Belfry play Kindred gets real about adulting

Director Lauren Taylor is making her Belfry debut with her take on Rosa Dolores’ Kindred: A Fairy Tale for Adults. Taylor—who is from Australia and has lived in Canada for 15 years—says that the play focuses on the real struggles of being an adult. “The play deals with four characters, and they are all parents […]

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Queer Futurities art exhibit uses polyvocality to get messages across

Queer Futurities: holding area, gathering place is a new exhibit at Open Space that highlights sociological ideas such as queer futurity and forward-dawning as a way of combating fixtures in our hegemonic society. It achieves this through multidisciplinary art pieces created by 11 artists and curated by Dani Neira. The first spark for Queer Futurities […]

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Shad uses hip-hop to provide hope, inspiration, change

Toronto-based rapper Shad’s latest album TAO, released last year, takes listeners through the thought processes of Taoism beliefs and social awareness. C.S. Lewis’ 1943 book The Abolition of Man and Shoshana Zuboff’s 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism are used as references by Shad to provide context to dystopian changes in society over music […]

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Just for Laughs Comedy Tour! returns to Victoria

The Just For Laughs Comedy Tour! is set to return to Victoria for the first time since 2019. This year’s tour—the 19th edition—is called Just for Laughs Comedy Night in Canada; it will feature a lineup consisting of some of Canada’s top comics and is led once again by comedy legend Rick Mercer. This time […]

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Stars on Ice all about family-like bonds for Keegan Messing

Canadian men’s figure skating champion Keegan Messing—in town this weekend as part of Stars on Ice—basically grew up on the ice: he started skating when he was three years old. In 1992 he saw Elvis Stojko—who is also at Stars on Ice—skating and it changed his life. “All I wanted was to jump and spin,” […]

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East of Berlin shows hope through horror

I was excited to go see Toronto playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s highly revered East of Berlin, currently playing at Fernwood indie theatre Theatre Inconnu. I was excited because, like many people, I have a curiosity with World War II, a curiosity that dances between sick fascination and total horror. The term “east of Berlin” was actually […]

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New Music Revue: Frog Eyes come back strong with The Bees

Frog Eyes The Bees (Paper Bag Records) 3.5/5  Frog Eyes is back with their first album in four years, after taking a break and releasing an album under the name Soft Plastics in 2020. The Bees celebrates Frog Eyes’ new path in their musical journey with 10 unique songs with an abstract sound and upbeat […]

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Concert pays symphonic tribute to the Fab Four

Jim Owen and Sean O’Loughlin are bringing The Beatles to life again. Their Classical Mystery Tour: A Tribute to the Beatles concert—which has been happening since 1996—will have the Victoria Symphony putting a different spin on classic cuts. “For people like myself, we never got the chance to see the Beatles live,” says Owen. “I […]

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The Demolition Gang pay tribute to The Wrecking Crew with special student show

There was a relatively unknown group out of southern California that had credits on hundreds of top 40 hits in the ’60s and ’70s. The unheralded artists were an all-star cast of session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew. By providing services for groups like The Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Monkees, the […]

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Play explores multi-generational households, gender, bar mitzvahs

Local director Kevin McKendrick is directing Bema Productions’ take on Rich Orloff’s award-winning play Men Overboard in May; McKendrick describes it as a very poignant comedic performance.  “Men Overboard is what I describe as a wry comedy,” says McKendrick. “There’s many funny sections in it but it’s quite poignant. It deals with three generations of […]

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