Friday 30 September 2011

7 Days In Ontario Theatre

Conversations
  • Following Soulpepper’s recent production of White Biting Dog, J. Kelly Nestruck looked at whether Canadian revivals were on the rise (I think a former colleague of mine would say “finally!”)
  • In an “everyone-is-a-critic-now” world, Diane Ragsdale wonders what that means for works-in-process

From The Wire
  • It’s with sadness that we have to share the news of the death of Ed Procunier, a former President of Theatre Ontario, Adjudicator, and founding President of the London Community Players; a memorial is planned in November and we’ll be sharing more information in the weeks ahead
  • The provincial election is October 6; ArtsBuild Ontario is advocating for government investment in the arts and cultural community through: an extension of the Infrastructure Ontario Loan Program to all qualified arts and cultural organizations, and a capital funding program when the economy improves
  • The City of Toronto voted in favour of selling the Sony Centre, the St. Lawrence Centre, and the Toronto Centre for the Arts, but they’ve also set up a Mayor’s Task Force for Arts and Theatres, chaired by Councillor Gary Crawford
  • Applause (mostly) for Stratford artistic director Des McAnuff” by Michael Posner and Kate Taylor in the Globe and Mail

Migrations

Highlights From The Bulletin Board
  • Nightwood Theatre in Toronto is seeking submissions from emerging and mid-career female creators/playwrights to be included in The Market Place: a speed-dating-with-Artistic-Directors event of The New Groundswell Festival; application deadline is October 15
  • 4th Line Theatre in Millbrook has Linda Kash and Paul O’Sullivan leading an improvisation workshop on October 22 for youth 10 to 17
  • Toronto Fringe Applications are now online: deadlines are October 24 (New Play Contest), November 7 (Festival Lottery); Site-Specific Proposals are first-come, first-serve
  • Members of The Gina Wilkinson Prize jury are proud to announce the creation of an annual award benefiting emerging female directors and theatre artists looking to transition into the area of direction. The prize pays tribute to Canadian actor, playwright and director Gina Wilkinson and her unyielding dedication, vision and indomitable spirit that imbued her work and her life.  This year’s nomination deadline for the inaugural award is December 1
Check out all the latest postings of workshops, classified ads, recognition opportunities and more from Theatre Ontario’s Bulletin Board

Assembled by Brandon Moore, Communications Coordinator

Wednesday 28 September 2011

Theatre Ontario Seeking Community Theatre Coordinator

As announced at the Theatre Ontario Festival, Dennis Johnson is retiring as Community Theatre Coordinator.  We are now inviting applications for the position.  This is a part-time employee position, starting November 2011.

Theatre Ontario seeks a motivated and independent individual who is familiar with the theatre environment of Ontario.  The successful candidate will have excellent communication skills, as well as demonstrated skills in production and management within the community theatre sector.

Read more about the Community Theatre Coordinator position on the Theatre Ontario website

Monday 26 September 2011

ONstage Openings for the week of September 26

In Toronto
Sept. 26, Another Africa at Canadian Stage
Sept. 26, The Studio at Young People's Theatre
Sept. 29, Bigger Than Jesus at Factory Theatre
Sept. 30, Infinitum at Triangle Pi Productions

In South Central Ontario
Sept. 29, Jake's Women at Oshawa Little Theatre
Sept. 30, The Drawer Boy at Theatre Aurora

In Southwestern Ontario
Sept. 30, You'll Get Used To It!...The War Show at Players' Guild of Hamilton

For all the theatre currently playing across Ontario, and information for theatres on how to add/update your listing, visit the ONstage theatre listings on the Theatre Ontario website.

Friday 23 September 2011

7 Days In Ontario Theatre

Conversations
  • On The Artful Manager, Andrew Taylor proposed a new way of thinking about job descriptions in the cultural sector for small and mid-size organizations: job function trading cards
From The Wire
Migrations
Highlights From The Bulletin Board
  • September 30 is the deadline for OAC Theatre Creators’ Reserve submissions to Talk Is Free Theatre in Barrie; funding priorities are regional artists; artists from culturally diverse backgrounds; artists and works that would likely experience difficulty in attracting support elsewhere
  • September 30 is also the deadline for nominations for the Keith Kelly Award for Cultural Leadership from the Canadian Conference of the Arts
  • Toronto’s Paprika Festival has put out the call for submissions: deadline is October 7 for their Productions, Creators Unit, Playwrights-in-Residence, and Resident Company; the Paprika Festival celebrates the work of young and emerging artists, primarily those who are 21 and under
  • Fall workshop schedule from Off The Wall—Stratford Artists’ Alliance is now available: subjects include animatronics, artistic welding, exploring shadow puppets, mail armour costuming, mask making, and stage upholstery
  • Factory Theatre has issued their call for OAC Theatre Creators’ Reserve submissions, with a deadline of November 25; funding priorities are: projects that reflect our cultural diversity; young voices that speak to youth issues; unique, theatrical investigations in form; groundbreaking projects from established playwrights; work that explores new methods of creation, including collective creation
Check out all the latest postings of workshops, classified ads, recognition opportunities and more from Theatre Ontario’s Bulletin Board

Remember, you can also receive our news every month by email.  Our archives are online and the September issue is now available.

Assembled by Brandon Moore, Communications Coordinator

Monday 19 September 2011

ONstage Openings for the week of September 19

In Southwestern Ontario
Sept. 20, Footloose - High School Project at The Grand Theatre (London)
Sept. 22, The Turn Of The Screw at Kitchener-Waterloo Little Theatre

In Toronto
Sept. 21, In The Next Room or the vibrator play at Tarragon Theatre (currently running in previews)
Sept. 22, The Maids at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (currently running in previews)
Sept. 23, The Odd Couple at Soulpepper Theatre with previews from Sept. 22
Sept. 23, The Great American Trailer Park Musical at Hart House Theatre

In Eastern Ontario
Sept. 20, West Moon Street at Kanata Theatre (Ottawa)

For all the theatre currently playing across Ontario, and information for theatres on how to add/update your listing, visit the ONstage theatre listings on the Theatre Ontario website.

Friday 16 September 2011

7 Days In Ontario Theatre

Migrations
Highlights From The Bulletin Board
  • Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre is holding two Master Classes in October – The Director’s Toolkit with Liesl Tommy (1st and 2nd) and Go Ahead! Produce It Yourself with Julie Tepperman and Jacoba Knaapen (5th and 6th)
  • Ottawa Little Theatre has four workshops scheduled: WHMIS in the Theatre (Sep. 17), Stage Fencing (Sep. 24-25) , Sound (Oct. 1), and Lighting (Oct. 22)
  • Deadline to apply for Buddies In Bad Times’ Young Creators Unit in Toronto is Sep. 23 – the Young Creators Unit is for queer-identified artists, age 25 and under, seeking to develop and perform their own solo performance piece
  • Deadline for the Ottawa Little Theatre One-Act Playwriting Competition is Oct. 14; please note that there is an entry fee for this competition
Check out all the latest postings of workshops, classified ads, recognition opportunities and more from Theatre Ontario’s Bulletin Board

Assembled by Brandon Moore, Communications Coordinator

Wednesday 14 September 2011

My 2011 Summer Theatre Travels

by Tim Chapman, Professional Theatre Coordinator

As usual I have been making the rounds of summer theatres which belong to the Association of Summer Theatres ‘Round Ontario (ASTRO).   It is so much fun to get out of the city and see the vast variety of theatre in this province.

Dance Legends at Drayton Entertainment
The first out-of-town show I saw this summer was Dance Legends at Drayton Festival Theatre.  I love show dancing and this show offered a history of the great American choreographers and dancers.  And it went beyond show dancing to include ballet, modern dance, and many of the memorable dancers of the movies and the music industry.  It was a big show with fourteen dancers, two singers, and four musicians—something few theatres in Ontario could afford to produce.   I loved it and so did my brother-in-law who joined me.  In fact, he loved it so much he saw it a second time with my sister.  And she loved it too.  The dancing was fantastic and I thought the whole show was first-rate the way it was put together and produced.

Next I saw the first two of three shows at the Shaw Festival this summer: Shaw’s Heartbreak House, and Drama at Inish, a gentle Irish comedy of the 1930’s.  Shaw recently announced that Inish’s run has been so successful that the run has been extended.  Heartbreak is one of George Bernard Shaw’s best plays and I had not seen it since Christopher Newton’s seminal 1985 production at the Festival.  Christopher took it on again and it was a fascinating re-visit with the always superb Shaw company of actors and designers.  Later in the summer I caught up with the much lauded Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  What a triumph!  Director Eda Holmes has mined terrific performances from the entire cast.  It was thrilling to see this Tennessee Williams classic so superbly realized.

In early July I was down to see John Gray’s new musical Amelia.  Festival Players of Prince Edward County produced the premiere of the show last summer directed by Artistic Director Sarah Phillips.  They revived it this summer prior to the production going to the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa in September.  It is a three-hander musical about the iconic flyer Amelia Earhart, a companion piece to Gray’s Canadian classic, Billy Bishop Goes to War.  Sarah and the cast, including Eliza Jane Scott in the title role, do a bang-up job delivering a fine production.  I also journeyed to Perth in Eastern Ontario for the first time to visit the Classic Theatre Festival now in its second season.  Artistic Director Laurel Smith has carved out an interesting mandate to produce the classic hits of Broadway and the London Stage.  In her first two seasons she has concentrated on shows from the 1940’s and 1950’s.  I saw Bell, Book and Candle by John van Druten.  You may remember it from the 1950’s Jimmy Stewart/Kim Novak movie.  I thought the show worked well in the summer theatre context.  It drew a good crowd the performance I saw, and they appeared to be totally absorbed with this pleasing production.

Theatre Collingwood opened its season in July with Maryjane Cruise’s Separate Beds.  I had never seen the play, though it has received over twenty-five productions since it was first produced at Theatre Aquarius in 2002.  Arlene Mazerolle and Brian Young adeptly stick-handle the many laughs in this comedy about married life.  The show definitely got Collingwood’s summer season off to a good start.  But I am sorry I missed Dan Needle’s—author of the Wingfield plays—new multi-character show, Fair Play, which premiered at Collingwood in August.

In late July I went out to see Humber River Shakespeare’s outdoor touring show A Comedy of Errors.  Well, twenty minutes into the show, it started pouring rain and the performance had to be cancelled.  Unfortunately, I was leaving for a holiday in the U.S. a few days later and I never had another opportunity to see the production.  Too bad—the show got off to a promising start.

The Cavan Blazers at 4th Line Theatre.
Photo by Wayne Eardley
I made it out to Millbrook to see the opening of 4th Line’s The Cavan Blazers in early August.  I had never seen it before.  It was 4th Line’s inaugural production in 1992, and they have produced it another four times—the last time in 2004.  I had always wanted to see it as I knew there were characters riding real horses in the show: perfect for outdoor theatre.  It’s a monumental undertaking with a cast of nearly sixty (led by Richard Greenblatt, Edward Belanger and Artistic Director Robert Winslow) and a gripping 19th century local story.  It is the type of big show which 4th Line produces so superbly.  They just announced that the 2011 20th anniversary season was its most successful ever, with record-breaking attendance from across Ontario and as far away as Quebec, Manitoba, B.C. and the U.S.

Derek Ritschel is in his first season as Artistic Director of Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover so I really wanted to see a show there.  Derek just finished directing the Norm Foster classic The Melville Boys.  I could not get down to that show, but I was able to see Uwe Meyer’s Dating by the Book.  (Uwe is the Artistic Director of the Port Hope Festival Theatre.)  It may be the first ‘viagra’ comedy I have seen.  It is very funny, and Derek had told me it had been the hit of the Lighthouse season thus far, with two productions remaining.

Peter Van Gestel as Macbeth at Driftwood Theatre.
Photo by David Spowart.
In Withrow Park in Riverdale, about a 15-minute walk from my house, I caught Driftwood Theatre’s touring Macbeth.  Artistic Director Jeremy Smith consistently offers interesting and well-produced outdoor productions of Shakespeare, and this production continued that history with an exciting, smartly-executed show.  Driftwood has been coming to Withrow Park for a number of years but I have never seen such a large crowd as this year.  It was well-deserved.

I still hope to get to Stratford and I will be going to Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque later in September but, thus far, that concludes my summer theatre travels in 2011.  My colleagues at Theatre Ontario, John Goddard and Brandon Moore, also traveled to some other ASTRO theatres this past summer.  John enjoyed shows at the Blyth Festival, the Port Hope Festival Theatre, the Orillia Opera House where LaughOutLoud Productions produced their second summer season and at the Straford Shakespeare Festival.  Brandon went down to Port Colborne to see Showboat Festival Theatre’s 2 Across, a charming production of an American comedy of crosswords and romance, directed by Artistic Director Thom Currie.

Another summer season is coming to a close.  But our artists will continue to “trod the boards” across this province.  From Niagara-on-the-Lake to Bobcaygeon, from Morrisburg to Sarnia, from Haliburton to Port Stanley, there will always be summer theatre close by.

Monday 12 September 2011

ONstage Openings for the week of September 12

In South Central Ontario
Sept. 16, Real Estate at The Curtain Club (Richmond Hill) with a preview on Sep. 15

In Southwestern Ontario
Sept. 13, Mama's Country Record Collection at Lighthouse Festival Theatre (Port Dover)
Sept. 15, The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at Galt Little Theatre (Cambridge)
Sept. 15, Perfect Wedding at Elmira Theatre Company

In Toronto
Sept. 13, MacHomer at Factory Theatre
Sept. 13, In The Next Room or the vibrator play at Tarragon Theatre in previews
Sept. 14, The Tale Of A Town - Queen West at Theatre Passe Muraille
Sept. 17, The Maids at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in previews

In Eastern Ontario
Sept. 16, Amelia: The Girl Who Wants To Fly at Great Canadian Theatre Company (Ottawa) with previews from Sept. 13

For all the theatre currently playing across Ontario, and information for theatres on how to add/update your listing, visit the ONstage theatre listings on the Theatre Ontario website.

Wednesday 7 September 2011

ONstage Openings for the week of September 6

In Eastern Ontario
Sept. 10, The Kitchen Witches at Upper Canada Playhouse (Morrisburg) with previews from Sept. 8

In South Central Ontario
Sept. 8, A Life In The Theatre at West End Studio Theatre (Oakville)

In Southwestern Ontario
Sept. 6, Rhinestone Cowgirl at Victoria Playhouse Petrolia
Sept. 7, Who's Under Where? at Drayton Entertainment: Drayton Festival Theatre with a matinee preview on Sept. 7
Sept. 8, Blue Suede Shoes: Memories Of The King at Drayton Entertainment: Schoolhouse Theatre (St. Jacobs) with previews from Sept. 7

In Toronto
Sept. 8, Harvey at Scarborough Players

For all the theatre currently playing across Ontario, and information for theatres on how to add/update your listing, visit the ONstage theatre listings on the Theatre Ontario website.

Friday 2 September 2011

7 Days In Ontario Theatre

Conversations
From The Wire
Migrations
  • Ron Lenyk is the new CEO of the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga
TO Toasts!
Highlights From The Bulletin Board
  • Don’t forget: submission deadline for the 33rd Annual Rhubarb Festival at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre is today
  • Deadline to apply to audition for the b current rAiz’n Ensemble of emerging artists in Toronto is September 7
  • Talk Is Free Theatre in Barrie is now inviting applications for their OAC Creators Reserve; they have two deadlines with the first on September 30
Check out all the latest postings of workshops, classified ads, recognition opportunities and more from Theatre Ontario’s Bulletin Board

Assembled by Brandon Moore, Communications Coordinator