A long journey back Wayson Choy returns to the Ottawa Writers Festival It’s an ironic curiosity that the events that inspired Wayson Choy’s latest memoir, Not Yet, were initially caused by his troubles breathing, given the double meaning of the word “inspire.” In 2001, asthma and a heart condition conspired to almost kill Choy, in…
A terrifying future of Climate Wars Gwynne Dyer’s latest book takes a ruthless look at our coming world Reading Gwynne Dyer’s Climate Wars made me think of religious experience. As a boy I was terrified to my core at the realization of Hell: a world of unending, merciless suffering caused by my own actions in…
Beautifully ugly Globally acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes to Ottawa In 2004 the British High Council in India and Sri Lanka commissioned director Tim Supple for a project which captivated him: to direct an iteration of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a product of the fertile artistic soil of the near-Orient.…
An elegant statement NAC English Theatre begins its 2008 season with style Under the artistic direction of Peter Hinton, the National Arts Centre has undergone something of a beautiful little renaissance over the past few years. Productions have pushed outwards on every front, becoming more stylish and colourful, or more sombre and profound, depending on…
Local theatre is Playing Bare Evolution Theatre’s latest is fascinating, complex When an author references a canonical work, they always risk its shadow rising and overwhelming their effort. But Dominic Champagne’s Playing Bare manages to weave the shade of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot into a symbiotic whole with his own narrative. Unfortunately, this means that…
A modern monument to “Extraordinary Canadians” Penguin Canada launches a landmark undertaking to describe the Canadian soul Books: my fun, my schooling, my first, truest and only love. I write often about theatre in this paper, but, in confession, I write theatre from the vantage point of literature. Nothing in life exists until it is…