Category: Praxis Theatre news
by Michael Wheeler
Two events of note this week where people will get together to talk about the confluence of the arts and the internet:
Effective Blogging
- Thursday April 22, 12pm to 2pm.
- Alterna Savings Boardroom, at Centre for Social Innovation, 215 Spadina Avenue, 4th flr.
- With Matt Blackett (Spacing Magazine) and Michael Wheeler (Praxis Theatre).
- Deadline to register for this session is Tuesday April 20, 2010.
Yours truly and Matt Blackett, Editor of Spacing Magazine, will be speaking about blogs and blogging as part of the TAPA Trade Series presented in partnership with The Creative Trust. (First order of business: Lets start the gradual phase-out of the word “blog”.)
To register please contact Alexis Da Silva-Powell, TAPA’s Corporate Partnerships and Membership Associate at alexisdsp@tapa.ca OR Shana Hillman, Creative Trust’s Program Manager at shana@creativetrust.ca
Arts Journalism: Staying Critical in the Digital Age
Tuesday April 20, Presentation 6:30 p.m., Reception 8:00 p.m.
Innis Town Hall. 2 Sussex Ave. @ University of Toronto
Moderated by Bronwyn Drainie, Editor of the Literary Review of Canada. Featuring Kamal Al-Solaylee, Assistant Professor at Ryerson and former theatre critic at the Globe and Mail, Seamus O’Regan, co-host of CTV’s Canada AM and host of Arts & Minds and The O’Regan Files on Bravo!, and Globe and Mail columnist and feature writer Kate Taylor, currently on leave as the Atkinson Fellow for 2009-2010.
Presented by the Canadian Journalism Foundation, this forum looks at the cultural giants of the past to the celebrity culture of today and how arts criticism and literary journalism have changed. Mainstream media cutbacks and the proliferation of blogging means everyone is a critic. Can the web save arts journalism?
Tickets are $5 – $15 and can be purchased 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.
Image by Paul Ingles licensed under Creative Commons 2.0
This week praxistheatre.com was voted the #1 Culture and Literature Blog in Canada in the 2009 Canadian Blog Awards.
We are super-happy about this and really appreciate everyone who participates with the company digitally and in reality.
Thank you in particular to these people:
- Graham F. Scott, for coordinating and designing the great integration, when our website and blog were integrated into a single place on the interweb at praxistheatre.com.
- All of the contributors to praxistheatre.com in 2009:
Gideon Arthurs, Tara Beagan, Maev Beatty, Augusto Boal, Mark Brownell, Deanna Downes, Emily Farrell, David Ferry, Brendan Gall, Joel Grinke, Chris Hanratty, Christine Horne, Daniel Karasik, Ravi Jain, Richard Lee, Hayley Lewis, Bridget MacIntosh, Ian Mackenzie, Ross Manson, James Murray, Leora Morris, Tony Nappo, Simon Ogden, Simon Rice, Aislinn Rose, Michael Rubenfeld, Sarah Sanford, Adam Seelig, Samantha Serles, Rupal Shah, Caroline Sniatynski, Vinetta Strombergs, David Tompa and Aaron Willis.
- Celebrity Theatre creator Greta Papageorgiu and features writer Lindsay Schwietz, for producing regular engaging content in addition to their demanding schedules as arts professionals.
- Ian Mackenzie, for having the idea that we should use our website to engage with our community, and for creating an online culture around the company that put us in a position to succeed in the blogosphere in 2009.
- Everyone who took the time to vote for praxistheatre.com
- Praxis Theatre Board of Directors and Donors. Resources can make art, and arts-based websites, better.
- People and organizations that are kicking our ass in terms of achieving praxis through the confluence of ideas and internet. These inspirations include Mike Daisey, Naomi Klein, The Yes Men, Beautiful City, Avaaz, and Vote for Environment. There are a lot of folks setting the bar high out there by achieving concrete results though their internet-ing.
Happy Holidays to all!
Michael Wheeler
Editor
praxistheatre.com
Photo by coldpants licensed under Creative Commons.
It’s been almost a 1/2 year since we made big changes at praxistheatre.com with a new format that blended some of our best content from our blogspot blog with our company website. Inspired by a new commitment to integrate our creative process with our web presence, our goal has been to continue to be hub for discussion and analysis of independent theatre while increasing awareness of Praxis Theatre and the original theatrical works we are creating.
There has been mostly positive feedback about this switch, especially in terms of the high functionality of the new website and the potential inherent in an “open source” creative model. This tune-up addresses some consistent critiques from a number of readers regarding readability and organization and is reflected in three changes:
- A single sidebar column that runs down the right margin of the site amalgamates the two smaller columns that preceded it. The text size of these links have been increased.
- Hyperlinks are now underlined in red. If you pass the cursor over a hyperlink, the text will also change to be underlined in red.
- The Upcoming Shows page will contain the “open source” elements of our Section 98 creative process. This page will contain the “source code” of our production: information, discussions, examples, scripts and research we are engaged in. This page will be maintained by Aislinn Rose, Section 98 Open Source Project Leader.
Thanks for participating. We hope you continue to use this is site as a resource and a place for dialogue about indie theatre in Toronto and around the world.
Michael Wheeler
Editor
praxistheatre.com
Praxis Theatre presents Section 98: an open-source, interactive, original theatrical creation.
Section 98 dramatizes historical and current events while incorporating modern technology to explore individual and civil rights in Canada. This stage of the creation process will be developed in the context of The Progressive Arts Club, The FLQ, and the present day. The production invites the audience to participate in this experiment through their cellphone, PDA, on their computer before and after the performance, in person, or to simply observe and not interact at all!
The suspension of rights has been a contentious issue throughout Canadian history. Section 98 uses theatre and technology to enable everyone to debate and discuss these issues in 2010. A single presentation of this work-in-progress presentation of this work will occur on will take place at Harbourfront’s Studio Theatre on March 13th 2010 at 8pm.
As an “open source” theatrical project we aim to keep our artistic process open, available and interesting through the use of this website. This production is a collective collaborative creation with all members of the creative team contributing to the process. That being said, we all have specific roles:
Director: Michael Wheeler
Assistant Director: Laura Nordin
Online/Script Coordinator: Aislinn Rose
Dramaturg: Alex Fallis
Sound and Lighting Design: Verne Good
Stage Management: Brittney Filek-Gibson
Performers: Margaret Evans, Jody Hewston, Melissa Hood, Greta Papageorgiu and Ben Sanders.
Click the image below to learn more about Section 98 and Open Source Theatre.
*Photography by Meredith Hanafi
Hello Gentle Reader,
Welcome to the new and improved Praxis Theatre Blog and Website.
As you can see we’ve integrated the whole thingamabob into one site here at praxistheatre.com. If you haven’t (re)bookmarked us yet, please take the time to do so.
What can you expect on this newfangled webpage?
- A brand new series that will focus on interviewing Artistic Directors from Canada and around the world by Praxis Theatre Co-Artistic Director Simon Rice. The first of this series will be launched Wednesday June 17th.
- Praxis Theatre Co-Artistic Director Michael Wheeler will continue his dialogue with artists involved in the creative process behind The Africa Trilogy, currently being created by Volcano Theatre, premiering at Luminato in June 2010.
- More artists participating in Praxis Theatre’s Variations on Theatre.
- Even more Celebrity Theatre posts by OCTP* Greta Papageorgiu.
- Increased long-form content by arts journalists like the piece Lindsay Schwietz just wrote on Eat The Street.
- Lots of other stuff we haven’t even thought of or can’t tell you about yet.
Please enjoy and give us your feedback. Special thanks to the many-talented Graham F Scott for his patience and skill bringing about this exciting new stage of online Praxisness.
* Original Canadian Theatre Paparazzi
The new address of the Praxis Theatre Blog is:
praxistheatre.com
Our integrated website with a much more functional blog on the homepage will be up and running June 16th.
Please take the time to update your blog rolls and bookmarks.
See you on the flipside!
Praxis Theatre will present two new original works in the summer of 2009!
1) Tim Buck 2 @ The Toronto Fringe Festival
Playwright and international security adviser
Andrew Zadel, author of the award-winning
Steel, returns to Praxis Theatre with his tale of UN forensic pathologists struggling to arrive at definitive answers in Kosovo.
We had to do a little bit of maintenance on this blog over the weekend. So if you noticed anything wonky in this space during the past 24 hours, that’s why.
Should be back to normal now. Thanks!
A quick housekeeping note: Over the course of this past weekend, Praxis Theatre made a transition to a more robust email server. As a result of this process, any email sent to our praxistheatre.com email addresses during that time (approximately 5pm EST on Friday, September 7 until 5pm EST on Sunday, September 9) would have been lost to the ether.
In other words, if you sent us any email this weekend . . . we didn’t receive it. Sorry for any inconvenience. Please resend if applicable.
Thanks!
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