The new year certainly started us off with some INCREDIBLE live performances! It was a busy month and it looks like February is shaping up to be busy as well!
BETWEEN A WOK AND A HOT POT – Cahoots Theatre
Following Cahoots Theatre’s multiple-Dora Award-nominated world premiere of Three Ordinary Men and critically acclaimed co-production of our place, Canada’s first theatre company devoted to culturally diverse work announces its third premiere since Spring 2022 with playwright Amanda Lin’s and director Esther Jun’s Between a Wok and a Hot Pot. While preparing a traditional hot pot onstage, Mandy reminisces about when it wasn’t cool to be Asian, and delves into the complicated topics of identity and appropriation. The show is production managed by Shawn Henry and stage managed by Wei Qing Tan, with dramaturgy by Elyne Quan. Its design team consists of Echo Zhou, Olivia Wheeler, Emily Jung, and Sarah Yuen.
Saturday January 28th to Sunday February 12, 2023
The Incubator at The Theatre Centre – 1115 Queen St. West, Toronto
Okay, you can stop now – Theatre Passe Muraille
A physical theatre experience that explores how we deal with, manipulate, and come to terms with information, in Okay, you can stop now four performers are invited into a landscape full of newspapers: a tangible form of history. Over time, knowing that history is continual, the weight of the news gets the better of each individual.
Through personal accounts and collective experience, each performer navigates their relationship to privilege and power: how do we move forward once history has indelibly been changed?
February 4 – 11
Theatre Passe Muraille (16 Ryerson Avenue) Mainspace Theatre
Okay, you can stop now – Theatre Passe Muraille
YERMA – Coal Mine Theatre
Directed by COAL MINE co-founder Diana Bentley and starring acclaimed film and television actress Sarah Gadon (Michael Mann’s Ferrari, Carly Stone’s North of Normal, Mary Harron’s Alias Grace) alongsideMartha Burns (Victory/Shaw Festival, Slings and Arrows/Showcase), Daren A. Herbert (The Music Man/Stratford, Pretty Hard Cases/CBC), Louise Lambert (Detroit/Coal Mine, Mass Effect: Andromeda/Bioware), Michelle Mohammed (Mahabharata/Why Not Theatre, The Handmaid’s Tale/Hulu) and Johnathan Sousa (Othello/Stratford, Frankie Drake Mysteries/Shaftesbury Films), YERMA is a reimagining of Frederico Lorca’s tragic tale of a young woman driven to unthinkable by the desire to have a child, YERMA is adapted by acclaimed Australian playwright and director Simon Stone.
February 5 – 26, 2023
2076 Danforth Ave. Toronto
YERMA — CMT (coalminetheatre.com)
Redbone Coonhound – Tarragon Theatre
Out for a walk in their West End neighbourhood, Mike and Marissa—an interracial couple—meet a dog with an unfortunate breed name: Redbone Coonhound. This small detail unleashes a cascading debate between them about race and their relationship that manifests as a series of micro-plays, each satirizing contemporary perspectives on modern culture. Through its hard-hitting comedic elements, Redbone Coonhound explores the intricacies of subtle and overt polemics of race, systemic power and privilege in remarkable, surprising and hilarious ways.
A wild and subversive journey back through history and into the future. Redbone Coonhound reveals deep fears, rage, insecurities and, ultimately, hope.
February 7 – March 5, 2023
Tarragon Theatre Mainspace 30 Bridgman Avenue Toronto
Redbone Coonhound – Tarragon Theatre
The Tragedy of King Lear – Shakespeare BASH’D
After a hiatus, Shakespeare BASH’s is back with a production three-years in the making. Initially planned for 2021, the pandemic put an indefinite hold on the production, as well as how the fan-favourite company could continue to offer their intimate stagings of Shakespeare’s plays.
The Tragedy of King Lear will bring audiences the accessible, high energy Shakespeare that BASH’d is known for, in a new setting, offering an intimate experience with one of Canada’s foremost performers and some of the country’s most exciting up and coming actors.
February 16-26, 2023
The Theatre Centre, BMO Incubator (1115 Queen St W)
A View from the Box 