Intermission Magazine Home
iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: Psychology and ideology collide in Necessary Angel’s austere Winter Solstice
Winter Solstice left me in a state of tension — pondering whether, in a similar situation, I’d be more likely to flirt with or kill a potentially evil man.
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.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: Psychology and ideology collide in Necessary Angel’s austere Winter Solstice
Winter Solstice left me in a state of tension — pondering whether, in a similar situation, I’d be more likely to flirt with or kill a potentially evil man.
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.
iPhoto caption: Headshot courtesy of Marcia Johnson.
Speaking in Draft: Marcia Johnson
"The whole reason I started writing was to give myself work, because I just wasn't getting lead roles, I wasn't getting interesting roles, and I knew that I could carry them off," says Johnson. "My goal when I wrote You Look Great Too was for people to say, ‘Oh my gosh, yes, she can play a lead’ — and then I would never have to write again. Then it turned out that writers were more in demand. I thought ‘OK, maybe I’ll write a few more plays.’"
iPhoto caption: Photo by Ann Baggley.
REVIEW: Here For Now’s Dinner with the Duchess is an aching étude on the cost of creative passion
Dinner with the Duchess is a tallying of an artistic life’s costs that builds a symphony out of simple presentation, resounding long past the final note.
Reviews
iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: Psychology and ideology collide in Necessary Angel’s austere Winter Solstice
Winter Solstice left me in a state of tension — pondering whether, in a similar situation, I’d be more likely to flirt with or kill a potentially evil man.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Ann Baggley.
REVIEW: Here For Now’s Dinner with the Duchess is an aching étude on the cost of creative passion
Dinner with the Duchess is a tallying of an artistic life’s costs that builds a symphony out of simple presentation, resounding long past the final note.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: Wights sizzles with ambition at Crow’s Theatre
While the play’s genre-straddling form feels slightly too ambitious for its concept, this sheer ambition is exciting, challenging audiences to think, while warning us that we can only go so far with words.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Fran Chudnoff.
REVIEW: Bad New Days’ Last Landscape unearths raw feelings about the natural world
Last Landscape uses physical theatre, puppetry, and found objects to erode the boundaries between art and nature, human and environment.
iPhoto caption: Photographed productions from L to R, top to bottom, with the photographer in brackets: seven methods of killing kylie jenner (Dahlia Katz), Big Stuff (Dahlia Katz), De Profundis (Dahlia Katz), Goblin:Macbeth (Jae Yang), Salesman in China (David Hou), Dana H. (John Lauener), Earworm (Dahlia Katz), Age Is a Feeling (Dahlia Katz), Honey I’m Home (Eden Graham).
Our favourite theatre productions of 2024, in Toronto and beyond
End-of-year lists are personal. When it comes to theatre, the question isn’t really what shows you liked most, but which ones left the strongest imprint, continuing to pinball around in your mind and heart even after the set is gone and the cast no longer recalls their lines.
iPhoto caption: A Christmas Story production still by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: A Christmas Story feels fresh at Theatre Aquarius
If you want to catch A Christmas Story before it closes, good luck — the show is close to sold out, and with the talent on that stage, it’s not hard to see why.
Spotlight
iPhoto caption: Aurora Browne for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
“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.”
iPhoto caption: Norm Foster in an undated headshot.
“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.’”
iPhoto caption: Vanessa Sears for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
“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.”
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.