Kingston Theatre Alliance

The Kick & Push Festival opens on a hopeful note with Pandora in the Box at the Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning. Transforming the Tett’s Rehearsal Hall into a maze of giant comic panels, this immersive work by cartoonist Lorena Torres Loaiza revisits the story of Pandora from Greek mythology to explore the nature of hope. Through a blend of real-world and virtual spaces, Pandora in the Box follows […]

Recently, I had a chance to sit down with performer Alex Boese and director Michael Catlin to chat about their upcoming play Birthmarks, which will be playing at Kingston Fringe. The play was written by Canadian playwright Alexandria Haber and follows Alex’s character, Kate. Birthmarks follows Kate as she tries to get over a tragic loss in her life while also trying to reconcile the relationship with her mother whom […]

Myths, musicals, Marvel movies, and the Mabinogion: Jesse Vriend is in pondering mode, and I’m along for the ride. It’s a Monday afternoon in early July and we’re sitting at Mallo, a café on Bathurst with ribbons of neon lights on the ceiling and a cute little cactus on the table.  I met Vriend in 2017 through a creative writing course at Queen’s. For a semester, I took great joy […]

What do you do when all your friends are married and you’re perpetually single? Inspired Productions (with Slackwood Productions) explores this dilemma in their inaugural show, Company, at The Spire this week. First produced in 1970, Company is a concept musical about marriage, dating, and divorce by composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and librettist George Furth. Produced by Mae Whalen with stage direction by Susan Del Mei and Matthew Davis and vocal […]

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 […]