Kick & Push Festival Archive

An empty auditorium's rows of seats. One man stands at the top.

A Wordless Wonder: ‘Le Concierge (The Caretaker)’

  • Centre culturel Frontenac
  • Kick & Push Festival
  • Review

The Caretaker walks through the empty halls of a high school, paying no mind to the 20 people following him. He occasionally pauses to drink from the fountain, or to tune his radio to the right station. All the while, myself and 19 others fan out around him, taking in the different angles of this Caretaker’s nightly routine of monotonous and essential work. Le Concierge (The Caretaker) opened on Thursday […]

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En conversation avec: Daniele Bartolini, Christoph Ibrahim, et Vincent Leblanc-Beaudoin

  • Centre culturel Frontenac
  • Interview
  • Kick & Push Festival

To read this article in English, click here.  Daniele Bartolini, Christoph Ibrahim, et Vincent Leblanc-Beaudoin forment l’équipe de création à l’origine de Le concierge, spectacle qui a inauguré le festival Kick & Push hier soir. Tracey Guptill, directrice artistique du Centre culturel Frontenac, s’est récemment entretenue avec eux pour discuter de théâtre immersif, de création in situ, et du pouvoir éphémère du silence. Cet entretien a été révisé pour en […]

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In Conversation With: Daniele Bartolini, Christoph Ibrahim, et Vincent Leblanc-Beaudoin

  • Centre culturel Frontenac
  • Interview
  • Kick & Push Festival

Pour lire cet article en français, cliquez ici. Daniele Bartolini, Christoph Ibrahim, and Vincent Leblanc-Beaudoin are the creative team behind Le Concierge, which opened the Kick & Push Festival last night. Tracey Guptill, the Artistic Director of Centre culturel Frontenac, sat down with them recently to chat about immersive theatre, site specific work, and the ephemeral power of silence.  This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  What a […]

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Le concierge: mes impressions 

  • Centre culturel Frontenac
  • Kick & Push Festival
  • News

Veuillez noter que cet article contient des spoilers pour Le concierge. J’ai eu la chance et le bonheur de vivre l’expérience immersive qu’est la production de Le concierge à deux reprises: lors de sa création à Toronto en mars 2023, puis à Ottawa en février 2024.  Je vous partage une texte que j’avais envoyé à Vincent Leblanc-Beaudouin suite à la représentation d’Ottawa. Salut Vincent, Je serais curieux de discuter avec […]

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tk fringe banner

TK Fringe 2025: A Festival in Review

  • Festival
  • Kick & Push Festival
  • Review
  • TK Fringe

When the TK Fringe began this year and I received my press pass I found myself thinking: “How much can I abuse this power?” Each of the KTA’s three summer critics were assigned five shows to review, so I knew not everything would be covered and I would not be assigned to see every show I was interested in. So rather than simply abuse the power of the press pass […]

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Erin Kennedy: Where Wires Meet Wilderness

  • Festival
  • Interview
  • Kick & Push Festival

From the depths of kelp forests to the red soil at the Mars Desert Research Station, Erin Kennedy’s robots have tackled some of the toughest terrains out there. This robot inventor and analogue astronaut has designed robots that can be worn, pick up trash, collect sea urchins, and even conduct research in space. Now, Kennedy is bringing her newest robot, a motion-sensing butterfly, to the Tett Centre for her special […]

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Poster for 'Love in the First Degree' in The Kick & Push Festival. The poster has the title, dates, location, slogan, logos of 6 AM Productions, the Tett Centre, The Kick & Push Festival.

‘Love in the First Degree’: A Killer Improvized Courtroom

  • 6 AM Productions
  • Festival
  • Kick & Push Festival
  • Review

A beautiful wedding has been ruined by the murder of the groom. The crime has eight suspects, and rather than bother a judge with the issue, Vic Vanderspank (Shanique Peart), the evening’s host, has assembled a collection of jurors (the audience) to decide by vote. The jury is not voting on who is guilty though: the trial is broken up into rounds with someone being voted off as innocent each […]

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Poster for 'The Open Road' in TK Fringe. Poster includes the location, title, TK Fringe logo, The Kick & Push logo, playwright, and small blurb about the show.

Next Stop: Toad Hall!

  • Bottle Tree Productions
  • Festival
  • Kick & Push Festival
  • Review
  • TK Fringe

Whether you are familiar with the original novel by Kenneth Grahame, the stop motion film, the Disney animated short film, or the more recent 2016 musical, it is hard to deny The Wind in the Willows as one of the greats in children’s literature. The adventures of Mole (Liv Hendy) and Rat (Essie Latimer-Scahill) as they try to help the infamous Toad (Kai Kerr) out of his nasty habits have […]

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Teacher’s Trials and Tribulations in ‘Detention’

  • Festival
  • Kick & Push Festival
  • Review
  • TK Fringe

Being a teacher is difficult: parents demanding the world for their children regardless of the effort being put in on the student’s end, a complete lack of social life because of all the time needed for marking, and to top it all off there’s the endless torment of your unenthusiastic pupils. Samantha Twiggs (Eleanor Daly) embodies all of these struggles and shows what happens when just about everything goes wrong for […]

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‘1969’: A Multimedia Hitchhiking Glimpse Into the Past

  • Festival
  • Kick & Push Festival
  • Review
  • TK Fringe

It’s 1969, the Vietnam war is at its peak with more than 500,000 American soldiers overseas and to protest the war and advocate for peace, John Lennon and Yoko Ono are staging a bed-in at a Montreal hotel. Enter Micheline (Lilli McDonald) and Suzie (Gia Silva), two Canadian teens trying to hitchhike their way to Montreal to allegedly join the protest efforts. They soon meet Sammy (Kieran Chenier), a young […]

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Making ‘Life More Sweet’ in Kingston

  • Festival
  • Kick & Push Festival
  • Review
  • TK Fringe

With soft, calming classical music drifting through the venue, your eyes are drawn to a single tent pitched at the center of the stage. At first, nothing happens, then a single sock pokes out from the slightly opened zipper. Then another sock pops out, tied to the first, followed by a folded lawn chair. Suddenly a tennis ball flies out of the tent, then a crumpled newspaper right after it, […]

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Poster for 'A Play We Just Wrote - Just Now' in TK Fringe. Poster includes the location, some dates and times, title, TK Fringe logo, The Kick & Push logo, box office phone number and web page, and the creators of the show.

A Play They Wrote Just Now… And They Absolutely Nailed It!

  • Festival
  • Kick & Push Festival
  • Review
  • TK Fringe

I knew I was in for a good time as soon as Hillary Yaas strutted on stage in a long Cruella De Vil-type coat and the biggest, most colourful wig I have ever seen. Co-creator Selena Vyle calls out to her from the stairs of the Baby Grand, and from the moment they are on stage together, the whole room feels alive. Their latest show A Play We Just Wrote […]

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