Kingston Theatre Alliance

“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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Smoky, sensual, and unsettling—welcome to Cabaret. This weekend, St. Lawrence College, showcasing students from the Music Theatre Performance program, presents the classic musical in all its doomed, debauched glory. Set in interwar Berlin, Joe Masteroff’s Cabaret (music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb) depicts the insidious creep of fascism into everyday life. Based on the play by John Van Drulen, which in turn is based on the work […]

“I’ve never felt comfortable performing anything super direct, like a normal love song. But a song about an inanimate object can find an oblique way into real feelings. These songs take very minor things and put them in big, mythical terms. I like that challenge—what’s the smallest thing you can write about and still make it compelling?” This is Arden Rogalsky, songwriter and lead performer of Kingston folk-rock collective Princess […]

What is the Critic Looking For? What a loaded question! Let me ask you one. What makes great theatre? I’ll even tell you the answer.  Artists.  You want artists to be there. Artists, technicians, administrators, engineers, carpenters, bartenders, ushers, whatever their job title, you want these masters of their craft there. You want them in there doing what they love to do; making theatre happen. Ideally, you’ll find artists who […]