I recently started working as the Community Manager for a project called The Conversation About Love. This interactive experiment revolves around an online art gallery based on the themes of Sarah Polley’s new film, Take This Waltz. Participants are asked to take a tour around the gallery and join the conversation on the topics of love, fidelity, lust and heartbreak. The conversation has taken on many forms including songs, photos, original artwork and personal anecdotes. In addition to the website, conversationalists can also join in via Facebook and twitter.
As someone with a personal and professional interest in this notion of using social media and other online tools in an effort to build community and develop audiences for your work, I was immediately drawn to the project. The big question posed to me was, “how do you feel about chatting and tweeting about love for the next several months?”
Then along came a facebook invitation to a post-show social for Tarragon Theatre’s production of In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, asking participants to submit “stories of sex, love and all the rest of it”. The stories submitted will be read aloud at the event this Thursday evening, but submissions will remain anonymous to protect the not-so-innocent.
I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that my first instinct was that this event called for a little live-tweeting. The twist in this case, is that I plan to bring the Take This Waltz-inspired Conversation About Love into the next room, for a joint online conversation about love and sexual awakening.
Want to follow along? Perhaps join in? Here are the facts you need to know:
You can get $10 tickets to see the show this Thursday, October 13th at 8pm. Click here for all the info you need on buying tickets and submitting your tales of love and/or woe. The social after the show is free.
Follow the tweets via www.twitter.com/ConvoAboutLove. You don’t need to be a tweeter to keep tabs on the discussion, but if you are, I’d love for you to follow me in this new experiment. Let me know what you think!
Don’t be shy about submitting your stories. I won’t be tweeting all the sordid details… if you want those you’ll have to join us at the theatre.
Side note: as I finished composing my email to Tarragon suggesting the addition of live-tweeting at their event, I received a message from Tarragon asking if I might like to live-tweet at their event. I’m really excited to see a company like Tarragon embracing these new tools to engage their existing audience in new ways, while reaching out to develop and cultivate a new community of followers and fans.
Hope to see you online or in the theatre on Thursday night!
Matchbox Macbeth – which opens at a secret, site specific location on October 13th – was born when three friends, frustrated with their lack of resources, brought a bottle of wine into a shed and said: “Hey – let’s make a play in here.”
From our very first moments in the space, it was apparent to us that the shed needed to be more than just a roof above our show – it needed to be a character in whatever story we decided to re-imagine. The creative potential of the space was so palpable, so obvious, that the show we built around it was unadorned, magical and deeply rooted in its surroundings.
So deeply rooted, that this four actor, hour long re-telling of Macbeth simply couldn’t work anywhere else. And we sort of loved this. It forced us to work with what we had, to simplify, to problem-solve, to look closely at who and what was in our immediate vicinity. It was, in essence, purely Local theatre. And it all started with the shed.
Or maybe it started before the shed. Because we were in the shed for good reason – we didn’t have access to affordable rehearsal space elsewhere. It’s a terrible irony that the more theatre schools teach their students to incubate and collaborate over long rehearsal periods, the more a premium is placed on rehearsal spaces in the city. And this became an immediate roadblock to us. But soon enough we began to find the merits of a highly urban, site specific, character-based venue too good to resist.
The conversation about space for indie artists seems to be evolving and gaining momentum in the city. The Fringe of course just launched its Creation Lab, which provides subsidized rehearsal space to indie artists and grew out of a series of roundtable discussions that identified and articulated this very issue. And companies are also getting creative: this month alone there are at least four site specific shows happening in the downtown core at historic houses, in laneways and in sheds. Ours opens in less than a week.
So let’s think outside the theatre this fall. See you in the shed!
Statement from Occupy Wall Street – this statement was voted on and approved by the general assembly of protesters at Liberty Square:
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
“NON-VIOLENTLY sending a message to the financial sector worldwide. Canada too is under the same bind of freedom because of monetary policy. Show your support for Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Toronto Market Exchange”
You can find the Occupy Together Facebook Page here, Twitter Feed here, and Occupy TO Facebook Page here.
The dominant Twitter hashtag seems to have settled as #OccupyWallSt. Is #OccupyBaySt about to start trending?
“In creating the man that we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be. To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil.”
~ Jean-Paul Sartre, from the 1945 lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism”.
Sunday the 25th of September 7-9pm
Dancemakers Centre for Creation -55 Mill St., Building 58, Studio 313
A resource exchange session is on this Sunday.
Any artist who as ever found themselves needing something specific for a process, workshop or show may have a new way to get their hands on those things without paying, but in the spirit of community, through offering something they might already have (and not use, or not use regularly) in exchange.
It is free!!!
Come with a list of what you need and what you have.
Meet some other artists.
Work better with the resources we already have between us!
Don’t talk too much about Rob Ford.
And see you there.
Praxis Theatre Artistic Producer Aislinn Rose will be Live Tweeting community deputations at City Hall today. Join in the conversation whether you are there too, or following along from home or work.
“The rich people have their lobbyists and the poor people have their feet.”
Nathalie Des Rosiers, General Counsel of Canadian Civil Liberties Association speaking at a post-show panel at after You Should Have Stayed Home at The 2011 SummerWorks Festival.
This summer I directedYou Should Have Stayed Home, a play about theatre artist Tommy Taylor’s experience over 48 hours of the G20 weekend in Toronto presented at the 2011 SummerWorks Festival. While trying to return home from his first ever protest as a law-abiding citizen at the “Free Speech Zone” at Queen’s Park, Taylor was swept up in a mass arrest, caged with 40 other people in a 10ft by 20ft cage and denied drinking water until he passed out from dehydration.
Taylor contacted me in February to talk about collaborating on a piece of theatre adapted from his Facebook note, How I Got Arrested and Abused at G20 in Toronto. Having read the post, I knew the story presented an excellent opportunity to dramatize and address the deterioration of civil rights in Canada.
Click the logo to read the rest of the article on Rabble.ca
For the inaugural edition of our new series Culture Heroes by Jody Hewston, we look back at the past few months, and declare Michael Healey our clear Culture Hero of Summer, 2011.
In response to the Canadian Heritage department cutting its funding of Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival, Healey put out a call to action for all Artistic Directors of theatre companies that receive federal arts funding to come together in an act of solidarity for freedom of speech. His words were straight to the point:
If you find yourself anxious about the potential ramifications for your own company’s federal funding as a consequence of taking part in this demonstration, I can think of no better reason for participating in it.”
You can read an analysis of the SummerWorks Homegrown controversy here on the Praxis blog. Michael Healey’s own words in the Globe & Mail can be found here, and Globe theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck’s views on the matter here. A great backgrounder on the story, as well as a list of the companies who answered Healey’s call is available here on the Wrecking Ball blog.
Toronto Stop the Cuts Network’s flyer for tomorrow’s meeting in
Dufferin Grove Park
by Aislinn Rose
Earlier today, a communiqué was released because The City of Toronto appeared to be trying to shut down a meeting in Dufferin Grove Park, organized by the Toronto Stop the Cuts Network.
The meeting was intended to bring Torontonians together for refreshments at 12pm, and then break into smaller groups from 1pm to 5pm to come up with a “a clear set of demands to deliver to City Hall”. The Facebook event can be found here.
The Toronto Stop the Cuts Network, a group made up of community organizations and individuals, released this statement:
In a blatantly anti-democratic move that smacks of Rob Ford’s authoritarianism, Toronto City is attempting to stop the Mass Meeting to Stop Ford’s Cuts from taking place. The city is shutting down programming at Dufferin Grove Park, where the meeting is scheduled from 12pm to 5pm on Saturday, September 10. Organizers from the Toronto Stop the Cuts Network say they are expecting thousands of residents to attend, to write a Toronto Declaration, ‘a vision for the Toronto people need and deserve’.
After a call to Councillor Ana Bailão’s office, I learned that the Toronto Police had issued a demonstration alert, and that the plan to close the park and its services was seen by the City as a “safety measure”. However, Bailão’s office felt this was unacceptable, and have ensured that the park will instead by kept open all day.
The park’s regular services will also be running in the morning and in the evening, but will be stopped only during the 5-hour meeting organized by Stop the Cuts. Bathrooms, however, will also be kept open during the meeting.
When asked why a demonstration alert would be issued for a meeting, Bailão’s office said they also believed the event to be a meeting rather than a demonstration, but that postings about the meeting on other sites had raised concerns.
Let us know your thoughts on these issues in the comments section. We also welcome anyone who has any updates regarding Stop the Cuts and their meeting in Dufferin Grove Park, to post them here.
“What we’d like to do is have a monorail system that’s running right from the Pan Am Games (site) right along the lakefront and stops at Union Station and Ontario Place and right across the front of the lake,” Ford said.
“And then it would hang a quick little right, right down Cherry St., and as it goes down Cherry St. the first stop would be right at the end of the pier.”
“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.”
Recent Comments