Montreal gets Closer

“No one will ever love you as much as I do. Why isn’t love enough?”

Tonight is opening night of Closer by Patrick Marber at Espace 4001 in Montreal.

The production is directed by Praxis Alumni Andrew Zadel, playwright of Steel (04, 07), Underneath (09) and performer/co-creator of Tim Buck 2 (09).

For tickets contact: info@andrewzadel.com or call 514.649.2249

Merde to the entire team from Praxis.

Love and sexual awakening… at Tarragon Theatre

by Aislinn Rose

I recently started working as the Community Manager for a project called The Conversation About Love. This interactive experiment revolves around an online art gallery based on the themes of Sarah Polley’s new film, Take This Waltz. Participants are asked to take a tour around the gallery and join the conversation on the topics of love, fidelity, lust and heartbreak. The conversation has taken on many forms including songs, photos, original artwork and personal anecdotes. In addition to the website, conversationalists can also join in via Facebook and twitter.

As someone with a personal and professional interest in this notion of using social media and other online tools in an effort to build community and develop audiences for your work, I was immediately drawn to the project. The big question posed to me was, “how do you feel about chatting and tweeting about love for the next several months?”

Then along came a facebook invitation to a post-show social for Tarragon Theatre’s production of In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, asking participants to submit “stories of sex, love and all the rest of it”. The stories submitted will be read aloud at the event this Thursday evening, but submissions will remain anonymous to protect the not-so-innocent.

I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that my first instinct was that this event called for a little live-tweeting. The twist in this case, is that I plan to bring the Take This Waltz-inspired Conversation About Love into the next room, for a joint online conversation about love and sexual awakening.

Want to follow along? Perhaps join in? Here are the facts you need to know:

• You can get $10 tickets to see the show this Thursday, October 13th at 8pm. Click here for all the info you need on buying tickets and submitting your tales of love and/or woe. The social after the show is free.
• Follow the tweets via www.twitter.com/ConvoAboutLove. You don’t need to be a tweeter to keep tabs on the discussion, but if you are, I’d love for you to follow me in this new experiment. Let me know what you think!
• Don’t be shy about submitting your stories. I won’t be tweeting all the sordid details… if you want those you’ll have to join us at the theatre.

Side note: as I finished composing my email to Tarragon suggesting the addition of live-tweeting at their event, I received a message from Tarragon asking if I might like to live-tweet at their event. I’m really excited to see a company like Tarragon embracing these new tools to engage their existing audience in new ways, while reaching out to develop and cultivate a new community of followers and fans.

Hope to see you online or in the theatre on Thursday night!

Taking it to the Streets with Litmus Theatre

by Claire Wynveen

Matchbox Macbeth – which opens at a secret, site specific location on October 13^th – was born when three friends, frustrated with their lack of resources, brought a bottle of wine into a shed and said: “Hey – let’s make a play in here.”

From our very first moments in the space, it was apparent to us that the shed needed to be more than just a roof above our show – it needed to be a character in whatever story we decided to re-imagine.  The creative potential of the space was so palpable, so obvious, that the show we built around it was unadorned, magical and deeply rooted in its surroundings.

So deeply rooted, that this four actor, hour long re-telling of Macbeth simply couldn’t work anywhere else.  And we sort of loved this.  It forced us to work with what we had, to simplify, to problem-solve, to look closely at who and what was in our immediate vicinity.  It was, in essence, purely Local theatre.  And it all started with the shed.

Or maybe it started before the shed.  Because we were in the shed for good reason – we didn’t have access to affordable rehearsal space elsewhere. It’s a terrible irony that the more theatre schools teach their students to incubate and collaborate over long rehearsal periods, the more a premium is placed on rehearsal spaces in the city.  And this became an immediate roadblock to us. But soon enough we began to find the merits of a highly urban, site specific, character-based venue too good to resist.

The conversation about space for indie artists seems to be evolving and gaining momentum in the city. The Fringe of course just launched its Creation Lab, which provides subsidized rehearsal space to indie artists and grew out of a series of roundtable discussions that identified and articulated this very issue.  And companies are also getting creative: this month alone there are at least four site specific shows happening in the downtown core at historic houses, in laneways and in sheds. Ours opens in less than a week.

So let’s think outside the theatre this fall.  See you in the shed!

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Claire Wynveen is founding member of Litmus Theatre, a producer of Matchbox Macbeth and also works for the Fringe Creation Lab.

Litmus Theatre’s remount of Matchbox Macbeth opens on October 13^th and runs until October 30^th.  Thursdays to Sundays.  7pm and 9pm.

Click here for tickets.

Tickets will not be sold at the door.  We have no door.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

Statement from Occupy Wall Street – this statement was voted on and approved by the general assembly of protesters at Liberty Square:

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

• They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
• They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
• They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
• They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
• They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
• They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
• They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
• They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
• They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
• They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
• They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
• They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
• They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
• They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
• They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
• They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
• They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
• They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
• They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
• They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
• They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
• They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
• They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

www.occupyto.ca

*Eds note – The Globe and Mail reports Canadian occupations are being planned in most major Canadian cities through a website called Occupy Together. The Toronto occupation is being planned by Occupy Toronto Market Exchange beginning on October 15th.

From the Facebook Page:

“NON-VIOLENTLY sending a message to the financial sector worldwide. Canada too is under the same bind of freedom because of monetary policy. Show your support for Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Toronto Market Exchange”

You can find the Occupy Together Facebook Page here, Twitter Feed here, and Occupy TO Facebook Page here.

The dominant Twitter hashtag seems to have settled as #OccupyWallSt. Is #OccupyBaySt about to start trending?