After a successful #CivilDebate 1 on the Creative Cities theories of Richard Florida, we’re excited to announce the debaters for the second resolution in our Civil Debates series:
Be it resolved that Boards of Directors have the right and responsibility to overrule the Artistic Direction of a theatre company.
Debating in favour of the resolution:
Franco Boni:
The Theatre Centre’s General & Artistic Director Franco Boni has led the organization since 2003, and he is currently working on building its permanent home. Franco is a recognized cultural innovator, facilitator and community builder with a demonstrated track record of restoring financial stability and artistic credibility for local art organizations and festivals for over two decades.
He served as Festival Director of the Rhubarb Festival and Artistic Producer of the SummerWorks Theatre Festival.
He is the inaugural recipient of the Ken McDougall Award for emerging directors, and was awarded the Rita Davies Cultural Leadership Award, recognizing his outstanding leadership in the development of arts and culture in the City of Toronto.
Brendan Healy:
Originally from Montreal, Brendan began his career as an actor, appearing most-notably in Peter Hinton’s production of Greg MacArthur’s Girls! Girls! Girls!, presented at the 2001 TransAmériques Festival.
Since relocating to Toronto over a decade ago, Brendan has established himself as a central figure in the city’s theatre scene and his work has been presented across the country. Notable productions include: Jean Genet’s The Maids, Nina Arsenault’s The Silicone Diaries, Sarah Kane’s Blasted, Martin Crimp’s Fewer Emergencies and Wallace Shawn’s A Thought in Three Parts.
Brendan is a graduate of the National Theatre School’s Directing Program. His productions have garnered multiple Dora Mavor Moore Awards and he is a recipient of the Ken McDougall and the Pauline McGibbon awards for directing. Brendan was the associate artist at Crow’s Theatre before becoming the Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times and he is a regular instructor at the National Theatre School of Canada.
Debating against the resolution:
Gideon Arthurs:
Gideon is the General Manager of Tarragon Theatre and Artistic Producer for Groundwater Productions. He is the former Executive Director of the Toronto Fringe Festival. Before that he worked as Company Manager at Soulpepper Theatre and in fundraising at Ryerson University. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for The Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, where he was the past chair of the Media Relations Committee and works with the Indie Caucus, and is on the Board for STAF.
Prior board service includes Pleiades Theatre (Secretary), Public Recordings (Treasurer), and the Paprika Festival (President). He has produced and directed numerous independent theatre productions at Fringe festivals, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, FemFest, Uno Festival and Summerworks. He also has two amazing daughters, Olive and Tallulah, who are his primary preoccupation.
Jini Stolk:
Jini was cofounder and Executive Director of Creative Trust, where she worked to strengthen the financial capacity and organizational potential of Toronto’s performing arts companies. As the newly appointed (January 2013) Creative Trust Research Fellow at the Toronto Arts Foundation she hopes to bring those 12 years of experiences and learnings to the City’s wider arts community. Before Creative Trust she was Managing Director of Toronto Dance Theatre, Executive Director of the Toronto Theatre Alliance/Dora Mavor Moore Awards (where she revitalized the half-price ticket booth, T.O. TIX), Associate Director of the Association of Canadian Publishers and General Manager of Open Studio.
She is involved in many community and cultural advocacy activities, and is Chair and a founding steering committee member of the Ontario Nonprofit Network, and a director of the Centre for Social Innovation; Past Vice-President of the Toronto Arts Council and Past-President of Toronto Artscape, Hum dansoundart and Six Stages Theatre Festival. She loved being a member of the steering committee of ArtsVote Toronto 2010. She received the 2012 William Kilbourn Award for the Celebration of Toronto’s Cultural Life, and was a Sandra Tulloch Award and Harold Award winner.
*Stay tuned for more information about this debate as it approaches*
CIVIL DEBATES
Creative Cities Debate
Debate 2: Arts Boards
Hosted by Theatre Centre Managing Director Roxanne Duncan Moderated by Praxis Theatre Artistic Producer Aislinn Rose April 1, 2013; doors 7pm, debates 7.30pm The Theatre Centre Pop-Up, 1095 Queen St. West, at Dovercourt PWYC at the door. No RSVP required. Cash bar for the thirsty. Twitter Hashtag: #CivilDebates
Click here for more information about the Civil Debates series in partnership between The Theatre Centre & Praxis Theatre.
Greta chats with the team behind To the Last Cry and The Lost Sagas of Tjorvi the Flaccid. Pandemic Theatre and Theatrelab have teamed up to present the double bill at the Factory Studio Theatre March 20th-24th.
JIV AND OMAR’S TIPS FOR DOUBLE BILLS
Keep an open dialogue at all times between production partners.
Maintain a “Road House” mentality. Keep your tech tight, flexible and ready to go! This saves on tech time, and keeps you prepared for everything that will go wrong!
It’s all about the collective.No competition only joint success. Choose your team based on their love for what the whole project is about. The last thing you need is division.
CONTEST FOR FREE TICKETS!
E-mail tix@pandemictheatre.ca to be entered in a draw for a pair of tickets for opening night WEDNESDAY MARCH 20th. Put Free Tix in the heading.
Greta Papageorgiu is an actor, teacher and director. She has taught and performed in Ontario, Quebec and Germany. Her next class starts April 2nd at The Fringe Creation Lab. For details go to meisnerwithgreta.ca.
Packed house at The Theatre Centre pop-up – Image by Renna Reddie
Last night we held our inaugural Civil Debate with The Theatre Centre, examining the Creative Cities theories of Richard Florida:
Be it resolved that the Creative Cities theories serve to reinforce dominant class structures.
Arguing for the resolution was Mammalian Diving Reflex’s Darren O’Donnell and Executive Director of Trinity Square Video, Roy Mitchell.
Kevin Stolarick, Research Director at The Martin Prosperity Institute, and Sabra Ripley, Masters of Public Health in community development and health promotion, and activist with BeautifulCity, argued against.
At times passionate, the debate often shifted into a conversational mode, which was what we’d been aiming for by calling the series “civil”. It was great to see lots of new faces, and turning the discussion over to the audience led to some of the most heated moments of the evening.
Everyone in the audience had an opportunity to vote for a side on their way out by dropping a poker chip into the “yea” or “nay” bags. The results were:
The Yeas have it with 45 votes to 19.
We definitely learned a lot from this first event, and as a result we will try a different voting strategy the next time around:
If you’re coming to the next event, you’ll be asked to vote for the side you agree with as you arrive, and you’ll be asked to vote again as you leave. The side that has changed the most minds will be declared the winner of the debate rather than simply the side with the most votes. We hope this will be an effective strategy for an event that attracts a crowd more obviously in favour of one side over another.
Stay tuned for a post on Wednesday where we will reveal the debaters for our next debate, to be held on Monday, April 1st:
Be it resolved that Boards of Directors have the right and responsibility to overrule the Artistic Direction of a theatre company.
WHERE: The Theatre Centre Pop-Up, 1095 Queen St. West, at Dovercourt
PWYC at the door. No RSVP required. Cash bar for the thirsty.
This evening Darren O’Donnell, Roy Mitchell, Kevin Stolarick, and Sabra Ripley will debate the resolution:
Be it resolved that the Creative Cities theories serve to reinforce dominant class structures.
MORE DB8 INFO
Hosted by Theatre Centre Artistic Director Franco Boni
Moderated by Praxis Theatre Artistic Director Michael Wheeler
The event will be live-tweeted via @praxistheatre & @theatrecentre. The Debate Hashtag is: #CivilDebates.
Not on Twitter/Don’t want to be? Below is a livestream of the tweets and pictures using the #CivilDebates hashtag, feel free to follow along live from this post.
Want more info on the topic, the debaters, and how the event will work? CLICK PIRATE & NINJA.
“The fact that something is difficult must be further reason for us to do it. It is also good to love; for love is difficult.”
~ Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
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Sound:
Upstart Theatre is proud to present The Seagull in Four Movements, a contemporary adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, set and performed in a Toronto bar.
Runs March 14th-16th and 21st-23rd at 8pm at the Winchester Kitchen and Bar (51 Winchester Street, Toronto). Live music starts at 7pm. Tickets $15 General Admission, $10 for Students and Seniors. To reserve, email upstart.seagull@gmail.com.
Be it resolved that the Creative Cities theories serve to reinforce dominant class structures.
The Context:
The emergence of the Creative Economy and Creative Class (via Wikipedia)
The publication of John Howkins’ The Creative Economy and Richard Florida’s book The rise of the Creative Class gave the movement a dramatic lift as global restructuring was hitting deep into the US. Its timing hit a nerve with its clever slogans such as “talent, technology, tolerance” and interesting sounding indicators like the “bohemian index” or the “gay index”, that gave numbers to ideas. Importantly it connected the three areas: a creative class – a novel idea, the creative economy and what conditions in cities attract the creative class. Florida concluded that economic development is driven in large measure by lifestyle factors, such as tolerance and diversity, urban infrastructure and entertainment.
Critics argue that the Creative City idea has now become a catch all phrase in danger of losing its meaning. Cities also tend to restrict its meaning to the arts and activities within the creative economy professions calling any cultural plan a creative city plan, when this is only an aspect of a community’s creativity. There is a tendency for cities to adopt the term without thinking through its real organizational consequences and the need to change their mindset. The creativity of the creative city is about lateral and horizontal thinking, the capacity to see parts and the whole simultaneously as well as the woods and the trees at once.
A post-it with one of the debate topics suggested at our interactive debate suggestion installation at The Next Stage Festival
The Debaters:
Side A – SUPPORTING THE RESOLUTION
Darren O’Donnell is a novelist, essayist, playwright, director, designer, performer, Artistic Director of Mammalian Diving Reflex and Research Director of The Tendency Group, an emerging think tank and social policy laboratory. His books include: Social Acupuncture, which argues for an aesthetics of civic engagement and Your Secrets Sleep with Me, a novel about difference, love and the miraculous. His best-known work is Haircuts by Children, which was first created in collaboration with the children of Parkdale Public School in 2006. In addition to his artistic practice, he is currently an Msci candidate in Urban Planning at the University of Toronto.
Roy Mitchell is the Executive Directorof Trinity Square Video. Roy comes to the Trinity team as a member, past board member and trouble maker. His work has screened internationally, and he has curated for local film festivals and written on art, film, and video. He believes a busy artist-run-centre is a good artist-run-centre.
Side B – OPPOSING THE RESOLUTION
Kevin Stolarick: Dubbed the “Official Statistician of the Creative Class”, Kevin Stolarick, PhD, combines a depth of knowledge with an appreciation of the importance of finding and sharing the knowledge or “pearls of wisdom” gained from his comprehensive understanding of the Creative Class and the Creative Economy. He is the Research Director at The Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He holds a PhD in Business Administration and an MBA from the Tepper School of Management, Carnegie Mellon. Kevin provided quantitative research and analytical support for several of Richard Florida’s books including The Rise of the Creative Class and Rise Revisited (the 10thAnniversary Edition). He continues in collaboration with Richard and others researchers.
Sabra Ripley is a community artist and arts-advocate with a Masters of Public Health in community development and health promotion, focused on arts as a means of developing strong, healthy individuals and communities. She is currently the Executive Director of Ottawa’s House of PainT Festival of Urban Arts and Culture and a Cultural Outreach Officer in the City of Toronto’s Arts Services unit. In recent years Sabra has worked as Interim-Coordinator for the billboard tax advocacy group Beautiful City, as a Management Consultant for the Artists Mentoring Youth Project, and as a Researcher for the Scarborough Arts Council’s Creative Mosaic project. As a community artist she danced with the all bgirl DeCypher Crew and acted with Salamander Theatre for Young Audiences.
The Format:
Side A1 7 minutes
Side B1 7 minutes
Side A2 7 minutes
Side B2 10 minutes
Side A1 3 minutes
Following the formal debate, the floor will be opened to the audience for questions and comments.
The Role of Audience:
Each attendee will be provided with 2 tokens. One may be used to make a statement or ask a question when the floor is opened to the audience. The second may be used to register support for or against the resolution when exiting the pop-up at the end of the evening.
The Added Excitement!
At the conclusion of the debate, the 4 debaters who will tackle the following resolution at Civil Debates #2 on April 1st will be announced.
Be it resolved that Boards of Directors have the right and responsibility to overrule the Artistic Direction of a theatre company.
CIVIL DEBATES
Debate 1: Creative Cities WHEN: March 15, 2013; doors 7pm, debates 7.30pm WHERE: The Theatre Centre Pop-Up, 1095 Queen St. West, at Dovercourt PWYC at the door. No RSVP required. Cash bar for the thirsty. Facebook Event Page, Twitter Hashtag: #CivilDebates
Have people involved who are not acting in the play. That way when the last week comes, the actors can put their efforts into acting and everything else that needs to happen will be taken care of by others.
There is no room for divas. It’s a collective. Everyone needs to help with everything. You are all going to build and sweep and fold and mop.
Remember that you love this.
Things will get rough.
Things will go wrong.
Mistakes will be made.
Just breathe and remember that you’re doing this because you love it and the people you’re with.
Laws of Motion directed by Chris Stanton runs until March 15th. For ticket info click HERE.
Greta Papageorgiu is an actor, teacher and director. She has taught and performed in Ontario, Quebec and Germany. Her next class starts April 2nd at The Fringe Creation Lab. For details go to meisnerwithgreta.ca.
Some of you may understandably have tonight as the kickoff date to the Civil Debates series. This was the case in the original announcement. As we began talking to the array of incredible speakers who will be participating, we realized we had our order of operations out of order. Finding a day that works for all the participants first was what we should have done – then announce the dates.
Anyhow, live and learn. As we finalize our speakers lists we think these changes will be worth it and now we know how to go about it next time. Soooooo there is a: NEW DATE
JOIN US TO KICK OFF CIVIL DEBATES ON MARCH 15th, 2013
Brought to you by Praxis Theatre and The Theatre Centre, Civil Debates take the passionate and articulate exchanges from praxistheatre.com out of the virtual space and bring them into a face-to-face setting.
Our debate format is based on the Canadian Parliamentary model with two speakers on either side. Just like the best performances we see on stage, each debater has a responsibility to hear the arguments and respond – not just deliver a prepared statement. At the end of the debate, the floor will be opened to the audience, who will have the opportunity to share their own responses and to register their votes on the topic.
Due to the nature of the format, the discussion requires a bold, clear statement to begin, and our intention is to ensure we have some of the best speakers on each side of that statement to address their viewpoints with passion and rigour.
On March 15, the debaters will tackle the following resolution:
Debate 1: Creative Cities
“Be is resolved that the Creative Cities theories serve to reinforce dominant class structures.”
JOIN the debate at The Theatre Centre Pop-Up on Friday, March 15th or follow a live tweetcast via #civildebates.
CIVIL DEBATES Debate 1: Creative Cities WHEN: March 15, 2013; doors 7pm, debates 7.30pm WHERE: The Theatre Centre Pop-Up, 1095 Queen St. West, at Dovercourt PWYC at the door. No RSVP required. Cash bar for the thirsty.
The first time I read Gilbert’s Engaged (a wordy Victorian farce that inspired other wordy playwrights like George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde), it seemed like its success and artistic power hinged entirely on how it used language to throw into question our rituals around courting, marriage, and money. The second time I read it, I thought “I wonder if we could tell this story without speaking”. And so, in our silent-film style version (which threatens to end happily several times) we’ve replaced words with a live (original) piano score, a distinct physical language, and title card slides.
Ten lines you won’t hear in our silent-film version of Engaged
The Scots:
“Dinna heed the water in my ee—it will come when I‘m ower glad”
“A gude girl loves her husband wi’ one love and her mither wi’ anither.”
“My hairt is sair at losing my only bairn; but I’m nae fasht wi’ ee.”
The Ladies:
“I love you madly, passionately; I care to live but in your heart, I breathe but for your love; yet, before I actually consent to take the irrevocable step that will place me on the pinnacle of my fondest hopes, you must give me some definite idea of your pecuniary position.”
“Lor, sir, kissing’s nothing; everybody does that.”
“I have come to the conclusion that it my duty to fall in with Cheviot’s views in everything before marriage, and Cheviot’s duty to fall into my views in everything after marriage.”
The Men:
“I will think out some cunning scheme to lure her into marriage unawares”
“Who is the unsightly scoundrel with whom you have flown—the unpleasant-looking scamp whom you have dared to prefer to me?”
“Why is it that when I love a girl I can think of no other girl but that girl, whereas, when a girl loves me she seems to entertain the same degree of affection for mankind at large?”
“If you would be truly happy in the married state, be sure you have your own way in everything”
10 Things You Might Be Strangely Reminded of in Engaged
1) That moment in TETRIS when the bricks start piling up
Theatre Hetaerae’s Engaged is part of the 34th Annual Rhubarb Festival at Buddies and Bad Times Theatre. Shows are 8pm nightly from Wednesday February 20th to Sunday February 24th. For tickets: Box Office (416-975-8555) or go to tickets.buddiesinbadtimes.com
Directed by Leora Morris
Created and performed by Hume Baugh, Miranda Calderon, David Christo, Colin Doyle, Caitlin Driscoll, Alex Fallis, Sochi Fried, Eleanor Hewlings, Viv Moore, and Andy Trithardt With Original live music by Scott Christian
and Costumes by Nina Okens
“They are lonely. I’m not talking about lonely for a lover or a friend. I mean lonely in the universal sense, lonely inside the understanding that we are tiny people on a tiny little earth suspended in an endless void that echoes past stars and stars of stars.”
― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
IMAGE:
SOUND:
Guy Doucette is an artistic director, actor and singer-songwriter. His joy is to bring people together in celebration of arts and culture!
The Theatre Lab and Back Burner Productions are proud to present our upcoming collaborative production JACKIE AND JACK. Written by legendary Canadian polymath Jim Christy, it is a ‘What If’ play that follows the meeting of two of North Americas’ most tragic figures. Jack Kerouac and Jackie Kennedy. The play is an examination of an encounter the two may have had on a beach in Hyanis, Northport – 1959, at a period of time when both of their lives are changing irrevocably.
February 22nd to March 2nd |Unit 102 Theatre | 376 Dufferin Street (just south of Queen St. W) Tickets: $15 advance (through T.O.tix) | $20 at-the-door | Sunday Matinee PWYC
“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 Theatre Centre’s General & Artistic Director Franco Boni has led the organization since 2003, and he is currently working on building its permanent home. Franco is a recognized cultural innovator, facilitator and community builder with a demonstrated track record of restoring financial stability and artistic credibility for local art organizations and festivals for over two decades.
Originally from Montreal, Brendan began his career as an actor, appearing most-notably in Peter Hinton’s production of Greg MacArthur’s Girls! Girls! Girls!, presented at the 2001 TransAmériques Festival.
Gideon is the General Manager of Tarragon Theatre and Artistic Producer for Groundwater Productions. He is the former Executive Director of the Toronto Fringe Festival. Before that he worked as Company Manager at Soulpepper Theatre and in fundraising at Ryerson University. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for The Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, where he was the past chair of the Media Relations Committee and works with the Indie Caucus, and is on the Board for STAF.
Jini was cofounder and Executive Director of Creative Trust, where she worked to strengthen the financial capacity and organizational potential of Toronto’s performing arts companies. As the newly appointed (January 2013) Creative Trust Research Fellow at the Toronto Arts Foundation she hopes to bring those 12 years of experiences and learnings to the City’s wider arts community. Before Creative Trust she was Managing Director of Toronto Dance Theatre, Executive Director of the Toronto Theatre Alliance/Dora Mavor Moore Awards (where she revitalized the half-price ticket booth, T.O. TIX), Associate Director of the Association of Canadian Publishers and General Manager of Open Studio.
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