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The Color Purple sweeps the Merritt Awards in YouTube ceremony

Merritt Award-winners Janelle Cooper as Sofia with Tara Jackson as Celie in The Color Purple at Neptune Theatre. (Stoo Metz) For its first time ever Theatre Nova Scotia went to YouTube to make sure this year’s Merritt Awards gala went ahead. Over 950 people watched the live broadcast with hosts Kathryn McCormack and Henricus Gielis, a virtual red carpet and food and drink suggestions publicized pre-show. Neptune Theatre’s season-closing musical […]

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1960s musical of Shakespeare’s As You Like is a blast

Maggie Power as Rosalind gets bumped by flower children Moonbeam (Nicole Sheppard), left, and Cori (Mea Tonet) in the Highland Arts Theatre’s psychedelic production of As You Like it in Sydney. (Chris Walzak)  I have never really liked As You Like It until now. Turns out all it needed was 1960s music and Wesley Colford’s playful, clever spin on Shakespeare’s comedy about young love and mistaken identity. As artistic and […]

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Flip the calendar to March for feel-good comedy in Calendar Girls

Marlane O’Brien, Burgandy Code, Francine Deschepper, Martha Irving and Shelley Thompson star in Calendar Girls, at Neptune Theatre to March 29. (Stoo Metz) Calendar Girls is a heartwarming comedy with a dream cast that got an immediate standing ovation on opening night. Director Jeremy Webb puts a crisp, fast-paced, nicely-nuanced spin on this British tale  with Nova Scotia powerhouses Shelley Thompson, Martha Irving, Francine Deschepper, Burgandy Code and Geneviève Steele. […]

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Theatre designers talk at Government House tonight

Theatre Nova Scotia designers talk about their process tonight, 7 p.m., at Government House, 1451 Barrington St., Halifax, as part of the Evenings @ Government House series. To register for the free event call 902-424-7001 or online (lt.gov.ns.ca; click on News & Events)). Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Talking about how they concept to final design in a theatrical production are costume designer Emlyn Murray, a graduate of Dalhousie University’s […]

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The Bridge and The Color Purple lead 2019 Merritt Award nominations

Shauntay Grant’s The Bridge, produced by 2b theatre and Neptune Theatre in association with Obsidian Theatre, is up for best new Nova Scotian play and outstanding production. (Stoo Metz) The Color Purple (Neptune Theatre) and Shauntay Grant’s The Bridge (2b theatre and Neptune Theatre in association with Obsidian Theatre) have each received multiple nominations for the annual Robert Merritt Awards. Also on the nomination list are emerging companies Keep Good […]

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Sculptor fights through pain to reach the light in new book about artistic creation

Luigi Costanzo, author of Sculpting Towards the Light (Pottersfield Press; $19.95), muses on life, art and light while telling the story of creating this sculpture, called Sculpting Towards the Light. He launches the book Saturday, 6:30 p.m., Italian Canadian Cultural Association,  2629 Agricola St., Halifax, and at the Musquodoboit Public Library April 25.  (Sandor Fizli)  Luigi “Lou” Costanzo hopes his book, Sculpting Towards the Light, gets people reflecting on their […]

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Listen to the Wind: site-specific, dreamy, gothic theatrical adventure

In Steady Theatre’s Listen to the Wind are, clockwise from top, Sam Vigneault, Amy Weisbrot, Stepheny Hunter and Rachel Lloyd. Steady Theatre’s production of Canadian playwright James Reaney’s 1972 Listen to the Wind is an intriguing, theatrical experience twinning location with content. In the play-within-a-play children stage a Victorian melodrama in an old house much like the March sisters do in Little Women. This show, whose short sold-out run ends […]

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WILD about Blue Mountain Birch Cove

Goodnight Suzie, by Shelagh Duffett, in WILD Where there is landscape there is light. The seam of searing yellow above midnight-blue trees in Mark Brennan’s painting Sunrise At Honeymoon Bog is visible from far across the room at the Chase Gallery, Brennan is one of 10 artists in WILD, an exhibit in support of the Nova Scotia Nature Trust’s Save the Wild Blue Campaign for the Blue Mountain Birch Cove […]

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Decoupling in song: a rich musical journey

Heather McGuigan and Aidan deSalaiz star in Neptune Theatre’s production of The Last Five Years on the main stage to Feb. 9. (Stoo Metz) Told entirely in song, The Last Five years is an 85-minute journey in joy and sorrow with bristling anger, tender love, beautiful music and excellent, haunting performances. The award-winning, off-Broadway musical by Jason Robert Brown on Neptune Theatre’s main stage stars Adam deSalaiz and Heather McGuigan […]

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Joy Laking celebrates winter in children’s book, Colours in Winter

  Joy Snihur Wyatt Laking brings colour to winter’s white in a playful children’s picture book about learning to see beauty wherever you are. Colours in Winter (Pottersfield Press, $14.95) is about a little girl who wishes winter was full of colour then ends up tangled up in multi-coloured snowflakes to the point she wishes all the colour gone. She then discovers that winter does have its own colours: in […]

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