Kingston Theatre Alliance

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 […]

Sarah Emtage is a poet, playwright, sculptor, and library technician in Kingston. She is the author of the radio play The Sound Castle (2020) and its two-part sequel, Jabberwocky and The Listeners (2022), which were produced for the Shortwave Theatre Festival. Shannon Kingston is a Kingston-born playwright currently studying children’s media at Centennial College. Her radio play Garden Of Edith (2022) was produced for the Shortwave Festival, and her previous […]

At Hilda’s house, nobody uses the front door. Set in 1956, Hilda’s Yard follows an afternoon of mild chaos as empty nesters Hilda and Sam Fluck find their adult children hopping the fence in an unannounced—and uninvited—return home. Jokes are made, relatives are nagged, and heartfelt conversations are had. Hilda’s Yard, a comedy by Norm Foster, premiered in New Brunswick in 2012. This month, it appears at Kingston’s Domino Theatre […]

This review mentions sexual violence. You can tell a show is going to be a riot when the venue posts a list of what not to bring. If you’re going to the Brockville Arts Centre this weekend, their website has a long catalogue of forbidden items, including rice, dry toast, toilet paper, open flames, confetti, and supersoakers. If this list sounds familiar, you might already be humming the “Time Warp.” […]

I have a terrible secret: until Friday night, I had never seen Funny Girl. Not the show, not the movie. I’d never even borrowed the CD from the library, which I did with every other cast album I could get my hands on as a show tune-saturated tween. I have a foggy middle school recollection of hearing Lea Michele sing “Don’t Rain on My Parade” in Glee, but that’s it. […]

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