Praxis Theatre

Praxis Blog and Website pre-relaunch blackout

2009-06-12T17:49:00.012-04:00

Photo by stuartpilbrow licensed under Creative Commons 2.0

The integration of the Praxis blog and website will likely cause some problems over the weekend. Regular programming will resume on Tuesday June 16, 2009.

One url to rule them all!

Praxis Theatre blog is moving

2009-06-09T17:03:00.000-04:00

The new address of the Praxis Theatre Blog is:

praxistheatre.com

Our integrated website with a much more functional blog on the homepage will be up and running June 16th.

Please take the time to update your blog rolls and bookmarks.

See you on the flipside!

Indie Dora 2009 nominees

2009-06-03T12:08:00.003-04:00

INDEPENDENT THEATRE PRODUCTION DIVISION

OUTSTANDING NEW PLAY/MUSICAL
Layne Coleman Tijuana Cure
Brendan Gall, Mike McPhaden, Rick Roberts & Julie Tepperman The Gladstone Variations
Tara Beagan Miss Julie: Sheh'mah
David Yee lady in the red dress
Anton Piatigorsky Eternal Hydra

OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION
You Fancy Yourself Produced by Contrary Company in association with Theatre Passe Muraille
The Gladstone Variations Convergence Theatre
lady in the red dress fu-GEN Asian-Canadian Theatre Company in association with the Young Centre for the Performing Arts
Eternal Hydra Crow's Theatre
Appetite Volcano in association with the Exchange Rate Collective

OUTSTANDING DIRECTION
Mary Francis Moore You Fancy Yourself
Rebecca Benson, Alan Dilworth, Ruth Madoc-Jones & Aaron Willis The Gladstone Variations
Nina Lee Aquino lady in the red dress
Chris Abraham Eternal Hydra
Sarah Sanford Appetite

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A MALE
David Ferry Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
R.H. Thomson Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
Steven McCarthy Norway.Today
Ins Choi lady in the red dress
David Ferry Eternal Hydra

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE
Maja Ardal You Fancy Yourself
Janet Amos The Gladstone Variations
Christine Horne Miss Julie: Sheh'mah
Karen Robinson Eternal Hydra
Liisa Repo-Martell Eternal Hydra

OUTSTANDING SET DESIGN
Victoria Wallace Mourning Dove
Teresa Przybylski Miss Julie: Sheh'mah
Camellia Koo lady in the red dress
John Thompson Eternal Hydra
Gillian Gallow Appetite

OUTSTANDING COSTUME DESIGN
Shawn Kerwin Miss Julie: Sheh'mah
Julia Tribe + Reva Quam Wise.Woman
Gillian Gallow Appetite
Barbara Rowe Eternal Hydra
Victoria Wallace And Up They Flew

OUTSTANDING LIGHTING DESIGN
Andy Moro Miss Julie: Sheh'mah
Trevor Schwellnus minotaur
Michelle Ramsay lady in the red dress
John Thompson Eternal Hydra
Rebecca Picherack Appetite

OUTSTANDING SOUND DESIGN/COMPOSITION
Christopher Stanton minotaur
Romeo Candido lady in the red dress
Richard Feren Eternal Hydra
Robert Perrault Appetite
Waylen Miki An Inconvenient Musical

Congrats to all!

Actors’ Equity adjusts rules to further empower NYC Member-Creators

2009-06-02T11:12:00.012-04:00

Actors' Equity Association has announced significant changes to the NYC Showcase Code.

The agreement, which is not technically an Equity contract, but is "promulgated by Actors' Equity Association to allow its members to participate in productions in small theaters without the benefit of an Equity Contract."

Members receive no salary or benefits and the performance and rehearsal schedules are limited in number. The terms of the code, created by and for the members, are designed to protect both the Equity actors and the interests of those theatres in New York City that operate under an Equity contract.

Approximately 1000 productions went on in NYC last year under this agreement, which does not forbid producers and actors coming to a sub-Equity standard agreement on pay. This code can only be used by Equity actors working in theatres with less than 99 seats in two types of situations:

A) The Basic Showcase Code for use on independent one-time productions.
B) The Festival Showcase Code that allows actors to work for not-for profit producers who create a season of work.

Some of the recent changes include:

Maximum ticket prices have been increased from $20 to $25.
Maximum rehearsal time has been increased from four to five weeks.
Maximum budget to fall under the basic code is increased from $20,000 to $35,000.
Performances may now be held over a six-week period.

These changes were the result of the Off-Off Broadway Committee, which is made up of members of Equity who have worked under the code and producers who have produced under the code.

Will this significant shift by AEA towards allowing its membership greater ability to leverage their labour to kick-start careers and productions have an impact in Canada?

Members of Canadian Actors Equity Association voted 96-1 to express dissatisfaction with the options currently available to Member/Creators at the 2009 AGM. [Click here for full info and more photos on the CAEA website.]

The 2009 CAEA AGM held on February 24th in Toronto saw a massive turnout to support a Member Resolution calling for Equity to provide a Showcase-type agreement for use by its membership. The final vote in support of this motion was 96-1. The issue brought out so many members, that the minutes to several previous AGMs were passed by an assembly that had finally achieved quorum. Clearly CAEA has a mandate to come up with a new system that supports members that want to hustle to get something off the ground, but no one knows what will be proposed.

What do you think? Should CAEA adopt a Showcase-type code? Should the rules in the U.S. have anything to do with Canadian rules? Are these agreements “the thin end of the wedge” that will spell the end of reasonable protections for performers? Has that been the case in New York? Is this a good way to facilitate artists creating their own work?

Facebook reveals Your True Theatre Calling

2009-05-29T14:56:00.004-04:00

There is a 10 question quiz making the rounds on Facebook that allows users to determine definitively Your True Theatre Calling.

Forget for a moment that almost all the theatre artists you know under 35 years of age do more than one thing, and that the new era of artists seems to be an entrepreneurial set that refuses to be defined by a single job desciption out of both necessity and ambition. The real question is, "Does the quiz work?" Judging by the results below, the technology may need some refining. (This may also be a window into why online dating results in so many ill-suited matches. It all makes sense on paper.....)

Praxis Gourmet - Summer 09 Edition

2009-05-26T15:25:00.008-04:00

Praxis will be holding it’s biannual Praxis Gourmet on the evening of Thursday June 4th, 2009.

Praxis Gourmet is an exclusive fine-dining and wine-pairing event, featuring a gourmet five-course meal with wine pairings. This will be accompanied by a live jazz trio and a sneak-preview scene from the upcoming shows this summer. It has proven in the past to be a magical evening and is an essential part of how Praxis raises funds for its productions.

Here’s a look at the menu for June 4th:

Hors d’oeuvres
Endive cups with blue cheese, pecans, dried cherry, and maple vinaigrette.
Heirloom tomato and watermelon gazpacho

First Course
Cured wild caught Rainbow Trout, with wild arugula, Bartlett pear and citrus vinaigrette.

Second Course
BBQ locally farmed turkey with lemon, dijon, and smoked paprika.
Roast fingerling potato
BBQ white and green asparagus
Wild leek aioli.

Cheese Course
Locally produced sheep’s milk cheese from Monforte Dairy.
Marmalade of orange, basil and balsamic.

Desert
Home made Orange Spice Ice Cream in BBQ half peach with ginger white chocolate tuile.

The price is $110 per person, with all funds going towards our upcoming Summer Season.
A limited number of reservations are still available.

Email simonrice(at)praxistheatre.com to reserve your spot today.

We hope you can make it for this evening of great food, wine and theatre!

Harold Awards this Monday: May 25th

2009-05-22T13:11:00.003-04:00

If the belligerent relative that showed up late to your cousin Dora's wedding to shout out horrible truths to the dismay of the assembled guests was an awards show, it would probably be the Harolds. It's sort of like the Doras in the way that the Moon is sort of like a football. It's happening on Monday. 14 Harolds are awarded - the recipient of last year's award choosing who to pass it on to next, and the real trick is you have to trick them into going without knowing they're getting Harolded. It works to varying degrees. Visiting, dancing and heckling is strongly encouraged, and although Harold didn't drink, you probably will.

Eat The Street: Is it theatre?

2009-05-19T09:08:00.018-04:00

O'Donnell is part of his own documentary crew at Addis Abba

By Lindsay Schwietz

A lot has been written about Darren O’Donnell. You can find him on the cover of Eye Weekly, a comprehensive article in Taste T.O., and even The Toronto Star. Just the mention of his name can incite debate about the value and purpose of his work, or the obsessive love of twenty-something women.

Can Darren O’Donnell and his company, Mammalian Diving Reflex’s newest work with children be considered theatre? Do his theories of Social Acupuncture and his attempt to break down our boundaries and force social encounters have a place in the Toronto theatre community?

Parkdale Public School vs. Queen Street West 2: Eat The Street is Mammalian Diving Reflex’s newest project, where a group of students from Parkdale reviewed eleven restaurants in the Queen Street West area. It all culminated in the awards ceremony at the Gladstone Hotel on May 11th.

I had been to one of the dinners, at Addis Abba, an Ethiopian restaurant where we all shared platters of food and sat at a long table, mingling youth and adults. This involved being watched by the other diners in the restaurant, many sitting atop a higher platform peering down at us. Everyone of us at the table were "the players" - the flash of the camera every few seconds, the video in our faces asking us what we think, the audience witnessing an impromptu celebration of sorts. It was a collective experience, viewed by others, documented extensively and influenced by who was in the room.

Sitting in the back room of the Gladstone Hotel, it all seemed so anti-climactic. We are out of the public eye, in a room that looks a lot like any other small awards ceremony I’ve been to. Not what I had expected.

The Parkdale Pumas enter through the middle of the audience to the stage after a quiet thank you to all the sponsors by Artistic Producer Natalie De Vito, Darren O’Donnell and three of the students act as MC’s for the night. Darren talks about his lucky red socks before announcing the first award for Hottest Waiters is awarded to the Drake Hotel, who went on to win Best Overall Restaurant. They proceed to award Scariest Bathroom: Mitzi’s Sister because of the red light, Least Graffiti in the Washroom: Saigon Flower (causing the little lady owner to look like she might cry with happiness onstage accepting it), and Coolest Chef: Matthew Matheson at Oddfellows because of his many tattoos. You can find full results on the Eat the Street Blog .

There were two dance breaks, by a brother and sister, doing traditional Indian dancing. There were images of the hottest waiters; video of the coolest chef showing off the many tattoos covering his body; O'Donnell attempting discussions onstage with the youth presenting the awards and them responding with awkward one-word answers. There was mention of some of the people in the room who were regulars to the dinners and supportive journalists. Some restaurants showed to accept their awards, some didn’t.

Darren O’Donnell’s past works with children, include the internationally touring Haircuts by Children, where youth were taught to cut hair, then gave out free haircuts to willing adults, and the Children’s Choice Awards, allowing children to experience art, theatre, dance, etc and give awards to their choice of categories. Both events share similarities to Eat The Street in their reliance on spectacle and media.

Jury members rate their culinary experience.

But the awards ceremony for Eat the Street was less about the spectacle and more about celebrating the people in the room, what is around them every day, their diversity and ultimately, their similarities. This was more community focused than a theatrical act and everyone present seemed somehow connected to the project.

Frankly, I was slightly disappointed. I wanted the drama, spectacle and grandeur. But I suppose that isn’t what Mammalian Diving Reflex’s Social Acupuncture wing of their company is about. According to their website, they “bridge gaps between people who may not ordinarily have any reason to form relationships. Simultaneous to its impact in the community, it functions as a laboratory of sorts for the performance work of the company, inspiring new techniques and approaches.”

This is the answer. The Eat the Street Awards Ceremony might have been more about a community coming together to share and less about theatre. But it still has theatrical elements and inspires future theatrical production. And it has taught me more about the community of Parkdale that I live in, the people around me, the children that run by me, the families that have recently immigrated here, the restaurants and ultimately about myself and how I fit into that.

Maybe if more theatre in Toronto had that impact on the audience – involved and taught the community – instead of rerunning the same past successful productions over and over again, theatre would hold a more important and impacting place in general society.

Variation #2: David Ferry

2009-05-16T10:16:00.022-04:00

Text:

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive.
And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country. placing it under its mental deity.
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav’d the vulgar by attempting to realise or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began Priesthood.
Choosing forms of worship from Poetic tales.
And at length they announced that the Gods had ordered such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.

Image:

Sound:
Click here

David Ferry is an actor and director. He stars in Eternal Hydra by Anton Piatigorsky, presented by Crows Theatre opening May 17th, 2009 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto.

Click here to learn more about Praxis Theatre's Variations on Theatre.

Out and About

2009-05-12T08:26:00.005-04:00

Gianpaolo Venuta, star of Over the River and Through the Woods at the Segal Theatre in Montreal, was seen leaving the Jeanne Sauvé mansion late Saturday night with a mystery blond on his arm...Does his girlfriend know about this?

The slow march from monologue to dialogue

2009-05-11T08:26:00.007-04:00

"I think anyone can do theater. Even actors. And theater can be done everywhere. Even in a theater.”

Augusto Boal
1931 - 2009

City of Wine - Everyone

2009-05-09T16:36:00.012-04:00

Photo by John Lauener - CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Cast and crew from all seven shows and schools, join Nightswimming and Theatre Passe Muraille staff on the stage to clarify exactly who caused this whole massive enterprise. (Playwright Ned Dickens)

Seven Jewish Children to have star-studded Toronto Premiere

2009-05-06T13:52:00.013-04:00

The first public performance of Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children in Toronto features a who’s who of Canadian theatre. Arguably the most controversial and headline grabbing theatrical text of the past year, the ten-minute piece has already caused controversy in the UK and the US with performances at the Royal Court and New York Theatre Workshop.

Crow’s Theatre will present the Toronto debut at Theatre Passe Muraille as part of the Directors' Showcase & Exchange from May 15th to 17th. The reading will be directed by Rose Plotek who recently directed the Canadian and French language World Premiere in Montreal last month. The Facebook page for the event reads reads:

“Crow’s Theatre will also present staged readings of Caryl Churchill's new play ‘Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza’ – NTS Directing Program alumnus Rose Plotek will direct an ensemble cast that includes Rosemary Dunsmore, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Jeff Meadows & R.H. Thomson.”

If the controversy over the cancellation of My Name is Rachel Corrie by CanStage is any barometer, these performances are likely to become a lightning rod for both sides of the issue. Because it’s important not to be a relativist about everything and take a stand on important issues, we’re throwing it out there that at Praxis Theatre we do not think this play is anti-semetic, and we do think its long overdue for a performance here in the T Dot.

Disagree? Read the text for yourself here, or leave a comment. The best thing about art of this nature is that it has the potential to raise awareness and encourage discussion of important issues.

City of Wine - Oedipus and Seven

2009-05-04T15:15:00.014-04:00

Oedipus directed by Ursula Neuerburg-Denzer, Concordia University, Montreal

Performs Wed May 6 @ 8pm, Sat May 9 @ noon

After an extremely early morning, long bus ride and exhilarating load in, the cast and crew from Oedipus at Concordia are thrilled to have arrived in the great city of Toronto for the City of Wine festival. It has certainly been a long haul getting here but we are all excited to stage our show at Theatre Passe Muraille. Having adapted to a new playing space and significantly altered set, the show promises to be interesting and fresh for all! It is really great to be involved in the City of Wine Festival. It has already proven to be a fantastic theatre experience and opportunity to meet some wonderful new people and catch a glimpse at the theatre world many of us will continue to pursue in the future. It's also been a great chance for some national travel, too! Looking forward to seeing you all at the show, cheers!

Hayley Lewis

Seven directed by Sarah Stanley, York University, Toronto

Performs: Thurs May 7 @ 4pm, Sat May 9 @ 8pm

When Seven takes the stage at Theatre Passe Muraille it will be the first time that it is performed. Unlike the other six plays, York’s production has yet to be seen by an audience. This certainly adds to our excitement and anticipation as the City of Wine festival week approaches. For the last four weeks we have been in a whirlwind of rehearsals; doing script work, creating songs, and practicing chorography and fight scenes. The actors have been transforming into their characters and discovering that, although they are “UnNamed”, they are truly complex individuals. Meanwhile our team of dramaturgs and assistant directors have been researching Greek mythology, the Trojan War, and finding connections between the play and current events. Seven is the story of the very last Thebans. After being forced to leave Thebes and fight in the Trojan War, they must face their own mortality and the end of their city’s history. As we have become more and more immersed in this world, the significance of bringing Thebes to its end has really set in. Being part of City of Wine has been such a rewarding journey. We are very excited to see the work that the other schools have done and to celebrate our successes together.

Samantha Serles

Click here to get fully up to date on City of Wine

City of Wine - Creon

2009-05-01T08:42:00.003-04:00

Creon, directed by Jillian Keiley, Memorial University's Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Corner Brook, Newfoundland
Performs: Thurs May 7 @ noon, Sat May 9 @ 4pm

Is May 1st here already?! My class separated only a few short weeks ago to return to our own respective corners of the country, and already we're coming together again as we all join the traveling mass of theatre stories en route to Toronto! Having first mounted Creon in November, there has been a long waiting period for Grenfell in which we have strived to keep the show fresh and ever-improving. After five months of a waiting to bring Creon to the stage once more, my class is eager to finally get to work and learn from so many talented people, meet theatre students from schools across the country, and help in bringing such great stories to life. See you all soon!

Meghan Greeley

Click here to get fully up to date on City of Wine

Stan's Cafe and HATCHLab: Learn to a make crazy experimental theatre for free

2009-04-29T08:45:00.013-04:00

Stan's Cafe is coming to Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. These guys are crazy (in a good way). In an effort to allow facilitate skill and idea transfer between international and local artists, they are currently accepting applications, due tomorrow, to work with their AD James Yarker.

The press release reads:

"HATCHLab is an intensive peer-to-peer learning opportunity presented as part of Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH: emerging performance projects and World Stage programmes. HATCHLab’s goal is to create a space for conversation about practice and to cross distances between artists in Toronto’s performance community and our international peers. Previous HATCHLab’s have featured New York’s TEAM (Theatre of the Emerging American Moment) and Australia’s Back to Back Theatre. This time, Stan’s Cafe Artistic Director James Yarker will lead a workshop on performance creation, devising, and the meetings of theatre, visual and performance art cultures.

Space in HATCHLab is limited. Interested participants should apply no later than Thursday, April 30. The workshop is being created for the participants, so please include a bio and resume in your email, and tell us why you’d like to be part of the workshop and what you’d like to get out of it. Email your submissions to HATCH@harbourfrontcentre.com. Successful applicants will be notified no later than Friday, May 1."

Check out these videos of the two shows they will be presenting, before you decide if this is a good idea:

The Cleansing of Constance Brown

Of All the People in the World

What should we discuss now?

2009-04-27T17:00:00.003-04:00

Any suggestions?

City of Wine - Pentheus and Jocasta

2009-04-24T00:07:00.018-04:00

Pentheus directed by Tatiana Jennings, Humber College, Toronto
Performs: Tues May 5 @ 8pm, Friday May 8 @ noon

Having closed the show on April 18th, Pentheus is still fresh in our minds and bodies at Humber College. We celebrated a great run at our theatre, and look forward to the remount in May. Much like the other participating schools, we’re wrapping up our year and time at Humber, with other final performances and projects taking place. Our time at Theatre Passe Muraille is fast approaching, and our remount rehearsals are on their way as well! As Torontonians we have the luxury of knowing Passe Muraille as audience members, so we’re familiar with the space. However, we will be faced with the point of view of performers, so will soon be navigating a newly taped-out rehearsal floor that will reflect the City of Wine setup. As the date draws closer, we talk often of meeting the other students from across the country, as well as directors, technicians, family, and the general public that will be involved with City of Wine. It’s such a thrilling way to exit theatre school, working amongst one another and closing the distance between schools across the country. What better way to enter a career in the arts than to work with other emerging artists from all necks of these Canadian woods? It’s with this inspiration that we press forward, managing to get through our year-end tasks and performances, looking forward to the City of Wine and all that will follow.

Emily Farrell

Jocasta directed by Craig Hall, Studio 58 at Langara College, Vancouver
Performs: Wed May 6 @ 4pm, Friday May 8 @ 8pm

Image by Emily Cooper

The living definition of playing at work: Remember how in elementary school you folded pieces of paper until they couldn’t get any smaller, then pulled them out and they looked like accordions? Imagine that, but as set pieces. The furniture for Jocasta is made of paper, yup. These set pieces fold accordion style into completely flat slabs, get carried on stage and then opened up and stepped on, sat on, jumped on, or whatever else one may want to do to it. On a nightly basis I am amazed at the abuse that these little buggers can take. On the opening days of rehearsal all the named characters would go off to work on emblems and other types of character building processes, whist we, the unnamed, would spend hours figuring out how crazy of shapes and designs we could make with these while still being able to support a person! And it didn’t stop there, these pieces were an obsession for the run of the show, I continue to find new ways that they can be folded, one of the many reasons I didn’t get a chance to blog about it. I don’t feel that any amount of description can do justice to how cool these things are; therefore I posted a demo of them on YouTube. Check it out. Also there you will find a promo video for the Vancouver production. It has shots of people actually standing on these guys. Enjoy

Joel Grinke

Click here to get fully up to date on City of Wine

Chris Dupuis is talking to The Globe and Mail (but are they listening?)

2009-04-23T16:48:00.008-04:00

Toronto-based theatre artist and journalist Chris Dupuis has taken on the Margaret Wente and The Globe and Mail over their willingness to print her recent article on HIV and the issues surrounding HIV disclosure in his recent article in XTRA.

Dupuis, who is also editor of the Time and Space Magazine, a forum for critical discussion of contemporary art, performance and politics; finishes his finely-tuned critique with this final challenge:

“The damage that Wente has done to the general public’s perception of HIV-positive people and advocacy groups is immeasurable. I have never been so ashamed of another member of my profession.

I call on the Globe’s editors to assign a rebuttal piece to Wente’s work to run on the front page of a future Saturday edition of that paper.

It’s time for the Globe to put things right."

In support of Dupuis and his attempt to garner balanced coverage to this issue we invite readers to leave puns in the comments section that make discuss Margaret Wente and her approach to journalism: We'll go first:

That's Wente happens when you present material out of context.

See how easy it is?

City of Wine - Harmonia and Laius

2009-04-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

Harmonia directed by DD Kugler, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver

Performs: Tues May 5th @ 4pm and Thurs May 7th @ 8pm

This process of rehearsing a show for remount is a strange and wonderful thing. Strange because things are the same, and yet different; it’s clearly not a new production, and yet it’s not quite the same as the first one either. But this is what’s wonderful about the process as well. What an opportunity it is to come back to characters and a story with the kind of understanding that only a production can give you, and then continue to work! To be able to solidify as well as break open the elements of the original show! To make new discoveries (not least of which is that where once you had space on the stage for entrances and exits, you now have a solid wall…)! This chance to take a second look at our work is a gift, and we are excited to be able to bring this story to life again as part of the City of Wine Festival.

Caroline Sniatynski

Laius directed by Eda Holmes, George Brown Theatre School, Toronto

Performs: Wed May 6 @ noon and Fri May 8 @ 4pm

The writing of this paragraph is wedged between an Italian line run of Laius, and a performance of one of our spring shows! Here, at George Brown Theatre School, we are ending off our year (and time at theatre school) by performing two shows in rep: a Restoration comedy (The Relapse) and a musical (The Baker's Wife). In between 12-hour tech rehearsals, we have been getting together to review blocking, run lines, practice transitions, and review the live music we will have to pull together again for our remount of Laius in May. It is a challenge to keep three shows ready to go at a performance level, but we all feel our acting muscles are the strongest they've ever been -- it is amazing how many worlds we can hold on to at the same time. In fact, leaving this script for days and weeks at a time to enter other characters, examine other issues, and experience other eras has actually sharpened the clarity of the Theban world for me. I have a keener sensorial understanding of what that world feels like, where its moral compass lies, and how its tragedies resonant specifically for the characters. We all look forward to reoopening the world of Thebes with fresh eyes and hearts, especially in the presence of so many other students entering the world with us! We are all also very excited to be hosting so many out-of-towners in our city ... we will welcome them with wine and more wine.

Leora Morris

Click here to get fully up to date on City of Wine

City of Wine: The biggest thing ever

2009-04-19T20:44:00.019-04:00

City of Wine tells the epic story of the city of Thebes and its citizens through a cycle of seven plays by playwright Ned Dickens. Produced by the award-winning dramaturgical theatre company nightswimming, the cycle will be performed twice over May 5th to 9th, 2009 at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, Canada.

What did it take to make it happen?

1 playwright
15 years
9 Workshops
12 dramaturgs
14 directors
25 designers
110 theatre artists
172 professional actors
9 schools
42 school sessions
233 student performers
248 individual supporters
4 Canadian cities
5 days in May
12 hours of theatre

McGill University professor of theatre studies Dennis Salter recently declared to Macleans Magazine, "Nothing on this scale has ever been tried in Canadian theatre."

Leading up to this event, student performer/bloggers from across Canada will be sharing their production and experience with the Praxis blog with one submission from an artist involved in each of the seven shows.

City of Wine bloggers were each given the same broad criteria: Write one paragraph about and include one image of your production. The statement, “Why I am too busy to blog about City of Wine” was suggested as a starting point for these soon-to-be graduated performers, but was not strictly prescriptive.

Stay tuned for the first responses this week!

Variation #1: Sarah Sanford

2009-04-15T10:01:00.038-04:00

Text:

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

Image:

Sound:

Enter this website and click on the box next to DINING ROOM. When the animation loads and the fly has landed, click on #3 along the bottom.

Sarah Sanford is the conceiver/director the original dance/theatre work Appetite opening April 17th in Toronto at Theatre Passe Muraille and April 30th in Philadelphia at The Wolf Building.

Click here to learn more about Praxis Theatre's Variations on Theatre.

Theatre on the internet: Praxis Theatre's Variations on Theatre

2009-04-13T22:09:00.017-04:00

Inspired by the success of Praxis Theatre’s 101 Sentences About Theatre, this week marks the debut of a new series: Praxis Theatre’s Variations on Theatre. The series asks artists to respond with a combination of the three key elements present in theatre:

Image, sound, text.

These will consist of:

A) One image
As a jpeg or YouTube clip.

B) One song or sound
As a link to a Myspace based artist, a website that has sound, a written description of the sound, or other legal means devised to transfer knowledge of sound through the internet.

C) One piece of text

No constraints. Not crazy long.

Other info:

A jpeg of the artist contributing to the project. (preferably NOT a headshot).
Name, upcoming project and what role (i.e. director, actor, etc.) in this work is.
Website that provides more detail and information on this work.

(Yes it is easy as ABC-123.)

The goal of Praxis Theatre’s Variations on Theatre is to discover new and interesting ideas about theatrical product and practice through creation as a catalyst for discussion. It also has the potential to accumulate a project that approximates small instances of theatre on the internet. That a live audience doesn't experience these responses in the same space necessarily changes the project in a way that makes this project something different from “pure theatre”. This is why they will be "variations". C’est la vie. We work with what we have.

Variations on Theatre also presents a way for the community to interact with this website as something other than a bulletin board. Or perhaps, asks that you interact with the website artistically to use the bulletin board. In either case, if you follow the criteria and give it an honest try, the process includes pimping yourself and your upcoming project. If you're not hawking any artistic wares, and find the project interesting, we'd like you to join in too.

#1 later this week!

Some questions about the Lebronsemble

2009-04-10T08:27:00.008-04:00

The best team in professional basketball, The Cleveland Cavaliers, led by the best player in professional basketball, Lebron James, now begin many games by performing their own piece of devised original theatre. We christen this new troupe: The Lebronsemble.

If a typical black box theatre holds 200 people and a typical NBA arena holds 17,000 people; how may sold out performances would you need to reach as many audience members as The Lebonsemble? (Answer: 85 consecutive sell outs.)
Is it surprising in the least that Lebron also happens to be a good director able to meld imagination with compelling imagery?
Does their success on the court stem from the strong connection they possess as an ensemble?
Have they been studying Stanislavki's Circles of Attention to create better awareness on the floor?
Luke Walton sure would make a hunky star of a short musical interlude. Are Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol cooking up their own rival act? (Before you write this off, think about all the courtside celebrities the Lakers could incorporate.)

Watch and decide:

Appetite - The Play

2009-04-08T09:13:00.009-04:00

If there was an "Academy Awards of Dance/Theatre YouTube Promo Clips" this one would likely receive a nomination.

Click here for more info

3 reasons to get your indie theatre company online by noon yesterday

2009-04-07T08:51:00.007-04:00

by Michael Wheeler

About 25% of the time I put into being Co-Artistic Director of Praxis Theatre is devoted specifically to our blog and online presence .

That we would have ever ended up spending this much time developing our theatre company online never occurred to Co-AD Simon Rice and I when we began Praxis in the winter of 2003, but it seems wholly necessary in the early spring of 2009. We think it's so important we're in the middle of putting time and money into integrating and re-launching our website and blog at praxistheatre.com.

Why? Because theatre, like virtually every other art form and industry, is being radically reshaped by the power and popularity of online media. Here are the top three reasons why:

Click here to continue reading this article on the Toronto Fringe Festival website.

Out and about

2009-04-05T17:26:00.024-04:00

Jane Maggs (left) and Dana Puddicombe (right) were spotted at the opening night party for Small Wooden Shoe 's Dedicated to The Revolutions at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
Is there trouble brewing between these two co-founders of East of Reason Theatre?

Seems like it.

Praxis Theatre announces summer season

2009-04-02T23:28:00.007-04:00

Praxis Theatre will present two new original works in the summer of 2009!

1) Tim Buck 2 @ The Toronto Fringe Festival

The first iteration of our original adaptation/exploration of the Progressive Arts Club's depression-era protest play, Eight Men Speak, will be presented at The Tranzac as part of The Fringe Club.

2) Underneath @ The SummerWorks Theatre Festival

Playwright and international security adviser Andrew Zadel, author of the award-winning Steel, returns to Praxis Theatre with his tale of UN forensic pathologists struggling to arrive at definitive answers in Kosovo.

Rum and Vodka - the remount

2009-04-02T08:14:00.012-04:00

Click here for more info

PCC to the performance nation: What has changed?

2009-04-01T00:23:00.009-04:00

PCC Toronto asks the question: “What has changed?”

The Images Festival, Harbourfront Centre, Small Wooden Shoe, Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, The Theatre Centre, Dancemakers, and SummerWorks Festival come together to host the 11th meeting of the Performance Creation Canada Network.

WHAT IS PCC?

Performance Creation Canada (PCC) is a nationwide network dedicated to the nourishment, management and study of performance creation in Canada, and the ecology in which it flourishes. The meeting is aimed at creating a discussion between artists in dance, theatre, music, film, and visual arts who are interested in the well being of Canadian performance creation. The conference is designed to open conversation, and open minds.

This year PCC meets in Toronto April 2nd-5th.

Click here to read their dedicated blog with all the juicy details.

2009 Keynote Speaker: Jillian Mcdonald

Scheduled Panelists/Moderators include: David Michael DiGregorio, John Jameel Farah, Oliver Husain, Sung Hwan Kim, Jillian Mcdonald, Darren O'Donnell, Beatriz Pizano, Helena Reckitt, Julia Rudelius, Sarah Stanley, Small Wooden Shoe, Evan Webber and Carl Wilson

Blogging, facebooking and twittering about the arts as a job

2009-03-30T15:44:00.004-04:00

This is the first time we've ever posted a job opening, but Harbourfront Centre is accepting applications for a position that seems ideally suited to regular readers of this blog:

"Currently an employment opportunity exists in our Design Communications Department for a contract Social Media Specialist. Reporting to the Web Site Content Administrator, this position will be responsible for the execution of all social media strategies for Harbourfront Centre and its programmes to enable further interaction and engagement with our diverse audiences and increase brand awareness and website traffic."

Click here to read the full posting.

May the most savvy social media/arts and culture integration expert win!

2009 World Theatre Day Message - Augusto Boal

2009-03-26T00:33:00.012-04:00

All human societies are “spectacular*” in their daily life and produce “spectacles” at special moments. They are “spectacular” as a form of social organization and produce “spectacles” like the one you have come to see.

Even if one is unaware of it, human relationships are structured in a theatrical way. The use of space, body language, choice of words and voice modulation, the confrontation of ideas and passions, everything that we demonstrate on the stage, we live in our lives. We are theatre!

Weddings and funerals are “spectacles”, but so, also, are daily rituals so familiar that we are not conscious of this. Occasions of pomp and circumstance, but also the morning coffee, the exchanged good-mornings, timid love and storms of passion, a senate session or a diplomatic meeting - all is theatre.

One of the main functions of our art is to make people sensitive to the “spectacles” of daily life in which the actors are their own spectators, performances in which the stage and the stalls coincide. We are all artists. By doing theatre, we learn to see what is obvious but what we usually can’t see because we are only used to looking at it. What is familiar to us becomes unseen: doing theatre throws light on the stage of daily life.

Last September, we were surprised by a theatrical revelation: we, who thought that we were living in a safe world, despite wars, genocide, slaughter and torture which certainly exist, but far from us in remote and wild places. We, who were living in security with our money invested in some respectable bank or in some honest trader’s hands in the stock exchange were told that this money did not exist, that it was virtual, a fictitious invention by some economists who were not fictitious at all and neither reliable nor respectable. Everything was just bad theatre, a dark plot in which a few people won a lot and many people lost all. Some politicians from rich countries held secret meetings in which they found some magic solutions. And we, the victims of their decisions, have remained spectators in the last row of the balcony.

Twenty years ago, I staged Racine’s Phèdre in Rio de Janeiro. The stage setting was poor: cow skins on the ground, bamboos around. Before each presentation, I used to say to my actors: “The fiction we created day by day is over. When you cross those bamboos, none of you will have the right to lie. Theatre is the Hidden Truth”.

When we look beyond appearances, we see oppressors and oppressed people, in all societies, ethnic groups, genders, social classes and casts; we see an unfair and cruel world. We have to create another world because we know it is possible. But it is up to us to build this other world with our hands and by acting on the stage and in our own life.

Participate in the “spectacle” which is about to begin and once you are back home, with your friends act your own plays and look at what you were never able to see: that which is obvious. Theatre is not just an event; it is a way of life!

We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.

Augusto Boal

(Original Portuguese)
* means also having the nature of a spectacle or show (note of the translator)

Curious Carnivore Concert

2009-03-23T13:51:00.001-04:00

What the hell is World Theatre Day?

2009-03-20T09:45:00.004-04:00

This map shows all the cities that have signed on for activities on World Theatre Day 2009. (We'll see you after school Siberia and Mongolia!)

World Theatre Day is celebrated every year on March 27.
It is sponsored by The International Theatre Institute, an international non-governmental organization that was founded in Prague in 1948 by UNESCO and the international theatre community. The ITI aims "to promote international exchange of knowledge and practice in theatre arts (drama, dance, music theatre) in order to consolidate peace and solidarity between peoples, to deepen mutual understanding, and increase creative co-operation between all people in the theatre arts."
Of course World Theatre Day, has a blog and a Facebook group.
Each city gets involved in different ways. Suggestions include open rehearsals, readings, discounted tickets, flash mobs, blogging, recording, or just plain attending theatre.
Every year a famous theatre artist writes a message about theatre that can be transmitted any way you see fit. Previous writers include lightweights like Laurence Olivier, Wole Soyinka, Vaclav Havel and some guy named Peter Brook. This year's message is written by Augusto Boal.
Click here to get everything you need to make your city part of World Theatre Day.

Missing You

2009-03-19T08:50:00.001-04:00

Is Darren O'Donnell still a theatre artist? Is that question even relevant in this context? What is our government's commitment to human rights? What would I look like if I was Omar Khadr? If I answer that question for an audience (even an informal one), is that not theatre?

These are some of the questions raised by Missing You, a set of amusement park face-in-the-hole novelties by Darren O'Donnell. The viewer is given the opportunity to offer their presence in the place of Omar Khadr's absence, occurring during curator Sophia Lin’s Toronto Free Gallery’s group show Presently Absent, sharing the space with artists Swintak and Johanna Householder.

Two full-size portraits of Toronto-born, Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr, rendered on two large pieces of plywood occupy the two bay windows of the gallery. The faces are removed and the viewer invited to occupy Khadr, at a time in his life before the current and insane legal limbo, in one of his two homes: Toronto and Afghanistan - an impossibility. The carnival novelty mocks our inability to act, our complicity with the Canadian state for allowing this to continue, and suggests that when we do try to act, our only option is to act like a buffoon.

March 19 - April 18
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 19, 6PM - 9PM
Live Feed Performance by Johanna Householder at 6:30pm
Toronto Free Gallery
1277 Bloor Street West

Out and about

2009-03-16T23:09:00.007-04:00

Autumn Smith and Cathy Murphy of MackenzieRo at the opening night of Someone is Going to Come presented by One Little Goat.

Theatre Is Territory 3.0

2009-03-15T10:44:00.007-04:00

What the fuck is going on now?

Basically this:

After four months of transition with help from Ian Mackenzie consulting from the shadows, the kids at Praxis are finally ready to run their own blog. We’re on our own now in this e-wilderness, without the benefit of a pioneer of the Canadian theatrosphere.

Theatre Is Territory will continue in a new location, the appropriately located: theatreisterritory.com. You will be able to find all of Ian’s famous 10 Questions interviews here and a few of his other ongoing projects too.

Everything here will remain almost unnoticeably the same…or will it?

NO IT WON’T!

We have a lot of changes in the works:

• Praxis Theatre Co-Artistic Director Simon Rice will begin contributing regularly with his own series of interviews.
• Greta Papageorgiu’s wildly popular Celebrity Theatre series is set to return as well.
• No more Just The Facts. It was boring. We‘ll develop a new way to let people know what the fuck is going on
• A full re-launch that fully integrates this blog with the Praxis Theatre website.

We would like to give sincere thanks to Ian for everything he has done for the company as our Marketing Director and in particular with this blog. From his first post at 10:33am on October 11th 2006, to his last post on Monday January 26th 2009, two-and–a-half years later, this blog has become an important place for discussion and information about indie theatre in Canada and around the world.

Thanks Ian. Praxis Theatre is certainly better known and respected because of all of your savvy, imagination and hard work.

Sincerely,

Everyone at Praxis Theatre!

Canadian indie productions get slick on YouTube

2009-03-10T20:59:00.006-04:00

After scouring the internet for good uses of YouTube videos to promote Canadian theatrical productions, one thing became crystal clear: Indie companies have this scene locked down! No venued or commercial companies we found really had anything worth posting in this format.

Give it time. The mainstream takes time to co-opt new forms, but they invariably get around to it. It has likely not sunk in that people who watch YouTube promo clips are the NEW audience for theatre and they are still milking the OLD one.

Here are some fine examples of the use of YouTube videos to promote indie productions:

Experimental Indie

Dedicated To The Revolutions

Small Wooden Shoe

Classical Indie

Macbeth

Classical Theatre Project

Theatre for Young Audiences Indie

Cranked

Green Thumb Theatre

What do you think? Is this the new cost effective way to promote a show, or just a fun hobby for artists with too much time on their hands? Do these clips make you want to see these shows, or are they just entertainment unto themselves?

What should we talk about now?

2009-03-06T00:30:00.003-05:00

Any suggestions?

(New picture every time we ask that question from now on.)

Panych gives the straight goods to Piatkowski

2009-03-04T08:43:00.005-05:00

Highly recommended interview with Canadian theatre legend Morris Panych on One Big Umbrella today. Never one to pull punches on the internet, Panych gives a series of entertaining and refreshingly uncensored responses to the questions posed by M.K. Piatkowski. Highlights include:

“Who would direct the coolest production of one of your plays?

I can tell you who would direct the uncoolest. The asshole from New York who directed Avenue Q...”

“Where would you like your work to be produced?

It’s a nice feeling to have a play make you some money, so anywhere is fine. That said, one of my favorite recent experiences was going to see Lawrence and Holloman at a little hole in the wall place in Kensington Market...”

“What scares you? What can't you write about?

…Sometimes I think I should write about being gay but I have nothing to say about that, either. ‘I’m gay’ is not a play; although some people seem to have made a career of it.”

You can read the full interview on One Big Umbrella here.

Total eclipse of the arts

2009-03-02T11:25:00.004-05:00

The provincial government in BC has the arts community piping mad after they reduced arts funding to 1980s levels in a single pre-election budget! (Did these guys pay attention to how well that worked out for the government in the federal election?) Theatre Skam has responded with your typical, "Don't get mad, record and remix a really hilarious song about it" response. Click the link below to hear:

Total Eclipse of The Arts

Member-Creator Resolution Passes 96-1 at CAEA Annual General Meeting

2009-02-27T08:58:00.008-05:00

Photo by Annnna licensed under Creative Commons

On Monday February 24th CAEA held its annual AGM. Though attendance in the past has been so poor that quorum has not been achieved, members turned out in exceptional numbers this year. Debate from the floor made clear the motivation behind this unparalleled presence. The Member Resolution put forward by TAPA Indie-Caucus member Mark Brownell prompted this surge in numbers—artists came to vote.

The resolution (with minor amendments), passed with overwhelming support; only one individual voted against it.

Those who spoke in support of the resolution—which deals with member-created work —urged the audience to consider the specific manner in which the way that artists work has changed. Individual members spoke for those from across the country who could not be present, reporting that they see their impetus to create as being stymied by the association. A particular point of emphasis noted the distinction between producers and member-creators. A second distinguishing point was the necessity of making this discussion a national dialogue. The President himself could not help commenting “I am getting a strong message here.” He explained that member-initiated production has been put on Council’s work plan for the next year.

With respect to concerns about the resolution, one speaker suggested that CAEA avoid an influx of too many member-creators and make the agreements available to these artists more difficult to access.

Council meets in March. Equity by-laws place the command of this Member Resolution firmly in the hands of Council. The membership present at the AGM has voted, with quorum. Council now has the opportunity to vote and determine the future of this resolution. Attendance on Monday evening must send to Council a clear signal as to how the resolution and its outcomes might be handled.

Click here for the CAEA Council Info Page

Summerworks Performance Gallery 2009

2009-02-26T08:19:00.012-05:00

Photo by Design Wallah licensed under Creative Commons

What would you do in a completely empty hotel room or the hallway in between?
What is the importance of the audience to this piece?
Does the risk and imagination stretch beyond the physical confinements?

Launched in 2008, The Performance Gallery (Inside the Box) was one of the SummerWorks Theatre Festival's many new initiatives. In its inaugural year, the gallery, which took place on the 2nd floor of the Gladstone Hotel, featured an eclectic group of artists offering everything from short plays to dance to performance art to improvised concerts. This year it returns to the Gladstone (Aug 6- 9 & Aug 13-16th) and is seeking site-specific but not necessarily site-themed pieces (7-10 minutes) in all performance mediums.

Click here to read the full application procedures.

Are American MFAs a Ponzi Scheme or just ten times better than Canadian MFAs?

2009-02-23T00:02:00.015-05:00

Mike Daisey’s visit to Canada was overshadowed by that of another charismatic Yankee who rose to success through a combination of excellent public speaking skills, fully harnessing the potential of the internet, and the notion that a broken system requires change. So it goes.

Mike Daisey performed this month at Vancouver’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, and judging by the overwhelmingly positive response he received from folks like Simon Ogden of The Next Stage, America’s most prolific and relentless theatre blogger seems not to have disappointed with his abilities as a performer in his visit to Canada.

While he was there, Daisey was not blogging about the scenic wilderness or the high quality of our maple syrup. He was responding to the firestorm he started off, when he pointed out the numerous parallels between American MFA acting programs and the characteristics of a Ponzi Scheme.

The basic premise of Daisey’s argument is thus: A system that encourages artists to incur $100,000 + debt while the average wage of graduates hovers somewhere below the poverty line, is a corrupt one that will eventually collapse under the weight of its inability to provide a return for its investors.

This scheme implicates academia, a large swath of artistic institutions, and of course American Theatre Magazine, whom in a matter of months it seems Daisey has singlehandedly de-legitimized as voice genuinely representing the interest of American artists through a critique of its role promoting and benefiting from deeply flawed institutional and educational models.

These are all very good and valid points, but they raise an even more interesting question for North American theatre artists who enjoy their beer with a higher percentage of alcohol under the benevolent rule of a Constitutional Monarchy:

If it costs roughly $40,000 a year to go to New York University, and $4000 to go to York University, is NYU ten times “better” than York? What added value does your extra $36,000 a year buy you?

Although there are a number of excellent undergraduate or certificate conservatory programs, there are actually very few MFA theatre programs in Canada period. What’s up with that? Are MFAs necessary at all - or do we not have enough? Two thirds of the cast of our recent production of Stranger (and the producer) trained in the US after completing an undergrad degree in Canada...

Matthew Jocelyn picked to run Canadian Stage Company

2009-02-18T14:17:00.003-05:00

Time to find something new to gossip/speculate aimlessly about. After an exhaustive search, Matthew Jocelyn was announced this morning as Artistic and General Director of Canadian Stage Company.

Was this the right pick? This was not one of the old guard names that had been thrown around ad nauseum over the past few weeks. On the surface though, a born and bred Torontonian who is bilingual and has significant international accomplishments under his belt seems just about right. Care to disagree?

Attention CAEA Member-Creators

2009-02-15T23:03:00.018-05:00

Hello Indie Artists,

I am putting forward an individual member's motion at Equity's next AGM on the evening of February 23rd.

The motion is as follows:

"WHEREAS Equity members who create their own work (Member-Creators) are under-represented on Council;

AND WHEREAS there is dissatisfaction among such Equity Member-Creators with the current options to engage Equity artists, including The Independent Artists Projects Policy (the "Indie"), Small Scale Theatre Addendum and Co-op Guidelines that are available to its members;

BE IT RESOLVED THAT steps be taken by Equity staff to address this dissatisfaction by consulting with a committee made up of volunteer CAEA Member-Creators whose purpose is to field concerns and suggestions, gather information and seek advice from fellow CAEA members as well as examine alternative options, devise revisions or alternatives to the current agreements and policies and report back to the business representatives, senior staff and the membership at large."

I am asking all Equity members in good standing to arrive at 6 p.m. sharp and support this motion when it appears on the agenda. I also request that members be courteous and polite during this meeting. A member's motion is rare and the President brought this section of the AGM to the general membership's attention in good faith and with a desire to let all points of view be heard. Now is the chance for you to make a difference in shaping the future policies of your association. We hope that you will attend.

~ Mark Brownell

Praxis Theatre is a member of the Indie Caucus and supports this motion. We encourage CAEA Member-Creators who share our concerns to arrive before 6pm at the Austin Gallery, 1 King St W., 12th floor, Toronto. (@ King Subway Stn.) on Monday February 23rd, 2009.

Click below to read the CAEA announcement:
Notice of National Annual General Meeting

For more information, click the link below to visit the Facebook group:
Artists for a new CAEA Indie Agreement

Globe and Mail writer for a day

2009-02-12T07:59:00.009-05:00

Finding a way to project this image of Department of Culture's recent Senate appointments was what started the whole (Wrecking) ball rolling for me.

What the heck just happened?

By Michael Wheeler

In a classic case of careful what you wish for, days after wondering aloud to a colleague how anyone ever got to be part of a Wrecking Ball, I found myself at the centre of the technical side of one.

This was hilarious for many reasons. These included:

It is possible that some of the alcohol from the Stranger closing night party was still in my system when I arrived at Theatre Passe Muraille on Monday morning.
I had no real knowledge about how digital projectors worked, but would be running one.
I had never used Powerpoint before, which all of the images I was responsible for would be stored in and manipulated by - on one of two laptops. I would be unable to determine which one until I arrived.
As I have stated previously, I believe The Wrecking Ball to be the most exciting thing going on in Canadian theatre right now, and I felt a heavy bias towards not fucking one up.
Things got more ridiculous when I ended up writing a report on this experience for The Globe and Mail, which critic J. Kelly Nestruck duly posted on their theatre blog, Nestruck on Theatre.

This all occurred over 48 hours, and I gotta say: the one thing I am learning about the theatrosphere is that it pays to act fast and be decisive.

Click the link below to read my Globe and Mail debut:

The Wrecking Ball from top to tail: Michael Wheeler reports

Click the link below to view a high res-photo of the new DoC Senate:

Department of Culture 2009 Senate with legend here.

Just the facts: Moon Mission 3

2009-02-08T18:22:00.005-05:00

Moon Mission 3
Who: Evan Webber, with actors Hannah Cheesman and Ker Wells, and design by Sherri Hay.
Where: The Rhubarb Festival at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto, Canada.

When: February 11th-15th @ 8 pm.

What: A science-fiction romance play about the return of humans to the moon.
Why: Because the astronauts are praying for you.
Web: www.relativesafety.com
Buzz: The buzzing is because we're running the contact mics directly into the PA. Don't worry, it's intentional.

The Stranger interview

2009-02-06T13:45:00.010-05:00

CIUT’s Catherine Kustanczy sat down with Praxis Theatre Co-Artistic Director Simon Rice last week to discuss the company’s current production of Stranger at The Theatre Centre in Toronto. Here’s the interview.

By the way, this weekend is your last chance to catch the show.

We’re also offering a special blog-reader discount for our closing weekend. Here’s how it works: If you’re buying your tickets at the door, say the words, “Theatre is territory” at the box office and we’ll reduce the price of your ticket by $5 . . . down to a cool $15. Sweet!

Tickets and info here.

Do we need artists to create the new creative economy?

2009-02-05T09:52:00.009-05:00

Back-to-back articles have appeared in Toronto’s two most-read newspapers, The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, regarding creativity and artists that seem to underscore a dissonance between government spending and economic objectives.

The first piece in The Star titled “Report urges 'creativity-oriented economy' for Ontario”, summarizes a multi-million dollar report prepared for the provincial government on how to prepare our economy for the future. Amongst the recommendations:

“- Set a goal of having more than 50 per cent of Ontario's employment in "creativity-oriented jobs" by 2030. Currently, 30 per cent of jobs are in that category, accounting for nearly half of all wages.”

The second piece in The Globe titled, “Starving artists? That's not far from the mark”, analyzes a report based on the 2006 census commissioned by The Canada Council for the Arts, The Ontario Arts Council, and The Department of Heritage. Amongst the conclusions:

“What makes the situation even more distressing is that artist earnings have been decreasing since 1990 – a decline likely to intensify over the next two years. While average earnings for the overall labour force rose by almost 10 per cent from 1990 to 2005, artists experienced a slide of 11 per cent – to $22,731 from $25,433 – at the same time as the cultural-sector work force tripled in size. Actors experienced the sharpest decline in average earnings among artists, dropping 34 per cent to about $18,000 in 2005.”

Both of these studies come on the heels of the Department of Heritage announcing a new strategy to spend $25 Million to create The Canada Prizes, an American Idol-style competition that uses big money cash prizes to attract non-Canadian talent for a one week in June in Toronto.

These two studies seem to contrast greatly with the latest funding announcements made by brand new Heritage Minister James Moore. Will the trickle down economics of this one-week bonanza reap dividends for taxpayers seeking to revitalize a domestic creative economy? What role do artists play in a society seeking to increase creativity-oriented jobs by 20%? If your country’s artists are living in poverty and the situation is getting worse, can you expect to make this economic shift?

Just the Facts: Talking to Chris Dupuis

2009-02-02T22:30:00.007-05:00

Talking to Chris Dupuis
Who: Chris Dupuis.
Where: Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto, Canada. Thursday Feb 5th, 12th, and 19th.

@ 7 pm!
What: Part interview, part performance, artist and journalist Chris Dupuis chats with artists presenting work at the 30th Rhubarb Festival.
Why: Do You Like Talking? Do You Like Art? Do You Like Chris Dupuis? If you answered YES to any of these questions, this show is for you.
Web: www.chrisdupuis.com
Buzz: May contain Nudity, Mature Content, Foul Language, Cigarette Smoke, Strobe Lights, Self Indulgence, General Wankery .

Wrecking Ball 8

2009-02-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Wrecking Ball is back, just in time for Valentines Day. The incredible success of the 2008 Federal election nation-wide series of Wrecking Balls has just added fuel to the fire, or should we say, detonation?

Round 8:

Boonaa Mohammed, spoken word poetry.

Tara Beagan writes, Weyni Mengesha directs.

Matt MacFadzean writes, Michael Healey directs.

Anand Rajaram has a secret plan.

Theatre Passe Muraille has agreed to leave the bar open during the event. Iggy’s Sweaty Teste will be the preferred beverage. You have to have two before it hits you in the face!

Canada Prizes for the Arts and Creativity

2009-01-28T23:50:00.024-05:00

This week's federal budget contained few surprises, but there was one item that came out of left field, shocking the cultural sector: Luminato founders David Pecaut and Tony Gagliano, pictured above, have been granted $25 Million to create the Canada Prizes for the Arts and Creativity.

A number of artists have expressed ire that this announcement comes on the heels of the cancelation of the PromArt program, abandoning the federal government's commitment to promoting Canadian artists abroad. This new money will be used to host a pre-Luminato competition, where prestigious panels of judges will adjudicate international competitors in the fields of dance, music, art, and dramatic arts. The winner gets cash and a slot in the two-year-old festival that recently received another unprecedented $15 Million donation from the Ontario provincial government. New Conservative Minister of Heritage James Moore calls The Canada Prizes "the largest cultural prize-giving in the world".

What do you think? Is this a genius ploy to make Toronto an international hub for arts and creativity? Is this a genius ploy to to fund culture without rewarding Canadian artists for depriving the Conservative government of a majority in the recent election? How the heck do these two dudes get multi-million dollar grants from any level of government that no one else can apply for?

Twitter theatre?

2009-01-26T14:00:00.005-05:00

Three questions for any theatre people out there who are using the social networking tool Twitter:

1) How does Twitter help you be a better theatre professional?
2) How do you find other theatre people on Twitter?
3) Who would you recommend Twitter to?

Come to think of it, any thoughts on Twitter and its relationship to theatre would be awesome and of interest.

Stranger in ink

2009-01-23T10:38:00.011-05:00

Some company news: Praxis Theatre’s new play opens tonight . . . and just in case you’re looking for some Stranger love before the show, you can find us here:

Eye Magazine: Best Bests: Stranger
The Toronto Star: Small theatres, bold new productions...
Now Magazine: Stage Scenes interview – Michael Wheeler

Opening night is officially sold out. Thank you! But we’ve got lots more shows over the next three weeks. So come on out and get your Albert Camus on.

You can book your tickets online, and find all the info you need at praxistheatre.com.

Thanks again. We think you’re going to like this show.

Existential angst never felt so good.

Live from tech

2009-01-21T17:24:00.002-05:00

Original Video - More videos at TinyPic

New show! New website!

2009-01-16T07:56:00.009-05:00

Praxis Theatre is thrilled to announce that after more than two years in development, our brand new show is almost ready to go.

The show is called Stranger and it’s based on Albert Camus’ 1942 existential masterpiece novel L’Étranger.

To help you get a sense of the show, we’ve put together a brand new website with production information, photos of the cast, free downloadable wallpaper for your desktop – you can even buy tickets right from the site.

Check out the new microsite here: Stranger.

We’ll be updating the site regularly leading up to the show’s opening on January 23 and throughout the run. Please stay tuned for more details as we get closer to opening night.

Hope to see you at the theatre!

Regards,

Your friends at Praxis Theatre

Producing on the fringe

2009-01-12T08:08:00.002-05:00

Before becoming a Supervisor with Special Events (Cultural Division) for the City of Toronto, Bridget MacIntosh was the Producer of the Fringe of Toronto Theatre Festival, and Founding Producer of The Next Stage Festival. This made Bridget the ideal person to sit down with Gideon Arthurs, newly minted Executive Director of The Fringe of Toronto Theatre Festival, to have some beers and hear what's new with The Fringe.

BRIDGET: So I hear January is the new July Gid. Tell me what what’s up?

GIDEON: Everything. I mean everything. I have a new life-affirming/hopelessness-inducing task management system that reminds me that there is simply just no more time for anything. Mostly, that list is filled with the final details and prep for the Next Stage Theatre Festival (Jan 7-18!!!!) There are also one or two notes about the impending final gasping collapse of the world economy and the ensuing disappearance of arts’ funding in Canada and what extreme contingencies we’ll have to roll out if/when that happens. Also, I need to polish my boots before the festival starts and buy brown sugar.

BRIDGET: I made some brown sugar fudge over the holidays. Always good to have brown sugar nearby… but really I can’t believe it’s already time for Next Stage. I still have these moments where I think back and am like, “Wow! Did that really happen?” As the second instalment of Next Stage begins, just what kind of festival do you think you’ve inherited with Next Stage?

GIDEON: A fresh, full of potential, important festival. A festival that is a new, but deeply pure and true, incarnation of the Fringe’s principles. A brave, crazy one too - mid-January, a tent, no lottery… what the hell were you thinking? On a personal level, I’ve felt that NSTF has also afforded me the greatest sense of possession since I started at the Fringe almost a year ago. It’s been harder to understand and personally affect the massive beast that is our summer festival. With 20 years of institutional structure behind it, I sometimes wonder who the hell I am to try and improve it… But with NSTF being so young, and so full of potential for growth and creative input, I have a real view about what this festival can become, and how our team can make that view a reality.

BRIDGET: I know you know my thoughts on this but how do you think the Next Stage fits into the overall role of the Fringe of Toronto Theatre Festival?

GIDEON: I think it fits perfectly - more than an extension of what we do, it’s an evolution that makes sense. After 20 years, the Fringe is really in a place to claim its leadership role and continue to represent our constituents in new and innovative ways. Sometimes, talk like this frustrates me, but I find myself saying over and over again “Why don’t they know!? We’re at 58,000+ in attendance, we’ve given out $4 million over twenty years to thousands of artists, we employ over 100 people a year, we’re spread out to 30 different venues, we were the launching pad for the two most successful productions in Canadian Theatre… why aren’t you taking us seriously!!??” With Next Stage I honestly believe we’ve shown that we’re responsive and capable of growth, and therefore more “serious”, more confident, more capable. My hope over the next few years is to see the Fringe become THE voice for emerging and independent arts, a nexus of creative voices that cumulatively are stronger and louder than when alone, and who’s ranks include artists AND patrons as advocates for culture in our city.

OR

In Naval terms, Next Stage is the Cruiser to the Fringe’s Battleship.

BRIDGET: Or in bad 80’s movie terms, the Goose to the Fringe’s Maverick?

GIDEON: (silence)

BRIDGET: (silence)

BRIDGET: Next Stage is such a huge step in the evolution of the Fringe. With such a dynamic festival so you have any particular hopes or goals for the Next Stage over the next few years?

GIDEON: I’m trying hard in this yuletide season to only make qualitative goals, but I can’t help getting a little quantitative right now. Goal 1 - more people, more people watching plays, more plays made successes, more art-time for artists, more money for artists, more acclaim for the festival and participants, more patrons who can’t stop talking about the festival. More. Goal 2 – better operations, better funding, better understanding of what goes into making art by commenters on newspaper websites, better opportunities for our artists . . . better.

BRIDGET: Hey, you’re also coming up on your first year anniversary at the Fringe and we’ve still been playing tag with meeting up for steak. Although having beers and talking about theatre are great, just when is this meet for steak thing going to happen?

GIDEON: 2016

BRIDGET: (silence)

GIDEON: You know, my Mum’s flank steak was always my favourite, but it takes too long to marinate so I never make it.

BRIDGET: Any other challenges you’d like to talk about?

GIDEON: This job has truly been the challenge of a lifetime. In my four year plan, year 1 is labelled “Survival”. One of the major issues, that I think many of us in the arts face, is that there is infinite work to do. There is no ceiling, no control, and achievements are intangible - it’s that old “bringing back a 96% on a test and your parents asking you where the other 4% went”. No matter how many people come to the festival, no matter how much money we raise, there’s always more. No matter how many new programs we implement, we could implement more of them or make them bigger…The only limit is the exhaustion line, and when my wife tells me to come home. The first 48 hours of the ’08 Festival were possibly the worst 48 hours of my life. I was in so far above my head, I can’t even really remember what happened after we discovered that our ticketing software had crashed opening morning and none of our walkie-talkies worked.

BRIDGET: I once burned myself on a faulty festival cell phone.

GIDEON: (silence)

BRIDGET: I’m a *bit* biased here but I’ve always felt that the Fringe senior staff have been, and I’m sure continue to be, one of the finest festival staffs you can find. Graciousness aside, now, between you and me....if your entire Fringe senior staff were a street gang, how would you describe their individual fighting styles and who would come out on top if pitted against one another in a death match? I’m just saying, it’s like I’ve though about this before or anything.

GIDEON: We tried to arrange this one fight once with SummerWorks but we would have had to lend them our weapons and several of our staff, so it didn’t seem worthwhile. I see my staff/gang as more of a post-apocalypse urban gang than dance flick or 80’s gang. Paula “Silent and Violent” Forst, our Producer, is definitely the muscle - I’d say she’d do well with two giant mallets for some crashing and smashing. Adam “Grasshopper” Kirkham, our fundraiser, is quick on his feet and packs a wallop with a sock full of dimes. Lindsey “Voluntold” Clark, doing our volunteer coordinating, doesn’t engage in hand to hand herself but commandeers a legion of blood-thirsty volunteers to do her fighting for her. And then there’s the techs and box office staff, who to be honest will do anything for beer...They’re the group that shows up just when it looks like we’re outmuscled in a fight… the cavalry if you will. When push comes to shove though I’d have to say I would win in a fight against all of them, only because I’m an expert at driving people into a blind rage that allows me to take advantage of their weaknesses.

BRIDGET: Nicely played there buddy.

GIDEON: That blind rage stuff though. It’s true.

BRIDGET: Hey since we’re not doing the steak thing for a while, might as well tell me what you’re doing in the meantime. I hear that there are some new activities afoot? Do tell.

GIDEON: I’m incredibly excited about what we’re calling our new “initiatives”. We’re hoping to make official announcements soon, but they go as follows:

The Fringe Evolution Fund - to encourage remounts of successful Fringe shows, we’ll be giving out grants to help cover production costs for Fringe shows re-produced by the original company within five years of first appearing at the Toronto Fringe. We’re hoping to be able to give out as much as $10,000 within three years.

The Charrettes - inspired by design salons of the 19th century, this is a series of five meetings with relevant stakeholders to propose solutions to problems facing the performance community. Our first Charrette, about the shortage of rehearsal and performance space for small companies was a great success. Our next one is about adapting fundraising techniques for larger institutions to suit small companies… stay tuned for details.

Office Residencies -we have all the resources in place to welcome small into our offices during our down periods, to help bring their producing out of their kitchens and into a creative hub with other arts administrators.
OTICs (Online Ticketing for Independent Companies) - we’re offering subsidized access to our new online ticketing systems for small companies.

The Fringe/Paprika Festival Partnership - we’ll be working with the Paprika festival to make sure their youth get out to the Fringe as well as inviting one production to perform at the Fringe in 2009

BRIDGET: Love it. I think its important to get he word out about programs like these. To that end, this will eventually end up on a theatre blog. Any random thoughts on theatre blogs?

GIDEON: Isn’t the internet going to save theatre? Sometimes, I think we want to think that because the internet’s cheaper than everything else and is all we have… Now excuse me, I have to check my Facebook… for professional reasons.

BRIDGET: Oh yeah, sure no problem.

(2 HOURS LATER)

BRIDGET: Poked a lot?

GIDEON: (silence)

BRIDGET: Well Gid, thanks for the chat. Any words of wisdom to end off on? Any overall posits in the state of the performing arts?

GIDEON: I keep on trying to come up with different ways of saying this that don’t make me sound like I’m commoditising the creative process, but I give in. Money. Money is the challenge of the moment, not because money makes good art, and certainly not because we make art for money, but because without funding we are forced into impossible, un-artistic situations. I’m very afraid of what sort of art will be made when what seems to be brewing in arts funding comes to pass…

Just the facts: Next Stage Theatre Festival Edition v3

2009-01-02T11:38:00.000-05:00

The Rake's Progress: Do You Know Where Tom Rakewell Is?

Who: MacKenzieRo
Where: Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto, Canada
What: Adapted from the opera by Igor Stravinsky and the original engravings by William Hogarth, this show charts the course of Tom Rakewell through a loutish and debauched London.
Why: The 18th century engravings of The Rake's Progress alarmed and thrilled, the 20th century opera's lustiness astonished the 1953 Edinburgh Festival, how will 21st century audiences react to this updated evolution?
Web: MacKenzieRo Website
Hype: MacKenzieRo's previous production of DISCO PIGS was a hit at the 2007 Toronto Fringe, followed by a highly successful remount at Alchemy Theatre in 2008.

Reesor
Who: Reesor Collective
Where: Factory Studio Theatre, Toronto, Canada
What: Combines live music, performance, shadow-puppets, baking and a man in a bear suit to tell the story of a ghost town in Northern Ontario.
Why: In 1926, 400 people called Reesor, Ontario home. Now, all that remains is a pile of stone.
Web: Reesor Myspace Page
Hype: Toronto Fringe 2007 Best Overall Production, Best Music, Critic's Pick – NOW Magazine, "Best of the Fringe Series" – Diesel Playhouse

Humans Anonymous
Who: The Anonymous Co-op
Where: Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto, Canada
What: One is afraid of loneliness. Two is afraid of happiness. Three is afraid of ignorance. Four is afraid of judgment. Five is afraid of gremlins – even the nice ones. One loves four; three loves one; five loves cats.
Why: Returns to Toronto with new material and a New York run under its belt with the Bridge Theatre Company.
Web: The Official Kate Hewlett Fansite.
Hype: Not only did this 2006 Fringe show garner enough attention to transfer to New York, but playwright Kate Hewlett's subsequent fringe play, The Swearing Jar, was also a hit at the 2008 Toronto Fringe.

10 things I learned about theatre in 2008

2008-12-30T08:59:00.010-05:00

When in doubt, make a numbered list. That’s at least part of the thinking behind Praxis Theatre Director of Marketing Ian Mackenzie’s recent guest post at The Next Stage theatre blog: 10 things I learned about theatre in 2008.

Quasi-cantakerous, painfully obvious, or productively blunt?
You decide.

Please check out the full list of 10 at The Next Stage, here.

Just the Facts: Next Stage Theatre Festival Edition v2

2008-12-29T11:00:00.000-05:00

Take It Back
Who: Solid State Breakdance
Where: Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto, Canada
What: A combination of the high physicality of B-boying (Breakdance) with the partnering structures of Lindy Hop (Swing) and the aesthetics of Contemporary Dance.
Why: Asks the question: "Why don’t we dance in couples anymore?”
Web: Solid State Website.
Hype: "So organic and fun-loving that it manages to invent a dazzling new vocabulary, make statements on gender roles, and get the audience members whooping like they're at a full-blown battle." Straight.com

L’Ange Avec Les Fleurs
Who: Beth Marshall
Where: Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto, Canada
What A troupe of vagabond performers their band, tell the tale of a clown's journey to become a real man through an explosion of song, dance, puppetry, clowning and use of a BIG FRENCH BEAR!
Why: It’s a clown show derived from a synthesis of Henry Miller and Herman Hesse.
Web: L’Ange Avec Les Fleurs MySpace Page.
Hype: WINNER: Best Production, Acting and Set - Orlando Fringe

Someone else's turn to take on "truthiness"

2008-12-26T11:14:00.004-05:00

“Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles”

Nobel Academy on why it awarded Harold Pinter the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005.

The absolute evisceration of pretense will almost certainly be the cornerstone of the ideas that will define Harold Pinter’s legacy. He simply had absolutely no patience whatsoever for bullshit. On stage it made for bad theatre, and in the international arena it had catastrophic human consequences.

Pinter’s Nobel lecture had very little to do with theatre and everything to do with being one of the quintessential critiques of the Bush administration and post-WWII US foreign policy.

Above all things, it is a call to arms for citizens to defend truth in the public sphere. For Pinter, although truth can be many shades of malleable grey in art, there is a central truth that all inhabitants of earth share. It is the job of intellectuals to defend this truth against the manipulations of self-serving often murderous interests:

“I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.”

You can read the full text of Harold Pinter’s Nobel lecture to the Swedish Academy here.

Harold Pinter
Master artist and unflinching social justice and peace activist
1930-2008

Just the facts: Next Stage Theatre Festival Edition v1

2008-12-22T11:03:00.009-05:00

Theatre is Territory will be Just The Facts-ing all eight entries in the second edition of Toronto's Next Stage Theatre Festival.

The highly competitive juried festival plays winter Ying to the un-juried Fringe Festival's summer Yang. To be considered for The Next Stage you must have had a previous production in a Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals festival. It runs January 7th to 18th 2009, and takes place exclusively at the two venues of the Factory Theatre.

Practically speaking, all of the shows selected are either previous Fringe hits being remounted with increased resources and rehearsal, or new works by companies that have several Fringe hits under their belts. It's easy to see why this all adds up to a very good idea for the independent theatre community to support.

Download the full pdf of the brochure for the festival by clicking here.

Buy tickets online by clicking here.

Yichud/Seclusion

Who: Convergence Theatre
Where: Factory Theatre Studio, Toronto, Canada
What: A one-act play in three parts that examines intimate moments surrounding the arranged wedding of a young Orthodox Jewish couple, and the impact their union has on their families.
Why: Three words: Live Klezmer Band
Web: Convergence Theatre Facebook page.
Hype: Previous fringe productions AutoShow and The Gladstone Variations were runaway must-see hits garnering numerous accolades.

First Hand Woman
Who: Fire Up Co-operative
Where: Factory Theatre Studio, Toronto, Canada
What: A play set within a woman's heart and mind. It is a journey through heartache and healing told by the stages of grief: Denial, Bargaining, Anger, Depression and Acceptance.
Why: CAUTION: Show contains spontaneous simulated Orgasms!
Web: Playwright/Performer Sarah Michelle Brown’s website.
Hype: WINNER: Chapters “Best Text Award” Montreal Fringe

Don’t Look
Who: Steady State Theatre Project
Where: Factory Theatre Studio, Toronto, Canada
What: Daniel and Ariella, Star-of-David-crossed first cousins, whose innocent shiva makeout session forces them down a path of shame and regret. When they are finally pushed to the limits of their defenses, Daniel and Ariella find themselves face to face with everything they've been trying to avoid.
Why: Only play from the “incest-comedy-drama” genre in the festival.
Web: Don’t Look Facebook event page.
Hype: Toronto Fringe Outstanding Production: NOW Magazine

Volcano's Africa Trilogy - Part I - Introduction

2008-12-17T00:30:00.001-05:00

A long look at a really big idea

by Michael Wheeler

After much thought and talk about the lack of content about content on this blog and several others, this series will be an attempt to create an online discussion about the process and product of a massive theatrical undertaking. It is my hope that this will translate to something approximating content about content:

Volcano Theatre’s Africa Trilogy

With some funding from the generous folks at Theatre Ontario, I will be training with Volcano as an Artistic Producer on this project. It's a really great opportunity to see and share how something of this magnitude goes from an inception to incredibly ambitous production.

Ideally, this series will follow the project to its conclusion for the next year and a half and will have multiple authors representing many of the different perspectives the trilogy will encompass. Volcano Artistic Director, Ross Manson, has been generous enough to be all for me organizing something like this. Thanks Ross.

Volcano’s website describes the project as:

“An international trilogy of plays that will focus on the West’s relationship with Africa.

The three playwrights come from three regions: Africa, Europe, North America. The directors come from different countries within these three continents, thus making the project a six-country, three continent effort.

The theatre artists joining the project are relatively young, and formally experimental – mid or early-career innovators, already with national or international reputations. The starting point is the 2005 series of Massey Lectures given by Stephen Lewis, United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from 2001 to 2006.”

Stephen Lewis speaks about The Africa Trilogy at The Gladstone Hotel

The Playwrights:

Binyavanga Wainaina is the winner of the 2002 Caine prize for African literature, and the founding editor of Kenya’s only literary journal, Kwani?. He is one of the most important literary figures of his generation in Central Africa.

Roland Schimmelpfennig is the winner of the 2002 Vienna Nestroy Prize, and the Schiller-Gedächtnis Prize (awarded yearly in Germany for an outstanding literary contribution by a young dramatist). He is one of the most prolific and heralded young dramatists in Europe.

Christina Anderson was identified by American Theatre magazine as one of only fifteen US artists under 30 "whose work will be transforming America's stages for decades to come."

The Directors:

Josette Bushell-Mingo was recently awarded the Order of the British Empire for her work in theatre in the UK. She is the founder of PUSH, an organisation set up for the promotion and development of Black British Theatre, and currently runs the Tyst Teater in Sweden.

Liesl Tommy grew up in a township in Cape Town, South Africa. She studied at Oxford and the Claire Davidson Drama Centre in London, then earned her MFA from Trinity Rep Conservatory in the USA. She has been hailed as “eccentrically imaginative” by the New York Post, and a “standout” by the New York Times.

Ross Manson is a Dora and KM Hunter award-winning theatre director based in Toronto, whose work won the 2006 “Best of Edinburgh” prize at the world’s largest theatre festival. His international award-winning company, Volcano, has been identified by NOW magazine as the “best independent theatre company in Toronto”.

The entire team is currently working with a cast of 10 workshoping the first draft of their three scripts at the Lower Ossington Theatre in Toronto. These workshops are actually the fourth stage of the process following a planning meeting at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel in November 2007, a research trip to Rwanda and Uganda in March 2008, and a weekend of follow up meetings with the playwrights in New York City in June of 2008.

There is another workshop to follow in the spring of 2009 at T heatre Passe Muraille, and likely much more work between then and when it opens as part of Toronto’s Luminato festival in 2010.

So there should be lots to talk about. Stay tuned for more posts on this project from many different collaborators.

What's the deal with being an actor in Tokyo? Part 2

2008-12-03T23:46:00.009-05:00

Part 2 of an English-speaking-ex-pat acting primer for Tokyo
By Benjamin Johnson

JAPAN – In Japan they speak Japanese. So I shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of English theatre. But perhaps the problem is not the language barrier, but the arts industry, and perhaps the very business practices of the second-largest economy on the planet.

The largest English theatre company in Tokyo (their website says this will be their 112th season) is Tokyo International Players. They have four shows in their current season spanning a year, but unfortunately, each show only runs for four days… And the short run is a regular phenomenon with English and Japanese shows in Tokyo. They’re also actively seeking volunteers for all positions, which translates as: there is no money in English theatre in Tokyo.

As for Japanese theatre, the average run is also four days, with more high-profile shows (including casts of TV stars) running a scant two weeks. They appear to be heavily subsidized by sponsors and donations, with most non-Broadway Musical shows concentrated in the small area of Shimokitazawa. The economics of rehearsing for a couple weeks to do four performances is mysterious at best, and indicates that theatre audiences have not been developed as much as in western society.

A recent article in the Japan Times points to a company that has begun premiering shows in the UK to try and help sell their shows at home. The same strategy seems to work for the big musicals (Wicked, Annie, Lion King…), but says little for the potential growth of homegrown shows.

On the opposite end, the (“Broadway musical”) The Drowsy Chaperone opens in Tokyo this coming January (possibly with English subtitles for tourists…). Originally premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2001, after eight years and a successful New York run, it’s finally crossing the other pond.

As for making a living as an actor in Tokyo, or as an artist of any kind for that matter, “difficult” does not begin to describe the scene. As I mentioned in the previous post, agencies provide the actor with a “garauntee” of how much a specific job pays. But no one actually knows how much the agency makes, and I’m told by everyone I meet that asking is considered impolite, and could lead to less or no more jobs. So much for actor’s rights…

Japanese signing idol Ami Suzuki was the biggest music star in Japan in 1999, selling millions of CD’s and DVD’s, but despite this she made very little per month, plus less that half of one-percent of CD sales. When the president of her recording company was subsequently indicted on fraud charges, and details of her compensation exposed in court and reported in the news (despite threats), she was blacklisted by the industry and is just recently making a comeback as an independent artist, eight years later. And this is not an isolated phenomenon…

Moving further into mainstream, a recent article in the New York Times exposes a more sinister problem in the fabric of Japanese society, which is that Japan’s success as an economic force may be built on the back of the unpaid overtime of it’s entire work force. The article also points out that the practice of, “working oneself to death”, is so common in Japan there is a word for it, karoshi, and it’s not just an expression that means “to work a lot”.

Back to theatre, it would seem that the culture of unfair business practices towards artists (and employees in general), a potential theatre market that’s too busy working unpaid overtime, and a general complacency about the whole situation, has left one of the most intimate and personal forms of artistic expression, theatre, relegated to the side-lines. There is however, always hope.

An article in the Washington Post points to a growing movement in the younger Japanese, who are not interested in job promotions, or marriage, or taking on more responsibility of any kind, as a reaction to the suffocating atmosphere of the Japanese business culture, and that sad character: the salaryman. (Not to mention that Japan chose not to ratify the International Labour Standard of equal compensation for women). But perhaps the winds of change are coming to Japan, and a silent revolution could be brewing as we speak. Theatre, for it’s part, could play a vital role as a window on society, and a voice for the chorus of silent protesters, but book your tickets early, as it may only run for four days...

On a final note, perhaps there is a solution to the language barrier of English theatre in Tokyo, and that is: to reflect the reality of life in this city. English signs are everywhere, and every Japanese studies English in high school, although not enough to really understand well, but it presents the option of mixing the languages, (as most of my conversations are on a daily basis). Outside of the language, theatre is communication, and maybe that quintessential struggle should be on stage, as it is in the street…

Canadian Blog Award nominees announced

2008-11-27T16:19:00.005-05:00

The Canadian Blog Awards have announced their initial nominees for 2008. In the Best Cultural/Entertainment Blog category nominees include Resettle THIS!, Dead Things ON Sticks and Department of Culture. There are only two days left to cast your vote.

Here's how the winner will be determined:

"Voting
Two rounds of voting will take place with each round lasting 7 days. The first round of voting will include all nominees. The second round of voting will narrow the list of nominees in each category down to the top 5 from the first round of voting.
Each person gets one vote for their favourite blog, in each category. Unlike pre-2007, you do not get one vote per day, you just get one per round."

Click here to vote.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Political Immediacy

2008-11-26T23:04:00.015-05:00

Tamsin Greig and Jessica Raine in David Hare's Gethsemane at the National Theatre Cottesloe

(Photo: Catherine Ashmore)

Our recent post about the content of content on blogs, sparked a conversation that became both antagonistic and circular before this post by director Christine Bacon came up.

The piece discusses her work with London England-based and human rights-focused theatre company iceandfire and their outreach initiative, Actors for Human Rights. Their method is a "rapid response" that uses churches, pubs and everything in between "rushing the urgent news to audiences who need to hear it now".

Her post is a direct response to a critique of the new David Hare play Gethsemane published in The Telegraph. In it, critic Dominic Cavendish, founding editor of theatrevoice.com, argues that political theatre is too slow a medium as a producing model to respond quickly enough to current events. He expands his critique of English political theatre further:

"But to many of us, idealism has been precisely the problem. There has been too much cavalier self-belief, too much succumbing to the messianic credo of "social justice". Many of my generation, not Sir David's, want less fervour and more common sense - and want fiercer material from our playwrights to puncture the complacency of those baby boomers at the top of the tree."

Does the time it takes to fundraise for and produce theatre make political theatre obsolete? Is there a developing generational split in terms of what what and how political theatre should critique? What's different about the relationship between politics and theatre in Canada?

Just the facts: Vinegar Tom

2008-11-24T00:33:00.002-05:00

Vinegar Tom
Who: Royal Porcupine Productions
Where: Tank House Theatre, Young Centre For the Performing Arts, Toronto, Canada.
When: November 21st- 29th @ 8pm.
What: Vinegar Tom is the story of a small town whore, her mother and a married friend who gets an abortion, all set during the witch hunts, while making modern day parallels with the aid of contemporary music.
Why: Caryl Churchill wrote this play at the height of second-wave feminism. It’s still relevant. Come see why.
Web: Ticket info: www.youngcentre.ca

Content conundrum

2008-11-21T11:30:00.006-05:00

The theatrosphere has been having those “What have we become?” moments spurred on by a seemingly innocuous post by Tony Adams on the lack of content about what actually appears onstage in the theatre-focused online community. The post was motivated by comments made by Tony’s friend Chuy, paraphrased as:

“What I don't get . . . people all over the blogosphere, and in shows I've worked on, talk about business models, rehearsal processes, the whiteness of theatre, women playwrights, 501c3-- they talk about all that stuff . . . but why doesn't anyone ever talk about content. The actual content of theatre? No one ever talks about the actual content of what is on stages. Why?”

The post generated a firestorm of responses, none of which challenge the thesis that theatre blogs are much more focused on the meat and potatoes of producing work than the actual content of the work on stage.

Is there not enough content about the actual content of theatre online? What can be done to encourage more discussion of the craft without alienating other artists? What other barriers are there to communicating more about art and less about the business of creating art?

Just the facts: Soulless

2008-11-19T08:17:00.003-05:00

Soulless

Who: 505 Productions

Where: Factory Theatre Studio, Toronto, Canada

When: 4 Shows left. Wed Nov 18 - Sat Nov 22 @ 8pm

What: Soulless reflects the harsh realities of urban gentrification in a society already separated by materialism, self-centredness and general apathy towards the fellow human.
Why: It is current, accurate and cuts right to our souls… or what is left of them.

Web: http://www.soullessplay.com/

Just the facts

2008-11-18T13:03:00.002-05:00

Image by Vieux Bandit licensed under the Creative Commons.

Introducing a new standardized method for how independent theatre producers can promote their work on Theatre Is Territory:

If you would like your show info to be posted, provide the following info in the manner prescribed below. No promises that every project submitted will be posted, but there is no charge for this opportunity to increase the profile of your production. Although Theatre is Territory is Toronto-based, it has an increasingly global readership. Feel free to submit work from any location on earth.

The idea behind this project is that it will become a resource to independent producers to increase the profile of their shows. These producers are almost always working with razor thin budgets outside of any subscription series. They rarely have full page ads in weekly papers and posters on the way to every restaurant bathroom. They could really use a little free publicity.

Occasionally there will be a post about an exciting high-profile production, but in general this is an attempt to even the public awareness playing field, while letting our readership know about shows they might not be aware of.

Just the facts:

Send an email to: theatreisterritory (at) gmail.com
Subject heading: Praxis Blog: (Name of Your Show) Just The Facts

Attach two files to the email:

1

A single jpeg image no more than 300KB in size.
(Horizontal images work better in this format.)

A Microsoft Word document that has the following information in the order provided below:

* Show name

* Company name

* Performance location (name of theatre, city, country)

* Opening date and closing date

* What the show is about in 40 words or less

* Why someone should experience this production in 40 words or less

* Website for more info

* Phone # and/or website to purchase tickets

The Duke of Praxis

2008-11-16T23:13:00.017-05:00

Cheers to everyone who braved the first truly terrible weather of the season in Toronto to join Praxis Theatre at the Duke of York on Saturday night. There was a great turnout, it was a good time, and there are pictures to prove it.

Please join us this Saturday night . . .

2008-11-13T07:08:00.002-05:00

Here’s the map. Doors open @ 8. Hope to see you there!

What’s the deal with being an actor in Tokyo?

2008-11-11T13:24:00.013-05:00

An English-speaking-ex-pat acting primer for Tokyo

By Benjamin Johnson

• In Tokyo, acting and modeling are basically considered the same thing.

• Anyone coming to town with some kind of work visa can get an agent, most foreigners have more than one agent, and I’ve heard of people signing up with over twenty different agencies, however Japanese citizens can only have one.

• Once you have an agent, you’ll get emails on your cell-phone with an exact amount the job pays and asking you if you’re available for auditions on certain dates.

• Once you confirm your availability they send your headshot in to the casting agent for “picture selection”.

• If you make it past picture selection you go to the audition, usually with a manager from the agency who acts as your translator and who also works out the details for you.

• Then if you get the job, you show up on the day.

Almost all work is acting in commercials. Although most Japanese can read advertisements in English, few can hold down a conversation, and most would be lost listening to English dialogue. The English-speaking actor in Tokyo is essentially a model paid to draw attention to products. Film and TV work is basically nonexistent, save for extra work and embarrassing guest appearances on variety shows.

Theatre in Tokyo is similar to that in many other major cities. Japan has it’s own casts of Lion King, Cats and a host of musicals running endlessly. There are major houses doing translations of Ibsen and Shakespeare, traditional Japanese Kabuki and Noh plays, but as far as I can tell there’s not a single theatre job to be had for an English speaker in this town of 30 million people. The only agency that mentioned covering English speakers for theatre was a note on a list that said, “ask about theatre” next to the agency name.

There are of course, international touring companies, which perform in English, or without language, such as the new Cirque de Soleil show “Zed”. But for the most part, people are busy, life is expensive, and renting a space, rehearsing (i.e. not working a regular job), and producing a show is an expensive undertaking when your audience may not understand your carefully worded award-winning masterpiece that is basically all dialogue. Movement theatre would be the best way to go, and the Japanese already have the singular Butoh.

As for indie theatre in Tokyo, my next step is to visit a trendy neighborhood called Shimokitazawa. I’ve heard there are some signs of a somewhat indie-theatre community. I’ll investigate and report back.

Benjamin Johnson is a screenwriter and graduate of Canada’s National Theatre School, currently living and working in Tokyo.

Theatre is Territory 2.0

2008-11-07T11:34:00.021-05:00

So. What the fuck is going on with this blog?

I know.

Things have been a bit slow around here lately. It’s my fault. After more than two years, 426 posts, 78 “10 questions” interviews, and more comments section brawls than I can count, I must admit that my capacity for pumping this stuff out is waning. I still love theatre and theatre blogging. But resources are finite, and there are other projects on the horizon – not the least of which is my role in marketing Praxis Theatre’s upcoming production of Stranger, by far our most ambitious show to date.

That said, I am thrilled to announce that starting next week there will be a new voice, and a new energy in this space. If you’ve been a regular reader or commentor, you already know Michael Wheeler and his frequently insightful contributions to this blog. As a commentor, and occasionally as a guest poster, Michael has been a big supporter of this blog since its inception. He also happens to be Praxis Theatre’s Co-Artisitic Director.

Michael will now join me in the day-to-day posting at this venue. In the spirit of its origins, all posts will continue to be signed “Praxis Theatre”. Some will be written by Michael, some by me. Ultimately, and if we’re doing our jobs, it shouldn’t really matter who’s writing the posts. It’s not about Praxis Theatre or about one writer’s voice. It never has been. We’re interested in the big ideas. In learning more from our industry peers. And in being a thoughtful and relevant part of the conversation. Michael’s a great fit and I thank him dearly for caring enough about this project to step up when it needs him most.

So let’s see where this takes us. For my part, I’m looking forward to continuing the “10 questions” series. I want it to be good. So I may take another couple of months off interviewing to recharge and recalibrate.

Thank you kindly for your patience through this transition. And thanks to everyone who has contributed to this conversation so far. I am humbled by your generosity and wisdom.

Obviously, there is plenty more we need to figure out.

Welcome Michael.

Ian Mackenzie
Director of Marketing
Praxis Theatre

Exciting new work

2008-11-03T09:27:00.001-05:00

Coming to The Centre Centre in Toronto on November 13, Kick Theatre presents “a radical new Canadian adaptation of August Strindberg’s play.” Miss Julie. More info here.

Theatre is Territory podcast #2

2008-09-15T10:00:00.008-04:00

Praxis Theatre is thrilled to present the second in a series of theatre podcasts Toronto-based arts writer Alison Broverman is putting together exclusively for this blog.

This edition:

1) Rob Salerno talks about the Fringe festival tour and his show Balls.
2) Darren O'Donnell talks about the Department of Culture.

This podcast is about 13 minutes long.

We seek to annihilate your policies

2008-09-10T08:40:00.005-04:00

Here’s a link to the English translation of Wajdi Mouawad’s much discussed Open Letter to Prime Minister Harper.

For more commentary on this, go here, and here.

New theatre podcast

2008-09-08T08:20:00.010-04:00

Praxis Theatre is thrilled to present the first in a series of theatre podcasts that Toronto-based arts writer Alison Broverman is putting together exclusively for this blog.

This edition:

1) SummerWorks wrap-up interview with Michael Rubenfeld.
2) Nostalgia corner.
3) Broverman’s biggest regret of the summer.

This podcast is about 17 minutes long. Please have a listen and pass along any comments, feedback, or suggestions for future podcasts.

More town hall photos

2008-09-07T08:48:00.004-04:00

September 3, 2008 Town Hall meeting to mobilize in the face of sweeping arts funding cuts in Canada.

Much thanks to Catherine Kustanczy for passing these along.

Town Hall photos . . .

2008-09-04T14:57:00.007-04:00

September 3, 2008 Town Hall meeting to mobilize in the face of sweeping arts funding cuts in Canada. Above, Toronto Arts Council Executive Director Claire Hopkinson.

And here, author/activist Naomi Klein rallies the troops.

Thanks to Naomi Campbell for passing these shots along. We'd love to post more. Send your Town Hall photos here. Thank you.

Town Hall photos . . .

2008-09-04T13:06:00.004-04:00

Anyone got any good photos from last night’s Town Hall meeting at the Theatre Centre in Toronto? If you do and are are wondering what to do with them, please pass them along so we can post them here, with full credit, of course.

Please email photos here.

Thanks!

Arts funding cuts

2008-08-19T17:08:00.007-04:00

Does anyone have any information or opinions on the federal government’s recent cuts to the Trade Routes and the PromArt programs? Some are saying this is a vicious and sweeping attack on Canada’s culture industries.

Here’s a Globe and Mail primer on the cuts: Ottawa axes second arts subsidy in two weeks.

What does all this mean? What should we do?

SummerWorks picks

2008-08-13T09:33:00.009-04:00

A press still for One Reed Theatre's (never underestimate) The Power at SummerWorks.

Today's the last day to catch some SummerWorks action. Does anyone have any recommendations? Funny SummerWorks stories? Top picks?

Why is theatre imporant – survey results

2008-08-12T21:19:00.005-04:00

“We need it to see ourselves.” That’s the most popular answer among the 25 respondents to our Why is theatre important survey. The rest of the votes were split between “It’s a shared experience” and “None of the above.”

Given the small sample group, this is hardly conclusive polling. Still, it’s heartening to see a front runner emerge – especially given theatre’s current challenges communicating its value proposition to the non-theatregoing public.

Incidentally, the phrase “We need it to see ourselves” is a direct lift from Daniel MacIvor’s “10 questions” interview, here.

How American Theatre saved american theatre

2008-08-06T09:09:00.015-04:00

American monologuist and regional theatre reform advocate Mike Daisey has thrown down a blistering response to Theatre Communications Group executive director Teresa Eyring’s How Theatre Saved America, which was published in the current issue of American Theatre.

Eyring argues that the current repertory model in the U.S. is in fine working order:

“Many actors – instead of performing in several shows with a single theatre company in the same season – construct year-round employment by performing in different theatres throughout the year.”

Daisey disagrees:

“If actors manage to create community and continuity IN SPITE OF the institutions, no credit for that reflects back on theaters that refuse to support artists in a meaningful fashion: with staff positions, with health insurance, with a modicum of respect and dignity earned by working craftsman anywhere. Dribs and drabs of roles given when artists can jump for them are no substitute for real institutional support, and to claim otherwise is absurd.”

Daisey ends with a challenge to the magazine to devote an entire issue to the concerns raised in his hit monologue, How Theatre Failed America, opening its pages to “informed bloggers and theatrical luminaries.”

University of North Carolina drama professor and oft-quoted theatre blogger Scott Walters agrees enthusiastically with the suggestion, here.

What do you think? Are theatre’s regional institutions looking out for the artists? Or are they simply working to preserve their own outdated apparatus?

Sex and the Saudi

2008-07-30T09:29:00.002-04:00

Publicity shot from the upcoming SummerWorks show, Sex and the Saudi.

How is this show not going to be awesome?

Minor service interruption

2008-07-28T10:17:00.002-04:00

We had to do a little bit of maintenance on this blog over the weekend. So if you noticed anything wonky in this space during the past 24 hours, that’s why.

Should be back to normal now. Thanks!

Fringe show recommendations?

2008-07-10T13:55:00.003-04:00

Just four more days to go at this year's Toronto Fringe Festival. Any last-minute recommendations?

How Luminato failed Toronto

2008-07-09T09:02:00.006-04:00

By Michael Wheeler

Question:

You have a $10,000 a year budget for transportation.

You:

A) Rent a Lamborghini Countache for ten days, and drive it around like hell. Walk everywhere the other 50.5 weeks of the year.

B) Get a sensible sedan on a 12-month lease.

C) Alternate between a transit pass and bicycle. Use the savings to do something interesting.

This was my response to a co-worker who had seen BlackWatch the previous evening. He told me that although they had initially agreed with my earlier Lumi-not-go post , after seeing the production he had come to a different conclusion about the value of the festival. Anything that brings something that good to Toronto must be a good thing.

I really like Lamborghini Countaches too. A long time ago I had a poster of one above my bed. But option A is clearly ludicrous. It’s the same reason why spending $21.5 million over three years on an international festival that bring some of the best artistic work in the world to the T Dot for a short, extremely well publicized run, is also a very poor, frankly ignorant, decision.

Theatre at every level but the best of the most established institutions is in bad shape in this city right now. There’s a myriad of reasons for this best saved for another conversation, but the short version is as follows:

Mike Daisey is right and it’s the same situation up here. Being a theatre artist has ceased to become a profession you can make anything approaching a respectable living at in Toronto for all but handful of our very top practitioners. These lucky folks are still often working 12-hour days and six-day weeks for much less than what any of our non-thesbian friends make. Many of them probably do a little catering on the side to make ends meet. The earth is scorched. Anyone who puts economic well-being in their top-ten list of personal priorities would not come within a stone’s throw of this scene.

Yes, the theatre has always been in trouble. Yes, making art is hard. But the current theatrical economy is a graveyard for anyone who may have to pay bills, rent or student loans. We can see this in what has become of our grassroots institutions, places where the new generation of artists rehearse and perform:

Artword Theatre – gone.
Alchemy Theatre – gone.
Poor Alex Theatre – gone.
Equity Showcase Theatre – going, soon to be gone.

Not only are there few resources to create work, there is no longer anywhere affordable to put shows on.

In the wake of this grim reality, a couple of corporate head honchos who seem entirely unaware of any of this, waltzing in and deciding that they know best with what to do with the first increase in public money that’s been available to the performing arts in some time is a recipe for disaster. Lavishing much of those resources on smash hit shows from other places – a fellow indie theatre producer described it to me as, “putting makeup on a corpse.”

The Scottish Youth Theatre preps a new generation of performers.

Of course BlackWatch was amazing. Not only is Scotland, at roughly the size of New Brunswick home to the world’s premiere Fringe Festival, it has 300 youth theatres. Just for youth. The very best end up at the national chapter, The Scottish Youth Theatre. Many in the BlackWatch cast went through that system. The show represents the tip of a very large iceberg. The country has invested heavily in value of theatre and it is paying dividends – literally. It gets to tour to high-paying international festivals that rent the tips of other peoples icebergs because they don’t want the trouble of building their own.

My original idea for this piece was to throw out a number of options as to how this money could be used in different scenarios. Instead I settled on the 2007 Toronto Arts Council 2007 numbers because similar to Luminato, the TAC funds: Community Arts, Dance, Music, Literature and Theatre in Toronto. It’s a fair comparison. Well, not entirely fair. One does 10 days of programming and one does 365.

In 2007, The Toronto Arts Council distributed $9,738,829 – $247, 725 of which was for theatre project grants (which incidentally is the approximate value of one Lamborghini Countach) to be divided amongst 51 successful applicants. An even more interesting number is: $2,152,783. This is the total amount in project grants in all disciplines that were distributed, when you take out grants for operating funds and to large institutions.

What does it mean when you compare this to Luminato’s $21.5 Million over three years?

A) If we gave Luminato’s money to the TAC we could increase the TAC budget by more than 66%. This is a pedestrian statistic, but the impact of this would be massive.

B) You could more than double the amount of successful project grant applicants and double the amount each project receives.*

*$2,152,783 in project grants + 1 year of Luminato’s $21.5 million = $9,319,449.70
Twice as many project grants =$ 4,305,566 x 2 to double the grants = $8,611,132.00

Twice as many projects with twice as much municipal funding.

It would permanently change how art was created in this town. How much more, better work would go on year-round? How many artists would be able to stop working as waiters and temps and actually practice their craft for at least a couple of months? How many audience members and patrons could we get excited about this thing again by actually having the cash to create this massive wave of new, plausibly funded projects? How many of them could potentially turn in to the next BlackWatch?

Take Unspun Theatre’s production of Minotaur: It was one of my favorite shows of the year. It was new, exciting, smart; full of young artists taking big risks. Well received, well reviewed. I really think they ought to take it on tour. The production received a total of $14,000 in public funding (through OAC and Canada Council). With Luminato’s $21.5 million money you could create 1,500 Minotaurs.

In any case, our government opted instead to give it to their friends for a ten-day play date. They’re likely at their cottages in Muskoka right now talking about how lovely the whole thing was with the glowing balls in Dundas Square (which is usually so dirty) and chuckling about how many times they heard the c-word in Blackwatch. Meanwhile we sit here in the heat wondering how we’ll ever make his thing work again. The opportunity was there, it’s gone, it sucks.

An Olive Branch:
Alright Luminato, I promise to stop hating on you, and all you have to do is one thing:

Return the interest you’re going to make on keeping our extra $15 million in the bank “for the future” back to Toronto’s artists. We’re frigging starving down here, and it’s breadcrumbs really, but we’ll take it. If we trust the math put forth by an anonymous commenter on my original post, that would be $450,000 a year. It would really help. It’s almost double what was distributed for theatre projects last year by the TAC. That’s two Lamborghini Countaches for those of you playing along at home.

Correction. My original Lumi-not-go post incorrectly stated Luminato CEO Janice Price was American. This is not true. Although she comes to us from The Kimmel Centre in Philadelphia, The Lincoln Centre in New York and is a previous vice president of The Shakespeare Association of America, she is in fact a Canadian. My bad.

This is the fourth and final in a series of four blog posts on theatre by Praxis Theatre Co-Artistic Director Michael Wheeler.

How to build an empire – a Boy Scout’s guide

2008-07-08T07:52:00.000-04:00

Now playing at the 2008 Toronto Fringe Festival. Click here for more info on this show.

Domestic

2008-07-07T09:15:00.000-04:00

Now playing at the 2008 Toronto Fringe Festival. Click here for more info on this show.

Bluebeard

2008-07-03T13:23:00.001-04:00

Now playing at the 2008 Toronto Fringe Festival. Click here for more information on this show.

The Shift

2008-07-02T10:19:00.001-04:00

Now playing at the 2008 Toronto Fringe Festival. Click here for more information on this show.

Act 2

2008-06-24T09:15:00.001-04:00

My First Headshot (1999).

By Michael Wheeler

A strange thing happened to me this year: I ended up splitting with my fancypants agent and doing more acting than I’d done in the four previous years with representation. It wasn’t something I’d planned. It just kinda developed, and it has me thinking all sorts of things about how and what I want to do in the theatre.

A year and a half ago I had seriously considered hanging up my acting shoes. Being Co-Artistic Director of an indie company and directing shows around town was fulfilling and taking up a huge amount of time. Running around to audition to be an SOC hockey fan in an insurance commercial, or talking broccoli (aka a principal role) in a Sobey’s spot seemed to be a distraction for the most part. I had been given some friendly advice from several quarters that “you can’t be all things to all people” and that if I really wanted to make a name for myself as a director, I should firmly establish myself exclusively as one.

This also made sense to me because acting wasn’t too much fun anymore. When I finished my acting MFA in The States I did the mandatory 1 year in NYC that your visa allows for. I turned into a serious stress case of an actor with essentially 10 months to become wildly successful in order to extend my stay. I started with a part in a show at The Ontological Theatre and spun that into a mediocre agent who also doubled as a radio commentator for the New York Giants. I hustled like crazy between open calls, what the agent could find me, and up to 5 different joe jobs, but much to my dismay I did not find myself wildly successful.

This was partially because the odds of this working out for me were pretty low, but also because of how I was performing and auditioning. The whole I must define my career with this performance attitude the situation had me left me too tense and probably in hindsight, desperate, to really do anything like that. I returned to Toronto just in time for SARS, signing on as the first male client of a failure of a startup agency before landing an agent who was decidedly blue-chip a year later.

The pitiful state of the industry and being the smallest name on a big time roster meant opportunities to audition for projects that weren’t advertising came on a bi-monthly basis. Six, five-minute opportunities a year, to establish myself. It wasn’t cool. I kept myself in classes, volunteered to read for casting directors, but nothing seemed to give. The experience contrasted heavily with the success we were having with Praxis and the whole being an actor for hire thing started to feel like a raw deal. Eventually the agent and I mutually agreed that we “were not a good match”.

Fort at York workshop #1.

So I kind of surprised myself when I showed up to audition for The Fort At York. Over the course of two publicly presented workshops, I played first a mute kitchen boy named with a tendency to break into monologue, and eventually a soldier named Everett with some serious psychological problems in the final production. This led directly to playing an anarchist artist in Save Us at HATCH this year, I followed it immediately by acting in a Praxis Theatre show for the first time as The Prosecutor in our workshop presentation of Stranger.

And all of a sudden acting was a) fun again and b) I was much better at it. The major reason for this was simple: I no longer felt this overwhelming compulsion to make my career with a single performance. My breathing was controlled, shoulders went back, I found stillness, and had confidence in my ability to entertain without striving to entertain. All the little things I understood from my training intellectually, but hadn’t been able to incorporate practically with regularity. It’s tough to breathe from support and have crisp final consonants when you’re trying desperately to succeed like no one has ever succeeded before.

Save Us reading at Cameron House.

I am grateful to Tara Beagan, Chris Reynolds, Chad Dembski and Simon Rice for creating three shows that really fostered an exchange of ideas and valued collaboration in rehearsal. I had a lot of confidence in these projects because I was afforded the opportunity to play a part in things from the get-go. I also remembered something I forgot: I love opening night. As a kid I had hoped first to play for The Toronto Blue Jays and later, as a starter on any NBA team but The Utah Jazz. It was only after both of these goals proved entirely unrealistic that I started to get heavily into theatre at 16. In hindsight, I think I know why now:

Opening night as a performer, and all the shows that follow, is the closest you can get to approximating Game Day in sports. There is a specific time where you have to show up in front of a crowd of people. You get one chance to do something special with your teammates. The nerves, the excitement, the onus on yourself to thrive under pressure – once I lost an impossible sense of tension and just concentrated on the task at hand – it became addictive again. If I’m not going to play in the NBA Finals, this is as good as it’s going to get. And it’s pretty good.

So Mike the actor is back – resurrected from the graveyard of classic frustrations that plague actors in their first years out of a training program. Screw pigeonholing myself. Theatre pays so poorly we ought to do exactly the types of projects we would like to do and often you have to find these things yourself. And maybe a new agent.

This is the third in a series of four blog posts on theatre by Praxis Theatre Co-Artistic Director Michael Wheeler.

We advertise your Fringe show – free!

2008-06-23T09:23:00.000-04:00

Sounds impossible – and slightly suspect – we know. But here’s what we’re thinking: Send us a digital version of your 2008 Toronto Fringe Festival postcard or poster, and we’ll post it here on our blog, sometime between now and the end of the festival. Simple.

We get to learn more about your show, look at your awesome postcard, and everyone wins.

Please send your Toronto Fringe Festival postcards here.

By the way, does anybody have any fun stories about an upcoming North American Fringe Festival? What are you working on?

Dufferin Grove is the pinnacle of Western civilization

2008-06-17T08:02:00.002-04:00

By Michael Wheeler

In an attempt to prove I am bi-hyperbolic (my hyperbole goes both ways), I return from my anti-Luminato crusade on a positive note. If you are against some things you should be for other things.

Man do I love Dufferin Grove Park in the west end of Toronto. It’s The Greatest. It reaches its zenith with the Cooking Fire Theatre Festival, which opens tomorrow and runs through Sunday. I really do think there is a convincing argument to make it the pinnacle of Western progress in terms of exemplifying the values, principals, and aspirations we have arrived at thus far. (With a particular bias towards my own values, principals and aspirations.)

It was not always thus. There was a while back in the 90s where it was not much a public space. Just a kind of mundane shortcut on your way to the many dollar stores housed inside the Dufferin Mall. Not dangerous, but maybe dodgy. In any case, it was underused and a little forlorn. But miraculously, for once, the forces of gentrification have abandoned the dark side and pulled off something truly miraculous.

The place has transcended into some sort of actual, non-theoretical, social democratic utopia. Sometimes the biggest miracles are the ones staring you right in the face. There have been the usual basics added that make a public space somewhere you want to be: Safe, clean, well maintained, a sports field, a leafy area with benches, fire pits, a massive kids’ area with multiple playgrounds and a wading pool. It’s all first rate.

It’s the extra things that the staff of the park have worked very hard to integrate that really sets it apart though:

Food: Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoons you can make your own pizza in the park ovens for just $2.50 – Principal toppings: The vegetables that grow right there in the park garden. Friday nights, chefs prepare incredible dishes exclusively from the ingredients bought at the organic market. Soup is $2; a full meal is $6!

Organic market: The weekly Thursday organic farmers’ market has become an institution in Western downtown Toronto. It’s HUGE. If it’s organic, or grain-fed, or generally best solution for sustainable existence on this planet, they’ve got it. Some items are still pricey, but that has to do more with economy of scale and will work itself out over time.

Community programming: Just right now, in June, there are community drop-in games of cricket, soccer, ultimate frisbee, youth ball hockey, and a gardening clinic! The park also plays home to a myriad of community-based festivals throughout the temperate months. Also if you and your friends, team, family, etc. want to have a bonfire in one of the two fire pits, they’ll give you some training and hook you up no problem.

Most impressive to me though as a theatre guy is the Cooking Fire Theatre Festival. Now in its fifth year, the festival pulls off for one week what no other theatre festival does: A presentation of really great plays by the people for the people. What do I mean by this?

Although there is an international element to how Artistic Director Kate Cayley curates the festival, the majority of the works are created and presented by local artists. These are plays that attempt to be accessible to everyone who frequents the park without sacrificing artistic integrity. Kids, hippies, theatre buffs, parents, random folks who just happened to be walking through the park: all the regular folks we have such a hard time pulling to the theatre. Most Artistic Directors would salivate at the diverse audience base the festival has attracted with this focus. There is none of the elitist, moneyed; culture is for those 60+ with $50+ for a ticket notion that’s killing us right now.

True to its name, each evening begins with a park-created dinner similar to the weekly Friday night meal. Productions take place throughout the park and the audience is led through the various performance sites by volunteers. Halfway through, naturally, there is a park-catered coffee and desert break. The final show almost always starts as darkness falls. The younger kids get packed off to bed, the generators get fired up, and what started with a sunny outdoor folk festival kind of feel, finishes as something full of shadows and mystery. Then, if you’re really good, you go help the kitchen folk who are struggling with a mountain of dishes, ’cause this is not a disposable cutlery kind of place. And you leave feeling great about yourself, your community and the place you live.

Saturday June 21st and Sunday June 22nd, the Festival starts early at 5pm in order to present a Theatrurtle pre-dinner production of Alphonse, by Wajdi Mouawad, performed by Alon Nashman. These are legitimately two of Canada's top talents in the theatre world. All things being the same, it is probably not a bad idea to hit the festival on the weekend and catch this one too

Because this is a virtual utopia and not an actual one, there are small problems in Dufferin Grove. The guys that hang around the basketball courts and the moms pushing SUV-sized strollers to the organic market have their beefs with one another, and there has been a ridiculous debate amongst residents about installing an environmentally friendly toilet. This is small (likely organic) potatoes compared with what a united community and some dedicated staff have accomplished here though.

Everyone is welcome in this public space and these many disparate groups have found a way to co-exist and really thrive. Because of its location in a downtown neighborhood in the world’s most multicultural city – people from almost every class, income level, and ethnicity uses this public space on a given day. It feels like home to everyone. Where else in the world can you say that about? I’m calling it the pinnacle of Western Civilization until someone proves me otherwise.

This is the second in a series of four blog posts on theatre by Praxis Theatre Co-Artistic Director Michael Wheeler.

We advertise your Fringe show – free!

2008-06-13T09:16:00.001-04:00

By the way, does anybody have any fun stories about an upcoming North American Fringe Festival? What are you working on?

Dora Award nominees – independent theatre

2008-06-11T09:21:00.006-04:00

We’re a couple of days behind on posting this, but the 2008 Dora Award nominations for Independent Theatre are in.

Here’s the full list of nominees in the independent theatre category:

Outstanding new play
Anusree Roy – Pyaasa
Michael Rubenfeld – My Fellow Creatures
Beatriz Pizano – Madre
Michael Hollingsworth – Laurier
Brendan Gall – A Quiet Place

Outstanding production Waiting for Godot – Modern Times Stage Company
Lullaby – Dark Horse Theatre
Laurier – VideoCabaret
April 14, 1912 – Theatre Rusticle
A Quiet Place – single threat

Outstanding direction
Soheil Parsa – Waiting for Godot
Nina Lee Aquino – People Power
Michael Hollingsworth – Laurier
Allyson McMackon – April 14, 1912
Geoffrey Pounsett – A Quiet Place

Outstanding performance by a male
Nicco Lorenzo Garcia – People Power
Benjamin Clost – My Fellow Creatures
David Ferry – Lullaby
Ryan Hollyman – Lawrence and Holloman
Christopher Stanton – A Quiet Place

Outstanding performance by a female
Erin Shields – The Unfortunate Misadventures of Masha Galinski
Anusree Roy – Pyaasa
Marcia Bennett – Madre
Maev Beaty – Dance of the Red Skirts
Pragna Desai – Canada Steel
Karin Randoja – Breakfast

Outstanding set design
Trevor Schwellnus – Waiting for Godot
Camellia Koo – People Power
Trevor Schwellnus – Madre
Lindsay Anne Black – April 14, 1912
Jackie Chau – Antigone: Insurgency (Sophocles Revisited)

Outstanding costume design
Angela Thomas – Waiting for Godot
Jenna McCutchin – The Fort at York
Astrid Janson and Sarah Armstrong – Laurier
Nina Okens – Bella Donna
Lindsay Anne Black – April 14, 1912

Outstanding lighting design
Andrea Lundy – Waiting for Godot
Michael Spence – Raging Dreams - into the visceral
Trevor Schwellnus – Madre
Andy Moro – Laurier
Laird Macdonald – Breakfast
Michelle Ramsay – April 14, 1912

Outstanding sound design/composition
Romeo Candido – People Power
Thomas Ryder Payne – Madre
Brent Snyder – Laurier
Richard Windeyer – Breakfast
Christopher Stanton – A Quiet Place

Wow! What a wonderful year it has been in Toronto’s independent theatre. Congratulations to all nominees and best of luck at the Monday, June 30 Dora Awards ceremony.

Tonight! New work by Catherine Hernandez

2008-06-10T13:45:00.001-04:00

Please join Praxis Theatre tonight for the season finale in our series of original play readings. This month, we are pleased to present Catherine Hernandez’s Kilt Pins.

WHAT: Reading of Catherine Hernandez’s Kilt Pins

WHEN: Tuesday, June 10 @ 8 pm

WHERE: The Lower Ossington Theatre
100A Ossington Avenue (one block north of Queen St.)

CAST: Pip Dwyer, Jo Chim, Simon Rice, Greta Papageorgiu, Tania McCartney, Margaret Evans, James Murray. Directed by Michael Wheeler.

TICKETS: Pay-What-You-Can @ the door

For more information, please contact Laura Nordin.