Photo of Haley Sarfeld

Haley Sarfeld

Current Contributor

Haley Sarfeld is a singer, songwriter, poet, playwright, composer, collager, cruciverbalist, voice actor, and theatre critic living in Katarokwi/Kingston. She recently completed her MA in Cultural Studies at Queen's University. Her debut radio play, Half Past Lunchtime, aired on CFRC in 2022 as part of the Shortwave Theatre Festival. These days, Haley is working on The Lindworm's Cabaret, an upcoming musical adaptation of a folk tale about love, gender, and onions. Photo by Cecily Taylor.

Articles by Haley

Photo of Arden Rogalsky holding their pink book titled, 'FREAK FAIRY TALES.'

Master of mixed emotions: Princess Towers’ ‘Freak Fairy Tales’

  • Artist
  • Interview

“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 […]

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Seven performers dressed as skeletons on a dimly lit stage. It is the cast of Everybody produced by DAN School of Drama and Music.

‘Everybody’ is flippant and fatally Funny

  • Queen's University
  • Review

An immersive student production transforms the Isabel Bader Centre’s studio theatre into a site of divine reckoning. Branden Jacob-Jenkins’ Everybody is a contemporary adaptation of the 15th-century morality play Everyman. A popular genre in medieval and early Tudor theatre, morality plays typically feature personifications of abstract concepts alongside angels, demons, and an ordinary human protagonist. In Everyman, one man—representing all of humanity—goes on an allegorical journey through the afterlife, addressing […]

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Photo of Grapevine Theatre's onstage production of 'Harmonia.'

Spectacular on many levels: Grapevine Theatre’s ‘Harmonia’

  • Review

The perennial City of Wine offers its first full bloom with Harmonia, a tale of forbidden love between a goddess and a mortal. Harmonia is the first in the nine-play cycle by local playwright Ned Dickens, which the Grapevine Theatre Project plans to produce as a series over the next five years. After an enormous effort by a network of over 300 theatre lovers, Harmonia is the magnificent fruit of […]

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‘These Shining Lives’ is worth a Watch

  • Domino Theatre
  • Review

1922: Catherine, Frances, Charlotte, and Pearl are the four shining faces of the factory workers at the Radium Dial Company. For eight hours a day, they paint tiny numbers on pocket watch after pocket watch, laughing and talking as they dip their brushes in radium-laced paint.  When she first joins the company, Catherine is put off by her coworkers’ habit of licking their brushes to make the ends pointy, but […]

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An Irish flag with a red maple leaf in the centre. Below a girl rides her bike. Text reads: "Theatre Kingston EEN By Rosemary Doyle"

Help, I’m turning into my grandmother! EEN’s journey through Generations

  • Review
  • Theatre Kingston

It’s a classic clash of generations: Canadian high school grad Tanya arrives in Ireland and is flabbergasted by her grandmother’s seemingly backwards lifestyle. Mary, Tanya’s Nan, is set in her ways— she prefers to cover the electric stovetop with a tablecloth and cook her meals on a fire, so-called progress be damned. Over a long summer filled with uphill bike rides, intercultural misadventures, and cups of tea with a mysterious […]

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Photo of Rosemary Doyle.

“Like having a perfect conversation,” Rosemary Doyle on Playwriting

  • Artist
  • Interview
  • Theatre Kingston

Last weekend, I sat down with playwright Rosemary Doyle to learn about her writing process. We were joined at the kitchen table by a vivacious three-year-old who had endless questions for me (who am I, why did I ring the doorbell, why does my skirt have sparkles, can I twirl, can I watch her twirl, too?!). Faced with this hard-hitting preschool journalism, my conversation with Doyle was conducted in quick […]

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A shadow of a hand holding a small broom. Text reads: "Birdbone Theatre performs Broom Dance A shadow puppet show in concert with Chanter La Pomme Accordian and hurdy-gurdy ensemble performing Neo-trad and traditional European dance music Friday February 17 7-9pm 191 King St E Admission at door $20 - $40 & kids FREE"

A sweeping spectacle: Birdbone Theatre’s Broom Dance

  • Kingston Theatre Alliance
  • Review

A combination of shadow puppetry, singing, hurdy-gurdy drones, cackles, moans, and good old-fashioned solstice sorcery brings a crowded living room to near silence on a cold December night. This is Birdbone Theatre’s Broom Dance, a show that has enchanted me twice this winter. The first time was at the Department of Illumination’s Firelight Lantern Festival in November, followed by a house show in Kingston’s Skeleton Park neighbourhood just before the […]

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