You are absolutely right: “The issue is far larger than the firing of one AD”.
This is perhaps why you don’t see as many young members of our arts community getting up in arms about the firing of one AD as you might like. It’s not because we’re apathetic, it’s because we’re busy fighting those bigger issues and making art.
We’re opposing our governments at all levels. There are those who wish to corporatize the arts, and those who wish to politicize them, either by cutting funding or by moving resources away from arms-length funding bodies and into community events and festivals where the risk of political or dissenting art is low. And, in some cases, not allowed.
We’re engaging in municipal processes that are supposed to be about creating new culture plans for our city, to determine cultural priorities, how money should be invested, how best to build and maintain a cultural ecology. We wroteaboutthoseconsultationsextensively here on praxistheatre.com. While I tweeted live from many of them, I was surrounded by young, active, vocal members of our community. Though I must say, it is rather dispiriting to realize you’ve been invited to contribute to a document that was written before you arrived.
Throughout those rooms the voices present asked that the city talk about art not just in terms of financial investment and return, but about the less tangible contributions that a healthy cultural community can offer a vibrant city. You’ll not see any of those voices included in the new culture plan. When it became clear that any voices in opposition to “creative class theory” would not be included in the report, I asked that my name be removed from the “Consultation Participant List”. I was not consulted, and nor were many of the people in those rooms.
We’ve been speaking up about our own professional association that was built based on old models of making work that no longer reflect today’s realities. Young artists often find the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association to be one of the biggest roadblocks to the development of their work, another issue we’ve written aboutextensively. You’ll find no apathy on this topic. Younger artists have been working together for years to bring change to this important but out-dated organization, and that work is hopefully about to pay off, despite the fact that some of the old farts have been vocally opposed to reforms that would empower the younger generation of theatre-makers.
The Toronto Indie Caucus is made up of “emerging” and “submerging” artists alike and populated by some of the most driven and passionate young people in this community, and it continues to grow. The work of these artists has contributed to some highly significant votes for change within the association, the development of an Independent Theatre Review Committee, and a possible new indie agreement on the horizon. Let’s hope these extensive consultations to which we have lent our voices will actually take those voices to heart.
We have also spoken out about Luminato, our most recently created arts festival. It was not created by a collective of artists, but by two Toronto businessmen who used their connections with the government to get millions of dollars in funding to create an arts festival as a way of luring tourist dollars back to the city after the SARS crisis. They wonder why, after 6 years they’re failing to find a dedicated audience, community support or “brand awareness”, though I don’t suppose I need to remind our readership that their most recent season included no Toronto theatre artists in its lineup.
And finally, we’re fighting those very structural models upon which the Factory Theatre, and companies like it, is based. For years, arts organizations have been forced to fit into a certain mold in order to appease the various funding bodies. So we’ve incorporated, we’ve set ourselves up as not-for-profits, we’ve created our boards of directors, and we’ve gone after charitable status. This worked for a number of years while there was enough money to go around, but that’s no longer the case.
So we’re researching, we’re investigating best practices in other cities, and some of us are working with Arts Action Research in a program called Theatres Leading Change, which is all about discovering new models that are best for the work that we create, and the way we go about creating it.
When we’re asked to consult, we show up. When there are debates and votes happening at City Hall, we’re there too. When Equity tries to bully us, we get together and push for reforms. When our institutional leadership fails us, we speak out. Also, when elections happen, many of us work our arses off canvassing, letter writing, phone calling, and video-making.
This is not apathy, but a quiet community of passionate and dedicated artists working away at changing what no longer works. I am not silent, I sit on no fence, and I am not complicit. I’m just offering my voice to a different fight.
“I’ve gone drinking with the artistic directors of the biggest theaters in the country and listened to them explain that they know the system is broken and they feel trapped within it, beholden to board members they’ve made devil’s deals with, shackled to the ship as it goes down. I’ve heard their laughter, heard them call each other dinosaurs, heard them give thanks that they’ll be retired in 10 years.”
So yes, you’re right, this issue is larger than one AD, and those bigger issues are the ones we’re trying to tackle.
Tonight is the 33rd Annual Dora Mavor Moore Awards, which are being held at the St.Lawrence Centre for the Arts in the Bluma Appel Theatre. I will be there tweeting live for Praxis via @praxistheatre from the awards ceremony, as well as the pre-show reception in the Lower Lobby of the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. I think by the time the after-party rolls around, it will be best for me to put @praxistheatre to bed, though there may be shenanigans available via @AislinnTO.
If you can’t attend the awards tonight, but want to follow along, below is a handy live-stream of all tweets Dora, or at least, tweets using the #Doras hashtag. If last year is anything to go by, tweeters should avoid #Dora (minus the s) as you may find yourself being followed by people searching for “The Explorer”. You’ll also find all of Praxis Theatre’s tweets here, and I’ve added #DorasTO to the mix to cover our bases.
I’m looking forward to spending the evening with my date, famous tweeter – and rollerskating performer/playwright – @nancykenny, and I’ll try to grab a few photos of guests on the red carpet schmoozing with red carpet co-host @colindoyle.
Radix Theatre's Babylonia - Click the image to read the full post on the Theatre Centre Blog
by Aislinn Rose
Free Fall ’12 starts Saturday March 24… have you uploaded your memories yet?
Last month I sat on a Social Media Week panel to talk about the online component I had created for Liza Balkan’s Out The Window, part of Free Fall ’12. Joining me on that panel was Radix Theatre’s Andrew Templeton from Vancouver, to talk about the company’s workshop presentation of Babylonia. From the moment he played the trailer I was enthralled…
I started working on Liza Balkan’s Out The Window in 2010 when I was invited by Chris Abraham to join a development and workshop phase with Crow’s Theatre. I was in the very early stages of examining my own project that involved court transcripts, interviews and verbatim text, so it was an ideal project for me to observe.
I had no idea at the time that I would go on to work with Liza over the next couple of years, providing dramaturgical support at first, and then creating my most complicated online project next: The Brain.
Out The Window chronicles the years Liza spent making her way through the Canadian justice system after witnessing the death of Otto Vass after an altercation with the police in 2000. The piece also examines the years after the 2006 inquest, during which Liza has conducted countless interviews with lawyers, activists, police, and members of the community.
Bankers boxes at Liza's window - click to enlarge
Throughout those years, Liza has accumulated several bankers boxes, hundreds of computer files, and DVDs, CDs and mini DV cassettes filled with research, testimonies, and the work created by designers, actors and other artists. As I worked with Liza, it became apparent to me that this vast amount of content needed to be archived somehow, and preferably in a way that would make it accessible to the public. Enter: The Brain.
As Artistic Producer of Praxis Theatre, I have long been interested in experimenting with methods of interacting with potential audience members in the lead-up to a show, and continuing the conversations sparked by the show’s content after the show has ended.
For Out The Window I proposed the creation of an “online brain” that would allow me to try to capture Liza’s knowledge, along with the history of the project, in an interactive tool that would provide the public with an opportunity to navigate the immense amount of information according to their own interests.
Using “PersonalBrain” mind mapping software (and its online counterpart WebBrain), I have created four main sub-sections that branch off into a myriad of different sibling and child “thoughts”. Some thoughts contain embedded photos and PDFs, while others contain links to articles and documents. The Brain is a work-in-progress with a huge amount of information still to come. For an overall flavour of what’s currently available, right-click on the background of The Brain and select Wander mode. Click anywhere on the screen to set it back to normal.
One of the other things we’ve been exploring with our work at Praxis Theatre, is how our online activities can directly impact the development of our work. I am very excited to see how the creation of The Brain has had an impact on Out The Window. With the existence of our living archive, we’ve been able to make peace with the elimination of certain sections of text or design work, knowing that these elements would go on to have a life online.
The Brain has also found its way into the design of the show itself, which may mean that I’ll actually have to add The Brain to the Creative Iterations section of The Brain.
Click here for more information on Out The Window at the Theatre Centre opening March 17th at 7pm, and check out the brain before or after the show to learn more.
Praxis Theatre is involved in two events as part of Social Media Week next week, both of which address the intersection of performance and online technologies.
Although many of these events are now “sold out” for online pre-registration, there is a waiting list available at the venues, half an hour before each event begins that you can get on in person. Because all SMW events are free, it is anticipated that most events will have some people that don’t show up for their free pre-reserved spots.
The Online Brain created by Aislinn Rose is part of Liza Balkan's Out The Window at The Theatre Centre. The Line up for Free Fall '12 will be announced at The Drake Hotel on Monday February 13th.
What are the ways that online technologies can be used in conjunction with performance? How are digital technologies expanding the potential of art forms that have initially been analog based?
Free Fall Festival Co-Curator Michael Wheeler moderates multi-platform artists involved in The Theatre Centre’sFreeFall ’12 – ‘Performance Without A Net’. Panelists will demonstrate, discuss, and debate their mid-process methods and artistic philosophies in this interactive event.
From online “brains” that supplement the material an audience engages with live, to interactive performance that encourages audiences to upload their consciousness online, to cross-city tours that keep a mobile audience connected through social media tools, the parameters and potential of storytelling has expanded in exciting and unexpected ways.
Follow along or participate via #SMWFreeFall.
Panelists:
Jonathan Goldsbie on the use of Twitter in Route 510 Revisited Aislinn Rose on an Online Brain that complements Liza Balkan’s Out The Window Andrew Templeton on online platforms and narratives intersecting with Radix Theatre’s Babylonia.
Melissa Hood prepares her notes before a workshop presentation of Open Source Theatre Project
Yes, that’s right, it’s the romantic Valentine’s Day activity you’ve been looking for. Set the flowers and chocolates aside and come talk internet, community and theatre.
Praxis Theatre and the Toronto Fringe will co-host a case-study analysis of the work that Praxis makes in tandem with online community building activities, and how that community in turn helps build the work.
A presentation lead by the editors of praxistheatre.com and community members, this conversation aims to not only explore the notion of social media as audience development tool, but also performance development. A conversation for industry professionals, students, producers, media, PR professionals, and industry enthusiasts.
Earlier this year I had a conversation on twitter about social media, the arts, and audience development. One of the topics that came up was tweeting during actual performances. Many suggested that twitter didn’t belong in the theatre during a show, thinking it would pull the tweeters out of the performance and distract others in the audience.
When I asked a first-time theatre-goer who had been brought to the theatre via Twitter what she thought, she said tweeting would have made her feel more engaged and that she really wanted to know what other audience members were thinking throughout the show.
While some tweeters said Canadian theatre-makers were woefully behind the times when it comes to integrating social media in their work, some were adamant that tweeting during a show was a bad idea. Having already experimented with a show that incorporated live-texting throughout, I was adamant that it ought to at least be tried.
So here we are with our twitter-friendly performance of You Should Have Stayed Home at SummerWorks. We’re offering dedicated tweet seats, at the back of the audience so as not to be distracting for others, where tweeters can tweet away using our hashtag #G20Romp. All we ask is that you turn off any feature that makes a sound or vibrates, and darken your screens as much as possible – in a dark theatre you don’t really need much light.
Not sure what you’d tweet about? Our hashtag has already been in effect for some time, so here’s some of the conversation we’ve already been having.
Jonah Hundert and Praxis Theatre chat post-opening night:
Jonathan Goldsbie had a few thoughts after opening night as well:
We were pleased to have Davenport MP Andrew Cash join us for opening night and the SummerWorks opening night party after the show:
You Should Have Stayed Home performer/playwright Tommy Taylor with The Honorable Andrew Cash, Member of Parliament for Davenport
Look for the marked tweet seats in the back rows, where you’ll also find the previously mentioned requests about turning off sounds, vibrations, and lowering lights.
After the performance, we’ll be wanting to chat some more, both about the show and how you felt about tweeting during the show. Let us know if you met anyone new in the audience because of twitter!
Not a tweeter? Don’t feel left out.
We’re always happy to continue post-show discussions here in the comments of the blog. We welcome and look forward to your feedback.
If you’re not a tweeter but you are interested in this live-tweeting experiment, you can follow the hashtag even without a twitter account by clicking here.
We played the second of our three games on Thursday night, and saw our players – made up of members of Toronto Area Gamers – defeat a cursed manticore by tricking it into killing his own minions. The final epic battle was against a many-eyed rubbery octopus-like creature, in the midst of which I tweeted the following:
Apparently this is the kind of thing I tweet without giving it a second thought these days.
Tonight is our final game, and we’re bringing together members of Toronto’s theatre and gaming communities in a brand new adventure, taking place in the basement of Snakes & Lattes from 5pm until 11pm. Now that we’ve resolved some of the logistical challenges of the experiment our focus tonight is audience experience. We’ve brought you closer to the action, now how do we get you involved in that action?
View of the board from our Ranger, Mike Riverso
We also want to further explore the relationship between the design elements and the players, so that sound and visuals become a genuine and integral part of the conversation happening in the room. Our friend Amy will be joining us again with her iPad and will be live-drawing throughout, with a direct feed into the projectors.
Join us tonight in the final game of this phase of our experiment. We’re always happy to provide a recap, so don’t be shy about stopping by at any time.
Around the table you’ll find theatre nerds Michael Wheeler – Praxis Theatre’s co-Artistic Director, award-winning playwright Nicolas Billon, and Dora-nominated actor Colin Doyle. Rounding out the group is hybrid theatre/gamer nerd Becca Buttigieg, along with gamer nerds Kate Bullock and Ben Santos. Playing the role of God (or Dungeon Master) is, again, the wonderful Ryan Stoughton.
You can follow and join our tweets via #DnDPT. On Thursday night, our Ranger tweeted his experience when not smoking his Ranger pipe, or being saved by a flumph. Apparently a flumph is a thing.
Dungeons & Dragons (not) The Musical– Toronto Fringe Festival, 2011 Final game:
July 16th, 5pm to 11pm Venue:
Snakes & Lattes – 600 Bloor Street West. Tickets: Click Here to purchase, or here for more information.
*PLEASE NOTE: there is a maximum allowable attendance of 20 people at any one time; the box office will be located at the venue and will be open for the entire 6 hour performance time.
We had our first game of Dungeons & Dragons (not) The Musical at the Toronto Fringe Festival on Sunday evening in the Snakes & Lattes basement. For our first attempt at what we’re calling a performative experiment, it was fun, it was problematic, and I learned a hell of a lot. Oh, and apparently it was really hot.
Our team of theatre-makers and improv performers set out on a quest (along with their precious donkey) to find a manticore, meeting a copper dragon and battling gargoyles along the way. We started out with a packed house, but by the end of the six hours we had a rather more intimate audience. Despite our smaller numbers there was an audible gasp across the room when our beloved donkey met a tragic demise.
One of the main things I noticed as I watched the audience watching the game, is that many people were inching to get as close to the table as they could. Some of the braver audience members simply picked their chairs up and moved them next to the gamers, which I was happy to see. As a result I have plans to significantly reconfigure the placement of the game within the room, and where the audience will be seated. The gamers will be almost entirely surrounded by onlookers.
One of Amy's live (and un re-touched) ipad drawings from Sunday. Catch more of Amy's work throughout our final presentation on Saturday night
We also discovered some unexpected sound challenges. Considering the relatively small room in which we’re playing, I didn’t think sound levels would be a problem. However, we’re battling an air conditioning unit, so sometimes the voices were lost. This also limited our ability to really build in the sound design elements, in fear of further drowning out the action.
Our Dungeon Master, Ryan Stoughton, is an important and compelling element as he plays the various goblins and gargoyles, so I want him to be heard no matter what. Tonight he’ll have his own wireless mic, with an area mic to pick up the voices of the other players. This will also allow Lyon Smith our Sound Designer to further distort and play with their sound.
Finally, towards the end of the game when our players were more comfortable with one another, we had some really wonderful moments where they reached out to the audience for wisdom and advice. “Let’s ask the audience.” I’m hoping that tonight’s new seating and playing arrangement will further encourage this kind if interaction. Tonight will also see serious gamers at that table, and I’m excited to see how that alters the audience/player relationship.
I’d love to have you join us for our next six-hour session. We’ll be at Snakes and Lattes from 7pm until 1am and you can drop by any time for as little or long as you like. Our live-drawer for tonight is Jody Hewston, who created our D&D Dragons, and also just took 2nd place in the Fringe’s 24-hour playwriting contest!
Given the experiment, your feedback is really important to us, and I was thrilled to receive an email from a gamer who joined us for the entire 6 hours on Sunday to let us know what he thought. I hope we get more of those.
Before the show on Sunday, someone in line outside the venue said “are we allowed to heckle the players?”. Absolutely.
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Image by Jody Hewston
Dungeons & Dragons (not) The Musical– Toronto Fringe Festival, 2011 Remaining dates:
July 14th, 7pm to 1am
July 16th, 5pm to 11pm Venue:
Snakes & Lattes – 600 Bloor Street West. Tickets: Click Here to purchase, or here for more information.
*PLEASE NOTE: there is a maximum allowable attendance of 20 people at any one time; the box office will be located at the venue and will be open for the entire 6 hour performance time.
This July 1st marked the first Canada Day in four years that I did not spend in a marathon rehearsal session for a Toronto Fringe production. And yet, I do have a Fringe show this year… it’s just that I can’t exactly rehearse for it.
What I can do is tell you what – and who – I will be putting in the basement of Snakes & Lattes and what they will be doing. What I can’t do is tell you what’s going to happen once everyone is there.
The premise started out simply enough: What happens when you put Dungeons & Dragons, a character-based role playing game, in front of an audience? Is it interesting? Does it become performative? How does the presence of an audience affect the playing of the game? And… how the heck do you play Dungeons & Dragons? I have no idea, and I want to find out.
Previously on this page we have described the project as “part performance experiment, part research project”. Well, as the idea developed, its inherent ‘liveness’ and unpredictability – the fact that the story is created on the spot through the collective imagination of its players – became very exciting, and I wanted to open up this experiment to other members of the theatre community.
Snakes & Lattes on Bloor (click to enlarge)
Enter Trevor Schwellnus and Lyon Smith, Dora-winning lighting and sound designers respectively. While lights and sound are usually fixed features in a theatrical presentation, with set levels and fade in and fade out times, Trevor and Lyon will be experimenting with creating live light and soundscapes for each of the stories as they develop. Trevor and Lyon are also D&D nerds from way back.
Over the course of the Fringe we’ll also get to see how different kinds of players and their different backgrounds affect the game, and what that will mean to their relationship with the audience.
Our first game on the 10th will be played by members of the theatre and improv community, all with a background in playing D&D. The team includes one of my Toronto improv favourites, Carmine Lucarelli, winner of a Canadian Comedy Award as part of the ensemble of Show Stopping Number: The Improvised Musical, as well as Scott Moyle, Artistic Director of Urban Bard Productions, and dramaturg Stephen Colella, among others.
The second game on the 14th will be made up entirely by members of Toronto’s gaming community. Big thanks go to Kate Bullock and the Toronto Area Gamers for fitting me out with players and our Dungeon Master.
Our third and final game on the 16th will see these two brands of nerd join forces for a final epic game. Don’t miss Praxis Theatre co-Artistic Director Michael Wheeler as he returns to his D&D roots, playing alongside award-winning playwright Nicholas Billon, and Dora-nominated actor (and everyone’s favourite guy) Colin Doyle. You can also catch Colin at this year’s Fringe in The Godot Cycle, and we thank them for not scheduling his performance during our game.
Finally, I’ve also invited visual artists of various aesthetic styles to join us in our adventures to live draw/sketch the scenes and characters as they develop. If you’re an artist, please don’t hesitate to bring your sketch pad with you.
Oh, and about our title? It’s possible Michael and I were being nerds of another kind that day. Hope to see you in the basement.
Dungeons & Dragons (not) The Musical– Toronto Fringe Festival, 2011 Dates:
July 10th, 4pm to 10pm
July 14th, 7pm to 1am
July 16th, 5pm to 11pm Venue:
Snakes & Lattes – 600 Bloor Street West. Tickets: Click Here to purchase, or here for more information.
*PLEASE NOTE: there is a maximum allowable attendance of 20 people at any one time; the box office will be located at the venue and will be open for the entire 6 hour performance time.
Councillor Michael Thompson spoke to an overflowing City Hall crowd before the culture consultation began. City Staff found extra tables, chairs and facilitators while the usual speeches kicked things off.
by Aislinn Rose
On Monday, Praxis co-Artistic Director Michael Wheeler and I attended the only downtown public consultation for the new Toronto Culture Plan not focused on youth issues.
We were armed with our smartphones and the Twitter hashtag #creativeTO, which I had also used at the public consultation in Etobicoke in February. Separately, we made the rounds of the various tables open for discussion and tried to document what we were hearing.
Below is a partial transcript of the event, a 100 tweet summary from the past few days with the most recent tweets at the top, You can find the full and interactive transcript online here.
And remember, the final public consultation (on youth issues) will be at City Hall on April 7th from 6pm to 8:30pm. I’ll be there with my smart phone and a hashtag. Hope to see you there.
“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.”
We’re engaging in municipal processes that are supposed to be about creating new culture plans for our city, to determine cultural priorities, how money should be invested, how best to build and maintain a cultural ecology. We wrote about those consultations extensively here on praxistheatre.com. While I tweeted live from many of them, I was surrounded by young, active, vocal members of our community. Though I must say, it is rather dispiriting to realize you’ve been invited to contribute to a document that was written before you arrived.
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