Intermission Magazine Home

REVIEW: Poncili Creación whips up psychedelic whimsy at Montreal’s Ateliers Belleville

Did the show deliver on its promise of “a wordless conversation about the power of creativity”? It is a conversation in the Kuleshovian sense: two performances in sequence. While I would have loved to see material collaboration between these two original acts, their mere juxtaposition made a compelling case for psychedelia’s eclecticism. Untethered from the logic of dialogue or expectation of a logical resolution, the evening privileged collective amusement.

REVIEW: TPM’s Uncivilized turns the camera back on what we mean by ‘civilization’

The play’s most persuasive argument is writer-performer Ahmad Meree himself: his verve, vulnerability, and gift for making instant accomplices of the audience.

REVIEW: Hit Fringe musical Dancer returns for another lap

Somewhat hampered by the facts of its own story, Dancer is worth attending for its inventive balletic choreography and plucky spirit.

REVIEW: At Fall for Dance North’s festival opening, it all came back to Tessa Virtue

This year’s Fall for Dance North opening programme gave audiences a multi-course feast that’s delish all the way through. Well, almost.

REVIEW: Buddies and Obsidian’s Bootycandy is a biting carnival of laughter

Is sexual trauma something to laugh about? Are there limits to satire? Bootycandy pushes these questions to the edge.

REVIEW: In Tarragon’s outstanding Prophetess, language is both mighty and inadequate

Margaret’s facility with text helps her maneuver through an institution like York University, where words hold significant power. But the brilliant middle-aged scholar finds herself surprisingly unequipped to process the true sense of more elemental forces: love, grief, spiders.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.