A Fantastic Review from Mooney on Theatre

"World War I was an immense mistake. Missing Journey’s End at The Artisan Factory would be another gigantic mistake. It is an intimate, firsthand glimpse into a soldier’s life during war."

To read the full review CLICK HERE 

Journey's End: In the Green Room

Toronto theatre site In the Green Room sat down with Andrew Petker (Stanhope) & Jesse Nerenberg (Raleigh) to talk about the show.

To read the article CLICK HERE

Journey's End Trailer

Starring Andrew Petker (Captain Stanhope)

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

Journey's End Cast & Creative Team

Cast

T Stanhope (Captain) ....................................................... Andrew Petker

Osborne (Lieutenant) ....................................................... Robert Tsonos*

Trotter (2nd Lieutenant) / Colonel ................................... Richard Beaune*

Hibbert (2nd Lieutenant) ................................................. Tayves Fiddis

Raleigh (2nd Lieutenant) ................................................. Jesse Nerenberg*

Hardy (Captain) / Broughton (Lance-Corporal) .............. Jonathan Silver*

Company Sergeant Major / Bert (Private) ....................... Kelly Hoare

Mason (Private) / German Soldier ................................... Joshua Stodart

*Appears Courtesy of Canadian Actors' Equity

Creative/Technical

Director ............................................................................ Edward Hillier

Stage Manager ................................................................. Tamara Vuckovic

Asst. Stage Manager ........................................................ Laura Paduch

Lighting Design ............................................................... CJ Astronomo

Set / Costumes / Props Design ....................................... Chris Penna

Sound Design .................................................................. Kai Masaoka

Technical Director ......................................................... Evan Bonnah-Hawkes

Carpenter ......................................................................... Ben Carson

Wardrobe Mistress ........................................................... Janneke Tenbroek

Fight Coordinator ............................................................. Luke Marty

Crew ................................................................................ Benjamin Kibblewhite

It's Live!

Our indiegogo campaign for Journey's End is up and running. There's a wonderful video that was shot and edited by Ben Rayner from our team of producers. Check it out and donate!

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/journey-s-end/x/454731

Happy Thanksgiving Canada!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

To all of our friends and family out there, we wish you a very happy weekend full of pumpkin pie and turkey (or tofurkey).

We will be back in the rehearsal studio on Tuesday to work off those extra holiday pounds.

Stay tuned for news and updates about our upcoming production of Journey's End - tickets on sale soon!

Best wishes,
The Empty Room

Journey's End Launch Campfire

Join us on Sunday October 6th to launch our upcoming production of Journey's End!

In spirit of R. C. Sherriff's WWI piece the Launch Party will be held in great outdoors.. of Dufferin Grove Park. Equipped with a blazing campfire, tasty-roastables, and other special treats; TER & Friends will be celebrating it's upcoming production with songs, stories, and other fire-inspired performances. 

Check out the facebook event HERE
Or email us at info@empty-room.com for an invite.

Best part about it: it's free! (and there will be marshmallows).

See you around the campfire,

– The Empty Room

Coming this November...

Keep an eye out for performance dates, tickets & special promotions: all to be announced very soon!

– The Empty Room

Ninety-Nine Years Ago Today...

Ninety-nine years ago today, on the 28th of June 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated while touring in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Young Bosnia revolutionary movement, and one of a group of assassins organized by the Serbian underground military society The Black Hand. This was the inciting incident in what became the ferocious European power struggle known as The Great War, and later, The First World War.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg

The First World war ushered in the end of the Imperialist era, shaping the world we see before us today. As the centennial of this great conflict looms ahead, the stage is set for our next project; we will be mounting a play this coming remembrance season that is not only set in the trenches of the Western Front during The Great War, it was written by a soldier who fought there.

Nineteen year old assassin Gavrilo Princip

That is all we are at liberty to say about it for now, but please keep an ear out for a more formal announcement to come soon!

Until next time,

– The Empty Room

World Theatre Day 2013

"Today, actors and theatre companies have difficulties finding public theatres, stages, and spectators..."

Well, with crisis comes opportunity; what better time than now to make all of our voices heard, to make all of our hearts speak loud and true?

"...how far more penetrating to the soul is what the eyes can see and the ears can hear, than the words they read in a book."

(Extracts from Dario Fo's World Theatre Day Message 2013)

Click here to view the full message in English as read by Julian Sands.

Meanwhile, in Canada, here's what's gracing Toronto stages this week:

WorkHouse theatre's brand new play Gwen Powers by the supremely talented Michael Goldlist;
This, by Melissa James Gibson is on at Canadian Stage's Berkeley Street Theatre;
Theatre Smith-Gilmour brings Faulkner's As I Lay Dying to life at the Passe Muraille;
Lauren Yee's Ching Chong Chinaman is FuGen theatre's latest production at the Aki Studio Theatre.

Hope to see you all there, a happy and fortuitous World Theatre Day to you all,

– The Empty Room 

In Like A Lion...

It is a busy time for us here at The Empty Room; lots of planning is under way for our soon-to-be announced project scheduled for November. Want to hear more? Here's a clue: we're teaming up with the Royal Canadian Legion for this one...

Haven't figured it out? Follow us on Twitter ( @TheEmptyRoom ) and keep an eye out for more hints. Guess correctly before the official announcement and there could be a pair of free tickets in it for you!

Meanwhile in Toronto, here's what's whetting our creative whistles in this week:

Michel Nadeau's And Slowly Beauty... (Belfry / NAC)
Bahia Watson & Liz Paul's Pomme is French for Apple (Yonge Centre)
Martin Sherman's Bent (Hart House)
Ashlin Halfnight's Laws of Motion

Do you have a show you're working on in Toronto? Let us know and we'll put up a link.

Until next time, 

The Empty Room.

Rumblings in the darkness...

We have been quiet of late in the realms of social media, scribbling away on our own, immersing ourselves in theatre, music, art, and planning, ever planning for the next series of projects.

What is in store for 2013, you may ask? Well, the Born Free* project has been ticking away in our minds and on our notepads, with the next stage of development itching to be brought back on its feet later this year, plus we have an exciting new project on the cards for November, but that is all we can say of that for the moment...

More insights into the weird & wild workings of The Empty Room's members to come soon, in the meantime, here's what we're looking forward to in Toronto theatres this week:

Half-Pint Theatre's A Night of Shanley
Nightwood Theatre's The Penelopiad
The Quickening Theatre's The De Chardin Project
Obsidian/Atomic 3D/TPM's Shakespeare's Nigga

Cheers,

– The Empty Room

Open Rehearsal

Tomorrow it all begins again. We're very excited to be hosting our first open rehearsal of this project – 8pm at the Ernest Balmer Studio in the Distillery District. If you would like to attend, please drop us a line via the contacts page on our website – (click here) – please note, this is not a performance, merely a chance to share some of the ideas and scenes we've been working on, and invite responses and discussion from friends & supporters.
Cheers!
– The Empty Room

Gracious thanks!

To our wonderful supporters:
Thank you, thank you, thank you! It is due to the generosity of people like yourselves that this project is able to happen, and will continue to happen into the future. A big shout out to Gordon Frank, Rosemary Reilly, Sarah Nesbitt, Marnie Fiddis, Glen Simpson, Amar Wala, Aleks Blumentals, the Marta Resource Centre for Women, Magda Olchawska, 'Let-Me-Fall', Kelsey Johnson, Courtney Simpson, Taryn Jorgensen, Jesse Nerenberg, Alexandria Novokowsky, Loretta Semple, Kamini Murthy & Adam West! (Along with all those anonymous contributors out there – you know who you are!)

A big thank you

Thanks to everyone who came out to our Launch Party on Saturday night, especially to the wonderful artists and musicians who made the evening such a pleasure to be a part of.

A big shout out to The Rivoli for having us there – look forward to more events at this awesome venue, we're excited to start planning our next adventure with them!

Those who came will have heard about our current Indiegogo campaign – we're raising funds to put our new project, Born Free*, into development. Please help us out be spreading the link or donating as little $1 to help make this project happen.

With love,

The Empty Room

Launch Party at The Rivoli!

It's confirmed: the Official Launch Party for Born Free* will be on Saturday April 21st 2012 at The Rivoli – 334 Queen St. West, Toronto.

Come on down for an evening of Comedy, Music, Magic, and Revelry – hosted by none other than the legendary Nick Hamilton. Featuring comedy from Sex T-Rex & Jessica Beaulieu; music from Jamie Mac Band, The Night Knights, Meghan Greeley, & Shaun Benson; magic from James "The Illushionist" Hawksley; and topped off with the cherry that is Jonah Greenbaum-Shinder, who will spin the coolest of grooves to dance the night away to.

And if that's not enough, watch this space – we have even more acts to be announced soon!

– The Empty Room

In Memorandum

Last week, we suffered a great tragedy; our dear friend and colleague, Sarmad Iskandar, passed away suddenly on Friday March 16th 2012. Sarmad will be greatly missed by all of us, he was an incredibly talented Actor and Musician, and he was our friend.

Our thoughts go out to his family, their loss is utterly incomprehensible.

Rest in peace my friend, we will miss you for the rest of our lives.

With love,

– The Empty Room

A response to Kony 2012

In the wake of what has been one of the most successful viral campaigns in history, and its ensuing criticism, I would like to offer my response.

While I still believe that awareness is hugely important when it comes to human rights issues, I do not believe we benefit from the solutions proffered by movements such as Kony 2012. It is not, as with many things, a case of catch the bad guy. This is far too simplistic an approach. I defy any advocate of military action who thinks that more violence will serve us as a people. Violence begets more violence, and we should not stand for it.

The biggest obstacle we face when campaigning against human trafficking and modern day slavery – including the abduction of children to be used as soldiers – is the fact that we, as a society, feed the demand for such actions. It is our commercialism, our consumerism, and our voracious appetite for over-sexualized and objectified women that feeds this demand. The fuel in our cars, the rare metals in our consumer electronics and the modern, unrealistic conceptions of beauty that we buy into day after day are the things that cause these wars over oil and precious natural resources, and force women to be exploited and paraded around as commodities in front of a rabble of willing customers.

Yes, there are a number of people who profit from this. They are the hungry dogs salivating before a juicy bone – but it is us who are the ones wielding that bone.

This is what we need to spread awareness about: not just the fact that this is happening at all, but the fact that we are the ones causing the demand for it. Let the dogs go hungry I say.

– The Empty Room

5% in 48 hours!

Thank you so much for all your support so far, we have reached 5% of our goal in just 48 hours! Please keep spreading, emailing, posting the video wherever you can, we cannot do this without you. Keep checking back for more perks – some awesome ones to be released soon!

Love to all,

– The Empty Room

Born Free* – The Movement Has Launched

Slavery did not die with abolition, there are more slaves today than any other time in history – and it's even happening right here in Canada.

Slavery is here. It is right in your back-yard. It is there in your grocery store and your laundrette. It is in the wiring of your laptop, your smart-phone and your portable ultra-sleek tablet computer. It's in every newspaper, trash can, and in every cup of designer coffee. An estimated 27,000,000 people worldwide are victims of modern day slavery. It's time we woke up and made a change.

This project is about doing just that.

Born Free* is a collective of performing artists trying to spread awareness about the issue of modern day slavery. Using the tools of our trade – Music, Theatre, Dance, Spoken Word – we are creating a multi-disciplinary performance piece that tells the stories of those affected by this industry, how this issue impacts us in the 'first world', and why it is still happening so long after it was supposedly abolished two centuries ago.

Click here for more info.