Mar 15
The Encampment, by Thom Sokolski and Jenny Anne McCowan will take place at Fort York in June with Luminato Festival
Luminato announced its line-up on Wednesday with features ranging from Rufus Wainwright to Laura Secord and the War of 1812. Read more in News.
By: Alex Johnson
I was late to the Gregory Prest party. My invitation got lost in the mail. The man of the hour had been winning audiences over regularly with performances in White Biting Dog, Death of a Salesman, and Ghost, while I sat at home watching Dance Moms – all of them. With his current rendering of Edmund in Soulpepper’s Long Days Journey Into Night, I am at the party, and deep into the free champagne.
Gregory was kind enough to meet me before a Saturday night show and I came face-to-face with Gregory Prest: The Actor’s Actor. Present, eager, aware, quick to laugh and refreshingly at ease with the occasional uneasiness of the actor’s job.
By Andrea Leigh Pelletier
As any of my friends will tell you, I am a huge proponent of video art. I fell into it by accident in my final year as photography major. It was a new experience that allowed my mind to explore new forms of visual expression. Then it became a habit—I was filming my friends while they slept, and myself, alone in my apartment. Perhaps my love of video art was born out of my exhaustion with still images, and an inner yearning for a new experience. I started playing with projection and installation; it became my goal to not only produce a visual piece of art, but an immersive, all-encompassing world in which to experience this art.
With still images, I sometimes feel as though “the jig is up,” DSLRs are now commonplace and even your kid brother knows his way around Photoshop. Photographic images have saturated our world like never before because the everyday person understands their construction more thoroughly.
Installation-based video art pulls us in to an ever-changing audio-visual world, not only presenting us with beautiful and enigmatic imagery, but also surrounding us in the world of that imagery. Have I sold you yet? Good. Because right now in Toronto, there is a show I need you to see.
Read more in Artbeats
“I am so deeply impressed with the vision and originality of the Tennessee Project! It is everything that a holistic arts project should be: grounded in excellence, collaborative in nature and focused on community. Bravo. I can’t wait.”
THE TENNESSEE WILLIAMS PROJECT
Featuring the talents of nine theatre companies in the largest co-production Toronto has seen in years, the Tennessee Project will hit Toronto in MAY 2012! For seven nights, seven productions of Tennessee Williams’ one-acts will rotate through seven different Toronto neighborhoods, bringing Tennessee right to the heart of Toronto in an energized, heartfelt celebration of community, culture, and good ol’ Tenn.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
On May 1st 2012 at eight p.m., productions of the Tennessee one-acts will open in Cabbagetown, Greektown, Roncesvalles, The Annex, The Beach, Leslieville, and St. Clair West. The productions will rotate to a different neighborhood each evening, giving each community seven different nights of Williams.
WHAT’S THE POINT?
The point is to reach directly out to Toronto communities, develop relationships with them, and offer them a personal, friendly, uncomplicated theatre-going experience. We at the Tennessee Project believe Toronto has en enormous appetite for art, and seek to make it accessible, amiable, and celebratory, bringing theatre about our communities directly to them; to decentralize theatre from the downtown core and celebrate Toronto’s many faces, colors, and textures through the work of Williams – a man who always defended and treasured people from every walk of life. To bring a spectacular, unforgettable seven nights to the city that we love!!
BEYOND THE STAGE:
An evening in the theatre, like any form of entertainment, stands to be enriched through knowledge, familiarity, and interaction. The Tennessee Project is founded on the principle that audience outreach is an exciting and integral part of modern theatre that creates a more intimate and thrilling experience for all involved. Over the next few months, members of the Tennessee team will be getting to know each community. We will be volunteering at – and engaging with – local businesses, holding FREE events, opening up our rehearsals, holding ‘bar banter’ nights and VIP launch events, staging readings at local libraries, and bumping in to you on the street!
The companies involved are: Birdtown and Swanville Theatre Company, Red One Theatre Collective, Red Light Theatre District, Afterglow Theatre company, Another Theatre Company, Theatre Caravel, Written on Water Theatre, Quixotic Arts Collective, and Black Tea Theatre.
By: Ryan Quinn
Allyson Pratt and Meegwun Fairbrother in The Great Mountain
It’s especially hard for me to review The Great Mountain at the Young People’s Theatre, because I know that I’m not its intended audience at all. It’s also hard to review because there is no hidden layer, everything that the show needs to say, it says outright. But watching the performance, written by Tracey Power and directed by Alan Dilworth, I did feel let in on the magic. It’s not without its flaws, but I think it achieves what it set out to do, which is to send a message of environmental activism in a fun, heroic way.
Read more in Reviews
inthegreenroom 