Kingston Theatre Alliance

On my first day in Toronto, I lugged my suitcase along Dundas and sat down at Oxtail Pho to chat with playwright and lyricist Nam Nguyen. Nguyen’s musical A Perfect Bowl of Pho (book and lyrics by Nguyen, music by Wilfred Moeschter) premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2022 and is coming to the Kick & Push Festival this August.  In the meantime, his new show CAEZUS (music by […]

Sarah Waisvisz is a playwright, dramaturge, multi-disciplinary performer, and professor at the Dan School of Drama and Music. Her plays include Monstrous, a solo script about the Afro-Caribbean-diaspora experience and mixed-race identity, and Heartlines, a two-act play about queer-Jewish activists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. I reached Waisvisz over Zoom recently for a short but lively conversation. We spoke about her upcoming play Double Helix, her work as a professor, […]

An exceptional union of community and arts is a phrase I would use to describe Skeleton Park Arts Festival (SPAF). The Festival took place in Kingston from Wednesday June 21st to Sunday June 25th with the bulk of the festival happening on Saturday, June 24 and Sunday, June 25 in Skeleton Park (shocking). I was unfortunately unable to attend the Wednesday to Friday festivities but I did attend on Saturday […]

“A cavalcade of contemporary artworks, visualizations, and soundscapes inspired by our connection to water,” as described by Hydra: The Spirit of Water’s website. Calliope Collective‘s Hydra was performed at Kingston Mills Lock Station which is on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee, and the Huron-Wendat. Hydra is a multi-art show with beautiful large-scale art, floating giant puppets, music, circus acts, and community. It encourages the need to honour […]

Sewing together tumult and tenderness, A Stitch follows Sandra and her husband Roy, who suffers from dementia. The show begins when their morning is disrupted by a criminal on the loose, Jean, who breaks into their house to escape the police, and begins holding them hostage. The show shines in portraying Roy’s (Jason Bowen) dementia. He delivers his lines exceptionally—the short pauses to think and the stuttering sold his character. […]

The theatre is dark. A single video game controller sits under a spotlight in front of a projector screen. With no rules, and in no established order, audience members take turns leaving their seats and approaching the stage. One at a time, these brave players take control of asses.masses. Over several hours, a story of revolution, carnage, reincarnation, and collective care unfolds.  Presented by the Festival of Live Digital Arts […]

How would you feel if someone invaded your home—a place meant for comfort and security? Home is a solo performance starring Beau Dixon, performed at the Isabel Bader Centre and was a part of the Festival of Live Digital Art (FOLDA). In Home, Beau Dixon recalls his personal experience of a home invasion and how it changed him. He describes and recreates important moments of his life, but we are […]

Imagine being in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb dropped. Now imagine having no way to hear it. Scored in Silence is an excellent solo show, starring Deaf performer, Chisato Minamimura, and was performed as part of the Festival of Live Digital Art (FOLDA) at the Isabel Bader Centre. The performance recounts World War II and the effects of the atomic bomb on Japan, but more specifically how it affected the […]

“VOTES FOR WOMEN” read the posters, props, and pre-show backdrop at the Kingston Grand Theatre. The Lancashire Lass is a new musical by composer/lyricist/librettist Leslie Arden. Commissioned by the Dan School of Drama and Music in 2019 and workshopped in 2021 and 2022, the show had its official premiere this year in the Watershed Festival. Directed by Tim Fort, The Lancashire Lass recounts the women’s suffrage movement in 20th-century Britain […]

“All families are dysfunctional,” proclaims the poster for Assumption: a Comedy. “Some are just better at hiding it.”  Assumption is a new play co-written by Jo McAlpine, Christie Jefferson, Cathy LeSage, and Anna Sudac. Presented by the Not So Amateur Amateurs and directed by Anna Sudac, this play was brought to life under a unique set of circumstances. Starting with a spontaneous idea by McAlpine and Jefferson to co-write a […]

Leslie Arden is a renowned Canadian composer, lyricist, and librettist. In 2019, she was commissioned to write a new musical, The Lancashire Lass, for the DAN School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University. First shown in an online preview in 2021, and then in concert in 2022, The Lancashire Lass is having its fully staged debut at this year’s Watershed Festival on May 26th and 27th at the Kingston […]

This conversation with Sarah Emtage and Shannon Kingston is the second installment of a two-part interview. To learn more about these playwrights and read the beginning of the interview, click here. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  Something that I found interesting about Shortwave 2022 is that the three of us—quite coincidentally, I swear this is the first time we’re sitting down as a group—had similar threads […]