Holly Hebert — Kingston Theatre Alliance

The classic saying is, “The show must go on!” Well, so must the review… sort of.  With our small team at the KTA, unfortunately when one of us is struck with sickness, there’s a bit of reworking to be done. This was the case last week, just as we were about to review Theatre Kingston’s production of Boy Beatle. However, we luckily managed to work out a short interview through […]

The tenth day of the tenth month. What better time to read about the Kick & Push Festival’s tenth season?  Although summer may be long over by now, the KTA has just finished wrapping up the necessary paperwork that must come with the annual Kick & Push Festival. As my colleague and Artistic Producer of the Kick & Push Liam Karry recently closed the books on this year’s busy run, […]

Participating and playing in this year’s WritersFest is Jeff McGilton, a multi-faceted artist who Kingston has the pleasure of engaging this week as he and Mariah (Mo) Horner will be facilitating a workshop in the September festival titled Participatory Play. Earlier this year, Horner and Jenn Stephenson published Play: Dramaturgies of Participation and the workshop—a TeensWrite Studio event—will guide teens through concepts in the book, mainly focussing on participatory theatre. […]

It’s the last show of the 2024 Kick & Push Festival—Basement Girl, a play about PhD student Jovana navigating her new life in Canada while dealing with some eerie sounds in her apartment. Director, playwright, and actor behind Jovana, Bojana Babić was kind enough to sit down with me this past week for a Zoom interview about the show.  This interview has been edited for clarity and length.  Could you […]

Artistic work that’s been a part of the Kick & Push Festival for several years now, the Cedar Island Residency returns for 2024 and this year’s creations will be shared today. By collaborating with Parks Canada to make this residency possible, the work on Cedar Island began just under one week ago on August 12th. With a busy past few days of creation, myself and B. Solomon—a creator in the […]

The 2024 Kick & Push Festival is well underway with their upcoming closing weekend ending on a bang. With just over half the programming still remaining in its final days, wonderfully fabulous artists and their innovative creations will be leaving their mark on the Tett Centre, Cedar Island, City Park, and more. Amongst them is Seymour Irons—a man who wears many artistic hats but we’ll dive into that later—and his […]

Kingston’s annual Festival of Live Digital Arts (FOLDA) is once again on the horizon (and no, that is not a pun directed at HORIZON 360°—a film in this year’s lineup). As a hectic week is underway for the team and busy schedules abound in summer months, I conducted an eight-question email interview with Co-Curator Michael Wheeler about an intensive run alongside FOLDA in partnership with Ingenuity Labs: The StartUp. This […]

A group of young artists puts on a musical about young artists in a festival for young artists. Blue Canoe Productions and the 2024 Juvenis Festival present Rent, directed by Dylan Chenier.  Jonathan Larson’s Rent, loosely based on Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, tells the story of young artists as they traverse through gentrification, love, and the HIV and AIDS epidemic present in the 80s and 90s. With New York City […]

Kingston’s annual Juvenis Festival run by Blue Canoe Productions is underway and this year’s lineup of shows includes the premiere of Shay O’Brien’s Unknown Caller. The fourth year Queen’s University student has not only written the hour-long piece but is directing the show as well. After reading its mysterious description, my attention piqued and once I was put in contact with O’Brien, an interview was born. I hopped on Zoom […]

When it comes to theatre criticism, there are dozens of different opinions about its pros and cons. Of course readers have their valued takes but if there’s ever a disconnect that draws a line, it’s usually between the folks writing and publishing a review, and the folks involved in the production. Recently, the Kingston Theatre Alliance (KTA) received an email about a review and subsequent editor’s article, both written by […]

You’ve heard of iPhone, iPod, iPad, but what about iWorld?  Kingston Meistersingers’ production of We Will Rock You!, directed by Rachael McDonald, is a jukebox musical with songs by Queen and book by Ben Elton. Bringing a collection of rock hits to Domino Theatre’s stage, the show flashes forward hundreds of years into the future: the world is run by Globalsoft, a music corporation that has destroyed and banned all […]

The prompt: write a play about solar eclipses.  The students of Queen’s University (QU)’s DRAM 251 class were tasked with this in their 2023 fall semester. 24 plays were written as a result and seven have gone on to be dramaturged by the students of QU’s DRAM 339 class this 2024 winter semester. But the collaboration doesn’t end here. The seven plays will have staged readings tomorrow, March 25th, 2024 as […]