That Night In Toronto

Have you missed us Toronto?! While it seems like forever since we’ve been on the air (well, it does for us) - we’re back! Katherine has moved into her new abode in the West end and I’m … well, still here. I was in Montreal for a few days over the long weekend, but I digress.

Last night we took to Queen St. West to partake in this years Summerworks Festival. We began our night at the Gladstone Hotel with 7 mini shows (we saw 3 of them) - all of which are under 15 minutes max. The shows take place in some of the rooms on the 2nd floor of the Gladstone which makes for some very intimate and interesting theatre - definitely worth checking out, in my opinion. AND, it’s PWYC (Pay-What-You-Can) … so for only $5 you could go see some really great new Canadian work!

Our next stop took us to the Factory Theatre where we took in the opening performance of Until June by Jane Maggs - a gritty new work about the relationship between two sisters. A great performance by the cast and wonderful writing by the relatively new Maggs.

Starving, Katherine and I headed west along Queen and grabbed a bite to eat at one of our favourite restaurants - Fresh, by Juice for Life. We gobbled down some delicious vegetarian food before heading over to our final destination of the night - The Theatre Centre - to take in some music and talk to Michael Rubenfeld, the Artistic Producer of the Summerworks Festival.

New to the festival this year is the Music Series - nightly performances by some great indie artists in Toronto including Matthew Barber, The Bicycles, Claire Jenkins as well as the two performers we saw, Julie Fader and Peter Elkas. Both performed great sets which we enjoyed thorougly. Sarah Harmer even made an appearance playing drums for Julie and we saw Ron Sexsmith in the audience!

At about 12:50am, we decided to call it quits as we were both exhausted and full to the brim of culture! It was an excellent evening. And thankfully, you too can still check out some of Summerworks as it’s on until August 17 (this coming Sunday)! Check out their website for more information on upcoming events …

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What we talked about in this episode:

• Summerworks Festival
• Gladstone Hotel
• Factory Theatre
• Fresh
• The Theatre Centre
• Julie Fader
• Peter Elkas

Photo taken of traffic on Queen St. West and Dovercourt by Katherine Grainger.