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iPhoto caption: Headshots of Sophie Gee, Ray Hogg, Margot Greve, Leora Morris, and Jessica Carmichael.
Five theatre directors offer advice to the next generation — and the programs training it
The artists on this call were candid and vulnerable. They spoke openly about their professional frustrations and challenges — and they weren’t shy about pinpointing the ways that mainstream anglophone Canadian theatre practices fail directors and artists more broadly. That said, I didn’t leave our chat feeling hopeless or cynical.
iPhoto caption: 'Documents Perform 3.' Photo by T Photo Factory.
Joining online from across the Americas, more than a dozen artists, artistic producers, cultural leaders, and policymakers add live suggestions to the document, together transforming stuffy bureaucratic language into a rowdy patchwork of compassionate imagining.
iPhoto caption: Headshots of Sophie Gee, Ray Hogg, Margot Greve, Leora Morris, and Jessica Carmichael.
Five theatre directors offer advice to the next generation — and the programs training it
The artists on this call were candid and vulnerable. They spoke openly about their professional frustrations and challenges — and they weren’t shy about pinpointing the ways that mainstream anglophone Canadian theatre practices fail directors and artists more broadly. That said, I didn’t leave our chat feeling hopeless or cynical.
iPhoto caption: 'Documents Perform 3.' Photo by T Photo Factory.
Joining online from across the Americas, more than a dozen artists, artistic producers, cultural leaders, and policymakers add live suggestions to the document, together transforming stuffy bureaucratic language into a rowdy patchwork of compassionate imagining.
iPhoto caption: Carolyn Fe in 'Aye Caesar.' Photo by Mathieu Taillardas.
REVIEW: Carolyn Fe’s Aye Caesar asks what it means to be seen
The phrase is, in my view, a quintuple entendre — and, like the play itself, its meanings become clearer the longer you sit with them.
iPhoto caption: Virgilia Griffith and Mazin Elsadig in 'Wine in the Wilderness.' Photo by Dahlia Katz.
Wine in the Wilderness lays bare several of its characters’ emotional cores. But because it takes so long to reach that vulnerability, the revelations land with inadequate force.
Reviews
iPhoto caption: 'Documents Perform 3.' Photo by T Photo Factory.
Joining online from across the Americas, more than a dozen artists, artistic producers, cultural leaders, and policymakers add live suggestions to the document, together transforming stuffy bureaucratic language into a rowdy patchwork of compassionate imagining.
iPhoto caption: Carolyn Fe in 'Aye Caesar.' Photo by Mathieu Taillardas.
REVIEW: Carolyn Fe’s Aye Caesar asks what it means to be seen
The phrase is, in my view, a quintuple entendre — and, like the play itself, its meanings become clearer the longer you sit with them.
iPhoto caption: Virgilia Griffith and Mazin Elsadig in 'Wine in the Wilderness.' Photo by Dahlia Katz.
Wine in the Wilderness lays bare several of its characters’ emotional cores. But because it takes so long to reach that vulnerability, the revelations land with inadequate force.
iPhoto caption: Billy Lake and Aidan de Salaiz in 'The Maids.' Photo by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: In Talk Is Free’s The Maids, reverence and rebellion share the same room
For all her impatience with the play, director Jillian Keiley chooses to stay rigorously within its terms, pushing its logic to an extreme and letting its contradictions show.
iPhoto caption: Graysen LaPointe and the company of 'Amélie.' Photo by Taylor Long.
REVIEW: Shifting Ground Collective’s Amélie is vivid and endearingly earnest
There’s an overwhelming sincerity to this production that, at times, overwrites the offbeat sensibility of the original film — although, I suspect that Anglicization and a shift to musical theatre conventions have something to do with this tonal incongruity as well.
iPhoto caption: Juliana Monk in 'To a Flame.' Photo by Elana Emer.
REVIEW: To a Flame turns the deficit lens back on power
I left the theatre overstimulated, my attention stretched and my body still keyed up. For audiences willing to be swept up in that rush of sensation, that overload is part of the reward.
Spotlight
iPhoto caption: Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
Spotlight: Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu
“I always question: ‘How am I going to do it?’ But the moment I get in the room with actors, it becomes clear," says Tindyebwa Otu. "We need to tell stories; we need to be in community. Every show I do, I feel like, ‘This could be the last one.’ I’ve felt like this since I became a mom. And yet, 10 years later, I’ve produced more artistic work than ever.”
iPhoto caption: Nora McLellan for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Dahlia Katz. Styled by Sonia Lewis and Dahlia Katz. Hair by Anne May. Makeup by Katelyn O'Neil.
“It’s still always that same technicolour feeling for me," says McLellan. "That little girl and this much older person are pretty much the same. I really do all of my living on stage.”
iPhoto caption: Ma-Anne Dionisio for Intermission Magazine. Photo by Tim Nguyen.
“Art has a very significant healing aspect to it,” says Ma-Anne Dionisio. “The performance aspect, for me, always comes secondary.”
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Artist Perspectives
iPhoto caption: Jordan Laffrenier at a 'Slave Play' table read. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
Why you need to see more Alice Childress plays
Wine in the Wilderness will only receive its Canadian premiere this September, at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street Theatre. I’m directing the production, and I’d never heard of the play until I found it in the library. I wish I’d heard of it sooner. Somewhere there is a river of scripts that have been excluded from stages because they weren’t seen as the right colour.
iPhoto caption: Photo of Jordan Laffrenier by Sandro Pehar.
Preparing to direct Slave Play: A travel guide to Richmond, Virginia
Since reading Slave Play, I’ve asked every romantic partner whether or not they experience a racial dynamic between us in the bedroom. No one has given the same answer. What is it that I am asking them to acknowledge in these scenarios? Who is it that I am asking them to hold? What does it mean to hold someone’s history?
iPhoto caption: 'Delirious Night' at the Festival d'Avignon. Photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage.
At the 2025 Festival d’Avignon, politics were never far off
I’d performed and directed for festivals in Canada and elsewhere, but it wasn’t at all the same as being on the bum-in-seat side. There I was, in Avignon, rubbing shoulders with the umpteen visitors hungry for a good show. I came away feeling that here, theatre mattered. A lot. In the stony fields of Toronto, that can be easy to forget.
iPhoto caption: Set design by Camellia Koo,
Costume design by Judith Bowden,
Lighting design by Leigh Ann Vardy,
and photo by Dahlia Katz. Features Samantha Hill and Amaka Umeh.
A story with no expiry date: Adapting Fall On Your Knees
At this critical political juncture, as so many forces in the world try to mute and silence women, our Canadian stories merit our advocacy and fervent attention.
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.