The Africa Trilogycast member Muoi Nene has released a three-part series on the experience of being an African Canadian involved in the many of the early development workshops of two of the three plays in the Trilogy.
His thoughts on the creation process of both Shine Your Eye and Glo, what he learned, what he contributed, the ideas and concepts that in his mind have informed the production, and his hopes for the Trilogy can all be found below on The Africa Trilogy – Online Media Site:
The Movement Project’sHow We Forgot Hereis an interdisciplinary performance about memory and migration that asks a lot of questions. How did we get here? Where are our ancestors from? What have we forgotten along the way?
Two days before opening, members of the cast answered one more question:
WHY DON’T YOU GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM?
Marika Schwandt: I’d love to! First, someone will need to be selected to choose the place that I’ll be going. Then they will need to make an arbitrary decision about where this place is. Then they will need to tell me.
Malinda Francis (docuvixen): But where am I from? Do I go back to Barbados that i grew up for part of my childhood, which ironically is the only place I am seen as Canadian. I am back in Toronto, why don’t I go back where I came from, Holland where my mother is from,…I wanted to go there for a bit but status is not possible without my mother… Where you are from is relative? Is it where your exist in the moment or, where your ancestors are from? Through my interactions with various Diasporic communities. I see that hope of recognition, that familiarity, they see bit of home. And are you from…? So I would re-ask, How do you think, I was able to be born here?
Gein Wong: Sure, can I charge my plane ticket on your credit card?
Ryan Symington:I don’t go back because I don’t know where I am from. I am adopted. I know I was born in Victoria, British Columbia and that my birth mother decided to give me up before I was even born. I was never raised on Vancouver Island because my adoptive parents were from the mainland. I have no real connection to Victoria but during my childhood, whenever I went to the island for swimming competitions or for leisurely visits, there would be a sense of familiarity and calm that wash over me. I always found great comfort while sitting on the deck of the ferries, travelling through the passageways of the islands. Over the past year, something has sparked my interest and I have had this overwhelming desire to search out my real mother and father. The only purpose of doing that is to see what my face really looks like. Everytime I look at myself in the mirror, I have trouble identifying with the image that I see. It’s a bizarre experience that is becoming even stranger as I get older.
Eva-Rose Tabobondung:I would, if I could go back in time and put myself back into my mother’s womb, and she in her’s and she in her’s and she in her’s…. until the beginning of existence. Maybe I would be myself in another life time before this time. But maybe not. Maybe I’d just be happy going back to the land that I came from where my ancestors lived freely off the land and in harmony with each other.
How We Forgot Here March 22 – 28, 2010 $15 in advance at The Toronto Women’s Bookstore, $20 at the door.
Showtimes and full info available here.
In the past while we’ve received a number of emails with some very reasonable questions. They usually breakdown into three categories. We’ve never really been explicit with our answers so here we go:
1 How do you decide what companies and websites are listed in the sidebar?
If you have a website that is about theatre, just send a quick email to the info account at the top right of the site. State the name, URL and category it belongs in and we’ll throw it up there.
2 How can I promote my show on your website?
There are two ways to do this: Variations on Theatre was started to avoid praxistheatre.com becoming a clearinghouse for listings and press releases. If you have a show coming up you would like to promote, this is the most straightforward route. Make sure you give at least 2 weeks notice that you would like to do it and send in your Variation at least a week before it should go up.
The other option is to pitch something creative, like when Christine Horne proposed her faux-bitter interview with Susan Coyne. Like we would say no to something like that!
3 How can I write something for your website?
Send an email with a couple samples of your writing and a paragraph that addresses what you think is important about theatre, and what you hope it will evolve into in the next thirty years. We will proceed from there. We don’t pay (yet). When/if we do though, we’ll be paying the people that wrote for free first.
While Praxis Theatre became super-obsessed with our own product and process for a week, lots of other things have been going on:
HIVE 3 has been rocking Vancouver as the theatrical grand finale to the grand funding opus known as The Cultural Olympiad. Simon Ogden of The Next Stage has some interesting thoughts on what the event means for Vancouver and building and attracting new audiences by re-branding theatre.
In Toronto, Tarragon, Factory, and Canadian Stage all announced their seasons in quick succession in a bid to spare their subscribers the added cost of HST if purchased before April 30th. Buddies in Bad Times has made some hints about the first season curated by Artistic Director Brendan Healy, stating the new season, “will reflect a renewed engagement with Buddies’ social and political roots.” Luminato also officially announced the theatrical components of this year’s festival.
Roy McGregor wrote a very interesting piece in The Globe and Mail about the often skewed relationship between “hits” and good journalism as the world of information gets all 2.0 and hit-count-y.
Speaking of interactive theatre…. Check out this awesome show that’s gaining steam Down Under. If this is half as cool as the article makes it out to be I want my ticket yesterday.
Finally, The Theatre Centre’s annual Free Fall runs March 18th – 28th. Included in the festival is a show that occurs in the shared office space Praxis rents at The Great Hall, but is being used briefly by One Reed Theatre (who also rent a desk in the office) as a mini-theatre for their show.
Dave Tompa on how he scored the juicy role of an NDP Member of Parliament in Praxis Theatre’s Section 98
Praxis Theatre’s one-night-only workshop presentation of Section 98 is finally here. Do you have your tickets yet? Last night we had an invite-only dress rehearsal, and we learned a lot. In particular, after all these years of audiences being told to turn their cell phones off, we’re finding it a bit of a challenge to encourage you not only to leave them on, but to actually put them to use during the show. So we’re hoping to see you and your cell phones at the Harbourfront Centre tonight at 8pm.
Check out Praxis Theatre’s Co-Artistic Director Michael Wheeler talking to Harbourfront about our “Open Source” show, and why you need to bring your phones. See you tonight!
Harbourfront Centre’s Upfront talks “Open Source Theatre” with Praxis Co-Artistic Director, Michael Wheeler
We’re here on Day Three of HATCH at the Harbourfront Centre Studio Theatre, preparing for our work-in-progress presentation of Section 98. Some of you are familiar with the nature of “Tech Day”, but part of the purpose of our Open Source Theatre project is to reach a wider, non-theatre going audience… so for those of you who are not familiar with tech days, our Stage Coordinator Brittney Filek-Gibson – also known as BFG, also known as Praxis Theatre’s Social Media Sheriff – has created an amazing little video for you, that I like to call “Tech Day in 2 Minutes or Less”. In reality, tech days are much longer. 8 hours longer. Sometimes 12.
Don't go to the theatre regularly? Tell us why in the comments section and we'll give you a free ticket to our show!
So, to all you non-theatre goers… did you have any idea that theatre artists and technicians go through all of this just to make things pretty for your arrival? If you don’t normally go to the theatre, or if you used to go to the theatre but don’t anymore… we want to hear from you. What’s keeping you away? What can we do to get you here? Tell us why you don’t go to the theatre in the comments section below, and we’ll give you a free ticket to our show this Saturday night!
My mum has had a really hard time getting my dad to the theatre ever since she took him to a production of Man of La Mancha over 25 years ago, and a man “pranced around the stage on a broom pretending he was riding a horse”. To make matters worse for my dad, it was Good Friday and all the bars were closed.
On February 24th, I woke up to find an email from Section 98’s director Michael Wheeler, saying “have you been following my conversation with Omar Khadr?”. I’m sorry, what? Now, I think it says a lot about Mike that my first thought was, “if anyone’s going to find a way to have a conversation with Omar Khadr, it’s Mike”. Or maybe it says a lot about me. Then it dawned on me that a week earlier I had mentioned Omar Khadr in my Open Source entry “Checking for a Pulse“. I had dared to suggest that if one is going to support human rights and civil liberties, then one must do so in all cases, and, instead of quoting Margaret Chase this time, I’m going to quote Oscar winning actress Mo’nique: “sometimes you have to forego what’s popular in order to do what’s right”. I also said, based on this idea, that I’d like to know when we would be bringing Omar Khadr home. If I was going to find Mike’s conversation with “Omar Khadr” anywhere, I was betting it would be at the end of this post.
I headed to the comments section of the post, and there it was: ‘Everyone calm down! It’s me, Omar Khadr!‘… and it looked like Mike and Omar had stayed up “conversing” until the wee hours of the morning as well.
Don’t feed the trolls
If you spend a lot of time (angrily) reading reader comments on news sites like I do, you’ll often find the line, “don’t feed the trolls”. Can I go so far as to call this person a troll? Wikipedia defines an Internet Troll as “someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.” Well, the posts were reasonably on-topic, but cue the inflammatory on his end, and the emotional on my end. Ultimately, I don’t want to call this person a troll as I think he truly believes in his point of view (and isn’t just engaging in order to be a nuisance), but at the same time, he isn’t posting to debate or discuss. He’s posting to say “how it is”.
I was surprised at first that Mike had taken on a somewhat similarly comedic tone with his responses. Good on him for not taking the bait I guess, but I was also frustrated at the amount of misinformation sitting there that was going undisputed (in the beginning). It’s so very easy to spout inflammatory statements like, ‘“The Young Offenders Act?!” Even I know that was replaced in 2003!‘ as thought that actually means something. In this case, it means nothing. While the YOA was replaced in 2003 with the Youth Criminal Justice Act, Omar was captured in 2002, and therefore still covered by the YOA. Regardless, the new Act still considers youth to be between the ages of 12 and 18, and Omar was 15 when captured. So what was his point, other than to say something in an authoritative manner, thereby casting doubt on Mike’s earlier assertions?
Same goes for such lines as ‘here’s the only law that DOES apply to me and my “situation”‘ (when in fact there ARE other international laws relating to child soldiers that apply to him and his situation), and ‘(unlike a lot of these bastards at Gitmo) I was actually charged WITH A CRIME‘… as were other Guantanamo Bay detainees who, regardless of their charges and/or convictions, were still released to the custody of their respective countries. I’ve always enjoyed people saying that Canada is unique, or special, but not when we’re unique because the only Western citizen remaining in Guantanamo Bay is Canadian.
Omar Khadr: Then & Now
… can we send it back?
The “debate” went on for a few days, with Mike and another valiant participant going head to head with this person… and I just sat back watching, wondering what to do, feeling a little bit useless, and a little bit overwhelmed. Oh, not by the level of debate, don’t get me wrong. In fact, when I first started reading his comments, I actually thought it might be satire. I thought, here is an ignorant, arrogant Colbert-like character playing up the ridiculousness of “the other side”… you know, that side that suggests the only reason anyone is interested in Omar’s rights in this case is ‘because they hate America, they hate what it stands for‘. It would almost be funny if he weren’t actually being utterly serious… in a quasi-funny, (mis)appropriated, and conveniently anonymous voice. So the level of debate wasn’t what was overwhelming me.
No, it was more about the fact that I knew engaging him further was useless. Consider, for a moment, his insistence that Omar is guilty (though he has yet to be tried), and his complete dismissal of the evidence to the contrary provided by Mike. In fact, any good point in the real Omar’s favour was simply met with something like ‘just which side are you on? Because it sounds like you’re on mine! This is fantastic, I need another “useful idiot”‘. So t. schwellnus gets called an idiot… not by the writer of course, but by “Omar”… so he gets away with it.
And then there’s the issue of my being a woman. Fake Omar’s first comment said (in reference to me), ‘what’s with the lady that hates “Borat” and why is she even allowed to view such Western filth?’. After that, I (wrongly or rightly) assumed that any comment I made would be met with a similar ‘joke’ about my place as a woman. He would be ‘in character’ of course, and I would be expected to be able to take a joke of course… otherwise I’m just another one of those humourless shrews we see portrayed on the television every day. I didn’t say any of this to anyone, yet I was asked by a female friend if this was one of the reasons I wasn’t responding to the discussion. And let me tell you now, I’m not proud of the fact that I stayed away.
Finally, it is overwhelming to know that there are so many people out there like this person. As Mike said in one of his responses, ‘it is valuable for the production to acknowledge that the reason Omar Khadr is in Guantanamo Bay is because there are many, many people, just like you out there.’. I don’t mind that people have differing opinions than my own, not at all. I just want to be able to have discussions with those people where we can share what we think and what we know, and actually drive the discussion forward. I love to learn, and I therefore love it when someone proves me wrong… but that can only happen if I actually listen to what the other person is saying.
t. schwellnus may have said it to fake Omar best: ‘I don’t know what your intentions are, ultimately, but this shit just kinda makes me crazy‘.
So, as the keeper of Section 98‘s Open Source Theatre project, here’s what I want to know: what the hell do you do in this scenario? Do you take the bait and engage in the name of accuracy and/or principle? Do you ignore the “troll”? Do you delete his posts (as he accused us of doing)? Or, like Mike, do you try to find a way to incorporate this “voice” into the show, without taking the voice “out of context” (which is what concerns fake Omar). Though, I don’t see how we can take a voice that doesn’t actually belong to this person out of context, but we’ll certainly do our best.
Now I want to leave you with a question… and feel free to tell answer in the comments section below: what were you doing when you were 15? What was I doing when I was 15? I was going to Catholic school, and campaigning for Perrin Beatty? Why? Well, I was raised by my parents as both a Catholic and a Conservative. And, while I hate to admit it, I was pretty much one of those kids that did as their parents told them. It wasn’t until a little later in life that I realised I wasn’t a believer, and I certainly wasn’t a Conservative (of the big or small c variety). Luckily, when I was 15, I didn’t have parents that sent me to Afghanistan to fight in a war, as I probably would have gone. You?
Come see Praxis Theatre’s Section 98 interactive work-in-progress presentation on Saturday, March 13th at the Harbourfront Centre Studio Theatre. Click here for more information.
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
Adam Lazarus is Artistic Producer of the Toronto Festival of Clowns, through which he is accepting submissions and teaching workshops in Bouffon and physical approaches to theatre creation.
Check out these websites for more info: www.torontoclown.com & www.quiptake.com
Pretty tense going into the 3rd Period. Yanks sure are pouring it on.
Less than 2 minutes to go in regulation. Less than 1 minute to go in regulation.
Less than 10 seconds to go in regulation. Crosby scores in OT.
Stand and drink beer for your anthem. This isn’t Margaret, but it did happen next.
This is what it was like in Vancouver.
You can see Margaret as Eugenia (Jim) Watts in the workshop presentation of Section 98 on March 13th @ 8pm as part of HATCH in The Studio Theatre at Harbourfront.
“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.”
The Africa Trilogy cast member Muoi Nene has released a three-part series on the experience of being an African Canadian involved in the many of the early development workshops of two of the three plays in the Trilogy.
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