Toronto Interviews - Page 2

BroadwayWorld Toronto sits down with Chilina Kennedy, star of BEAUTIFUL - THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL, to discuss her childhood, a very pregnant callback audition, and her journey with the show over the past 1000+ performances....

Peck and Louise Pitre play Marie  - young and adult, respectively. We sat down with Pitre to talk about creating the role of Adult Marie in the 5th Avenue Theatre production during early previews....

In anticipation of opening night of Theatre Calgary's production of Billy Elliot, I sat down with Dance Captain Amber Bissonnette to talk about her career and life as a dancer. 'I got started in dance when I was five. My second cousin's mom owned a dance studio and my mom and my sister had just move...

Toronto is buzzing with anticipation for the opening of the International premiere of DEAR EVAN HANSEN. BroadwayWorld Toronto's Taylor Long sat down with Robert Markus and Jessica Sherman, playing Evan Hansen and Heidi Hansen in the new Canadian production....

Andrew Kushnir's latest work, TOWARDS YOUTH: A PLAY ON RADICAL HOPE, made its debut on February 28 at Streetcar Crowsnest's intimate Guloien Theatre. While the final product is a 2-hour examination of drama classrooms from around the world, Kushnir had to facilitate a detailed writing and editing pr...

In anticipation of the opening night of The New Canadian Curling Club by Mark Crawford at Alberta Theatre Projects, I sat down with director Darcy Evans to talk about the show, Canada, and the importance of community....

It's been four years since Damien Atkins's WE ARE NOT ALONE first premiered, but the play is finally making its Toronto homecoming at the Streetcar Crowsnest Theatre in a production directed by Chris Abraham and Christian Barry, and backed by Crow's Theatre, Segal Centre for Performing Arts, and 2b ...

By the time December hits (and oftentimes well before), it's impossible to browse theatre listings without running across half a dozen productions of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. But what makes it so long lasting? We reached out to companies across the US and more to find out just what makes ...

After a six-year stint with international productions of The Book of Mormon, Camille Eanga-Selenge has returned to Canada to star in Ross Petty's THE WIZARD OF OZ: A TOTO-LY TWISTERED FAMILY MUSICAL. The show's leading lady recently sat down to discuss her involvement with the show, her favourite co...

After numerous trips to Israel and nearly a decade of writing and refining, Human Cargo's artistic director and playwright Christopher Morris's newest show, THE RUNNER, is ready for audiences at Theatre Passe Murailles. Morris took time to delve into the process behind the show's research and inspir...

As the Toronto run of AIN'T TOO PROUD enters the last few weeks of its run, so too does the pre-Broadway tour of the ground-breaking new show based on the formation, life, and legacy of The Temptations. For E. Clayton Cornelious, who's been involved since initial readings, it's been a life and caree...

Visionary Canadian director Robert Lepage teams up with Guillaume Cote, Principal Dancer and Choreographer at the National Ballet of Canada to present FRAME BY FRAME. We spoke to Second Soloist Jack Bertinshaw, playing filmmaker Norman McLaren, about his life as a professional dancer, the unique cha...

From April 10th-12th, two-time Tony Award-nominee Stephanie J. Block will join the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Broadway star Ramin Karimloo and conductor Steven Reineke to present ON BROADWAY, an evening of Broadway's greatest hits at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto! BroadwayWorld's Taylor Long sat...

After the success of last year's inaugural show, THE SECRET GARDEN IN CONCERT, Podium Concert Productions returns to present NINE IN CONCERT on January 12 and 13, 2018 at Trinity-St. Paul's Centre for the Arts. BroadwayWorld's Taylor Long chats with director Tim French, Stratford Festival-favourite ...

Dr. Seuss' pro-environmental tale, THE LORAX, is on stage at Mirvish's Royal Alex Theatre. As the voracious villain, the Once-ler, Simon Paisley Day helps bring the popular children's story to life in a colourful stage spectacle. Simon Paisley Day took some time to answer a few questions from Broadw...

AJ Bridel (CBC's Over the Rainbow, Mirvish's Kinky Boots) chats about life at the end of the rainbow, and what to expect from her in this year's Ross Petty Production - A CHRISTMAS CAROL - The Family Musical with A SCROOGE LOOSE....

Hannah Fischer, a First Soloist with the National Ballet of Canada, is taking on the leading role of Hermione in the company's production of Christopher Wheeldon's THE WINTER'S TALE. BroadwayWorld's Taylor Long was lucky to get a few minutes to chat with Fischer about life as a dancer and her role i...

An electrifying new musical has roared into the Ed Mirvish Theatre. BAT OUT OF HELL THE MUSICAL, based on Jim Steinman's critically acclaimed album, became one of the best-selling albums in history. Broadway World's Taylor Long sat down with four of the show's leads, Rob Fowler (Falco), Sharon Sexto...

OTHER SIDE OF THE GAME marks the playwriting premiere for Toronto-raised writer, Amanda Parris. Presented by Cahoots Theatre and Obsidian Theatre, Parris' play gives voice to the stories of Black women, who are too often silenced. Parris chats with BroadwayWorld's Taylor Long about the process of br...

Opera soprano Simone Osborne sits down with BroadwayWorld's Taylor Long to chat about her career, her roots and her excitement in bringing ELIXIR OF LOVE to the stage at the COC....

Soprano Erin Wall is one busy woman. Luckily, the talented (and funny!) singer had some time to sit down with BroadwayWorld's Taylor Long to talk about singing, joke about her composer boyfriends, and share some of the preparation involved in mounting a large-scale opera like ARABELLA....

A North American premiere is set to stun Toronto audiences when NORTH BY NORTHWEST, a stage adaption of Alfred Hitchcock's renown film, graces the stage at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. BroadwayWorld's Taylor Long spoke with leading man, Jonathan Watton, on playing Roger O. Thornhill....

GREASE says 'You're the One That I Want' to Pretty Little Liars star, Janel Parrish. With previews beginning November 1st at Toronto's Winter Garden Theatre, Parrish will be taking on the iconic role of Sandy - but did you know that she auditioned for a different role?...

With the second week of rehearsals well underway, the cast and creative team of The Drowsy Chaperone have moved into our new rehearsal space and are taking advantage of the wall-to-wall mirrors and sprung floors to run through some of the show's biggest dance numbers....

Evan McKie, a Principal Dancer with The National Ballet of Canada, has enjoyed a thriving international career, performing with the Paris Opera Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet and the Tokyo Ballet to name a few. Hailed as 'among the absolute best in the world' (Dance Europe), it was my plea...

A new Canadian musical is about to hit the stage in Toronto. The Musical Stage Company (formerly Acting Up Stage Company) is bringing us their new work, ONEGIN. I had a chance to chat with ONEGIN's creators, Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hille as well as two of the cast members, Daren A. Herbert (Onegin)...

Idina Menzel will perform in Toronto this Wednesday at the Sony Centre as part of her 2015 world tour. Menzel is of course best known for her work in WICKED and FROZEN, and also recently concluded a Broadway run in her star vehicle IF/THEN, which she will take on tour this fall....

For Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award winner Alan Menken - his musical based on the book and film The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is what he calls 'a passion project, definitely.' Menken's version of Duddy Kravitz as a musical, which he co-wrote with David Spencer, was originally produced in the 198...

No, the Stratford Festival isn't doing another production of West Side Story. Chilina Kennedy already played that Maria at the Stratford Festival a few years back. The festival will produce the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical - The Sound of Music for their upcoming season....

For Danielle Wade playing iconic, female characters on stage is a dream come true. Fresh off the national tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's production of The Wizard of OZ - which played Toronto during an extended sit down, Wade is trading her ruby slipper for ones made of glass in Ross Petty's annual pa...

It's unlikely anyone leaving a performance of 'The Motherf**ker With the Hat' (MOFO) will be indifferent. That makes actor Juan Chioran happy. 'To be indifferent is the biggest crime in theatre,' he says on a day off from the popular show now playing at the new Coal Mine Theatre on the Danforth. He ...

BUYER & CELLAR is an outrageous new comedy about the oddest of odd jobs: 'an underemployed Los Angeles actor going to work in Barbra Streisand's Malibu basement' (The New York Times). Broadway star Christopher J, Hanke plays the lucky actor in this brilliant, hilarious and outrageously inventive com...

With its World Premiere about a year away, tickets are already on sale for the Broadway bound musical N THE QUEEN OF PARIS. And 2015 is shaping up to be the year of Emile Zola. Recently, I sat down with Ella Louise Allaire and Martin Ferguson, the co-creators of N THE QUEEN OF PARIS, and Pascal Nado...

'Helen Lawrence,' now playing at Toronto's Bluma Appel, theatre, is an entertaining, multi-media presentation of a 1940s film noir story hampered by a thin script by Chris Haddock (co-written with Stan Douglas.) During the first five minutes, you tend to be overwhelmed by the show's blue compositing...

Chatting backstage between tech rehearsals for Les Belles Soeurs, a new English musical adaptation of Michel Tremblay's epic play, I asked 3 of the shows 12 powerhouse performers, Valerie Boyle, Lisa Horner and Paula Wolfson, if they'd ever been in another show with a cast entirely comprised of wome...

In an annual report released today, Canadian Stage announced the company's third consecutive budget surplus following an award-winning and record-breaking season. This year under the leadership of artistic & general director Matthew Jocelyn, managing director Su Hutchinson and board chair Adrian Lan...

Julie Taymor is no stranger to being innovative in the theater. In 1997 she became the first woman to win the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for her production of 'The Lion King.' That same night she also walked away with the prize for costume design. No one had ever seen a production on...

Fans of Andrea Martin should know that she's written a wonderful, moving, incredibly funny, and honest series of essays that have been published by Harper Collins into a book titled 'Lady Parts.' Ms. Martin immediately sets the tone of her book in the introduction, where she confesses the greatest d...

Allan Hawco has been putting in long days in the lead-up to his onstage appearance in Belleville, a play about a dysfunctional couple, on now through May 4 at Toronto's Berkeley Street Theatre....

The Canadian Opera Company's Ensemble Studio was created in 1980 as a vehicle for training Canada's next generation of opera stars. Its current members will take to the stage of the Four Seasons Centre on February 7th, replacing regular cast members in Atom Egoyan's production of the Mozart opera Co...