Curtains Up Winnipeg

(Book review) Against the Night by Evelyne de la Chenelière

September 4, 2026

Book provided by Playwrights Canada Press

By Daniela Smith-Fernandez

In the dark of night, perspectives are different. This is a key theme, not only of this book but of many works of fiction. Darkness and night are understood to stand in for the chaotic, the hidden, the place where people behave in ways that they wouldn’t were they subjected to the cold clear scrutiny of daylight logic. This key metaphor goes deep in many cultures, and it is finessed beautifully in this play by Evelyne de la Chenelière, a québécoise playwright who I will definitely be seeking more of.

Speaking of perspectives, there was some language drama on my end with this text. I was given the English translation (thank you again Playwrights Canada Press), but the original is written in French, a language which I live, work, see theatre and write in. I have strong feelings about reading texts in the original language, so before I could review the translation I had to buy the original French play, Le traitement de la nuit and read it before I was willing to write a review. I don’t know if other multilingual people struggle with this issue as well, but I do. Which means that I can confidently say my review is informed not only by multiple readings, but also both in the original and the translation. I have given this play my time and my energy and feel entitled to make an analysis. Just so you know.

The story is full of ambiguity. We have Lena, the main character, who is the daughter of Bernard and Viviane, a wealthy couple who own an estate. The couple assure us that she was brought into the world with light and love and mutual cooperation in birth, but Lena makes it equally clear her life does not exhibit the happiness and joy her birth foretold. From the beginning, she is antagonistic to her parents who express themselves graciously, ceremonially avoid all conflict and bend over backwards to cater to her whims. In the mean time, Lena keeps running away from home, something they dismiss as “like a dog”. Their landscaper Jeremie, an ex-con, is paraded around as a sign of their magnanimous nature in front of their friends. That is until night falls, at which point Viviane swallows copious amounts of pills to deal with her insomnia and Bernard drives his Mercedes down dark roads. Lena and Jeremie are quickly complicit, sharing a garden shed as Jeremie hates houses. In the dark we finally see the cracks that their daytime pretences have caused and our vision of everyone becomes murkier and more complicated.

None of the characters are pure, that much is very clear, however what they are guilty of is difficult to determine in the script. It”s hard to reveal too much without giving spoilers, but I will say I tended to believe that Lena and Jeremie”s last scene did reflect a concrete truth. Viviane and Bernard are difficult characters to like, but equally hard to dismiss. They try hard to do positive things for struggling people, but there is a sense it is all performative. At the same time, their refusal to see their daughter Lena as she is, where she is and what she is, pushes Lena to further extremes away from them. There are so many choices to be made on the part of each actor and the collective productive how to approach this story.

The tricky part of this play for me, and the reason I read it so many times, is that there is so much mystery in terms of what is true and what is an illusion on the part of the characters. Their declarations contradict, erase each other, turn out to be dreams or illusions. Any director who takes on this script has big decisions to make as to what concretely has gone on because there are so many interpretations of concrete events. At one point I literally sat down and traced out all the possibilities of what could have been true and the number was staggering. Honestly, you could probably even play the whole thing as a “it was all a dream” Deus Ex Machina without difficulty.

The language is soft and lyrical, simple and elegant. The longer speeches make sense in context, and not a word is wasted. Everything builds to a crescendo of a strange, confusing, mixed up world with characters who can”t be bothered to see each other as they are. It’s a complex emotional landscape which is confusing and compelling.

As a concept I love everything about this book. As a reader, I found it incredibly unsatisfying. I feel like this would be better as a play infused with directorial decisions than lines on a page. I found myself trying to visualize casting this show, just to make sense of it, and playing around with different hints and allusions through set and costume choices. I think by some parameters that makes this a good script in that you want to transform it, but it also makes for incredibly frustrating reading.

This may be a case of learning to read plays in a different way than you read novels. I thought I knew a little about that distinction, but it turns out it is a process. I hope that as I keep reviewing I can start to develop techniques for understanding theatrical writing differently.

Thanks for reading!

Daniela Smith-Fernandez is Chilean-Canadian by birth, francophone by choice. She is an artist, writer and craftsperson who is proudly multicultural and multilingual (English, Spanish, French). She has worked in theatre as a costumer, prop maker, venue manager and volunteer. Her theatre reviews and articles have been published in student newspapers and blog. She is currently writing the second play in a trilogy about Jean-François, a man who is obsessed with sex and French grammar, not always in that order. She writes in English and French.
(Bedford drama) Agamemnon by Aeschylus

August 27, 2026

By Daniela Smith-Fernandez

Confession time: I do not have a theatre degree. In order to compensate for this shameful lack on my part I am reading the Bedford Introduction to Drama from cover to cover in the interests of filling in the gaps of my knowledge. This feature will be interspersed with other pieces such as play reviews and topics in theatre. I hope you enjoy coming along on my journey to cram a theatre education into my brain with a 4th edition copy I acquired from someone second hand!

Greek theatre is one of the things my ADHD brain has hyper-fixated on over the years. It also happens to be the very beginning of Bedford Introduction to Drama, regardless which edition you look at. The fact the Western theatre tradition began with the Ancient Greeks is one of those generally uncontroversial statements everyone and their dog (or cat) make at some point when they write histories of the THE-A-TRE (grandiose voice absolutely required for correct pronunciation). I love it with the devotion of the eleven year old girl I was when it first crossed my path. My cat Noisette had a few things to say on the subject too, but she is also a very vocal lady who is mainly interested in telling me about how cool her cardboard box is. Anyways.

The first play in the book is Agamemnon by Aeschylus. Unlike other classics of Greek tragedy, I have absolutely no prior experience of this one. On the other hand, since it’s based on mythology, I did have the benefit of knowing the bones of the story. It is an offshoot of the Trojan War epics, so I apologize for the recap to those who can already tell you these stories in their sleep.

Ignore this if you choose to. You have Troy, a proud kingdom with a prince called Paris who isn’t good for much beyond appreciating pretty people. Literally – the goddess Aphrodite promises him the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife, never mind that said woman, Helen, happens to be married to King Menelaus of Sparta. Paris doesn’t care so they run off to Troy together. Then all of the Greek kings banded together to bring her back… or tried. Agamemnon, Menelaus’ brother was all set to sail off to war, except that he had angered a god and there were no winds. To appease the really awesome compassionate gods, he decides he needs to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, as you do (?) The Greeks get to Troy, demanding to get Helen back but Trojans refused… so they fought for ten years, during which time many things happen you can learn about with a decent Greek mythology textbook instead of depending on a theatre nerd recapping a textbook. When the play starts, Agamemnon has come back home after ten years away at war, and his wife Clytemnestra is still holding a grudge from him murdering their daughter. That’s where the audience comes in.

As a play Agamemnon has a different structure than other tragedies, particularly in relationship to what the audience knows. Here, Clytemnestra goes on and on about how happy she is to see her husband and what a good queen she has been. If you read this play at face value without the help of annotations, you are going to miss that EVERYONE seeing this play knows she is lying through her teeth unless the very last few speeches. This is where consuming art from another time and place gets so interesting – we’re faced with work that depended on the audience having familiarity with narratives that we probably don’t – or not unless we are Classics majors. It isn’t just what they knew, but also the degree to which these stories were internalized that can’t be recreated. We can’t recreate their cultural references. By its very nature, reading these texts is embarking in a complex translation project where we are forcing ancient stories into a contemporary framework. The question becomes: is it still worth reading these plays when there is inevitably so much we’ll get wrong?

I would argue that yes, there is still value. Translation is imperfect, but it is still invaluable in helping us appreciate that the world looks different from different angles.

In the beginning, the old men of Sparta are excited about their king coming home. Everyone goes on and on about what a perfect queen Clytemnestra has been, especially Clytemnestra. Then Agamemnon comes home with Cassandra, a former Trojan princess who is now a slave girl. Cassandra has ominous things to say about the future, but no one listens. Agamemnon takes a bath – at which point Clytemnestra kills him. Her lover then shows up and gloats like a cartoon villain about taking over the throne. Everyone calls for justice and just kingship, but that will take until the next play in the trilogy.

What struck me with this play was the distinctive nature of tension. Everybody knows what has and will happen, so what Aeschylus does is essentially freezes the story in one moment and digs deep into the ethical dilemmas at work. Agamemnon is a returning hero to the old men of Sparta, and those concerned with good state governance. On the other hand, he did this absolutely heinous thing by sacrificing his daughter, and no one denies that this was also terrible.

The trick is the balance between bad decisions, and breaking down the considerations. The murder of Agamemnon is horrific, but is it balanced out by the motivation of revenge? Clytemnestra took a lover while her husband was away, and so Agamemnon’s death now also means that the land is in the hands of a tyrant. How do you balance personal with social responsibility? I fight with these questions in every Greek tragedy, but more than usual with this one because of the fact Clytemnestra lies about her motivations. It’s really not about Agamemnon at all – it’s about the impact on Sparta the weight of his decisions have had. It’s about the space created by Agamemnon, not the man himself.

And as a playwright, how do you build tension when everyone knows what is going to happen? How do you make their speeches compelling on their own but also push forward the plot? What is the aesthetic value of having a chorus repeat lines together – do they speak for the collective, or are they intended to be special interest? I know that I love the ritualistic feel of Greek tragedy, the sense that you are going to spend the play deliberating on why things had to come about the way they did. It’s a meditation, a cry for justice. A conversation on what could have gone differently, and why things came to a point of inevitability.

At the end, Agamemnon is dead, killed in the bath. Iphigenia is long dead, killed by her father. Cassandra, princess of Troy and slavegirl of Agamemnon is also dead. Sparta is now controlled by a tyrant. And the question remains: was this inevitable, or the product of some seriously bad decisions? I want to consider that question in every play I read from here on in.

One of the interpretations I’ve read of the Iphigenia story comes from scholars Kenneth Atchity and Elizabeth Wayland Barber. To them, these myths of women came from a different cultural context, specifically a matrilineal society. These myths then got integrated into the artistic production of a patrilineal society that came and took over. This is where motivations are confusing. To them, the death of Iphigenia is unforgivable because according to matrilineal law she would have been Clytemnestra’s only heir. In other words, what her husband took away from wasn’t just a child but the continuance of her line. Which makes the death a political blow as well as a personal one. This does make sense in my reading of the play… but also your husband killing your child is objectively terrible and I think we can already ruminate on the whole situation without the use of my anthropology degrees.

I’m trying to go slow with this project, read plays one at a time. So far we’re up to a good start…

…as long as my cats grant me access to my textbook!

Daniela Smith-Fernandez is Chilean-Canadian by birth, francophone by choice. She is an artist, writer and craftsperson who is proudly multicultural and multilingual (English, Spanish, French). She has worked in theatre as a costumer, prop maker, venue manager and volunteer. Her theatre reviews and articles have been published in student newspapers and blog. She is currently writing the second play in a trilogy about a pansexual man who is obsessed with sex and French grammar, not always in that order. She writes in English and French.
(Theatre topics) Exploring the Possibilities: Audiences With Agency

August 23, 2026

By Christopher Douglas

When I see announcements for performances that walk around a park or a warehouse, I jump at the opportunity. I love theatre that asks me to do more than merely sit in my comfortable seat in the dark and watch the action unfold. Sometimes that means becoming a participant in the work: making choices about where to go and what to watch within the playing space or building. Sometimes it means I’ll interact with the cast, maybe following instructions they offer me, and every so often I might even get to engage with parts of the set – look into a drawer or hold an actor’s prop. And then there are times when I’m given enough agency to choose what happens next…

For audiences seeking interactive experiences from their theatre seats:

Ayn Rand’s Night of January 16^th casts the audience as a courtroom jury, deciding if the defendant is guilty or not. The decision they make changes the course of the script, with roughly a page of dialogue spoken after either verdict – which isn’t a lot of text. Written in 1934, this example of an audience having agency shows that our desire to participate isn’t a new feature in theatre although it offers viewers only limited options.

Even musicals can incorporate interactive components. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, based on an unfinished Charles Dickens novel, uses alternate endings to solve the mystery, and The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee usually has a couple of ticketholders called up as spellers.

Tony and Tina’s Wedding is another popular example, where the interactions between characters and the audience change nightly but the structure of guests attending a wedding banquet for the titular characters does not change. Or currently playing on Broadway and in numerous regional theatres, Every Brilliant Thing is a one-person show that gently prompts audiences to fill in the blanks of the storytelling.

In our local scene, in 2023, Theatre by the River offered Glad to be Here by Ginny Collins, set in New Winnipeg, a futuristic city rebuilt from a present-day disaster. This example hews closer to Rand’s script, as the only significant choice the “diplomatic guests” make lies at the end of the show. There are smaller options scattered in earlier, such as if you want to eat the Jeannie’s cake, but nothing that alters the flow of the production. As it was staged within a church, guests were led through stylized corridors and backrooms – a promenade-style performance, which increased the interactivity without offering the audience additional agency.

For those who want to participate in the world of the play, try immersive theatre:

New York housed Sleep No More by Punchdrunk and Third Rail’s Then She Fell for years. In these immersive examples, audience members move through a multilevel space to encounter scenes as they untangle the story’s details. Afterwards, participants can follow the performer to explore a new room or plotline or they can stay and wait for whatever might happen next in that space. Part of the thrill of these experiences is the heightened world-building. Surrounded by posters and letters or food to nibble and televisions to observe, audiences become part of the live show, crafting a personalized performance that only each one of them will witness – almost a live video game. The choices you make might be quite different from what your friends choose: paths forged without overt guidance from the play’s creators. Typically, choices made by an individual affect only their experience of the piece (which scene is seen) rather than the overall characters or narrative.

I’ve been a part of the above examples and, most recently, Storehouse in London with its embodiment of the data-storage cloud. For a Canadian approach, try reading John Krizanc’s Tamara, about Art Deco painter de Lempicka, first staged in 1981 in a Toronto mansion. This fascinating and unusual script offers all the scenes that were performed and lets the reader choose which permutation appeals to them. You can follow a certain character’s path travelling between spaces, or read only the scenes set in the dining room, or – if adventurous – try to determine which scenes would be performed simultaneously in the different rooms of the mansion.

In a whole other unique realm:

Nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language Drama, Inheritance: a pick-the-path experience by Daniel Arnold, Medina Hahn, and Darrell Dennis featured the three authors as the performers in the debut production. Within this seemingly standard play’s first moments, the action pauses to ask the audience to vote on what happens next as a young couple visit her father’s cabin to find someone unexpectedly staying. Among the decision points asked of the crowd: what music is he listening to, does the blood on the floor belong to a recently caught animal, or who takes control of the rifle? This style of storytelling channels the children’s literature series “Choose Your Own Adventure”. Some of the script’s options reuse the same references and jokes about colonization or Indigenous rights, however, spectators are given agency to plot their own course, as each alternative influences the next fork in the road. At the night’s conclusion, the audience sees a chart of the 50+ potential pathways to demonstrate just how much freedom was offered. This (so far) underexplored format differs from the environmental immersion of Tamara or Sleep No More to still allow each performance’s audience to create a distinctive experience.

When I’m in an audience, I want to feel that this performance is special for everyone: the people onstage, the people around me in the dark, and the person I am. When all present have agency over how the performance comes together the room feels alive, it states why we gather together, and addresses how unique this moment is. That convergence of time and people and place is an experience that does not exist in any other form because, together, we collectively imagine a reality, explore an idea, and partake of the theatrical ritual. That’s what motivates me to leave my home on a cold January night and discover our community.

Christopher (he/him) has primarily been a producer or stage manager. He has worked on 40+ productions in a variety of venues including parks, a bed-and-breakfast, a former coffin factory, and on a literal island. His short plays and adaptations have been performed in academic and festival settings and he is currently exploring poetry and libretti. He has (very) occasionally been convinced to act. As a reader, he devours award-nominated scripts and, as a critic, he has a history of being outspoken. A Torontonian by birth and a graduate of York University, he now lives in Winnipeg.
(Book review) “Love You Wrong Time” by Deanna H. Choi and Maddie Bautista

August 21, 2026

By Daniela Smith-Fernandez

Curtains Up is now doing book reviews of published plays. Due to a work conflict, they can’t be local to Manitoba. Due to logistics, they have to be printed by a publisher who is willing to send me a review copy. Nevertheless, I am deeply excited to start this chapter of the blog thanks to Playwrights Press Canada. Thank you for working with us, and we’ll do our best to do you proud.

In “Love You Wrong Time” theatre and sound artists Deanna H. Choi and Maddie Bautista pervert the sexual stereotypes about Asian women with almost mathematical precision. Their cabaret style songs are presented with an edged humour that leaves you both laughing without restraint and the tiniest bit uncomfortable. Judging by the book, their performance piece integrates a great deal of audience participation and riffing on what they get from the crowd. It’s a show about image, and so incorporating the crowded, over the top visuals really matters. Choi and Bautista play with public perception, where it comes from and the visceral damage it causes to racialized and eroticized bodies of Asian women. Presented in scenes, each interlude presents a different aspect of Asian stereotypes with a nod, a wink and a clear fuck you to anyone still maintaining these crappy ideas.

From the splashy punk rock cover to the colour photos included within, it is abundantly clear from the get go that the book who put this book together were invested in capturing the dynamic energy of the live show, and it was effective. Probably the best trick employed were the dialogue endnotes between the artists at the end of this scene. They gave the feeling of being in the middle of a creative conversation between minds that have been ricocheting off of each other for years, and catches some of that dynamic in text form. The images of their costume changes also helped to set the scene of high octane performances designed to leave your head turning. It is hard to capture the immediacy of live performance in dead tree edition, but this volume gave it a damn good try. If I was in the slightest bit musical, the scores at the back of the book would have added another level of interest to the experience.

Deanna H. Choi and Maddie Bautista are clearly powerhouses with the energy to rock a range of themes, costumes and ideas in what comes across as a cabaret style performance. Every last detail attests to a creative partnership that is both rich and fulfilling in which they know how to play together to a crowd. If I got nothing more from this text than an appreciation for their creative friendship, I would still consider it worth the read. This is also where the notes come in – I highly recommend not skipping them as they actually offered some of the most interesting and nuanced commentary in the book.

The fact that you can feel that chemistry through the printed page is impressive, but it did leave me wondering who this particular book was for. The performances and detailed interactions described within are so incredibly specific I wondered if it was possible for other performers to replicate it. If it’s intended to be a commemoration of performance pieces by the duo for people who have already seen the live show, it catches that sense of excitement. On the other hand if this is supposed to be a duplicatable script, then I’d say it is much less successful. I question if anyone is ever going to be able to deliver the mad and distinctive energy of these artists well enough to perform the whole play. On the other hand, the inclusion of music means that playing individual scenes or numbers is more possible, and potentially even rewarding for fans of the original work. It all comes back to the hybrid nature of this text: part commemoration, part reproducible script, a lot of captured vibes.

One of the big differences between reviewing a published play and a performed one is potential; a good published play makes you believe that it’s worth taking out and mounting a production out of it, whereas a performed play is judged on how well they drew on the potential that was already there. This text convinced me that these are artists worth following and a performance worth catching. They did not convince me that anyone could make this play work other than the two of them. Is that a failure? I don’t know.

The strengths and weaknesses of this piece are very much tied to the overall cabaret feel. Not all numbers are equally strong, but I can guarantee that the ones I liked are not necessarily the ones that resonate for other people. For example, I liked “The History Song” that gave context to the historical origins of the submissive Asian stereotype, I loved the recreation of Full Metal Jacket, and I thought the “Microagression Drinking Game” was brilliant. These felt like elevated conversations I have with my friends who are people of colour about how you survive and laugh at how deeply ridiculous racism really is. On the other hand pieces like “Mukbang” and “Body Currency” I just found less interesting. At the same time, it’s the live voice that animates which makes for a performance.

The camaraderie of the piece is its strength, but also placed a limit for me on the emotional depths we could reach. This is funny stuff, material that leaves you thinking and a little uncomfortable afterwards. That is something it does really well. On the other hand, some of the ideas they presented were interesting enough I wanted them to explore them for a while longer, but instead it was on to the next idea. You can’t blame a cabaret style show for being a cabaret style show, but it did leave me wishing I could see what Choi and Bautista could do with a longer format.

I know that this script is really fun, occasionally poignant, and thought provoking. Reading it I had the definite thought that the exotification of Latin American women is nothing compared to that of Asian women. And it made me want to experience the beauty of building a creative partnership like that Choi and Bautista clearly enjoy. This book is a worthy product, but I leave it for you to build your own relationship with this text.

Daniela Smith-Fernandez is Chilean-Canadian by birth, francophone by choice. She is an artist, writer and craftsperson who is proudly multicultural and multilingual (English, Spanish, French). She has worked in theatre as a costumer, prop maker, venue manager and volunteer. Her theatre reviews and articles have been published in student newspapers and blog. She is currently writing the second play in a trilogy about a pansexual man who is obsessed with sex and French grammar, not always in that order. She writes in English and French.
(Opinion) The New Needs Friends

August 19, 2026

By Daphne Finlayson

Photo by Leif Norman

Every October, dozens of artists, directors, and curators of new theatre from around the continent gather in New York City for the Festival of New Musicals. A colleague of mine had the chance to attend last year’s festival, marveling at how packed it was. “Everyone wanted to be a part of the next big thing,” he said. He spoke of a culture where everyone wanted that first look at the next Hamilton, the next Six, the next cultural phenomenon just waiting to hit the big time. Remember those memes in the 2010s about hipsters, scoffing at people who liked things that were too mainstream? It was that kind of energy – everyone wanting to be at the ground floor of something new so they could say they liked it before anyone else.

Cut back to Winnipeg. This past July, The Winnipeg Fringe Festival played host to over one hundred and sixty shows from around the world. Many of these shows were new scripts, making their debut at our festival. New plays seeing their very first audiences. New artists getting on stage for the first time. This festival could be the first and only time anyone gets to see this piece of theatre! You could have a unique experience, shared only by you and whoever can fit into the Rachel Browne Theatre for six shows! That’s a pretty exclusive club.

And yet, unlike in New York, there is a cultural hesitation at play – Winnipeg audiences are wary of the ‘new’. I see it in the box office returns, and in who is or isn’t sitting next to me in that theatre – if it didn’t get five stars, feature a friend or family member, or get favorably compared to something they already knew, audiences are less likely to take a chance on a new play. New theatre is untested. It’s a risk, both with one’s time and money. It’s like online shopping and seeing the new piece of gear you have your eye on with zero customer reviews. It could be a diamond in the rough, or it could break after three uses. Are you going to be the chump that wasted an hour of your life on someone’s misguided attempt at comedy? No way, Jose!

But without brave audience members taking a chance on the ‘new’, theatre can’t move forward. Tomorrow’s stars are taking their first steps at places like Fringe, and can’t become the ‘next big thing’ without people in the audience to watch. We’ll just see the same artists performing the same shows, saying things we already know.

This is not to cast aspersions on the known quantities of theatre. Those artists are good at what they do, and they’ve been doing it long enough to have left most of their misfires in the rearview mirror. But how quickly we forget that those misfires did exist at one point in time. The surefire sellouts of today had to fall flat on their faces a number of times before they got to where they are. Like the first few weeks of learning to play guitar, an artist needs to build up their calluses with pain, with mistakes, with lessons learned. And they can’t do that in an empty theatre.

My guiding light as an artist comes from this post’s titular quote, courtesy of the film Ratatouille. It is one of my favourite films about creation because of its egalitarian approach to art – not that “anyone can cook,” but that a great artist can come from anywhere. They don’t need a fancy degree, or the right accolades, or the latest in lighting equipment; they just need a story to tell and the tools to tell it well. But most crucially of all, they need an audience.

The quote goes on to say that “the world is often unkind to new talent, new creations.” This unkindness takes many forms, but its most prevalent one is in that hesitation. That fear of “what if this is bad?” And to that I say… “well, what if it is?” What if at the end of the day you spent your hard-earned money on something that kind of sucked?

Would that actually be so bad?

This hesitation isn’t exclusive to Fringe, or even to theatre. In a media landscape increasingly pushing for more sequels, for nostalgia-bait, for reboots and remakes and more of what we’ve already seen, we need the ‘new’ now more than ever. We need artists who try, and more than that, we need artists who fail. Artists who take big swings and miss spectacularly. Who challenge the status quo. Who, worst case scenario, get on that stage and make absolute fools of themselves. The best way for any art form to move forward is in those failures. For every one-time performer taking a gamble on something they’ll never try again, is the next chance to say “you knew them when.” Once they keep chipping away at what doesn’t work, they will slowly, inch by inch, find out what does. It’s in that act of trying that artists find the tools they need to get better, one beautiful failure at a time.

BIO

Daphne (she/her) is a director and creator based in Winnipeg. She is a graduate of the University of Manitoba with a BA in Theatre and Film Studies. In 2022, she graduated with honours from the inaugural Red River College Digital Film and Media Production program. She has worked with companies like Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Prairie Theatre Exchange, The Village Conservatory for Music Theatre, The Keep Theatre, Theatre Projects Manitoba, and Rainbow Stage, in addition to running her own company, Hypothetical Projects. Daphne was the recipient of the inaugural Dan Augusta Promise Prize from Sick + Twisted Theatre and received the Gladys Cameron Watt Award in the 84th National One-Act Playwriting Competition.
(Nouvelles) On cherche des nouveaux écrivains !

August 5, 2026
Non, je ne pense pas que je vais l’embaucher…

Quand j’ai commencé Curtains Up, mon intention était toujours de fournir du contenu bilingue. Au Manitoba il y a une tradition riche de théâtre en français, mais c’est rare que quelqu’un est conscient de ça s’il n’est pas déjà impliqué dans la communauté francomanitobaine. De plus, je ne connais aucun médias qui fait la couverture regulièr de théâtre en français au Manitoba. Je veux le faire.

Alors, je cherche des écrivain.es francophones. Ils doivent être disponibles au moins de faire des critiques de la saison de Théâtre Cercle Molière cette année, et j’espère des productions des étudiants à l’université de Saint-Boniface. En plus, je suis ouvert à l’idée d’avoir couverture en français des pièces en anglais – pourquoi pas?

Les qualités que je cherche pour des écrivains sont le suivant:
- Passionné par le théâtre (non-negotiable)
- Qui s’exprime bien et est capable d’être précis de ce qu’il observe
- Respectueux du métier des personnes dans le théâtre, peu importe ce qu’ils pensent de la performance
- Communique bien qui reste en contact
- Ouvert à la rétroaction constructive
- Fiable, capable de me donner ses critiques dans un temps raisonable
J’aimerais avoir une équipe de trois écrivain.es qui sont capables de fournir au moins deux critiques chaque show.

Pour la formation des écrivains, je vais offrir un camp de critique en octobre. Dans la séance de 1,5 heures, on va parler des éléments d’une pièce, voir une performance court d’une scène et parle de comment décrire une performance. Enfin, on va avoir un discours d’un professionnel au théâtre pour parler du rôle du criticisme dans l’ecosystème des arts.

Si tu es intéressé d’être impliqués dans les capacités suivantes, laisse-moi savoir:
- Écrivain.e potentiel
- Comédien.ne – intéressé par donner une performance pour le camp de critique
- Professionnel théâtral – tu veux parler de l’impact du critique
(News) Recruiting new writers

August 5, 2026
No, not this guy

As mentioned before, I can no longer review local theatre. However, I want to maintain the momentum of the blog by recruiting new writers. That way Curtains Up and continue to cover local theatre and I can continue to build a culture of critique based on conversation and engagement with the art form.

This is the first of what is bound to be one of many posts looking for new writers. It’s kind of a preliminary putting my flag out there to see how people react.

In terms of writers, I’m looking for the following qualities:
- Loves theatre utterly and completely (non-negotiable)
- Articulate, able to be precise about what they observe
- Deeply respectful of people and their craft no matter what they think of the show
- A good communicator who stays in regular contact to get the job done
- Open to constructive feedback
- Reliable, able to hand in reviews on a reasonable time line
Ideally I’d like to build a team of up to ten people who I could call on to fulfill assignments and make sure that the theatre season gets covered. I will make myself available to mentor said team, answer questions and hook them up with resources as needed.

What do you get from reviewing with Curtains Up? Well, theatre tickets which you pay for with writing instead of cash. You get experience developing your writing skills with someone who has worked professionally as a writing teacher. Finally, you will learn a ton about art criticism which applies to any number of other fields.

I am working on putting together critique camps in both English and French. The idea is that you come to a 1.5 hour session where you learn about how to write criticism. We begin by discussing the elements of theatre. From there you get to see a 10-15 minute scene performed by actors (improvised or otherwise), followed by a facilitated group discussion about how to talk about performance. This is followed by a brief talk by a theatre professional about the role of criticism in the theatre ecosystem.

From there, people are invited to see a play (possibly at a reduced price) and submit a written review for consideration. Based on this initial performance, writers may be asked to join the roster for Curtains Up and review throughout the year.

If you are interested in participating in any of the following capacities, please email me at curtainsupwpg@gmail.com
- Potential theatre critic – interested in Critique Camp
- Performer – interested in performing for Critique Camp
- Venue – interested in offering a free space to hold Critique Camp
- Theatre professional – interested in presenting on the role of criticism
(Opinion) One paragraph for Molière: A note on cultural symbols

July 9, 2026

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By Daniela Smith-Fernandez

The guy in the painting next to this text is “Molière”. If you know, you know.

As mentioned before, I am reading through the Bedford Introduction to Drama, a text containing plays and articles designed for first year students. In the introduction they did an overview of the important playwrights and movements that are important in theatre history. For the most part it was as you expect – sooooo much Shakespeare, some notes on how little Greek theatre actually survives, medieval mystery plays… and then it came to Molière.

Guys, this textbook only gave him one paragraph!

I felt deeply indignant. A couple lines, that’s it?

There are moments where I understand all at once that the fact I live a lot of my life in French has changed my perspective on things. It’s not just a language I speak, it’s the culture I navigate in as well. Such as the moment when you find yourself shouting at a drama textbook for its exclusion of Molière, who is obviously too important to be slighted in such a way!

So who is this guy? Short answer: French playwright who is brilliant and writes fantastic critiques of manners and society. I admit I don’t know as many of his plays as I should, but I can also say that about Shakespeare. They are fun and witty and often bawdy and totally one of a kind. You want to get into his actual history and you can do the same google search I did. His biography is not the point.

The point is the place he occupies in francophone culture. French is quite often referred to as “the language of Molière”, Hell, I use that line multiple times in my own French language play as a punchline. His work has parallels to Shakespeare in how it shaped the living language. His work is more than just an important pretty piece of art to look at – he actually had an irreversible fundamental impact on French as it exists today. We speak the language of Molière because that’s how crucial a symbolic place he holds in the language community.

Then we get to an English language textbook with the usual idolatry of Shakespeare. (Guys I love Shakespeare but he’s not the only influential writer out there!) There Molière is a side note between the medieval mystery plays and maybe a couple lines about Christopher Marlowe. And my logical brain understands that this makes sense, because in English language theatre… that is the place of Molière. They give even less attention to Calderon de la Barca, and if I’d done my theatre education in Spanish I’m pretty sure I’d be having feelings about that too. Yet for the people who put this book together, these made sense in terms of anglophone theatre culture. I can’t fault them for that. I mean I did, viscerally, get upset about Molière but I do intellectually appreciate the exclusions.

This is a textbook case of why I think it’s so important to learn deeply and profoundly that the world looks different from different perspectives. Would anyone who hasn’t had exposure to francophone culture get indignant about the exclusion of Molière? It’s unlikely. My reaction comes from a place of being immersed in a culture deeply enough to have gut reactions. But for a good amount of time before the logic brain kicked in, the exclusion of Molière invalidated this textbook as a legitimate source of knowledge about theatre history.

You don’t have to be a language geek or even multilingual to benefit from understanding the role that a language plays in people’s minds, hearts and imaginations. Translating from one language to another is not just a matter of switching between two different parallel codes – it’s figuring out how to integrate the references and symbols that are embedded in the language itself. Even if you’re reading a translation, you can read the translator’s notes or look up references you’ve never heard of. That too is part of multilingualism and reaching beyond your own position in a language and culture.

Why stick to work from one language or culture when you can taste the intricacies of so many others on your ear and on your tongue? It would be like eating only one meal for the rest of your life.

It occurs to me that I did not actually add Molière to my Cultural Guide for Anglophones on the program for my play. I’m going to go and add a very abridged version of this now…

Daniela Smith-Fernandez is Chilean-Canadian by birth, francophone by choice. She is an artist, writer and craftsperson who is proudly multicultural and multilingual (English, Spanish, French). She has worked in theatre as a costumer, prop maker, venue manager and volunteer. Her theatre reviews and articles have been published in student newspapers and blog. She is currently writing the second play in a trilogy about a pansexual man who is obsessed with sex and French grammar, not always in that order. She writes in English and French.
(Topics in Theatre) A slip of the tongue: oral and written language in theatre

July 3, 2026

By Daniela Smith-Fernandez

Don Diego de la Luna sat next to me yesterday as I read the Bedford Introduction to Drama. I haven’t gotten to the fun part yet – we’re still coughing through the introduction in which the author defines terms and explains concepts of performance. Diego let me give him scritches as I ran through these introductory concepts of cast and speaker, not completely riveted. Which is strange, because when I was an eighteen year old poring over this text. I definitely was. It’s not like I don’t appreciate writing about theatre. It just wasn’t exciting this time around – maybe because I know more this time around?

I am fascinated by introductory textbooks – by introductions in general. It fascinates me what people consider to be essential information – the overarching narrative that needs to be told. History is a great example of this – what people think are the key events worth knowing tells you a lot about what they believe is important, and with it the story that is being told. Even people who are conscious of questions of inclusion and representation get strangely conservative when it comes to picking key elements. I find this compelling. If we are ever going to have diversity, we need to make changes in the material we consider to be essential, such as which plays make it in to the Bedford Introduction to Drama that first year theatre students all use in their introductory classes. I want to see and feel where the slant in the narrative comes from. But I digress.

As I was reading The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory, I caught myself reading out loud. Something I only became aware of as Diego looked up at me mid-petting, surprised to hear me talking, but also less interested once he realized they were things that weren’t “good boy” and “cookies”. I’m an avid reader, and normally I don’t have a problem with accidentally reading out loud. Except for when I read plays.

This is not the first time I’ve been caught out accidentally reading theatre out loud. My seventh grade teacher had to pull me aside and let me know I was reading Shakespeare aloud in a not so quiet voice and it was bothering the other students at silent reading. For me there is something incredibly natural about wanting to feel words in my mouth because, well, they are meant to be spoken out loud.

The relationship between oral and written language is a deeply complex one and yet another thing which will probably fascinate me for the rest of my life. See, most languages in the world’s history exist without a written form. The primordial form of language is oral. Language is rooted in the body, be it the voice box, the hands or any other form of communication. It is embodied, it lives in flesh and vibrations and tiny or not so tiny movements of the body. There is no such thing as a language which exists without a tangible shape – escapes of air from the diaphragm, movements of a finger, tones present in the way you exhale.

On the other hand, written language as a phenomenon is honestly just in its infancy. Only a small percentage of human languages have developed it, and even when there is a written language not everyone who speaks said language can use it. To use a massive generalization, writing is classist as fuck, a variation only a small handful ever feel comfortable with.

And yet.

We live in a world where written communication is everywhere. It is difficult, if not impossible, to survive in a modern globalized society unless you can navigate text. So it’s a little weird to realize that our ability to read is completely and totally based on our understanding of spoken language – plus a whole other complex set of symbols we learn to navigate. We are so used to text we forget how related it is to the voice vibrating sounds over our immediate environment.

That is until we stumble upon one of those art forms like theatre that are meant to be heard. Oral poetry also fits in this category. All of a sudden it matters more how the words feel heard out loud than in your heard. There are all of these fillers – umms and small talk and check ins that exist in speech but don’t ever make their way into novels. Anyone who has ever done transcribing will tell you that a lot of what people say is actually just confirming that they understand what the other person is saying and the flow of information is of the appropriate speed. Verbal communication is messy and full of landmines.

Then you get to theatre where you are writing out words that represent speech. It would be ridiculous and boring to add in all the interjections and repetitions of everyday speech. It isn’t for nothing that people complain that nobody talks like Shakespeare. The thing is, no one talks like people in theatre of any kind if we’re being perfectly honest. Theatre is full of distilled conversations where every word counts, every nuance is planned and every silence is potent. Dialogue isn’t all theatre is about, but it is certainly a large part of it. So we’re left with me sitting on the couch accidentally reading aloud to my cat Diego because I instinctively feel that these words were meant to be spoken. Because those words were never meant to be flat.

So why read plays? It’s not a full performance. All the movement and sound and colour and image is missing. You’re left extrapolating from the text into a world of What Could Be. It’s a little like reading a recipe. And yet… I would argue it’s still really enjoyable. How would you know if a show is worth staging if you couldn’t read the script? It’s just the bones whereas a production is a living entity, but it’s pretty hard for a show to stand on its own two feet without a solid skeleton. Maybe reading a script is like drawing a flower – as imperfect as it may be, it still evokes something bigger and more interesting.

I’ve been thinking of this question a lot lately as I watch my first baby play stand up and take shape for fringe this year. I wrote the lines, and I have no heard them so many times they have almost become unfamiliar to me. I find ideas hiding in the text I didn’t know were there as other people – the director, my actors, various editors – hold it up to the light to scrutinize it. I am left feeling so deeply honoured that people are taking the time with my script to memorize words and find beats in them. How many people get to be so lucky as to have their words considered like this? Even without good sales, I’m fairly confident more people will see this play than have ever read one of my articles or reviews. I need to be a writer because manipulating language is as fundamental to who I am as the blood pumping through my veins.

And then it comes back to the page again. How to I write to be heard? I’m not talking about having my writing read; I’m talking about writing in a way that captures the cadence of the human voice and all its many intricacies. How do I represent the sheer joy I feel in hearing speech, in saying beautiful words, in a well tossed off phrase? And how did it take me this long to discover I wanted to write for theatre when I am so in love with orality? For me personally I believe the best writing is not laden done with technicalities but contains some of that lyrical orality within it. There is a reason why poetry is distinguished from spoken word. And why so many timeless classics have an element of storytelling to them.

We need to remember the vibrations of language within our bodies – whether we are the speaker or the listener. I really believe that words need to be felt deeply to be understood on a subconscious level – a place that goes beyond logic and intellect. Language needs to be kept alive – potent, visceral, elemental. Words that hit something true get under your skin and leave you untangling them long after you go to sleep.

All at once I am back in front of my Bedford Introduction to Drama with a cat who can best be described as derpy who is currently play fighting his sister Noisette. I suppose that I could make use of my Marquee subscription and watch most of the plays in this book. It’s one way of learning theatre. That said, I still think there is a value to reading and getting to know the skeletons of shows which have so often resonated with people. Ones that many places have chosen to stage. I can appreciate the way that productions wind stories around the words. I can compare the texts to productions I have seen and appreciate how people make different curatorial choices in how to present them. I can learn how to write plays so that people want to stage them. Or just read a lot of really great plays.

Sometimes I feel like language is the love that I will never understand. All I can do is give myself to it and hope to learn something a long the way. Someday

Diego and Noisette on the other hand are currently bored of me breathlessly reading Greek tragedy and are now fighting for possession of the cardboard box.

Not all stories are for all audiences.

Daniela Smith-Fernandez is Chilean-Canadian by birth, francophone by choice. She is an artist, writer and craftsperson who is proudly multicultural and multilingual (English, Spanish, French). She has worked in theatre as a costumer, prop maker, venue manager and volunteer. Her theatre reviews and articles have been published in student newspapers and blog. She is currently writing the second play in a trilogy about a pansexual man who is obsessed with sex and French grammar, not always in that order. She writes in English and French.
(News) New chapter for Curtains Up

June 26, 2026

By Daniela Smith-Fernandez

There is big news in my life that I’ve been holding on to for a while now, which I have finally been given permission to reveal. This is big news for me personally, Daniela Smith-Fernandez, the person who writes and runs this blog… but it also has an impact on the blog itself. It’s hard sometimes to believe that I’ve been writing Curtains Up for less than a year when it has become such a big part of my life. And yet it has, and here we are – the passion project that has grown beyond me as an individual. So here’s the news:

I’ve been hired as the Company Manager for the Manitoba Association of Playwrights

I am beyond excited. I’ve wanted to work in arts administration since I was a fifteen year old kid photocopying submissions for Prairie Fire Magazine. The arts are my home, and I want very much to be useful to an organization. Selfishly I want to be surrounded by creative people and never have to make small talk about insurance ever again in my life. It feels like a good fit. The interview was the most myself I’ve ever felt in an interview. I can’t wait to be part of the team that makes things happen.

Thursday Executive Producer Daniel Thau-Eleff put on a newsletter to members with the following message:

Dear MAP members,

I am so excited to welcome Daniela Smith-Fernandez to the MAP office, as our new Company Manager! In addition to her passion for theatre, especially local theatre, Daniela has the (much-better-than-my) organizational skills that MAP needs as we begin this next leg of our journey. I think Daniela and I are going to work really well together, and I look forward to introducing her to you all as we continue to serve this wonderful playwriting community.

I feel very welcomed. I also can’t wait to start.

HOWEVER…

It does mean that I will be occupying a different position in the theatre community. One where conflict of interest is a serious concern. And where I have obligations to be fair.

Which means that I have to stop writing reviews. Which is sad, because I love writing reviews. It’s also bittersweet because for now holding off on reviews is going to allow me to take on this amazing new role which I am so incredibly excited for.

I’ve been playing this over in my head, and some of the scenarios run a little like this:

Me: Welcome to MAP! How can I help you get set up with dramaturgy?

Client: Oh thank goodness you’re so helpful! This AWFUL blog Curtains Up said that my play with (dinosaurs reciting bible verses-a defence of bedbugs-repeated product placement from an MLM) showed questionable judgement! ME!

Me: Oh… (trying hard to hide my Curtains Up sticker) I mean, well… that was me!

Client: How dare you! An organization that hires someone like you clearly has terrible judgement! I can’t trust you at all! I’m going to go away and NOT make use of the services of this wonderful community organization! (Flounces out)

I mean, that might be a little exaggerated. No one is twisted up inside enough to write a play defending bed bugs.

Still, it’s the end of an era and I need to pivot to keep this blog going.

I will continue to write pieces about theatre in general, probably more of them going forward, I will go ahead with my Bedford Introduction to Drama read along – although probably not right away. I have thoughts about playwriting and dramaturgy. Also, I’m going to be reviewing published plays for the presses that have gotten back to me.

This will continue to be an active space.

I’m also interested in having other people review for me, as long as they are willing to adopt my philosophy of respect for the artists no matter what you think of the play. Feel free to send people my way.

I have loved writing this blog. I’ve loved knowing that other people want to engage in dialogue about theatre which isn’t mean, or reductive, but genuinely comes from a place of loving the art form. Even if sometimes you think it could do better.

Thank you for coming with me, and I hope you will stick around as I pivot a slightly new direction.

Curtains Up.

Daniela Smith-Fernandez is Chilean-Canadian by birth, francophone by choice. She is an artist, writer and craftsperson who is proudly multicultural and multilingual (English, Spanish, French). She has worked in theatre as a costumer, prop maker, venue manager and volunteer. Her theatre reviews and articles have been published in student newspapers and blog. She is currently writing the second play in a trilogy about a pansexual man who is obsessed with sex and French grammar, not always in that order. She writes in English and French.

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