Author: Ava Baccari

  • Being Harmless: James Grainger on Horror, Fiction, and Toronto

    Being Harmless: James Grainger on Horror, Fiction, and Toronto

    Toronto author James Grainger’s debut novel, Harmless, reveals the potential for horror in everyday life when a weekend in the country among old friends turns into a search for their daughters who’ve vanished in the nearby woods. TRB sat down with Grainger to situate his new book in the haunted landscape of Canadian horror. TRB:…

  • As Store or Play, Kim’s Convenience is Canonically Canadian

    As Store or Play, Kim’s Convenience is Canonically Canadian

    Reviewed in this essay: Kim’s Convenience, from Soulpepper Theatre Company. Written by Ins Choi and directed by Weyni Mengesha. Until February 11th at Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill Street, Building 49, Toronto. Reopens May 17–June 9, 2012. 416-866-8666 or www.soulpepper.ca. Building a play around a racial stereotype is risky business, especially when…

  • Ecce Homo Theatre’s Loving the Stranger… Examines the War that Never Ends

    Ecce Homo Theatre’s Loving the Stranger… Examines the War that Never Ends

    Reviewed in this essay: Loving the Stranger or How to Recognize an Invert, from Ecce Homo Theatre. Written and directed by Alistair Newton. Until January 15th at Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst Street, Toronto. Part of The Toronto Fringe’s NextStage Festival. 416-966-1062 or www.fringetix.ca. One of the final slides projected onto the screen hanging onstage during…

  • Much Ado in Theatre Brouhaha’s Titillating Commentary LoveSexMoney

    Much Ado in Theatre Brouhaha’s Titillating Commentary LoveSexMoney

    Reviewed in this essay: LoveSexMoney, from Theatre Brouhaha. Written and directed by Kat Sandler. Until January 15th at Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst Street, Toronto. Part of The Toronto Fringe’s NextStage Festival. 416-966-1062 or www.fringetix.ca. If hotel rooms could talk, what stories would they tell? And would you really want to know what they have to…

  • Reviewing the Critic: The Ever-increasing Canon of Kamal Al-Solaylee’s Theatre Criticism

    Reviewing the Critic: The Ever-increasing Canon of Kamal Al-Solaylee’s Theatre Criticism

    Discussed in this essay: Tonight at the Tarragon: A Critic’s Anthology, edited by Kamal Al-Solaylee. Playwrights Canada Press, 2011. The book features work by prominent Canadian playwrights such as Michael Healey, Kristen Thomson and Jason Sherman, and launches, in fact, tonight at the Tarragon Theatre rehearsal hall, 30 Bridgman Avenue at 5:30 p.m. A funny…