Critic is residence Hayley Malouin writes, Sunday night on the hillside just behind Rodman Hall, seated around a fire boiling cedar tea, Manitoulin Island’s Debajehmujig Theatre Group will present The Global Savages – an experience that blurs the lines between performance and storytelling; myth and history; theatre and…

Critic in residence Nicholas Leno writes, Time is broken, and even though your location may seem incredibly familiar, you can’t be too sure of where you really are. D.L.T. Teatro’s whirlwind epic Midway Along the Journey of Our Life begins as you, the one and only audience member, don a blindfold and headphones. You ar…

In The Soil critics in residence Nicholas Leno and Hayley Malouin write, Hello and welcome to Nick and Hayley’s mini-blog site for coverage of the 2014 In The Soil Arts Festival! We hope you’re pumped up and ready for a weekend of exceptional artistic talent – we certainly are. A little bit about us: we’ve spent the la…

Actor and critic in residence Hayley Malouin writes, I’ve always been fascinated by the process of adapting books into plays. Narratives and dramatic text have such different manners of discourse. Different methodologies; different modes of presentation; different stories. The type of story-alchemy that changes one int…

Critic in residence Nicholas Leno writes, In the not too distant future our over-populated planet is nearly wiped out by a deadly super-virus that kills its hosts in their sleep. A year has passed since the virus’ spread, and Jackson, hero of Dragonfire Players’ new show The After Year, leads a group of survivors as th…

Embedded criticism involves an arts writer following a creative process closely and generating writing about the process that reflects this insider knowledge. The term was coined by London (UK)-based theatre critic and blogger Andrew Haydon in April 2012 and expanded on by the New York City-based arts writer and advoca…

DART student Tara Johnston (at podium) shares research with the “Critics, Bloggers, and Cultural Legitimation” panel DART student Kendra Neaves (at podium), Jill Dolan, Richard Ouzounian (Toronto Star), Karen Fricker Marilyn I. Walker, benefactor of the Walker Cultural Leaders series and the Marilyn I. Walker School of…

Guest of honour Jill Dolan: the feminist spectator in action, at Brock DART student Angie Colosimo’s doodle of the Critics and Niagara panel Stephen Remus (centre, Niagara Artists Centre) with Steve Solski and Jill Dolan The multimedia environment in Sankey Chambers Monica Dufault (left, Essential Collective Theatre) w…

Early Saturday morning on March 8, a group of five of us #DARTCritics headed to the Shaw Festival Theatre, to sit in on a rehearsal of director Peter Hinton’s production of Cabaret. With little idea of what to expect, and the buzz of coffee-charged chatter filling the small car, we made our way to the beautiful Niagara…

20 February 2014: As part of their preparation for our colloquium, The Changing Face of Theatre Criticism in the Digital Age,  the DARTcritics undertook research on a number of critics, bloggers, and others with an interest in their work, looking in particular at how online forms of communication (including social medi…