Upstage

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A longstanding talk show about Montréal’s theatre scene and performance arts. Reports, interviews and other features from Montréal's leading performance artists, directors and event organizers not represented in mainstream artistic outlets.

Archives from 2024

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    November 28, 2024: What are the Shruti Readings and why are they worthy of an Innovation Award? Charles Bender plays a patriarch out for justice in Yahndawa’, a new theatre piece made by an all-Wendat team. And Lakeshore Players Dorval warms up for its 60th season. | Playlist (Playlist still being updated) | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    November 21, 2024: | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    November 14, 2024: Lisa McCormack plays a troubled killer in The Anorak. LA's dybbuk theatre brings a provocative spin on Dracula and The Merchant of Venice to Museum of Jewish Montreal. Dancer Lucy M May's The Conditions at the MAI. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    November 7, 2024: Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    October 31, 2024: | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    October 24, 2024: Four shows centering women: Segal Centre's Titanique makes its Canadian debut! Talisman's Still Life centres anxious life. Centaur's Three Women of Swatow on three women trying to hide a body. Geordie and Imago team up on teen soccer drama The Wolves. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    October 17, 2024: Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    October 10, 2024: Teesri's Two Birds One Stone is a topical two-hander. Playwrights Alice Abracen and Michaela Di Cesare look ahead to Theatre Ouest End's new season. And meet Sonoyo Nishikawa, the Montreal lighting designer nominated for the lucrative Siminovitch Prize! | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    October 3, 2024: | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    August 29, 2024: Ladyfest celebrates 10 years of female, trans, non-binary comedy! Fest director Sara Meleika and artist Eve Parker Finely. A look at the upcoming season at the ever-eclectic La Chapelle Scènes contemporains. Plus: Festival Quartier Danse! | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    August 22, 2024: Meet tightrope walker - funambule Laurence Tremblay Vu, who performs at La Tohu this weekend! Marionnettes return to Verdun's Wellington: programmer Myriam Larose shares her picks, and also explains how she balances work and parenting + Fringe's top joke! | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    August 15, 2024: Into the Woods brings twisted fairy tales to Chateauguay. A student mines his peers' lives for his writing at La Licorne. La Tohu gets ready to celebrate their 20th season! | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    August 8, 2024: MainLine was flooded, and people stepped up! FAR Festival lands new funding and preps for theatre in the streets. Présence Autochtone celebrates Indigenous culture. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    August 1, 2024: | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    July 25, 2024: | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    July 18, 2024: | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    July 11, 2024: We start with Montréal Complètement Cirque: Dirty Laundry and Barbu. In between: Stephen Maclean Rogers puts the final touches on his solo show about his mother before a Fringe tour. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    July 4, 2024: Montréal Complètement Cirque: Gandini's juggling in Smashed2, and birthday fun in Sophie's Secret 29th. Ellen David directs Where You Are at Hudson Village Theatre. Amanda Kellock poses big questions in Shakespeare in the Park's Infinite Variety. | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    June 27, 2024: Waitress promises you a sweet night out. Lisa Rubin previews the Segal's new season. Dramaturg Caitlin Murphy starts a podcast. Theatre VME gets an upgrade. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    June 20, 2024: The Great Divide, in Yiddish: Alix Sobler's play about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Eda Holmes previews the Centaur's 56th season. And after 'resurrecting' the tale of a lost, gay Montreal playwright, Dane Stewart has more queer stories to share. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    June 13, 2024: We return to Fringe! Clown Kendall Savage. Storyteller Keith Serry on new masculinity. Aussie storyteller Jon Bennett share his transformative lockdown experience. Pindorama's Brazilian tall tales. James McGee injects improv into the Fest. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    June 6, 2024: Upstage goes to Fringe Park to meet with: Aussies Shane and Joe of Vehicle, Oren Safdie on his Ken Dryden tribute, Iris Behr of Hacks on her near deaths experiences, Toxique Trottoir's community-sourced Pitit Ayiti and Lou Laurence sings for us! | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    May 30, 2024: FTA: Lara Kramer's Gorgeous Tongue and Elena Stoodley's Survival Technologies. Amy Blackmore of the Fringe on what to expect. And Fringe living legend jem rolls is ON this weekend! He will stop by. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    May 23, 2024: Contact Theatre's Spring Awakening. At the FTA: Amrita Hepi's Rinse and Atom Cianfarani's The Cloud. And finally, CSL Dramatic Society finds unity in Sondheim's Into the Woods. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    May 16, 2024: Caravan depicts pro-abortion activism in 1970s Canada. This Show is Broken goes from virtual to IRL. Sonia Bustos' dance solo reaches out to audiences who are hard of hearing. Festival Accès Asie goes Short&Sweet. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    May 9, 2024: Elvira Kurt joins Segal's tough-talking POTUS. Wine & Halva playwright Deniz Basar on bridgiing divides. BTW's Vision Gala returns for the time since 2020. Hoor Malas dances If My Body Had a Name for Festival Accès Asie. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    May 2, 2024: A preview of Montreal's 16th annual Sketchfest! Meet one of the fest's performers, Emily Jeffers, who is stealing hearts with her clown act,Bitty Bat. And storied choreographer Marie Bélanger's new show, Réunion.s | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    April 25, 2024: Trampoline-focused circus show Esquive. Fringe hit Old G-d returns to Montreal for Clown Fest! Another diety-focused show, Brave New Theatre's The Act of G-d, at MainLine. Mishka Lavigne's bilingual opera about the October Crisis. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    April 18, 2024: Shakespeare's heroines get a modern update in Thy Woman's Weeds at Centaur. Two clowns coming to town for the MTL Clown Fest. Gabriel Charlebois Plante 's Sisyphean show. Isabel Rancier's Carré de cendre. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    April 11, 2024: Comparing yourself in Open House, with writer Drew Hayden Taylor and director DIan Marie Bridge. Le Patin Libre sharpens skating into performance art. L'inconsistance is a dance duet targeting empty rhetoric. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    April 4, 2024: Repeat of last week's episode | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    March 28, 2024: Queer Reading Series. Spicey links dance and hip hop. Les Autochtoneries aux Écuries. Heidi Strauss dances through her mother's dementia. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    March 21, 2024: Fifteen Dogs at the Segal. Colonization and the cosmos in Imago's Space Girl. An immersive jazz show. And BTW's exploration of intersectionality in Every Day She Rose. | Playlist (Playlist still being updated) | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    March 14, 2024: Mon conte de feu explores a Canadian puppeteer's legacy. La Grande Mascarade. Slam! brings wrestling to the Circus at La Tohu. The Lakeshore Light Opera puts on Gilbert & Sullivan's The Grand Duke. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    March 7, 2024: GUILT (a love story) finds Diane Flacks in heart-rending confessional mode at Centaur. Kevin Matthew Wong on his The Chemical Valley Project. Comic Elspeth Wright on the not-so funny news about Just for Laughs. Amour, acide et noix changed Quebec dance. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    February 29, 2024: Rahul Gandhi on Motherf*cker with the Hat. Infinitheatre adapts a Montreal novelist's bookin Dominoes at the Crossroards. Louise Lapointe looks ahead to marionette festival, Casteliers. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    February 22, 2024: An Aussie circus company in Montreal: Gravity & Other Myths presents The Mirror. Norman Nawrocki's tribute to a Ukrainian anarchist. The Keeper explores the poetry and stories of Persian poet Ferdowsi. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    February 15, 2024: Deciphers explores translation and immigration. Nate Yaffe explores queer families in Because of the Mud. And rock opera Jimmy Legdick and solo show Nine Lives earn remounts at MainLine Theatre. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    February 8, 2024: Forty years of dance for Margie Gillis, and Ballet de l'Ouest de Montréal. BTW's Diggers with Chance Jones. Adjani Poirier looks ahead to Imago's The Flood, which is set in a women's prison at the end of the 19th century. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    February 1, 2024: Dawson drama students present the Canadian premiere of Tony-winning Stoppard play Leopoldstadt! Pearle Harbour aka Justin Miller on AGIT-POP! Lara Kramer's retrospective at Espace Libre. Helen Simard turns her rock 'n roll choreography to young audiences. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    January 25, 2024: Ricki explore parental anxiety at Wildside, along with queer musical Fé-e-s sans foi. BTW's Diggers. Charles Bender on spotlighting Anglo Indigenous playwrights. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    January 18, 2024: Geordie Fest explores wants and ambitions through the eyes of kids. Good Things To Do is a personal, virtual show with a message from an old friend. Wildside's Stories for the End of the World. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    January 11, 2024: We visit two Montreal artists bringing their shows to the Orlando Fringe's FestN4. Dancer Lara Oundjian's Leaky Immediations. A puppetry show that explores quantum physics via object theatre in La rébellion du minuscule, at Théâtre dex Écuries. | Playlist | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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    January 4, 2024: | Pop-up listenListen | Download
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