Praxis Theatre is currently on hiatus! Please find co-founders Aislinn Rose and Michael Wheeler at The Theatre Centre and SpiderWebShow, respectively.

Category: Variations on theatre

March 25, 2013, by
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“But if we want to make it possible for more people to stay together forever—and I’m a fan of long-term relationships, and toughing out the rough patches, etc.—we need to change our expectations…If we’re not good at monogamy and we’re not wired for it… doesn’t it seem a bit nuts to make it the foundation upon which we build our relationships? So long as we insist on doing that, well, we’re asking for it.”

~ Dan Savage, “Divorced From Reality”

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orposter0213Carly Chamberlain is Artistic Producer of Neoteny Theatre and director of the company’s debut production: Overruled by George Bernard Shaw & Romance by Neil Labute.
 
This rare pairing of two very different plays about love, lust, and infidelity runs March 28 – April 6, Wednesdays through Saturdays at Red Sandcastle Theatre (previews Wednesday, March 27). Tickets are available for $10-$15 and tickets can be purchased here.

In celebration of World Theatre Day, the first twenty audience members to arrive for the Wednesday March 27th preview will gain free admittance.
March 14, 2013, by
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“The fact that something is difficult must be further reason for us to do it.  It is also good to love; for love is difficult.”

~ Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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Seagull Poster by Madeline HaneyUpstart Theatre is proud to present The Seagull in Four Movements, a contemporary adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, set and performed in a Toronto bar.


Runs March 14th-16th and 21st-23rd at 8pm at the Winchester Kitchen and Bar (51 Winchester Street, Toronto).  Live music starts at 7pm. Tickets $15 General Admission, $10 for Students and Seniors. To reserve, email upstart.seagull@gmail.com.


February 8, 2013, by
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“They are lonely. I’m not talking about lonely for a lover or a friend. I mean lonely in the universal sense, lonely inside the understanding that we are tiny people on a tiny little earth suspended in an endless void that echoes past stars and stars of stars.”

― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

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Guy DoucetteGuy Doucette is an artistic director, actor and singer-songwriter. His joy is to bring people together in celebration of arts and culture!

The Theatre Lab and Back Burner Productions are proud to present our upcoming collaborative production  JACKIE AND JACK. Written by legendary Canadian polymath Jim Christy, it is a ‘What If’ play that follows the meeting of two of North Americas’ most tragic figures. Jack Kerouac and Jackie Kennedy. The play is an examination of an encounter the two may have had on a beach in Hyanis, Northport – 1959, at a period of time when both of their lives are changing irrevocably.

February 22nd to March 2nd |Unit 102 Theatre | 376 Dufferin Street (just south of Queen St. W) Tickets: $15 advance (through T.O.tix) | $20 at-the-door | Sunday Matinee PWYC

January 22, 2013, by
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“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure….. Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?”

~ Herman Melville, Moby Dick

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CATALPACATALPA follows the true story of a band of Irish expatriates in Massachusetts, and their hair-brained scheme to sail a whaling ship to the colonial Prison in Fremantle, Australia to free six Fenian prisoners. Full of intrigue, suspense, and a tour-de-force solo-performance in which one actor plays over twenty different characters (not to mention a seagull, a whale and a storm!), CATALPA is a theatrical thrill-ride.

CATALPA runs at the TPM Backspace, Tues-Sat. 7:30pm, and Sat. at 2:00pm (PWYC), until Feb.2. Click here for tickets or call 416-504-7529.

Andrew Musselman is a Toronto-based actor, writer and producer who dreams of one day being able to afford a small cottage in Ireland.

January 4, 2013, by
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“What about identity? I asked.
He said: It’s self- defense…
Identity is the child of birth, but
at the end, it’s self invention, and not
an inheritance of the past. I am multiple…
Within me an ever new exterior”

Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian Poet. 13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008

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IMG_0059From a Birthright Trip to the camps in Nablus, The Peace Maker explodes with live music and contradiction as a Canadian visitor tries to bring peace to the Middle East in all the wrong ways.

The Peace Maker is being presented as part of the Next Stage Festival from January 3rd to the 13th. Tickets are $12 for matinees and $15 for evening performances. To purchase tickets, call 416-966-1062 or click here.

A graduate of the National Theatre School, Natasha is an actress, writer, educator and director. She is currently facilitating the Paprika Creator’s unit, acting in the television show Bomb Girls, and preparing to direct her first play as part of The Playwright Project in May, 2013.

Photo Collage Artist: Amy Siegel
Singers: Maryem Tollar and Harveen Sandhu

January 2, 2013, by
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“We were barely there. Our feelings could not be hurt because they lay elsewhere, off-campus, aurora borealis. I drew pictures of it on my binder, a smudge in a heart. A smudge and me in interconnecting hearts. Me and a smudge and a half human/half-smudge baby…What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real.” – Miranda July, “Making Love in 2003”

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WITH LOVE AND A MAJOR ORGAN plays at the Next Stage Theatre Festival, Jan 2nd-13th at Factory Theatre: Studio (125 Bathurst) Click here for schedule and ticket information.

Directed by Andrew Lamb, Written by Julia Lederer, Featuring Robin Archer, Julia Lederer, and Martha Ross. Click here for more information and everything you need and want to know.
 
Julia Lederer is a playwright and actor who enjoys playing small instruments- for example, the mini-harmonica and the ukulele. She has always been drawn to the colour purple. Since the dawn of time, probably.

December 20, 2012, by
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“…sometimes
‘Tis well to be bereft of promis’d good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.”

-Samuel Taylor Colridge, This Lime Tree Bower My Prison

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Anthony MacMahon is a playwright and actor from Saskatoon, recently relocated to Toronto. His short play, Eglington, will be a part of the Alumnae Theatre New Ideas Festival.

He appears in the Cart/Horse Theatre Toronto premiere of THIS LIME TREE BOWER by Conor McPherson. Playing until Dec. 22 at The Berkeley Theatre Upstairs @ 26 Berkeley St.


October 12, 2012, by
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As the Interim Artistic Directors of Factory Theatre, Nina Lee Aquino & Nigel Shawn Williams announced their upcoming season earlier this week. We asked them to provide an artistic response to the shows they selected for that season in the form of our 51st Variation on Theatre.

Every Letter Counts by Nina Lee Aquino

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“Between his interest in words and his architect’s love of structure and order, [Alfred Mosher] Butts decided to work on a word game that utilized a grid concept.  In addition, he wanted to create a game that combined both luck and skill, with stronger emphasis on skill.  He also liked the idea of 100 tiles.  As he began his first set of sketches, Butts called his boardless anagram game idea Lexiko, which later evolved into the board game Criss Cross Words.”

Everything Scrabble: Third Edition by Joe Edley & John D. Williams Jr.

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Do You Want What I Have Got? A Craigslist Cantata by Bill Richardson & Veda Hille

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“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

– Hunter S. Thompson

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Iceland by Nicolas Billon

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“People are always asking me about eskimos, but there are no eskimos in Iceland.”

– Björk

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Stopheart by Amy Lee Lavoie

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“All of us grow up in particular realities – a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we’re brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it. “

– Chaim Potok

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Photo of Nina Lee Aquino and Nigel Shawn Williams by Jonathan Heppner – click to read more about their new season

September 25, 2012, by
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“I understand that there’s too much! – a flawed system. The way things work is just so fucked up. I could go on and on for hours, I’ve been researching for years. I’ve neverseen the possibility of changing it all. Until something like this comes up. Cause… I mean…it could be possible to change something.”

– Joshua: Busker, Teenager, and Occupier. (October 2011, St James Park.)

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All We Gotta Do written and performed by Hugh Laurie.

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Docket Theatre presents Performing Occupy Toronto, a verbatim play about the Occupy movement by Rosamund Small, on October 15 at 6pm in St James Park.

Docket marks the anniversary of the occupation with a site-specific staging for one day only. The play will be proceeded by a multi-disciplinary art installation all over the park – artists of all kinds needed to participate!

Please contact Occupy@dockettheatre.com for more information about the show or how to get involved. You don’t need a ticket to enjoy this free, outdoor celebration and theatre piece. Visit DocketTheatre.com and Like us on Facebook!

September 13, 2012, by
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In the construction of a country, it is not the practical workers but the idealists and planners that are difficult to find…powerful people have liberty.

~ Sun Yet-Sen, revolutionary who help throw down the last emperor of China

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Gein Wong is an interdisciplinary director, playwright, composer, poet and video artist. Her show Hiding Words (for you), delves into nushu, a secret language created in 400 A.D. when Chinese women were not allowed to read or write. It runs from September 13 – 23 at Harbourfront Centre’s Enwave Theatre, and tickets can be purchased here.