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Reviews of theatre and art in Nova Scotia and beyond

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Punch Up: an hilarious tragicomedy about comedy itself

Kat Sandler’s Punch Up, co-produced by Matchstick Theatre and Hello City! at the Bus Stop Theatre, is a madcap but meaningful comedy and a laugh riot in spite of its voyage into despair. If you’re looking to get out of your own head and laugh and laugh, this 2014 Canadian hit is an indie must with six pay-what-you-can shows tonight through Sunday (https://www.tickethalifax.com/events/130423137/punch-up-by-kat-sandler). Sandler creates an explosive situation when a […]

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ALL THE WORLD’S A CRAFT

For the lover of fine art craft, WhichCraft? is a thrilling exhibit in its diversity of media, scale and expression at Harvest Gallery on Wolfville’s Main Street to Nov. 20. Autumn Larch, silk, merino and linen, Sanna Rahola. There are lots of fun connections to be made in an excellently laid-out display of art in stone, fibre, wood, metal, clay and paint by 21 artists. For example a witch’s pot […]

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LEAF and PAHLKE: Two Lifelong Creative Spirits exhibit in Halifax and Cape Breton

Artist Edith Pahlke exhibits her graphic and text prints at Hermes Gallery through Nov. 13 in North End Halifax. (Photo: Ariella Pahlke) Popping into Hermes Gallery one recent Sunday I was happily met by the artist herself. “Can I give you a tour?”said Edith Pahlke, generously taking me through her exquisitely-rendered, precisely-detailed linocuts of words and letters transformed into pictorial images. Pahlke’s daughter, award-winning Nova Scotia documentary filmmaker and artist […]

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The Pain, Passion and Politics of Hair in rockin’ new musical Love, Peace & Hairgrease

Thaydra Gray stars in the new Nova Scotia musical Love, Peace & Hairgrease at Alderney Landing Theatre through Sunday. (Daniel Wittnebel) Just saw the new musical Love, Peace & Hairgrease by East Preston’s Tara L. Taylor with over 200 high school students, who brought the roof down as the cast sang their hearts out in a tale of troublesome kinks in the hair and the soul. This two-hour co-production by […]

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Finding the sacred in the everyday: Ian McKinnon’s Harvesting/Time

Ian McKinnon combines the precious and the everyday in shimmering, delicate artworks in Prismacolor pencil on gold gesso on wood. The Halifax artist, who exhibited this month in Harvesting/Time at the Artists’ House Gallery, Lucky Rabbit & Co., Annapolis Royal, celebrates ordinary objects, people, the land and the sky referencing iconography in his use of gold. For McKinnon the act of art-making is sacred and these pieces are both sacred […]

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Walter Borden is Out of This World

Walter Borden’s The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time is out of this world and I urge anyone who is passionate about language and the big questions in life to see it during its mainstage Neptune run to September 25. The 90-minute show – apart from Borden’s thrilling performance – is like a crack of lightning illuminating a violent, directionless world. Borden and his characters struggle with racism, discrimination, poverty and […]

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Chills and thrills in The Stranger at Ross Creek

Ken Schwartz’s brilliant twist on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in The Stranger By Fire is a spooky and powerful tale of trauma at the individual and community level. Told around a blazing camp fire in the woods and peppered with humour, the hour and 20 minute show is riveting in plot and performance, in particular Burgandy Code’s amazing transformation from the sophisticated, convivial Dr. Bishop to the misshapen and […]

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COVID-19 postpones two plays at Ross Creek

Two Planks and a Passion Theatre Company has cancelled eight performances of its 2022 summer season due to a positive case of COVID-19 in the company. Ticket holders have the option to re-book tickets for later in the season from August 23 to September 3. “For live performance companies, COVID-19 is still a very significant obstacle that we are always navigating,” said artistic director Ken Schwartz in a press release. […]

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Unity (1918): stimulating, spooky outdoor theatre about a plague much like our own

With thunder in the forecast, Two Planks and a Passion Theatre took Kevin Kerr’s Governor-General’s award-winning Unity (1918) indoors for a staged reading, its first “rain:” show of the season. Usually the 6 p.m. Unity and 9.30 p.m. The Stranger By Fire would be performed outdoors at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts near Canning, where the shows run to Sept. 4. (Two Planks Theatre | Ross Creek Centre […]

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The Tattoo: all the usual fun of circus acts and marching bands with an extra emotional kick

The Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo is surprisingly moving this year. Firstly, it’s been two years since the cast of thousands has flooded the Scotiabank Centre with its excellent, all-ages, entertainment package of heart-stopping circus acts – particularly good this year – and heart-stirring massed pipes and drums. But there’s more to it. This year the Tattoo honours the No. 2 Construction Battalion ahead of the national apology by the […]

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