I remember I was playing in my grandma’s backyard after some wedding or something. And um… I had this beautiful white dress and I was playing with some boys on the back lawn when I felt it. All hot all over my legs and I didn’t know what to do so I just lay down. I didn’t want none of them to see it you know so I just lay down like someone lays down when they’re reading a book or something with their head in the hands and all. Like I was just enjoying the day or something when really my guts are screaming and I think I’m dying I really did think this was it I was leaking all my insides out and I was just lying there in the grass smiling, feeling my blood pouring out from under me and mixing with the dirt. I felt my blood mixing with the dirt and I was just lying there getting my white dress all dirty underneath but none of the boys could see that. They just saw me lying in the grass and smiling like I was sunning myself or something and they said “Come on, let’s go to the park” and I didn’t move. And they called at me again and said “Come on Magpie, let’s go to the park” but I wasn’t getting up and showing them I was dying. I just kept lying there and they started getting mad at me and saying “Stop laying around like a cow” and they started calling me a cow because I told them I just wanted to lie there, maybe all day. (Pause) And then they got bored with me and left. And then… when I knew no one was watching… I went inside and made myself clean again. That’s what I did Cody. I made myself clean again.
Jordan is the founder of Suburban Beast, a company dedicated to the creation of ‘documentary-performance’.
He is writing and directing the company’s new show Post Eden, which will receive a workshop production at Ryerson Theatre School from April 14-18, 2010. For more info click here.
BeautifulCity founder Devon Ostrom talks to Late Night in the Bedroom about the history of the billboard tax, the logic behind its implementation, and how some city councillors would like to hijack the revenue for other uses.
by Michael Wheeler
It’s all come down to the next week. As coveredover the pastfew monthson this website, it’s been a long haul for the BeautifulCity Alliance: after years of depositions, presentations, reports, and finally votes by City Council, we’ll have our answer when final approval is given to the city budget over April 15th and 16th.
Here’s some of what’s at stake:
Whether the visual pollution created by billboards will be counteracted by arts funding for the public sphere, or whether a billboard tax becomes like parking tickets and stripper licenses a new revenue stream for the city’s tax base.
Whether or not the original intent of the tax as presented to Council, recommended by City Staff, and supported by Torontonians by a 5-1 margin in a recent EKOS poll is actually reflected in the budget.
Whether or not the city meets its Lastman-era commitment to move per-capita arts spending from $18 to $25. Vancouver spends $19 per capita, Montreal spends $32 and New York spends $54.
Whether or not Toronto City Hall is a place where a grassroots, decade-long groundswell of dedicated engagement to provide a long-term sustainable approach to improved public space and arts funding is possible. Do vested interests have the ability to hijack community-based initiatives to in order to lower their tax rates? Where does the real power lie at City Hall?
Demonstrating support and momentum behind Budget Chief Shelly Carroll’s motion to dedicate the billboard revenue to the arts will determine the answer to these questions. Things are starting to heat up: The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and The National Post all recently ran pieces about this motion, and Mayoral candidates are showing a willingness to step into the fray. Councillor Carroll’s Facebook status indicates she will be relying on the Web 2.0 political class to demonstrate support for her stand:
What can you do?
Go to beautifulcity.ca and follow the simple to follow instructions to indicate to Councillors on the Executive Committee that they have your support to use the billboard tax for its intended purpose to enhance public spaces with art.
Props to these Councillors and/or Mayoral Candidates who have already indicated their support:
Councillor Shelley Carroll, Budget Chief
Councillor Joe Pantalone, Mayoral Candidate
George Smitherman, Mayoral Candidate
Councillor Joe Mihevc
Councillor Janet Davis
Councillor Howard Moscoe
Councillor Paula Fletcher
(Just because they’re listed here it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be contacted and congratulated for their principled stance.)
Fuse Magazine, XPACE and Images Festival 2010 invite you to the after party for the Fuse sponsored Images screening of Kevin Everson’s Erie and the launch of Fuse Magazine’s Spring issue Bikes, Boats and Big Ideas.
When: Thursday April 8, 2010. Doors Open: @ 8:30 pm — 1:00am
Where: XPACE Cultural Centre, 58 Ossington Ave (at Queen)
What else: Dance the night away to the beats of DJ DJ Tanner and DJ Triple-X Admission is free!
THE SPRING ISSUE OF FUSE PRESENTS:
Jesse McKee and the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective’s Steve Loft, Candice Hopkins and Leanne L’Hirondelle in conversation about changing the artistic landscape in Canada and internationally
Janna Graham on the labour politics behind big European art spectacles
Amy Zion on Art courtesy of the Olympic Games
Artist Project by Reena Katz
Reflections on our Parliamentary Democracy by Michael Wheeler
Reviews by Glen Lowry, Bart Gazzola, Debra Antoncic, Portia Priegert and Chris Gehman
IMAGES SCREENING OF KEVIN EVERSON’S ERIE:
The images Kevin Everson has recorded and compiled in Erie operate within the realm of the ready-made, with nearly the entire film composed of a series of unedited single- takes with sync sound, presented back to back. Forsaking montage for the most part, Everson refuses to insert an editorial presence through the tropes of narration or text, and instead favours a linkage which pivots upon the only direct dialogue in the film, spoken by three workers from an undisclosed General Motors factory. While their conversation centres upon the fate of the company, a united demand for leadership doesn’t stop at the corporate offices in Detroit, but instead radiates far beyond to all levels of government and the public who are now implicated in the crisis.
Melissa Hood looks over her notes during rehearsal. Photo by Hugh Probyn
by Aislinn Rose
In October 2009, Struts and Frets blogger Kris Joseph posted On theatre in society: porosity in response to Mike Daisey’s How Theater Failed America, about the current dysfunction of funding models for American theatre, as well as Chris Ashworth’s Toward a New Funding Model for Theater, in which he argues that “the process is the product”, and therein lies a new approach to funding. Joseph asserts in his post that he is, “now more convinced than ever that theatre can and must distinguish itself from film, TV, and new media by being completely porous to its audience.” He goes on to write that theatre artists must share their process by becoming integral parts of the communities where they work, and that the community should feel completely part of that work.
The post inspired an equally interesting conversation in its comments section, with Praxis Co-Artistic Director & Director of Section 98 Michael Wheeler commenting that the work we were doing with Section 98’s Open Source Theatre project was in part an attempt to make our process integral to our relationship with our audience, in preparation for our work-in-progress presentation for Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH season. We though the issues we were addressing would benefit from discussion and wanted to get our community involved as early in the process as possible.
Another commenter wrote to say that he normally runs screaming from the room when it comes to “art as process” work, with only a few exceptions. However, he was in complete agreement with a point made by Ashworth (in reference to sharing the development process with the audience) about editing out “the boring bits”. Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Easier said than done I think.
It’s been a few weeks since our HATCH presentation and we’re still sorting through the feedback. In an effort to open ourselves up to our community, we recorded our process online and encouraged audience members to text us during the show with the texts posted live to our blog throughout the presentation, and we asked our audience members to continue sending us their feedback after they’d gone home and had a chance to reflect. Some chose to return to our blog with that feedback, and others emailed us or sent messages via Facebook.
Here’s our best attempt to provide an unbiased overview of the synthesis of this feedback under the major categories it addressed.
Open Source/Interactive:
Assistant Director Laura Nordin operated the texting software during the performance and transferred the comments to the website. Photo by Hugh Probyn
A text received during the show:
An unsolicited Facebook message after the show:
Do I want to meet? Hell yes! I had to google “experience design” to find out it was an actual thing.
And in response to the texting:
And from a texter with a smart phone with access to our blog throughout the show:
And from a post-show blogger:
The Q&A at the end of the show yielded a number of comments on this topic, with many saying they found the texting to be distracting, or that they prefer to lose themselves in the theatre rather than participating in every day life activities like texting. Others really liked that they were able to communicate with us throughout the show, but they wanted to see it further integrated into what they actually see onstage. Lots to think about here!
Multiple Plot Lines:
Greta Papageorgiu presents “Section 98 for Dummies”. Photo by Hugh Probyn
Section 98 was investigating the history of Civil Rights in Canada, with a particular eye on the Communists of the 1930s, the FLQ and the War Measures Act in the 1970s, and Afghan Detainees in the modern era. Some audience members found the inclusion of so much information to be confusing, or questionable:
The audience at the Q&A seemed to divide neatly into two camps on this issue. On the one side there were people who felt that the multiple topics were too scattered and they were having trouble tying it all together. Another perspective suggested this was not the time to condense our story yet… that we should “keep blowing it up and making us make the connections ourselves (which I’m sure we’ll continue to do for several days)” as one participant commented. Or, as it was put another way, “I kind of like you throwing a bunch of shit up there… you’re giving us homework”.
General’s Testimony:
Photo of the Three Generals from my iPhone during rehearsal.
As part of the presentation, we also included verbatim texts of the testimony given by General Rick Hillier, Lieutenant-General Michel Gauthier, and Major-General David Fraser after the explosive testimony of Richard Colvin, in which he alleged that Canadian Soldiers knowingly transferred Afghan detainees to torture in Afghan prisons. Here’s some of what we got during the show:
So we discovered that most people found this material to be deadly boring (including my mom). There were, however, a few people who found the transcripts to be interesting, while others suggested we could absolutely continue working with them… once we had sculpted it with our point of view. “There’s no such thing as neutral.” This is fascinating to me since we had been so concerned about taking the material out of context and were committed to presenting it exactly as we found it.
Omar Khadr:
Image by Darren O’Donnell
Omar Khadr also caused some disagreement. I am, of course, not referring to the real Omar Khadr, the one who was captured at the age of 15 and lives in Guantanamo Bay. I’m referring to another of our Open Source Theatre commenters who went by the moniker of “Omar Khadr” in response to Open Source Entry # 4: Checking for a Pulse. Some of these comments were included in our show. Here are some of the responses this material generated, in the order in which they were received:
Some thought the sections to be “extraneous” or “questionable”, while another said, ““Omar” really turned out to be a lynchpin of the show.”
Fake Omar requested that we not take him out of context so we recorded his text using an imagined internet/robot voice. While people couldn’t agree on whether or not we should have included this material, most could agree that the robot voice should go.
Jim Watts
Margaret Evans as “Jim” Eugenia Watts. Photo by Hugh Probyn
If there’s one thing that most people could agree on, it was Communist/Theatre Artist/Revolutionary Jim Watts… the kind of character I would have liked to encounter in Canadian History classes in public school. Here’s what people had to say about her:
More post-show feedback continued in this vein, with suggestions that Jim really is the anchor of our show. To me, this is one of the most successful aspects of this workshop because we were fascinated by Jim while developing Tim Buck 2 when this show started at the Fringe, but she really didn’t emerge as a centrepiece in that iteration of the project.
What Now?
So, what do we do when half of our audience tells us they hate something about our show, while the other half says, “it was our favourite part”? One commenter may have addressed the challenge of conflicting advice best:
“If I start commenting on Linux, [an open source, collaboratively developed operating system] no one is going to listen, for very good reasons (I don’t know much about code.) So, how, in this world of aesthetic and political difference, can you tell […] who to listen to – who shares any values.”
This question of “who to listen to” is a great one, and will be on our minds as we dig deeper into all of the feedback. Which of the responses can we add to our “source code” to enhance our work, and which responses will “crash” it? As we continue in our efforts to be “porous” with our audience, please stay tuned for Part 2 where we discuss our own responses to the feedback, and where Section 98 is headed.
Laura Mennell plays the mysterious Mila Brook in The Electric Company's Tear The Curtain. Photo by Brian Johnson.
by Michael Wheeler
One of the unconventional things about this residency is that unlike a traditional curriculum that would begin with basic fundamentals and conclude with something grand and complicated, I am taking the best opportunities I can get when they are available. This approach led me to begin my training program by participating in the first half of a 3-week film shoot for The Electric Company’s newest production – Tear The Curtain, commissioned by The Arts Club Theatre Company to open at The Stanley Theatre in Vancouver in early September 2010.
This meant my cross-Canada study of the relationship between direction and design in theatre began with a crash course in how to direct a film. It took me a couple of days on set, and a couple of reads of the integrated script (which overall is formatted as a film not theatre script), to fully appreciate the magnitude and ambition of what I had gotten myself into.
The story operates on two levels: Plot-wise it is a film-noir styled story set in a semi-fictional Vancouver full of gangsters, tycoons, a secret cell of revolutionaries and double-crossing vixens. Fundamentally it is a narrative that will entertain. Thematically, it attempts something very complex and intricate by centring the plot around an embittered theatre critic in an era where film is becoming the dominant medium. The lead character is both fighting this shift, in part to keep his livelihood, and searching for the reason he was so enamoured with theatre to begin with.
Jonathon Young plays critic Alex Braithewaite. Photo by Brian Johnson.
This is not just an intellectual existential problem for the lead character to be considered by an audience. The show is a combination of both mediums. The Stanley Theatre – where the show will premiere – was once a movie theatre that has been transformed into a theatre theatre. All of the filmed sequences have been shot with in the Stanley Theatre and many of the shots are from the audience’s POV of the stage – or acknowledge in some way when that they were shot in the same room where the audience will experience the performance. Experientially – the line between film and theatre as mediums will be blurred as the same actors from the filmed portions will also tell the story through live scenes.
Still with me? Also, all of this was happening in the heart of Vancouver in the middle of the Olympics. Not too many of the huge crew of people that were working three weeks of consecutive 12hr days seemed all that aware of snowboard cross, curling or the luge – even though the Olympic village was around the corner. We had important things to do! (Not entirely true: Managing Producer Nathan Medd scored last minute tickets with his family to the Opening Ceremonies and came back with some impressive photos on his iPhone.)
My role was to observe – and occasionally be a sounding board for – director Kim Collier as she tore through an ambitious and demanding shooting schedule. Although I have been on film sets before, I have never considered each day and shot, from a director’s perspective, as such the learning curve was both steep and fascinating. One of my first realizations was that a production that used a large number of professionally filmed segments like this had only recently been made possible, or at least economically feasible, by new technology. The film sections are not actually shot on film; a RED One high-res camera was used. This is considerably cheaper than shooting on film and allows all of the information to be stored digitally and viewed immediately.
This technology is not flawless. RED One cameras are a little too good – they can show too much detail and not have the pleasant hues that come from shooting on film. To combat this effect – and to contribute to a film noir-ish feel throughout, there was a single person whose only job was to keep a thin mist of haze circulating whenever camera was rolling. Keeping this haze perpetual and consistent was a major battle throughout each day, but was key to both the atmosphere and continuity of the material being filmed.
Kim Collier (foreground right) directs while a Red One camera is operated by a RoboCop-like suit wearing cameraman. Photo by Tim Matheson.
A second element that jumped out at me as a theatre director learning to direct film was how little time there is for experimentation or mistakes. In theatre I think our creative process often leads us to take time feeling our way into things, trying different approaches, and sometimes using good ol’ trial and error. This is not even remotely a possibility on a film shoot – not only do you have to know exactly what shot you want ahead of time, but exactly what you want from each of your actors and your DP for each individual shot well ahead of time. Certainly you can make adjustments on the fly and always keep your eyes open for discoveries and opportunities – but time is money and a professional film crew is a lot of people’s time.
The biggest day of the shoot was my last one, when a huge number of extras were used to create the crowd shots both of the audience filling the theatre and of a party in that occurs in the lobby of the theatre. On that day over seventy volunteer actors (myself included) showed up at 8am on a Saturday to be dressed in high fashion of the 1930s and strike a number of sophisticated poses and while feigning conversation throughout the day. Most ingenious use of the RED One Camera occurred at the end of this day when the seventy actors were shuffled to completely fill small sections of the 600ish seats the theatre with the camera “locked down”. Later in the editing room these multiple iterations of ourselves will become citizens of the same time and space filling the entire audience in a single shot.
I am already looking forward to returning to Vancouver to join the theatre portion of rehearsals for Tear The Curtain leading up to an early September opening night. The whole company has been awfully nice to a guy from Toronto whom they’d never met before, and it was awesome to be included in this ambitious process. I’m looking forwards to learning the process by which The Electric Company and Director Kim Collier integrate the filmed and live materials both in the rehearsal hall and in tech at The Stanley Theatre. Next post – Michael Healey’s Courageous arrives at The Citadel Theatre in Edmonton.
The Africa Trilogycast member Muoi Nene has released a three-part series on the experience of being an African Canadian involved in the many of the early development workshops of two of the three plays in the Trilogy.
His thoughts on the creation process of both Shine Your Eye and Glo, what he learned, what he contributed, the ideas and concepts that in his mind have informed the production, and his hopes for the Trilogy can all be found below on The Africa Trilogy – Online Media Site:
Jessica Huras is the founder of Heart in Hand Theatre. She will be performing in the company’s premiere production of Claudia Dey’s Trout Stanley, opening at Bread & Circus April 22, 2010.
The Movement Project’sHow We Forgot Hereis an interdisciplinary performance about memory and migration that asks a lot of questions. How did we get here? Where are our ancestors from? What have we forgotten along the way?
Two days before opening, members of the cast answered one more question:
WHY DON’T YOU GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM?
Marika Schwandt: I’d love to! First, someone will need to be selected to choose the place that I’ll be going. Then they will need to make an arbitrary decision about where this place is. Then they will need to tell me.
Malinda Francis (docuvixen): But where am I from? Do I go back to Barbados that i grew up for part of my childhood, which ironically is the only place I am seen as Canadian. I am back in Toronto, why don’t I go back where I came from, Holland where my mother is from,…I wanted to go there for a bit but status is not possible without my mother… Where you are from is relative? Is it where your exist in the moment or, where your ancestors are from? Through my interactions with various Diasporic communities. I see that hope of recognition, that familiarity, they see bit of home. And are you from…? So I would re-ask, How do you think, I was able to be born here?
Gein Wong: Sure, can I charge my plane ticket on your credit card?
Ryan Symington:I don’t go back because I don’t know where I am from. I am adopted. I know I was born in Victoria, British Columbia and that my birth mother decided to give me up before I was even born. I was never raised on Vancouver Island because my adoptive parents were from the mainland. I have no real connection to Victoria but during my childhood, whenever I went to the island for swimming competitions or for leisurely visits, there would be a sense of familiarity and calm that wash over me. I always found great comfort while sitting on the deck of the ferries, travelling through the passageways of the islands. Over the past year, something has sparked my interest and I have had this overwhelming desire to search out my real mother and father. The only purpose of doing that is to see what my face really looks like. Everytime I look at myself in the mirror, I have trouble identifying with the image that I see. It’s a bizarre experience that is becoming even stranger as I get older.
Eva-Rose Tabobondung:I would, if I could go back in time and put myself back into my mother’s womb, and she in her’s and she in her’s and she in her’s…. until the beginning of existence. Maybe I would be myself in another life time before this time. But maybe not. Maybe I’d just be happy going back to the land that I came from where my ancestors lived freely off the land and in harmony with each other.
How We Forgot Here March 22 – 28, 2010 $15 in advance at The Toronto Women’s Bookstore, $20 at the door.
Showtimes and full info available here.
In the past while we’ve received a number of emails with some very reasonable questions. They usually breakdown into three categories. We’ve never really been explicit with our answers so here we go:
1 How do you decide what companies and websites are listed in the sidebar?
If you have a website that is about theatre, just send a quick email to the info account at the top right of the site. State the name, URL and category it belongs in and we’ll throw it up there.
2 How can I promote my show on your website?
There are two ways to do this: Variations on Theatre was started to avoid praxistheatre.com becoming a clearinghouse for listings and press releases. If you have a show coming up you would like to promote, this is the most straightforward route. Make sure you give at least 2 weeks notice that you would like to do it and send in your Variation at least a week before it should go up.
The other option is to pitch something creative, like when Christine Horne proposed her faux-bitter interview with Susan Coyne. Like we would say no to something like that!
3 How can I write something for your website?
Send an email with a couple samples of your writing and a paragraph that addresses what you think is important about theatre, and what you hope it will evolve into in the next thirty years. We will proceed from there. We don’t pay (yet). When/if we do though, we’ll be paying the people that wrote for free first.
“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.”
Jordan is the founder of Suburban Beast, a company dedicated to the creation of ‘documentary-performance’. 
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