Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

Virgilia Griffith Unguarded in  the Tarragon’s Guarded Girls By Stephen Weir In a city where there are scads more actors and actresses than there are roles to perform in, there is one person on stage who is very very different.    The standout star is Toronto’s Virgilia Griffith, a young woman who has been constantly employed – plays, dance performances, and TV roles – since graduating from Ryerson’s Theatre Program some eight years ago.   In the last year the Caribbean Camera has    strongly praised her work in three different plays    - Soulpepper’s Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Tarragon’s Harlem Duet,    and Obsidian’s Other Side Of The Game. Now she winning standing O’s in Tarragon’s Extra Space co-starring in Guarded Girls, an all-women 90-minute play about the horrors of prison. It is a brand new work by Governor General’s Literary Award nominee Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman.  It stars Griffith, Col...

There is a Rose in this Canadian Harlem Review by Stephen Weir   Harlem Duet, currently on stage at the Tarragon Theatre is attracting much attention. It is selling out most nights of its Toronto six-week run. There is nothing new about this 21-year old drama. Certainly not with the script which was written by Guyanese/Ja maican/Canadian Djanet Sears back in 1998. Nor  is there a new message found in the plot line  of the North American Black experience. It is a story of loyalty, revenge, love, madness and, of course, racism depress ingly repeated over three  generations in Harlem and the Deep South .  Virgilia Griffith So why is Harlem Duets packing the mid-town Tarragon Theatre these days?  It is the acting – the passion that some of Toronto’s best known Caribbean Canadian actors bring to the stage in a telling of age-old social problems that still impact the community today.   The standout star is  Virgilia Griffith ...