Storefront Fringe Festival — Kingston Theatre Alliance

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 […]

Let’s be real, life has been stressful because of a certain pandemic and we are all in desperate need of fun. For me, that fun was manifested into ChroFATica, a lyrical parody of Lady Gaga’s Chromatica. Featuring topics like NBC’s Superstore and actor John Candy, which I swear makes sense in context, I was treated to a wonderful production produced by and starring the hilarious Hillary Yass – a drag performer from the House of Lix in Toronto. Truly, […]

PAPILLON uses the unexpected to create new meaning and keep things feeling fresh. In a world filled with unpredictability, it can feel like at times the only constant is change itself. Exploring this concept onstage can lead to different forms of improvisation, which tests performers and adds to the live-ness of a performance. For PAPILLON, a high-powered, experimental movement piece that was presented at the Storefront Fringe Festival and supported […]

Delivering commendable storytelling and attention to detail, Through the Fairy Circle offers something for all ages. While the grassy stretch we have come to know as Wolfe Island offers the people of Kingston a beautiful daytrip, a sandy beach and one heck of a bakery, one performance at the Storefront Fringe Festival sees it also serving as theatrical inspiration.

Charismatic and captivating to a fault, Mark Cassidy and Hume Baugh provide an escapist nostalgia trip accompanied and magnified by a veritable smorgasbord of 70s hits. Allistonian Brockvillian Dionysian sports a jigsaw puzzle of a story that isn’t so much a cohesive narrative, but rather a man flicking through periods of his childhood as he quite literally takes a trip down memory lane to the motel that shaped him into the person he is today. Allistonian Brockvillian Dionysian is Presented by Threshold Theatre and Theatre Kingston Storefront Fringe Festival, supported in part by the Kick and Push Festival. This love letter to the playgrounds of wonder that were the local hotel and motel serves as the bittersweet farewell to a childhood that lives on in memory. 

n’s Storefront Fringe, supported in part by the Kick & Push Festival, with their misguided attempt at existential absurdity created and directed by Tyler Mathews. Although Cranz and Bernardo goes places, and with fervour, it does so in no specific direction.

Jim Garrard and SALONTheatre deliver a textbook performance of Krapp’s Last Tape worthy of Beckett’s legacy. Needless to say, Jim Garrard had notable names to compete with in his portrayal of Krapp, and yet, he more than held his own in the scope of the play’s notoriety.

As the play finds its narrative structure in Maria’s three-card reading, I find it suitable, being a Tarot reader myself, to provide a three-card response.

Blue Canoe Productions presents their newest work Sharing Stories: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. While there continues to be phenomenal creativity in digital performance, with this production, there is nothing quite like watching actors work together to tell a story in a shared space.

The Harrowing of Brimstone McReedy is Eldritch Theatre’s modern take on Marlowe’s own Doctor Faustus while being infinitely more engaging and entertaining for the modern audience. Partnered with Kick & Push, Theatre Kingston’s Storefront Fringe is certainly kicking off the festival with a strong show.

The Harrowing of Brimstone McReedy welcomes you into the room with a few carnival games—one in particular, ‘fast and loose,’ asks audience members to make bets on a piece of rope. Pick a side, any side, and if the knot tightens around your finger, you win. If you’re not caught, you lose. This sets the tone straight away for the show about to be played: either you’re caught, or you […]