Advertisement

Culture Stage

Wingin’ It

There’s a new voice in town touting the pleasures and the successes of Toronto theatre.

Leading up to the Dora Mavor Moore Awards on June 27 – which celebrates the best in the past year’s theatre, dance and opera – the show’s sponsor, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA), has commissioned In The Wings, a series of tongue-in-cheek interviews with this year’s Dora nominees by A. Jelly Konstruct.

You’ll find them on YouTube, the first here:

Don’t blur him with a local daily critic, despite the similarity in names. Konstruct is the self-proclaimed “most outspoken Toronto theatre fan (two years in a row) and voted one of NOW Magazine’s top 10 reviewers to avoid.”

Opening with Ethel Merman warbling There’s No Business Like Show Business, the opening interview is with actor/director David Ferry, who received the Barbara Hamilton Award at the Doras press conference last week.

Jumping up and down with boyish delight, Konstruct (performer/writer Julian De Zotti) gushes over Ferry but blurs him with Joe Pesci and later refers to the award he’s won as the George Hamilton Award. Ferry has to set him straight on a number of issues and offers a short history of performer Barbara Hamilton Ferry notes that she was “part of the Soulpepper of her generation.”

It’s all done in fun, with a bit of backstage gossip and a spoonful of facts a Dora statuette sits between the two of them. There’s a nice improv quality to some of the responses, so be sure to watch Ferry’s reaction to some of Konstruct’s comments.

There are more episodes of In The Wings to come, and if they’re as entertaining as the first, we have a novel way of celebrating the Doras and the Toronto performing-arts community.

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted