Latest news with #performer
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Rickey Smiley reveals he has no issue with 'offending people' as he details list of taboo topics in comedy special
Rickey Smiley is back - and has declared that he is funnier than ever before. 'I haven't done a special in 12 years, so I'm really excited about it,' he told Smiley - whose new special Fool-ish is now available to stream on Hulu - describes his latest project as 'funny, animated, with a lot of energy.' '[It's] really physical,' he quips. 'Something that I think everybody would enjoy.' Smiley, 56, says 'life has brought a lot of changes' since his last special, something which he delves into in Fool-ish. Joking that he is now 'older, and has a beard,' he also spoke about the changes having grown children - and recently discovering he is the biological father to six-year-old twin girls - has had on his comedy. 'I talk about that in the special as well,' he assures fans. 'It's a great special to be in your 40s and 50s, [and for] people in their 20s and 30s or whatever.' 'I think I'm funnier now, than I was before,' he declared. 'Because at this age, you say whatever on your mind and you don't care who gets mad.' 'When you have more life behind you than in front of you, you don't care,' he laughed. Smiley, who lost his 32-year-old son Brandon to an accidental overdose in January 2023, said performing his show felt like they were on stage together. 'My son was a performer, he was funny. He had his own style, and uniqueness on stage,' he reflected. 'I'm just glad that we were able to share and do the same thing,' he said passionately. For Smiley, who has been performing in comedy shows since the 1980s, there were no nerves when it came to curating the show. 'I'd done so many shows and comedy clubs, three shows Saturday, two shows Friday - do the morning show every single morning,' he listed. He joked it was like exercising the comedy muscles in your brain, and had 'a lot of fun' coming up with what to include in the special. 'I've been performing for years, and if you figure out if you're going to do a special, you go ahead and let's put a special set together,' he explained. Smiley, who lost his 32-year-old son Brandon (pictured) to an accidental overdose in January 2023, said performing his show felt like they were on stage together Smiley says that means 'doing things that people will remember.' The comedian added there may be some humor that may offend people, he deems his content universally engaging. 'You say what needs to be said and it's funny and everybody relates to it, and you're only saying what everybody's thinking anyway, so we just bold enough to say it,' the comedian shared. He revealed his potentially taboo topics include 'talking about little people' and his favorite TV show - My 600 Pound Life. 'People might get offended,' he admitted. 'But hey, it's funny, they're going to watch it.'
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Kara Young, already on a Broadway streak, could make Tony history with her role in 'Purpose'
NEW YORK — Don't bother asking Kara Young which one of her roles is her favorite. They're all her favorite. 'Every single time I'm doing a show, I feel like it is the most important thing on the planet,' she says. 'I don't have a favorite. It's like this: Every, every single project has held its own weight.'
Globe and Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
With Adieu, Guillaume Côté leaves the National Ballet of Canada to make way for new talent
Some loathe goodbyes. Others relish the drama. It seems safe to put Guillaume Côté in the latter camp as he leaves the National Ballet with Adieu, an evening dedicated to his 27-year career with the company. The mixed program, which opened in Toronto on Friday night, culminates in the world premiere of Grand Mirage, a 35-minute ballet that falls somewhere between mini-autobiography, valedictory speech and Côté's ode to himself. You would be right to infer that Côté holds a special place in the company–few artists get a show celebrating their exit. But as the only principal dancer cum choreographer on staff, he's been a long-time cherished Renaissance man who has charmed Canadian audiences for nearly three decades. Charm might be the operative word here; no one would argue that Côté has ever been technically exceptional as a dancer. Instead, he's distinguished himself with his presence, warmth and intensity as a performer. In certain roles–Romeo and Nijinsky for example–he's been absolutely magnetic, bringing depth and vulnerability to formidable characters. Onstage, he's unfailingly watchable, which may sound like faint praise but isn't. Whether the movement is complex or vague, he infuses it with honesty and vigour, transforming sometimes abstruse steps into captivating expressions of feeling. Guillaume Côté says farewell after nearly three decades at the National Ballet of Canada The response to Côté's choreography has been more varied. While his work has been presented at important venues across Canada, it has never been produced or commissioned outside the country–he doesn't rank among our most famous choreographic exports, i.e., Crystal Pite, Emily Molnar, Marie Chouinard, Aszure Barton, Emma Portner. Some of his limitations as a choreographer are evident in his two works on the program. Take Bolero, the 2012 ballet that kick-starts the evening, a tidy crowd pleaser set to Ravel's popular eponymous composition. Architectural and compact, the piece features a woman in white as she is supported and manipulated by a retinue of four men, their movements echoing the patterns and repetition in the melody. Leading the ensemble, principal dancer Genevieve Penn Nabity is the picture of strength and precision, and we're treated to some gravity-defying lifts worthy of a figure-skating rink. But it all feels like gazing on an exquisite platter of food we can't eat; we never go deeper than admiring what we see. Grand Mirage is a knottier work to analyze. It begins with a short film (by Ben Shirinian) that evokes Côté's inner turmoil as he grapples with the doom of impending retirement. Close-ups of Côté's face are interspersed with dreamlike sequences of frenzied dancing, flashes of him standing outside a seedy motel and footage of his appearance on a 70s-era talk show. (For some reason, the world we've been transported to is one of big lapels and bell-bottoms, the aesthetic unerringly Mary Tyler Moore.) When the film screen lifts, we find Côté in a staged version of the same motel room, where he flounders about depressively until he is visited by ghosts from his past. Some of these vignettes feel clichéd to the point of meaninglessness. Former principal dancer Greta Hodgkinson struts into his room in a purple leisure suit, hamming up the diva antics. Nothing about the choreography helps us understand their relationship, until we hear the first chords of Chopin's Nocturne No. 2 in E flat, and the dancers begin a pas de deux I can only describe as bed gymnastics, replete with upside-down lifts that often create an ungainly meeting between Côté's head and Hodgkinson's crotch. A later sequence involving a dancer with horns (David Preciado) is perplexing, and when the set transforms into the wings and lights of a stage, Côté performs a showy pas de deux with a woman in a blue wig (Arielle Miralles). Zigzagging across the stage to Frank Sinatra's crooning, they are wistful for a bygone era, but nothing new or interesting is happening at a choreographic level. Like much of Côté's work in Le Petit Prince and Frame by Frame, it feels there to fill a dramatic moment. You can't help but wish he'd worked the other way, with the drama unfolding from the movement itself. Some moments are more memorable. Soloist Hannah Galway appears on stage like a half-living wraith from a Tim Burton movie, and while her connection to Côté's narrative isn't fully clear, it's hard not to enjoy her haunting expressiveness, the sense that she's made of paper, that every movement carries the risk of a tear. It's not until the work's end that we get something that approximates real feeling from Côté. Thrashing his arms to Peter Gabriel's My Body is a Cage, he becomes angry, frustrated, inconsolable. The lyrics may be a bit on the nose (and the whole conceit a little redolent of James Kudelka's The Man in Black), but it's a relief to finally sense that we're being taken seriously as an audience, and granted access to something visceral. What will happen to Grand Mirage in the years to come? Between the film, the detailed costumes, the beautiful transforming set (all designed by Michael Gianfrancesco) the work clearly cost money to make. But it is so expressly and exclusively an ego-project for Côté, leaving so little space for another dancer's interpretation, that it's hard to imagine how and why the company would present it again. Especially not when the National is hiring the likes of Ethan Coangelo and Jennifer Archibald, the two Toronto-born choreographers who have world premieres sandwiched between Côté's pieces. Coangelo's Reverence is an atmospheric ensemble work, performed in bare feet, that plays with unmannered forms and motion. The dancers assume pedestrian shapes that evolve into flashes of virtuosity; there's a fascinating melding of loose limbs and vigour. Principal dancer Spencer Hack stands out for his expressive suppleness, and while some of the work's nuance is overpowered by its tonal darkness, this is clearly the creation of a choreographer with vision, sensitivity and a theatrical imagination. Archibald's King's Fall gets points for the evening's most novel and experimental piece. A chaos of style that pairs pointe work and pirouettes with classic breakdancing moves, the ballet is a breathless and entertaining whirlwind. Dressed like knights in shiny medieval helmets and chainmail-esque suits, the dancers throw themselves into the collision of genres. King's Fall is most successful when it's playful–there's room for more levity in the work–but Archibald's ambition and creativity are refreshing throughout. We're left with a program of mixed quality and mixed feelings. What's clear at the final tally: one choreographer's Adieu is another's heartening hello.
CBC
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
The magic of summer camp inspired Charis Cotter's new novel
Charis Cotter says some of her earliest memories are of attending summer camp as a child in Ontario. "We'd have dress-up nights and skits. I loved the skits. And singing, the singing was great. To me [it] was just magical," she said. She draws on these magical memories for her latest novel The Mystery of the Haunted Dance Hall, which tells the story of a girl who goes to summer camp for the first time and encounters a ghostly mystery. The prolific and award-winning author of children's books moved to Western Bay, Newfoundland, about 15 years ago, after spending most of her life in Toronto. She believes the move gave her the same sense of vitality she used to experience in the summers of her childhood. "Growing up in the city, but going out and being in the country, I just felt like I came alive. It was where I belonged. It inspired me," she said. Living next to a large cemetery in Toronto, and then moving into a house situated between two cemeteries in Western Bay, she has always been drawn to the sense of wonder graveyards inspire. "I always want there to be more to life than what you can see and touch, that there's something more mysterious happening, and magical," she said. In her writing, she approaches the idea of the supernatural with a sense of playfulness rather than fear. "To me it's a key to get into a child's imagination. It's with grownups, too. You start talking about ghosts, and immediately everyone is listening." An author and a performer Cotter has authored more than a dozen books for young readers, garnering accolades from the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards and the Atlantic Book Awards for children's literature, plus national and international awards. Yet, her first passion was acting, and she still brings that early love to her craft through engaging presentations. Cotter especially enjoys visiting children in classrooms. Drawing on her theatre training — she studied acting in Toronto and London, England — she presents dramatic readings in character and helps children learn to tell their own stories. Among her many personas, she has given readings dressed as Queen Elizabeth II and as a housecleaning ghost from Scottish lore. She also does creative writing workshops with school children. Two of her titles, The Ghosts of Baccalieu and The Ghosts of Southwest Arm, are collections of stories arising out of these classroom writing workshops. "I want to stimulate kids' imaginations," she said. "I want them to be creative and lose themselves in daydreams and use their imaginations because I just think it's vital to human existence and creativity." In The Mystery of the Haunted Dance Hall, the young protagonist feels different from other kids and is nervous about attending summer camp for the first time. In fact, many of Cotter's novels feature characters who feel out of step with their peers. "I think a lot of kids feel that way," she said. "I think kids can relate on some level to that feeling of not being sure of yourself and not being sure of your friends … or feeling that you're weird or different." What inspires her to write about these young characters? Cotter believes she is a 10-year-old at heart. "Everybody has an age that they are inside that's not their chronological age, it's their psychological age or the age that they operate from and see the world around them. And I always say that I'm 10 inside," she said. "There's insecurity, hesitation, but the world is opening up." Tender subjects Whether she's writing a new ghost story or telling tales to a room full of fifth graders, Cotter is driven by a deep empathy for the children she engages with. "I want their emotional experience of life to be validated," she said. Sometimes in a classroom setting, a child will disclose their real-life experience of grief. "Somebody will say, my father died last year, or my grandmother died. And then I have to try to respond to them in a way that isn't just playing, it's something more. And it's very moving when that happens." Ultimately, Cotter's goal is to inspire delight in her young readers. "My books are always to do with ghosts, and ghosts have to do with death. So, there is a sadness in my books. But my main purpose in writing is always to give the reader a good time, to entertain them and have fun, and pull them into another world," she said. In the coming months, Cotter will offer signing events in Newfoundland and Ontario. She also hopes to do another school tour in the fall. Copies of The Mystery of the Haunted Dance Hall are available in all bookstores. Her next local book signing will take place at Coles in the Village Mall in St. John's on Saturday, June 14, from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
News.com.au
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Rosamund Pike ‘never had any doubt' her life would be in the performing arts
The Gone Girl star, who is the daughter of two opera singers, always knew she was destined to be a performer too. In a recent interview with Harper's Bazaar U.K., Rosamund shared that although her family didn't have much money, they lived an exciting life, "I didn't know anything about money. But I knew what backstage felt like, how a crinoline (stiffened or hooped petticoat) worked. (I was in) this fun, maverick world, with a mixed bag of individuals blessed with amazing voices."
