I am sitting in the back room of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival Hub at 91 King Street West in Kitchener. The festival staff is all in the same room for the first time since the launch in March. Ken Cameron and Naomi Campbell arrived last night, as did Christian Barry with the Homage crew, and Kris Nelson (Encounters Series) was the last to arrive today after touring with Ame Henderson and Public Recordings in Europe, and a fly-by to his apartment in Montreal. (Ame will be part of Who’s Afraid of Academia? in the Heritage Room at Kitchener City Hall, talking about her recent foray back to school.) Marion Sharp and Richard Ellis also arrived today with suitcases, safari-style hats ,and a camera slung around Richard’s neck – these two volunteers have been with the festival since the beginning, volunteering in their home town of Ottawa and traveling each year to the festival’s new host city; there is an award named after them now.
So it’s official. We have about 51 hours until Mump & Smoot Cracked kicks off the festival, and we are trying to see each other over the boxes piling up around our desks.
I wanted to write something to shed some light on what Magnetic North is all about. Although I imagine that most of you have at least heard of the festival, I’ll give you the low-down. First of all, this year it’s in Kitchener-Waterloo, about an hour from Toronto (check out the info below for details about how you can take a bus to and from Toronto to the festival on June 14, 15 and 16). It’s a festival of contemporary Canadian theatre in English. It happens in Ottawa every second year and in the years in between the whole operation picks up and moves to a different Canadian centre. It serves a couple of important purposes – it puts the host city in the national spotlight, and each year casts the net further and further to build a network for artists and presenters to move work around the country and to get Canadian work out into the world. It’s the only festival of its kind in Canada. Over the years Brooke Johnson’s Trudeau Stories, Lauchie, Liza and Rory (Mulgrave Road), Fear of Flight (Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland), April 14, 1912 (Theatre Rusticle), So Many Doors (Sour Brides), The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets (November Theatre) and Nevermore (Catalyst Theatre) are some of the productions that have toured, nationally and internationally, in part because of their exposure and the connections they made at Magnetic North.
So this year, there are 10 shows from across Canada in the festival which opens on June 9: Mump & Smoot’s Cracked, Norman (Lemieux Pilon 4D Art), Homage (2b theatre company), The Last 15 Seconds (The MT Space), Elephant Wake (Globe Theatre), The Greatest Cities in the World (Theatre Replacement), Another Home Invasion (Tarragon Theatre), Dedicated to the Revolutions (Small Wooden Shoe), Monster Makers and Children’s Choice Awards (Mammalian Diving Reflex). To see all the details, go here.
There are lots of other events, happenings and performances as part Magnetic Encounters – which brings the audience really close to the work through direct interactions with the artists. And the festival is also a meeting ground for artists, presenters and other culture workers to discuss the relevant ideas and issues of the moment. This year, there are over 60 presenters, and we expect almost 250 delegates to take part in the Industry Series altogether. We’re going to be talking about touring, education, presenting, agency. We’re also going to host a panel discussion with Their Excellencies The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada, and M. Jean-Daniel Lafond. You can check out the full Industry Series schedule here.
It’s really exciting to be here in Kitchener-Waterloo; not only am I staying in the guest room at my parent’s place, and my mom wakes me up in the morning and makes me oatmeal with almond milk and berries, but I’m working downtown where I spent most of my teenage years – and can see the slow shifts that are happening in this town as the high tech industries and universities move into the abandoned factories that once made shoes, buttons and furniture. As kids we said that there was something in the water in Kitchener (a little less perhaps in our slightly more sophisticated better half, Waterloo). I realize now that it’s a magnet actually. It’s a force that brings people back, or together. Fitting I suppose that Magnetic North is here. I’m surprised how excited I am to bring the country into this place with all its quirks and characters.
Anyway, I’ll be here. Come find me and I’ll tell you where to meet new friends, where to walk at one in the morning to see the stars, and where you’ll find the best dim sum in Ontario. And I’ll see you around the festival of course. I’ll be one of the lunatics ever smiling…
For June 14, 15 and 16 Toronto arts practitioners can buy a one-day special for $100. It includes the bus from Toronto to K-W and back, access to the day’s Industry Series programming and tickets for two shows. SPILL Feast is extra. All reservations must be made in advance through Gayle Diguer at GDiguer@nac-cna.ca or 1-519-772-3783.
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Donna-Michelle St. Bernard onstage with Belladonna and the Awakening at Toronto Rape Crisis benefit
by Lindsay Schwietz
In December I wrote about the lack of women in artistic leadership positions in theatre in Canada. With women holding only around 30% of playwright, artistic director and director positions in PACT theatres – in general, the larger the theatre company the less the women – I was upset. There is such an enormous amount of women in Canada training in the arts, believing in their craft and working hard to make a career in theatre, and it is difficult for me to accept that the opportunities are not there to develop their art. I was disheartened until I decided to sit down with some of the women who are in that 30% in Toronto. What are those women’s experiences working in theatre? What do they believe about the status of women? What are their views on feminism as it relates to their work as artists?
I chose to interview four women in Toronto who are successful in both the independent theatre scene and in some of the larger theatres. They are playwrights, directors, performers, artistic directors, and general managers. They have all chosen to create their own work for various reasons. They are all strong women who believe in what they do and work hard to achieve their goals. They are: Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, Erin Shields, Beatriz Pizano and Kelly Straughan.
Donna Michelle-St Bernard
Because of the stigma attached to the word, women being quiet about their feminist views seems to be a trend in Toronto at the moment. Not for Donna-Michelle St. Bernard. “What happened to ‘Hear Me Roar’?” St. Bernard says. She is a feminist and proud of it. “I’m holding on to the word – I’m not letting it go.” St. Bernard is a playwright, emcee, and the general manager of Native Earth Performing Arts. Working on her goal to write a 54-play series – one play for every country in Africa – and a physical ‘monument of women’ which is still in the conceptual phase, she is focusing on doing more work for women.
When the PACT report came out, she was most interested in the high number of women in administrative roles versus the low amount in artistic roles. She wondered whether many women chose the administrative work when the opportunities were lacking to use their artistic side. “It calls to mind the number of women who work in arts administration who feel stigmatized by their administrative practice and feel it harder to break through the perception of them as administrators to be artists,” St. Bernard says. “For me my practice is a whole person practice. People like to treat my administrative brain and my artistic brain as separate entities, but I’m a whole person.”
Dienye Waboso and Nawa Nicole in Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s Gas Girls.
Now that the independent theatre scene in Toronto is thriving, more women are able to use both sides of their skills. “You have all these women who have a quiet artistic practice, who’ve now bolstered up their administrative capacities. I feel that is the root of all these independent companies being started by women. ‘I have this skill and I have this skill’,” says St. Bernard. “In theory, in the past it wasn’t that easy or conventional to just start a company to do your work.”
“We need to start validating and valuing independent work done by women because at this moment, independent theatre is our territory,” she says. “The environment is ripe for all these independent companies – for one-off shows. And it’s not just that we can do them. It’s the fact that the press will review a show by a company they’ve never heard of, and the professional community will come out and see what we’re doing even if it didn’t come up through their ranks. In that way I feel really positive about the empowerment of women in the arts.”
In her own work, St. Bernard is completely content with what she is doing and how she is doing it. “The theatre I make happens where I want it to happen in the way I want it to happen. I’m perfectly satisfied. And I’m successful by my definition, in the work that I’m putting out, who’s coming to see it and what the response is to it.” She measures her own success her own way, and does not need the larger theatre houses to validate her. That being said, St. Bernard is conflicted; it still angers her that there is not more artistic work for women in the big theatres. She isn’t producing work at the big theatres because she feels they are not a good fit for one another, but she wishes that were more of a choice rather than something imposed on her and many other women. “I don’t want to be there. But I don’t want to not be there because I’m not wanted there.”
Despite this conflict, what is really important for St. Bernard is being able to do her work and speak up for women’s rights. “Those of us who have the capacity to have voice have the responsibility to carry voice,” she says.
Erin Sheilds and Maev Beaty in Montparnasse
Erin Shields
“In my theatre program there were maybe 70% women and 30% men, but we were doing Shakespeare and Chekhov and all these plays where there were so many more male characters.” Starting as an actor, Shields was enraged at the disproportionate roles for men versus women, and she has seen many women quit because it is too hard to find work.
The answer was to create work for herself and in the past few years Shields has worked her way from the Fringe, to Summerworks, to having her play If We Were Birds on the main stage at the Tarragon this season. “It was always in my brain when writing that I wanted to make a lot of roles for women because I think that’s the way to change things – make good work, and make work where there are lots of women onstage, behind stage and lots of women everywhere.”
Shields notes that theatre training is really centered on “the history of dead white guys”, and that women are expected to adapt to this to survive. “Women are more accommodating in terms of listening to men’s stories. We’re used to hearing men’s stories and thinking of them in terms of ourselves… I can see myself in Hamlet and I can see myself in Othello and I can see myself in Lear. I can identify with these characters. Men have a more difficult time doing that because they haven’t really had to.”
Although not scared to use the term ‘feminist’ in terms of the greater discourse, Shields doesn’t tend to use the word because she feels it puts women in a cage, and suggests that labeling a piece ‘feminist’ can alienate many audience members who could otherwise be moved by it. “It puts up a warning that says ‘oh this doesn’t relate to me’ – for men and for women,” she says. “It can make people disconnect from the get go… you can look at this as a voyeur, but this doesn’t affect you.”
Shields says she is tired of being labeled a ‘female’ playwright. “I guess we have to do that still,” Shields says. She’d rather a world where she is simply a playwright, and it’s just about the art. “If you think of women playwrights who have been very successful, I think they are poets who transcend the women’s stories, but aren’t afraid to have women’s stories. They write plays that are human, not just female.”
Stay tuned for part two, which will include my interviews with Beatriz Pizano and Kelly Straughan.
Mon June 21st @ 8pm. Theatre Centre. Queen & Dovercourt. PWYC.
Wrecking Ball #10 is on its way, and with works by artists Marjorie Chan, Melody Johnson, Bea Pizano, Schuyler (Sky) Gilbert & Roland Schimmelpfennig, you really want to be there. Click here for more information.
The Turn of the Screw DVxT Theatre
The Mill Theatrefront in association with the Young Centre for the Performing Arts
Spent Theatre Smith-Gilmour, Why Not Theatre and Theatre Run
Goodness Volcano
Blind Date Produced by Rebecca Northan, in association with Harbourfront Centre
OUTSTANDING NEW PLAY/MUSICAL
Norman Lup-Man Yeung Pu-Erh
Michele Smith, Dean Gilmour, Ravi Jain and Adam Paolozza Spent
Hannah Moscovitch The Mill (Part Two): The Huron Bride
Donna-Michelle St. Bernard Gas Girls
Beatriz Pizano La Comuniòn
OUTSTANDING DIRECTION
Vikki Anderson The Turn of the Screw
Ross Manson Goodness
Nina Lee Aquino The Making of St. Jerome
Keira Loughran Pu-Erh
Christian Barry The Mill (Part Two): The Huron Bride
OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE
John Ng Pu-Erh
Jamie Robinson Gas Girls
Gord Rand Goodness
Clinton Walker The Turn of the Screw
Byron Abalos The Making of St. Jerome
OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE
Tanja Jacobs Happy Days
Rebecca Northan Blind Date
Nawa Nicole Simon Gas Girls
Ginette Mohr The Belle of Winnipeg
Christine Horne The Turn of the Screw
OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE IN A FEATURED ROLE /ENSEMBLE
The Ensemble Spent
The Ensemble The Dining Room
The Ensemble 9 Parts of Desire
Michael Kash Where’s My Money
Mary Francis Moore The Catering Queen
OUTSTANDING SET DESIGN
Trevor Schwellnus La Comuniòn
Lindsay Anne Black Birnam Wood
Jackie Chau Gas Girls
Jackie Chau The Making of St. Jerome
Gillian Gallow The Mill
OUTSTANDING COSTUME DESIGN
Nadine Grant The Turn of the Screw
Michelle Bailey The Red Queen Effect
Lorie Brown The Belle of Winnipeg
Dana Osborne The Mill
Andjelija Djuric La Comuniòn
OUTSTANDING LIGHTING DESIGN
Trevor Schwellnus La Comuniòn
Arun Srinivasan Pu-Erh
Andy Moro Reconciliation
Andrea Lundy The Mill
Andrea Lundy Aurash
OUTSTANDING SOUND DESIGN/COMPOSITION
Thomas Ryder Payne La Comuniòn
Richard Feren The Mill
Richard Feren Aurash
David Atkinson The Belle of Winnipeg
Brenna MacCrimmon / John Gzowski Goodness
Thanks to Impolitical for bringing attention to this clip that explains perfectly why you won’t be hearing from me until after The Africa Trilogy opens. (Don’t worry, interim editor Aislinn Rose will keep the content flowing in the meantime.)
A reading of Birgit Schreyer Duarte and Jacob Zimmer’s new translation of Life of Galileo at the Festival of Ideas and Creation presented last week by Canadian Stage.
by Leora Morris
I don’t think the text is the only thing that will make the public reading of Life of Galileo on Sunday night clear, funny, and moving. It’s also the spirit of the project, the impetus for the coming together. In the past week I have witnessed the preparation of a remarkable cast, meeting with the dual focus of reading this new translation of Life of Galileo and thanking a fellow artist.
Part of the impetus for the event was to hear Tracy Wright, a pioneer in the Canadian independent theatre scene, read the character of Galileo among an all-star cast of friends and colleagues. This has shifted slightly in the last few days: Tracy is currently recovering from surgery and so the reading is now in thanks to her. We are aiming to Skype the live performance to her.
A thank you in the form of a Brecht play.
I enjoy this concept because – although we celebrate and thank people all the time with awards ceremonies, money, booze, love poetry, pictures, and song dedications – we don’t often gift people with theatre. A staged reading feels somehow more fitting as a “thank you” than a full production: it is both an incredibly high-calibre professional performance AND a reminder of why it is happening in the first place.
My favourite moment of our read through recently at Canadian Stage was in the middle of Scene 6, when Daniel MacIvor (as Cardinal Barberini) poked Fiona Highet (as Galileo Galilei) in the side and they broke out into laughter. What a treat to see both the characters at work and the old friends at play underneath them. In fact, that is where the thank you is located, in watching all these actors (many of whom Tracy has inspired) take pleasure in each other and the script.
I suspect this layering works because readings permit a certain amount of personal style that isn’t necessarily valued in a fully staged production (when I prefer to watch a person be subsumed by their character, no trace of them in sight). Brecht would have liked it too, I think.
Join Small Wooden Shoe, and a huge cast of performers in giving thanks to Tracy Wright at Convocation Hall at University of Toronto on Sunday May 30th at 7pm. All proceeds from this evening of community theatre by professionals goes to The Actors’ Fund of Canada. Details here.
Leora Morris is Associate Producer on the project.
“Suppose I were not to talk to you about Democracy, but about the sea, which is in some respects rather like Democracy! We all have our views of the sea. Some of us hate it and are never well when we are at it or on it. Others love it, and are never so happy as when they are in it or on it or looking at it. But certain facts about the sea are quite independent of our feelings towards it. If I take it for granted that the sea exists, none of you will contradict me. If I say the sea is sometimes furiously violent and always uncertain, and that those who are most familiar with it trust it least, you will not immediately shreik out that I do not believe in the sea; that I am an enemy of the sea; that I want to abolish the sea; that I am going to make bathing illegal. If I tell you that you cannot breathe in the sea, you will not take that as a personal insult and ask me indignantly if I consider you inferior to a fish.
Well, you must please be equally sensible when I tell you some hard facts about democracy. When I tell you that it is sometimes furiously violent and always dangerous and trechearous, and those familiar with it as practical statesman trust it least, you must not at once denounce me as a paid agent of Benitto Mussolini, or declare that I have become a Tory Die Hard in my old age, and accuse of me wanting to take away your votes and make an end of parliament, and the franchise, and free speech, and public meeting, and trial by jury.
Our business is not to deny the perils of Democracy, but to provide against them as far as we can, and then consider whether the risks we cannot provide against are worth taking.”
Marie Jones performs in Citizen Theatre‘s inaugural performance: A PWYC staged reading of GB Shaw’s: The Apple Cart: A political extravaganza at The Piston on May 25th at 7pm.
Laura Nordin (pictured with co-star Carlos Gonzalez-Vio) stars in the Theatre Cipher production of Agamemnon at the Church Hall of Christ the Saviour Cathedral (823 Manning — three blocks north of Bloor between Bathurst and Christie) Wednesday through Sunday at 8 PM, between MAY 22 and JUNE 5. Tickets are $10 – $20 and can be purchased here.
Totally tacky…Kelly Straughan and Melissa Jane Shaw cornered Factory Theatre Artistic Director KG (Ken Gass) at the opening night party of Featuring Lorettaand began an impromptu audition.
KG was totally unimpressed. Good thing the Seventh Stage production of 9 Parts of Desire looks like it will be a hit…
In many of the circles I run in “Equity” is a dirty word. It is often uttered derisively, and under one’s breath. Something to be avoided at all costs, and dealt with only when absolutely necessary. For Canadian theatre artists trying to create their own work – dealing with this hostile force is one of, if not the biggest, obstacles to pursuing their craft. It is frequently uttered in conjunction with other dirty words.
I think this is a darn shame.
As an artist who unabashedly wears his progressive convictions on his sleeve, I really WANT to like the professional association that represents and fights for the workers in our industry. I think in many ways theatre artists are the canaries in the coal mine in terms of the 21st Century economy: Increasingly our labour is becoming casualized – purchased by employers who offer no benefits or job security on a contract-by-contact basis.
Although there are exceptions, like the year-round acting company started by Peter Hinton at the NAC, in general the North American trend has been to move away from providing steady work and opportunities to local artists. South of the border, Mike Daisey has articulated in great detail the huge amount of money pouring into buildings and institutions as “arts funding”, while the conditions for theatre artists rapidly deteriorates. We are experiencing many of the same conditions and we need a strong professional association to advocate on our behalf.
This is why CAEA is important to all of us. We are caught in a grander paradigm of precarious workers with no security or opportunity to create savings. CAEA has a crucial role to play in advocating and organizing against this disturbing trend in support for artists. In particular, by ensuring the best rate of pay and working conditions in successful profitable productions.
Unfortunately, like some sort of auto immune disease, the vim and vigour with which the association should be protecting artists with the major producers and funders in the country has been turned loose on its own membership. Where the energy of the organization should be going into finding new opportunities to expand and enhance our industry, significant resources are going into shutting down and intimidating member-initiated projects.
The consequences of this misguided strategy have been immense and devastating for independent theatre creators. Unlike artists in competing markets like Boston, Chicago, NYC and LA, Canadian artists have no way to get new work off the ground under a specific company name. There is the option to produce under the Co-Op agreement, but this requires every production member to be part of Equity and does not allow shows to happen under the name of a theatre company. Unable to brand themselves (a key element of building an audience), use the artists they want to work with, and raise tens of thousands of dollars to put on their first play – a huge number of indie theatre productions fail, or simply do not happen at all. It has not been an awesome era to be an emerging theatre artist in Canada.
All of this has led to the incredibly important, i-won’t-talk-to-you-if-you-don’t-go Regional AGM to address indie issues@ 7pm at Theatre Passe Muraille this Monday May 17th. Just as important is the recent announcement that CAEA will be establishing the Independent Theatre Review Committee to gather feedback from across Canada on this issue. If you would like to join this committee you have until just May 20th to put yourself forward. They will likely be taking nine new members. Seeing as the committee started with three Ontarians (well 2 from Ontario and one from the “dance region”) – if you are not from Ontario and you have an Equity card, your odds of making the committee are VERY GOOD. There is only one actor from Toronto so far, so there is some room there too.
Fundamentally what is missing from existing CAEA agreements is any cognizance of five dramatic shifts going on in Canadian theatre:
1 There are very few artists under 35 who categorize themselves solely as “actors”. We all have multiple identities now. Someone is a playwright-dancer-director, another artist is an actor-choreographer-writer, and I even know a stage manager-lighting designer-poet. These are the people creating art now. Most importantly, we are all producers. If you try to explain this to anyone at CAEA they look at you like you’re speaking gibberish. It’s like there are no check boxes to accommodate this reality so we’re just going to pretend it isn’t the case.
2 Where are the young people? Have you been to the theatre recently? As a thirty-three-year-old I often find myself THE YOUNGEST PERSON IN THE AUDIENCE! This is a major crisis. Who is going to come to the theatre in twenty years? We need to take drastic and immediate action to make theatre accessible to a younger generation of theatre-goers. This is going to require engaging and supporting younger and emerging theatre artists instead of persecuting them. It’s time for a Youthquake – and unlike in Slings and Arrows it is going to take more than a slick marketing campaign.
3 We are at a major competitive disadvantage – when other major American theatre centres have access to agreements with American Equity that allow projects to get off the ground when they are at an early stage, when no one is going to make any money off of them anyway – it makes Canadian theatre much less likely to be daring or new. Are we artists who create daring and innovative work or are we just a place for productions from other places to tour to?
4 Canadian theatre has really sub-par engagement with diverse communities. Both in terms of audience and practitioner our industry is overwhelmingly white. This despite Canada being home to several of the most multicultural cities in the world. How can we do our job to reflect life back to our citizenry if we only reach and look like some of the citizens? This is a crisis of relevance. CAEA has to look at this situation, take a deep breath, and decide that a quota for the percentage of Equity members in indie productions is destructive and frankly, discriminatory. The door will continue to be closed to these communities unless their participation as both audience and artists in isencouraged.
5 We need to start working together. How much energy has gone into this multi-year internal battle to have CAEA stop treating its younger and self-producing membership like they are commiting a crime for trying to create new work subsidized by their sweat and hard work? We have much in common and lots to work on to create art and an industry for a new generation of theatregoers. It’s time to bury the hatchet and getting on with the making of this new era in contemporary Canadian theatre. There is no desire to diminish the hard work and many gains CAEA has made for Canadian theatre artists in the past, but it is time to move on and make some gains for the future.
“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.”
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