Archives for May 2017

Outside Mullingar will make you happier about being alive

Pacific Theatre produced John Patrick Shanley's Outside Mullingar

Rebecca DeBoer plays an assertive woman and John Emmet Tracy a tender man in Outside Mullingar.

After watching playwright John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar, it’s as if you can smell the spring leaves more keenly on your way home from the theatre. You’re more hopeful and awake. And you want to kiss somebody.

In the story, we meet 42-year-old Anthony and his harsh, widowed father, Tony. They’re farmers. They live next door to Aoife Muldoon and her daughter Rose, and they’ve just returned to their kitchen after the funeral of Aoife’s husband, Chris: in this romantic comedy, death’s shadow is never far from the door, reminding the characters—and us—to get on with it. [Read more…]

Children of God: Listen

Corey Payette's Children of God was one of the most important shows of 2017.

Children of God may change the way you understand Canada.

Just entering the theatre for the premiere performance of Children of God, you could tell what a monumental opening this was going to be.

Corey Payette’s new musical speaks from the heart to one of the most important subjects facing all inhabitants of the territory that we now call Canada: the impact of the residential school system. And it does so at a critical moment: in the midst of a wave of cultural change that’s been energized by First Nations activism and by Senator Murray Sinclair’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

See this show and make absolutely certain that you stay for the discussion afterwards. During the opening night conversation, several people shared their direct and indirect experiences of residential schools. Some were survivors of the schools: they were kidnapped and incarcerated. They were also abused. Others are feeling the multigenerational effects of the system, which, in attempting to destroy languages, has come dangerously close to destroying ways of seeing the world. This kind of personal witness is invaluable. [Read more…]

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