Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

Trout Stanley – Rising Toronto Star is not a fish out of water in this darkly funny, all Black Canadian Play By Stephen Weir Stephen Jackman-Torkoff has had so many edgy roles in his young acting career, crazy come easy.   This month he plays a touched barefoot wanderer who wanders through a British Columbia forest in a tattered police uniform looking for the lake where his jewelry-thieving parents accidentally electrocuted themselves years ago.   Early in this Black comedy he meets two equally crazy gun toting, noose carrying sisters and falls in love overnight.   Did I mention Jackman-Torkoff’s character only answers to the name of Trout Stanley? Jackman-Torkoff is the runaway star of Trout Stanley, a very dark comedy currently getting rave reviews at the downtown Factory Lab Theatre. Trout Stanley is a remount of play that first hit the boards back in 2004 in Nova Scotia, came to Toronto in 2005 and then on to a wow zowie response in New York C...

It Isn’t A Game In The Other Side Of The Game Amanda Parris Toronto fervently wishes that the name Lester Donaldson would not be spoken and that 29 years after his death the city could return to being known as Toronto The Good.   But if wishes were kittens, Amanda Parris’s debut play, Other Side Of The Game, would still be a lion’s roar against Toronto’s treatment of the Black community – from police shootings in the last century to carding in the 2000s. Lester Donaldson is a name from way back.  He was a mentally disturbed Black man who was shot dead by police in a Toronto rooming house.  It was 1988 and the community rose up and marched, shouting Lester’s name at the police and City Hall. It was the spark that lit a roman candle under Dudley Laws who shortly thereafter formed the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC). There were more shootings of innocent Black men and BADC hit back with more  and larger demonstrations and finally a riot. In Oth...