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A production photo of Qasim Khan of Hamlet and a Fat Ham promo photo featuring Peter Fernandes, superimposed over a photo of the Berkeley Street Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo of Peter Fernandes by Lorne Bridgman; photos of Qasim Khan and the Berkeley Street Theatre by Dahlia Katz.

What’s it like to play Hamlet? Ahead of Fat Ham’s Canadian premiere, Qasim Khan and Peter Fernandes trade tales

Khan starred in Canadian Stage’s recent High Park Hamlet. Now, Fernandes is leading Fat Ham, a contemporary adaptation set at a cookout.

By Liam Donovan / Feb 13, 2025
Production photo for The Secret to Good Tea at the Grand Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo by Rémi Thériault.

In Rosanna Deerchild’s The Secret to Good Tea, laughter is a crucial part of the brew

“If you get two or three Indigenous people in the same room, somebody is going to start making jokes,” says Deerchild. “We have a lot of trauma, but we also have a lot of laughter and joy. In the Indigenous worldview, that balance is really important. When you become imbalanced, then that's when the wounds start.”

By Nathaniel Hanula-James / Feb 12, 2025
A production photo of Qasim Khan of Hamlet and a Fat Ham promo photo featuring Peter Fernandes, superimposed over a photo of the Berkeley Street Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo of Peter Fernandes by Lorne Bridgman; photos of Qasim Khan and the Berkeley Street Theatre by Dahlia Katz.

What’s it like to play Hamlet? Ahead of Fat Ham’s Canadian premiere, Qasim Khan and Peter Fernandes trade tales

Khan starred in Canadian Stage’s recent High Park Hamlet. Now, Fernandes is leading Fat Ham, a contemporary adaptation set at a cookout.

By Liam Donovan / Feb 13, 2025
Production photo for The Secret to Good Tea at the Grand Theatre. iPhoto caption: Photo by Rémi Thériault.

In Rosanna Deerchild’s The Secret to Good Tea, laughter is a crucial part of the brew

“If you get two or three Indigenous people in the same room, somebody is going to start making jokes,” says Deerchild. “We have a lot of trauma, but we also have a lot of laughter and joy. In the Indigenous worldview, that balance is really important. When you become imbalanced, then that's when the wounds start.”

By Nathaniel Hanula-James / Feb 12, 2025
Andrew Kushnir on the first day of rehearsals for Casey and Diana at Theatre Aquarius. iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Q&A: Casey and Diana director Andrew Kushnir on bringing the acclaimed drama to Theatre Aquarius

“There’s lots to grieve right now in the world,” says Kushnir. “But there are so few communal places to be with that grief. And I do think grieving in public normalizes a universal human condition: that we’ve all loved and lost something (time, a dream, a way of life) — or, more commonly, a dear someone.”

By Liam Donovan / Feb 10, 2025

Meet the participants of What Writing Can Do: The 2025 Musical Theatre Critics Lab

Theatre Aquarius’ National Centre for New Musicals, the Grand Theatre, and Intermission Magazine are excited to announce the cohort of What Writing Can Do: The 2025 Musical Theatre Critics Lab.

By Liam Donovan / Feb 7, 2025

Reviews

Production photo of Just For One Day at Mirvish. iPhoto caption: Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.

REVIEW: Mirvish’s Just For One Day gives Live Aid the showchoir treatment

It’s a group effort to a rather incredible degree — many of the songs are essentially riff battles, with the singers hot-potatoing the melody around.

By Liam Donovan
Production photo of A Streetcar Named Desire at Theatre Calgary. iPhoto caption: Photo by Nanc Price.

REVIEW: A Streetcar Named Desire pulls into Theatre Calgary for the first time in over two decades

You’ll find everything you might expect from a take on A Streetcar Named Desire: sensuality, top-notch performances, and all.

By Eve Beauchamp
Production photo of Cliff Cardinal's CBC Special. iPhoto caption: Photo by Henry Chan.

REVIEW: Cliff Cardinal’s CBC Special is a real gem

Cliff Cardinal’s CBC Special may not broadcast on Canadian television, but it is, indeed, quite special.

By Ryan Borochovitz

REVIEW: La Reine-garçon hits like an avalanche at the COC

This co-production between the Canadian Opera Company and the Opéra de Montréal is eminently watchable.

By Liam Donovan
iPhoto caption: Photo by Curtis Perry.

REVIEW: In Why It’s (im)Possible at GCTC, parenting is an ever-evolving process

In the context of an increasingly difficult political and social climate for trans youth, Why It’s (im)Possible addresses the need for familial support.

By Alexa MacKie
Production photo from Who's Afraid of Virignia Woolf? at Canadian Stage. iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

REVIEW: Detailed design anchors confident Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Canadian Stage

Tasked for the second time in a year with filling the titanic canvas of the Bluma Appel Theatre, director Brendan Healy opts for hundreds of little strokes over a single massive one.

By Liam Donovan

Spotlight

aurora browne iPhoto caption: Aurora Browne for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Spotlight: Aurora Browne

“It’s a joy just to be in the room with a bunch of people,” says Browne, who returns to the stage this fall in The Bidding War at Crow’s Theatre. “I love working. I love theatre. I love the whole process. I love being at the read. I love the coffee and the rehearsal. I love the smell of the theatre. I love the feeling of opening night.”

Written by Anne T. Donahue, Photography by Dahlia Katz
iPhoto caption: Norm Foster in an undated headshot.

Spotlight: Norm Foster

“I'm really proud that people want to see my work and want to see my new stuff,” says Foster, whose new play "Lakefront" plays at Lighthouse Festival Theatre through the end of the summer. “That makes me want to keep writing. Whenever I think, ‘Oh, maybe I’ve written my last play,’ I go, ‘No, I think I've got a few more in me. Let's keep going.’”

By Michael Ross Albert
actor vanessa sears stands on a waterfall in a sparkly blue evening dress. iPhoto caption: Vanessa Sears for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Spotlight: Vanessa Sears

“If I want to be the most expansive, detailed, versatile artist I can be, the only way to do that is to keep learning, questioning, exploring, and working,” says Sears, currently starring as Juliet in the Stratford Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet. “If that’s not where the open doors are, then I will go elsewhere.”

Written by Fiona Raye Clarke, Photography by Dahlia Katz
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Artist Perspectives

Armchairs, tattoos, and an online theatre magazine

When I started at Intermission, my world was limited to the confines of an armchair. Arts journalism was a high it felt dangerously fruitless to chase. The life stretched ahead of me was amorphous and frightening, a chasm filled with hand sanitizer and immigration concerns. It was worth crying over a spilled kombucha and scrubbing at the stain.

By Aisling Murphy
national ballet of canada iPhoto caption: Production still from The Nutcracker courtesy of the National Ballet of Canada.

Why should you go to the ballet?

My childhood memories of learning to dance were front and centre for me when I attended opening night of The Nutcracker, performed by the National Ballet of Canada at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.

By Martin Austin
iPhoto caption: Photo by Grace Mysak.

Want to see a magic show about race? Wait, what?

You’d be forgiven for the double-take. It’s a fairly common reaction when I tell folks about my work as a magician.

By Shawn DeSouza-Coelho

Why I’m tired of cripface in Toronto theatre

Cripface is when an able-bodied, or able-passing, person performs a disabled experience that isn’t their own. Local theatre companies large and small, indie and established, have engaged in this practice. 

By Sivert Das
sophie rivers iPhoto caption: Writer and theatre artist Sophie Rivers in Yellowknife, N.W.T.

What can Toronto theatre learn from Yellowknife?

Growing up in Toronto, the Northwest Territories were always a distant idea, a place I knew only from colouring in elementary school maps. But over the summer, I came to see Yellowknife in a different light.

By Sophie Rivers

Cake, commuting, and conversation: Here’s what Canadian audiences value when they go to the theatre

This past spring, we invited a group of scholars, artists, and students to gather at the University of Toronto Mississauga to figure out what Canadian audiences want and need from their hosts.

By Signy Lynch, , Kelsey Jacobson