Other things going on in theatre and on the interweb
Vancouver's newest theatre, The Revue Stage. Photo by David Cooper.
- There are two new Toronto theatre blogs by politically-minded companies to check out: Studio 180, The company behind Stuff Happens, The Overwhelming, and The Laramie Project (amongst others), has started up this new blog on their website. Meanwhile, Pandemic Theatre a young company with two new shows coming up, Imbalance and My Gaza Tis of Thee, has created a website that wins my heart by A) Having their blog be their homepage, B) Telling the gov’t often and articulately what they think of their regressive social policies. They’re having a fundraising kegger on Friday.
- Do Nonprofits Embrace Social Media? Here’s an excellent online powerpoint kind of presentation that explains where we are with all of that after a survey of over 200 nonprofit execs. Two most interesting stats: 1- 88% are experimenting widely with social media. 2 – 79% are uncertain of how to demonstrate social media’s value for their organizations.
- The Arts Club has opened yet ANOTHER venue in Vancouver. The Revue Stage looks to be an intimate space for “new and innovative works from both emerging and established artists”. Combine this with the opening of both Progress Lab (as a creation space) and The Cultch (with two more indie friendly performance spaces), and Vancouver has some much improved indie theatre infrastructure all of a sudden. Now they just need some money to make the theatre… oh, right.
- Applications for The Next Stage Theatre Festival in Toronto are now available. The deadline is May 24th, 2010. If you have show you’re looking to take to The Next Stage – it’s time to get your sh*t together. Last year every show got reviewed in Eye and The Star and there’s nothing much else going on in January theatre-wise so it’s a great opportunity.
Hey Praxis, Thanks for the link! The Progress Lab has the potential to be an amazing performance space.
Hey Jessica. I think we just missed each other there this winter doing different things with The Electric Company. Although the studio @ Progress Lab could be a great performance space (that was the first thing I thought when I saw it), it has incredible value as a rehearsal space that is big and high enough to rehearse anything with some tech. It really opens up the possibilities in terms of what you can rehearse and experiment with before you move into a theatre. We actually don’t have anything quite like it that indie companies have access to in Toronto. Is there anything like it for indie companies in Ottawa?
Hi Michael. Come to think of it, I’d like to take back my last comment. I think Progress Lab has much more value as a rehearsal space by itself. It occurs to me that we have a few (but certainly not enough) spaces to rehearse here in Ottawa, but the main problem is these spaces are also used for performance. And it is unlikely that an independent company would be able to experiment with high level tech in that space if it is being used for a performance that same evening or a university class the next day. So they just don’t.
It would be ideal for Ottawa if we had a similar warehouse space that could be used for design and tech, ideally with little studio spaces attached to the rehearsal space. As far as I know, we don’t have anything suitable in a central location, though I do believe the Nepean Arts Centre has something similar to what I describe. I envy that warehouse – the Centre for Digital Media – that was used for HIVE in Vancouver. Too cool for words.
Cool. Yeah, it’s tough.
For 2 years my rent job was managing a rehearsal space and the fact is you can get like $50 + an hour for a decent clean studio in downtown Toronto for the hours between 6-10pm so it’s hard to offer rental companies who are rehearsing in the day the exclusive access you need to rehearse that way. Unless they want to pay an extra grand a week. Because Progress Lab is run by a number of companies sharing resources they cut out the middle man and thus cut out being priced out.
This is the part where I should write about the importance of possessing the “means of production”. It’s a good double entendre as we are also rehearsing productions.
Thanks for the Next Stage link!
I’ve just read Ric Knowles’ book that discusses means of production. It’s nice to see the term being used in context!
By the way, you should put me on your blog list 😉
Done. Anyone else have a blog at least tangentially related to theatre?
Renna – No worries!