Summer in Nova Scotia is the perfect time to embark on a magical mystery tour, theatre-style. Head to the Annapolis Valley and take in three delightful, chilling and thrilling plays. The Tempest (Ross Creek Centre for the Arts), as adapted by Ken Schwartz, is touching and wonder-filled, anchored by a layered performance by Graham Percy […]
Kate Watson
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Queer Acts is acting up again
There’s been a big change at the Queer Acts Festival, but funnily enough, audiences aren’t going to notice it. “Queer Acts has become its own entity,” explains festival director Adam Reid. “In previous years, it’s been under the management of the Halifax Pride board. But with this change, we can be partners with Pride while […]
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Habit of Murder kills it
Maritime murder mystery abounds at Ship’s Company Theatre with a month-long run of Habit of Murder.
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Best of The Best Brothers
The Best Brothers has received a lot of great reviews, but one that really stands out for director Dean Gabourie came from a woman in a coffee shop in Stratford, Ontario where the show had its debut in 2012. “She said that anyone who has a brother, a sister, a mother or a pet will […]
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‘night Mother lets it go
Sherry Smith has seen a lot of plays over the years, but there’s only one that has rendered her speechless. “I saw ‘night, Mother in New York in 1983, and when I left the theatre, I actually couldn’t speak. It was that powerful.” Now Smith is directing the LunaSea Theatre production of this Pulitzer Prize-winning […]
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Fatty Legs’ unbreakable spirit
It’s been almost four years since Xara Choral Theatre presented a version of Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s children’s book, Fatty Legs, at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission event in Halifax. Anyone who saw it then can attest to its beauty and power. “The reception Fatty Legs got in 2011 was overwhelming,” recalls Xara’s co-artistic […]
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The Addams Family’s deliciously death-obsessed
They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky. They’re all together ooky—The Addams Family. Buh-da-da-dum. Snap, snap. That pesky little ear worm will be familiar to viewers of the 1960s TV series The Addams Family, about the deliciously death-obsessed Addams clan. The show, which featured characters like the hunched and hairless Uncle Fester and Lurch, […]
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Edge of Glory
Director Emmy Alcorn has high praise for Stephanie MacDonald. “She’s riveting. So connected. So focused. What she has goes way beyond just talent.” MacDonald, a two-time Merritt Award-winning actor, showcases this talent in Mulgrave Road Theatre’s production of Watching Glory Die, directed by Alcorn. The play, written by acclaimed Canadian playwright Judith Thompson, is inspired […]
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The Seagull takes flight
Could there be a more fitting play than Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull to launch the graduating class of Dalhousie’s Fountain School of Performing Arts? The show’s director, Tanja Jacobs, doesn’t think so. “This play explores what it is to be an artist and to want love and life in the arts. That’s very much what’s […]
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Looking at the 2015 Merritt Awards
If art reflects life, then the 2015 Theatre Nova Scotia Merritt Awards show was a perfect reflection of the mood right now in snow-bound Halifax. There was recognition that making a life in theatre can feel a lot like trying to forge a path through a world of six-foot snow banks. There was a sense […]
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Reconnect to flamenco
Maria Osende is on the line from sunny Madrid: “I think I picked the right winter to spend away from Nova Scotia.” Osende, along with being a master of understatement, is a dancer and choreographer who created her own dance company, Maria Osende Flamenco, when she moved to Canada in 2004. She is spending the […]
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The Cave Painter goes deep
“How could you not want to understand the world?” That question, asked by an aging, questing artist named Dianne, is a central one to The Cave Painter, Don Hannah’s one-woman show about art, religion, love, loss and growing old. The atheist, bohemian Dianne (played by Jenny Munday) is facing life alone after her fundamentalist Christian […]
