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.
Soulpepper brings “cathartic laughter” to the Toronto stage
George Orwell’s 1945 classic novel Animal Farm was a satirical critique of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. As the program for the production of Soulpepper‘s Animal Farm cheekily notes, “its greatest flaw, identified by a majority of 7th and 8th graders, is that it’s obviously irrelevant to our modern more sophisticated lives.” This new adaptation by Anthony MacMahon takes the premise of the original and applies it it to the issues of today. It also takes the approach of the original, which is not at all subtle. While nuance has a time and place, its not necessary for a hilarious and adept skewering of the current rise of demagogic political leaders.
Hannah Moscovitch’s Bunny takes to the stage at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre
I don’t often recognize myself in a character as much as I did at the opening night of Bunny, Hannah Moscovitch’s new play at Tarragon. Maev Beaty, one of the most splendid actors this city has to offer, plays Sorrel. As a teenager, Sorrel is a dorky, top-of-the-honour-roll student who’d rather read old novels than try to “fit in.” But as she moves further into adolescence, she discovers one thing that’s as pleasurable as reading: kissing, and more than kissing, with more than one boy. While Sorrel is described by all as stunningly beautiful, which does not describe me, I identify so much with her twin passions of sex and fiction, as well as her socially awkward sense of humour. Beaty’s Sorrel is so much herself, with no time for inhibition, that it’s hard not to love her.
Harsh history and present day reality are explored in a new play now playing in Toronto
Ipperwash, onstage now at Native Earth, is a fictional story based on the true events of the Stoney Point reserve, which was forcibly moved to the neighbouring reserve of Kettle Point in 1942 by the federal Department of Defence. There they established Camp Ipperwash, a military training base, with the promise to return the land after the war was over. However, the area was left contaminated, riddled with land mines.
In the play, set in the present day, an army veteran who is also Indigenous named Bea (PJ Prudat), arrives, employed on the clean up. As she develops relationships with two of the people who live there, Tim Cloud (Jonathan Fisher) and his nephew Slip (James Dallas Smith), while also being visited by the ghost of Tim’s sister Kwe (Samantha Brown), she grows aware of the history of the land and the powerful toll it took on the people of Stoney Point. Continue reading Review: Ipperwash (Native Earth)→
Hilarious, well-acted The Wedding Party arrives on the Toronto stage
I think most people end up having a complicated relationship with weddings — I certainly do. The Wedding Party by Kristen Thomson, produced by Crow’s Theatre, is a glorious fiasco of complicated relationships that play out on the wedding day of a young couple. The couple themselves are pointedly absent as characters. I have very often seen unhealthy family dynamics usurp the attention from a couple on their wedding day, and this show is about that. Continue reading Review: The Wedding Party (Crow’s Theatre)→
Soulpepper brings “cathartic laughter” to the Toronto stage
Hannah Moscovitch’s Bunny takes to the stage at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre
Two dance programs come to Toronto’s Theatre Centre
Harsh history and present day reality are explored in a new play now playing in Toronto
Hilarious, well-acted The Wedding Party arrives on the Toronto stage