The second Fringe Festival show I saw yesterday, also at the Waterfront, was Electric Company Theatre's production of Great Day for Up. Originally written and performed by ECT Artistic Director Jonathon Young in 1996 as his graduating project from Studio 58, the company has revived the piece on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.
Great Day is a short Beckettian exploration of the limits of language, the materiality of objects, the body's estrangement from itself and its environment, and the meta-ness of the theatre. It showcases Young's immense talents as a physical performer, as well as ECT's trademark sensitivity to total theatrical design (the lighting is by Adrian Muir and the terrific sound score is by Owen Belton). Young plays an unnamed striver who climbs on stage through what looks like a roof-top skylight of the sort one would find on an old tenement building. He has brought with him a plastic bag of junk and, literally willing his legs to move, he gradually explores his surroundings. The dilemma facing him is where does he go from here? Danger lurks in the wings and there appears no way out behind the safety curtain stage left. Our erstwhile hero is willing to take direction: from the objects around him; from the scraps of paper whose messages he initially receives as oracular pronouncements, only to subsequently revise the text; and from someone named Will to whom he occasionally directs an existential query. It would seem--especially given the immense second ladder positioned upstage left--that the only way forward for the character is to go further up. Except, we eventually learn, up is actually "in."
And, in this respect, an equally interesting aspect of attending this show is that Young includes, as part of the program, an inserted "Afterword," in which he lets audience members in on the original genesis of the piece's composition, as well as his thoughts on returning to it 20 years later. It's a most compelling--and quite moving--piece of writing: not least for the way it gives us more "texture and colour" to a show Young variously refers to as a "thing" or a "blob."
P
Showing posts with label Vancouver Fringe Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vancouver Fringe Festival. Show all posts
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Fringe Festival 2016: The Girl Who Was Raised by Wolverine
This is my dedicated weekend to see Fringe Festival shows, as I anticipate next week will be a bit of a time-suck between teaching and other projects (although, who knows?). I picked two shows, both at the Waterfront Theatre, for yesterday afternoon.
The first was The Girl Who Was Raised by Wolverine, by Deneh'Cho Thompson, whom I know as a very talented actor in the School for the Contemporary Arts' Theatre program. This is Deneh's first play, and it focuses on a young mixed-raced Indigenous woman named Stephanie whose blood apparently holds the cure for a mysterious contagion that has befallen the world in the not-too-distant future. Stephanie has been held against her will for psychiatric observation and physiological experimentation in a state hospital since childhood and is now faced with an impossible decision: she must decide which of her parents--her Indigenous father or her white mother--must die as part of a "culling" that has decreed that one-third of the population must be exterminated.
I think it's a very interesting choice to fuse the dystopic YA genre (Stephanie's defiance of her captors bears more than a hint of Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games) with traditional Indigenous storytelling conventions. However, in its current form Thompson's play is a bit of a mess. Not only do the scenes shift awkwardly between Stephanie's present in the hospital and her past memories of life with her parents, but the action is repeatedly halted to have the actors playing said parents argue with each other about the plot and solicit audience advice on how the story should proceed. Normally I have no animus against breaking the fourth wall, but here the device seems less a sincere address to, or even undermining of, audience sentiment than a glib invocation of a well-worn Brechtian theatrical conceit. Then, too, the final address to the audience which ends the play presents us with a choice as impossible as Stephanie's, one involving the small rock that each of us is handed upon entering to the theatre--and that upon exiting I could only refuse to dispose of according to instruction.
From reading the brief description of the play in the Fringe Fest program guide, and also talking to my SCA colleagues, it sounds as if Deneh's play has shifted quite radically from its original conception. There is certainly an interesting story here, but at present it's a bit hard to locate.
P
The first was The Girl Who Was Raised by Wolverine, by Deneh'Cho Thompson, whom I know as a very talented actor in the School for the Contemporary Arts' Theatre program. This is Deneh's first play, and it focuses on a young mixed-raced Indigenous woman named Stephanie whose blood apparently holds the cure for a mysterious contagion that has befallen the world in the not-too-distant future. Stephanie has been held against her will for psychiatric observation and physiological experimentation in a state hospital since childhood and is now faced with an impossible decision: she must decide which of her parents--her Indigenous father or her white mother--must die as part of a "culling" that has decreed that one-third of the population must be exterminated.
I think it's a very interesting choice to fuse the dystopic YA genre (Stephanie's defiance of her captors bears more than a hint of Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games) with traditional Indigenous storytelling conventions. However, in its current form Thompson's play is a bit of a mess. Not only do the scenes shift awkwardly between Stephanie's present in the hospital and her past memories of life with her parents, but the action is repeatedly halted to have the actors playing said parents argue with each other about the plot and solicit audience advice on how the story should proceed. Normally I have no animus against breaking the fourth wall, but here the device seems less a sincere address to, or even undermining of, audience sentiment than a glib invocation of a well-worn Brechtian theatrical conceit. Then, too, the final address to the audience which ends the play presents us with a choice as impossible as Stephanie's, one involving the small rock that each of us is handed upon entering to the theatre--and that upon exiting I could only refuse to dispose of according to instruction.
From reading the brief description of the play in the Fringe Fest program guide, and also talking to my SCA colleagues, it sounds as if Deneh's play has shifted quite radically from its original conception. There is certainly an interesting story here, but at present it's a bit hard to locate.
P
Monday, September 15, 2014
Fringe 2014: Roller Derby Saved My Soul and Definition of Time
Another splendid weekend to bookend my 2014 Fringe experience. And, again, two very different shows--though, as before, with a connecting thread.
Owing to a late morning start and abundant seawall traffic, I made it to the False Creek Gym just as they were shutting the house for the start of the noon hour show of Roller Derby Saved My Soul. Nancy Kenny's one-woman show is about Amy, a shy 30 year-old who lives in her younger sister June's shadow and harbours fantasies--nurtured by her love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer--of being a superhero. She gets her chance when June invites her to watch one of her roller derby games as a belated birthday present. After the game Amy finds herself in front of the recruitment table, mesmerized by the Glamazon Diana, and in a bewitched fog she suddenly sheds her inhibitions and signs up as "fresh meat."
What follows is a classic tale of heroic redemption. The bookish Amy--who prefers the movies to real life--quickly finds her skating legs (quite literally), blooming into a natural jammer. After the requisite hiccup of adversity and self-doubt, she triumphs by reconciling with her sister, getting the girl she thought out of her league, and--most importantly--saving the day for her team.
If you think this sounds a bit like Ellen Page in Whip It (minus the lesbian sub-plot), you'd be right. However, the stock dramatic arc notwithstanding, Roller Derby Saved My Soul is in no way derivative. This is thanks to two things. First, there is the show's taught writing, which confronts the cliches of genre (and gender) head on, upending them with the comedic one-two punch of timing and surprise--including some of the saltiest language about lady bits I've heard in a long time.
Then there is the performance by Kenny, who is as convincing in conveying the vulnerability of Amy as she is the bombast of June (not to mention the seductiveness of Diana). A naturally charismatic performer, Kenny is a also a gifted physical comedienne. She is clearly an experienced roller derby-er, and yet she is also able to translate kinetically to the audience what it feels like to be the unbalanced newbie trying on her skates for the first time. She's also hilarious as an increasingly inebriated Amy trying to keep up with her teammates (and the audience) in a drinking game to The Police's "Roxanne." Great stuff.
Movement is even more on display in Definition of Time, a quirky but strangely affecting dance-theatre piece that I took in at The Cultch after a pleasant cross-town bike ride. Conceived and choreographed by Iris Lau, the show was devised with the help of a slew of current SFU Contemporary Arts students and recent alums. These include performers Marc Arboleda, Elysse Cheadle, Shannon Lee, Carmine Santavenere, Clara Chow, and composer Elliot Vaughn, whose live score (featuring keyboards, violin, and percussion using everyday found objects) is simply brilliant. The text is by Adam Cowart, which is alternately allegorical and absurdist in its playing with various theoretical and material concepts of time.
Not that there is any real narrative through-line. The piece is more of an amalgam of fragmentary episodes, exploring through different choreographic structures and bits of physical theatre what it seems best to call the spatialization of time, giving it sensory dimension via different bodily encounters. To this end, I wish Lau had trusted herself a bit more in lettering the dancing speak for itself in the piece, rather than embellishing so many of the movement sequences with objects and additional dramaturgical effects. In the partnering, especially, there are often two or three other things going on that clamor for one's attention.
That said, I liked that the piece retained its rough edges. Though too long and overstuffed with too many ideas, there were myriad things to savour throughout.
P.
Owing to a late morning start and abundant seawall traffic, I made it to the False Creek Gym just as they were shutting the house for the start of the noon hour show of Roller Derby Saved My Soul. Nancy Kenny's one-woman show is about Amy, a shy 30 year-old who lives in her younger sister June's shadow and harbours fantasies--nurtured by her love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer--of being a superhero. She gets her chance when June invites her to watch one of her roller derby games as a belated birthday present. After the game Amy finds herself in front of the recruitment table, mesmerized by the Glamazon Diana, and in a bewitched fog she suddenly sheds her inhibitions and signs up as "fresh meat."
What follows is a classic tale of heroic redemption. The bookish Amy--who prefers the movies to real life--quickly finds her skating legs (quite literally), blooming into a natural jammer. After the requisite hiccup of adversity and self-doubt, she triumphs by reconciling with her sister, getting the girl she thought out of her league, and--most importantly--saving the day for her team.
If you think this sounds a bit like Ellen Page in Whip It (minus the lesbian sub-plot), you'd be right. However, the stock dramatic arc notwithstanding, Roller Derby Saved My Soul is in no way derivative. This is thanks to two things. First, there is the show's taught writing, which confronts the cliches of genre (and gender) head on, upending them with the comedic one-two punch of timing and surprise--including some of the saltiest language about lady bits I've heard in a long time.
Then there is the performance by Kenny, who is as convincing in conveying the vulnerability of Amy as she is the bombast of June (not to mention the seductiveness of Diana). A naturally charismatic performer, Kenny is a also a gifted physical comedienne. She is clearly an experienced roller derby-er, and yet she is also able to translate kinetically to the audience what it feels like to be the unbalanced newbie trying on her skates for the first time. She's also hilarious as an increasingly inebriated Amy trying to keep up with her teammates (and the audience) in a drinking game to The Police's "Roxanne." Great stuff.
Movement is even more on display in Definition of Time, a quirky but strangely affecting dance-theatre piece that I took in at The Cultch after a pleasant cross-town bike ride. Conceived and choreographed by Iris Lau, the show was devised with the help of a slew of current SFU Contemporary Arts students and recent alums. These include performers Marc Arboleda, Elysse Cheadle, Shannon Lee, Carmine Santavenere, Clara Chow, and composer Elliot Vaughn, whose live score (featuring keyboards, violin, and percussion using everyday found objects) is simply brilliant. The text is by Adam Cowart, which is alternately allegorical and absurdist in its playing with various theoretical and material concepts of time.
Not that there is any real narrative through-line. The piece is more of an amalgam of fragmentary episodes, exploring through different choreographic structures and bits of physical theatre what it seems best to call the spatialization of time, giving it sensory dimension via different bodily encounters. To this end, I wish Lau had trusted herself a bit more in lettering the dancing speak for itself in the piece, rather than embellishing so many of the movement sequences with objects and additional dramaturgical effects. In the partnering, especially, there are often two or three other things going on that clamor for one's attention.
That said, I liked that the piece retained its rough edges. Though too long and overstuffed with too many ideas, there were myriad things to savour throughout.
P.
Monday, September 8, 2014
Fringe 2014: Slumming and The Masks of Oscar Wilde
A beautiful first weekend for the 30th anniversary of the Vancouver International Fringe Festival. On Sunday I saw two shows vastly different in structure, subject matter and tone, but that nevertheless shared at least one formal storytelling conceit.
First up was Batterjacks' production of Barbara Ellison's Slumming at Studio 16. Set on the steps of an abandoned church in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the play is a two-hander that stages a territorial struggle between First Nations sex worker Britney (Sharon Crandall) and a white shopping cart lady named Grace (Terri Anne Taylor) who seems far too refined to be living on the street. When Britney, feeling happy and flush after a recent date, wakes Grace up with her singing, battle lines are quickly drawn. Arguing that she has every right to rest in the space, Britney says that she only needs three more good dates and then she'll be out of Grace's hair--off to Kelowna to collect her daughter Lillian, who's in foster care.
Soon an uneasy truce is established between the two women, who agree to share the space. However, when Britney returns from a bad date having been raped and robbed, the limits of Grace's empathy are put to the test. This is where the play, which up until this point has been trading rather broadly in some stock dramatic--and socio-cultural--clichés, veers into more surreal territory. When Britney requests of her new friend a story to calm her down, Grace (who by this point has traded her sweats and rain jacket for a blue cocktail dress and a string of pearls) quotes a few lines from Lady Macbeth and then launches into a fairy tale about a king and a queen. Not only does the shocking denouement of Grace's story come to explain why she's living on the street, but it also--as in most fairy tales--leads to a surprise parting gift for Britney.
Oscar Wilde wrote his share of fairy tales that also doubled as social and/or political allegories. The most famous of these is "The Happy Prince," which is the text that provides the thematic through-line to Shaul Ezer's The Masks of Oscar Wilde, written with the assistance of frank theatre's Chris Gatchalian. A hybrid performance piece that mixes the lecture format with shadow theatre, among other dramatic effects, the play is another two-hander, see-sawing dialectically back and forth between actors A and B (Sean Harris Oliver and Tamara McCarthy, respectively) in a manner reminiscent of one of Wilde's critical dialogues (e.g. "The Critic as Artist," or "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," which is actually referenced).
The frame conceit is that actor A is a contemporary academic giving a lecture on Wilde and his "four masks"--which he identifies as "man of letters," "aesthete," "Victorian moralist," and ... I forget the fourth. Actor B--who appears to be an avatar of Wilde himself--keeps interrupting A's lecture, insisting that he's leaving out at least two additional masks worn by the writer: "the disgraced sinner/persecuted victim" and "the martyr." At first A doesn't seem to see B (though he can hear her); eventually, however, the already thin dividing line between the real and the symbolic, present and past, collapses altogether as A and B perform a series of vignettes from Wilde's life. All of these are drawn from and animated by Wilde's writings, with the performers each taking a turn at playing his various characters (including delightful versions of Jack Worthing and Lady Bracknell, from The Importance of Being Earnest), his loved ones (wife Constance and lover Bosie), antagonists (fellow Irishman Edward Carson, who went toe to toe with Wilde in court), and Wilde himself.
The results are never less than fully compelling, giving further credence to the idea--now taken as virtual dogma--that Wilde's greatest theatrical creation was himself. Ezer notes in the program that the inspiration for the play came from Peter Brook's Love is My Sin, based on Shakespeare's sonnets. But to my mind the clearer antecedent is Moisés Kaufman and Tectonic Theater Project's Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, a play from 1997 that is likewise redacted from Wilde's trial transcripts and supplemented by additional writings by the author. No matter the precise inspiration, The Masks of Oscar Wilde is still stirring stuff.
P.
First up was Batterjacks' production of Barbara Ellison's Slumming at Studio 16. Set on the steps of an abandoned church in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the play is a two-hander that stages a territorial struggle between First Nations sex worker Britney (Sharon Crandall) and a white shopping cart lady named Grace (Terri Anne Taylor) who seems far too refined to be living on the street. When Britney, feeling happy and flush after a recent date, wakes Grace up with her singing, battle lines are quickly drawn. Arguing that she has every right to rest in the space, Britney says that she only needs three more good dates and then she'll be out of Grace's hair--off to Kelowna to collect her daughter Lillian, who's in foster care.
Soon an uneasy truce is established between the two women, who agree to share the space. However, when Britney returns from a bad date having been raped and robbed, the limits of Grace's empathy are put to the test. This is where the play, which up until this point has been trading rather broadly in some stock dramatic--and socio-cultural--clichés, veers into more surreal territory. When Britney requests of her new friend a story to calm her down, Grace (who by this point has traded her sweats and rain jacket for a blue cocktail dress and a string of pearls) quotes a few lines from Lady Macbeth and then launches into a fairy tale about a king and a queen. Not only does the shocking denouement of Grace's story come to explain why she's living on the street, but it also--as in most fairy tales--leads to a surprise parting gift for Britney.
Oscar Wilde wrote his share of fairy tales that also doubled as social and/or political allegories. The most famous of these is "The Happy Prince," which is the text that provides the thematic through-line to Shaul Ezer's The Masks of Oscar Wilde, written with the assistance of frank theatre's Chris Gatchalian. A hybrid performance piece that mixes the lecture format with shadow theatre, among other dramatic effects, the play is another two-hander, see-sawing dialectically back and forth between actors A and B (Sean Harris Oliver and Tamara McCarthy, respectively) in a manner reminiscent of one of Wilde's critical dialogues (e.g. "The Critic as Artist," or "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," which is actually referenced).
The frame conceit is that actor A is a contemporary academic giving a lecture on Wilde and his "four masks"--which he identifies as "man of letters," "aesthete," "Victorian moralist," and ... I forget the fourth. Actor B--who appears to be an avatar of Wilde himself--keeps interrupting A's lecture, insisting that he's leaving out at least two additional masks worn by the writer: "the disgraced sinner/persecuted victim" and "the martyr." At first A doesn't seem to see B (though he can hear her); eventually, however, the already thin dividing line between the real and the symbolic, present and past, collapses altogether as A and B perform a series of vignettes from Wilde's life. All of these are drawn from and animated by Wilde's writings, with the performers each taking a turn at playing his various characters (including delightful versions of Jack Worthing and Lady Bracknell, from The Importance of Being Earnest), his loved ones (wife Constance and lover Bosie), antagonists (fellow Irishman Edward Carson, who went toe to toe with Wilde in court), and Wilde himself.
The results are never less than fully compelling, giving further credence to the idea--now taken as virtual dogma--that Wilde's greatest theatrical creation was himself. Ezer notes in the program that the inspiration for the play came from Peter Brook's Love is My Sin, based on Shakespeare's sonnets. But to my mind the clearer antecedent is Moisés Kaufman and Tectonic Theater Project's Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, a play from 1997 that is likewise redacted from Wilde's trial transcripts and supplemented by additional writings by the author. No matter the precise inspiration, The Masks of Oscar Wilde is still stirring stuff.
P.
Monday, September 9, 2013
How Not to Fringe
I didn't mean to make the first post of the fall season about what I haven't been able to see, but such has been the case with my Vancouver Fringe experience so far. My own fault, of course. The Fringe, on now through this Sunday at various venues on and around Granville Island--and on and off the Drive--always coincides with the return to school: meaning that I get to see more or less of its offerings depending on how much advance prep I've done and/or how many unexpected administrative curve balls are thrown at me. Let's just say that this year on the former front, "not so much," and on the latter "way too many."
As a performance studies colleague recently put it to me in an email, would that I had "a circa 1985 Delorean to buy more time (and could wear acid wash jeans without shame)."
Yesterday, however, I thought I had a reasonable window in the late afternoon. And so I hopped on my bike and raced down to Granville Island to catch a show--any show, I wasn't going to be choosy--around 4 pm. I blame the traffic on the seawall, but by the time I made it to the Island everything had already started or was sold out.
To be expected on a sunny weekend day. And good for the performers. As for me, I contented myself with watching the touts flog their shows to patrons in line (always fun), and with collecting various handbills--which I'll ideally use to help me choose a show for this weekend. Then I went into the market to buy dinner.
P.
As a performance studies colleague recently put it to me in an email, would that I had "a circa 1985 Delorean to buy more time (and could wear acid wash jeans without shame)."
Yesterday, however, I thought I had a reasonable window in the late afternoon. And so I hopped on my bike and raced down to Granville Island to catch a show--any show, I wasn't going to be choosy--around 4 pm. I blame the traffic on the seawall, but by the time I made it to the Island everything had already started or was sold out.
To be expected on a sunny weekend day. And good for the performers. As for me, I contented myself with watching the touts flog their shows to patrons in line (always fun), and with collecting various handbills--which I'll ideally use to help me choose a show for this weekend. Then I went into the market to buy dinner.
P.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Creating Trouble
I still remember a fistfight I got into with my brother in the early 1980s over some incendiary speech the Unionist politician Ian Paisley had given about Republican representation in the affairs of Northern Ireland. And we were both Canadian Protestants whose knowledge of the "troubles" in far-flung Belfast had mostly been gleaned from Bono and U2! Still, the episode is a telling example of how quickly and routinely the entrenched factionalism surrounding the fate of Northern Ireland--which had then ratcheted up another notch with the recent election of Margaret Thatcher--devolved into violence.
That fraught time--and, more importantly, place--is where we're once again transported in playwright and performer Stephanie Henderson's The Troubles, a multi-character solo piece from Resounding Scream Theatre that had its last performance at the 2012 Fringe Festival yesterday. And it's clear that even fourteen years after the Belfast Agreement, the wounds are still fresh.
Henderson is a wonderfully open and engaging performer, and the production plays to her naturally empathic strengths by having her address the audience directly from the top of the show--in a flawless Irish accent, no less. Her character, we soon learn, is leaving Belfast, fed up with the bloodshed and violence, and the rending of communities and families simply because of religious affiliation and/or the accident of one's birth. We only learn the woman's name, Molly, at the end of the show, but to Henderson's credit, we never learn her religion. Saving her ideology for where it most belongs--in service of compelling theatre and creating an affective connection with her fictional characters as they daily negotiate the turmoil of a city divided--Henderson, the playwright, wisely doesn't take political sides.
However, she does take lots of physical risks in embodying her characters, who range from a young schoolboy who literally has his friendship with his best mate, Jimmy, knocked out of him, to a father labouring to keep his family safe, to a beer-chugging Man U fan who narrowly escapes an IRA bomb, to a young Catholic girl who loses her brother in the Bloody Sunday attacks. All are believably drawn, and whether wearing a balaclava or toting a teddy bear, Henderson is never less than fully "present," drawing us into each character's story as much with her gestures as with her voice (if you want a lesson in how to make love to a pint of Guinness, see Henderson).
My one complaint, and it's a small one, is that the transitions between the characters are not always clearly delineated. Nor are the connections between them. Perhaps Henderson does not mean for the stories she tells to be linked in a direct way. That said, the conceit of framing the piece from Molly's perspective does encourage us to try to connect the dots of all that happens in between back to her. In future versions of this work maybe those connections (or disconnections) will become more sharply defined. So, too, may the purpose of the video projections. At present I feel like the iconic images we see (including of the priest Edward Daly testifying about the British military firing on unarmed civilians during Bloody Sunday) take the piece out of the fictional world of everyday negotiation Henderson has worked so hard to create and into the too-easy world of ideological identification and condemnation. Two-dimensional visual images, even of the documentary variety, have a way of flattening the lived--and live--complexity and messiness of day-to-day existence. Which is why, of course, we go to the theatre.
My own Fringe theatre-going, such as it's been this year, is over. But the fall season is just beginning. I look forward to what's in store.
P.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Fringe Begins
It's Labour Day, which means two things: a return to school; and the imminent start of the Vancouver International Fringe Festival. The two are not always conducive to mutual enjoyment. Last year, being on leave, I could attend a decent number of Fringe shows. This year, class preps and related administration will likely mean I have to be more chary with my time. But I do plan to get out there and see at least a few shows.
Here's what's caught my eye so far:
Parczew 45 (Chai Productions) at Studio 16
Underbelly, by Jayson McDonald (of last year's most excellent Giant Invisible Robot fame), at the Waterfront
Loon, from the Wonderheads (the folks responsible for Grim & Fisher, last year's breakout Fringe hit, which is returning to the Cultch in January), at the Waterfront
Utopia (Theatre Free Radical) at Studio 1398
The Troubles (Resounding Scream Theatre) at Studio 1398
Recess, by Una Aya Osato, at the False Creek Gym
Home Free, Staircase Xi Theatre's mounting of a short play by the great Lanford Wilson, at the Carousel Theatre
Three More Sleepless Nights, a site-specific take on another short play by the equally great Caryl Churchill (I saw a version of this last December, and it was fantastic--highly recommended)
Slumming, by former student Barbara Ellison, at the Cultch
slut (r)evolution, by Cameryn Moore, of Phone Whore fame, at Performance Works
By the way, Cameryn, together with Gigi Naglak (Chlamydia dell'Arte: A Sex-Ed Burlesque), Celene Harder and Val Duncan (Does This Turn You On?), and Deb Pickman (Shameless Hussy Productions), will be part of a panel on "Sexuality in Theatre" that I will be moderating on Monday, September 10th as part of the line-up of sidebar events the Fringe folks have programmed at the St. Ambroise Fringe Bar (1363 Railspur Alley on Granville Island). The proceedings begin at 7 pm.
And of course all of this is preceded by the Opening Night gala and auction tomorrow at 7 pm at Performance Works.
Get your tickets for all events here.
P.
Here's what's caught my eye so far:
Parczew 45 (Chai Productions) at Studio 16
Underbelly, by Jayson McDonald (of last year's most excellent Giant Invisible Robot fame), at the Waterfront
Loon, from the Wonderheads (the folks responsible for Grim & Fisher, last year's breakout Fringe hit, which is returning to the Cultch in January), at the Waterfront
Utopia (Theatre Free Radical) at Studio 1398
The Troubles (Resounding Scream Theatre) at Studio 1398
Recess, by Una Aya Osato, at the False Creek Gym
Home Free, Staircase Xi Theatre's mounting of a short play by the great Lanford Wilson, at the Carousel Theatre
Three More Sleepless Nights, a site-specific take on another short play by the equally great Caryl Churchill (I saw a version of this last December, and it was fantastic--highly recommended)
Slumming, by former student Barbara Ellison, at the Cultch
slut (r)evolution, by Cameryn Moore, of Phone Whore fame, at Performance Works
By the way, Cameryn, together with Gigi Naglak (Chlamydia dell'Arte: A Sex-Ed Burlesque), Celene Harder and Val Duncan (Does This Turn You On?), and Deb Pickman (Shameless Hussy Productions), will be part of a panel on "Sexuality in Theatre" that I will be moderating on Monday, September 10th as part of the line-up of sidebar events the Fringe folks have programmed at the St. Ambroise Fringe Bar (1363 Railspur Alley on Granville Island). The proceedings begin at 7 pm.
And of course all of this is preceded by the Opening Night gala and auction tomorrow at 7 pm at Performance Works.
Get your tickets for all events here.
P.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Fringe Fury
Further to my last post, on the website for the Vancouver International Fringe Festival, Executive Director David Jordan has posted a wonderful, righteously--and rightly--infuriated open letter to Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman pointing out the folly and untruths in Coleman's recent justification for making arts festivals in the province ineligible for future gaming funds.
Game on, Mr. Coleman!
P.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
More Flip Flops on the Arts
So it appears that, in the face of massive outrage from the BC arts community, Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman has had an eleventh-hour change of heart on the gaming revenues, restoring $40 million of previously promised money that was then subsequently--and summarily--cut (see the story in today's Vancouver Sun). All well and good, but in the same breath he also announced that the three-year funding model the government had previously adopted regarding the allocation of these revenues will be eliminated, and that they will revert to a year-by-year application process.
However, the even more alarming news is the further erosion of funding to the BC Arts Council, with the 40% rolling cuts announced in February's budget now escalating to more like 80-90% in Finance Minister Colin Hansen's revised budget this past Tuesday. In February it was announced the Council's funding would drop to $9.6 million in 2010-11, before increasing slightly to $9.8 million in 2011-12. Now we're told that those numbers will be $2.25 million in 2010-11 and $2.2 million in 2011-12 (see the article from yesterday's Globe). And this at the same time as $400 million is being set aside in the form of various "relief measures" to offset the phase-in of the controversial HST. Why not scrap the HST altogether, and move that $400 million over to arts? Clearly there seems a plan afoot to gut the BC Arts Council completely and absorb all arts funding decisions and administration within the Ministry, as was recently done with BC Tourism. Kevin Krueger's silence during the past few days is most telling in this regard.
I wasn't going to reply to the boilerplate email Krueger's office sent me in response to my August letter, but now I definitely will, asking for an explanation of these further cuts, and what they mean for the government's long-term funding priorities for the arts.
I know there is division in the community about using the Olympics as a platform to voice dissent about the Liberals' neglect of the arts. While a boycott of the entire Cultural Olympiad is perhaps extreme, I do think something needs to be made of the international spotlight in getting the word out to the rest of Canada and the world about what low esteem this government has for the arts. Pointing to Turin as a model we could have and should have followed re tying long term arts and culture commitments to an event like the Olympics might be a way to go here.
In the meantime, I repeat the exhortation that ended my last post: we all need to reach deeper into our own pockets to help support our favourite institutions. The Fringe opens next week, and is accepting grateful donations with tickets purchased on-line, and will also have donation buckets at all venues. And the main stage space of the Cultch reopens this long weekend with a special two-for-one ticket deal for Midsummer, a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe. (As a side note, see the interview in The Georgia Straight with Cultch Executive Director Heather Redfern about the amazing changes to the venerable old venue on Venables.)
I wasn't going to reply to the boilerplate email Krueger's office sent me in response to my August letter, but now I definitely will, asking for an explanation of these further cuts, and what they mean for the government's long-term funding priorities for the arts.
I know there is division in the community about using the Olympics as a platform to voice dissent about the Liberals' neglect of the arts. While a boycott of the entire Cultural Olympiad is perhaps extreme, I do think something needs to be made of the international spotlight in getting the word out to the rest of Canada and the world about what low esteem this government has for the arts. Pointing to Turin as a model we could have and should have followed re tying long term arts and culture commitments to an event like the Olympics might be a way to go here.
In the meantime, I repeat the exhortation that ended my last post: we all need to reach deeper into our own pockets to help support our favourite institutions. The Fringe opens next week, and is accepting grateful donations with tickets purchased on-line, and will also have donation buckets at all venues. And the main stage space of the Cultch reopens this long weekend with a special two-for-one ticket deal for Midsummer, a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe. (As a side note, see the interview in The Georgia Straight with Cultch Executive Director Heather Redfern about the amazing changes to the venerable old venue on Venables.)
P.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Whither BC: The Sequel
As expected, most arts and culture organizations (along with several other social programs) in the province received letters last week advising them that previously promised revenues from BC gaming revenues were being withdrawn owing to the ballooning deficit and Finance Minister Colin Hansen's revised budget projections (read the Vancouver Sun story here). This despite the fact that most of these organizations had already gone ahead and programmed their seasons in anticipation of the funds they had been contractually guaranteed.
As Lorna Brown noted in a recent email sent to the community urging people to join a Facebook campaign protesting the cuts, combined with the cuts to the BC Arts Council announced in last February's budget, this amounts to a de facto 75% cut to arts and culture in the province. Where else in the world would this be allowed to happen?! We live in a largely information-based and creative economy: why aren't, therefore, the creative industries duly rewarded with stimulus spending the likes of which was lavished on so many other dead or dying industries? When will the people of this province wise up to the dirty tricks of this government? Everyone's in an uproar about the HST (as well they should be--another kick in the pants to arts and culture in the form of higher ticket prices); but this is an administration that has gleefully--and with impunity--lied to us before. And that continues to do so (BC Rail, anyone? Missing emails?).
Of course, the Liberals are hoping the outrage over all of this will blow over as a result of the massive party that will be the Olympics. But what kind of party will it be with no money for the artists and creative producers who are best positioned to showcase the city culturally? I vote for riding this wave of anger right on into the Olympics themselves, letting the world know in no uncertain terms just what price this government puts on the second pillar of the Olympic Movement.
In the meantime, the public must do all it can to support the organizations whose programs and livelihoods are now imperiled. The best way we can do that is by going to see their work. The Vancouver Fringe Festival starts next week--I've just bought my Frequent Fringer Pass. Soon after that it will be time for the Vancouver International Film Festival. Though there's the little matter of teaching to contend with (the sabbatical is officially over today-boo hoo!), I hope to attend as many films as possible. And The Dance Centre's 2009/10 program just came in the mail today. It's chock-a-block with exciting offerings, starting with my SFU colleague Rob Kitsos's new work, Wake, next Friday and Saturday (Sept. 11-12).
Dig deep into your pockets, people, and buy a ticket to these and other events. And, since we can't vote Campbell and the Liberals out of office for another four years, consider doing so to the federal Conservatives instead. I hear Michael Ignatieff has just withdrawn support from Harper's minority government, so I guess that means we're headed to the polls once again this fall.
P.
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