We had so many wonderful submissions and would like to thank all writers who submitted to the the contest. We loved reading your work! Selecting just 16 pieces for the longlist was no easy task and as always all...
Review of There There by Tommy Orange
Review by Cody Caetano
No need to worry if you haven’t read the dust jacket, because I got the unblinking one sentence pitch of Cheyenne writer Tommy Orange’s There There to hitch the most disinterested readers: twelve exhausted Native folks reeling from one cross-cultural massacre come home to powwow at the Big Oakland Powwow, inside a big metal dome. Continue reading Power of the Powwow: A Review of Tommy Orange’s There There
Reviews of “Redemption” and “Big Sister”
Reviewed by Laura Anne Harris
Photos by Vancouver Fringe
“Redemption” by playwright James Walter Charleston is a solo show performed by Jim Sea. The piece focuses on three main characters: a prisoner who has been convicted of sexual assault, a southern lawyer who puts prisoners into reform therapy programs, and a therapist who works with prisoners to reform their behaviour. Continue reading “Shows so Fringe-y they deserve their own categories” – PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe
Former PRISM poetry editor Rob Taylor sat down with Amanda Jernigan to discuss her recently released third poetry collection, Years, Months, and Days (Biblioasis, 2018), a book whose content was inspired by a nearly 200-year-old Mennonite hymnal, Die Gemeinschaftliche Liedersammlung....
Review of “Ruby Rocket Returns!” and “Fake Ghost Tours”
Reviewed by Peter Takach
Photos by Vancouver Fringe
A rainy Sunday in Vancouver lends itself to noir. As we skulked under the steel girders of Granville Bridge, I found myself ascribing tropes to my fellow theatregoers as we walked past converted warehouses. Over there walks our hero alone, the private eye in her overcoat, lighting a covert cigarette. Here, a pair of femme fatales with their red umbrellas. Walking along by the docks, you can almost see the ghosts of longshoreman past. But what was once a foggy place of corrugated tin factories is now a cobblestoned island of upscale markets, touristy boutiques, and luckily for me, theatre venues, home this month to the Vancouver Fringe Festival, where I took in two comedic shows.
Continue reading “Gumshoes and ghosts” – PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe
Review of “Weirdo”
Review by Liam Siemens
Photo by Robbie T
How do you make a magic show for the twenty-first century? In the tenth century, it was about grifting small coin from a few unsuspecting traders. In the nineteenth century, Robert-Houdin formalized it, founding a magic theatre, and performing tricks that Louie Bonaparte would later contract for political ends. In the twentieth century, magic gained visibility and grew weirder: Harry Houdini would survive public burial, magicians would establish their own club (called The Magic Circle), Criss Angel would gothify it and take it to television. So what about now? Continue reading “Weirdo is magic for the twenty-first century”– PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival
Review of “Banned in the USA” and “Unscriptured”
Review by Laura Anne Harris
Photos by Vancouver Fringe
As soon as I entered the space of Gerard Harris’ “Banned in the USA”, I was immediately disarmed by the charm of the performer improvising a tune on the piano. The show didn’t start traditionally with lights down or music swelling, rather, Harris (no relation!) began with some light chit chat as we waited for the show to officially start. Continue reading “Fringe is the truest, rawest and most intimate form of theatre” – PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival
Review of “Dear Elizabeth”
Review by Issie Patterson
Photo by Wunderdog Theatre
Sarah Ruhl’s carefully-crafted and poignant “Dear Elizabeth” is an intimate piece for any audience with even a passing appreciation for poetry. Directed by Shelby Bushell, the show is constructed around a back-and-forth of real letters read aloud by Alexis Kellum-Creer as the witty, self-deprecating Elizabeth Bishop and Anthony Santiago as the sometimes arrogant, often intoxicatingly enthusiastic Robert Lowell.
Continue reading “Dear Elizabeth starts deliberately slow, gathering momentum for a powerful finish” – PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival
You Can’t Stay Here
Jasmina Odor
Thistledown Press
Review by Sarah Richards
Jasmina Odor’s short story collection You Can’t Stay Here is about relationships. Shaky ones. They flicker between lovers and friends, but also between old homes and new ones — most of Odor’s protagonists emigrated to Canada from Croatia during the Bosnian war. Even temporal relationships are disrupted. The war, whether lodged in one’s lived or living memory, is a wedge, “a chasm between past and future.” (119)
Continue reading Love and All Its Vulnerabilities: A Review of Jasmina Odor’s You Can’t Stay Here