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 […]
Theatre alumna Dana Osborne (BFA ’96), a costume and set designer with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, has been honoured with the Ontario Arts Council’s prestigious Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award in Costume Design. The $15,000 prize, given annually to a professional Canadian costume designer in mid-career working in Ontario, allows recipients to further enrich their […]
York contract faculty members and alumni Laurel Paetz (MFA Theatre’07) and L.J. Nelles (BA Music ’84, MFA Theatre ’07) are teaming up to make a documentary about theatre Professor Emeritus David Smukler, a master teacher of voice and speech. Titled Breath is Alive, the film’s intent is to capture the essence of Smukler’s work by […]
In the high stakes field of large-scale theatre directing, experience is usually gained on the job and in a sink-or-swim situation. While there’s no prescribed career path, most directors develop their chops on small- and mid-sized stages while waiting for the big break. Theatre artists Ted Witzel and Ker Wells are going about it somewhat […]
Performance design professionals, historians and arts audiences alike have reason to celebrate the publication of World Scenography 1975-1990. This thoughtfully curated, lavishly illustrated anthology documents the most influential theatrical designs of the period. World Scenography 1975-1990 documents lighting, set and costume design The book covers set, lighting and costume design for all forms of performance, […]
Oscar-nominated screenwriter and accomplished American playwright Bruce Jay Friedman has a new collection of selected works coming out, and it’s being published by York University’s Leaping Lion Books, which is run by students in the Professional Writing Program. The launch of 3.1 Plays will take place Thursday, March 1, from noon to 3pm, at the […]
Established and emerging artists in York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts bring their collective talents to a riveting new production of a baroque classic: Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. This epic story of love and betrayal plays out at the Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre on York’s Keele campus for two performances only, March […]
Graduate students Shannon Roberts, Nancy Latoszewski Greyeyes and Ilse Gudiño, candidates in York’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in choreography and dance dramaturgy, premiere new choreographies for ensembles in Temenos. The show, performed by professional and pre-professional dancers, runs Feb. 15 to 17 in the Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre at the Keele campus. Shannon Roberts. […]
Alistair Newton, a Toronto-based playwright and director of theatre and opera, will digitally screen some of his work and engage in a discussion and Q&A tomorrow with film Professor Marie Rickard, the master of York’s Winters College. The event, Queering Theatre in Toronto, will take place Thursday, from 2 to 4pm, in Winters Senior Common Room, […]
Toronto-based playwright and director of theatre and opera, Alistair Newton will digitally screen some of his work and engage in a discussion and Q&A with film Professor Marie Rickard, the master of York’s Winters College, in January. The event, Queering Theatre in Toronto, will take place Thursday, Jan 5, 2012, from 2 to 4pm in […]
A cross section of creative artists from the Faculty of Fine Arts is on deck for tomorrow's all-night art party. Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, which will take place throughout downtown Toronto, features the work of more than 500 local, national and international artists Theatre Professor Shawn Kerwin collaborated with Laurel McDonald to create "Alone Together", an “art-app” for […]
York theatre Professor Michael Greyeyes has choreographed and directed from thine eyes, a powerful new dance theatre work that examines mortality, memory and forgiveness, opening Sept. 22 at Harbourfront’s Enwave Theatre. This world premiere is the season opener for Toronto’s DanceWorks and kicks off Harbourfront Centre’s dance series NextSteps 11/12. The show is co-produced by […]
York thespians will showcase their work on stage and behind the scenes in some of Toronto’s hottest productions this season. Watch for two this weekend. Phillip Silver is set, costume and lighting designer for Soulpepper Theatre’s production of The Price by Arthur Miller, currently in previews and opening tomorrow. Allyson McMackon (BA '92) has assembled […]
Called “remarkable” and “sometimes hilarious”, 3 Jamaican Plays: A Postcolonial Anthology (1977-1987), edited by York environmental studies Professor Honor Ford-Smith, will launch Monday. Readings of short excerpts of each of the three plays, considered an intertwining memory, violence, creativity, belonging and dispossession during a ten-year period in Jamaica, will take place June 6 at 7pm, […]
York nursing Professor Christine Jonas-Simpson has always been keenly interested in loss and grief, how people experience it and how they integrate it into their lives in a continuing way. It was while doing research on daughters who had lost their mothers to Alzheimer’s disease that Jonas-Simpson experienced what she calls “the deepest loss of my […]
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. […]
Is it really such a stretch to think of art as a sort of medicine, or at least as a healing tool that can literally affect our health? wrote the Ottawa Citizen March 23: Expand the definition of art as a health tool, and consider it as an essential link, as a bridge between those […]
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 […]
English Professor Priscila Uppal has found a new way to indulge her passion for the written word. She is now a reviewer for Radio Canada International, talking, of course, about all things bookish and Canadian. On various Wednesdays between 11 and 11:30am, including tomorrow, Uppal will discuss what she has been reading lately as part […]
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 […]