Tag Archives: Grindstone Comedy Theatre and Bistro

Two off-centre homegrown holiday musicals return, bigger and fancier, this week! First, Grindstone’s Die Harsh. A preview

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca This is the week that two original bona fide homegrown holiday musicals return to the stage — both unconventional, both expanded and enhanced from their 2023 editions — to deck the hall (well, two different halls). … Continue reading

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New faces in theatre: meet composer/lyricist Simon Abbott

They’re young, adaptable, and creative. And as theatre returns in this late-pandemic grind, and the doors open to live audiences, we’ll be seeing the work of these theatre artists light up, and transform, the scene here, on- and backstage. Meet … Continue reading

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EDMONten is back, to showcase full-length 10-minute plays

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca They’re new, they’re full-length, and, impossibly, they’re 10 minutes long, curtain up to curtain down. EDMONten is back this week, live and online from the Grindstone Comedy Theatre, for a second annual showcase of six original … Continue reading

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Happy Valentine’s weekend: have some theatre with your champagne

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Let’s try to ignore for the moment the origins of Valentine’s Day as a feast day in honour of a martyr, and, more recently, a massacre. Or the source of a bottomless supply of gummy limericks, … Continue reading

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Giving 2020 the kiss-off (and welcoming 2021): how to be festive on New Year’s Eve

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca It’s entirely possible no one will see your party shoes. But if there was ever a New Year’s Eve to hoist a glass of bubbly and cheer loudly, it’s got to be this one. And it … Continue reading

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The experimental spirit lives on in Edmonton theatre, live and in unusual hybrids

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Calling the pandemic an “obstacle” to live theatre, or maybe a “challenge,” is a bit like saying COVID is the flu. The pandemic has had a devastating effect on an art whose raison d’être is the … Continue reading

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Off the cuff and on the spot: Gordon’s Big Bald Head makes (up) a movie

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Hey, tonight I was in the virtual audience at the Grindstone, i.e. the invisible sweatpants brigade online at home. And I was watching an amazingly dexterous improv duo onstage do, off the cuff, something that is … Continue reading

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Gordon’s Big Bald Head infiltrates movie history in Good Head, at the Grindstone

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca They are smart. And they are funny. But there is nothing cautious, or predictable, or even sane about the entertainment proposition that the deluxe improv troupe Gordon’s Big Bald Head offers the world. They own a … Continue reading

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Impossible? EDMONten, a showcase of full-length 10-minute plays

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca If we didn’t know it before, we do now, after six months of theatre trying hard and being ingenious on screen, size isn’t everything. (And as for duration, haven’t you asked yourself what’s happened to your … Continue reading

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Signs of life: live theatre is coming back, with cautious first steps

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca And they’re back! Very cautiously, of course, experimentally, a little tentatively, with ultra-sanitized jazz hands. And not full-blast: nary a large-scale musical in sight, needless to say. But live theatre is starting to be back … … Continue reading

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