Toronto’s Alameda Theatre Company’s 2013 De Colores Festival of New Works is a celebration of Latin theatre in Canada showcasing new works in development

For the first time I found myself at Theatre Direct Studios for Alameda Theatre Company’s 2013 De Colores Festival of New Works. The space, for anyone else who hasn’t been there, is a beautiful cozy theatre in the Wychwood Barns, well suited for the intimacy of the evenings’ readings.

De Colores Festival is dedicated to providing a safe place for Latin American Canadian writers to develop new works. Each night of the festival a new script or two are read along with a short work by the Nueva Voz Youth Ensemble. On Thursday, Have You Lost Something? by Flavia Hevia, and Solaz by Jefferson Guzman were presented.

Continue reading Review: De Colores Festival of New Works (Alameda Theatre Company) →

Double bill Kuwaiti Moonshine and By a Thread playing at Toronto’s Sterling Studio Theatre are personal stories that though entertaining, fall short in their conclusions

Double bills are often hard nights of theatre to sit through. They’re long, for starters, and they also ask the audience to suspend disbelief twice in a row, bring us from climax to conclusion only to do it all over again. Just as one story settles we’re thrown into the next.

One-man-shows can also be hard nights of theatre to sit through. It is more difficult for a single actor to create what many can. Listening to the same person talk for a whole hour is trying in any setting, in or out of the theatre.

Sterling Studio Theatre’s current double bill of one-(wo)man-shows Kuwaiti Moonshine and By A Thread makes for a demanding night of theatre.

Continue reading Review: Kuwaiti Moonshine (Better to Burn Out Productions) and By A Thread (Sterling Studio Theatre) →

You Should Have Stayed Home is the dramatic true story of a detainee during Toronto’s G20 riots playing at the Aki Studio Theatre

You Should Have Stayed Home is Tommy Taylor’s true account of being kettled, arrested, held in inhumane conditions for nearly 24 hours, and then let go with no charges laid in Toronto’s 2010 G20 debacle. Thousands of others received the same or similar treatment, which is hard for us Canadians to reconcile with our view of our society and our laws. This makes it a very important story to tell.

Taylor is a likeable guy, which I think is a huge part of why this show works. It’s storytelling, rather than a play: hardly anything is acted out on stage, mostly Taylor just tells the audience what happened to him. And what happened isn’t always easy to parse. If it were fiction, the plot would make more sense. But this is a true story that takes place in the midst of the chaos of the G20, and by chaos I’m not talking about broken windows or burning cars. I’m talking about the incomprehensible decision-making that happened at the upper echelons of police and security that day. Continue reading Review: You Should Have Stayed Home (Praxis Theatre) →