next stage theatre festival

Celebrated Canadian playwright Judith Thompson spearheads Sick!, a brave and insightful work (now playing as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival) which gives voice to a myriad of young performers - some of whom are practiced actors, some not - but all of whom have a real ailment or non-medical condition which they share and parse for the audience.

It's a candid collection of personal stories told in direct address that move and resonate, partly due to the lack of pretence permeating the majority of performances, partly due to the often difficult details of the lives described. Sick!...

The Grace Project: Sick!

Indie theatre personality Nicola Gunn presents with At the Sans Hotel (on as part of this year's Next Stage Theatre Festival) a quirky and difficult to define one woman show about, well, a lot of things and nothing all simultaneously. Call it performance art, call it theatre, call it what you will, one gets the feeling Gunn could not care less about labels anyway.

Guiding the largely direct address presentation is Gunn's alter ego, Sophie, a skittish, flower-print summer dress wearing French import who charms with visual puns, a sprinkling of philosophical declarations, and stream of consciousness musings about...

At the Sans Hotel