Beautiful Feet

Scott Belluz and Subiksha Rangarajan (as The Woman)  Photo courtesy of Domoney Artists . Used with permission. In March, countertenor Scott Belluz starred in The Man Who Married Himself , a production by Toronto Masque Theatre in their penultimate season, which the Crow’s Nest website described thus : “ Unwilling to marry a woman, a man fashions a lover from his own left side. He's enraptured by her perfect beauty—a mirror of his own—until he discovers that this new woman longs for freedom and wildly desires another. South Asian and Baroque music and performance traditions meet in a stunning new masque based on a traditional Indian folk-tale. Powerful and timely, The Man Who Married Himself is an allegory of the female and male warring within as told by 2 dancers, 3 singers and 6 musicians.” The show was very engaging, with lots of gestural and sensual stimuli, as well as unexpected humour. As someone in the talkback said, unlike most folk-tales, which in general h...

Closet Monster (dir. Stephen Dunn, 2015) is completely original and completely wonderful. I had heard Dunn and star Connor Jessup interviewed on the often-dreadful q  CBC radio show and decided to see it once I heard Isabella Rossellini had done the voice-over for a hamster. (How ridiculously cool of her!) Also because it was Canadian, indie and fresh. I wasn't disappointed. Caveat: you might have issues with this film. Like, if you're a homophobe. Or if you hate violence and horror, which I avoid watching, but the Cronenbergesqueness [what's the noun for this??] which covers these elements made it bearable (...okay, I had to turn away once). They are necessary to the film, which is simultaneously genre-busting and genre-melding. As Dunn said, it is not intentionally a queer film: LGBTQ identity is a catalyst for the plot and an essential theme, but its "aboutness" is much broader than that. He also provides some much-needed light moments. Our beloved Mariti...