To motivate students, one theatre professor has made bubonic plague-era masks mandatory for all of her classes.
theatre
The undercurrents theatre festival bills itself as “theatre below the mainstream.” It’s a festival of boundary-pushing theatre by both emerging and established creators that gives creators a chance to stage their new works.
High school students are using theatre to keep the stories of abuse and perseverance at Bell High School alive at Ottawa’s Fringe Festival.
A member of Greenland’s Inuit community, Vivi Sørensen said she was compelled to properly tell the stories of Indigenous Peoples. “My main reason for wanting to direct is the fact that our stories … are always told from outside. And I felt like there’s a misportrayal, there’s something that’s wrong.”
There is enough personal and professional intrigue to earn the play’s description as being about “the abuse of power, political expediency, and the masks we wear to carry on as if everything is as it should be.” I think, acutely aware of my privilege as a white cisgender male, the key word here is abuse.
Although improv is, well, improvisational, there’s a lot of work that goes into preparing for a show. Campbell described it as tools to keep in your back pocket—knowledge of how stories progress, different genres and styles to perform, and other tricks and tools learned from plenty of practice.
“It’s a release—it’s very different from what I normally do at school … I just get to come to forget everything—here I can be some crazy, wild character.”—Sarah Robach, fifth-year biology student.
“I think a lot of them were intrigued by the story, by the text, by the way it was written because it’s not your regular realistic drama—it goes way beyond that,” explained director Melina Buziak. “The characters often break the fourth wall and refer directly to the audience and the text is really intriguing.”
This Ottawa-based festival gives students, and new performers a chance to try new things on stage.
What begins as a “safari of other people’s pain and suffering,” as Mtuli put it, turns into the photojournalist intensely following the illegal romance of Alexander, an ethnic Serb, and Mirela, a Muslim.
Undercurrents is a non-mainstream theatre festival in the heart of downtown Ottawa.
The spirit of this event is precisely to be a platform for non-conventional and experimental theatre.
Starting in their 2018 season, the GCTC will be turning one of their plays into a podcast and putting it out for free.
Now that I’m in my second year at the University of Ottawa, I’ve looked at things from a more positive and hopeful point of view—or at least I try to.
The Ghomeshi Effect is a verbatim dance-theatre production that gives a voice to survivors of sexual assault and shines a critical light on how the issue is handled by the Canadian justice system.
“As my first year ended, I looked back and realized I was being too hard on myself. I was setting all these expectations for myself and when I didn’t reach them, I felt disappointed and slightly depressed.”
New mentorship program introduced to help students shape their theatre skills.
Starting Jan. 9, the U of O’s Department of Theatre will be launching a YouTube drama program, where students will get the opportunity to learn about the art of whining in front of a camera for 20 minutes.
With boundless energy and enthusiasm galore, the raucous theatre troupe of Sex T-Rex roared into the University of Ottawa’s Academic Hall on Aug. 25, bringing with them their two riotous shows.
Directed by MFA candidate Pamela Feghali, the play tells the tale of four friends and their twisted experiences of insobriety and sabotage. The discourse surrounds the tribulations of the artist, whose beauty and talent causes both admiration and envy.
Originally created by Jordan Tannahill, Erin Brubacher, and Cara Spooner, and written for a Toronto setting, the play was adapted for Ottawa with a new local cast featuring two University of Ottawa students, and opened at the National Arts Centre (NAC) on March 31 to a full house.
A Chorus Line, one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history, will run at Ottawa’s Centrepointe Theatre March 4–13. The production, put on by the Orpheus Musical Theatre Society, features a cast and directing team that is nearly half-comprised of University of Ottawa students and alumni.
Fournier and Ruano, both University of Ottawa alumnae and active members in the local theatre scene, premiered their new podcast Just Another Gala on Soundcloud on Feb. 15. The podcast is a weekly series, releasing new episodes every Monday, and is hoping to give the Capital’s theatre field the coverage it deserves.
The play is inspired by Milner’s experience with his mother’s decision to pursue assisted suicide after getting a lung infection at 94-years-old that left her with no chance of recovery. After telling Milner about her decision, it sent him on a journey to learn about death and assisted suicide. When she passed away, he decided to write a play about his experience.
In a world where the traditional act of dating is becoming dated, Catherine Ballachey and Stephanie Henderson are bringing Listen To Me, a dynamic and nontraditional play, to Ottawa’s theatre scene. Listen To Me allows audience members to interact with performers in a “speed dating” setting where delving deeper than smalltalk, without the distraction of technology, is the ultimate goal.
