#CDNTimes

Welcome to The SummerWorks Edition of #CdnCult Times, which asked three artists who are participating in the festival to contribute through different discourses that are...

It's mid-summer, which in Canadian Theatre means high season for The Fringe, as festivals roll out across the country. Last weekend, in 'Has the Fringe circuit...

Sure, as a Fringe we leave programming to the Fates, and some years will inevitably be stronger artistically than others – but we certainly have the capacity to create the best conditions possible for audiences to find our artists.

The Fringe is basically the only time of the year you’ll see straight theatre, stand-up comics, sketch comedy, improv, live music, dance, musicals, even opera sharing spaces and audiences. These are all integral parts of a healthy performance ecology, and yet the practice in Canada is to keep them far, far, apart – different venues, different time slots, different audiences, different pages in the shrinking Arts sections of newspapers.

Anything goes. ANYTHING. From a solo spoken word show to a company's debut production to inspiring contemporary dance to saucy burlesque to reading a phone book aloud onstage to puppetry for all ages to stand-up comedy to a musical to a complete train wreck to the next big thing in Canadian theatre. Anything really goes (as long as it stays within the law of course!).

With the growing intention to offer a narrative as opposed to present an exposé on the source material, Clare and Philip continued to find themselves in conflict. Clare was reluctant to engage with the source material in a way that would require her to embody King Lear’s experience. She described finding the uncanny resemblance of the character’s circumstances to her own circumstances disturbing.

The Magnetic North Festival took place in Halifax and Dartmouth from June 19-29 this year. Every second year the festival takes place in Ottawa,...

Him: "I heard your looking for stories..." Us: Yes .. about this street. Him: "Well you should talk with Laurence Smith he's got keys to half the buildings on this here strip. He comes by at 10, 12 and 2 o'clock everyday and parks right over there in the lot." Us: Great

For a city and a theatre community that I think sometimes feels isolated from the Canadian Theatre Community as a whole, having an influx of theatre makers from all corners of the country here and being encouraged to meet and mingle is something that I wish could happen in Halifax more often.

In the late winter of 2010 two life-altering things happened to me: I received my first smartphone. I received my first ever grant from the Canada Council.