Tara Beagan is captured by iPhone being announced as Native Earth Performing Arts new Artistic Director on January 26 at The Theatre Centre during the Weesageechak Festival. Photo courtesy PJ Prudat
January 2011 was a pretty good month for Jesus Chrysler playwright Tara Beagan:
Congrats to our friend and collaborator on both of her well-deserved successes. Tara replaces out going Artistic Director Yvette Nolan – who was also a great friend to Praxis Theatre.
Yvette sent us some well considered notes on her experience and thoughts surrounding Praxis productions, and she has been an ally as an artist and community member. Congrats to Yvette as well; she passes on a company in great shape to exciting leadership and we generally like it when things work out this way.
performed by Margaret Evans, Christine Horne and Keith Barker
directed by Michael Wheeler
produced by Aislinn Rose
sound and lighting design by Verne Good
costume design by Scott Penner
asst. directed by Laura Nordin
stage management by Rebecca Powell
Jesus Chrysler at Rhubarb is the fourth stage of development of an evolving work centered on legendary Toronto activist and director Eugenia “Jim” Watts.
Click here to learn about our earlier iterations of this project at The Toronto Fringe, HATCH: emerging performance projects and LabCab.
What makes a video go “viral”? Everyone seems to be giving it a go these days, and Toronto theatre companies are no exception. But are these videos an effective way of selling a show to an audience?
Here are three promo videos of current or upcoming shows in Toronto as examples. What makes a video “forwardable”, and what would make you post a video on Facebook? Has a video like one of these ever propelled you to buy a ticket to a show?
Friends, family and colleagues were all shocked by the sudden death of actor, writer and director Gina Wilkinson after a short battle with cancer on December 30, 2010. All who were connected with Gina are welcome to attend a memorial in her honour later this month and a new fund to support emerging female directors has been established in her name:
Gina’s Memorial
Monday January 24 @ 3pm
Jane Mallett Theatre
27 Front St E, Toronto
Tax-deductible donations to establish a fund for The Gina Wilkinson Award for Emerging Female Directors can be made payable to: “Ontario Arts Foundation – In memory of Gina Wilkinson” and sent to:
Attn: Alan Walker, Executive Director
Ontario Arts Foundation
151 Bloor St W, 5th Floor
Toronto, ON, M5S 1T6
FIXT POINT is proud to present Philippe Gaulier in Toronto:
OPEN CLASS OBSERVATION – On the final day of the Bouffon Masterclass with PHILIPPE GAULIER
January 7th, 2011 from 2 to 4pm at Canadian Stage, Berkeley Street Theatre (26 Berkeley Street Toronto). Tickets are $20 PURCHASE TICKETS IN ADVANCE HERE – Limited Space
We will be back in 2011 with some new ideas and content as well as more of what we do best.
If you came here looking to kill some time on the internet – there’s always these 30 pics of kids that are scared of Santa – just to make you feel that y0ur holiday season is going relatively well. If you are in or around Toronto – maybe we will see you in person at Small Wooden Shoe’s second annual Christmas concert, What Keeps Mankind Alive, on the 29th of December at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
"Actually I'm wearing pink for all the pinkos out there that ride bicycles and everything. I thought I'd get it in. What'd ya expect, Ron MacLean, here? To come here?" Don Cherry at Rob Ford's inauguration at Toronto City Hall Dec 7/2010
Dear Mr. Cherry,
I write to you as an avid hockey fan and as an artist.
I started watching hockey with my Dad when I was a kid. I loved coach’s corner on Saturday nights on CBC and although I often didn’t agree with your politics, I always admired your hockey smarts. When you talked hockey, I listened.
However, since you have entered the political arena you have ceased to make sense to me. When it comes to commenting on what’s going on off the ice, your smarts have let you down.
“People are sick of the elites and artsy people running the show.” I have been a Toronto based theatre artist for close to 15 years. Most people I know in my profession make less than $30,000 a year. How does this put me or any of my fellow artists in any position to run things? How is it that you rail against the elites when your salary is paid for by the CBC, a publicly funded corporation? Do you not see the paradox here?
“It’s time for some lunch pail, blue-collar people…(to run things)”. I can only assume you were referring to Mayor Ford. Mr. Ford is ferociously anti-union even though unions represent workers. In your speech to council on December 7th, you called out the pinko kooks in the crowd. By pinkos you mean socialists, who are trade unionists, who are for the worker, the lunch-pail carrying blue collar folk. The guy and gal who love to watch a good game of hockey, eh?
So when you stood before council beside Mayor Ford, representing the little guy, the working man (and woman), and lambasting the lefties ( I can only assume you meant the councillors who support bike lanes, public transit, and unions), claiming that a time of honesty was now upon the city, all I could see was a man who makes close to a million dollars a year standing beside another man whose company does close to $100 million in annual sales, I did not see two defenders of the people.
I saw a sports personality in over his head with no idea how much the people who live in this city, artist and worker alike, have in common with the average wage of an arts worker falling somewhere just below minimum wage. I saw a new mayor who is bent on using misinformation and division to rule. The war on cars has now become the war between wards in the GTA.
Mr. Cherry. I am an artist and a hockey fan. I even admit to cheering for the Maple Leafs (it was great to see them come back against the Bruins Saturday night). I respect you as a man of hockey, but I can’t take your endorsement of Mayor Ford seriously.
The English noun identity comes, ultimately, from the Latin adverb identidem, which means “repeatedly.” The Latin has exactly the same rhythm as the English, buh-BUM-buh-BUM—a simple iamb, repeated; and identidem is, in fact, nothing more than a reduplication of the word idem, “the same”: idem(et)idem. Same (and) same. The same, repeated. It is a word that does exactly what it means.
It seems odd, at first glance, that a noun that we associate with distinctiveness and individuality, with the irreducible uniqueness of each person, should derive from one that denotes (and even sounds like) nothing but mechanical repetition. But once you’ve given it some thought, the etymology of identity makes a kind of sense. At least one way of establishing what something is, after all, is to see whether it always remains itself, and nothing else, over and over again. This is also the case, presumably, for people: you are, endlessly and repeatedly, you, and not some other.
Image:
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Writer for theatre, tv and film, Bobby Theodore is the co-creator (with Ame Henderson) of 300 TAPES – a bold experiment in storytelling exploring how our memories are shaped (and warped) over time. Created over two years as part of The Theatre Centre’s Residency Program, 300 TAPES merges theatre, sound art and choreography.
300 TAPES by Public Recordings runs December 1-12 at The Theatre Centre, 1087 Queen Street West, Toronto (before heading to Calgary in Feb 2011). 416-538-0988.
Sean Dixon is the author of the play/novel ‘The Girls Who Saw Everything‘ which was just produced (play) by Ryerson Theatre & longlisted (novel) for CBC’s 2011 CanadaReads. He’s currently writing a show around the banjo for Crow’s Theatre & has a new novel coming out with Coach House Press in the spring.
A scene from The Middle Place: Kevin Walker and company
By Catherine Murray
With every one of our initiatives or creations, Project: Humanity (P:H) has endeavoured to expand awareness of local and global human issues using the arts. We’ve aspired to works that can serve as reflecting pools – allowing audiences to see themselves a bit more clearly, a bit more as part of a community. Our documentary-style play The Middle Place by Andrew Kushnir is currently playing at Theatre Passe Muraille and looks to broaden audiences’ perspective on homelessness and further introduce them to our company’s socially-minded aesthetic.
This current incarnation of the piece has been three years in the making. In 2007, we invited Andrew to join us in the youth shelter system, where Project: Humanity had started to provide day-programming in the form of drama/improv workshops. Andrew had felt compelled to do one-on-one interviews with some of the youth living there and hoped to create a piece of verbatim theatre employing their words (something he had never done before as a playwright).
Company member Akosua Amo-Adem
The members of P:H had all been affected by the shelter populace in much the same way – these at-risk youth had us seeing anyone and everyone’s proximity to homelessness. As one caseworker told Andrew: “Sometimes it just takes one event…one thing that does or doesn’t happen to you, that decides whether you’re on this side or that side.” Our work with them had us shedding our preconceived notions of what a homeless youth was and Andrew wanted to build a play that would replicate that experience for the uninitiated while validating the community-of-origin.
Not only did the shelter administration go for it (they had a long-standing interest in raising awareness about youth homelessness to the greater community) but much of the youth population embraced the opportunity to anonymously relay their experience. It was explained to them that their real names would never be known and actors would communicate their words to an audience. And this ensured anonymity coupled with the trust we had built up through our drama programming factored heavily in the intense candour we encounter in the play.
The voices in The Middle Place do humanize a stigmatized group in our community – but P:H wanted to advance that experience. For our current run at Theatre Passe Muraille, we’ve created an installation around the play called the Urban Youth Experience (the UYE). The UYE includes a number of physical installations such as art created by homeless youth through our partnership with SKETCH as well as a shelter photo installation by photographer Shaun Benson. We’ve programmed numerous post-show events including talkbacks with shelter caseworkers – kicked off at last week’s benefit performance for Youth Without Shelter. We’ve partnered with researchers at University of Toronto OISE who are offering audience members a chance to turn the camera on themselves and participate in a post-show interview to share their (verbatim) response to the play. Our goal has been to expand the traditional theatre setting into a community setting that encourages reflection, expression, and discussion.
One of the things we’re most proud of us is P:H’s free City Resource Guide. Each and every audience member can walk from the show with a guide we created listing numerous organizations that provide assistance to youth in need, as well as organizations that offer the general public a way to get involved and help.
Check out these links to learn more about the Urban Youth Experience and Project: Humanity. The Middle Place runs at Theatre Passe Muraille until November 13th and has shows Thursday – Saturday at 7:30pm, with 2:00pm matinees on Saturdays. A special “Suitcase Showcase” performance has been added for November 22, at 7pm.
Catherine Murray is a co-founder and Program Director of Project: Humanity. A graduate of the BFA Dance program at Ryerson University, Catherine has been doing arts facilitation within the youth shelter system for over 3 years.
“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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