This year, our student embedders become one of The Team, as they follow the creation process of Essential Theatre Collective‘s upcoming show. To start, they met with director Colin B. Anthes and designer James McCoy to discuss their vision for The Team. Hazel Adie, Dani Shae Barkley, Frances Johnson, Jonah Pace, and Kr…
It’s been over a week since Essential Collective Theatre’s world premiere of Our Lady of Delicias opened at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre and I’m still bumping into people buzzing about it. Politically charged, hilariously delivered, and satisfyingly ambiguous, it’s a play that sparks discussion, discussion t…
Emma McCormick and Kristina Ojaperv write, As our journey into the evolving form of embedded criticism begins, we feel the title of Jordi Mand’s new work sums up our first impressions – This Will Be Excellent. Embedded criticism provides an inside look at the process of a show’s creation, through discussing the initial…
The 38th Rhubarb Festival at Buddies in Bad Times theatre is upon us! While our focus at DARTcritics is on theatre in the Niagara region, every once in a while we venture further afield —and the fact that this is billed as Canada’s longest-running new works festival and a “hotbed of creativity” certainly caught our eye…
This winter’s Mainstage production at the Department of Dramatic Arts (DART) at Brock University represents something unique in departmental memory—the first time that a Mainstage is being directed by an outside professional, not a faculty member. The play is Radium Girls by D.W. Gregory and the director is Philip McKe…
This summer, we (DARTcritics staff writers Caroline Coon and Sarah Bradford) had the opportunity to spend three weeks in Stratford, Ontario taking courses towards our Brock University Dramatic Arts degrees. While there, we thought it would be beneficial to interview a few of the fresh new faces at Stratford this season…
The Shaw Festival is coming into the last few months of its season, but it is not too late to experience the energetic and captivating ensemble work of the casts of both The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide To Capitalism and Socialism and the Key To the Scriptures (my review of which you can read here) and The Divine: A…
DARTCritics saw a preview of Air during In The Soil, and now the full production is set to premiere at Hamilton Fringe. With the festival just around the corner, DARTCritics Nick and Alex called Tottering Biped Theatre’s Artistic Director, Trevor Copp, to discuss his work on the production. NICK: We saw The Stag Hunter…
Three years ago, my friend and occasional director Keavy Lynch, artistic director at Empty Box Theatre Company, texted me saying she needed actors for a directing class assignment, and that she had “dibsed” me. That was my first encounter with the world of Waiting For Alonzo and my character, Bielke. It was a different…
One of the best parts about covering the St. Catharines theatre scene is being able to see both the germination of a production and the work of friends and colleagues at the same time. When Essential Collective Theatre popped up on Facebook with a new show titled Senior Stories and a list of senior citizens homes they…
