CDTPS PhD candidate Ilana Khanin recently won the Toronto Theatre Critics' Award (TTCA) for Best Director of a Musical for I Was Unbecoming Then (2024), presented at the Next Stage Theatre Festival. The TTCAs recognize professional theatre productions that opened in the city between May 16, 2024 and April 30, 2025.
Excerpt from an article about the Toronto Theatre Critics' Awards in The Globe and Mail by Aisling Murphy:
"In a particularly strong year for directors, two were commended for their extraordinary work: Dylan Trowbridge, whose production of Cock, produced by Talk Is Free Theatre, situated audiences in a converted warehouse space in eastern Toronto, and Ilana Khanin, whose work on Lyndsey Bourne and Sam Kaseta’s I Was Unbecoming Then beat out an impressive roster of competitors at more established theatre companies."
Excerpt from the article “Best theatre of 2024 from Toronto, Stratford and Shaw” in The Globe and Mail by J. Kelly Nestruck and Aisling Murphy:
"A 14-person a cappella musical would be an ambitious undertaking in any context. But at the 2024 Next Stage Festival in Toronto, I Was Unbecoming Then emerged as a standout piece of programming that heavily featured newcomers to the city’s theatre scene, all of whom knocked this project out of the park. Each song was perfectly in tune, and director Ilana Khanin exquisitely tapped into the show’s portraiture of mid-2000s girlhood (complete with velour tracksuits and rolled-down Uggs). I so hope for a remount in 2025."
Excerpt from a theatre review of I Was Unbecoming Then in the Toronto Star by Karen Fricker:
“The show’s dozen characters are members of a Vancouver high school choir, circa 2006. At the start of Ilana Khanin’s precise production, they strike poses on a big white carpet illuminated by standing lights and gaze out to the audience. Immediately, the painful paradox of adolescence: You’re all looking at me. Stop looking at me. Please look at me… The all too short Next Stage run of I Was Unbecoming Then has ended, but I expect it will not be the end of the road for this groundbreaking piece.”