Do you believe in faeries? Michael didn’t either, until dark and mysterious things began to happen in his once happy home. Spindle Collective’s latest haunting work sìofra, is the second installment in their Dark Mother Trilogy. Co-written by Natalia Bushnik and Kathleen Welch, who also directs and has composed original music for the piece, this…
Fortune Frenzy Fanaa In his seminal work “Masnavi”, Rumi’s didactic stories follow a similar path: problem, complication, and resolution. So too do the stories we hear in The Caged Bird Sings by Rouvan Silogix, Rafeh Mahmud, and Ahad Lakhani. Directed by Mahmud, The Caged Bird Sings remains a transcendent and thought-provoking experience, with certain elements…
Camp: a place usually in the country for people (usually children or adolescents) to participate in recreational or educational activities especially during the summer. Camp: a place usually away from urban areas where tents or simple buildings (such as cabins) are erected for shelter or for temporary residence (as for labourers, prisoners, or vacationers). Two…
Beauty Hustle Psycho Graffiti Some of the most iconic stories of our time have the word “American” in the title. Franca Miraglia’s American Devotion, directed by Mario D’Alimonte, swings for the same heights, but unfortunately doesn’t hit a home run. Featuring some of the most recognizable figures of the 1950’s, American Devotion shows the private…
“My father lost me to the Beast at cards.” Hailey Gillis’ opening line of Tiger Bride lets us know that this is not your average fairy tale. Based on Angela Carter’s “The Tiger’s Bride”, a gothic retelling of the classic “Beauty and the Beast” story, Tiger Bride is a dark, music-filled fantasy that’ll leave you…
Before his death in 2025, Richard Foreman made his notebooks available for use online. From these notebooks, Ilana Khanin’s You Must Change Your Life was born. Featuring Thea Mea Hesler and Annie Hoeg, You Must Change You Life is sure to be a unique theatrical experience. I asked Thea and Annie about the show, working…
“Af dem hob ikh eyn entfer — Got is a foter un Heylik is zayn Toyre!” From the opening lines of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish I felt the shift: changes both large and small which were taking a story I’ve known for most of my life and giving it new and deeper meaning.…
“How many Indigenous artists does it take to make an Opera indigenous?” While this question shouldn’t have to be asked in the first place, it’s what Against the Grain Theatre was faced with when the funding got pulled for their full scale production of Indians on Vacation, an opera based on the novel by Thomas…
“What is Hell?” Take Wilde, famously charged with indecency in a time where it was still illegal to be queer who said: “We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” Or take Huxley, who was so much more than the dystopian fiction we’re forced to read in school, who said:…
The sound of cicadas singing is one of the hallmarks of summer; that chirring can be heard night and day, sometimes at seemingly unbelievable volumes considering they’re insects. You can especially tell the years where the cycles have linked, and the alien-looking creatures cover the trees...or maybe even swarm your home near Trinity Bellwoods Park.…
A View from the Box 