Dense Vancouver and Other Sights

Mayor Robertson had an op-ed in today's Vancouver Sun responding to the community push back against the city's development and densification plans for Marpole (lane-way housing), Commercial Drive (high-rise towers), and the Downtown Eastside (finding the right mix of social and market housing).

The precedent for such civic action was established in Mount Pleasant last year in response to the controversial Rize development plans at the nexus of East Broadway, Kingsway and Main Streets, which originally included a 22-storey residential tower (the plans have since been revamped, although still not to the satisfaction of most in the neighbourhood). This week the non-profit artist project management and curatorial collective Other Sights is partnering with The Western Front and the artist-run centre 221A to present an open research studio at Kingsgate Mall on possible futures for this iconic triangle of the city. Among other things, folks are invited to drop by between 11 am and 7 pm (5 pm on Sunday) to comment on and contribute to an evolving aerial model of the area.

Would that the mayor find time to visit the mall. But perhaps he's too busy packing up house in preparation for his move to Kits, where very soon he can likely enjoy a leisurely and largely car-free bike ride to Chip Wilson's palazzo.

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Artist Studios and Bike Lanes

Usually I treat with skepticism and a healthy dose of irony the self-congratulatory email blasts that arrive in my in-box from Vision Vancouver on a regular basis extolling the party's latest triumph at City Hall. These announcements often seem to me to be platitudinous wish fulfillment masquerading as planning and policy (the greenest city by 2020 anyone?). (I don't think I've been a paid-up member of the party since Robertson's inaugural mayoral run, but that of course hasn't meant that they've tossed my email address.)

Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened up my email yesterday to find not a missive from the mayor reflecting with shame (or nostalgia, for that matter) on last year's Stanley Cup riots (as most media outlets in the city have been doing this past week), but announcing progressive new measures (not least in terms of making available new affordable studio space) for Vancouver's artists. Good news for a city that has the highest concentration of artists in Canada. Details of the announcement can be found here.

What's more, this came on top of news that the Vision-dominated Council had approved making permanent the separated bike lanes along Dunsmuir and Hornby, as well as introducing a public bike share program like those in Toronto and Montreal and other major cities around the world.

Not a bad week's work, and for once my applause is genuine.

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More Arts Deaths (and some ideas for rebirth)

I was distressed to read in today's Globe and Mail that the annual Siminovitch Prize in theatre, awarded on a rotating basis to the best playwrights, directors, and designers in this country, and at $100,000 won of the richest arts awards in this country, is coming to an end after this year's competition.

This comes on the heels of Marsha Lederman's article in yesterday's Globe about the increasingly bleak cultural landscape here in Vancouver, what with the Playhouse's recent demise being followed by news of the imminent shuttering of the historic Ridge Cinema, an exodus of talent from the region in the performing arts generally, and, just today, the announcement that Book Warehouse, one of the last independent chains in the city, and a strong supporter of the arts, would be closing operations after 32 years in business.

And it's not like we can look to the provincial government for support, with Minister for Community, Sport, and Cultural Development Ida Chong's recent remarks on the Playhouse's demise indicative of the art-as-afterthought, sink-or-swim mentality of the BC Liberals to culture generally. And is an appeal to the robocalling Tories in Ottawa is even an option?

That leaves the city. And while it may be, as Heather Deal notes in the same Georgia Straight item above where Chong is quoted, that there can be no more bailout money for the Playhouse, if Gregor Robertson's Vision council is serious about making Vancouver the most sustainable city in the world, then part of their plan has to include a comprehensive cultural strategy for the city.

As part of that plan, they should look at the precinct around the civic theatres on Hamilton Street, especially if the Vancouver Art Gallery does indeed move to Lardwell Park. Presently the Queen E and Playhouse are just containers for the art presented on their respective stages, and the area adjacent them is a dead zone (except for the masses of people crossing the viaduct to get to Rogers Arena for the Canucks games). This needn't be the case, even when the theatres themselves are dark. The plaza outside the Queen E is a wonderful space that is woefully underused. Why isn't the restaurant that used to be there operating, preferably with a star chef at the helm? With the Library Plaza and CBC studios nearby, Gastown and SFU Woodward's mere blocks away, and a resited VAG potentially in the offing, the whole area could become a cultural hub of the sort that works so well in Melbourne, with its performing arts precinct in Southbank (taking a page from that other Southbank, in London) and galleries and civic plazas in nearby Federation Square.

Melbourne is often cited alongside Vancouver as one of the most livable cities in the world. In addition to tackling the affordability and housing issues that will surely threaten to displace us from that list in the very near future, folks at city hall would do well to look at the cultural planning and infrastructure that has gone into making Melbourne a hotbed of artistic production and export. And I'm not just saying this because I'm a huge fan of Chunky Move.

Recommended reading on this front for Mayor Robertson and Councillor Deal is Jon Hawkes' book The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: Culture's Essential Role in Public Planning (2001). Needless to say, Hawkes is from Melbourne.

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The New Old City Hall

Not the municipal election results I was hoping for, but it certainly could have been worse given the incredibly negative campaign run by Suzanne Anton and the NPA.

I held my nose and voted for Gregor, of course, despite my disappointment in both his stance on the Occupy Vancouver protestors and his hiding behind Penny Ballem in seeking the injunction to remove them. I also would have preferred a more diverse Council and am sad that neither COPE's Ellen Woodsworth nor Sandy Garossino was elected. Alongside the NPA's Elizabeth Ball, Garossino would have been a powerful independent voice for the arts. I guess if someone had to squeak by Woodsworth for the last Council seat, I'm glad it was Adrienne Carr. It will be good to have her sitting opposite former compatriot Andrea Reimer in holding Vision's development plans accountable to its "green" mandate.

We'll see what happens over the next three years.

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Political Roundup

If the chill in the air this September 1st is any indication, local municipal and provincial politics this fall should be anything but warm and fuzzy. At the very least recent news on both fronts merits some snide commentary.

First off comes today's report that Premier Christy Clark has paused amid her jam-packed schedule of photo-ops and put the brakes on the idea of a fall election. No doubt even she had to understand the message that was sent with the HST referendum results, and so now it looks like we won't be going to the polls until May 2013, just after the re-introduction of the PST. Time enough, one would think, for Clark to actually do some governing. Time enough, as well, for Clark, in so doing, to sink herself and her party--especially if Adrian Dix and the NDP can ride the wave of orange love in the wake of Jack Layton's funeral.

Also in the papers today was a suggestion that the soon-to-be-released report on the Stanley Cup riots (co-authored, you will remember, by ex-VANOC chief John Furlong) will cast some negative light on our shiny happy Mayor Robertson. Combined with news that the NPA has hired the same team that got Rob Ford elected in Toronto, this means we might actually have a horse-race for the mayorship of Vancouver this November. Now all we need is for Robertson to declare himself a candidate for the federal NDP leadership... Does the lad speak French, I wonder?

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Incongruity

We've been talking a lot about the importance of incongruity as a structuring principle of comedy in one of my classes this summer. Here are a few of the political incongruities that gave me a chuckle this past weekend:

1. Just in time for the 42nd edition of New York City's Pride Parade yesterday (at which a chastened Tracy Morgan served as honorary marshall--kidding!), Governor Cuomo signed a bill on Friday making New York the sixth state in the US (plus the District of Columbia) legalizing same-sex marriage. As the lead article in Sunday's New York Times pointed out, "the biggest and most influential donors to the New York campaign were Republicans." But as the paper's former restaurant critic Frank Bruni put it elsewhere in a very personal (and movingly written) op-ed piece--with what I take to be only the slightest whiff of irony--perhaps the greater incongruity is that this is a victory that the LGBT community is celebrating in the first place: "Why such widespread backing, from such surprising quarters? One major reason is that the wish and push to be married cast gay men and lesbians in the most benign, conservative light imaginable, not as enemies of tradition but as aspirants to it. In the quest for integration and validation, saying “I do” to “I do” is much more effective — not to mention more reflective of the way most gay people live — than strutting in leather on a parade float. We’re not trying to undermine the institution of marriage, a task ably handled by the likes of Tiger Woods, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards and too many other onetime role models to mention. We’re paying it an enormous compliment."

2. Meanwhile, here at home, after nearly a year investigating across party lines allegations of Canadian troops' complicity in detainee torture in Afghanistan, Stephen Harper's government has released thousands more pages of transcripts. Once again, most of the information on those pages is blacked out. Word is that some of it has to do with asbestos being used to build the prisons where the alleged torture took place.

3. In Saturday's Globe and Mail, Mayor Gregor Robertson admitted that he didn't know how many police were on the streets the night of the the Stanley Cup riots, and that Police Chief Jim Chu wouldn't tell him. Apparently last year's release of the same information was a "mistake" and that as Chair of the Police Board, the mayor has no input into operations, only for "police and budget." But wouldn't both of those things--personnel and money--fall into the category of operations in most organizations? At least Robertson agrees with Premier Clark that those responsible for the worst of the mayhem should be duly punished. As the above photo details, they are starting with bad spellers.

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Blindness

I will cringe through every minute of the federal leaders' debate this evening in advance of casting my ballot on May 2nd, even though I agree with Elizabeth May that the broadcast consortium's vexation over competition from NHL hockey is rather rich in light of their cavalier banning of her from the proceedings. After the federal election (the predicted outcome of which I truly fear), I will look wearily ahead to this summer's provincial referendum on the HST (five whole weeks, apparently, to tick off YES or NO to that one). Depending on those results, we may soon be heading to the polls in BC, though Christy Clark had better win a byelection first (she's just confirmed she'll seek Campbell's Point Grey seat, but not when).

But it's this November's municipal elections that I'm already most preoccupied with. Who to vote for now that it seems Mayor Robertson and Vision Vancouver have definitively lost their way, bowing at every level, it would seem, to unseen elites rather than truly representing the citizens who elected them in the first place? I cite as evidence the following:

1. The Olympic Village Boondoggle: According to Gary Mason, in today's Globe, the $40-50 million Vancouver taxpayers are now predicted to be on the hook for re Millennium's default on its loan from the city (and which last week City Hall claimed was down sharply from the predicted $150 million plus we were potentially looking at before the complex went into receivership and a rebranding campaign was launched to sell the remaining condos) is actually more like $230 million once the additional $180 million Millennium has failed to pay back for the land is factored into the equation. I realize the previous administration got us into this mess, but I agree with Mason (of whom I am not normally a fan, and who in general has been a rabid Olympics boosterer) that being less than fiscally honest with residents is repugnant.

All of this raises the question of why Olympic host cities are required to build such facilities in the first place--most always the biggest single expense, and generally leaving a morass of debt and recrimination after the event. Can't the athletes be put up in hotels, or billeted with families? Or erect temporary structures--tents, anyone?--that can be easily removed or converted into container-type social housing after the fact. Surely there has to be a better solution than burdening cities around the world with similar problem buildings on redeveloped land that will be difficult to flog in any market, let alone one following a global recession.

2. The Right to Protest: Word in today's paper that Robertson has asked that a proposed bylaw banning the erection of temporary structures as part of civic protests be revisited and reworked does little to reassure one that this administration hasn't in fact been taking direction from the Chinese government--and specifically on the matter of the Falun Gong protesters whose daily vigil outside the Chinese consulate on Granville Street the proposed bylaw seems expressly designed to target. What a spectacular abrogation of the basic principles of civic democracy! It's enough to make one want to reconsider CSIS Director Robert Fadden's remarks last year regarding Chinese influence over Canadian municipal elected officials.

3. Casinos: I am also not sanguine about today's announcement from Paragon, the BC Place developer that wants to build a major new casino adjacent the sports complex, that it has found a partner in Marriott for the hotel that is also to be part of the project. This is just the sort of 5-star endorsement that makes this Council start seeing dollar signs. Despite the overwhelming community--and police--opposition to the development, I predict that a negative vote next Tuesday is far from assured.

Instead of bread and circuses, why not think more creatively about arts and culture? After tentatively endorsing the Vancouver Art Gallery's move to Larwill Park, Council has been deafeningly silent on Bing Thom's inspired proposal for a new recital hall and performing arts complex at the VAG's current site.

4. Fireworks: More bread and circuses. A final item that caught my attention in today's press was word that the infernal Celebration of Light, the annual fireworks competition held very summer off English Bay, has been given new financial legs, thanks in part to money and in-kind sponsorships from the City. Why? Most West End residents hate the event; it provides license to homophobic louts from the suburbs to get drunk and go looking to bash some fags; and as far as I can see it's largely an empty and pointless spectacle.

Much like the past three years at City Hall.

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PuSh's Tidal Launch

It sure was a swell party last night at Club 560, where the 7th annual PuSh International Performing Arts Festival was launched at a Gala event also inaugurating the official celebrations of the 125th anniversary of Vancouver's incorporation as a city. Lots of people, great buzz, loads of media coverage (courtesy of CTV and others), and of course our distinguished (and so, so pretty) Mayor, who among other things, declared Chinatown the newest hip neighbourhood.

PuSh got lots of plugging from Board President Max Wyman, looking as distinguished as ever, and of course from Executive Director Norman Armour, whose inspired remarks about this year's PuSh theme of "cityness" let everyone know whose idea this dual launch really was.

I could only stay for the first part of the ceremonies, but that was long enough to catch Veda Hille leading her Vancouver Complaints Choir in a rousing and hilarious paean to all that could be better about our city--as well as all that is good, but about which we still like to kvetch. Catch Veda and gang at Club PuSh at Performance Works on Granville Island on January 29th at 8 pm, where full-length show Happy Birthday Teenage City will be unveiled.

After the speeches and a few canapes, it was over to Water Street, between Abbott and Carrell, for a tech preview of La Marea (The Tide), the site-specific collaboration between local company Boca del Lupo and Argentinian writer and director Mario Pensotti. La Marea tells nine different stories concurrently in 10 minute cycles that repeat over the course of two hours every evening between 7 and 9 pm from tonight through this Saturday. Spectators can come and go at their leisure, moving from scenes performed in various storefronts, in an apartment window, outdoors on two corners and, in one case, in the middle of the street. The characters (all acted by students from SFU, UBC, and Langara's Studio 58), in pairs and occasionally alone, are working through mini-dramas involving various states and stages of connection, with couples just getting together, and others about to break up, and still others fantasizing about what wasn't or what will be said in relationships that have already dissolved or are as yet to be imagined. In all cases, this is communicated to the spectator through projected subtitles, and part of the drama of the piece is not just piecing together the connections between the various scenes, but also in establishing the relationship between text and embodiment in terms of each "performance."

Then, too, there is the site of the performance. While the street has been closed off to traffic during each night's performance, pedestrians and members of the community still wander the sidewalks, and one's encounters with them can be just as interesting and powerful. Last night, for example, I was given a number of condoms from a local women's support network, and was also serenaded by a Scotsman named George, who sang a couple of traditional Irish (!) ballads.

Talk about cityness! A fantastic beginning to what promises to be a fabulous PuSh Festival.

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In Brief, Take 2

An interesting phone call the other day from the Vancouver Playhouse. A volunteer was following up on our attendance at Brief Encounter, no doubt wanting us to spread the word about its manifold charms to other potential audience members. When I told her we left at intermission there was a pause, a curt thank you, and then a click. Guess we won't be hearing back from them again soon--although I am going to be giving the company one more chance this season with Melissa Gibson's This in January. I read the New York Times rave when it played Off-Broadway; and this production will star Megan Follows, who bowled me over in an otherwise hit-and-miss revival of Cloud Nine in Toronto last February.

Speaking of phone calls from performing arts organizations, kudos to Ballet BC for their alacritous and gracious stewardship etiquette in response to a recent donation I made. I had phoned up their box office to place an order for two mini-pack subscriptions to the remainder of the season after receiving an email in my inbox about this short term offer. This deal is a very smart marketing move on the part of Artistic Director Emily Molnar and Executive Director Jay Rankin, as it allows them to capitalize on the success of their season-opening November program (which I had to miss) as well as the added Christmas cross-marketing of their Nutcracker offering. Equally smart is having box office staff (I was served by the most capable Ashley) ask you at the time of purchase whether you would also like to make a tax-deductible donation to the company. As I'm learning more and more at PuSh, nine times out of ten all you have to do to get people to give to something they believe in is ask. Such was the case with me, and I appreciated the follow-up phone call the next day from Development Manager Roger Kayo thanking me for my donation.

On the subject of arts funding, I note that George Abbott is alone among the declared candidates to replace Gordon Campbell as Liberal Party leader and Premier of the province in vowing to restore gaming and other monies to 2008-9 levels. Chump change should, as most expect, that harridan from talk radio, Christy Clark, win the contest. Even more depressing are the latest poll numbers, which indicate the Liberals, with Campbell on the way out, have now overtaken the Carole James-less NDP in voter popularity. Et tu, Jenny Kwan?

Other things of mildly vexatious interest: Mayor Gregor Robertson can't get through to 911 to report gang shootings in his neighbourhood, but he and his Vision-dominated Council can steamroll through, against overwhelming citizen opposition, a travesty of a plan to "re-green" Hastings Park. How expanding the PNE and Playland fits into such a mandate is beyond me.

Meanwhile VAG chief Kathleen Bartels and the City continue to be miles apart on a potential deal to find a new downtown site for the gallery. Heather Deal is quoted in the Georgia Straight as saying that the main post office depot at Georgia and Hamilton is likely to close soon, suggesting that as a possible alternate site to Larwell Park, which Bartels and the VAG Board covet. Hell, yes!! It's a wonderful, vast modernist building, perfectly situated across from the Queen E and the Playhouse, with no doubt heaps of underground storage space, and square footage up the whazoo for the right architect to go crazy with. But Ms. Bartels doesn't seem interested, confirming that she wants a new signature building to cement her legacy as Director rather than finding the right solution to showcase the collection.

Finally, I was amused by the recent report from Canada's Officer of Official Languages, Graham Fraser, criticizing the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics for their inadequate use of French. Well, duh! Anyone watching on TV could have figured that out. Did we really need a months-long, and no doubt expensive, report to tell us what we already know? I mean the ceremonies themselves were overseen by an Australian; and VANOC CEO John Furlong is a unilingual Irishman. Furlong, by the way, dismissed the report, noting that 40 odd complaints from peeved Francophones couldn't compare with the thousands upon thousands of congratulations VANOC received on the ceremonies. What nobody seems to realize in all of this is how outdated is the notion of linguistic nationalism. It's been a tenuous reason for holding the country together at the best of times, and in our polyglot 21st-century, transnational world, it just not signify at all.

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A Miscellany

In the spirit of gearing up for the holiday season, here is a miscellany of thoughts based on recent local and global headlines that have grabbed my attention:

1. “I wonder if Carla Bruni can get me a walk-on in Woody Allen’s new film?”/ “I bet Nelson Mandela will be pissed.”/ “What’s everyone so worked up about? It’s not like I head-butted anyone.”: Possible thoughts running through French football captain Thierry Henry’s head following revelations he committed a handball violation in advance of the winning goal in a World Cup qualifying match with Ireland.

2. With friends like these…: Poor Richard Colvin—nothing like going from a respected high-level diplomat to a government pariah overnight. PM Harper and his various minions were lining up to outdo each other in heaping scorn on the former point man in Afghanistan for testifying before a parliamentary committee that his emails warning that Taliban detainees transferred from Canadian to Afghan custody faced likely torture were ignored. And how would we know anyway, given the mostly blacked-out versions of those emails that have been provided to the committee, and to the media? (Actually, the resurfacing of the detainee issue, coming on the heels of Henry's World Cup imbroglio, reminded me a lot of my chapter on David Beckham and Tony Kushner in my forthcoming book with Manchester UP. I'd say more about how, exactly, I connect football with Afghanistan in the context of my larger argument about performance, place, and politics in the book, but I'd rather you buy a copy instead! It's out at the beginning of February, but you can pre-order--apologies for the exorbitant UK academic pricing--here.)

3. “Okay, I’ll go. But I’m not going to have fun, and I’m not going to talk to anyone.”: Stephen Harper commits to attending upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen after Barack Obama and China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, announce they’re going. Unlike Obama and Wen, however, Harper will arrive with no concrete pledge from Canada to cut carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. One doesn’t hold out much hope for some sort of universally ratified post-Kyoto protocol emerging from the Copenhagen meetings, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Harper will at least be shamed into coming on side with Obama. (As a side note to this item, one wonders if our famously grumpy PM is even more out of sorts these days because of the rumours swirling that motorcycle-riding wife Laureen may be about to dump him for her RCMP boy-toy. They have not been traveling together recently, and she has been spotted sans wedding ring in several recent photos…)

4. What Mayor Gregor giveth with one hand, he taketh away with the other: Okay, so City Hall has backed down on its ridiculous proposal regarding the ratio of food and alcohol pricing in Vancouver restaurants. And it has also amended its anti-Olympic sign bylaw to apply only to commercial properties. But the same municipal government that is spending feverishly to gussy up the city in advance of the Olympics is also slashing public library budgets (forcing several branches to slash hours and one perhaps to close permanently), and closing popular amenities like the petting farm in Stanley Park and the Bloedel Conservatory atop Queen Elizabeth Park. Meanwhile, the nearby Little Mountain social housing community is officially no more, razed by bulldozers (with a little help from a freak blaze that erupted one afternoon) this past month. What happens next is anyone’s guess because BC Housing, the provincial agency mandated to ensure a provision of replacement subsidized housing in the redevelopment of the site, claims that a confidential non-disclosure agreement prevents it from releasing details of the contract of purchase and sale that is being negotiated with private partner Holborn Properties. With the official Olympic curling venue only a block away, and all available space around Nat Bailey Stadium already spoken for, who says that they can’t—at least in the short-term, pave paradise and put up a parking lot?

5. Yeah, but only until the end of March: My reaction upon reading that VANOC CEO John Furlong topped the list of Vancouver magazine’s Power 50 issue.

6. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet: I was sorry I couldn’t get to the Wrecking Ball event at the Vogue on Monday (work and life conspired to intervene). But I was please to hear—courtesy PuSh Managing Director Minna Schendlinger at a Board retreat last weekend—that Kevin Krueger had received so many emails protesting the cuts to arts and culture in the province, that his ministry account had recently crashed. Apparently his staff has quietly put out the word, via the Alliance for Arts and Culture, asking members of the community to stop sending emails, that the message has been heard. Of course we’ve all interpreted this as license to send even more!

That’s it for now. Back next month (which is Tuesday!) with what I hope will be more performance reviews. The new Murakami play; Headlines Theatre’s After homelessness…; EDAM’s new program; MachineNoisy at the Dance Centre: all things I want to see.

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100 Days/14 Shows

A short post long on numbers for those into keeping count (and/or accounts)...

This past Wednesday marked the 100-day point till the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics here in Vancouver. The occasion coincided with a new role for VANOC: strike-breakers. That's right, the provincial government is preparing back-to-work legislation for striking paramedics in the province, in part based on a document forwarded by Olympics organizers stating that in the wake of a likely escalation of the H1N1 pandemic, the government would either have to put an end to the strike or ensure that some contingency plan was in place should emergency health care workers potentially still be off the job come February.

Needless to say, this wasn't being played up in various symbolic ceremonies around the city celebrating the countdown event. Among those ceremonies, perhaps none was more weighted with significance than Mayor Gregor Robertson handing over the keys to the False Creek Athletes Village to VANOC CEO John Furlong. Media and invited guests were treated to a tour of of the facilities, and the rhetoric surrounding the whole event was decidedly more upbeat, conciliatory, and even congratulatory than the doom and gloom scenarios painted a year ago by the newly elected Vision Vancouver City Council, who upon examining the books, forecast a billion dollar deficit for the Village that taxpayers were potentially on the hook for. Now, it seems, things are looking up, with condo king (and contemporary art collector) Bob Rennie on hand to assure everyone that post-Olympics sales in the development were looking golden.

Today, however, we learn that the overall economic benefits of the Olympics for the 2003-2008 period have been much less than predicted by Games organizers and government politicians alike. As Vaughan Palmer notes in his Vancouver Sun column today, parsing the numbers outlined in the 4-part report on Olympics impacts prepared by PriceWaterhouseCooper, you eventually discover that the mega-event boosted both the provincial GDP and job creation by, respectively, one-tenth of one percent.

Whooeee, baby! Let's not spend it all in one place--like on wage increases for those paramedics, for example, or, heaven forfend, on arts and culture!

Arts and culture in this city was in fact precisely what I and 100+ other people were celebrating yesterday at the VanCity Theatre on Seymour Street, as we gathered there to witness the launch of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival's 2010 line-up. Full disclosure: while I was there as a supporter and fan, I also attended in my official capacity as a new PuSh Society board member, a role I am very excited about.

But just now I'm even more excited about the program Executive Director Norman Armour and his talented team of colleagues (including new Associate Producer Dani Fecko) have assembled for this coming January and February: 14 shows totaling 93 performances over 18 days at 11 different venues across the city, and featuring artists who hail from 12 different cities and 6 different countries working in at least 6 related disciplines (theatre, dance, music, film and video, installation, and multi-media). How about them numbers?

Or how about these, cited by Norman in his program guide message, and repeated at yesterday's event: "BC's arts, culture and heritage industries generate 80,000 jobs in the creative sector and $5.2 billion of annual revenue." In strictly monetary terms, then, art is a good investment, and would that Liberal politicians who've been anticipating windfalls from the Olympics that have yet to materialize pay closer attention to the wealth of creative resources we have immediately to hand.

Then, too, as those of us who listened yesterday to an excerpt from Stefan Smulovitz and Eye of Newt's new PuSh-commissioned score, to accompany a January 28th screening of Carl Dreyer's classic 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc at Christ Church Cathedral, were undoubtedly thinking at one point or another, there all sorts of other ways (aesthetic, social, political, ethical) that art's value far exceeds one-tenth of one percent.

The Festival officially launches on January 20th with a performance of Jérôme Bel's The Show Must Go On at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU Woodward's. The first chance to get a glimpse of this amazing new venue (even before Robert Lepage touches down in it with The Blue Dragon later in February), the show itself promises to be truly "spectacular": in its showcasing of the potential for emancipated response in live performance; and in its use of the talents of 20 dynamic local performers, some professional dancers and actors (Noam Gagnon, Billy Marchenski, Adrienne Wong), some not, or no longer (Jim Green, Max Wyman). Definitely not to be missed.

PuSh passes are now on sale. Visit the Festival website for purchase details, and for descriptions of all the shows. Or pick up a free program guide at any JJ Bean location across the city. For information on how you can become a member of PuSh's new Patron's Circle (and reap fantastic benefits in the process), contact our Fundraising Manager extraordinaire, Bobbi Parker at 604-605-8285 or bobbi@pushfestival.ca.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by...

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Gregor's First 100 Days

Well, he may not have scored a sit-down with Jay Leno, but Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson did at least reach the 100-day mark before Obama. Here's the update he and his Vision Vancouver team put out yesterday on their progress so far:

"We have just passed the 100-day mark since being sworn in to City Hall. These first few months have been as challenging as they’ve been productive. Despite the hurdles thrown at us, we’ve demonstrated that a Mayor and Council who are prepared to show leadership can get things done. Today, I would like to give you a brief report on what we’ve accomplished since taking office in December.

The Homelessness Crisis

Since taking power, Vision has hit the ground running. On our first day in office, we created the Homeless Emergency Action Team. After one week, we were able to secure funding from the Province and the Streetohome Foundation for five new emergency shelters. Over the last 100 days, these shelters have provided a safe and secure place to sleep for up to 500 people a night. Earlier this month, I was also pleased to announce that we’ve secured funding from the provincial government to keep the shelters open for another three months.

Both the VPD and the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association can attest to the positive impact the HEAT shelters have had on reducing mental health calls, aggressive panhandling, and street disorder. The HEAT shelters are working.

The Olympic Village

Dealing with the Olympic Village mess left by the previous NPA administration has been one of the toughest problems we’ve faced. Nevertheless, I’m proud to say that your Vision team has risen to the challenge. As promised, we held an open, public council meeting to reveal the financial situation of the Olympic Village. We were up front with the people of Vancouver about the amount of financial risk the city was exposed to. We hired KPMG to provide an external review of the Olympic Village finances.

Thanks to the quick work of the Provincial Government and the Official Opposition, the City was granted the tools necessary to borrow money to finish the project. The new financing deal we’ve negotiated will save the City roughly $90 million in interest payments. We’re now working hard to make sure the Olympic Village stays on track and is done on time.

Public Safety

Vancouver, as Police Chief Jim Chu said earlier this month, is in the midst of a brutal gang war. The brazen nature of the recent gang shootings and the complete disregard for human life are unacceptable. Gangs do not care about municipal boundaries and we need a strong regional response to deal with them. Chief Chu and I met with the Prime Minister several weeks ago, and we made the case for more police officers throughout Metro Vancouver. Our city is doing its share in terms of funding our police. To fight gangs across the region, we need other municipalities to do the same.

Managing Your Money

The recent economic downturn has put a major strain on the City’s finances. As a Council, we’ve already taken bold steps to cut costs. Since December, we’ve cut $42 million from the City’s budget while maintaining services. We cancelled the expansion of the controversial Downtown Ambassadors program and implemented a hiring freeze. We’re working hard to keep taxes down in the next City budget.

Greening Your City

Vision has pledged to make Vancouver the greenest city in the world. To do this, we’ve reached out to ‘green’ business and sustainability leaders and formed the Greenest City Action Team (GCAT).Whether it’s expanding car-free days or community gardens, we’re making progress, with more to come. GCAT will be working to tackle climate change, increase sustainable transportation, and create green jobs in the weeks ahead."

I'm more or less in agreement with most of this; I just wish we could get past the partisan finger-pointing at the previous administration. Don't get me wrong, I'm the first to lay much of the blame for the Athletes Village mess at the feet of the NPA and former City Manager Judy Rogers (whose severance package topped $570,000 according to yesterday's Vancouver Sun and Globe and Mail). But Robertson has inherited the fallout, and so he should just get on as best as possible in dealing with it.

On the Olympics front, I have just been approached by a group of colleagues in Urban Studies at SFU to join their group studying the outcomes of the Games on Vancouver. Very exciting, indeed, and I shall be sure to share some of our discussions with readers of this Blog.

P.

$1 Billion

That’s the total estimated costs for Olympics-related security in 2010, as finally confirmed by the federal government today. Organizers had originally budgeted one-fifth that amount. I guess this helps pay for all the helicopters that have been buzzing overhead in Vancouver during the past week as part of various “training exercises.” Nothing like going into full lockdown mode so we can all safely watch men and women hurl themselves down mountains or slap a little black disc across the ice. And so what if that means residents and business owners in the line of fire, as it were, have to put their lives and jobs on hold for two weeks or more as perimeter fencing is erected around their homes and stores? It’s all in the spirit of fun and cross-cultural bonding.

It’s exactly one year from today that the whole spectacle begins, and as you can tell I’m starting to get worked up. There are all sorts of celebratory events taking place across the city today, including a torchlight ski extravaganza on Grouse Mountain. I recommend, instead, hauling ass to the counter-torchlight parade being organized by the Olympic Resistance Network at Victory Square at 6 pm: details at www.no2010.com. This follows upon the 2nd Annual Poverty Olympics, which took place in the DTES on Monday. And a talk by Helen Lenskyj, a noted critic of the Olympics industry, on Tuesday (thanks, Myka, for the notice); I quote Lenskyj in my book, but alas I couldn’t go to her talk as I was at another event (see below).

In related news, Gary Mason reveals in today’s Globe that the city seems to have worked out a financing deal with a consortium of Canadian banks that will allow them to borrow approximately $800 million at a reduced interest rate of only 3% in order to pay back Fortress Investment and see that the troubled Athletes Village gets finished on time. This is good news, and while taxpayers are by no means in the clear yet, the situation is looking a lot better than it was several weeks ago. Kudos to Mayor Gregor for his quiet but intense negotiating on this one.

And kudos to City Council for also voting to cancel a plan to extend additional funding to the Downtown Ambassadors Program (DAP). A human rights complaint against Genesis Security, the private firm that staffs the program, and the Downtown Business Improvement Association, which will continue to pay for it in its current jurisdictional mandate, has recently gone forward at the BC Human Rights Tribunal. It alleges that the DAP’s coordinated intimidation of the street homeless population in the Downtown Eastside essentially amounts to a violation of the right to public assembly, and that in targeting some of the most marginalized populations in the city (Aboriginal people, the homeless, the addicted, and the mentally ill) is fundamentally discriminatory. (Lenskyj has noted that our DAP is directly modeled on a similar “hospitality force” put in place in Atlanta in advance of the 1996 Summer Olympics.) My friend Jamie, who actually covertly trained with Genesis as part of an art project he is working on relating to the DAP, gave a deposition as part of the complaint, and is keeping me informed about its progress. 

In the last post I reported on the rethink at City Hall about cultural programming and funding, and the possibility that we might get an independent Arts Council. Apparently opinion is divided on this issue, both among councillors and arts administrators: check out this item from The Georgia Straight. This is an issue I also will keep tracking. The same item in the GS also reports that attendance at this year’s PuSh Festival exceeded 24,000 and that Club PuSh, in particular, was a roaring success. Hurrah!

On Tuesday Alana and I went to see battery opera’s site-specific piece Lives Were Around Me. We were part of an intimate audience of three that assembled at the Alibi Room at 8 pm (we arrived earlier for a dinner, which was discounted by 10%, a nice surprise). After signing a liability waiver, we began following battery opera’s dapperly dressed David McIntosh east on Alexander Street. McIntosh was a charming, if cryptic, guide (“You can’t believe everything you hear” was the one line he kept repeating); he led us to the Firehall, on Cordova, where we were eventually met by Adrienne Wong (we would also later encounter Paul Ternes), who was more talkative, although no more understandable. This was because the text of the walking tour we were taking of the Downtown Eastside was freely adapted from James Kelman’s Translated Accounts, an abstruse, Kafkaesque novel made up of monologues detailing instances of surveillance, arrest, detention, and torture carried out in an unnamed police state. The effect was deliberately disorienting, forcing us to reexamine a part of the city that has historically been overdetermined with meaning, not to mention over-policed by various state apparatuses invested in the interpretation of that meaning. However, I think in the end the text dominated too much, and that the piece was perhaps overconceptualized dramaturgically, to the point where external intrusions—that is, the very space and community where the event was taking place—seemed to flummox our guide. 

This was most evident at the bar we entered midway through the piece. Like any bar in that part of town, it was filled with a larger-than-life cast of characters, and while a table had been reserved at the back for us (complete with a complimentary beer each) we were sharing the space with Bobby and his friend. We soon learned both just been released from jail and were interested in making conversation, and perhaps more (Bobby seemed to take a particular fancy to yours truly, displaying his tattoos, and offering up multiple hugs). But our guide, while polite with Bobby and tolerant of his interruptions to a point, kept telling him that she had to keep to her schedule, and consequently kept drawing us back to the tale she was telling. In other words, despite the piece being all about looking at/for/through evidence (we later had a tour of the Vancouver Police Museum, next to the Firehall, which was more than a little creepy), the material lives occupying the site in which the performance was taking place seemed ancillary to the abstract representation of various extreme scenarios of livability. To be sure, the juxtaposition of textual site and cited text necessarily prompted me to import other spaces as dramatic referents, some of which made me feel more, some less, vulnerable; none of which gave me any clearer sense of my bearings. But, overall, the performance seemed more interested in exploring the internal psychic excavation of various spatial archives (broadly and very sketchily defined) than it was in precipitating an external bodily encounter with the full repertoire of this particular place’s experiences (on the “archive” and the “repertoire,” see Diana Taylor). Nevertheless, in terms of the latter, the neighbourhood—and Bobby (who resurfaced, magically, at the end of the tour) especially—did not disappoint. Lives were around us. We, too, had an audience. All we had to do was look.

P.

Things Worth Celebrating

The contract for the book has arrived. Hoorah! It will appear with Manchester University Press, in their "Theatre: Theory, Practice, Performance" series either late this year or early next. Before the Olympics, at any rate, I've been assured by my editor. Greatly relieved by this, although it does increase the pressure to finish up final revisions and get the typescript off asap. If only world events would take a time-out and allow me to stop tinkering. It's terribly difficult, despite what Benjamin says, to write a history of the present.

Have I mentioned the title? It's called World Stages, Local Audiences: Essays on Performance, Place, and Politics. You've likely sensed a theme.

Our 2009 PuSh Festival passes have also arrived. We're psyched about the shows we've chosen: new work from Marie Brassard and Ronnie Burkett; dance and experimental theatre from Japan; more dance from Toronto and Cambodia; lots of whacky local work; and late-night cabaret at the new Club PuSh the organizers have set up on Granville Island. Am especially looking forward to catching a show there by dragster extraordinaire Taylor Mac.

On the horizon, there's a show at the Vogue by Antony and the Johnsons to look forward to in February, and before that the (imminent, I believe) release of their new album, The Crying Light. I got to interview Antony Hegarty as part of Susan Stryker's TransSomatechnics Conference at SFU Harbour Centre this past May--an amazing experience, and as an added bonus he serenaded conference participants with a short private solo concert.

While the news on the expected cost overruns for the Olympic Athletes' Village in False Creek gets worse by the day, Mayor Robertson and his new Vision team have so far made some bold decisions that are shaking things up for the better at City Hall. First, Robertson fired City Manager Judy Rogers, who bears a lot of responsibility for the False Creek mess, and who had amassed far too much individual power for an unelected bureaucrat. Next, Vision councillors instituted a new Homeless Emergency Action Team (HEAT) that succeeded in getting more than 300 people off the street and into shelters during the recent cold snap in the city. And, finally, there are signs that the new regime is going to be more responsive to culture and arts infrastructure, reversing a decision of the previous administration, for example, that will allow the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, undergoing a massive LEED-certified renovation of its main performance space (a former church on Venables), to also purchase and renovate a second venue nearby.

Now if only the mayor could do something about getting rid of all of this snow. To be fair, he does seem to have ordered up a rather controlled melt so far. The rains have arrived, but not in the force with which they were first predicted.

In Vancouver, that's always worth celebrating.

P

Happy Planets (sort of)

Finally, election results to celebrate. Last night, here in Vancouver, residents elected Gregor Robertson as our new mayor, and gave him a sweeping Vision/COPE majority on city council. Peter Ladner and the NPA party were crushed (only one NPA city councillor, Suzanne Anton, was reelected). There are Vision/COPE majorities on the Parks and School Boards as well. 

To explain: as a municipality, Vancouver has no ward system. Instead, voters elect a slate of candidates: up to 10 council candidates of their choice, plus the mayor. Historically, the party of choice has been the Non-Partisan Association, which, despite its name, is pretty partisan, leaning right on most issues, touting lower taxes and more crime fighting as their main issues, and fielding their candidates largely from the monied classes on the west side. The poorer, east side of the city has tended to favour the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE), usually managing to get 2 or 3 candidates elected to council every term (and occasionally as many as 5), but only once a COPE mayor: Larry Campbell, who served one term as mayor from 2002-2005 (Mike Harcourt, who ran and won as an independent candidate for mayor in the 1980s, was endorsed by COPE, but was not a member of the party). And, really, Campbell was elected less on his COPE credentials than as a result of his media charisma, his tenure as Chief Coroner of Vancouver helping to inspire a popular local television crime series called Da Vinci's Inquest. Indeed, Campbell soon found himself with a deadlocked city council when his more centrist views, and those of councillors Jim Green, Tim Stevenson, and Raymond Louie, clashed with the further left positions of the traditional COPE core. When Campbell decided not to run again in November 2005, Green et al formed a new party called Vision Vancouver, but a divided left only succeeded in handing outgoing mayor Sam Sullivan and the NPA the keys to city hall on a platter. However, this time around the left united around a slate of shared candidates, and the strategy proved overwhelmingly successful.

Of course, it helped that they had Robertson as their top-man, with his Ken-doll good looks, his experience as a provincial MP, and his successful environmentally-friendly juice company (hence the title of this post). But really the race was likely decided in the very last week, when news of a secret in-camera meeting at city hall to authorize an emergency $100-million loan to the developers building the 2010 Athletes' Village (and earmarked afterwards for luxury condos) leaked to the press. The fact that it was Ladner's copy of the notes for the meeting that was the source of the leak didn't help his fortunes, nor did his subsequent justifications on why the deal was necessary, and why it was necessary to approve it in secret. Robertson seized on the lack of transparency over taxpayers' money, and on growing fears in the city about possible fiscal shortfalls related to the Olympics in the current slumping economy, and this time the keys to the mayor's office were more or less his for the asking.

So far so good. Now the hard work begins. Like Obama, the real test will be how successfully Robertson can follow through on his promises. Starting with eliminating homelessness in the city. In his victory speech last night, he reiterated this commitment, and I and thousands of others in the city are ready to believe him. But we'll also be watching closely...

Robertson sort of referenced Obama in the opening of his speech, and it is amazing how contagious the magic of November 4th continues to be. Although for me, and many others I'm sure, the magic of that moment was tempered somewhat by the success of anti-queer ballot initiatives in California, Arkansas, and Florida. The passing of Proposition 8, nullifying the California Supreme Court's earlier endorsement of same-sex marriage, was a real blow. Not that I'm particularly in favour of marriage as an institution, gay or straight. However, in this instance, celebrating its post hoc repeal is also to support legislated homophobia. Same-sex marriage has been the law of the land in Canada since 2005, and I've actually recently published an article in Text and Performance Quarterly that compares the politics of same-sex marriage in Canada and the US. It also looks at recent theatre and performance work referencing same-sex marriage, including Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens' ongoing performance art wedding project: check it out at www.loveartlab.org. 

A revised version of the article also serves as a chapter in the book I'm finishing, the one that lends its subtitle to the title of this blog (see first post). There, I attempt to broaden the comparative national and geopolitical focus of my analysis on Canada and the US, as well as complexify my discussion of same-sex marriage as a civil institution, by turning my attention to the trans-Atlantic routes of dissension within the Anglican Church over the blessing of same-sex unions. Here, I explore the local/global dynamics of both the religious rites and Religious Right that are never far from the same-sex marriage debate, in this case pitting liberal Anglican/Episcopalian congregations and leaders in North America against more traditional members of their own dioceses, the Church hierarchy in Canterbury, as well as Anglican provinces from the global south (Africa, Asia, Latin America), which today comprise the majority of the worldwide Anglican Communion's 77-million members. 

I also attempt to contextualize the whole same-sex marriage debate within the framework of the ongoing war on terror, and Iraq serves as the backdrop here. Indeed, in the final section described above I also return to some of the legal and linguistic parsing of marriage-related performatives undertaken in the first sections of the chapter by analyzing how we might relate the Anglican Church's decision (at Lambeth 2008) to seek a binding covenant on the blessing of same-sex unions to the new obliquity governing personal status laws in Iraq under their new, largely shari'a-codified constitution, and to the incitement toward explanation contained within the act of blessing itself. 

Not sure, exactly, how I got from Vancouver municipal politics to same-sex marriage, but then such convergences are the nature of this blog. I'll return soon with further thoughts on these and other planetary consolations.

P