Notes from All Over
by Staff Editors
(March 10, 2023 – Toronto, ON) A constant trickle of news items over the last few days made us decide it was best if we picked the salient points in each and publish them in one article.
We begin with a reminder from White Pine Pictures that the deadline for the Linda Lee Tracey Award is fast approaching. It’s March 31, 2023. Click here for more information and to enter.
The Academy Awards are this Sunday, but the following day brings the JUNO awards. Simu Liu returns to host The 52nd Annual JUNO Awards, broadcasting live in all time zones across the country from Edmonton on Monday, March 13 at 8 p.m. ET/6 p.m. MT on CBC, CBC Gem, CBC Radio One, CBC Music, and CBC Listen. The JUNO Awards will also be available on CBC Music’s Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and TikTok pages and for audiences around the globe.
On March 23, Netflix debuts its latest movie, The Night Agent. Based on the novel by Matthew Quirk, The Night Agent is a sophisticated, character-based, action-thriller that centres on a low level FBI Agent who works in the basement of the White House, manning a phone that never rings — until the night that it does. The Night Agent stars Gabriel Basso in the title role. Look for Canadian actors Sarah Desjardins, who plays the teenage daughter of the Vice President, and Eve Harlow who plays an unpredictable killer whose impulses come at a cost.
Notes from the Stage:
Toronto’s Factory Theatre will launch a new dramedy about faith, community, and sex from one of Canada’s most exciting emerging writers, Rachel Mutombo (pictured), Factory Theatre is thrilled to present the world premiere of Vierge. Directed by Natasha Mumba, Vierge stars Yvonne Addai, JD Leslie, Kudakwashe Rutendo and Shauna Thompson, and will be onstage from April 8 to April 30, 2023 at the Factory Theatre. Click here for more information.
A story of unrequited love, creative jealousy, guns and vodka. This spring, Soulpepper Theatre Company brings Anton Chekhov’s timeless tragicomedy The Seagull to the stage as part of Act I of their 2023 season. The acclaimed adaptation of the play by English playwright Simon Stephens will be directed by Toronto theatre scene veteran Daniel Brooks and performed by an all-star cast that includes founding members Diego Matamoros and Robyn Stevan, Academy Alumni Hailey Gillis, Dan Mousseau and Paolo Santalucia, several actors familiar to Soulpepper audiences including Oliver Dennis, Raoul Bhaneja, Randy Hughson, Michelle Monteith, and finally Ellie Ellwand and Farhang Ghajar, making their Soulpepper debut. The show will run April 6 to 30, 2023 at Soulpepper’s Baillie Theatre. There is more information online.
Paul Gross, no stranger to the stage, will be taking on the role of King Lear in the upcoming Stratford Festival. It’s been 23 years since Gross was on stage in Stratford. In 2000, the Due South star played the lead in Hamlet. King Lear is known to some as Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy. It’s a story of an aging king who divides his power and land between his daughters, and the havoc that ensues as a result. Previews for King Lear begin April 24. The show runs until Oct. 29, playing at the festival theatre. Find more information online.
From Montreal, the Centaur Theatre has announced the English-language premiere of the Théâtre Duceppe production of King Dave, written by acclaimed actor and playwright Alexandre Goyette and directed by Christian Fortin. Originally revived and adapted by Anglesh Major in 2021, King Dave is an emotionally complex solo work about a young Haitian-Quebecois man’s struggle to survive and thrive in Montreal. This intense, intricate tale stars talented bilingual artist Patrick Emmanuel Abellard. King Dave will be presented March 28 – April 16, 2023 at the Centaur Theatre. Click here for more information. The Centaur Theatre Board of Directors recently announced that after an extraordinary 45-year tenure with the organization, English Montréal theatre champion Charles Childs will be ending his appointment as General Manager on June 30, 2023.
Back to film:
Scrap focuses on artists around the world who are transforming scrap or are working with it in other ways, employing their creativity to help solve environmental problems. For example, sculptor John Lopez uses old farm equipment to make huge sculptures of bison and animals that used to roam the Plains where he lives; architect Tchely Shin makes buildings out of old ships, like the discarded ocean liner he turned into an art installation that is now a cafe located in Seorak-myeon, Korea. Stacey Tenenbaum is an award-winning producer and director, passionate about making cinematic films that are filled with humour and heart. Scrap, from First Run Features, will be available on DVD and will begin streaming on Amazon, Apple TV & iTunes for Earth Day, April 11, 2023. Award-winning documentary director Jennifer Baichwal said this about Scrap: “A beautifully filmed elegy on the metals we discard, and their innate capacity for renewal and transformation.”
Also of note: Comicon’s 2023 Toronto stop takes place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre March 17-19.
Also, Toronto filmmaker Brian D. Johnson’s vibrant feature-length documentary The Colour of Ink, co-produced by Sphinx Productions and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), is finally being released. It opens March 23 at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto with both Johnson and his main subject, Jason Logan, in attendance. Other openings include:
March 24 at ByTowne Cinema in Ottawa
March 24 at 7 p.m. at Five Points Theatre in Barrie, as part of the Barrie Film Festival’s Reel Stories
March 24 at Cinéma du Parc in Montreal (in English) with an in-person Q&A with Brian D. Johnson on opening night
March 24 at Cinémathèque québécoise in Montreal (in French)
March 24 at Cinema Le Clap Sainte-Foy in Quebec City (in French)
March 25: Special live event with Jason Logan at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto
March 26 at Cinéma du Musée in Montreal (in French)
April 2 at Metro Cinema in Edmonton
And April 7 at VIFF Centre in Vancouver.
And finally, Kudos to the National Film Board. On Wednesday of this week they announced that 63% of all ongoing projects at the NFB (254) were directed by women or by teams with equal or greater representation of women than men. Notably, 66% of production spending was also allocated to productions led by women. The NFB met or surpassed goals for gender parity in two of four key creative functions, screenwriting (67%) and editing (70%), while women’s participation was lower for cinematography (43%) and music composition (20%).
We don’t normally cover theatre news, if you’d like us to do that more often, please let us know.
