Teenagers from This Year’s Paprika Festival on What They Want to See More of on Toronto Stages
The Paprika Festival is a performing arts festival that highlights the work of young and emerging artists, on from May 14 – 20 at Native Earth Performing Arts’ Aki Studio. We spoke with six of the teens involved in this year’s festival to hear what they want to see more of on Toronto Stages.
Rofiat Olusanya
Playwright-in-Residence
I think it is time playwrights and theatre-makers in general stop putting a modern spin on plays from history that are perfect the way they are. If I go to see Shakespeare, I want to hear the old English on the stage, not the modern way we talk.
Olivia Cameron
Creators’ Unit
The opinions of Canada’s youth need to be represented more, seeing that we are the future. Throughout high school, I felt that in certain classes our opinions were immediately invalidated by our teacher, and that we were not given the opportunity to debate issues we had questions about. Being told “that’s the way it is” is not a good enough answer. We youth see our world and realize it is not perfect, and we can help improve it. We just need someone to listen. Theatre is the perfect platform for this.
Janis Chang
Playwright-in-Residence
I’d love to see more theatre that offers up that intangible sense of wonder. To me there is something extraordinarily compelling about watching performances that transport the audience to a different reality—with magic, fantasy, the beautiful and the bizarre—while covertly asking tough questions and demanding hard truths.
I also still want to see more faces and voices like my own in Toronto performance. It is so inspiring to see creators such as David Yee, Nina Lee Aquino, Ins Choi, Marjorie Chan, and many others producing work in this city, and showing developing artists such as myself that there is a place for Asian faces and Asian stories in Canadian theatre.
Cole Stevens-Goulais
Paprika Productions
I would love to see more exploration of Indigenous sexuality in both traditional and contemporary contexts.
Tiffiney-Alexis Simon
Creators’ Unit
Teenagers. I just want to see more people of my age range not relying on social media platforms and controversy. Platforms like Instagram and YouTube are offering more opportunities for teens to openly express themselves. But they can also make it seem like you need a big social media following to accomplish anything. It’s easier for someone to become a model on Instagram than to accomplish something that takes actual talent and hard work. The impact social media standards have on teens is to make them think that they should follow trends rather than stay true to themselves and show their talents for what they are, and I don’t like that!
Jesse Hugh Wabegijig
Indigenous Arts Program
I want to see more art that is grounded in cultural traditions and history, specifically art that has something to say beyond the contemporary colonial viewpoint. I have found that people need to start tracing their heritage to a time when they were Indigenous. The saddest thing to see is a colonialist who doesn’t know how colonized they have been.
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.
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.
Comments