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Rhoma Spencer uses the Force in the new play, The Solitudes By Stephen Weir Take a bow, Rhoma Spencer, take a bow. You are the toast of Toronto’s theatre world for your current role in the new assembly play The Solitudes. Critical reviews. A quarter page colour picture of you in the Toronto Star. And there is an incredible TTC poster of you with hands on hips glaring and scaring all of us riding the Red Rocket this month. Rhoma Spencer is an actor, director, storyteller and broadcast journalist who began her career in her birth nation of Trinidad & Tobago. On stage, performing in TV shows, movies parts, and public events; heck, I have even seen her in costume at a high profile Scarborough funeral a few weeks ago. Now based for the most part here in Toronto, Spencer continues to be one of the busiest live performance actresses in the city. This week she is a brooding, scowling and sometimes hilarious presence on the Harbourfront stage with the Alunia T

Selina Thompson is worth her Salt on stage By Stephen Weir I have a fist-sized lump of salt on my desk.   Unlike actress Selina Thompson, I don’t know what I am supposed to do with it. “Just, mind you, don’t put this in your mouth,” she warned me when she handed over the rough pink triangle of rock salt. “This is for thinking on, not eating.” “ It was a piece of salt that convinced me I should continue living,” the young British actress told an almost full North Toronto theatre on Thursday night. As she has done at performances around the world, Thompson ended her one-woman play, SALT, by racing out to the front of the house in time to give each and every one of her departing members of the audience chunks of salt so we could ponder life too.   After watching her on stage pulverizing a block of salt while she was riffing on slavery, European racism and the utter freedom of walking the streets of Jamaica while Black, Thompson left us with scads

The Night The Great White Hope Lost It All By Stephen Weir - Caribbean Camera There is nothing noble about a fistfight. Blood. Flying Teeth. Broken Ribs. Brain Damage. A new all-Black (minus one) cast at Soulpepper Theatre says that sometimes fisticuffs can even tear a country apart.   Royale, running until November 11th recreates the Fight of the Century . This was a historic 1910 boxing match that brought US race relations to the canvas and made a black fighter King of the World. You probably know Marco Ramirez for the writing he does for TV more than for what he does for the stage. The American has penned for some big hits including Orange is the New Black, and the Marvel comic Netflix series, Daredevil. Ramirez is said to secretly love boxing because he sees it as “primal theatre”, two men stepping into the ring, and only one coming out with arms raised in victory. In his award winning play Royale, premiering at the Distillery District theatre, Ramirez has mixed