Features
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: Ann-Marie MacDonald in 'Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet).' Photo by Elana Emer.
“Sexism kept me out of hockey as a kid,” says Ann-Marie MacDonald. “But sexism also shut me out of Shakespeare."
iPhoto caption: Karen Robinson in a promo photo for 'Prophetess.' Photo by Dahlia Katz.
When I spoke to actor Karen Robinson and playwright Ho Ka Kei about Prophetess' upcoming world premiere, they described an artistic process grounded in care and collaboration. Ho had long wanted to write the part of Queen Margaret for Robinson, and he framed the “love letter aspect” of writing for people he holds dear as key to the play’s origin story.
iPhoto caption: Members of the company of 'Pareidolia.' Photo courtesy of La Llave Maestra.
Aluna Theatre’s RUTAS Festival embraces the complex, the controversial, and the magical
“Communities need a space to come together, to breathe together, to think together, to see the same thing together and see different things in the same thing that they're seeing together,” says Aluna artistic director Beatriz Pizano. “That is the belief that we give this space to, to tell these stories.”