Heads Up for the Week of Feb. 5-11, 2024
Feb. 5-11, 2024
Rockaby
Factory Theatre.
Written by Joanna Murray-Smith
Directed by Rob Kempson
Sidney can feel her career slipping down the drain. No one loves a pop star when she’s past forty. Unless she wants to join the ranks of the has-beens on the casino circuit, she needs to reinvent herself – and quick. But what if she regains her former glory and still feels that something is missing?
In its Canadian premiere, ROCKABYE offers a satirical and dark portrait of our self-involved, celebrity-obsessed culture.
Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst St in Toronto.
Feb. 5-23, 2024.
TRUTH
Young People’s Theatre.
By Kanika Ambrose
Based on the novel “The Gospel Truth” by Caroline Pignat
Directed by Sabryn Rock
RECOMMENDED FOR AGES 10+ | GRADES 5+
BUY NOW (Public)
It’s 1858 on a Virginian tobacco plantation. Deep in a forest, a young Black girl named Phoebe sits in the hollow of a tree, a notebook in her pocket and a harrowing choice ahead. Truth is adapted from the Governor General’s Award-winning novel “The Gospel Truth”, and tells the story of a courageous 16-year-old, the arrival of a stranger from the north, and a trail of secrets that could change everything. From the American South to St. Catharines, Ontario, Truth chronicles the fierce strength and resilience of a community as it struggles to find freedom.
Feb. 5-25, 2024
Uncle Vanya
Written by Anton Chekhov
Adapted by Liisa Repo-Martell
Directed by Chris Abraham
At the CAA Theatre, 651 Yonge St. Toronto.
ADVISORY
Gunfire and use of haze. Recommended for ages 12+.
In the waning days of Czarist Russia, Ivan “Vanya” Voinitsky, and his niece, Sonya, toil ceaselessly to run their family estate. After retiring, Sonya’s father, a celebrated professor, returns to the estate with his young, glamorous wife. When he announces his plans to sell the land and evict them all, passions explode and lives come undone.
A remounting of the 2022 production originally presented in the round at Crow’s Theatre, this time presented in the CAA proscenium theatre.
Feb. 6-18, 2024.
De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail
At The Young Centre for the Performing Arts
Adapted by Gregory Prest
Original music and lyrics by Mike Ross and Sarah Wilson
De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail is a musical fantasy based on the letter Oscar Wilde wrote while incarcerated for two years at Reading Gaol, to his love Lord Alfred Douglas. The letter was written a page a day over a period of three months, collected at the end of each day, and handed over to Wilde on his release from prison.
Feb. 6 -March 3, 2024
DION
At Coal Mine Theatre
By Ted Dykstra and Steven Mayoff
Directed by Peter Hinton-Davis
Musical Director: Bob Foster
Dion: A Rock Opera is a fully sung rock opera based on Euripedes’ The Bacchae.
Pentheus, the conservative right-wing leader of a city-state “somewhere in time” on this earth, arrives home from a trip to learn that all the disenfranchised people in his kingdom have taken to the hills, following a non-binary and self-proclaimed Demi-God named Dion. The runaways from society, rumour has it, are drinking a strange brew, and are often seen running through the hills naked in states of ecstasy. The runaways include almost all of society’s women, including his own mother Agave and his uncle Cadmus.
Please be advised this production uses strobe lights and theatrical haze.
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Feb. 7- 25, 2024.
The Other Side of the Sea
At the Theatre Centre
| Two strangers meet on a lonely beach, not knowing that their futures depend on this encounter. A fisherman with no name and a civil servant at her office desk oscillate between loneliness, memory, and reality on a journey towards human connection and renewal. This powerful, minimalist drama celebrates courage, conviction, and life itself. |
| Book Your Tickets Now! |
Feb. 8-10, 2024
Deciphers
At Harbourfront Centre, as part of the Torque 2023-24 dance series.
Deciphers, performed and choreographed by independent dancemakers Naishi Wang and Jean Abreu, on stage February 8–10, 2024 at 7:30pm at Harbourfront Centre Theatre, as part of its 2023/24 international contemporary dance series, Torque. This contemporary duet is an intensely physical cultural exchange between dancers, investigating post-colonial histories, the migrant experience and the transcendent nature of human identity.
To purchase tickets and for more information about Deciphers and the complete Torque 2023/24 season, please visit HarbourfrontCentre.com
February 8th – 24th, 2024
Macbeth “A Tale Told By An Idiot”
At the Haunted Red Sandcastle Theatre, 922 Queen St. E.
By William Shakespeare
Conceived & performed by Eric Woolfe
Directed by Dylan Trowbridge
“MacBeth is a weird, and involuntary soothsayer. The Weird Sisters inevitably await him, knowing that he is, in part, their kin.” – Harold Bloom
Shakespeare’s blood-soaked king, weird witches, viscera-sopped murders, nightmares of madness, and terrifying occult prophecies crash head on with our ghoulishly giddy bag of timorous trickery! Performed by a solo actor using a diverse range of multi-sized puppets, masks, and parlour magic, cosmic horror, and lowbrow pop, this Mad Mackers is a production like no other! Coinciding with the 400th Anniversary of the play’s premiere, and bound to amaze, horrify and delight you.