Every Brilliant Thing: intimate, participatory play about everyday joy tours Annapolis Valley

Watching people’s mental health fracture during the pandemic gave Caravan Theatre’s artistic director Kathy France the desire to stage Every Brilliant Thing, opening tonight in Wolfville before an Annapolis Valley tour. In Duncan Macmillan’s one-person, hit play a daughter is inspired by her mother’s chronic depression to create a list of every brilliant thing she can think of to remind her mother that life is worth living. As the child […]

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Alter Egos bursts with colour and textile imagery

Alter Egos, at the Chase Gallery, Public Archives, through October, is an intriguing, colourful two-person exhibit about costuming, textiles as fine art and the characters who artists create as portals for their visions. The artists, Maria Valverde and Anna-Lisa Shandro, give a talk Wednesday, Oct. 25, 6 to 8 p.m., at the gallery. Valverde specifically deals with alter egos; textile artist Shandro is both a fashion designer working in recycled […]

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The Calm of Realism at Secord Gallery

3 Painters, 3 Visions, at Secord Gallery, 6301 Quinpool Rd., Halifax, through Oct. 27, is a tranquil journey in classic realism during a time of international stress. In valuing everyday objects from flowers to power poles, painters Susan Paterson, Kim Milan and Greg Coldwell point to order, the thoughtful distillation of experience and feeling and the importance of taking time to look and appreciate the world immediately around you. Both […]

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A mother’s love and the night sky

Geneviève Steele as Albertine forgets she is grabbing the hair of her child Leó (Rooks Field-Green) in A Beginner’s Guide to the Night Sky, at Ferry Terminal Park to Oct. 8. (Contributed) A Beginner’s Guide to the Night Sky is a magical story about love, loss and the star system. The premiere of this hour-long play by Colleen MacIsaac, produced by The Villains Theatre and presented by Eastern Front Theatre, […]

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Holy Cow!: Three Fringe Fest mini-reviews

Knight of the Bat 2: Act of the Assemblers is writer/director Dan Bray’s hilarious sequel featuring playwright/playboy Will Shakepeare as the Knight of the Bat with his sidekick Dick. (And if you think that name is up for lots of comedy, you’re absolutely right.) Bray writes with a manic pace, delicious word-jam and comic brilliance sending up Shakespeare and the Marvel superhero universe. In this version Shakespeare and Dick – […]

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A Woman’s Story: Brown Wasp Goes Where Few Shows Have Gone Before

Brown Wasp, a charming, intimate and insightful one-woman show at the Halifax Fringe Festival, is unusual as it delves into the icky, largely unspoken world of female body experience. In Meah Martin’s award-winning, 50-minute play, Sarah St. John is an older woman at a spa hoping for a cure in the sacred, healing waters of Little Manitou Lake, Saskatchewan. The character’s self-deprecating story of many surgeries for “female problems” and […]

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Romeo and Juliet at Point Pleasant Park Full of “Teen Spirit”

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Downed Hearts: the heart and soul of theatre by one of Canada’s top playwrights

A friend reaches across to hold my hand at the end of Downed Hearts at Ship’s Company Theatre and we nod and smile at one another, tears in our eyes, because Downed Hearts is a very good play and it has touched us very deeply. The two-hour drama, premiering at Ship’s through Aug. 27, is a heartrending, uplifting tale of love and loss and survival. It is so compelling and […]

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ANTIGONE: Spellbinding, Ancient Tale Brought to Life Around a Blazing Fire

Antigone By Fire is a beautiful, impassioned, haunting production, told around a blazing fire, as a 441 BCE play claims the chill and darkness of a 2023 night. Don’t let the content warning – “Antigone contains physical violence, death, and suicide” – deter you. The 75-minute play – a Two Planks and a Passion Theatre production at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, near Canning – is strong stuff […]

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HALIFAX AND ANTIGONISH: A TALE OF TWO FAIRYTALES

VIVA PINOCCHIO! The talent on the grassy Cambridge Battery stage for Shakespeare by the Sea’s Pinocchio: The Musical Adventure, at Point Pleasant Park, 7 p.m., through Sept. 2, is amazing. Director Jesse MacLean, SBTS artistic director, has a powerhouse cast bringing this remount of the 2016 show back to roaring life. It’s a classic mix of what makes SBTS family musical comedies so popular: rapid dialogue, some comical contemporary references, […]

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