Theatre Gargantua’s Dissonant Species opened at Factory Theatre on Friday night. It’s written by Heather Marie Annis and Michael Gordon Spence and directed by Jacquie P.A Thomas. It’s a multi-disciplinary exploration of the idea that “everything is sound” and it also explores other ideas about waves; vibration, the notion that two people can be (metaphorically) on different wavelengths and it flirts with the idea that everything is “vibration” which is sort of true in a QFT way.
Adam Paolozza’s Last Landscape opened at Buddies in Bad Times on Tuesday night. It’s an experimental piece about environmental collapse. It’s not exactly a “play”. There are no words. What there are are puppets, movement and sound.
Versus is a one man show (more or less) by Adam Lazarus about a day in the life of the rather unfortunate (if distressingly normal) Gerald Bloom and worse the day is his birthday. It’s part of Summerworks and playing at the Theatre Centre. While it is mostly a monologue, Lazarus gets assistance from Nicholas Eddie and Irene Ly who do rather more than shift props. He also ropes in audience members, from time to time, to, for example, make him a smoothie or clean up dog poo. If being acutely embarassed is not your thing then don’t sit in the front row! Continue reading
Where better in Toronto to do a site specific version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol than Campbell House (built 1822)? Apparently The Three Ships Collective and Soup Can Theatre have been doing such a show for five years but it had never appeared on my radar until this year despite having seen and enjoyed other Soup Can shows. So last night I went.
The Monkey Queen, currently being presented by Red Snow Collective at the Theatre Centre Incubator, is a play with music and movement, rather than opera or music theatre. Diana Tso’s play riffs off the classic Journey to the West to create a “journey to the east” in which a Chinese-Canadian woman explores her own roots and identity in a narrative and landscape half real, half mythical.
operaramblings 