Community News — Kingston Theatre Alliance

Last summer I booked a trip to New York City as I hadn’t visited since I was very young. I was extremely excited as I really wanted to see a Broadway musical for the first time. As I hopped online looking for shows to see, I remember thinking, “Back to the Future the Musical… Why?” I have no hate for the idea—it could be an amazing musical—I was just surprised at the idea of a Back To The Future musical and it having a spot on Broadway. I continued searching and found that around half of the musicals on Broadway at the time were either remakes of hit movies or revivals of older shows. At first, I was surprised but after further thought, it made sense. I recently looked at Broadway.com’s list of current best-selling Broadway shows and saw that four out of the top ten shows on Broadway right now are direct adaptations of former hit movies, while five out of ten of the shows are connected to an already existing popular product or a revival of an old show.

Nine is a famous Broadway musical brought to life by the students of St. Lawrence College’s Music Theatre – Performance program. It played at the Thousand Islands Playhouse this past weekend and was directed by Alexandra Herzog. With music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and book by Arthur Kopit, the story based on the 1963 film 8½  follows Italian Film Director Guido Contini (Felipe De Brito) as he tries to […]

Since my first dreary days as an ArtSci frosh, getting stuck in a crowd of Queen’s students has been a surefire way to bring out my inner Wednesday Addams. As I stood in the Rotunda Theatre’s packed lobby on Thursday evening, noisy whirls of preview-night chatter ricocheting in my ears, I felt a distinct urge to crawl deeper into my own skin. When I realized my arms were crossed and […]

You’ve heard of iPhone, iPod, iPad, but what about iWorld?  Kingston Meistersingers’ production of We Will Rock You!, directed by Rachael McDonald, is a jukebox musical with songs by Queen and book by Ben Elton. Bringing a collection of rock hits to Domino Theatre’s stage, the show flashes forward hundreds of years into the future: the world is run by Globalsoft, a music corporation that has destroyed and banned all […]

When it comes to theatre criticism, there are dozens of different opinions about its pros and cons. Of course readers have their valued takes but if there’s ever a disconnect that draws a line, it’s usually between the folks writing and publishing a review, and the folks involved in the production. Recently, the Kingston Theatre Alliance (KTA) received an email about a review and subsequent editor’s article, both written by […]

The prompt: write a play about solar eclipses.  The students of Queen’s University (QU)’s DRAM 251 class were tasked with this in their 2023 fall semester. 24 plays were written as a result and seven have gone on to be dramaturged by the students of QU’s DRAM 339 class this 2024 winter semester. But the collaboration doesn’t end here. The seven plays will have staged readings tomorrow, March 25th, 2024 as […]

You know how the story goes: boy meets girl, girl meets Satan, Satan tempts girl, girl eats fruit, boy eats fruit, humankind becomes doomed, and for some reason it’s all girl’s fault. Or something like that. Adam and Eve’s fall from innocence has been told and retold across millennia. Perhaps the best-known English-language version (and certainly the one most often assigned to university students) is John Milton’s 1667 epic poem, […]

What comes to mind when you think of audience participation? No, for real, tell me.  Don’t want to? Okay, I’ll go first. When I think of participation, the little sing-song voice in my head starts humming Al Simmons’ “Don’t Make Me Sing Along”. This tune was rattling around in my mind when I met with theatre scholars Dr. Jenn Stephenson and Mariah (Mo) Horner to talk about their research project, […]