Dorianne is a graduate of the Theatre and Drama Studies joint program between University of Toronto, Erindale campus and Sheridan College. She writes short stories, plays and screenplays and was delighted to be accepted into the 2010 Diaspora Dialogues program and also to have her short story accepted into the 2011 edition of TOK: Writing The New Toronto collection. She is also a regularly contributing writer on http://www.sexlifecanada.ca. You can follow her on twitter @headonist if you like tweets about cats, sex, food, queer stuff and lefty politics.
Bring tissues to Waiting Room, a play by Diane Flacks at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre
Waiting Room, playing at Tarragon Theatre is a play about a baby with cancer. “Baby with cancer” has to rank high, if not at the top, of any list made of The Three Most Heart-Breaking Words. Playwright Diane Flacks, who has herself spent time in the NICU with her son, has created a world inside a hospital where tense parents weigh suffering and cognitive damage against the hope of life for their infant; where unlikely friendships form and prove to be necessary support; where doctors, as diverse as humans are, can be brash and more interested in science than compassion, or sensitive and torn, or calm professionals. Continue reading Review: Waiting Room (Tarragon Theatre)→
As Mine begins a confident, smooth-talking woman in tight pants approaches a charmingly awkward woman with overtly seductive intentions. Then they transform into the same confident smooth-talking woman, Abigail (Michelle Polak), who is a Teaching Assistant for a poetry class, and the charmingly awkward woman, Bea (Jenna Harris), who is a student. Discord and Din‘s production, presented as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival, traces these women’s romantic relationship with humour and honesty. Jenna Harris, who is also the playwright, said in NOW Magazine that she wrote this play based on “my own life experiences and what I observed around me” and the situations and dynamics in the play certainly felt familiar to me.
Toronto’s Beerprov Blends Two Of Our Favourite Things
BeerProv is an improv comedy competition where someone gets voted off the stage each round and the funniest performer of the night wins a prize. I attended the December 2014 edition and the deck was stacked that night as they had “special guest” Colin Mochrie competing. I don’t think anyone expected one of the younger and lesser known performers to win against Mochrie’s wealth of experience, but they each made a valiant effort. The prize is just an opportunity to drink a beer from the “BeerProv Mug of Champions”, so I don’t think any of the contestants were too bent out of shape about the odds. The large cast of comedians kept the crowd happy and laughing all night. Continue reading Review: BeerProv (BeerProv)→
