My Gaza, ’tis of Thee co-writers Alex Rubin (L) and Jiv Parasram (R) are Toronto-based actors, directors and playwrights. Graduates of UC Drama at the University of Toronto and founding members of Pandemic Theatre, they have spent the last year focused primarily on politically satirical pieces. Currently, Rubin and Parasram are serving as actor and director (respectively) on My Gaza, ’tis of Thee.
The show runs runs September 16th – 19th & 24th – 26th at 8pm (2pm matinees on the 17th and 19th) at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse, 79A St. George Street (just south of Harbord). $15 General, $12 Senior/Student/Underwaged.
Jonathon Young and Laura Mennell on film with Scott Bellis and Dawn Petten on stage
by Michael Wheeler
I wonder if this is what embedded journalists feel like?
After two trips to Vancouver to participate in both the filmed and theatrical execution of this project, it is impossible to provide anything approaching an unsentimental analysis of it. I really like the show, the people who made it, and I sincerely hope it comes to Ontario someday so I can show it to people.
I’m sure it will inspire a number of conversations about performance and form: Is it a movie? Is it a play? If it is a hybrid of both, what do you call it? I think it is something else entirely however:
I think Tear The Curtain! is an ode.
The production begins with a film clip of theatre critic Alex Braithwaite being driven to review a performance by his secretary Mavis:
MAVIS
You know what your trouble is?
Dawn Petten as Mavis and Jonathon Young as Alex Braithwaite
ALEX
I’m a hack writer living in a hick town.
MAVIS
No.
ALEX
A hick border town where we’re raised on foreign ideas and foreign stories which we imitate, pretending they’re our own… I should have left when I was twenty and gone where the action is.
MAVIS
You just don’t know what you want Alex. I’m sure we may be hicks compared with other places, but don’t deny yourself the privilege that gives you.
ALEX
What privilege?
MAVIS
The freedom to create our own future.
Theatrically, Tear The Curtain goes on to embody this conversation by becoming a piece of theatre that lives within the constraints of this debate by doing something new and exciting, while acknowledging the cultural constraints of living in a city fifty clicks from the United States. Recognizing and integrating the generations of storytellers and shifts in technology that have come before them, the production sets out to be a performance that uses new forms and tools to re-imagine Vancouver within an archetypically American film noir aesthetic.
This is why I think Tear The Curtain an ode. It is not just film noir gangsters, dames, and crazy film integration within a vacuum. It is an ode to the City of Vancouver. It is attached to a particular perspective about what it means to make art in this place, in this era, and everything that generations of artists have gone through to arrive at where they are today.
My part in one of the film clips is so incidental that there are no stills of me with my eyes open. (If you listen very carefully however, you can hear me chuckle at one of Alex Braithwaite's jokes.)
Like the rest of this process, tech at The Stanley Theatre was a whirlwind of activity. What distinguished this week-long period where actors and designers finally integrate their offerings from most, was the extra factors that had to be set in tandem with all the regular ones a director would consider. Each moment is precious in the time you have from when you move into the theatre to to opening night.
Because many of the filmed segments had audio scored directly for the image on the video, but the audio cues for the live action were being set as we established actor blocking, there was a lot to think about in terms of what audio was coming, at what level, and was it attached to the film or called live. Often when audio was activated was related to the fly system for the show, which incorporates three different curtains, a scrim, and a very large wall that are continually emerging from, or disappearing into, the air above the stage
Even the simplest video elements in a performance piece can devour precious tech time, but the scale and resolution of the images captured by the Red camera posed particular challenges for Video Wrangler Michael Sider:
My favourite thing about this scene is that the projected image actually exists legitimately within the given circumstances of the story.
To get the largest, richest image to fill the entire scrim, two identical projectors are broadcasting simultaneously, mounted parallel to one another. These images are also broadcast on different surfaces that are varying distances away from the projectors, so each surface has to have its own focus where the images from the two projectors overlaps correctly.
Separate from projector concerns, once we moved into the theatre, many video sequences needed to have small adjustments made on the fly. A number of factors including small text changes, the timing of scored audio, and blocking adjustments, meant many scenes needed to be shortened or lengthened, or faded in slower or faster, than how we had been working with them back at Progress Lab.
Lighting Designer Alan Brodie faced his own particular challenges working with mixed mediums: The lighting hang used the maximum amount of dimmers available for lighting equipment in The Stanley Theatre. The show requires this many lights because a number of the focuses occur though the light that is video, through or around a scrim, on or within a three-dimensional two-story set, in the house, or any combination of those factors.
Additionally he was charged with using all of this light to maintain a dark, cold, and smoky film noir aesthetic already captured by cinematographer Brian Johnson in the filmed sequences. This had been planned at length in meetings with Director Kim Collier as the three of them established together the visual qualities of the world they would create before either the film or play had been made.
All of these elements are called by Stage Manager Jan Hodgson, who had been practising activating and integrating these elements verbally in the rehearsal hall. Tech involved incorporating new elements and timing as well as actually working with the real things. Most importantly, it was the time to gain an understanding of the rhythm of the show.
There is music to how all these components are related and need to be called. In many ways the art of this production relies on the way the stage manager understands the music the director is playing in all these cues, as much as it does performances on the stage. Although depends a lot on those too. As I put the finishing touches on this piece on a crisp Toronto morning – two days separated from The Electric Company, my thoughts turn to all of the performers in the show:
Today is opening night day! I think the opportunity to be on a stage like doing this show, at this place and time, has a lot to do with why performers gravitate to the theatre, and this is ultimately why Tear The Curtain is a piece of theatre (in the form of an ode). You will never get that feeling on a film set; you have to be there alive in that room with the other people who have chosen to be there, to know what it is. Wish I could be there to share it with them.
Merde!
James Fagan Tait and Dawn Petten form a single potent image
One made by a Cameron, the other created to influence one…
This Ted Talk was part of TED YYC in Calgary and only recently was posted to the TED channel. Most powerful is Ben Cameron‘s clear and accurate argument about how the internet has permanently shifted the means of production into the hands of artists. This cannot be undone and will have a profound effect on the development of the performing arts into the future. Whether or not you buy into every idea expressed in this talk, certainly the shift to an interactive culture with fewer gatekeepers as access to resources is democratized seems to be the future, and this is one of the first attempts to address what that means to the performing arts.
This animated video was created by artist David Shrigley in response to anticipated cuts to arts and culture in Britain by its newly elected coalition government led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. Of particular interest to Canadians is the video’s attempt to address rural and urban sensibilities about the meaning and utility of art, a paradigm which also defines our cultural politics. Certainly the video makes an intellectual argument for why arts and culture are important to fund and preserve, but its sense of humour and watchability make it the type of clip that already has almost 30,000 hits.
The rehearsal studio at Progress Lab 1422 has three story ceilings and comes with its own grid, kitchen, conference room and private bathrooms
by Michael Wheeler
I am a little flummoxed about how to communicate what has transpired in Tear The Curtain! rehearsals over the past few weeks. It has been hectic, inspiring, and I can’t wait for audiences to see this thing once all the pieces have been put together. Like lead character and theatre critic Alex Braithwaite, all my thoughts are in fragments and there may not be a clear connection between them:
This is the most technically demanding show I have ever worked on: It has multiple flies including a wall of the two-story set that flies in and out, as many lighting instruments as The Stanley Theatre can handle, an original score written by a composer who usually writes for feature films (separate from the regular audio cues), and cinema quality video that appears on multiple surfaces.
Boca Del Lupo, Electric Company Theatre, Neworld Theatre and Rumble Productions all have offices here and divide up access to the rehearsal space
I can’t imagine this type of work being built in a regular rehearsal hall. Because The Electric Company is one of the creators and co-tenants of Progress Lab 1422 in East Vancouver, they have the ability to work with many of these technical elements well before “tech” in their own rehearsal hall. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is a circumstance very few indie companies ever find themselves in when building a show.*
Good news for me: There’s been enough for me to do on this show that I have been given an official title that will appear in the credits and everything: “Assistant to the Director”, not to be confused with “Assistant Director” which in this instance would likely refer to a specific person who worked on the film shoot last winter, which I wrote about here.
The best laid plans: Although the idea was to have a “locked” script by this point in the rehearsal process, the first major challenge I was thrown into was a significant restructuring of the first act based on what we learned from the first full run through with live acting and video together. I find this a little reassuring: no matter how much sense a script makes on paper, the nature of theatre means it will be something different from literature when it is actualized. There’s no getting around having a clear and unsentimental head in these moments.
Directing a performance that essentially works with two distinct mediums is twice as much work for the director. Doing a 10 – 6 rehearsal day with actors means you have most pre-dinner hours figuring out the live part of the show, and then you have until you fall asleep to figure out the other 60%.
There are some excellent, affordable, and healthy options for lunch on Commercial Dr.
Kevin Kerr and Jonathon Young restructure the first act in a late night dramaturgy session
Ever since our Fringe production of The Master and Margarita in 2006 I have been keen to re-workshop and essentially re-create our original adaptation. Working on Tear The Curtain has given me great clarity on how Praxis should go about this. Magical realist stories on the stage could be the big winners of these new developments in technology.
No ego – no problems: Kim Collier, Kevin Kerr, and Jonathon Young have been working together for more than a decade. Everyone knows everyone’s role on the project, everyone gives notes where appropriate, everyone trusts that the other person is very good at their job. When something is this complicated there can be no drama with your drama.
In the winter of 2009 I attended a theatre history lecture at Toronto Free Gallery by Alex Fallis on The Progressive Arts Club and the theatre created by artists who were opposed to many of the anti-civil rights policies enacted by Prime Minister Bennett in the 1930s. These people proved to be so fascinating that I elected to create with Praxis Theatre a show about them, Tim Buck 2, which played at The Tranzac Club as part of the 2009 Toronto Fringe Festival.
This led to our Harbourfront Centre HATCH workshop Section 98, which expanded the scope of our work to some other instances when civil rights proved to be a contentious issue for Canadians: namely the FLQ crisis, the Air India bombing, Omar Khadr, and the treatment of Afghan detainees captured by Canadian soldiers. Both the Fringe show and our HATCH workshop were extremely useful in terms of exploring who these people were, what they were concerned about, and the complexity of balancing our country’s commitment to civil rights and concerns of national security.
Unfortunately, neither of these initial explorations did an awesome job of storytelling. So this spring and summer we went back to the drawing board with this project and thought about how to move beyond ‘staged dramaturgy’ and into narrative-based work informed by these themes.
The most consistent positive feedback from our open source creative process revolved around curiosity and fascination with Eugenia “Jim” Watts.
There were also quite a few normal conversations, in person, with live human beings who had seen the show(s).
The first conclusion was that the core personality we had explored that generated a unique resonance with both audiences and ourselves was Eugenia “Jim” Watts, played in both productions by Margaret Evans. A core political organizer and theatre director in 1930s Toronto, she co-directed the legendary civil rights play banned by Bennett, Eight Men Speak, and later went on to be one of two women serving with the Mackenzie Papineau Brigade in the Spanish Civil War where she was an ambulance driver. She was also involved with a number of other projects; she was very busy, and interesting, and worth being the impetus for a work of art.
Margaret Evans playing Jim Watts in Section 98 as part of HATCH at Harbourfront Centre
The second conclusion was that this piece required a playwright, and a good one. This playwright would preferably be an artist who had experience creating theatre about historical events for a contemporary audience (we talked a lot about avoiding a ‘bio pic’) and a passion for social justice.
So it is with much pleasure and excitement we announce Dora-winning playwright Tara Beagan has joined Praxis Theatre in continuing our work on this latest iteration, . Tara and I worked together for two years on Crate Productions’ TheFort at York, and she also acted as an outside eye for Praxis on our Toronto Fringe 07 co-pro, Dyad, but Jesus Chrysler is her first official work with Praxis Theatre and we are thrilled to welcome her.
Jesus Chrysler will be presented at The Factory Theatre as part of Lab Cab on Saturday September 18 and Sunday September 19 at 5pm.The entire festival is free with all manner of art and experiences presented by over 50 artists throughout every nook and cranny of The Factory from noon to 6pm each day. We invite you to come check out the whole festival and save your 5pm – 5:20pm slot for us. This being a Praxis show, we’ll definitely welcome your feedback online or in person, with a particular emphasis on your thoughts about our transition to a script based work about a single individual.
Hope to see you there!
Where’s Praxis? Can you find Tara, Margaret and Michael in the Lab Cab poster? Click to enlarge
Last week Calgary’s annual theatre awards, The Bettys, took place. It was a good night for Alberta Theatre Projects (ATP), which garnered eight awards, but especially for ATP Artistic Associate Vicki Stroich, who accepted an Outstanding Achievement Award for her work as a dramaturg and advocate for new work.
Word of the awesomeness of her acceptance speech has spread far and wide, so we were pleased to see it posted on the ATP blog, which we have reprinted below with her permission.
Vicki Stroich holds her Outstanding Achievement Award after giving an outstanding speech
I have a lot of people to thank because any contribution I have made has come with the support, guidance, encouragement and inspiration of the people around me.
First, thank you to the Betty Mitchell Awards Steering Committee and especially Adrienne Smook for this surprising and humbling honour.
I have to thank my teachers, my friends and my family. My parents (who are here tonight) for showing me the value of hard work and for supporting my choice to live a life less ordinary.
I need to thank all the collaborators and co conspirators I’ve worked with, all the playwrights, directors, actors, designers, stage managers and crew for the amazing and unique experience of creating new things together year after year, with all the challenges and triumphs that process brings.
I want to thank my fellow dramaturges, the ones in this room and the ones across Canada, across the border and in other parts of the world for reminding me what a vital role we have.
I thank the Canadian theatre community and most especially I have to thank this community of artists here. I grew up here in Calgary both as a person and an artist and every year I am reminded that this is a community of artists who make things happen. There is ambition and heart and an ingenuity here that is constantly inspiring. No matter how big and bold the idea, I know we will find a way to make it happen. And that’s rare. And I treasure it.
And I must thank Alberta Theatre Projects and the people who have raised me up in the theatre, who supported me, gave me not only the encouragement but the resources to foster the work and make things happen and who have done so with a great deal of love and a massive amount of good humour; Bob White, Dianne Goodman, Vanessa Porteous, Lyndee Hansen and all the great people I have worked with.
I can appreciate what goes into supporting someone or something. It’s what I have chosen to do. And as someone who has chosen to support and advocate for the vision and work of other people, it seems strange to be up here at the mic alone accepting an award for something that is meant to be behind the scenes.
But when people ask me what it is I do, exactly, I use that word “support” a lot. I also use words like listen and witness. On the surface these words might seem passive, but I have learned not to think of them that way. It has been my experience from working with artists that the act of listening, the act of witnessing is a powerful and rare contribution to someone’s work. I used to take it for granted. I don’t anymore.
The other part of that “support” is more vocal; I ask questions and advocate. I use my voice to help people understand their work better (at least that’s the goal) and if I can, I help them gather the resources and team together to make their project everything it deserves to be. I used to take that for granted, too; my voice. I don’t as much anymore.
I chose to support people because I wanted to make some contribution to the world they wanted to create, to the voice they wanted to express, to a vision they wanted to share. The unique quality of theatre to create an exchange of ideas and emotions and most of all, energy, captivates me. I didn’t think about what the result of 9 years of listening and witnessing and questioning and advocating day to day would contribute. I choose to do it everyday because, like you, I love the theatre. Because I wanted to contribute to it. Because it means something.
That I am standing here being given an award for the sum of those contributions (so far) is truly humbling. I will not take it for granted. It inspires me to contribute my eyes and my ears and my voice and my heart tomorrow and the next day and the next day and on and on.
Listening and witnessing and questioning and advocating is something we can all do. These are contributions that we can all make to our community, to our culture and to this art form that we all love. Please don’t take your own individual contributions day to day for granted. They mean something.
Alison learned about life in the theatre from her Mom
By Alison Broverman
Last month my mother, Sue Foster, made her Toronto Fringe debut in Act Two Studio’s Leacock Live in the Tarragon Theatre Mainspace. She’s 59. I’m allowed to tell you that, because you probably won’t believe me anyway (especially if you happened to see her at the beer tent that one night when she was buying us all drinks).
A few weeks ago I trapped her in the car on our way back from a cottage and made her tell me all about her first Fringe experience. I have adapted that car ride into a short play for your reading pleasure. Please contact me regarding performance rights. Thank you.
Act 1: Inside a Toyota Highlander driving down the 400 on a hot August day. The air conditioner is on. Alison and Sue are eating Twizzlers. Sue is driving. Alison subtly – she hopes – pulls her digital audio recorder out of her purse. She feels awkward about what she is about to ask, but it is for the greater good of the Praxis theatre blog.
Alison: So remember that night at the beer tent when you bought us all beer?
Sue: Yes…
Alison: People want to hear about your first Fringe experience.
Sue: Who?
Alison: Readers of the Praxis theatre blog.
Sue: Ok…
Alison: So can I interview you?
Sue: Really? I guess so…
Alison: So can we do it now that I’ve trapped you in the car?
Sue: Ok, sure.
Alison: Ok, so…how was your first Fringe? As a performer? [My mother was instrumental my 2007 Fringe production of Expiry Dating, building and transporting the set, hosting the opening night party, and tap dancing at the fundraiser.]
Sue: It was fun! It made me feel like I was part of a special kind of club, even though I was a performer in a show with 15 other people. Which is kind of a big cast for a Fringe show.
Alison: Not the biggest cast. I bet it wasn’t even the biggest cast this year.
Sue: I bet it was the cast with the most number of years, if you added up all our ages.
Alison: I bet that is definitely true. [The entire cast of Act 2 Studio’s Leacock Live was over fifty, several were over 70, and at least two were over 80.] So what was your favourite thing about being in the Fringe festival this year?
Sue: Hm. My favourite thing about the Fringe festival. This is gonna sound strange, but…handing out the little flyers. [She laughs.]
Alison: Why?
Sue: Because I got to say “come and see this show, I’m in it!” But without having the pressure of being the star or anything. And I thought our little bookmark/flyers were kind of cute.
Alison: They were. [They really were.] Were you nervous at all before the festival, or worried about anything?
Sue: I was worried that it was going to be lame. That we were going to be lame. But I think we…weren’t. I hope we weren’t.
Alison: I don’t think you were lame. [I’m a good daughter, obviously, but they really are not lame. Adorable, yes. Not lame.]
Sue: I was a little bit worried that we would be lame, but then once we got a bit of feedback from people who attended rehearsals, and from some of the members of Act 2 who were going out to help us publicize, I figured we wouldn’t be lame.
Alison: You sold pretty well.
Sue: Yeah, we did. [Modestly] Best of the venue. So that’s pretty good.
Alison: And what was the worst part? Was there anything that sucked?
Sue: Ummm…hm. Not really. Because the thing I don’t like sometimes about a big group of people is that somebody gets nitpicky and grumpy about things. But I was able to avoid them.
Alison: Who were the nitpicky grumps?
Sue: Oh, just various people from time to time. Because they’re old, some of them, and some of them get tired easily.
Alison: Did you read any of the reviews?
Sue: I did…but I tried hard not to take them personally.
Alison: But some of them were very good.
Sue: Some of them were very good, yes. J. Kelly Nestruck was very sweet. One of our cast members responded to his first article about the Fringe, where he called us as “old actors”, and he called her back within an hour of her e-mailing him and apologized and said he was in a hurry when he wrote it, and then he gave us a really nice review once we were up and running. So that was pretty nice. The guy from…I can’t remember if it was Eye or Now, he was not very complimentary about some things, but whatever…I think I’d better take this exit and get some gas. The light just came on.
A publicity shot for Leacock Live
Alison: Ok.
Sue: I didn’t just miss an exit, did I?
Alison: I don’t think so…no, look, there’s a rest stop up there.
Sue: Oh yeah, perfect.
Alison: How did you come to be in Leacock Live in the first place?
Sue: Well, the director asked me to be in it. I think she did that because I’d done the part before…[they arrive at the gas station and fill up the car and eat more Twizzlers.]
Act 2: Back on the road
Alison: You were in the middle of saying something about…something.
Sue: Yeah, something about how the director picked me…
Alison: Oh yeah. And do you know why Act 2 chose Leacock Live for their Fringe show?
Sue: Yeah. One of the Act 2 members entered the Fringe lottery on our behalf, and she really wanted us to do Leacock Live. So we figured, since it was her entry that got us in, we did what she wanted us to do. She wasn’t able to be in it because of her work schedule, but she loved it, so that’s nice.
Alison: And what were some of the follow ups to the Fringe afterwards?
Sue: One of the people in the cast decided to contact Orillia and invited their council to come. And they invited us to kick off their Leacock Festival at the Stephen Leacock Museum. So we did the show there on late July, and they loved it, and said “Bring this back every year!”
Alison: And what else?
Sue: What else? [Sue looks at Alison quizzically.] Got any hints?
Alison: Weren’t you invited to a high school in Aurora?
Sue: Oh yeah! We were invited to a high school in Aurora. It’s a dramatic arts high school and we’re going to show them some Readers’ Theatre, I guess…And expose them, maybe, to Leacock. I was astounded to discover that Leacock is no longer taught in public schools. And it’s very sad, because he’s a historic figure in Canada. So there were many people under 30 who came to our show who actually had never heard of Stephen Leacock. You’ve read Leacock, right?
Alison: Of course! I read Leacock in grade 7. [At the nerd high school you sent me to, Mom.] So did you spend a lot of time at the Fringe tent during the festival?
Sue: I spent a few hours there…I at least passed through at least six days, and a couple of those days I stayed for a couple of hours. So yes, I guess I spent a good amount of time at the Fringe tent.
Alison: And did you see anything else good?
Sue: Yeah, I think I saw about 12 shows. [They babble for awhile about how Craplicker was such a great show with such an unfortunate title.]
Alison: Any other thoughts you’d like to add about making your Fringe debut at the age of 59? It is ok if I put your age in there, right?
Sue: Sure, I don’t care if you tell people I’m 59. They won’t believe you anyway. I just think it might be fun to do another Fringe show sometime, something different. It made me think anything’s possible.
Alison: Do you feel differently about the Fringe now, having been in a show yourself?
Sue: Not really…I think I’m going to take Black Creek. We should go to the Danier outlet.
Alison: Ok!
[Alison and Sue drive to the Danier outlet, where Sue buys Alison a blue leather jacket as a belated birthday present. You see what happens when you try to interview your mom?]
Someone forgot to tell the PM that encouraging Nickelback actually reduces Canadian culture...or did they?
by Michael Wheeler
Shortly after the 2008 Federal election, Peter Donolo, soon-to-be Chief of Staff to Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, addressed a select group of executive directors and organizational leaders at an industry seminar organized by The Arts Advocate. In his role as pollster for The Globe and Mail during the election, Donolo had accumulated extensive data on the arts and how it had impacted the race. One piece of information from his presentation produced audible exhalations and dismayed nodding of heads:
The highest polling numbers the Harper campaign ever saw in the province of Ontario were on the day after his Ordinary People Don’t Care About The Arts statement (Sept 24/08).
However much it seems retrospectively the comments were a careless slip that may have cost the government a majority, the reality is there was an emotional resonance to this message that initially gave him momentum in a battleground province. Eventually, these numbers receded in the weeks before voters went to the polls, leaving the merged Canadian Alliance and PC parties short of a majority government with the support of just over one third of the electorate.
Seen in this context, comments made by the PM to the national media that he was “concerned” by Catherine Frid’s play Homegrown at the 2010 Summerworks Festival begin to fit into the government’s larger agenda as a strategic exercise by a government no longer able to communicate through rational discourse. These comments point to a desire to use emotionally charged signposts to frame discussions and talking points, rather than the merits of programs and policies based on data or logic.
Will we talk about the arts next election in relation to harnessing our imaginations and creativity within a complex and multidimensional culture? Or will we discuss the arts in relation to whether we should use tax dollars to support terrorism? These are the types of paradigms that are being established in the discourse leading up to the next election.
If Harper succeeds in connecting arts funding and supporting terrorism, it will fit in well with a campaign that paints public funding for political parties to replace the influence of massive donations by corporations and unions as supporting separatism, a coalition government as advocating socialism, and an inquiry into the largest series of civil rights violations in Canadian history at G20 as supporting anarchism.
Of course none of these references are true, but it doesn’t matter. Everymainstreamreviewer who saw Homegrown went out of their way to specifically address the allegations by the PM and his office that the play “glorified terrorism”. Each one reached the identical explicit conclusion that the play in no way justified or supported terrorism. What matters is that arts funding and taking a “sympathetic” view of terrorism are now a cultural meme that some people will remember. Mission accomplished.
This type of highly emotional and dramatic hyperbole will be backed up by an impressive war chest accumulated by the Conservative Party that has been significantly out-fundraising the opposition since fall 2008. In the lead up to the next election, this will back a multi-million dollar wave of negative ads in every media geared at emotional flashpoints in an effort to define complex policy issues with simple narratives that elicit a kneejerk response from sub-cortical “reptilian” elements of the brain.
By hoping to communicate with voters through fight or flight stimuli, the goal is to avoid any rational or substantive debate. Next year, without any reliable or detailed information available through the census, there will be even less data available to evaluate and discuss policies and programs. The heavily partisan bent of the Harper government has forced it to abdicate a knowledge-based discussion of their policies, save a few economic statistics that neglect to mention the sizeable budget surplus Canada had when they took the reins of government and the huge deficit they have generated five years later.
When Kory Teneycke (l) was Communications Director to the PM they both lunched in NYC with Fox News President Rupert Murdoch. Four months later he left his position to lead Quebecor Media's attempt to rewrite CRTC rules in their favour to start Fox News North, which he is pictured announcing.
This embrace by Conservative strategists of US Tea Party-style political tactics is set to be joined by the biggest weapon in regressive populist media: Our very own Fox News. Upset that the current CRTC head won’t fast track a special Category 1 licence for a national TV station to be run by Harper’s previous spokesperson, Harper is set to replace him with someone who is willing to break CRTC rules to allow him a national TV station dedicated to supporting and propagating his ideology.
There is an unfortunate logic to politics that right-wing parties are succeeding when they are talking about the military and the economy, and failing when they talk about things like education, healthcare and culture. By framing culture as a “spending” and “national security” issue they are effectively taking a topic that is a loser for them and turning it into a winner. Combine that with the strong numbers in Ontario after Harper’s anti-arts statements in 2008 and the fact the Conservatives have given up completely in Quebec, and we may be looking at another election where arts and culture is again under attack.
This is not necessarily a great strategy for Harper – where last election arts and culture supporters were caught off guard being attacked by their own government, this election they will be organized, have lists of active supporters in every major city, and have identified leaders and organizing strategies that target swing ridings. They are also way better than them at gaining earned media and using the internet. At the end of the day, it will be up to the opposition, the non-Quebecor owned press, and civil society to shift the debate out of the highly emotional, into factual analysis of the policies and parties that will best serve the country.
Lately, it has been the subject of some media as to whether an emotional, ideologically-based discussion of policies and programs can become a substitute for rational debate that includes data and information.
“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.”
My Gaza, ’tis of Thee co-writers Alex Rubin (L) and Jiv Parasram (R) are Toronto-based actors, directors and playwrights. Graduates of UC Drama at the University of Toronto and founding members of Pandemic Theatre, they have spent the last year focused primarily on politically satirical pieces. Currently, Rubin and Parasram are serving as actor and director (respectively) on My Gaza, ’tis of Thee.
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