NYC to YYZ: 5 Things That Need to Come to Toronto Part 2

By Nicole Cardoni

It doesn’t matter if they say ‘zee’ to our ‘zed’ or ‘soda’ to our ‘pop’ – America vs. Canada only matters when we face off at centre ice. 

So here are five things happening south of the border that need to come to Toronto ASAP.

This isn’t about jealousy or envy; it’s just about making our city as cool as possible.

Theatre
While Hollywood’s paint by number business model of recycled superheroes and warmed-over franchises can stupefy audiences, new blood can reinvigorate even Broadway’s most well-loved productions. And recently, Steppenwolf Theatre Company has breathed new life into Kenneth Lonergan’s comedy “This is Our Youth” with a cast that includes child star royalty Kieran Culkin, “Superbad” star and Ontario native Michael Cera, and fashion wunderkind turned actress Tavi Gevinson.  

“This is Our Youth” is set in the “War on Drugs” New York of the early 80s, and Dennis, Warren, and Jessica are Upper West Siders in a grittier version of the city that went extinct with Giuliani when it was replaced with extra-wide strollers and Starbucks.  

Lonergan’s characters are painfully self-aware and yet oblivious to their own privilege – buying drugs with their parents’ money while lacerating their parents as hypocrites and, worse, Reaganites.

Botched drug deals, clumsy sex, and other juvenile hijinks get laughs even from the nosebleed seats, however the emotional impact of Lonergan’s script has not waned since the play’s first Off-Broadway debut in 1996 because the young trio’s struggle with adulthood, identity, and loss, remains as authentic today as it did when the play debuted. 

Once this show wraps its limited run on Broadway, we’re hoping Michael Cera will consider bringing it home to his fellow Torontonians.  

Film
If there’s anything that Dirty Dancing and Footloose have taught us, it’s that dancing can solve almost any problem.

However, in Dancing in Jaffa, we’re shown that story may be more than a High School confection. In a new documentary by Hilla Medalia screening in New York this month, dancing is revealed as both a tool capable of overcoming hatred and a bridge connecting real change in places overwhelmed by violence. 

The film follows Pierre Dulaine, a four-time ballroom dancing champion, as he takes his program, Dancing Classrooms, back to Jaffa, his birthplace. For generations, Jaffa has been a city divided, Israelis against Palestinians, even down to the children playing in its streets. Over a 10-week period, Pierre teaches Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli children to confront issues of identity, segregation, and racial prejudices as they dance and compete together. 

Here’s hoping it comes to a Toronto theatre soon.

Bar
Tired of fighting with the Nonnos in your neighbourhood over who’s got next on the bocce court? Well, the Park Slope Brooklynites that built Union Hall must’ve felt the same because this place is equal parts bar and shrine to the art of lawn bowling. 

Union Hall was converted from a warehouse to a restaurant, bar, and live music venue in the heart of Brooklyn. This laid-back, understated bar offers cozy firesides, a stately library, outdoor garden space, an upsized beer menu, and, the piece de resistance, two large indoor bocce courts. 

A sport this cross-generational should never be limited to just one warm-weathered Canadian season. Wheel Grandpa with you and start the campaign with the proprietors of your own neighbourhood bars today.

Operation bocce year-round begins with you.

Interactive Theatre/Performance Art
With all the Shakespeare in the Park and the year-round recycling of Shakespeare’s work at Stratford, there’s no fresher performance of “Macbeth” than that of Punchdrunk’s “Sleep No More.”

Stripped of the early modern English, “Sleep No More” is predominantly wordless, forcing these talented performers to rely on expressive movement of their bodies and the cinematic environment to convey the turbulent emotion behind the well-known text.

All audience members wear Eyes Wide Shut-like masks as they meandre anonymously and silently through the beautifully creepy McKittrick Hotel (a 6-floor, 100,000 square foot warehouse in Chelsea). Audience members walk the space made up of some 100 rooms, including bloody bedrooms, terrifying nurseries, mossy gardens, and a spooky lunatic asylum.

So before all of Toronto turns into condos, “Sleep No More” should find a warehouse to provide a landscape for this memorable, mind-bending performance. 

Music
The Dig’s Emile Mosseri and David Baldwin, who provide the vocals for this New York-based quartet, have played together since age 10. And you can hear it in the way their voices coalesce and then fracture amidst the dark, elliptical guitar loops and the incessant throb of the bass. 

With two new EPs, Tired Hearts and You and I, the band owes a debt of gratitude to the finest of 80s goth rock – but they do Robert Smith proud. 

The Dig tours this fall, with Canada dates still to be announced. So it’s possibly that NYC to YYZ might just happen after all…

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