And so we embark on a new year of theatrical journeys together! April of 2025 will mark my third year of writing A View from the Box; definitely taking suggestions on how to celebrate! Let’s take a look at all of the fabulous offerings for this January.
Last Landscape – Bad News Days in partnership with Common Boots Theatre
A theatrical meditation on environmental collapse.
A world premiere production from Bad New Days created and directed by Adam Paolozza imagines a future where we find alternative ways to reconnect with and remember nature.
In a sometime somewhere devoid of nature, posthuman ‘workers’ enter an empty space and assemble a series of artificial landscapes out of found objects, striving with their bodies to recreate the natural world from memory. But is it the deep past we see, or some genetically modified future?
Last Landscape blends Bad New Days’ signature brand of physical theatre with an eco-dramaturgical, DIY aesthetic to create a slowly transforming, imagistic meditation on extinction, ecological grief and interspecies care, where colossal puppets of prehistoric megafauna roam free. On the brink of environmental collapse, the production offers hopeful possibilities for how we all might share this big green miraclemarble.
Last Landscape will be performed by Nada Abusaleh, Nicholas Eddie, Gibum Dante Lim, Annie Luján, Adam Paolozza, and Kari Pederson. SlowPitchSound will provide both original music and live turntablism.
January 12 – 26
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre – 12 Alexander Street
Last Landscape — Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
WIGHTS – Crow’s Theatre
Wight:
a. A living being in general; a creature.
b. Originally and chiefly with (good or bad) epithet,
applied to supernatural, preternatural, or unearthly
beings. —Oxford English Dictionary
Anexplosive and thought-provoking new drama, WIGHTS explores a marriage—and a country—at a crossroads. Set in late October 2024, during the run-up to the U.S. federal election, the story introduces English professor Anita Knight on the eve of a pivotal job interview for the leadership of Yale’s Centre for Reparative Thought and Justice. As her friends and husband help her prepare, an unknown future looms just beyond the window, pressing to get in. At once enigmatic and hard-hitting, WIGHTS delves into the intricate power of language and its profound influence on our relationships, society, and the very fabric of reality.
A Crow’s Theatre commission, WIGHTS is written by playwright Liz Appel and directed by Crow’s Theatre Artistic Director Chris Abraham. The cast features Ari Cohen (Infinite Life, Coal Mine Theatre), Sochi Fried (The Game of Love and Chance, Shaw Festival), Richard Lee (The Orphan of Zhao, Shaw Festival), and Rachel Leslie (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Broadway).
January 7 – February 9
Guloien Theatre at Streetcar Crowsnest – 345 Carlaw Avenue
Winter Solstice – Necessary Angel Theatre Company in association with BirdLand Theatre and Canadian Stage
Beware the sincere stranger.
Extremism doesn’t kick the door down on arrival: it waits for an invite, then makes itself at home.
It’s Christmas Eve and Bettina’s mother is staying for the holidays. Tensions rise between Bettina, her husband, and her mother – heightened by the presence of a man her mother met on the train and invited around for drinks. Family dynamics, betrayal, and the inescapable shadow of the past reverberate through this rapid and razor-sharp satire on the rise of the new right.
Winter Solstice is a comedy of manners with a bite starring Canadian stage and screen stars Frank Cox-O’Connell, Kira Guloien, Cyrus Lane, Diego Matamoros and Nancy Palk.
January 14 – February 2
Berkeley Street Theatre – 26 Berkeley Street
Winter Solstice — Necessary Angel Theatre Co.
Dinner with the Duchess – Here For Now Theatre in association with Crow’s Theatre
Fame. Power. Legacy. At the end of a storied career, violin virtuoso Margaret, the Duchess, gives her final interview to a young, savvy reporter. Aided by her long-suffering yet ever- charming husband, Margaret must confront the secrets of her past and face the impossible question: how will she be remembered? This psychological thriller about artistic passion and its cost “hits all the right notes” (Now Toronto).
Award-winning playwright Nick Green is also the author of Casey & Diana, “the most moving Canadian play of the year” (Toronto Star), which sold out its premiere run at Stratford Festival in 2023 and subsequent run at Soulpepper. Director Kelli Fox is also a critically acclaimed actor.
Here For Now Theatre is an independent feminist theatre company based in Stratford, Ontario, that presented its critically acclaimed production of Girls & Boys at Streetcar Crowsnest last season.
January 14 – February 2
Studio Theatre at Streetcar Crowsnest – 345 Carlaw Ave
Dinner with the Duchess – Crow’s Theatre
Cock – Talk Is Free Theatre
After their sold out run in Barrie earlier this year, TIFT will transfer Mike Bartlett’s Cock to a studio inside Carlaw Industrial Centre. The hit comedy is about John, a gay man, who has been in a relationship with his partner for seven years. But when he meets and falls in love with a woman, he is forced to contemplate the boundaries of his identity and decide what he really wants for his future. Jakob Ehman, Michael Torontow, Tess Benger and Kevin Bundy reprise their roles in this hilarious and touching look at the difficulties that pop up when you have a choice. Dylan Trowbridge also returns to direct.
January 19 – 31
Artists’ Play Studio – 388 Carlaw Ave Unit 295
For Both Resting and Breeding – Talk Is Free Theatre
Staged inside a home in Parkdale, For Both Resting and Breeding by Adam Meisner, is set in the year 2150. Humans have become gender-neutral and use the pronoun ‘Ish’ to identify themselves. Two historians want to transform an old residence into a living museum commemorating Millennials for the upcoming sesquicentennial. As the museum is being created, members of the group become too enamoured with their gendered counterparts and eventually start to re-enact the “dangerous” behaviours of their ancestors. For Both… originated in Barrie in 2018 and has since traveled to Australia, Chile and Argentina, now making its Toronto premiere. The play features Maja Ardal, Amy Keating, Richard Lam, Jamie McRoberts, and Alexander Thomas; Ardal directs.
January 15 – 31
164 Cowan Ave
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Canadian Stage
Late one night, after a university faculty soirée, George and Martha welcome a younger couple into their home. As the alcohol flows and dawn approaches, the young couple are drawn into George and Martha’s toxic games until the evening reaches its climax in a moment of devastating truth-telling.
Directed by Artistic Director Brendan Healy, this is an unmissable revival with an ensemble of Canada’s best: real-life acting couples Paul Gross & Martha Burns and Mac Fyfe & Hailey Gillis take the stage together in this bruising, no-holds-barred drama.
This riveting play endures as a powerful commentary on society, solidifying its status as one of the best scripts of the last century.
January 18 – February 9
Bluma Appel Theatre – 27 Front Street
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The Strange and Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom – Eldritch Theatre
25 years after it first crawled out from under your bed, Eldritch Theatre’s premier production makes its horrific return!
Having survived the ghastly terrors of adolescence in the 1980s, growing up in succubus-haunted, suburban New Bosford, poor Billy Wuthergloom, under the glaring red eyes of a Creepy Musician, gathers together a tattered collection of ghoulish puppets, and relives his horrific journey into adulthood, including his troubled relationship with his doomed best friend, Hirskill Fischmascher, an uncanny child-mystic, who could see things that other people couldn’t.
January 29 – February 9
Red Sandcastle Theatre – 922 Queen St E
The Strange & Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom ‣ Eldritch Theatre
Thank you to my Patrons:
N. Bushnik, S. Fisher, B. Kinnon, D. Moyes
And to my supporters who’ve bought me a coffee:
Angelica and Paul, Anonymous, Adrianna, and Caitlin
Would you like to become a Patron? Check out my Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/AViewfromtheBox
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A View from the Box 