Rating: NNNNN
PUNCHY PLAY
Doohnamow aims for a knockout. Savoy Howe has structured her play, about a Maritime woman who heads to Toronto to come out and in the process gets involved in amateur boxing, around a 12-round match. It features Howe and Eryn Dace Trudell, with Ray Marsh — Howe’s real-life boxing coach — as part of the action. “We fight three minutes and think for one,” offers Howe, who sees the production as a chance to promote women’s aggression in a world that condemns it. Directed by Moynan King and choreographed by Learie McNicolls, Doohnamow — read it backward — opens Wednesday (April 18) at Dancemakers (927 Dupont). 416-480-2058.
SUNDAY SLEEP-INS
Used to be that to see a hit show offering Sunday pwyc performances you had to line up early in the morning. Not fun on a bitter winter day. That tradition’s been changing slowly this past year, with theatres like the Tarragon, Factory and Theatre Passe Muraille setting aside some pre-bookable, fixed-price seats for those shows.
DIRECT ACTION
Award-winning young-audiences company Theatre Direct has a new, energetic artistic director in Lynda Hill, who’s previously been associated with such groups as Young Peoples Theatre, Nightwood and Cahoots Theatre Projects. The first show in her tenure? Native writer Tomson Highway’s premiere work for young audiences, A Trickster Tale. Its central character — half man, half spider — is the clown figure who’s part of many nations’ mythologies. Directed by Leah Cherniak, the show features Santee Smith, Jonathan Fisher, Kurt Smeaton and the too rarely seen Tanja Jacobs. Only at public schools? Pity.
jonkap@nowtoronto.com
glenns@nowtoronto.com
