Category: political theatre
There are numerous reasons why the plan to tax billboards and use the money to fund culture is a long overdue strategy as outlined in this post by Torontoist writer Hamutal Dotan. What became clear from Tuesday’s proceedings at City Hall was that the wealthy billboard lobby ain’t goin out like that.
Amendments proposed by Councillor Norm Kelly on Tuesday pose a real danger to the Beautifulcity.ca initiative. Councillor Adam Vaughan pointed out (to inappropriate and thoroughly scolded applause) that the amendments amounted to cutting the proposed tax in half while more than doubling the number of billboards allowed and increasing their size.
Whether or not these amendments will become reality has a lot to do with if middle-of-the-road councillors feel the public pressure to accept the bylaw as the city’s own non-partisan staff has recommended, or whether this is something they can float under the radar on and side with the lobbyists by passing it with shady amendments.
If you show up in at City Hall tomorrow that becomes less likely. It is an election year after all…
Praxis Theatre presents Section 98: an open-source, interactive, original theatrical creation.
Section 98 dramatizes historical and current events while incorporating modern technology to explore individual and civil rights in Canada. This stage of the creation process will be developed in the context of The Progressive Arts Club, The FLQ, and the present day. The production invites the audience to participate in this experiment through their cellphone, PDA, on their computer before and after the performance, in person, or to simply observe and not interact at all!
The suspension of rights has been a contentious issue throughout Canadian history. Section 98 uses theatre and technology to enable everyone to debate and discuss these issues in 2010. A single presentation of this work-in-progress presentation of this work will occur on will take place at Harbourfront’s Studio Theatre on March 13th 2010 at 8pm.
As an “open source” theatrical project we aim to keep our artistic process open, available and interesting through the use of this website. This production is a collective collaborative creation with all members of the creative team contributing to the process. That being said, we all have specific roles:
Director: Michael Wheeler
Assistant Director: Laura Nordin
Online/Script Coordinator: Aislinn Rose
Dramaturg: Alex Fallis
Sound and Lighting Design: Verne Good
Stage Management: Brittney Filek-Gibson
Performers: Margaret Evans, Jody Hewston, Melissa Hood, Greta Papageorgiu and Ben Sanders.
Click the image below to learn more about Section 98 and Open Source Theatre.
*Photography by Meredith Hanafi
Sun Nov 8 @ 8pm. Theatre Centre. Queen and Dovercourt. Toronto. PWYC.
Wrecking Balls are going on across the country this November. Not in Toronto? Check the website for the Wrecking Ball in Canada nearest you.
Following on the heels of the National Wrecking Ball 7 during the 08 federal election it’s pretty clear this has morphed into a national political theatre phenomenon.
Tamsin Greig and Jessica Raine in David Hare’s Gethsemane at the National Theatre Cottesloe
(Photo: Catherine Ashmore)
Our recent post about the content of content on blogs, sparked a conversation that became both antagonistic and circular before this post by director Christine Bacon came up.
The piece discusses her work with London England-based and human rights-focused theatre company iceandfire and their outreach initiative, Actors for Human Rights. Their method is a “rapid response” that uses churches, pubs and everything in between “rushing the urgent news to audiences who need to hear it now”.
Her post is a direct response to a critique of the new David Hare play Gethsemane published in The Telegraph. In it, critic Dominic Cavendish, founding editor of theatrevoice.com, argues that political theatre is too slow a medium as a producing model to respond quickly enough to current events. He expands his critique of English political theatre further:
“But to many of us, idealism has been precisely the problem. There has been too much cavalier self-belief, too much succumbing to the messianic credo of “social justice”. Many of my generation, not Sir David’s, want less fervour and more common sense – and want fiercer material from our playwrights to puncture the complacency of those baby boomers at the top of the tree.”
Does the time it takes to fundraise for and produce theatre make political theatre obsolete? Is there a developing generational split in terms of what what and how political theatre should critique? What’s different about the relationship between politics and theatre in Canada?
Good news
Praxis Theatre Co-Artistic Director Simon Rice has resurrected his widely beloved U.S. politics journal The Rice Report.
A Rice Report primer
The Rice Report started back in 2004 – a reaction to Simon’s growing distress with the state of American politics and its questionable foreign policies. His Rice Report newsletter series used the 2004 U.S. presidential election as a springboard to foster rigorous (and informed) discussion of an increasingly compromised democratic process.
His weekly reports became wildly popular among a small group of followers – and included a live play-by-play “performance” of the controversial Kerry-Bush showdown on election night: Tuesday, November 11, 2004.
A new blog
We are thrilled to welcome Mr. Rice to the blogosphere and announce the return of The Rice Report. Among the topics he’s promising will be in the cards:
Who’s running? From Hilary to Huckabee, the A-Z on 2008!
2004 Aftermath – Was the general election stolen?
The Hidden History of 9/11 – A weekly crash course for beginners and/or skeptics.
And if you’re wondering what any of this has to do with theatre, check Simon’s response to one of our 10 questions:
6) How has your interest in American politics influenced your ideas about theatre?
American politics have all the great elements of drama – farce, tragedy, absurdity, heroes, villains, clowns – the stakes are always high and although much focus has been put on the circus-like atmosphere of modern American politics, we all want to know what the next Act will bring. The Bush administration has felt like the usurping power in one of Shakespeare’s histories. With Donald “Rummy” Rumsfeld emerging as chief rhetorician, uttering such poetic lines as, “The absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence,” when no WMDs were found in Iraq. That’s a beautiful line!
I guess what I’m saying is that my passion for American politics deepens my understanding of theatre, and vice-versa.
Click
here to get to
The Rice Report, then hit
“Bookmark
” on your browser. You’ll be glad you did.
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