Someone forgot to tell the PM that encouraging Nickelback actually reduces Canadian culture...or did they?
by Michael Wheeler
Shortly after the 2008 Federal election, Peter Donolo, soon-to-be Chief of Staff to Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, addressed a select group of executive directors and organizational leaders at an industry seminar organized by The Arts Advocate. In his role as pollster for The Globe and Mail during the election, Donolo had accumulated extensive data on the arts and how it had impacted the race. One piece of information from his presentation produced audible exhalations and dismayed nodding of heads:
The highest polling numbers the Harper campaign ever saw in the province of Ontario were on the day after his Ordinary People Don’t Care About The Arts statement (Sept 24/08).
However much it seems retrospectively the comments were a careless slip that may have cost the government a majority, the reality is there was an emotional resonance to this message that initially gave him momentum in a battleground province. Eventually, these numbers receded in the weeks before voters went to the polls, leaving the merged Canadian Alliance and PC parties short of a majority government with the support of just over one third of the electorate.
Seen in this context, comments made by the PM to the national media that he was “concerned” by Catherine Frid’s play Homegrown at the 2010 Summerworks Festival begin to fit into the government’s larger agenda as a strategic exercise by a government no longer able to communicate through rational discourse. These comments point to a desire to use emotionally charged signposts to frame discussions and talking points, rather than the merits of programs and policies based on data or logic.
Will we talk about the arts next election in relation to harnessing our imaginations and creativity within a complex and multidimensional culture? Or will we discuss the arts in relation to whether we should use tax dollars to support terrorism? These are the types of paradigms that are being established in the discourse leading up to the next election.
If Harper succeeds in connecting arts funding and supporting terrorism, it will fit in well with a campaign that paints public funding for political parties to replace the influence of massive donations by corporations and unions as supporting separatism, a coalition government as advocating socialism, and an inquiry into the largest series of civil rights violations in Canadian history at G20 as supporting anarchism.
Of course none of these references are true, but it doesn’t matter. Everymainstreamreviewer who saw Homegrown went out of their way to specifically address the allegations by the PM and his office that the play “glorified terrorism”. Each one reached the identical explicit conclusion that the play in no way justified or supported terrorism. What matters is that arts funding and taking a “sympathetic” view of terrorism are now a cultural meme that some people will remember. Mission accomplished.
This type of highly emotional and dramatic hyperbole will be backed up by an impressive war chest accumulated by the Conservative Party that has been significantly out-fundraising the opposition since fall 2008. In the lead up to the next election, this will back a multi-million dollar wave of negative ads in every media geared at emotional flashpoints in an effort to define complex policy issues with simple narratives that elicit a kneejerk response from sub-cortical “reptilian” elements of the brain.
By hoping to communicate with voters through fight or flight stimuli, the goal is to avoid any rational or substantive debate. Next year, without any reliable or detailed information available through the census, there will be even less data available to evaluate and discuss policies and programs. The heavily partisan bent of the Harper government has forced it to abdicate a knowledge-based discussion of their policies, save a few economic statistics that neglect to mention the sizeable budget surplus Canada had when they took the reins of government and the huge deficit they have generated five years later.
When Kory Teneycke (l) was Communications Director to the PM they both lunched in NYC with Fox News President Rupert Murdoch. Four months later he left his position to lead Quebecor Media's attempt to rewrite CRTC rules in their favour to start Fox News North, which he is pictured announcing.
This embrace by Conservative strategists of US Tea Party-style political tactics is set to be joined by the biggest weapon in regressive populist media: Our very own Fox News. Upset that the current CRTC head won’t fast track a special Category 1 licence for a national TV station to be run by Harper’s previous spokesperson, Harper is set to replace him with someone who is willing to break CRTC rules to allow him a national TV station dedicated to supporting and propagating his ideology.
There is an unfortunate logic to politics that right-wing parties are succeeding when they are talking about the military and the economy, and failing when they talk about things like education, healthcare and culture. By framing culture as a “spending” and “national security” issue they are effectively taking a topic that is a loser for them and turning it into a winner. Combine that with the strong numbers in Ontario after Harper’s anti-arts statements in 2008 and the fact the Conservatives have given up completely in Quebec, and we may be looking at another election where arts and culture is again under attack.
This is not necessarily a great strategy for Harper – where last election arts and culture supporters were caught off guard being attacked by their own government, this election they will be organized, have lists of active supporters in every major city, and have identified leaders and organizing strategies that target swing ridings. They are also way better than them at gaining earned media and using the internet. At the end of the day, it will be up to the opposition, the non-Quebecor owned press, and civil society to shift the debate out of the highly emotional, into factual analysis of the policies and parties that will best serve the country.
Lately, it has been the subject of some media as to whether an emotional, ideologically-based discussion of policies and programs can become a substitute for rational debate that includes data and information.
During the film shoot last winter the stage of The Stanley Theatre was used to get a almost a hundred extras into period hair and make up. This fall the show premieres on the same stage.
Last winter I wrote about my trip to British Columbia to learn more about the work director Kim Collier and The Electric Company are doing combining live and recorded performance as part of my investigation into the relationship between direction and design as Director in Training at The Tarragon Theatre. On my first trip to Vancouver in February 2010 during The Cultural Olympiad, I spent two weeks on the set of the film shoot for the production Tear The Curtain!
As of today I’m back for round two of this project, attending rehearsals and learning as much as I can in the lead-up to opening night of this hybrid film and theatre piece production that will have its world premiere presented by The Arts Club Theatre Company at The Stanley Theatre on September 15. Stay tuned for more about this project as opening night approaches!
The past week has hosted some novel conversations on contemporary theatre and how it is developing. Most interesting is how all of these perspectives are contributing to a larger conversation about what form theatre can take to engage, well, anyone under 40 who isn’t already in theatre. Here are some recent highlights:
“The post-1945 consensus understood this completely. The need for municipal theatres, the need to fund the experimenters (who of course become the next establishment), the need for national institutions, the need to represent the rich diversity of our society – allowing a place where we can all become richer by including the excluded – was centrally important to the interventions made. But more than this, there was an implicit understanding that our greatest talent could not be nurtured without support.”
Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, Huffington Post critic Monica Westin has a decidedly more upbeat perspective on Why Hipsters Will Save Theater in her review of David Cromer’s Cherrywood. Her thesis proposes that the ironic disengagement that permeates hipster culture has the potential to create a new kind of theatre, that combines both “alienation effect” and “happening”. They (we), are capable of creating and enjoying this new approach to art as “the first generation of bohemian youth culture that’s not going to look like idiots–like the hippies and the punks–later for pretending to have all the answers, when all we had was a new way of dressing stupid.”
“But it’s the combination of the alienation effect and the happening that makes Cherrywood so important. In 1968 Peter Brook declared in The Empty Space that “The alienation effect and the happening effect are similar and opposite–the happening shock is there to smash through all the barriers set up by reason, alienation is to shock us into bringing the best of our reason into play… leading its audience to a juster understanding of the society in which it lived, and so to learning in what ways that society was capable of change.” How does alienation work? According to Brook is can use any rhetoric: “It aims continually at pricking the balloons of rhetorical playing–Chaplin’s contrasting sentimentality and calamity is alienation.” Brook couldn’t imagine a theater piece in which both could happen at once; life now demands this of theater, and Cherrywood delivers it.”
The TKTS iPhone Ap
Of course you can’t be a theatre-conscious hipster looking for the latest, coolest, cheapest tickets you can find without this new Ap for your iPhone, which lists all the Broadway and Off Broadway shows and discount rates that TKTS has available each day. This sort of technology is probably much better suited to attract the new generation of potential theatregoers that make same-day plans and aren’t looking to fork out an arm and a leg for a night out on the town. Is there the potential for indie companies to collaborate through this same technology? Now that we have thrown out the notion that we have to perform in the same space to have marketing/ticketing alliances shouldn’t we be all over this?
If you used your iPhone to get tickets, maybe you should keep using it once the show starts? Over at 2amtheatre they had a multi-perspective post and conversation about the type of interactive, invite the audience to communicate with their PDA during the performance type of stuff Praxis was experimenting with in March at Harbourfront Centre. The consensus opinion seemed to be that imposing tweets on pre-existing scripts was a recipe for disaster, but that tweeting during shows had the potential to expand the medium if the pieces were built with this level of interactivity in mind. Travis Bedard provided some questions that should be considered while choosing to make work this way:
“But what can this technology enable for a playwright or deviser creating NEW work?
This is another possible tool on the utility belt for writers. It is indeed another entire plane of existence for characters.
Can extra-stage characters exist only in the Twitter-verse? Can the audience team up with one another for or against the stage characters?
What does the interaction between the sequestered, in-space audience and the free range Twitter audience look like?”
How well can the playwright and director control that?”
This last question is probably why there hasn’t been a HUGE amount of experimentation with this sort of thing. It is a process that confers less power to both playwright and director. Unproven methods that reduce the influence of the artistic leaders of a project are tough to get off the ground. I’m also a little confused about why Twitter is the only option being discussed as a technology to do this sort of thing. Facebook statuses, texts, tweets, IM, email, skype – we’re all using interactive digital technologies to improve our capacity to communicate. Why stratify it to a single tool exclusive to, well, hipsters? If we’re going to save theatre, we’re still going to do it with everyone else. It’s also important to remember what can happen when we get obsessed with a particular brand of technology.
Every year IAS destroys the lives of thousands of performers. This short video is proof positive that no case is hopeless and that this syndrome is treatable if spotted early enough. Watch this video for early warning signs – do you know anyone showing signs of IAS? Identification and treatment may be their best chance for recovery.
One of Ellen Bayley’s many jobs as the The Metcalf Foundation Arts Management Intern at Volcano Theatre, is organizing and promoting The 2010 Volcano Conservatory, which offers intensives and master classes taught by industry leaders for actors, dancers and theatre-makers.
Classes offered between August 16th – 29th in Mnouchkine Technique, Fearless Dancing, Lecoq Red Nose Clown, Viewpoints, Chekhov Technique and more. Don’t miss out!
1 Open source collaboration with your audience to create art?
The video was released with the following statement by BSS:
“This video was made as a response to the G20 Summit in Toronto June, 2010. The rest speaks for itself. It was sent to us by a lover of our music who wants to remain anonymous. We are very proud to share this mash-up with you.“
In our March 2010, Harbourfront HATCH workshop of Section 98, which also looked at civil rights abuses, Praxis used an open source development process that solicited feedback and material from our audience over the web. Some of this informed our process and discussions, while some feedback ended up making the final text we staged. Looks like in this case the band has received a great video from the internet, and adopted it as part of their artistic process.
What do you think: Is this “open source” method of creating art a passing fad or a new development in how the interweb will be impacting the creation of contemporary art?
2 What is the artistic response to G20 Toronto?
Well here ya go. Here is a world-renowned group of Toronto-based artists making a statement about what happened here during G20. Well actually someone else made the statement, and they agreed with and approved it. It begs the question, “What was the song Meet me in the Basement about to the band BEFORE the video?” Or does it ? Does music even get made that way? I don’t know, I’m in theatre.
What do you think about the combination of this song and this video? Is it effective, accurate, insightful? Any other positive or negative adjectives you would attach to this work?
One weekend I was an upbeat artist interested in how we could consider tough ideas to create an artistic response to difficult questions facing us as global citizens. The next weekend I watched all manner of Torontonians interested in solving these same problems criminalized and incarcerated in hundreds of civil rights violations throughout the city.
So there is a whole different version of this post – half-finished, abandoned in the middle of the Charter-rights meltdown that was G20. It considered each of the works presented, the moral questions they were trying to consider, and my response to them in as a middle-class Canadian. It would probably have been an excellent resource for final reports for grants.
I erased it, because the new me, the one that is horrified at the violent resources my country is willing to invest in stifling peaceful dissent (vandalism and violence are not equal or necessarily related), isn’t really interested in a hollow play-by-play of theoretical issues and responses.
All of the pieces created through the inFORMING CONTENT workshop were an attempt to deal with the imbalances and contradictions in a global economy. Ravi Jain’s T.A.K.E. looked at the role wealth has in a global adoption industry, Michael Rubenfeld’s If You Were Here looked at how distance separates us from achieving common goals, an unnamed project devised by Claire Calnan subjected single participants to a whirlwind tour of causes to support – having to choose to donate to just one. Even the waiting area in the courtyard outside the performance area was permeated by global concerns, with pictures of soon-to-be-extinct animals available to be coloured with crayons.
The weekend after this workshop, leaders representing the vast majority of the world’s economy came to Toronto. In response, citizens that are invested in solving all of these problems exercised their guaranteed rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and free speech to implore this gathering of the Most Powerful People In The World to address some of the most troubling ethical issues of our time: Maternal health, foreign aid commitments, the toll global warming will have on both species and the world’s poor, etc. The exact same issues that participants in the inFORMING CONTENT workshop had been hoping to address the week before.
Toronto is still coming to grips with what happened next, but one thing is for certain: Civil rights violations occurred on a massive scale. Amnesty International has already called for a full inquiry and YouTube videos of police brutality have flooded the internet. The lesson from G20 in Toronto is this: If you protest, if you exercise your right to free speech to rectify the world’s imbalances, you will be violently arrested and thrown in a cage without access to a lawyer.
This image shows police who have removed their identification tags confronting and arresting citizens at the designated protest site at Queen’s Park. This is a conscious tactic, also used by police at the 2005 G20 in London, to avoid accountability for human and civil rights violations.
This reality has completely transformed the way I consider the questions raised by the inFORMING CONTENT workshop. Before I was content to consider the ideas from more of an intellectual standpoint, assuming that if I truly threw my resources into solving one of these problems I could have an impact.
I am much more cynical now – uncertain of how to address these great ethical questions of our age. Clearly our governments don’t want to consider them. Clearly they are willing to throw more money than you can imagine to stifle and silence people who speak out about them. Clearly this is a really big problem for those hoping to affect change.
In Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu’s W.4., a group of eight audience members are taken to a waiting area outside a room full of severely traumatised individuals. Not all the audience is permitted in: some are forced to simply listen to the sound of despair from the outside. Others are invited inside, but end up becoming an inmates in the room themselves. On the other side of G20, this piece speaks best metaphorically about the problems we face as global citizens facing ethical issues. Those of us on the outside are locked out, and those of us that try to get in are locked in cages.
How do we impact the great ethical issues of our time in this era? Certainly identifying, discussing and analyzing them is part of a response, but that can’t be it. What else should we be doing now in these given circumstances? I have no answers to these questions, but it’s what I’m left thinking about after experiencing two very different weekends trying to address the difficult ethical questions facing the planet.
The Indie Caucus will host a Tent Talk in the Fringe HQ that is the parking lot behind Honest Eds as part of The Toronto Fringe Festival Saturday at 4pm.
All of the panelists have been members of the Indie Caucus since its inception, have had multiple dealings with Equity as both member and non-member creators, and will offer insight and advice on what the future holds in this regard for independent artists and what they can do promote positive change within CAEA.
Clearly this issue is incredibly important to all artists at different stages of their careers and there is growing anger and frustration that even after two heavily lopsided votes (96-1 anyone?), the largest turnout ever at a RAGM to address this issue, and the creation of a new committee to look into the problem – NOTHING HAS ACTUALLY CHANGED YET. Despite all of these meetings and votes, practically speaking, it is still 2005.
Below, three CAEA members who are not members of the Indie Caucus, share their hopes and throughts for reform after attending the now-legendary Theatre Passe Muraille RAGM:
Susan Coyne performs in Thistle Project's Peer Gynt. Photo by Lindsay Anne Black
Susan Coyne
I was surprised, when I was working on an independent theatre show, to hear my young colleagues talk about how reluctant they were to join Equity. They felt that joining Equity would make it too difficult for them to produce and perform their own work. This seemed very strange to me, as a longtime member of CAEA.
At the meeting, I sensed a huge frustration from the artists who spoke about the rules for producing independent theatre in Equity’s jurisdiction. There seemed to be a disconnect between what the artists were saying and Equity’s description of the problem. For the Equity officers who were at the meeting, the problem was described as a problem of manpower: given how small the number of Equity artists employed in independent theatre, a lot of people’s time was spent filling out an enormous amount of paper work. This seemed slightly to miss the point. Though I can understand that the Equity office may be shortstaffed. I would have liked to see some kind of acknowledgement that though the numbers may be small, this kind of work, with its willingness to take risks and experiment with new ideas, is the well from which we all draw. We are all, in my experience – inspired, invigorated and challenged by seeing, and participating in independent theatre, and I hope that we can find a way to not only support and encourage these companies and artists, but make it easier for them to do what they do, within Equity.
Marcia Johnson
The Ontario CPAG (Council Policy Advisory Group) Equity meeting was encouraging and inspiring. The turnout at Theatre Passe Muraile was more than respectable. I recognized friends and colleagues who have been doing great work in Toronto for years.
I am grateful to Mark Brownell and his team for putting a positive spin on the event. We were encouraged to think of solutions, not just tell horror stories. Mark did a great job of providing a context and the background for the struggle that a lot of Equity creator-producers face when it comes to working within the rules. His pie chart showed three-percent of work that Equity members do fall under these different creator-producer categories yet the majority of staff hours are used to facilitate them.
VInetta Strombergs chaired a panel featuring Equity members Rebecca Northan, Melissa D’Agostino and Michael Rubenfeld. They shared their obstacles, successes and suggestions. I was also pleased that President Arden Ryshpan and Executive Director Allan Teichman were invited to weigh in. It was all very conciliatory.
We all treated each other with respect and were constructive in our criticism. The many door prizes were a very nice touch. It felt like we were being rewarded for attending and making it all the way through to the end.
I am filled with hope that an easy to manage contract will be developed and not the (in the words of Ross Manson, Volcano Theatre) ad hoc system that exists now.
Maev Beaty performs in Volcano's The Africa Trilogy. Photo by John Lauener
Maev Beaty
So I begin with a confession. I have been an Equity member for several years now. I have produced, written, acted, festivaled, deputied, worked under Guest Artist, Co-op and Indie. I have also complained, been denied, been scolded, been furious and yes, I have been helped. But I have also heard of hypocrisies and confusions that made my hair stand on end. So what is the confession? I have never been to a meeting, rally or parade. I have paid my dues and bitched in bars, but I have never actually tried to involve myself in or be an active witness of the actual machinations of CAEA.
But boy do I love Facebook. I really do. I use it for networking, education, alternative news sources, entertainment and reunions. And thanks to Facebook I finally became involved in my Association’s future. I received probably 40 reminders about the big CAEA May 17th meeting from probably 20 different sources. And it worked. I went. And I am so glad I did.
I deeply appreciated how pro-active and transparent the organizers were and how efficiently the evening was handled. As a ‘newbie’, I never felt condescended to or confused. There was minimum complaining and a lot of honesty. In fact, there was a lot of honesty about dishonesty. A major recurring theme of the evening was that producer/members frequently lied on contracts or simply worked outside them. There are many reasons for this course of action, chief among them being the hassle of negotiating the overly complex and confusing contract options, and the feeling that they were being seen as exploitative and suspicious by CAEA staff. This information came out in the evening not as a complaint, but as a clear sign to staff and council that our system is flawed and requires re-examining. Nobody WANTS to lie. But we need to change things so that’s not the easiest solution.
So – what kind of change? There were several suggestions of improvements and adjustments made that night. Below is the short list of the solutions I was most excited by:
Eradicate the graduated system that forces companies to have a limited number of times they can use certain contracts before they must use another.
Get rid of the quota of CAEA members that must be in your production when the producer/originator of the project is a Member/Engager.
Create a menu prototype for contracts, with choosable options for each module and then provide a sample template that matches your chosen contract to help you fill it out. (it could all be done online – colour coded menu pieces that you pick and choose)
Create a clear series of riders that could be easily ‘tacked on’ to that contract that deals with issues such as Touring or using dancers, non Equity or International performers without making them join the Association
Make the Fringe Waiver applicable to ALL SummerWorks productions.
Change is GOOD. Yes it was my first CAEA meeting but it sure won’t be my last.
The all star crew that make up Tonto's Nephew, North America's only all first nations sketch comedy troupe, reunite tonight for one show only
Do you want Colin Mochrie to make you laugh? Go to Comedy Bar at 9pm!!
International comedy superstar Colin Mochrie will join the sketch comedy troupe Tonto’s Nephew and other Second City alum in a fundraising event to assist the Kawacatoose First Nation tonight.
WHEN: Tonight @ 9pm
WHERE: The Comedy Bar.945 Bloor Street W. Toronto
WHO: Herbie Barnes, Sid Bobb, Darrell Dennis, Craig Lauzon and Michaela Washburn are Tonto’s Nephews
WHO ELSE: Guest spots by Colin Mochrie, Sandy Jobin-Bevans, Paul Bates, Jan Caruana.
WHAT: Huge laughs. Admission is by donation.
Margaret Evans plays Eugenia "Jim" Watts in Section 98
by Simon Rice and Michael Wheeler
Like any good tyrannical minority government gearing up for a fall election, Praxis is shaking it up! Nothing beats a cabinet shuffle to temporarily boost polling numbers for an independent theatre company.
Kidding… Sort of. We are making some changes at Praxis and they are lateral, but you know in the theatre world lateral means diagonal.
We wouldn’t have the wiggle room to be so obtuse if Margaret Evans, Maggie as we all know her, had not been General Manager of Praxis for the last 2 1/2 years.
Under Maggie’s tenure Praxis produced four shows, the scope of which were our largest thus far, both creatively and budget-wise. She also oversaw the creation of our board of directors, and was steward of the most successful fundraising campaigns in the history of the company.
Despite these skills and accomplishments, her greatest asset is actually as a performer. Margaret will be retiring from her role as GM of Praxis and will be taking a more front and central role as an actor/creator in our production of Section 98, continuing her work playing Eugenia “Jim” Watts, the legendary 1930s political artist and Spanish Civil War ambulance driver and radio host.
Aislinn Rose - Praxis' new Artistic Producer
Continuing in the diagonal tradition, Aislinn Rose will be rewriting the books as Artistic Producer at Praxis. Over the past year she has acted as Script Supervisor on our 2009 Toronto Fringe production of Tim Buck 2, as well as Director of the Open Source Theatre Project for Section 98, presented as part of Harbourfront Centre’s 2010 HATCH season. As Artistic Producer she will be handling Praxis’ day to day operations as well as developing a new creative project… More on this soon.
We should also mention that she has a non-Praxis show running right now, Amy Zuch’s Key to Key, which she directs for this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival at the Royal St. George venue until Saturday July 1o.
“After the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations, we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.”
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