Sounds impossible – and slightly suspect – we know. But here’s what we’re thinking: Send us a digital version of your 2008 Toronto Fringe Festival postcard or poster, and we’ll post it here on our blog, sometime between now and the end of the festival. Simple.
We get to learn more about your show, look at your awesome postcard, and everyone wins.
Please send your Toronto Fringe Festival postcards here.
By the way, does anybody have any fun stories about an upcoming North American Fringe Festival? What are you working on?
We’re a couple of days behind on posting this, but the 2008 Dora Award nominations for Independent Theatre are in.
Here’s the full list of nominees in the independent theatre category:
Outstanding new play
Anusree Roy – Pyaasa
Michael Rubenfeld – My Fellow Creatures
Beatriz Pizano – Madre
Michael Hollingsworth – Laurier
Brendan Gall – A Quiet Place
Outstanding production Waiting for Godot – Modern Times Stage Company
Lullaby – Dark Horse Theatre
Laurier – VideoCabaret
April 14, 1912 – Theatre Rusticle
A Quiet Place – single threat
Outstanding direction
Soheil Parsa – Waiting for Godot
Nina Lee Aquino – People Power
Michael Hollingsworth – Laurier
Allyson McMackon – April 14, 1912
Geoffrey Pounsett – A Quiet Place
Outstanding performance by a male
Nicco Lorenzo Garcia – People Power
Benjamin Clost – My Fellow Creatures
David Ferry – Lullaby
Ryan Hollyman – Lawrence and Holloman
Christopher Stanton – A Quiet Place
Outstanding performance by a female
Erin Shields – The Unfortunate Misadventures of Masha Galinski
Anusree Roy – Pyaasa
Marcia Bennett – Madre
Maev Beaty – Dance of the Red Skirts
Pragna Desai – Canada Steel
Karin Randoja – Breakfast
Outstanding set design
Trevor Schwellnus – Waiting for Godot
Camellia Koo – People Power
Trevor Schwellnus – Madre
Lindsay Anne Black – April 14, 1912
Jackie Chau – Antigone: Insurgency (Sophocles Revisited)
Outstanding costume design
Angela Thomas – Waiting for Godot
Jenna McCutchin – The Fort at York
Astrid Janson and Sarah Armstrong – Laurier
Nina Okens – Bella Donna
Lindsay Anne Black – April 14, 1912
Outstanding lighting design
Andrea Lundy – Waiting for Godot
Michael Spence – Raging Dreams – into the visceral
Trevor Schwellnus – Madre
Andy Moro – Laurier
Laird Macdonald – Breakfast
Michelle Ramsay – April 14, 1912
Outstanding sound design/composition
Romeo Candido – People Power
Thomas Ryder Payne – Madre
Brent Snyder – Laurier
Richard Windeyer – Breakfast
Christopher Stanton – A Quiet Place
Wow! What a wonderful year it has been in Toronto’s independent theatre. Congratulations to all nominees and best of luck at the Monday, June 30 Dora Awards ceremony.
Please join Praxis Theatre tonight for the season finale in our series of original play readings. This month, we are pleased to present Catherine Hernandez’s Kilt Pins.
WHAT: Reading of Catherine Hernandez’s Kilt Pins
WHEN: Tuesday, June 10 @ 8 pm
WHERE: The Lower Ossington Theatre
100A Ossington Avenue (one block north of Queen St.)
CAST: Pip Dwyer, Jo Chim, Simon Rice, Greta Papageorgiu, Tania McCartney, Margaret Evans, James Murray. Directed by Michael Wheeler.
TICKETS: Pay-What-You-Can @ the door
For more information, please contact Laura Nordin.
By Michael Wheeler
This post is not about the art being presented at Luminato. There are a lot of really cool works being presented at the festival and I wish all the artists involved enormous success. Except for Joni Mitchell. What? Joni Mitchell is a visual artist!?!
This post is about money. Cash dollars for the arts. How it is spent, who decides, and for what purpose. I didn’t really understand how off the rails this whole spectacle had gone until I read Kate Taylor’s May 24th , 2008 article From zero to $22.5-million in 2 years in The Globe and Mail.
And then my head exploded.
Taylor begins by answering some of her own questions:
“How did a 10-day Toronto arts festival, which had completed only one season, win a direct provincial grant of a kind usually reserved for established government agencies? How did Luminato, that ill-defined grab bag of splashy public spectacles and pricey international performances (which gets underway for a second season on June 9) come out of nowhere so fast?
The answer is: one part strategy, one part timing, many parts political connections.”
She comes to the conclusion based on the following evidence:
The festival was founded and is co-chaired by Tony Gagliano and David Pecault. Gagliano is CEO of St. Joseph Communications, which publishes Toronto Life, and is also friends with Greg Sorbara, former Liberal finance minister and architect of McGuinty election victories. To complicate matters, his family also donated $10 million to the recent AGO renovation. This is relevant because the three major grants for the arts by the Ontario Government recently have been to the AGO, the ROM and Luminato. There is a strange, out of my just-trying-to-make-rent league, cycle of money going on there.
Pecault is Senior Partner with The Boston Consulting Group but, surprise, is married to Helen Burstyn, a prominent Liberal supporter who used to work inside McGuinty’s office and is now volunteer chair of The Ontario Trillium Foundation, another provincial arts granting body.
These well-connected founders managed to immediately, out of nowhere, get our Ontario government to commit $7.5 million dollars towards this festival over its first three years. What the? Praxis Theatre has to receive three successful project grants before we can even qualify to apply for operational funding. But fine, the post-SARS tourist economy ain’t what is used to be and some stimulus that skips the red tape is perhaps in order. But this latest, no-application process, trust us we’ll do something good with it, extra $15 million dollars – which Luminato admits that they don’t know what to do with yet – is quite frankly beyond the pale.
Here’s the top three reasons why:
First, access to public arts funding should not be political. Public money can’t and shouldn’t be about who you know. We have a hard time making the case for public arts funding period. Why not house the homeless, make the TTC cheaper, and paint some more bike lanes instead? If it begins to be even perceived as a slush fund for political friends to throw exclusive red carpet parties, while they wine and dine international artists, we’re screwed selling this idea to the rest of our citizens. The connection between the co-chairs and the Premier’s office are embarrassingly obvious. For all of us in the arts.
Second, there has been much to do in the media, and on this blog, about what’s wrong with theatre in Toronto as of late. In particular the lack of strong new voices and the conditions many artists work in. Alec Scott’s Toronto Life Article (who publishes Toronto Life again?), comes to mind. A lot of arguments have debated whether or not the criticisms are valid – not much talk about why they could be true. I think the answer is money and access to it. The more people that live here, make plays, and can find a way to live, the more exciting new art will be made. Throwing $15 million at Luminato will do little to address this for Toronto theatre.* If you think you know about the other disciplines being presented at the festival, let me know. It’s going to do very little to address the root causes of what plagues us in Theatretown.
*Note. Yes. The Luminato windfall was immediately followed by a $5 million increase to the Ontario Arts Council yearly budget to deflect this sort of criticism. But consider these #s: With the new money, The OAC distributes $60 million a year to roughly 400 organizations. This is peanuts, we’re talking $150,000 a piece after a rigorous process of peer review. Right now Luminato is rocking along with an average of $7.5 million a year and they just invented themselves.
Third, and most importantly, this is bad strategy. It’s the same kind of Lastman-era flawed logic that got us a basketball team named The Raptors and the notion that somehow we can buy a world class city instead of building one. Hiring a high-priced American Artistic Director to bring World Class shows to Toronto will not put us on the map as an international hotbed of talent. People travel to London and New York for this reason because of the shows that are created there, and the tradition the community has of making great works that push boundaries. That’s when the rest of the world follows suit and tries to participate with it as well. Until we have more legitimate domestic talent, stars, and the hits that go with them, we’re never going to achieve that sort of status.
So I’m Lumi-not-going. There are a bunch of shows, both domestic, and international, that seem really interesting. Normally I probably would check them out. But I’m disturbed enough by all of this to opt out. I’ve got a grant application I should probably be working on anyhow.
This is the first in a series of four blog posts on theatre by Michael Wheeler.
Toronto-based actor Terrence Bryant – fresh from wrapping My Fellow Creatures at Theatre Passe Muraille – gets ambushed by Praxis paparazzi.
He wasn’t happy to see the press.
Last week, we asked for help to create a definitive list of Toronto theatre blogs. Here’s what we’ve got so far:
BlogTO – Theatre
Case Study: The House at Twenty-Seven Edgedale Road
Chris Dupis
Notes from the 3Cs
Off the Fence
Spinning/and/spinning
Theatre is territory
This is a great start, but we can’t help feeling like we’re missing some. Anyone know of any other Toronto-based theatre blogs? They could be actor blogs, production blogs, company blogs, or any other kind of blog, as long as they primarily relate back to theatre.
And while we’re at it, why don’t we broaden our search to include Canadian theatre blogs: We’re now looking for all Canadian theatre blogs.
As always, please pass along any relevant links by dropping a link in the comments section below, or by sending us an email. We’ll post the revised list next week. Thank you!
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1280 x 1024 – Used on large, high-resolution monitors.
1680 x 1050 – Large, wide-screen monitors.
Please join Praxis Theatre for the next entry in our series of original play readings. Tonight, we are pleased to present two short works: The Progressive Apparatus by Hugh Spencer and Dark by Simon Ogden.
WHAT: Reading of The Progressive Apparatus (Hugh Spencer) and Dark (Simon Ogden).
WHEN: Monday, April 7 @ 8 pm
WHERE: The Concord Café – 937 Bloor St. West
(Just West of Ossington subway station on the south side)
All are welcome. For more information, please contact Laura Nordin.
Actor/Director Hume Baugh (The Girl in the Picture Tries to Hang Up the Phone, Child Hood) wasn’t happy to see photographers while leaving this house on Toronto’s trendy Queen Street East.
His production of All’s Well That Ends Well opens March 26, 2008 at Alchemy Theatre.
Sounds impossible – and slightly suspect – we know. But here’s what we’re thinking: Send us a digital version of your 2008 Toronto Fringe Festival postcard or poster, and we’ll post it here on our blog, sometime between now and the end of the festival. Simple.
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