There’s a beauty to the fact that the end of summer also means the beginning of new seasons of theatre; as the nights get longer and the weather cooler, what a better thing to do than get together and see live theatre! I have a lot of exciting performances coming up this month and I’m looking forward to sharing them all with you! Don’t forget, if you want a little bit extra from those posts, you can always sign up for my new Patreon!
her. – zippysaidproductions
In 1950s Toronto, German expat Ilsa entertains her good friend Helga and Helga’s great-nephew Gunter. Her irresistible coffee and pastries should be the star of the show, but Gunter seems determined to get Ilsa to reveal the dangerous secrets of her wartime past.
September 6 – 10
Red Sandcastle Theatre – 922 Queen St. E
her. (zippysaidproductions.com)
The Waltz – Factory Theatre
Set on the doorsteps of a rustic cabin in north-east Saskatchewan, The Waltz captures one perfect moment when two teenagers, whose histories are serendipitously interwoven, spend one evening with a boom box under the magnificent prairie sky at dusk. Brimming with 90’s nostalgia, The Waltz continues to capture the hearts of audiences as it explores whether we can ever feel truly at home. The smash hit that charmed audiences last year returns to the Factory stage for a limited engagement before embarking on a national tour to Prairie Theatre Exchange and then the Great Canadian Theatre Company.
September 6 – 17
Factory Theatre – 125 Bathurst Street
The Master Plan – Crow’s Theatre
The 2023.24 Crow’s Theatre 40th anniversary season kicks off with multi-award-winning playwright Michael Healey’s THE MASTER PLAN, the highly anticipated stage adaptation of the best-selling book Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy, recently nominated for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, by The Globe and Mail journalist Josh O’Kane, directed by Crow’s Theatre Artistic Director Chris Abraham.
A Crow’s Theatre commission, THE MASTER PLAN is a biting satire about the messy affair between Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs as they attempt, but inevitably fail, to build a smart city in Toronto.
September 5 – October 1
Crow’s Theatre – 345 Carlaw Avenue
The Master Plan – Crow’s Theatre (crowstheatre.com)
Canoe – Unsettled Scores with Native Earth Performing Arts, The Toronto Consort, and Theatre Passe Muraille
Canoe is a captivating tale of two sisters from Northern Ontario, their ancestral tree, and an old, but familiar, visitor from the past. Through a minimalist aesthetic, this poignant work breaks free from Eurocentric operatic structures, creating an accessible and safe space for diverse audiences to experience the transformative power of Indigenous storytelling and opera.
September 12 – 16
Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity St. Paul’s (427 Bloor Street West, Toronto)
Canoe – Native Earth Performing Arts
Give ‘Em Hell – Theatre Direct
In Give ‘em Hell, Peterborough-born and award-winning playwright Madeleine Brown retells the final school year leading up to the tumultuous 2012 closure of Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School (PCVS). In a fight to save their high school, the students of PCVS discover the power of activism, the perils of self-discovery and what it costs to stand up for a cause. Featuring a cast of eight Peterborough-local teenagers alongside professional actors M. John Kennedy, Jeff Dingle and Sarah Lynn Strange, this new play is directed by award-winning director Aaron Jan and will be staged in the former PCVS building with designs by Melanie McNeill, JB Nelles, Logan Raju Cracknell and Uri Livne-Bar. It is accompanied by an exhibition of archival materials from this monumental turning point in the school’s history. Give ‘em Hell is a truly entertaining, fiercely relevant and provocative play that will surely inspire the next generation of young activists through its powerful and true story.
September 15 – 23
201 McDonnel Street, Peterborough
Give ’em Hell – Theatre Direct
The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time – Tarragon Theatre
From legendary Canadian artist Walter Borden, The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time is a deeply personal reflection on Walter’s journey of life. An invigorating autobiographical performance, Walter re-visits the show, initially written and performed in 1986 as Tightrope Time Ain’t Nuthin’ More Than Some Itty Bitty Madness Between Your Twilight & Your Dawn. Through a solo performance featuring 10 characters, Walter explores homosexuality from a Black perspective and offers an experience of the resiliency of the human spirit.
September 19 – October 15
Tarragon Theatre – 30 Bridgman Ave
The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time – Tarragon Theatre
speaking of sneaking – Buddies in Bad Times Theatre with groundwork redux and Obsidian Theatre
speaking of sneaking follows the story of Ginnal, who yearns to send a barrel back to his family in Jamaica from his bachelor apartment in Toronto. The play artfully collapses past and present, as Ginnal reminisces about his youth in Yard and his path to Foreign. Guided by the playful and ancient spider Anansi, Ginnal navigates the complexities of Black queer masculinity and wrestles with the fraught potential of leaving one home to find another.
September 19 – October 1
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre – 12 Alexander Street
speaking of sneaking — Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
TOPDOG/UNDERDOG – Canadian Stage
A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and sibling rivalry, in TOPDOG/UNDERDOG Lincoln and Booth are brothers haunted by their past – as well as their names. When Lincoln gets a gig impersonating his namesake, Booth takes over his brother’s old racket as a three-card monte dealer. A tangle of secrets, lies, and one-upmanship, where the stakes get higher and higher, and someone’s bound to end up on top – TOPDOG/UNDERDOG was selected as the Best American Play of the Last 25 Years by the New York Times in a 2018 column.
September 22 – October 8
Berkeley Street Theatre – 26 Berkeley Street
Topdog/Underdog / Canadian Stage
SEA WALL – One Four One Collective
Sea Wall is a deceptively simple, viscerally human story, in which a young photographer tells us about a holiday in the south of France with his wife and family. An exquisite, hauntingly truthful, portrait of a man trying desperately to keep his head above the water, while below him the sea wall drops away into shattering oblivion.
September 21 – October 8
The Assembly Theatre – 1479 Queen Street West
PRODUCTIONS / EVENTS | Onefouronecollective
APPROPRIATE – Coal Mine Theatre
A searingly comic family drama in the spirit of August, Osage County, the play follows the members of the Lafayette family as they return to their crumbling Arkansas plantation home on the occasion of the recent death of their patriarch. As his three adult children sort through a lifetime of hoarded mementos and junk, they collide over clutter, debt, and a contentious family history. But after a disturbing discovery surfaces among their father’s possessions, the reunion takes a turn for the explosive, unleashing a series of crackling surprises and confrontations.
September 24 – October 15
The Coal Mine Theatre – 2076 Danforth Ave
APPROPRIATE — CMT (coalminetheatre.com)
Thank you to my Patrons:
B. Kinnon, D. Moyes
Would you like to become a Patron? Check out my Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/AViewfromtheBox?utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator
A View from the Box 