Interview — Kingston Theatre Alliance

Mercury is in retrograde at Kingston Fringe this August as the stars collide in Death of a Starman, starring real life astrologer Zaid Bustami. I had the pleasure of chatting with co-writer and director of the show, Kay Komizara, about toxic masculinity, storytelling, and of course, the stars. Komizara has been a creator for the last 11 years, having worked in Victoria, Montreal, and is now touring Ontario for Death […]

Lucy Darling is a world-renowned socialite whose dazzling stage magic and improvisational comedy will be gracing Theatre Kingston next weekend.  While Ms. Darling was much too busy to meet me for an interview—and, really, can you blame her? She has places to be!—I recently had the opportunity to speak with Carisa Hendrix, the performer and magician behind the persona. After a delightful potation of Lucy Darling YouTube content, I met […]

Shanique Peart is a Kingston-based multidisciplinary artist who mixes performance and media, with a focus on dance and photography. She’s also a delightful person to chat with—we met for the first time last week, and within minutes it felt like catching up with an old friend.  With two artist residencies and a festival performance around the corner, Peart has a full summer of creative projects planned. As we sat in […]

Alone at last? Not so for the characters of Left Alone at Domino Theatre. Domino’s annual one-act play festival, ‘Come Play by the Lake,’ will be staged July 5-6, 2024, featuring four one-act plays. Left Alone by J. Wes Secord begins the performances this year, and I had the opportunity to sit down with Secord and learn about their experience writing and staging the play.  This interview has been edited […]

Summer solstice is just around the corner, and the sun has been bragging about it all week long. When it’s unbearably hot out, Skeleton Park (officially McBurney Park) is one of my favourite places to seek refuge—the trees offer generous shade, and there’s usually a light breeze to cut through the humidity that clings to the lakeside city air.  It’s no coincidence that, on the longest days of the year, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

You know how the story goes: boy meets girl, girl meets Satan, Satan tempts girl, girl eats fruit, boy eats fruit, humankind becomes doomed, and for some reason it’s all girl’s fault. Or something like that. Adam and Eve’s fall from innocence has been told and retold across millennia. Perhaps the best-known English-language version (and certainly the one most often assigned to university students) is John Milton’s 1667 epic poem, […]

What comes to mind when you think of audience participation? No, for real, tell me.  Don’t want to? Okay, I’ll go first. When I think of participation, the little sing-song voice in my head starts humming Al Simmons’ “Don’t Make Me Sing Along”. This tune was rattling around in my mind when I met with theatre scholars Dr. Jenn Stephenson and Mariah (Mo) Horner to talk about their research project, […]

In early February, I sat down with Stephanie Fung, previous editor of the Kingston Theatre Alliance (KTA)’s Performance Blog to ask what’s up with them?!  I met Steph in the summer of 2021, and was immediately drawn in by their simultaneously cool and perceptive nature. They were a mentor for me as I was learning more about theatre criticism in Toronto Fringe’s New Young Reviewers (NYR) Program, and we stayed […]