In my heart there is anger; sadness; grief for my more naïve self. Because after Dear Evan Hansen, I do not feel as if I’ve been found, as the film’s tagline so bravely promised I would be. I feel instead as if I’ve been left behind to atrophy in the Music Box Theatre some five hundred miles away, a nineteen-year-old ghost in an echoing auditorium.
The Listeners is not a cult narrative, or a Stephen King-wannabe, or a Lolita aftershock — Tannahill’s second novel is a triumph all its own, posing urgent (and at times beautiful) questions against a distressing context of disinformation.
As in-person Toronto theatre slowly re-opens, Intermission’s Editors will be sharing personal reflections on the realities of being back in the theatre. These are not criticisms or reviews. They are not blog posts. They are memories of being caught in the middle of a theatre renaissance. They are an archive. They are history.
“We’re coming back. We’re coming back stronger.”
A figure dancing across a historic building. A multi-sensory experience to navigate within your own home. Theatre Passe Muraille presents two unconventional, collaborative pieces that ask audiences, “How do we connect”?
We’ve been privileged enough to witness the birth of a brand-new artform: live digital performance. This art form can only grow and improve as the digital tools to share it grow more powerful.
I want to be clear here: I’m not trying to echo that theatre-bro you went to school with who kept posting about how Shakespeare wrote 31 plays and 80 sonnets during the plague of London.
Watching The Show That Changed My Life reminds me that theatre is what we make it.
This first experience taught me that theatre and ADR shared some vital purposes: storytelling, character expression and crucial believability in conveying dialogue.
Equity and access – the questions we keep asking during this time of remote theatre.
Equity and access – the ongoing puzzle Canadian theatre en masse has been unable to solve.
The live performance of Quiver seems a distant memory, a relic of the less suffocating weeks of COVID-19 restrictions. Almost like a miracle, Quiver was performed in the brief moment of time when it was possible.
Whether a dashing sword fight or full-out pummel, fight scenes often occur at pivotal moments in the script, revealing characters at their most primal, emotionally heightened states.
Most artists can take a tiny budget and produce magic. We’re constantly creating new worlds, images and stories with nothing but shoestrings and determination. That is both our superpower and our curse. When done well, most audience members will never know the difference between a show by a large theatre house and one from an … Continued
Despite myriad concerns about Zoom, the fusing of the performer’s body with the infrastructure of technology has allowed artists to create work even when performance venues are closed and physical gatherings impossible.
On a Zoom call that confirmed our students’ worst fears for their final year, I was there to provide a glimmer of hope: a partnership with Outside the March to commission original digital plays for our graduating class.
Next Stage isn’t happening this year. Like most arts festivals, it’s been halted by COVID. In this peculiar time of rest, many theatres have been re-evaluating their practises, seeing who they’ve left out of the programming and how they may better serve their communities.