Kid-Pleasing Puppetmongers
There was a mini mob scene at the Tarragon Extra Space Theatre on Wednesday following the season’s first school performance of Bed & Breakfast by Puppetmongers Theatre. One of two school groups had to bolt to catch a bus but the other group rushed the stage to pepper actors/puppeteers Ann and David Powell with questions about how the puppets work, how the set was built and to marvel at the tiny mouse trap, among other delightful doll’s house details.
Puppetmongers has been playing both in and out of town for 37 years now and frequently performs for parents who first saw a show as children and are now bringing their own kids to see the Powells play.
Melanie McNeill’s Life in the Wings
Climbing the theatre ladder has never been easy or especially rewarding. Devotees, particularly those backstage and in the wings, practice their craft for love not money with a few lucky souls able to scrape their way to long and fruitful careers.
Melanie McNeill, above, has been paying her dues for a decade and is finally on a rung somewhere in the middle of that ladder. She says that when she was in a student in Ryerson’s Theatre Production program (class of 2002) she had two dreams: to win a Dora and to be flown somewhere to work. Both of those dreams came true for her in 2011.
I met McNeill backstage at the Cameron House on Sunday to talk about her work on the stupendous Life and Times of Mackenzie King, an instalment of writer/director Michael Hollingsworth’s The History of the Village of the Small Huts, 1918 – 39. Performed black box-style by the wonderfully innovative VideoCabaret, the shows are unlike anything else on the Toronto theatre scene, a sort of pantomime of Canadian history played broadly and colourfully with a wink and a nudge. READ MORE
Public Consultation On Civic Theatres
The Mayor’s Task Force on the Arts and Theatre is inviting participation in public consultations with reference to the future of Toronto’s three civic theatres: the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, and the Toronto Centre for the Arts.
Mayor Rob Ford appointed a Task Force to examine the role and function of the three City-owned theatres in the context of the recent Core Service Review. Chair of the Task Force, City Councillor Gary Crawford (Ward 36, Scarborough Southwest), has appointed four distinguished citizens to serve on a Theatres Panel; John McKellar (Chair of Theatres Panel), Chris Lorway, Don Shipley and Peter Steinmetz. The panelists will investigate the impact of these theatres on the local economy and make recommendations regarding their operations in light of the City’s objectives. Input of the theatre community and stakeholders is strongly encouraged.
You are invited to attend public consultations being held November 9 from 9:30 – 11:30 am at St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts (27 Front Street East) and from 6:30 – 8:30 pm at Toronto Centre for the Arts (5040 Yonge Street), pictured above.
For more information contact Tina Ferreira, Executive Assistant to Councillor Crawford, at tferreira@toronto.ca
2P4H: A “Bulletproof” Production
In separate interviews last week, 2 Pianos 4 Hands creators Richard Greenblatt, left, and Ted Dykstra both observed that they have “nothing left to prove” with the remount of their wildly popular show, on now at Toronto’s Panasonic Theatre until November 20.
And yet, rather than resting on their laurels, the pair are knocking it out of the park with what is billed as the “farewell” performance of the show that was born as a Tarragon Theatre workshop piece in 1994, and later blown into a full-fledged show as part of the 1995/96 Tarragon season.
Reviews of this 15th anniversary production of 2P4H have been unrestrained. The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star both awarded the show four stars with the Globe’s Paula Citron observing that Dykstra and Greenblatt’s “comic timing is superb, and the construction of the show is perfection . . .” READ MORE
Greatness Becomes Daniel MacIvor
Daniel MacIvor is a fixture on the Toronto theatre scene for a very good reason, he never stops working. He confesses that it may be a bit of a problem, this workaholism, “but I love my work and it satisfies me so what am I going to do? The problem is that I’m really, really bored otherwise. When I’m not working it’s just the dog and me; being busy is better.”
MacIvor typically mounts at least one show per year in Toronto then works on two or three other productions elsewhere in the country. Following his current run at Factory Studio Theatre with His Greatness, MacIvor heads to Stratford to workshop a play scheduled for the summer season and in March he’ll mount a new show, Was Spring, at Tarragon Theatre, where he is this year’s playwright-in-residence.
MacIvor is clearly enjoying his turn as Tennessee Williams’s assistant in His Greatness, a play the writer premiered in Vancouver in 2007 but has never acted in himself. And being in the show has encouraged him to rethink a significant aspect of the show. READ MORE
