All of my officially published pieces of journalism
Guns, beer and blood Ottawa Chamber Company puts on an intriguing local theatre experiment The Elmdale House Tavern isn’t a place I’ve ever seen in the afternoon. It’s a dusty, old, yellow-painted landmark bar deep in the heart of Hintonburg. The kind of peaceful harbour with the timeless charm of high ceilings, old linoleum and…
Native spirit Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar reshaped by native artist collective Mojica breathes new life into Caesar “You have to emerge from the theatre changed in some way, or else the whole thing is a waste. You can be mad at it, or you can be provoked to action, but some change has to occur.” These…
Staging of Boris Vian’s Empire Builders a brave leap for Ottawa theatre scene Empire Builders is something new for the local English theatre scene: a professionally produced absurdist play by Boris Vian, a French polymath. And Joël Beddows, artistic director of Théâtre du Catapulte, is the one cultivating it. Familiar with the French language theatre…
The set of the NAC’s new production of Macbeth is elegantly sparse. In the opening scenes we’re faced with 10 inviting chairs, all set in a perfect line with each other, spaced evenly, divided into equal groups and placed under solid rectangles of light. The natural and divine world is in order. But soldiers violently and suddenly overturn select chairs and nature starts to spiral further out of alignment as chairs appear in more haphazard and scattered places.
The year in theatre has been fascinating and full of energy – not so much spectacular as it was thrumming with a deep, constant pulse of building momentum that promises a great future for this city.
Most important to the theatre community as a whole was the opening of the new Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre, housing one of Ottawa’s oldest enduring companies, the Great Canadian Theatre Company.
Giller Prize winner Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air is almost too good So I have a problem this week. Late Nights on Air landed in my lap about three weeks ago. And it sat on my desk, waiting patiently with a tinge of desperation, like someone rendezvousing with a new lover. I no sooner…