Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

  Virgin play for the virgin playwright  By Stephen Weir  The Caribbean Camera Inc.  on  April 20, 2023 Rarer than a church handing out money on Sunday to its congregation, the new play Vierge (virgin) is breaking ground with its black all-female cast and its Black female playwright. oh yes, its director is a Zambia-born Black woman. The city has a long history of White male dominated theatre, Vierge is making a huge racial and gender statement that, judging by the rousing Thursday night premier, rocked the standing-room-only Toronto audience. Etobicoke’s Shauna Thompson stars in Vierge, the new play recently unveiled at the factory theatre. The play features Thompson as Divine, a sixteen-year-old who feels like she doesn’t belong anywhere and whose only comfort is her rarely read Bible. However, when her family joins a Montreal Congolese church and she befriends three African Canadian girls in her newly formed youth group, Divine discovers that the world around...

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...