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Culture Stage

10 artists to watch this winter

1. PAUL SUN-HYUNG LEE Performer, Chimerica

If you’ve seen Kim’s Convenience, you won’t have any trouble remembering Lee, who gave an award-winning performance as the titular gruff owner of a Regent Park store. But he’s done some other fine work at Soulpepper and elsewhere, in Accidental Death Of An Anarchist, La Ronde and Monster Under The Bed. He’s back onstage in Lucy Kirkwood‘s Chimerica, playing a Beijing man who was a pro-democracy activist during the Tiananmen Square uprising. Two decades later, the photojournalist who worked with him returns to discover some hidden truths. Expect passion and delicacy in Lee’s performance. March 29 to April 17 at the Bluma Appel Theatre. 416-368-3110.


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2. NEEMA BICKERSTETH Performer, Century Song

With her powerful voice, engaging connection with the audience and great smile, Bickersteth ties together the varied elements of Century Song, a performance hybrid created in collaboration with director Ross Manson and choreographer Kate Alton. Inspired partly by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (whose central character switches genders and moves through multiple generations) and Alice Walker’s In Search Of Our Mother’s Gardens, the piece uses song and movement to look at all the personalities contained within one woman. If the earlier workshop was any indication, the projections by fettFilm should be as stunning as the performance. Part of the Progress Festival at the Theatre Centre, January 19-23. 416-538-0988.


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3. PAT KELLY and PETER OLDRING Performers, This Is That Live

We Canadians love our news parodies. Witness the popularity of Double Exposure, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and The Royal Canadian Air Farce. You can add This Is That, the mockumentary Radio One show that mimics the tone of CBC programs so well that it’s elicited dozens of complaints. You can see hosts Oldring and Kelly, whom we really miss in the Toronto scene, deliver the show live when they headline the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, March 5 at the Randolph. Passes $75. torontosketchfest.com.


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4. JOHANNES DEBUS Conductor, Siegfried and The Marriage Of Figaro

Music director of the Canadian Opera Company since 2009, Debus makes the drama inherent in an operatic score as important as the action we watch onstage. This winter he conducts two works in rep that couldn’t be more different: Siegfried, the third part of Richard Wagner‘s epic Ring Cycle, which looks at the conflicting passions of gods, dwarves and heroes, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s The Marriage Of Figaro, a musically smaller-scale piece whose human characters are just as grand emotionally. Siegfried runs January 23 to February 14, and Figaro plays February 4 to 27, both at the Four Seasons Centre. 416-363-8231.


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5. SAHARA MORIMOTO Dancer, Phase Space

One of the joys of going to recent works by the great choreographer Peggy Baker is getting to watch Morimoto, an artistic associate with Peggy Baker Dance Projects for seven years and a frequent performer. Armed with solid technique and a poetic, dreamy spirit, Morimoto is a great addition to any ensemble. She’ll demonstrate that in Phase Space, in which she, Rick Brown, Sarah Fregeau, Kate Holden, Sean Ling and Andrea Nann share the stage with composer/musician John Kameel Farah in a work that draws on and expands upon moments from Baker’s previous works. January 22 to 31 at the Betty Oliphant. 1-800-838-3006.


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6. RAQUEL DUFFY Performer, The Anger In Ernest And Ernestine and The Just

Duffy, a graduate of Soulpepper‘s Academy, is one of the company’s shining lights, a standout performer in Idiot’s Delight and Tartuffe. Next she tackles a pair of contrasting works, the funny and dark The Anger In Ernest And Ernestine, by Leah Cherniak, Robert Morgan and Martha Ross, in which a loving couple move in together and find their living habits incompatible, and Albert Camus‘s The Just, about a group of revolutionaries who plan an assassination in tsarist Russia. Can’t wait to see the fire she’ll bring to both plays. Anger runs January 25 to February 20, and The Just plays March 5 to 26 at the Young Centre. 416-866-8666.


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7. JAMES WALLIS and JULIA NISH-LAPIDUS Performers, Hamlet

Few local companies have as successful a track record with the Bard as Shakespeare BASH’d. They’ve sold out their Fringe productions for the past four years. Occasionally they mount shows outside the festival, the latest being Shakespeare’s best-known play, Hamlet. It features Wallis in the title role, with Nish-Lapidus as Ophelia, David Ross as Claudius, Jane Spence as Gertrude, Daniel Briere as Polonius and Jennifer Dzialoszynski as Laertes, directed by Catherine Rainville. Like the company’s other productions, Hamlet will get an intimate staging, this time at the Monarch Tavern. February 2 to 7. shakespearebashd.com.


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8. LISA HORNER and NICOLA LIPMAN Performers, Grey Gardens

In the Tony-winning musical Grey Gardens, the past haunts the present in mesmerizing ways. Based on the cult film by the Mayles brothers, it looks at Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s aunt and cousin, “Big Edie” Beale and her daughter, “Little Edie.” The play (by Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie) is set in 1940s high society and then in 1973, when mother and daughter have fallen on hard times socially and economically. Acting Up Stage‘s production features a stellar pair in the lead roles: Lipman (Domesticated) as Mater and Horner (The Wizard Of Oz, Les Miserables) as her wannabe cabaret performer offspring. February 19 to March 6 at Berkeley Street Theatre. 416-368-3110.


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9. COLIN MUNCH Performer, Toronto, I Love You

Munch is as good an improviser as he is an actor. You may have seen him in Kat Sandler’s Punch Up and Sucker and in the recent production of Trout Stanley. But he’s also a founding member of Sex-T Rex and a current member of the Bad Dog Repertory Company. The latter is mounting its T.O.-centric improv show, which was a huge hit a couple of Fringes ago. With fellow improvisers like Craig Anderson, Jess Bryson and Nigel Downer, Munch will make you see the city – and laugh about it – in a whole new way. January 20 to 30 at Bad Dog Comedy Theatre. baddogtheatre.com.


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10. AKRAM KHAN Choreographer/performer, Torobaka

An appearance by Indo-Anglo dancer/choreographer Khan is always a treat. Witness the sold-out houses for past shows like Kaash (2003), Confluence (part of Luminato in 2011) and Desh (2013). Now, in Torobaka, he collaborates with flamenco great Israel Galván for a piece mixing Indian and Spanish movement. The result, already acclaimed in the UK, promises to be a fierce fusion of two styles, with two artists at the top of their game. March 9 to 12 at the Bluma Appel Theatre. canadianstage.com.

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