Cory Thibert and Tony Adams come to Montreal Fringe with their latest coming-of-age-bromance-break-up romp A flexible writer is a sane writer. Ergo, a flexible script is a grounded script.
New pieces are best if they remain flexible, impressionable, excitable and, importantly, honest. For better or for worse, writers who trust themselves are writers well-written. Cory Thibert and Tony Adams are two such writers. In Wolves>Boys, Thibert and Adams bring a script to stage with an incredible awareness of its fluidity. As they chronicle the best-friendship between two young men, they take the script from one evening to the next, testing waters, throwing out new edits, new ideas, small things enmeshed into their already solid script. This, I believe, is what the Fringe is about. Keep your work in development and it will grow. Growth is what audiences watch for. There is nothing more strange, chaotic and entertaining than artistic growth especially, as in this piece, when it's decorated with wit, humour and tenderness. Though fluvial, the piece is hardly turbulently crafted. Wolves > Boys has already won Outstanding Duo at the 2012 Ottawa Fringe and garnered a third Prix Rideau Award nomination for Outstanding New Creation. In 2013, both Thibert and Adams were nominated for the Emerging Artist Award by the Prix Rideau Awards jury for writing/performing in the exact same show. This is a polished piece but, with humility, they focus on "the live-ness of the audience" thereby allowing themselves to be affected by new people every night. We like that they're making a mess. And you'll hardly notice. Thibert and Adams joined forces and founded Maycan Theatre in 2009. The spontaneity of their works excites us and their youthful, vandal, come-what-may, casual type of subject matter paired with a fantastic use of the medium has made them one of our Montreal Fringe picks for this year. Wolves>Boys has six performances in the Montreal Fringe: June 14-15; June 17-18; June 21-22. Tickets are on sale now! Click the link below for more information. More information here.
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Major Matt Mason brings Geoffery Simon Brown's Control to Calgary this monthWe need you to know about Geoffery Simon Brown. A recent graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, an award-winning playwright, an accomplished director and performer and one of the founding members of the Major Matt Mason Theatre Collective, remember his name because one day soon you'll hear some one drop it at a really cool party and we wouldn't want you to be embarrassed. Here's what you need to know: Geoffery Simon Brown writes for his generation. His pieces are raw, strange and unabashedly intense as he parachutes large voices and powerful concepts into simple gold-nugget story lines. He is a master of the unusual. His piece Still Still Still, which won the 2013 Playwrights Guild of Canada Post-Secondary Playwriting Competition, escorts the audience into the mind of a man with five-fold synesthesia and a limitless memory. The effect is dizzying and the show exemplifies Brown's relentlessness. Similarly, his most recent piece, The Circle transforms a garage full of reckless teenagers into a tragic rabbit hole for their insecurities and we dive in with them as the show pulses with hilarious disaster. Through comedy, ingenuity and freakish authenticity, Brown makes theatre effortlessly experiential.
Until I saw Mark Correia perform, I didn't believe in magic. Not this kind of magic. Not the kind where he pulls a string out of his eye and wows me to the point of my jumping to my feet and yelling "YOU'RE A FREAK!". It was one of the most magical theatrical moments I had experienced in a long time. Which is great. Because, he's a magician. Merely 18 years old, Correia is one of the youngest up-and-coming performers I know. He's been performing magic for over twelve years, booking his first professional gig at age six. "I believe the first time I was funny was when I was ten", he muses. "I think it was a Thursday." On that day, at age ten, Correia made a coin disappear and everyone laughed. Now, literally now, as in this weekend, you can see him in the student soiree on Sunday night in the Toronto Festival of Clowns. This Sunday, Correia will be performing a stunt entitled Straitjacket Escape wherein he does just that. The act is a little teaser to his biggest project yet, a fundraising stunt called Escaping Parkinson's, a project Correia took on to raise money for Parkinson's Disease with the Michael J. Fox Foundation. In this weekend's act, he'll be performing elements that he's never done before. The trick will be thrilling for both Correia and the audience as he honors his love for performance in this first-ever escape trick. After this weekend's festival, Correia can next be seen in Escaping Parkinson's with the Michael J. Fox Foundation happening this July 7th to the 21st during which he will spend two whole weeks in a straitjacket setting the world record for longest amount of time in one ever. At the end of the two weeks he will attempt an escape. Follow his stunt via video blogs and twitter! www.markcorreia.ca Twitter: @Mark_Correia For ticket information on Correia's upcoming appearance in the Toronto Festival of Clowns click here. "It's pure joy, bro". That could have been the entire interview with these two. If you watch their act, 2-MAN NO-SHOW, you'll know what I mean. Joy becomes them as they play for the audience in complete vulnerability and trust, taking us on an improvised journey to an unknown destination. Unsurprisingy, joy also becomes the audience as we unite with Kessler and Hall in exhiliration. It is one of those shows where time stands still and you're just so happy to be part of it the "how-did-we-get-here" ending is satisfying and personal. I was first exposed to their manic delivery of endearing lunacy at last year's Toronto Fringe Festival but Kessler and Hall perform together at venues all over the city throughout the year including Comedy Bar, Second City and Social Capital Theatre. They have won critical acclaim across the continent including Toronto's best improv troupe by Now Magazine and a nomination for the 2012 Canadian Comedy Award. Currently, 2-Man No-Show-3D is currently running at The Toronto Festival of Clowns. Ticket information here. Additionally, the comedy duo is happy to announce that they will be performing together in this year's Toronto Fringe Festival in the Theatre Passe Murraille backspace. Don't miss them in and around Toronto all year! You are funnier naked", she promises, "metaphorically speaking", of course. Teacher and practitioner of Naked Comedy, a multivariate performance art form including clown, bouffon, physical theatre and improv, Deanna Fleysher (aka Butt Kapinski) has caught our eye as she storms in from Los Angeles to engage Toronto audience at the Toronto Festival of Clowns for the first time ever. Fleysher discovered her inner clown at age seven midst a humble first performance. As she recalls in the most adorable show business anecdote ever: "My first acting teacher was a clown, when I was seven. He would throw us on stage and yell SMALL at us, and we would have to be SMALL. He would yell TINY, we would be TINY. Then he would yell MINISCULE!!! I remember being especially MINISCULE!!! and the people watching me were laughing, and I did not know why. But I figured, well, if they are having fun, I must be doing something right. At the very least, I must be really really small. " From that miniscule seven year old grew a tremendous powerhouse performance act and coaching phenomenon. Fleysher resides in Los Angeles where she directs the Naked Comedy Lab. Unstoppable, she is currently teaching and touring on tour across the continent. In fact, she just arrived from teaching one of her Naked Comedy workshops in Texas, during which she coached performers in "an enticing blend of clown, bouffon, physical theater and improv". The workshop is guided by her core performance principles which are listed on her website and well worth reading. While reading these guidelines for performance, I was actively assessing and motivating changes in my own comedy act so, I want to impress her influence strongly towards you. Her practice is dedicated to the audience, a principle that is so simple and yet, so easy to forget. Now, Fleysher exercises these principles on stage as Butt Kapinski, "an award-winning, noir-loving, gender-troubled clown who wears a trenchcoat and a streetlight strapped to his/her back and goes into crowds and solves mysteries". You can check out the trailer for her show below. Come see her at this year's Festival of Clowns in Toronto or catch her at the Calgary and Edmonton Fringe Festivals this August as well as The Clutch in Vancouver and UBC Kelowna in October. For information on her Toronto performances this weekend click here. |