Vancouver's newest theatre, The Revue Stage. Photo by David Cooper.
There are two new Toronto theatre blogs by politically-minded companies to check out: Studio 180, The company behind Stuff Happens, The Overwhelming, and The Laramie Project (amongst others), has started up this new blog on their website. Meanwhile, Pandemic Theatre a young company with two new shows coming up, Imbalance and My Gaza Tis of Thee, has created a website that wins my heart by A) Having their blog be their homepage, B) Telling the gov’t often and articulately what they think of their regressive social policies. They’re having a fundraising kegger on Friday.
Do Nonprofits Embrace Social Media? Here’s an excellent online powerpoint kind of presentation that explains where we are with all of that after a survey of over 200 nonprofit execs. Two most interesting stats: 1- 88% are experimenting widely with social media. 2 – 79% are uncertain of how to demonstrate social media’s value for their organizations.
The Arts Club has opened yet ANOTHER venue in Vancouver. The Revue Stage looks to be an intimate space for “new and innovative works from both emerging and established artists”. Combine this with the opening of both Progress Lab (as a creation space) and The Cultch (with two more indie friendly performance spaces), and Vancouver has some much improved indie theatre infrastructure all of a sudden. Now they just need some money to make the theatre… oh, right.
Applications for The Next Stage Theatre Festival in Toronto are now available. The deadline is May 24th, 2010. If you have show you’re looking to take to The Next Stage – it’s time to get your sh*t together. Last year every show got reviewed in Eye and The Star and there’s nothing much else going on in January theatre-wise so it’s a great opportunity.
Deaf Community Consultant, Jamilla Ross, details how Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing patrons can attend sign language interpreted performances of The Africa Trilogy in this video shot by Karyn McCallum.
For more detail on this video, ASL performances at Luminato, and all sorts of other online media about the show check out The Africa Trilogy Blog.
Last winter the Canadian cultural community was shocked to learn the only new cultural funding of the big “2009 stimulus budget” would be an international $25 million Nobel Prize of The Arts/ competitive arts festival with qualifying rounds where the grand winner in each category would perform at Luminato. Soon after, it was revealed that falsified documentation about who’d been consulted was used to pitch the prize to the government. (Exactly how did that process work?) At the same time voices in Quebec were becoming increasingly uncomfortable about the Toronto-centric Anglo bias to the project, and many other voices nationally in the cultural sector began speaking out against cutting domestic funding in tandem with creating a large international award. Soon after, the initiative was classified as “under review” and no one ever heard about it again.
It’s hard to have a single opinion about all this: In some ways putting this cash in the hands of The Canada Council is the best, smartest, depoliticized way to distribute arts funding. So fundamentally I’m not sure that the specifics of the award will be all that controversial as long as it is distributed by an arms-length jury. The crazy part about this whole process, and the media coverage of it so far, is the lack of attention to whether the prize is a good idea to begin with.
The stated goal in the Ministry’s press release is to “brand Canada as a centre of excellence”. Which is a good idea – except for one thing – after we’re branded as excellent, we will have to create things that are excellent. Things aren’t looking so hot on that end – between the policies of current Federal and Provincial governments and the economic crisis – actual monies for art going to artists is way down. Farewell DFAIT, Trade Routes, PromArt, small magazines, endowments, and BC artists. Bonjour a huge amount of money to an artist at the top of his or her career and the administrative and production costs of a massive international ceremony.
So more than anything this just seems like putting the cart before the horse. We would like to be branded as excellent, we would like to be perceived as excellent, but we are going to reduce the funds that would lead to excellence. (We will however throw you a big party if you ever get there.) It is a common approach to Canadian cultural funding these days that is a lot like encrusting the tip of a melting iceberg with gold. It should also probably be noted that it creates an inverse relationship between the creation of art and “fancy galas“.
Since the majority-that-almost-was in 2008, the Conservative government has been looking for ways to appear pro-culture while not actually funding any of the art or artists that contributed to their unrealized ambitions. This prize fits firmly in this category of things that will allow the government to say that arts funding is “up” while continuing to decrease the amount that is actually allocated to culture, either directly through grants to artists or indirectly by subsidizing rehearsal, performance space, equipment, travel costs, etc.
Ironically, when the Minister of Official Languages and Canadian Heritage re-announced the prize yesterday, he received extensivecoverageinthemedia – for something seemingly unrelated: In a hockey-induced fit of pride over the weekend he’d twittered the Vancouver Canucks were “Canada’s team in the playoffs”, seemingly unaware that many Canadians consider Quebec a part of Canada. (And all of a sudden we got a glimpse of how they could just forget to put French in the opening ceremonies of a Canadian Olympic games.) In an article in today’s The Globe and Mail he remains unrepentant and stands by his tweet and seems unabashed by the notion that Tweets Have Consequences.
So here we are right back where we started eighteen months ago, except everyone’s a little more hurt and a little more bitter: Anglophone artists are increasingly starved for support, francophone artists are armed with multiple instances of the government trying to exclude Quebec from the definition of Canadian culture, and a hostile government is inventing new and interesting ways not to fund the ecosystem that creates Canadian culture in both official languages. I am going to be so relieved to talk about this era in the past-tense.
If you want to read THE OLD Canada Prizes outline – the one that no one wants to talk about anymore – click here. It seems only fair that interested citizens wishing to provide feedback to the government have (unredacted) access to the documents used to create and approve the initiative.
WHERE: The El Mocambo (464 Spadina Avenue)
WHEN: Monday, May 3rd, doors @ 7:30 p.m.
WHY: Because it will be awesome!
TICKETS: $10 at the door
HOSTED BY: David Gale
Since 1994, The Harold Awards have come to represent the independent and hard-working spirit of Toronto’s vibrant theatre community. Since 1994, it has been a boisterous, mischievous, frequently intoxicated, hilarious celebration.
If you’ve never been, make this the year you break the seal. Attendees are not even supposed to mention the other awards show, so we won’t do it here, but let’s just say it’s nothing like it! Click the link to learn more about The Harold Awards and how they work.
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WHERE: Theatre Passe Muraille
WHEN: Monday, May 17, doors @ 6:30 p.m.
WHY: Because it took 3 long years to get here.
HOSTED BY: CAEA Ontario Council Policy Advisory Group.
PANELISTS: Naomi Campbell, Michael Rubenfeld, and Rebecca Northan.
After voting to create a solution that encourages (as opposed to discourages), the creation of indie theatre in a 96-1 vote at the 2008 AGM in Toronto, and again in a 42-4 vote at the 2009 AGM in Montreal, this is the first tangible sign CAEA is finally taking the concerns of membership on this issue seriously. This will likely be the only opportunity for Equity members to contribute to what this new solution will look like.
The Ontario CPAG and members of the newly formed Independent Theatre Review Committee will be available to update the membership on this issue, who will be able to contribute their own ideas in a general think tank session. This is not intended as a beef session but rather as an opportunity for CAEA members to contribute new ideas as the committee begins its work on a new generation of independent theatre agreements.
Members should contemplate the following question: “What do you want in an agreement that is outside of the CTA or ITA?”
Members should avoid ever complaining about Equity stopping or hindering them from creating their own work ever again if they don’t attend. Book your babysitter/night off now to avoid disappointment with your career and/or industry.
“If you look about, you will see that only operations that are well established, high-turnover, standardized or heavily subsidized can afford, commonly, to carry the costs of new construction. Chain stores, chain restaurants and banks go into new construction. But neighbourhood bars, foreign restaurants and pawn shops go into older buildings. Supermarkets and shoe stores often go into new buildings; good bookstores and antique dealers seldom do. Well-subsidized opera and art museums often go into new buildings. but the unformalized feeders of the arts – studios, galleries, stores for musical instruments and arts supplies, backrooms where the low earning power of a seat and a table can absorb uneconomic discussions – these go into old buildings. Perhaps more significant, hundreds of ordinary enterprises, necessary to the safety and public life of streets and neighbourhoods and appreciated for their convenience and personal quality, can make out successfully in old buildings, but are inexorably slain by the high overhead of new construction.
As for really new ideas of any kind – no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be – there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
The Tale of a Town runs May 1st -16th and BEGINS AT: Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Avenue and ENDS AT: the SCAR MFC Theatre, 609 Queen Street West, Toronto.
Last year's Unconference was held at Canadian Stage. This year it's at Dancemakers. Photo by Amanda Lynne Ballard.
Last year Praxis covered how The Unconference Was Unbelievably Well Attended. Well it’s that un-time of year again, so dust off the part of your brain that lets you meet and communicate with new people and get down to Dancemakers this weekend.
This year Small Wooden Shoe presents the Unconference on Saturday April 24 @ Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation – and the rest of the 3rd floor of the Case Goods Warehouse. Hosted by Misha Glouberman. The webpage for the event is here. New this year: Create your own login to participate in online discussion groups during and after the conference. (Or don’t – it’s an unconference – no one is the boss of you!)
Registration and coffee starts at 9:15 am. The event starts at 10am (being early is great!) Lunch will be around 12:30/1 and it will be done by 6 with social time after. Pre-registration is $10 and can be done by calling 416-367-1800 or emailing bradley@dancemakers.org
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?
At 6:16:11 PM on April 15 Counsellor Minnan-Wong's motion to "torpedo" the Billboard Tax being connected to arts funding failed miserably.
by Michael Wheeler
If you’re sipping your morning coffee it’s time to spike it with something, and if it’s closer to lunch crack something bubbly – because folks – rarely is there such a clear cut victory as this:
Years of community-based consultations and organizing has resulted in exactly what Torontonians had called for by a 5-1 margin. The revenue from the new Billboard Tax will be dedicated to arts funding for the public sphere.
There’s nothing else to say really. Tip of the hat to Devon Ostrom and the entire Beautifulcity Alliance for their work, intelligence and sticktoitiveness. There were some dark moments there.
Next time someone tells you grassroots organizing doesn’t work – or the current generation of artists is politically apathetic – feel free to send them the link to this post.
“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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