News & Reviews — Kingston Theatre Alliance

immersive and inter-disciplinary theatre company Outside the March returns to the Kick and Push Festival for their fourth year with The Itinerary: Playtest. Broadcasted through Zoom and enacted through your phone, the performance is literally in the hands of the audience. Players select from a series of actions to be carried out by performers Amaka Umeh and Sébastien Heins, taking us through the death, life, then death again of the one and only: Elaine.

Given the chance to create utopia, what would it look like? Would it be possible? And would we even want to? Fusing strategic gameplay with a theatrical narrative, the Vancouver/Toronto-based company Re:Current Theatre has created an experience that is as immersive as it is interactive.

In Kingston, most performances have either been cancelled or rescheduled, educational training programs have been restructured and venues have been closed until further notice. However, performers in Kingston are resilient and have adapted by moving performance and other content online.

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 […]

When you walk into Stupidhead! at the Central Public Library, the floor is covered in zig-zags of candy-coloured tape that suggest—thanks to a paper mâché brain that gets wheeled out when the show begins—the wavelengths of the brain.

In his song “We All Try”, the brilliant songwriter Frank Ocean echoes the sentiment, “you must believe in something”, because it is this belief in something that drives our need to try.

Strap yourselves in for a wild ride at Butcher by Nicolas Billon, the fall installment of Theatre Kingston’s 2018/2019 season. This strong and dedicated team of Canadian theatre artists, guided by seasoned director Kathryn MacKay, succeed in bringing to life this complex narrative and the even more complex themes that come along with it.  The first thing audiences see when walking into the alley space is Steve Lucas’s meticulously designed […]

Following the successful run of A Comedy of Tenors, Domino Theatre is back with the second instalment of their season: The Mouse House, a thrilling and timely play by Canadian playwright Robert Ainsworth.

Theatre Kingston has just announced their season for 2018/19! On the roster for this season are 2 plays: The Butcher by Nicolas Billon, and What a Young Wife Ought to Know by Hannah Moscovitch. Both playwrights are Canadian. The Butcher, playing in the Baby Grand Theatre from October 26 – November 11, explores themes pertaining to victimhood in an elusive judicial system. “A mysterious old man is dropped off at a police […]

Theatre in Picton, Ontario, audiences can watch Mimi (played by Christy Bruce) go on a blind date, and even have the chance to participate in the date. Blind Date is part improv, part clowning, part miming, and makes for a fun night out for audience members of all kinds.

Two Filipina nurses walk into Arborfield Memorial Hospital. You won’t believe what happens next! Marie Beath Badian was inspired to write Prairie Nurse by real people, including her mom, a nurse who immigrated from the Philippines to Canada, Penny, another Filipina nurse, and Pat Hackett, a candy striper at the hospital. Prairie Nurse is bright, energetic, and bears all the markers of a TV sit-com—wild misunderstandings, over the top characters, […]

A new Canadian farce! Playing in the Springer Theatre until August 18, The Canadian by this new whimsical physical comedy world premiered by Thousand Islands Playhouse – takes the audience through a whirlwind of events so calculated and carefully timed that they could all crumbling down upon an accidental early entrance or line fumble. Director Rob Kempson reflects upon this in his Director’s Note, equating a farce to a “complex […]