Category / Culture
Hari Kondabolu: Keynote at the Reel Asian International Film Festival
By Michelle Kay Featured Image by Jillian Maniquis This year, the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival celebrated its 22nd birthday and featured its first-ever keynote speaker! Brooklyn-based comedian, writer and podcaster, Hari Kondabolu joined local culture writer and film critic Radheyan Simonpillai on stage on the third evening of the film festival. The two…
Examining The Under-Representation of Asian Heroes through The Last Jedi’s Rose Tico
By Linh Nguyen These past couple months held no shortage of kick-ass action movies. Like millions of people across the globe, I headed to theatres to see Avengers: Infinity War and Solo: A Star Wars Story and revel in the films’ charismatic heroes. Though I largely enjoyed my viewing experience I left with a familiar…
Woori Communal Table Session II: Where Are We Now?
“I thought to myself in this moment how rare it was to be at an event that was accessible and relevant to both me and my parents simultaneously. Although they weren’t present, I knew they could be…” -Elise Yoon, Reflections on Woori Communal Table Session 1: Where Are We from? “나는 부모님과 함께 편하고 공감을…
Mixie & the Halfbreeds: Interview with the Playwrights
By Mirae Lee “Asian but not Asian.” Reflecting on their experience living as a mixed race person in Canada, playwright Adrienne Wong and Julie Tamiko Manning collaborates on Mixie & the Halfbreeds, exploring the in-between, shifting territory that any mixed person must navigate. Starting off as a CBC Radio drama which soon became a theatrical production in…
Mixie & the Halfbreeds: Interview with Vanessa Trenton
By Mirae Lee Belonging is an all too familiar topic in our community, and we constantly find ourselves questioning, struggling, and scrambling with it to not only define where we “fit in,” but also to better understand who we are. Two artists, Adrienne Wong and Julie Tamiko Manning, takes “belonging” further into complication through their…
Reflections on Woori Communal Table Session 1: Where are we from?
우리 커뮤널 테이블: 우리는 어디에서 왔는가? 에 대해서 Eating together as a way of building community in the Korean Canadian diaspora 캐나다 한인 동포들이 커뮤니티를 만드는 방법 중 하나: 함께 모여 같이 밥 먹는 것 Written by / 지은이 Elise Yoon Translation by / 번역 Euan Hwang There’s an unspoken, familial comfort in being in…
Fringe Review: In Sundry Languages
Cover Photo by Henry Heng Lu By Grace Phan The stage in Theatre Passe Muraille’s Mainspace is bare aside from a simple tripod, camera, and flat screen T.V. setup stage right. A little upstage of the camera sits a piano and mic. The murmurs of excitement from the audience on opening night tickle your ears, the…
From the Heaviness of Life to the Lightness of Death: A Review of Diana Tso’s Spring Moon
Header image courtesy of Wenting Li By Wilma Lee Following a piano piece interwoven in major and melodic minor arrangements, seven women sing a Chinese folksong. Three grandmothers and their granddaughters: the Song, Lee and Chan families gather together to perform an annual Chinese ritual — Ching Ming Festival — with three bowls, three sets…
From Age to Age: Spring Moon
Header photo courtesy of Yuli Scheidt By Jasmine Gui In a culture where youth is prized, and the elderly are most often forgotten, Spring Moon not only dramatizes stories of Chinese seniors, but casts Chinese seniors to tell them as well. Presented by the Mixed Company Theatre as part of The InterGEN Project, written by Diana Tso…
From Stage to Screen: Revisiting Kim’s Convenience
by Elise Yoon published in LooseLeaf Volume 3 In 2011, I was a volunteer for the Toronto Fringe Festival and was scheduled for a shift at Randolph Theatre. The line-up started hours before the show and stretched around the corner and down Bathurst Street. At the time I hadn’t read the reviews of Kim’s Convenience;…