Comments on: Dufferin Grove is the pinnacle of Western civilization

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:52:00 +0000

marty bragg is leaving canstage! hooray!

By: Simon Rice

Simon Rice — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:56:00 +0000

Nice article Mike. As someone who has both performed in and attended the festival, my favourite aspect of it is that the shows use the natural contours of the park to make their stages. I also begrudged the fact that going to see Dream in High Park didn’t feel like being in a park once you were seated in front of the gaudy amusement park-esque stage they’ve constructed.

By: mary

mary — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:11:00 +0000

“…the elitist, moneyed; culture is for those 60+ with $50+ for a ticket notion that’s killing us right now.”

Ain’t that the truth! And it drives me batty when theatres blame all their empty seats on everything but this obvious fact. Actually, it’s starting to get so bad that $50 is on the cheap side.

By: mike

mike — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:52:00 +0000

Hi Ian,

I'm gonna go with:

Stop giving our tax dollars to titans of the consulting and publishing industries to decide which hot international shows they would like to rent for a week.

Start investing in our own communities and artists. For real. Not the pitful bread crusts we're being thrown currently. Whether these things happen or not is very much about money.

By: ian mackenzie

ian mackenzie — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:45:00 +0000

Good call Mike. Dufferin Grove really is a gem. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me through the park on the back of his bike. I remember the big trees. They're even bigger now.

It's wonderful to be grown up now and still have it be so central to the neighbourhood.

And across the road, the Dufferin Mall – the People's Mall – still makes me smile (though I'd like to see the Walmart go).

What can we do to spread the Dufferin Grove Park model further?

By: mike

mike — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:52:00 +0000

Thanks Simon. It is a pretty cool festival. I’m not sure if I’m making that argument, but it is a lot of fun exercising the ol’ writing muscles after prolonged dis-use.

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:26:00 +0000

Great post Mike, the Festival sounds awesome. Enough to make a Vancouverite jealous anyway. And it's great that you're PRing a theatre festival on the same day that I dropped a post about doing just that. Synchronicity indeed.

And you're making a good argument for being a regular columnist on this here web log.