The show must go on: How York theatre students helped adapt a local high-school musical for pandemic times

A year-end musical theatre production can be as important to the heart and soul of a high school as its season-opening football game or senior prom. So when the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year and began robbing students of some of their most formative experiences, drama educators scrambled to keep the curtains from closing. Karen […]

York fringe theatre festival out to take risks

playGround, the annual juried fringe festival of York University’s Department of Theatre, celebrates its 20th season with two dynamic programs running Feb. 14 to 17 in the Joseph G. Green Studio Theatre, 139 Centre for Film & Theatre atYork’s Keele campus. Well-known for its uncurbed spirit and risk-taking mindset, playGround is a student-produced seedbed for the […]

Fine arts professors' plays pack a political punch

Faculty of Fine Arts professors are bringing three plays to Canadian stages this week – each packing a political punch. The thought-provoking plays tackle the Rwandan genocide, the Canadian election and the untraceable ghost population of the city of Whitehorse. A catalyst for dialogue and healing is York film Professor Colleen Wagner’s Governor General’s Award-winning play The Monument. […]

Adjunct Professor Lata Pada receives one of India's highest awards

Alumna Lata Pada (MFA ’96), adjunct professor in the Department of Dance's graduate program, has already received Canada’s highest award – the Order of Canada, in 2009 – but now she can add one of India’s highest honours to her collection. In January, Pada accepted the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award for her contributions to Indian dance and […]

Theatre masters students stage The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

Theatre @ York will perform the 2005 off-Broadway hit, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, an imaginary retrial of the man who betrayed Jesus, beginning Sunday. Paul Muir directs fellow students from York’s Master of Fine Arts Theatre Program in this fast-paced, edgy courtroom “dramedy” by Stephen Adly Guirgis presented in the Joseph G. Green Studio […]

Nursing researchers collaborate with Department of Theatre to highlight patient safety issues on stage

When it comes to Canadian Patient Safety Week, the play’s the thing. Researchers at York’s Faculty of Health have come up with a pioneering way to convey their evidence-based research on what can happen when health-care mistakes are made – they’re putting on a play about it. Seeing the Forest, inspired by a true story […]

Theatre studies student wins University-wide thesis prize

Claire Wynveen (MFA ’09) is the first student on record in the Department of Theatre to be awarded a thesis prize by the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Her thesis encompassed her performance in the Theatre @ York production of Peter Barnes’ macabre satire The Bewitched (see YFile, April 7, 2009) as well as a written […]