By Brannavy Jeyasundaram Featured Image Courtesy of Dahlia Katz “Rituals don’t just exist in the past, they’re how we connect to the here and now,” says Nova Bhattacharya prior to announcing the premiere date of her upcoming production. It is the middle of September 2019; she speaks to a room full of eclectic musicians, performance artists, and…
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…
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…
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…
By Linh Nguyen Last Christmas, I was lying on a deck chair beside the pool in Cuba when a man came up and asked me if I was Chinese. “I’m not,” I answered. “What are you then?” he said. The question was certainly nothing new, posed in the same assertive tone that expected an enthusiastic…
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…
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;…
by Jasmine Gui SPOILER ALERT: The following feature contains spoilers relating to the play. As the lights dim, the sound of an unidentified female voice narrating draws us into the world of ‘Swan’. This encounter is also a confession. The distinct clarity of a single voice that draws us in is, however, gradually replaced…
By Elliott Jun A week ago, I found myself catching up with an old friend. After a meal of questionable nutrition and exhausting the classic conversational topics of “What do you plan on doing?” while suppressing my internal screams of “I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M GOING WITH MY LIFE. I JUST GRADUATED, LET ME BREATHE!”…