no less effective in getting this central message across, through the compelling scenes enacted by the rest of the performers. In this regard, Theatre Kingston has chosen a powerful and provocative production to open their 2019-20 season.   …

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The New Canadian Curling Club: Delightful immigration comedy with deeper aspirations

The New Canadian Curling Club: Delightful immigration comedy with deeper aspirations

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The New Canadian Curling Club    Photo  Randy deKlein-Stinson

In the context of these politically divisive times,  the message of Mark Crawford’s recent play, The New Canadian Curling Club, is undoubtedly well-intentioned. The story of four immigrants who take up curling for the first time and overcome the prejudice of their coach (who undergoes a conversion of his own) makes for a feel-good show overall which imparts valuable lessons about belonging and acceptance. This production at TIP, directed by Andrew Kushnir, also makes the most of the play’s many comedic moments, drawing plenty of laughs from the audience. There are moments, however, which occasionally took me out of the immediate action of the play and seemed to be awkwardly placed. While the main story of Crawford’s play is solid, certain subplots are handled clumsily. …

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Nixon’s Nixon : A Revival at the New Repertory Theatre

Nixon’s Nixon : A Revival at the New Repertory Theatre

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Nixon’s Nixon  Photo Andrew Brilliant

Nixon’s Nixon by Russell Lees opened on Broadway in 1996 almost two years to the day of the ex-president’s death. The play, a two hander, takes place in August of 1974 in the chair filled Lincoln sitting room at the White House where Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger drink, reminisce, and discuss the President’s possible options for the future. However, like Nixon, Kissinger is concerned with his own future. He hopes to keep his position if and when Gerald Ford takes the office of president. Each attempts to manipulate the other. Kissinger keeps trying to convince the hysterical Nixon to resign while the president insists he has to remain in office because the American people admire a fighter. …

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Moshkamo- Finding Wolastoq Voice: East-coast voices tell their stories that convey their struggle to survive.

Moshkamo- Finding Wolastoq Voice: East-coast voices tell their stories that convey their struggle to survive.

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Finding Wolastoq Voice. Dancer story teller Aria Evans, Set  Andy Moro.  Photo Justin Tang

 

Mòshkamo: “ Finding  Wolastoq Voice”  reveals  the founding cosmogony of the East Coast peoples.

This  production from Theatre New Brunswick is based on a text by Natalie Sappier  (Sammaqani Cocahq -the Water Spirit),  a multi-disciplinary artist whose work  unfolds on a frontal stage – a space  in the round would have been much preferable –  within the double layers of a Malaseet circle where the young woman enters  the spiritual  world of the Tobique First Nations  to tell us her personal journey to recover her identity. …

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Moshkamo: The Unnatural and Accidental Women : the voices of the disappeared still speak to us in this immersive event.

Moshkamo: The Unnatural and Accidental Women : the voices of the disappeared still speak to us in this immersive event.

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The Unnatural and Accidental Women. Set by Andy Moro, Photo  Barbara Gray

Let’s be clear from the outset. This performance has absolutely nothing to do with Surrealism, nor is it too long. Rituals go on endlessly and repeat themselves non-stop.   Clearly this particular theatre-ritual deals with one of the most disturbing and shameful situations we have ever experienced on our collective territory:  the  murder of women from First Nations, Métis Nation,  Inuit groups.     In spite of the hearings, investigations  and apparent concerns for these lives,  no guilty party has ever been identified or punished.  These murders are treated as unsolvable mysteries,  and the women themselves are relegated to  “accidental” beings who perhaps never even existed!  But they do exist, and still exist, as Marie Clements shows us in this  powerful encounter  between her theatrical conception of their lives, and, director  Muriel Miguel’s choreography, along with a list of extremely talented  collaborators  and the voices of the disappeared who  still inhabit the natural world and are still speaking to us through these artists. …

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