All of my officially published pieces of journalism
Anthony De Sa’s first book aptly illustrates a lot of the things I find frustrating about Canadian literature. When you think about Canlit in broad strokes, you find that a huge swath of it is coloured with the same themes, the same tropes. There is something about the popular fiction in this country which recoils from variety. READ MORE
After a two-year hiatus from summer performance in the verdant Strathcona Park, Odyssey Theatre returns to its bread and butter: theatre under the stars. This year the company presents They All Do It, a commissioned work from local playwright Jan Irwin. Loosely based on the opera Cosi fan tutte, the company aims to straddle the divide between the old-fashioned classical opera and contemporary theatre with a genre-mixing, intellectually interesting show. READ MORE
Hit hits the road Touring production of Broadway success Avenue Q arrives in Ottawa Whenever I get tasked with an article about one of the touring Broadway productions, it’s always a bit of a headache. What is there left to say about Avenue Q? Unless you’ve been living under a rock with poor television reception,…
Canadian animator draws admirers, critics for updated Looney Tunes By Bruce Ward and Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston, Ottawa Citizen May 26, 2010 OTTAWA — The wit and wisdom of that rascally rabbit and his cartoon sidekicks captivated Canadian animator Jessica Borutski when she was a little girl. “I started learning these characters when I was maybe six,”…
Readers’ threesome A compatible trio of popular reading series awaits in May and June Dutch sound poet Jap Blonk at the A B Series Lying just beneath the thin crust of this city is a wash of amazing literary events that really seem to belong to a different town than the Ottawa we think of…
In pursuit of Facts Milner: “I think it’s just a question of good writing” Ottawa playwright Arthur Milner’s new political thriller touches on murder, mystery and the Middle East When you summarize the action of the new work by Ottawa playwright Arthur Milner, Facts, it sounds dreary and heavy: two policemen, one Israeli and one…