Category Archives: Previews

The thorny issue of Consent: Concrete Theatre steps up

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Was there consent? It’s the timeliest of questions — confusing, contentious, discussable. It’s the stuff of headlines. And it’s the raison d’être of Mieko Ouchi’s Consent, the play that Concrete Theatre has bravely been touring to … Continue reading →

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Taking a taxi through ’80s Madrid: Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown, the musical

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca In the first song of the musical comedy cum romantic screwball that ricochets across the Varscona stage Thursday, a Madrid taxi driver apostrophizes his beloved home town in the ‘80s.  “Give me directions straight into the … Continue reading →

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Métis Mutt: Sheldon Elter’s journey beyond the punch lines

Posted on February 14, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca “Hello. My name is Sheldon Elter. And I’ll be your Native comedian for this evening.” Sheldon Elter, the startlingly multi-talented Métis actor/ playwright/ screenwriter/ musician/ director, shudders when he thinks of the jokes he told as … Continue reading →

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The Unrepentant Necrophile: the punk rock musical that’s a test case for female empowerment

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca The Brooklyn duo the Coldharts are undeniably into dark and shivery. Take their unnerving Fringe hit Edgar Allan, in which the terrifying young Poe is haunted by a doppelgänger he can’t shake. Or The Legend of … Continue reading →

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A Latinx dance lesson: Broken Tailbone is moving theatre, in every sense

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca “Take off that coat! You’ll be too hot otherwise!” There is nothing usual about Broken Tailbone, the highly original Carmen Aguirre creation that occasions her first-ever visit to Edmonton, courtesy of Workshop West’s Canoe Festival, and … Continue reading →

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The sense of connection: Paradise at the Chinook Series

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca In 1992, Patti Flather’s father, a family doctor, was murdered outside his North Vancouver home — shot by a former patient with an undiagnosed mental illness. Reflections on that traumatizing event eventually found their way into … Continue reading →

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Feel the breeze: Chinook blows through with cutting-edge live theatre

Posted on February 8, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Chinook: finally, the moment in the deep midwinter when “cutting edge” doesn’t refer to the wind chill factor.  Edmonton’s international multidisciplinary performance series blows through the winter theatre season again starting tonight. For this third annual … Continue reading →

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Her Mark: life on The Rock is harsh, beautiful, and poetic

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca “Every word I have spoken the wind has taken, as it will take me. As it will take my grandchildren’s children, their heads full of fragments and my face not among those.” In his poem Her … Continue reading →

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Nature at risk: Bears, Matthew MacKenzie’s “dark comedy about pipelines” is back to provoke

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Three years ago Edmonton audiences found themselves in the presence of the season’s (make that the decade’s) only “multi-disciplinary comedy about the Northern Gateway Pipeline.” And they watched, spellbound, as a man on a flight through … Continue reading →

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The complex lives of fathers and sons: Empire of the Son comes to the Citadel Club

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca In the hit touring show that arrives Thursday in the Citadel Club, a son tells the story of a remote, unapproachable father: his own.  Countries get adopted, and left behind; continents get crossed — and so, … Continue reading →

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