Nam Nguyen's Quiz Icarus was my favourite new play of the year. Hearing the odd vulnerable story of two Torontonian trivia champs who dared to compete on Jeopardy was almost as exhilarating as watching Nguyen turn into a giant showboating dick as he beat audience members at a game he's so good at.

@whynottheatreto.bsky.social Mahabharata part 1's beautiful poetic threat that Munish Sharma's Bhima invokes on the Kuravas made me shake. Ravi's vision and stagecraft alongside the beautiful score will stay with me for a really long time. Canstage has a good thing going with these 2 parters.

Riel Reddick-Stevens' Sex Goddess was my favourite show of @toronto-fringe.bsky.social. Like watching a queer, r-rated family channel original video game on on cocaine. I'm really biased, but it's nice to see really stupid theatre (men in suits are hiding inside of grandma) that's done this well.

La Fille du Laitier's Macbeth Muet was an incredibly specific fever dream that made me understand macbeth in incredible detail (all without saying a word). Someone's gotta program this in Toronto or anywhere. Tours easily, easy set up and lots of beautiful gore (and eggs).

On the other side of the budget was El Kabong Theatre's production of Letts' bug. Inspiring seeing a Toronto director with no money smash it by having a story-first high-craft vision that enhanced the material. Seeing Nick Eddie attack those speeches with razor precision was a chef's kiss. Wow.

@stratfest.bsky.social's Anne of Green Gables is an all time fave for me. Really clean, smart direction, fantastic adaptation and remarkable to see a TYA show that doesn't talk down to kids. I'll be remembering this for a really long time. Best of the year and cried every time at a new spot.

this doesn't change the way I think about narrative, but just a pondering. Because Will Parry keeps talking about how moved they were by girl in the bubble and how they're glinda, so sure, yes.

I wonder if in the blockbuster, we forgive disjointed plot for these powerful moments - in a similar way to dance, but in a container that still favors narrative though in a sloppier way.

Superman - which has a kind of meandering second act, but sticks the landing in act 3. Or the Fast and the Furious films (wicked is better than these), which at it's peak succeed for sequences of action.

I think about Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a movie that doesn't really have clear character arcs, but is really popular because of it's overall tension and well choreographed combat (a theatre artist in Hamilton tried arguing to me that Cap is a dynamic character but hmmm...). I think about

it all, if sometimes having incredibly effective moments versus a cohesive linear plot is also something that can lead to commercial success? this isn't something I'm interested in pursuing in my own work, I just think I'm always interested in the populist response to things

Purely looking at the moments alone, I found the moment after For Good incredibly moving (the stuff through the door was like a nicer version of the Bear season 2's ending), the Wicked Witch of the East stuff really well put together and No Good Deed to be standouts. But I wonder - with the MCU of

is linear. Whereas in dance the container is based on moments. So then, why is Wicked part 2 incredibly popular? Is it Gay Avatar/MCU - where fight sequences (songs in Wicked's case) are what people are really watching it for? Or are these moments more than the sum of it's parts?

gave me pause. This friend who messaged me said that Wicked succeeds not because of it's linearity, but because of moments it lands very effectively - beyond Defying Gravity. She compared it to contemporary dance (a form I'm starting to work in). I don't know if I buy this myself because the form

(still not great, but I never have the ick when I see the musical. i'm a little let down, but never more). maybe it's because theatre is a more abstract form for me versus film (we have to imagine Oz beyond the set, versus in the movie the Emerald City is fully revealed in CGI). But still, this DM

Because Wicked is a linear plot, framed with rising/falling action, this perspective doesn't ring true for me. Even though it's act 2 is wonky, I think I buy the sort of non follow through of No Good Deed more in the musical versus the movie.

A colleague Dm'd me about this saying that Wicked succeeds as a piece of subtextual fiction for her rather than cathartic fiction with a linear plot, especially from her perspective as a sapphic. I'm not queer, but I wonder if this holds true for other queer folks who've seen the movie.

In No good deed (absolute banger), Elphaba vows to be more wicked. We don't see this in the action of the movie - though in the OG, she kidnaps dorothy after this, which i guess is more wicked than her mild/ineffective activism. She immediately gives up as soon as she finds out fiyero is dead.