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Spotlight: Steven Gallagher

A love of theatre runs so deeply through Gallagher’s bones that you’d think it was a path he began to follow as soon as he could walk and talk. But for a boy who came of age on a rustic farm in Quebec and favoured sports venues over stages in high school, an eventual career in theatre was hardly a given.

For the creators of Why Not Theatre’s Mahabharata, nothing is more contemporary than an ancient epic

“I’ve been [telling] the company to embrace time as a collaborator,” says director Ravi Jain ahead of the show’s April run at Canadian Stage.

REVIEW: Cambodian Rock Band makes scintillating Canadian premiere at Vancouver’s Arts Club

Jumping back and forth through time, it weaves the story of a father-daughter relationship together with high-energy musical performances and meditations on the traumatic effects of the Cambodian genocide.

At Theatre Calgary, Corrine Koslo returns to the role of Madame Arcati after 20 years away

“I’m still flying around a bit but I’m not, you know, leaping six feet into the air and things like that,” says Koslo. “And I don’t need to. Then, I did. That was who I was and that’s who I brought to the table.”

GCTC to close out season with Rachel Mutombo’s Vierge

Co-produced by Montreal’s Black Theatre Workshop and directed by Dian Marie Bridge, Vierge will run from March 18 to 30 at the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre in Ottawa.

REVIEW: The Born-Again Crow is an ardent ode to unproductivity

Director Jessica Carmichael’s Toronto premiere production trucks along with the passionate force of an early-2000s emo rock hit, imbuing this systemic critique with rousing, playful life.

Factory Theatre welcomes new audiences with shows that explore human connection

“I feel like I’m really looking to theatre for joy right now,” says artistic director Mel Hague. “I don’t mean works that are specifically funny or happy. I’m talking about something deeper where you can feel connected to the art on stage, the space that’s hosting it, the other people in the audience, and yourself.”

Roberto Zucco marks a new era in Buddies’ history of queer theatre

Toronto theatre can be a bit risk-averse. Artistic directors, constrained by limited funding, program obvious crowd-pleasers over boundary-pushing experiments. Playwrights, afraid to ruffle feathers, create spaces that validate the public’s...

How SummerWorks confronts a theatre industry steeped in hustle culture

“As far as our sector goes, there’s this idea that how busy you are is a reflection of your values,” says director-dramaturg Harri Thomas. “We also tend to emphasize a person’s career over the body of work they’ve produced. There are certain things that we can do at a community level, particularly when it comes to resource sharing. But we also need to consider the fact that we operate in a scarcity environment where we’re so focused on individual shows that we often neglect the larger ecology.”

Director Hillar Liitoja was ‘pathologically uncompromising’ in his pursuit of great art

His creations brought together all the joy and terror and beauty and chaos of being alive.

As the new artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times, ted witzel will ‘connect two generations of queers’

"Nightlife trends come and go," says witzel. "But there’s no reason a queer party space can’t be a creative site as well as a way to fund art."

‘It’s Definitely Worth the Trip’: In Conversation with The 39 Steps at County Stage

The two-time Tony-winning story will see its first ever site-specific outdoor production, courtesy of the County Stage Company.