Prairie Scene: Talk: Walking the talk

“We’ve known each other a long time; we’ve killed roaches together in a rented apartment in Toronto years ago” is how actor Graham Ashmore describes his 20-year friendship with his co-star Arne MacPherson. The kind of chemistry that a pair builds up over that length of time is something “you can’t define, but an audience really picks up on it.” MacPherson agreed easily, noting, “If the people watching believe in the friendship, then they have a stake in the process.”

Year of Magical Thinking

Winter Cultural Preview: Theatre: Bringing the heat

In 2011, the venerable Arts Court becomes residence to a trio of small companies, giving them a permanent place to hang their hats. Créations In Vivo, Evolution Theatre and the New Theatre of Ottawa all have a new home for 2011. Créations In Vivo starts 2011 with Légendes boréales, a show mixing theatre, acrobatics and music (Jan. 13). Evolution Theatre begins the year with Little Martyrs at the Arts Court (Feb. 9). It tells the story of two preteen murderers who meet up a decade after their crime. Festive! READ MORE

Year in Review: Goodbye to the Gladstone: Goodnight, sweet stage

Maybe the most newsworthy and unfortunate thing to happen to the local theatre community is the announcement this past fall that the Gladstone Theatre, that lovely plaster-white building near Preston and Gladstone, is being put up for sale. Perhaps it was too much to hope that, after the success of the Great Canadian Theatre Company’s Irving Greenberg Theatre out in Hintonburg, Ottawa could afford to support another local professional performance venue. READ MORE

The Rideau Project

The Rideau Project Piercing the two solitudes Part of the mandate of the Magnetic North theatre festival is to engage the community where it happens to find itself. This year that plan has taken the shape of The Rideau Project, an aggregation of six different scenes written by six separate playwrights of both official languages…

Nevermore

Nevermore A musical, motley, macabre exploration of Edgar Allan Poe Ryan Parker, Shannon Blanchet, and Sheldon Elter from Nevermore Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre has been lauded by its home city with a multitude of theatrical awards and prizes. Impressed by these, and their previous work on a musical adaptation of Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Magnetic North theatre…