ARTS EAST

May 1st is marked throughout the world as International Workers’ Day, or May Day. Recently we spoke with Sébastien Labelle, artistic director of the Mayworks Halifax Festival, about what attendees can expect at this year’s celebrations. When and why did you first get involved with the festival? I first became involved as a featured artist in 2012. I was a member of Puppets Et Cetera!, a street theatre group with whom I presented a show about food production through the use of migrant labour. I presented another show with Puppets Et Cetera! in 2013. This time about the history of May Day. In that same year, I joined the volunteer organizing committee that produced the festival through the Halifax-Dartmouth & District Labour Council. In 2014, I took the lead as volunteer organizer of the festival, and in 2016, following the incorporation of the festival as a non-profit, I was hired as the Festival Director. I became involved initially as a performer and artist interested in...

In the late nineteenth century, after disease and circumstance have left her alone in the world, a woman believes she is predestined to spinsterhood in her small community in Newfoundland. When a series of dramatic events brings a strange man to her door, Mary emerges from the comfortable isolation that she knows to follow her dreams in Boston. Those desires do not come without sacrifice and hard choices. When her past comes back to haunt her, Mary must decide whether there is room for both her aspirations and her heart—or if she must surrender one to have the other. Recently we spoke with author Ida Linehan Young about her latest novel, Being Mary Ro . When and why did you want to be a writer? The desire to write has always been with me. I remember writing poems and short stories in elementary school and I enjoyed it. I had often thought about writing my first book but always believed that I wasn’t good enough to be an author, that I didn’t have an extensive nor flowery ...

From April 11-15, The Villain’s Theatre of Halifax presents The Blazing World - an imaginative and poetic sci-fi odyssey about one scientist’s quest to save a dying planet - at Neptune Theatre's Scotiabank Stage. Recently we spoke with playwright Colleen MacIsaac about both her profession and the production. When and why did you first get involved with theater and the performing arts? I began my theatrical career when I was seven, playing a skunk in an elementary school masterpiece called “The Animal’s Christmas”. From there I moved on to notable roles such as “assembly MC” and “Spots the Leopard”. When I was in grade 5 I had my big break - booking the lead role of “Witch” in a class Halloween play, though the production was eventually cancelled after I had learned all my lines because no one else felt like doing it. After some improv classes and theatre camps where I achieved my crowning and bloody glory of being so overenthusiastic about my blocking that I caused a g...