Category: Michael Wheeler
Michael Wheeler & Krista Jackson. Photo by David Cooper
Since mid-February I have been working along with Krista Jackson as one of two Neil Munro Intern Directors at The Shaw Festival. The Theatre Ontario and Sun Life Financial sponsored program inserts us into three shows at the festival as assistant directors, as well as running sessions with the Shaw Academy. It concludes with The Directors Project: we choose a one-act from the Shaw Festival mandate and create with festival actors and designers.
Krista and I will present our top three picks for this text to a committee led by Program Director Eda Holmes in mid-June. In early-July once the selection has been approved and confirmed, we discuss with the committee appropriate actors for specific roles who are then asked if they would like to volunteer to be part of our project. Rehearsals begin in August for invite-only presentations in September.
We both hope our thoughts as we go through this process will be interesting to theatre blog readers and thus we have elected to write the occasional co-blog on The Directors Project and what is going on with us at The Shaw Festival.
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Krista Jackson
April 27, 2012
Writing on a rainy afternoon in my little cottage in Niagara-on-the-Lake – Misalliance directed by Eda Holmes is in previews and we are in the thick of blocking His Girl Friday directed by Jim Mezon– the second of three shows I am assisting on. I am staring at my pile of one act plays on my coffee table which includes the large red binder Neil Munro assembled of “good ones”, wondering which one to crack this afternoon. I have read nineteen so far bypassing the shows done in the director project’s recent past.
So what is swirling around in my head? Translations are always an issue with pieces that aren’t American or British, but at this point I’m not ruling out anyone. When chatting with ensemble members and stage managers about the project many have talked about comedies being preferable to work on – and see – by the end of a long season. Still, I want to narrow it to three shows that excite me and make me ask the most questions.
Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre just celebrated Shaw in this year’s Master Playwrights Festival and I directed a production of Village Wooing for my company, zone41 theatre. So, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to do a Shaw again, but after working on the brilliant Misalliance I was seduced into reading some of his other one acts and have found one I really like. Michael and I have made a pact to use both music interns Beau Dixon and Scott Christian to compose some original music for our shows, so I am also keeping that in mind as I read. A one act with multiple scenes perhaps? More reading to do…
Today I’ll dive into Feydeau, First to Last – a compilation of 8 one act farces. Bring on any suggestions – and thanks for reading!
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Michael Wheeler
May 4th 2012
So far the majority of my experience here has been working as an assistant director with Shaw Festival Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell on Ragtime at The Festival Theatre and with director Alisa Palmer on A Man and Some Women at The Courthouse Theatre.
I am learning a ton – it is a very different creative process when you are rehearsing a show for half-days over a two-month period with some of the best actors in the country. Not that Praxis actors aren’t some of the best in the country also, in fact Tim Buck 2 co-creator Ben Sanders stars in The Shaw Festival’s production of Misalliance, but I digress.
In terms of picking a one-act, so far my reading has begun with classics one would expect to read if picking a play written during Shaw’s lifetime (1856-1950). Shaw, Chekhov, Brecht, a little Synge and Coward. I have already come up with a few texts that fascinate me. The size of cast is a question I am considering currently: Do I want to work with an ensemble or with a smaller cast on some really detailed work? Either way we get the same amount of rehearsal time. I think the answer to that question will inform my eventual choices for texts and the process that we work with.
In any case, look forward to more specific posts as the deadline approaches and I have to make some choices. I don’t intend to be too coy about the whole thing and will throw out some titles that I am considering next time around. Please feel free to leave us your thoughts and ideas about what to read next in the comments.
Praxis Theatre is involved in two events as part of Social Media Week next week, both of which address the intersection of performance and online technologies.
Although many of these events are now “sold out” for online pre-registration, there is a waiting list available at the venues, half an hour before each event begins that you can get on in person. Because all SMW events are free, it is anticipated that most events will have some people that don’t show up for their free pre-reserved spots.
Oh yeah. Both of these Social Media Week Toronto events are free.
The Online Brain created by Aislinn Rose is part of Liza Balkan's Out The Window at The Theatre Centre. The Line up for Free Fall '12 will be announced at The Drake Hotel on Monday February 13th.
What are the ways that online technologies can be used in conjunction with performance? How are digital technologies expanding the potential of art forms that have initially been analog based?
Free Fall Festival Co-Curator Michael Wheeler moderates multi-platform artists involved in The Theatre Centre’s FreeFall ’12 – ‘Performance Without A Net’. Panelists will demonstrate, discuss, and debate their mid-process methods and artistic philosophies in this interactive event.
From online “brains” that supplement the material an audience engages with live, to interactive performance that encourages audiences to upload their consciousness online, to cross-city tours that keep a mobile audience connected through social media tools, the parameters and potential of storytelling has expanded in exciting and unexpected ways.
Follow along or participate via #SMWFreeFall.
Panelists:
Jonathan Goldsbie on the use of Twitter in Route 510 Revisited
Aislinn Rose on an Online Brain that complements Liza Balkan’s Out The Window
Andrew Templeton on online platforms and narratives intersecting with Radix Theatre’s Babylonia.
Melissa Hood prepares her notes before a workshop presentation of Open Source Theatre Project
Yes, that’s right, it’s the romantic Valentine’s Day activity you’ve been looking for. Set the flowers and chocolates aside and come talk internet, community and theatre.
Praxis Theatre and the Toronto Fringe will co-host a case-study analysis of the work that Praxis makes in tandem with online community building activities, and how that community in turn helps build the work.
A presentation lead by the editors of praxistheatre.com and community members, this conversation aims to not only explore the notion of social media as audience development tool, but also performance development. A conversation for industry professionals, students, producers, media, PR professionals, and industry enthusiasts.
Follow along or participate via #SMWPraxis.
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by Michael Wheeler
Alan Filewod’s Committing Theatre begins with a single event from June 1919. Unable to get a response from his government about how the upkeep of city properties are impacting his private garden, a man goes to City Hall and presents the Mayor of Vancouver’s secretary with a bouquet of flowers picked from properties that adjoin his. The bouquet is covered with caterpillars.
This is an important refrain throughout the book. Filewod starts before the 1920s radio sermons of Social Credit founder and eventual Alberta Premier William Aberhart, and takes us all the way to the current Toronto-based practices of Mammalian Diving Reflex’s Darren O’Donnell. Throughout, Filewod keeps returning to the caterpillar episode he considers an example of what Bertolt Brecht would later call gest, “a theatricalised action that embodies, enacts and watches a social critique.”
Reading much this expansive history of Canadian political theatre sitting in and around Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park in NYC, I couldn’t help but speculate that these occupations of public spaces have something in common with the man who walked into Vancouver City Hall a century ago. Both are frustrated with a perceived injustice their government will not listen to, and both are determined to express this frustration through a non-violent gesture that exists physically in the real world. Both the Occupy protests and the man with a bouquet of caterpillars commit a consciously theatrical act.
Click below to read the rest of the review on Rabble.ca
by Michael Wheeler
This week, more than a hundred members of the Canadian Arts Coalition met on Parliament Hill for meetings with more than a hundred MPs and Senators.
A hectic day of meetings for this group was capped off with a reception in the Speaker’s Lounge where the Minister of Heritage, James Moore, addressed an “electric” closing reception. From his speech to the arts advocates around the country:
“The tone of the coalition, and the way you are all coming together, in a very positive leading way, a forward leading way, this is what we aspire to, this is what we hope that we can do in terms of public policy achievements, and reaching out and talking to us. And it’s so important that that be the process, and it not be adversarial.
This is a majority Parliament and it’s not going anywhere for four years. The mix of MPs that you saw in the House, that you saw today, will be the fact of the Federal Parliament for the next four years. So we have to work together, we all will work together to keep that professional effect.”
Intrepid arts advocate and blogger Shannon Litzenberger live-blogged the meetings she went to including meetings with highly placed officials from Finance and the Minister himself. From each of these meetings, the message seemed to be the same: The arts will receive a 5% cut and it would really be in the interest of artists to not speak out against this government.
In fact, Conservative officials and MPs seemed to quite appreciate the efforts of the coalition to normalize relations between artists and the Harper Government, which have never been great, and have been terrible since the PM’s “Ordinary Canadians don’t care about the arts” statement in the 2008 election and the funding cuts to touring grants that preceded it.
Nevertheless, it was hard not to see the stick they were wielding to enforce this normalization of relations, when it was explained that some areas would be deemed “priority areas” with less cuts, which means of course that some areas, deemed not a priority, would be cut more.
Of course this is exactly the sort of thing that drives me nuts, and led me to leave a lengthy comment on Shannon’s blog, which you can read in its entirety here. Below is a portion of that response:
I found the comments from Finance’s Andrew Rankin….shall I say unnecessarily prescriptive? They can be translated as “Stop complaining and start celebrating our initiatives”. The problem is, their initiatives are worth frank discussion. Cutting SummerWorks, shifting Heritage funding to celebrate acts of war, cutting touring programs, funding totally BS festivals like the Walk of Fame Festival (Has ANYONE ever heard of this festival before?). It all adds up to bumbling, ideologically driven, poor public policy.
I also had a question about independent art and artists and the degree to which their needs are on the radar of this government. We have ushered in a new era where funding goes to major institutions who agree to “play ball” and thus can be controlled through access to this funding. Meanwhile the core generators of the cultural ecosystem, independent voices that are more difficult to be silenced, will continue to be starved of access to funding. Then later they will say, “But we increased arts funding!”, when in actuality they have just increased funding to organizations who will agree to be a sympathetic mouthpiece, or at least an uncritical one.
Canada's purchase of new fighter jets is projected to cost $30 Billion, or 192 times the amount distributed annually by The Canada Council.
In the twelve hours since I left that comment, it seems the government has also found a new way to cut money from arts funding and other social programs that improve quality of life for Canadians.
The Globe and Mail reports a significant plan to change charitable giving “in which businesses and citizens shoulder more of the cost of giving.” This comes on top of plans to spend billions on jails, fighter jets, and oh – this just in - nuclear submarines. Is it just me or are some departments being asked to shoulder the burden of balancing the budget more than others?
The Minister of Heritage concluded his speech to MPs and arts advocates with the statement:
“I know that there are those of you that support all sort of political parties and that’s fine….It doesn’t matter. I almost think that supporting culture isn’t a left-wing issue or a right-wing issue, it’s the right thing to do.”
If nothing else, let’s agree to reject this statement as duplicitous, dangerous and insulting. This is a right-wing government that has decided to spend billions of dollars on militarization and corporate tax cuts, while shrinking the money available to all sorts of the social programs that have defined what is great about Canada, including a 5% cut to culture.
Lets not kid ourselves, even if we are stuck with a government the majority of Canadians did not vote for over the next four years, practically any other government would do better.
Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God - Tony Nappo, Kristen Thomson, Tom Barnett and Maev Beaty. Photo by John Lauener
by Michael Wheeler
I realize it is a little strange as the Co-Artistic Director of Praxis Theatre and Editor of praxistheatre.com to publish a blog post about the best play I’ve worked on so far and for it not to be a Praxis Theatre show – but there’s PR and then there’s an attempt at truth. Hopefully people read this thing because we appreciate the latter over the former in this space.
Shine Your Eye - Dienye Waboso. Photo by John Lauener
Over the past three years, with the generous support of two grants from Theatre Ontario, I have been a participant in Volcano Theatre‘s The Africa Trilogy – which premiered last year at Luminato and became Another Africa this year at Canadian Stage.
This participation has taken number of forms; first as Artistic Producer Trainee with artistic and producing duties on all three productions, which I blogged about extensively on praxistheatre.com in a seven part series, and then as the creator and curator of The Africa Trilogy Blog.
Both of these experiences were immensely rewarding. In terms of gaining an intimate detailed understanding of how an ambitious international collaboration goes from idea to reality (praxis) they were invaluable.
There could be no better education in creating original plays than the opportunity to experience directors Ross Manson and Josette Bushell-Mingo, cast, dramaturge, choroegraph and stage new works by new voices in theatre.
In particular, seeing Shine Your Eye, the first dramatic work by Binyavanga Wainana, (just pronounced this week by Forbes magazine as one the 40 most powerful celebrities in Africa) come to life as a thoroughly contemporary African perspective on Africa, expanded my understanding of theatrical potential.
The majority of my work over three years and seven (yes seven!) rehearsal processes was as Assistant Director working alongside director Liesl Tommy and choreographer Heidi Strauss on Roland Schimmelpfennig’s Peggy Pickit Sees The Face of God.
Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God - Maev Beaty, Kristen Thomson. Photo by John Lauener
Developing a World Premiere of a Schimmelpfennig text over 2008-2011 has inspired two extremely vibrant emotions in me:
1 – Pure inspiration: I remember walking home from a read-through of the play sometime in the second workshop in 2009 with a deep suspicion that, assuming we are still here on earth, this text will be performed in fifty years by Norweigan high schoolers, community players in Austin Texas, and subject to a number of revivals.
There’s nothing quite like being sure what you are doing is important and may possibly outlast you.
2 – Absolute dread: As an artist literally in training to have responsibilities connected to the success of this a once-in-a-lifetime text was intimdating to say the least. When I found myself rehearsal director of a workshop to review blocking and camerawork from Luminato with new Canadian Stage cast members Tom Barnett and Kristen Thomson in April, it was frankly the most pressure I have put on myself.
I watch enough sports to know sometimes guys make The Stanley Cup in their rookie year and that’s the only shot they ever get.
Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God - Maev Beaty, Tony Nappo, Kristen Thomson, Tom Barnett. Photo by John Lauener
If you can’t tell, I am immensely proud of this play and there is a week-and-a-half left to catch it. You can get some seriously cheap tickets: Under 30: $12.50, PWYC Mondays, and $22 Arts Worker opportunities are all in play.
Click here for full details on cheap tickets, and click here for the Another Africa show page.
If you enjoy new performance that pushes the potential and form of live storytelling I hope you will come. Don’t make it one of those shows you meant to see but things were crazy in the fall, yadda, yadda, yadda. If you come this Friday October 14, Volcano Theatre General Manager Meredith Potter will be talking in more detail about creating the production in the second floor lobby at 7:15pm before the 8pm curtain.
That’s it. That’s my pitch. Thanks to Volcano Theatre for the unprecedented trust and opportunity and to director Liesl Tommy for giving her assistant director real things to do. Hope you can make it.
Councillor Michael Thompson spoke to an overflowing City Hall crowd before the culture consultation began. City Staff found extra tables, chairs and facilitators while the usual speeches kicked things off.
by Aislinn Rose
On Monday, Praxis co-Artistic Director Michael Wheeler and I attended the only downtown public consultation for the new Toronto Culture Plan not focused on youth issues.
We were armed with our smartphones and the Twitter hashtag #creativeTO, which I had also used at the public consultation in Etobicoke in February. Separately, we made the rounds of the various tables open for discussion and tried to document what we were hearing.
Below is a partial transcript of the event, a 100 tweet summary from the past few days with the most recent tweets at the top, You can find the full and interactive transcript online here.
And remember, the final public consultation (on youth issues) will be at City Hall on April 7th from 6pm to 8:30pm. I’ll be there with my smart phone and a hashtag. Hope to see you there.
#creativeTO Transcript
Margaret Evans as Jim Watts. Photo by Julien Lafleur courtesy of LabCab
presents
Jesus Chrysler
by Tara Beagan
February 16 -19 2011 @ 9pm
at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as part of the 32nd Rhubarb Festival
performed by Margaret Evans, Christine Horne and Keith Barker
directed by Michael Wheeler
produced by Aislinn Rose
sound and lighting design by Verne Good
costume design by Scott Penner
asst. directed by Laura Nordin
stage management by Rebecca Powell
Jesus Chrysler at Rhubarb is the fourth stage of development of an evolving work centered on legendary Toronto activist and director Eugenia “Jim” Watts.
Click here to learn about our earlier iterations of this project at The Toronto Fringe, HATCH: emerging performance projects and LabCab.
Starring Margaret Evans, Written by Tara Beagan, Design by Verne Good, Directed by Michael Wheeler
by Michael Wheeler
In the winter of 2009 I attended a theatre history lecture at Toronto Free Gallery by Alex Fallis on The Progressive Arts Club and the theatre created by artists who were opposed to many of the anti-civil rights policies enacted by Prime Minister Bennett in the 1930s. These people proved to be so fascinating that I elected to create with Praxis Theatre a show about them, Tim Buck 2, which played at The Tranzac Club as part of the 2009 Toronto Fringe Festival.
This led to our Harbourfront Centre HATCH workshop Section 98, which expanded the scope of our work to some other instances when civil rights proved to be a contentious issue for Canadians: namely the FLQ crisis, the Air India bombing, Omar Khadr, and the treatment of Afghan detainees captured by Canadian soldiers. Both the Fringe show and our HATCH workshop were extremely useful in terms of exploring who these people were, what they were concerned about, and the complexity of balancing our country’s commitment to civil rights and concerns of national security.
Unfortunately, neither of these initial explorations did an awesome job of storytelling. So this spring and summer we went back to the drawing board with this project and thought about how to move beyond ‘staged dramaturgy’ and into narrative-based work informed by these themes.
The most consistent positive feedback from our open source creative process revolved around curiosity and fascination with Eugenia “Jim” Watts.
Both presentations involved an online component that allowed the audience to participate with or respond to our work: Tim Buck 2 asked the audience to return to the website to learn the results of a poll conducted at the conclusion of a debate at the end of the show. These posts also generated some interesting conversations in their comments sections.
Section 98 was more intrinsically attached to the internet with Praxis Artistic Producer Aislinn Rose acting as Open Source Project Leader, sharing parts of our process online, actively seeking participation from our community, and developing an infrastructure that encouraged live feedback over the web or through texts during the workshop presentation.
There were also quite a few normal conversations, in person, with live human beings who had seen the show(s).
The first conclusion was that the core personality we had explored that generated a unique resonance with both audiences and ourselves was Eugenia “Jim” Watts, played in both productions by Margaret Evans. A core political organizer and theatre director in 1930s Toronto, she co-directed the legendary civil rights play banned by Bennett, Eight Men Speak, and later went on to be one of two women serving with the Mackenzie Papineau Brigade in the Spanish Civil War where she was an ambulance driver. She was also involved with a number of other projects; she was very busy, and interesting, and worth being the impetus for a work of art.
Margaret Evans playing Jim Watts in Section 98 as part of HATCH at Harbourfront Centre
The second conclusion was that this piece required a playwright, and a good one. This playwright would preferably be an artist who had experience creating theatre about historical events for a contemporary audience (we talked a lot about avoiding a ‘bio pic’) and a passion for social justice.
So it is with much pleasure and excitement we announce Dora-winning playwright Tara Beagan has joined Praxis Theatre in continuing our work on this latest iteration, . Tara and I worked together for two years on Crate Productions’ The Fort at York, and she also acted as an outside eye for Praxis on our Toronto Fringe 07 co-pro, Dyad, but Jesus Chrysler is her first official work with Praxis Theatre and we are thrilled to welcome her.
Jesus Chrysler will be presented at The Factory Theatre as part of Lab Cab on Saturday September 18 and Sunday September 19 at 5pm. The entire festival is free with all manner of art and experiences presented by over 50 artists throughout every nook and cranny of The Factory from noon to 6pm each day. We invite you to come check out the whole festival and save your 5pm – 5:20pm slot for us. This being a Praxis show, we’ll definitely welcome your feedback online or in person, with a particular emphasis on your thoughts about our transition to a script based work about a single individual.
Hope to see you there!
Where’s Praxis? Can you find Tara, Margaret and Michael in the Lab Cab poster? Click to enlarge
(l-r) Maev Beaty, Muoi Nene, Araya Mengesha, Dorothy Atabong, Trey Lyford and Milton Barnes in Glo by Christina Anderson directed by Josette Bushell-Mingo
If I promise to incorporate “World Class City” into my lexicon can we keep making shows like this?
by Michael Wheeler
I have been working on this show for a long time.
I started in late 2008 as Artistic Producer in Training with Volcano – and then later as Assistant Director of Peggy Pickit Sees The Face of God by Roland Schimmelpfennig and Social Media Coordinator for the whole Trilogy. These different roles have afforded me a really broad perspective on a how a major international collaboration comes together – in the office, the rehearsal studio, and in the theatre. Thanks Theatre Ontario.
It has been a wild ride – I don’t think anyone involved in the show would argue it’s been an easy process. Ethically, theatrically, collaboratively, creating three new works of theatre that all deal with the contemporary nature of the relationship between Africa and the West has been a challenge that has pushed some top international and domestic artists to reanalyze themselves and their process. There have been few simple questions – so along with that has come complicated answers. From dramaturgy, to casting, to design, to scheduling, to marketing, to ensuring three separate works are having a contemporary conversation with each other – virtually every decision had to be made weighing the consideration of a huge number of factors.
Nothing will melt your mind faster than a production meeting with three directors, three assistant directors, six designers, four stage managers and two production managers.
Sipping my morning coffee on Opening Night Day it has really hit me how much I’ve learned from this process and how much I’m willing to stand behind this production. I am a much more knowledgeable artist because of it and I want to continue to be involved in projects like it: productions that combine top international artists with the best from Canada. I have a track record of being heavily critical of Luminato in the past – specifically because of the lack of opportunity the festival initially held for Canadian artists – and frankly it seems a little strange to be a physical embodiment of a change I was arguing for, but I’ll take it.
The words “World Class” and “City” get thrown around a lot here. It might even be fair to say we are unhealthily obsessed with whether or not Toronto and these words have a positive relationship. Certainly Luminato was born out of the sense it could contribute to this definition. Separate from whether the critics deem this show a hit or a miss in the days to come – shows like The Africa Trilogy are most likely to put Toronto on the map in terms of international culture. If we really want to play with the big boys and girls on the world stage it requires these kinds of resources both financially and in terms of the people we can attract to work with us. The surest way to become “World Class” is to make shows WITH other World Class artists.
If you haven’t been over to The Africa Trilogy blog yet, let me take this opportunity to invite you over to learn more about the show, the people who created it, and the ideas it has been addressing. There are a number of great posts by various authors with vastly different roles in the production including new content by inFORMING CONTENT Workshop Leader Deborah Pearson on the challenges of making socially relevant theatre, Lucky Ejim on being an actor who tells African stories in the West, and Mark Sealy on the contemporary representation of Africa through visual images.
Here’s to an awesome opening night for The Africa Trilogy and the many other Africa Trilogy-like projects to come.
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