How to write three acts

It’s simple really. Act 1  sets the scene. In Act 2, the hero pursues what she wants. And, in Act 3, she goes after what she needs. In a story that ends happily, she will prevail thanks to the insight that she has gained through her struggle. The three-act...

The story on West Side Story

One of the arguments against non-Equity touring productions, such as Troika Entertainment’s West Side Story, which is at the QE until this weekend, is that patrons get sucked into paying inflated high prices to see performers who have never appeared on the Great...

Online comment: revenge of the idiots?

I was all prepared to write a rant about the sorry state of online commenting. I was going to tie it into Rob Ford and the general decline in public discourse. But—you know what?—in the theatre section of straight.com, the state on online commentary ain’t so...

Book The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi NOW

The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi is one of those beautiful PuSh offerings with a ridiculously short run. It closes January 25 so book now.  Dragonfly is about Gaston Talbot who has been unable to talk since he experienced a trauma at 16. Decades later, he can finally...

Get a measure of Mom medicine this weekend

I  highly recommend two shows in the world of Vancouver theatre this weekend: Asha and Ravi Jain’s A Brimful of Asha and TJ Dawe’s Medicine. I’ve also got high hopes for director Kevin Bennett’s take on Measure for Measure, which opens at...