3/20/2018 1 Comment Dear Canadian Theatre leadersThere are openings happening for Artistic Direction at:
Manitoba Theatre Centre The Canadian Stage Company PuSh Festival Soulpepper They all want candidates with a certain length of experience leading a certain size of budget (as apposed to candidates who's most coveted skill is assembling the best team for artistic excellence). This is because arts funding is insufficient in this country. As you read this, keep in mind that a major theatre in Berlin was recently occupied by protesters because they were concerned that the new leadership (formerly leading Briton's TATE Modern) was too commercial. TOO COMMERCIAL, I TELL YOU. I suppose the famously efficient Germans prefer development and mobility in risk. Bless their hearts. With at least three major theatres basically looking for the same rare candidate, one of three things can happen: - One of them will hire someone from Europe or America who already had basically the same job or - A "retiring" AD will sidestep into one of these openings, effectively keeping the same job, or - Someone will take a risk and offer a vertical move upward to a promising young(ish) Canadian. More importantly, as pointed out to me by my friend Kendra, if these institutions limit themselves to hiring within the posted job descriptions, the only candidates to consider are mostly old white men. I've got nothing against old white men. I plan to be one soon. But I hope that I'll be working hard and well under the leadership of someone who's experience and worldview is more urgent, more progressive, and more reflective of our precarious wobbles out of colonization. If the large institutions that represent so much of our cultural voice took a risk and hired someone who has never managed a certain-sized budget, then they would be able to create opportunities to the identities that have never had them. I'm not talking about tokenism. I'm not even talking about representation. I'm talking about enriching Canadian art itself by diversifying the voices allowed to speak it. And, as has been stated throughout the ether, hiring from outside the country communicates a lack of faith in ourselves. Young(er) people are ready for the role. We're full of energy. We're not jaded by politics. We have fresh ideas. And we know how to be frugal. We know how to be frugal! As a matter of fact, also pointed out by Kendra, Steven Schipper was only 32 when we was appointed AD of MTC. And Thomas Ostermeier only 31 when we started leadership at the Schaubüne (but then again, that last one's Germany, so ... ). Of course, its not just young white men that I'm chiefly endorsing here. That's understood, yes? I get it. Canada just lost the Magnetic North Festival due to financial constraints. We need a "sure thing" to take the helm. It comes back to our funding structures. And perhaps a cultural disinterest in being challenged. But, finally, old white men are being challenged. At least a little bit. Maybe that has something to do with the timing of this exodus from artistic leadership. It is time to raise new voices. It is time to develop new audiences. It is time to widen the mirror that culture provides. It distills to a single question: are major institutions like CanStage and MTC more interested in maintaining their own strong ballast above shallow waters or are they more interested in deepening the waters so more can sail through? Forgive me, I'm a writer so I think in metaphors. Let's try this: are they more interested in maintaining their own (financial) growth with someone whose done it all before or more interested in developing our national (cultural) growth with someone who should be doing it now? Which is it? Edit: The Guardian posted this article since I wrote this blog. Regarding having some faith in ourselves, the heart of my worry is that Canada still has to learn from the experiences relayed here. Edit again: The Canadian Stage Company posted their job description for the position more recently than this blog was blargh'd. It makes me happy and you can read it here.
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1/17/2018 0 Comments Liminal CanLitI originally posted the following onto the social media pages of InterArts Matrix after a conversation about it with Isabella Stephanescue.
* The decision of Coach House Books to suspend poetry publications will be more impactful than I think we will be able to measure. They're one of few Canadian publishers who print their own titles. This means that they provide an immediate mobility for authors to reach readers and are able to support authors ostensibly faster than other routes to paperback. And although poetry is rarely lucrative for anyone, it also means that authors can sometimes get paid faster for their work (something which we are extremely passionate about here at IAM). Editorial Director, Alana Wilcox cites our "twitter world" for the changing direction of poetry in Canada. This is what worries me. If you haven't noticed, I love twitter. But, although it gives us access to a million different communities and perspectives, it represents only one thin layer of our culture. Surely we can't ignore it after the astoundingly swift success of local poet, Rupi Kuar. If I may, my criticism of Rupi Kaur's poetry is that it is young. Not a bad thing by any means. She is a young writer and I'm first in line to celebrate that. But she has such an ocean of room to grow. Also something to be celebrated. The problem of this has to do with the avenues of her success. She developed her readership on instagram where bite-sized, quickly digestible, poetry is Queen. Her lyricism and deceptively simple use of imagery do her all kinds of favours. But the medium that she developed her voice in did not encourage a close or vast interrogation of structure. In poetry "structure" means so many things! I use her as an example because her age and her medium have created an entry point for so many non-readers of poetry to become readers. And writers! It's a great day for poetry! But as poetry (and Rupi, deservedly) enjoy this freakish hey-day the full gamut of the literary medium starts to disappear. Especially as the new readers she draws have little other context to discover the scale and variety of the canon. Coach House Books' decision to put poetry publication on hiatus is not only a disservice to writers who now have nowhere to grow beyond literary magazines and their instagram accounts; it is a disservice to new readers who will now have less to discover. Any artistic medium needs many rungs on the ladder to success. From a recital in your living room, to the platform of social media, to your first grant, to The New Quarterly, to Coach House Books, and then off to becoming The New York Times Bestseller, or what-have-you. That Rupi jumped from social media to NYT Bestseller does not mean that other writers will. Nor does it mean that they can, especially as granting bodies that make writing and publishing possible often don't care how many twitter followers you have. Naturally, Coach House Books is a business and they need to keep the lights on. If their poetry publications are sucking more resources than providing then it must be time for a change. This might be an indicator for bodies like the Canada Council for the Arts to deeply interrogate their recent changes. Coach House Books' first publication was a collection of poetry. They have published some of Canada’s most important and influential poets, including BpNichol, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Michael Ondaatje, and Anne Michaels. Without Coach House, we wouldn't have access to writers like those. Nor would they have access to us. Because, frankly, their work is too robust to receive the attention it deserves if left to die on social media. As Wilcox says, we live in a "twitter world." And I love that world. I really do. But social media doesn't pay anyone for their work. It doesn't keep a hard copy for posterity. And it doesn't invite you to take time and slowly digest a piece of literature that deserves it. Surely this "twitter world" is a reason to circulate poetry with a heavier gusto than to put it on hiatus. We are being severed from a promising generation of writers and readers. I hope Wilcox finds better answers. 11/11/2017 0 Comments Lest we forgetIs the poppy a symbol for remembrance day because of John McRae's poem? Or did he highlight the poppy over the fields because it was already a symbol?
I ask because it's not a very good poem. For about ten years now I've felt conflicted and uncomfortable every remembrance day. I remember, a little less than ten years ago, attending the cenotaph at Waterloo City Hall where they had tanks and jeeps present, as well as soldiers, police, cadets, and veterans. The only unarmed of these groups were the veterans. Everyone else had their guns. I remember standing in the cold, looking around at the spectacle, wondering why the hell everyone showed up. Was it to mourn dead soldiers? Was it, really? That year I wrote a controversial poem which you can find in my 2013 book, InSight (shameless, I know). We read McRae’s poem every year as a recruitment campaign for the military. “Take up our quarrel … the torch be yours …” All Canadians memorize these lines before they’re able to totally understand what they mean. And then, if we are treating the poppy as a sacred symbol on account of that poem then the meaning of the poppy is the intention of the poem. “If yea break faith with us who die / we shall not sleep …” It’s a recruitment campaign. Today is tremendously important. We must remember war. We must commemorate the dead. We must respect those among us who still suffer on account of their military service. But must we wrap it in a flag and feed it to our children with the unapologetic speed of bullets down their throat? While taking time today to reflect on the shame and sorrow of war, please keep in mind that the anniversary of November 11th is a lie. We told ourselves that it was the war to end all wars. And, credit to the generations before us, I’m sure people knew this was a lie as they told it to each other. Of course no single war could end all other wars. But we maintain that lie by holding fast to the anniversary of the “end” of (a) war. And then, celebrating what we muse as war’s ultimate end, we read McRae’s sloppily rhymed poem to tell each other that joining the military is an honorable life decision. That training how to kill people is somehow respecting those who were murdered by soldiers. It's backwards. 9/25/2017 0 Comments Why Are Artists Poor?I struggle to help some people around me understand the work that I do. I am an award-winning playwright with an MFA from one of the top schools in the field. At any given time I have multiple projects on the go. I have been magnificently fortunate. But when I search for the language to explain what I do, the world seems to turn beige and retracts.
There is a much bigger conversation to be had around what the arts take from society and what they contribute in turn. This article is for the layperson. To begin to understand my perspective, here are some brief truths to start from:
Artists can make budgets A short while ago a successful entrepreneur I know posited that private investors struggle to support the arts because artists don’t know how to build a robust budget plan. At the time I nodded my head, I think, trying to absorb the perspective of those with more financial power than myself. But, if you’re a professional artist, I’m certain you’re uncomfortable with my silence in this regard. That is because we make a new budget for every project that we do. I’ve written three in just the past couple months. Leaders in the cultural sector know how to make small project-oriented budgets as well as large multi-year operational budgets. Otherwise, naturally, we wouldn’t have galleries or theatres or symphony orchestras. Importantly, and probably what my friend meant, we make a very different kind of budget than a traditional entrepreneur does. I’ll talk about that further down. But let’s unpack the last two bullet points at the top. Commercially-driven producing models such as the Drayton Entertainment theatre franchise receives no public funding (as far as I can sleuth). This is because they present productions that have been developed elsewhere—often a long time ago—and proven commercially successful for financial gain elsewhere, by other companies, as well. To mount these productions Drayton does not have to hire artists for a development period to create the art and they do not have to hustle to convince their audiences to come see something unknown. This is a great model because it employs countless actors and technicians, it creates a gateway into theatre art for apprehensive audiences, and it brings Broadway-like shows to rural communities. Brava! However, naturally, if all theatres produced with this model then there wouldn’t be any content to produce. Or, at the very least, it would all become exactly the same. Arts organizations that focus on the development of new work typically have to split their income three ways: government grants, private donations, and ticket sales. Ticket sales almost always make up less than a third of any theatre’s budget. This includes such “giants” as the Stratford Festival, Shaw, and Soulpepper, as well as fledgling little upstart ensembles like my own little collective. It is already beginning to make sense why the cultural sector does not thrive in the capitalist model. An organization might theoretically benefit from raising ticket costs (like Waterloo Stage once did here in my home city). But then they run the risk of alienating their patrons and, effectively, losing money (like when our Waterloo Stage permanently shut-down). So we apply for government subsistence. When I do a creative project I’m usually employing between three and 10 people. A majority of the funding that I apply for pays for their time and expertise so they can put bread on the table. They are almost always underpaid. Very little of the funding I apply for goes to expensive-looking elements like fancy projections, web-content, costume design, etc. Most of that stuff is the fruit of a returned-favor or an in-kind donation. Isabella Stephanescu, the Artistic Director of The InterArts Matrix, puts it simply: “artists are money-poor but resource-rich.” So why are my artist-employees underpaid? Public funding in Canada has a healthy level of competition. There are more artists applying for funding than there are dollars to distribute. This means that we have to create projects that target the wishes of those funding bodies. Which is easy enough and often a wonderful morally just thing. It also means that, in general, we have to create projects that are cheap to produce. There’s a reason I wrote a one-woman-show during my master’s degree. The other, more affecting, byproduct of competitive arts funding is that we usually receive less money than we ask for. I’ve never received more than 66% of what I’ve requested from a public funding body. Hopefully that’s only because I’m a wee 30-year-old artist-baby still learning how to make it happen. But, then again, being 30 puts me in one of the OAC’s priority groups … This is where the skill of creating a robust budget comes in. In order to apply for any public funding we have to submit a detailed budget plan. The sum of expenses (most of which is a handful of fair wages) has to equal the sum of capital (much of which is public funding). After the budget is built and only 60% of the applied-for funding received, the numbers will no longer cancel each other evenly. Naturally, there are ways of anticipating this in order to still pay everyone fairly. I can build a gratuitously expensive production element into my budget plan and then omit it once the funding arrives so that there remains enough to pay everyone fairly. But this is hard to anticipate and creates false demands around what you envision your project to be. Why doesn’t the government allocate more funds to it’s cultural budget? The short answer is because it isn’t sexy to politicians. Let’s again return to my bullet points at the top of the article. £850million is not insignificant. Contrary to popular belief there can be a monetary return on culture. This stat, however, comes from a country with more public arts funding per capita and a population of ticket-buyers and investors who are more culturally prepared to support the arts. Canada doesn’t have the same depth of tradition to export culture as successfully as the United Kingdom. Art and culture are also a vital element in creating a rich local economy. I hope to produce a play inside an independent business soon (stay tuned). That business will benefit from patronage directly supplied by my audience. Even cultural events more traditionally outside of independent businesses create a return to the community. They employ people, they bring traffic to city centers roughly around mealtime, the develop tourism, etc! Cultural events are also an important part of industry retention. Citizens want something to do. The more employable members of a community—those with a greater spending power—have no reason to remain in a city that is not enriching them. Of course, more funding would, in time, supply us with that depth of tradition required to lucratively export culture like the UK does. Perhaps the gap between our current reality and that possibility has a lot to do with the incorrect assumption that money disappears once it is invested in the arts. Could the government invest more in art and culture? I struggled to find a digestible comparison of government subsidy by sector that even bothered to include the arts. But this five-minute video provides an elegant account of the budget Trump proposed during his electoral campaign. It shows us how much the Obama administration allocated to each sector against how much Trump’s administration does. So, conveniently, you can see a budget on the political left (or centre, perhaps) as well as the political right. Arts shows up as you approach the 4-minute mark. I strongly suggest you watch it. In other words, yes. Yes, I believe governments can afford to invest more into art and culture. It boils down to a question of how government wants artists to be spending their time. My friend Viktorija Kovac, artistic director of Cosmic Fishing Theatre, generously encourages my creative practice by saying that if I spend my time not writing plays, then we all lose. Thanks, Viktorija. Unfortunately, I’ve put triple the time into being an arts administrator than into being an artist over the past two years. That’s because I need to be paid for my contribution to society; I need to put bread on the table. The biggest single reason I’m sitting down to write this is that my brain is struggling to bounce between projects and write the appropriate applications for the appropriate opportunities. I need to lay it all out or trim my workload in order to create more focus. Or get this gadfly off my neck … Wait, how are artists spending their time? That’s right. I’m not creating art nearly as much as I am enabling it. The tragedy is that doing the crucial work of enabling it is usually unpaid effort. I typically get paid when the administration done in my “free” time is successful. And it isn’t always. Let that sink in. This is part of the reason that you’ll see a lot of artists supporting the idea of a Universal Basic Income. The most recent edition of Good Work News argued that a Universal Income provides opportunity and incentive for precarious workers (34% of the workforce) to stabilize into better contributions to society. Artists don’t need that incentive because we already have it. We would contribute so much more to society with a socially-guaranteed safety net underneath of us. We would create more culture and we would have broader audiences. There is also an argument that, with automation and the continued disappearance of blue-collar labour, our economy will soon demand a Universal Basic Income in order for the healthy functioning of every private sector but innovation. I thank God for the tactless upset of our more-senior artists. When the National Arts Council announced that they are allocating their incredible funding increase that came with Trudeau’s government to digitization, there were shots fired. Canadian cultural hero, Michael Healey, had an almost regrettable field-day on twitter. We are not opposed to progress or innovation in our ancient field. In fact, we trip over ourselves to provide it. The controversy is that we discovered that what little money supports our field is also threatened by increasing digitization. We are the same as everyone in that respect and it is terrifying. Oh, lowly be the feckless state of culture in this aspartame-beige universe. Not so! Please don’t misunderstand me! The people who work for arts councils and funding bodies are full-aware that their income is more comfortable and reliable than the people they support and, therefore, continue to “show up” to the job with such a gusto to make any entrepreneur blush. It’s not their fault that they can only give me two-thirds of what I need. Thanks to a healthy mixture of public funding and private support Canadian theatre has invaded Broadway beautifully this year. Come From Away is making millions. Soulpepper took a Critics Pick from the New York theatre scene. Independent Canadian productions regularly bring awards back from the United Solo Festival or the Edinburgh Festival. There are success stories and, to some degree, I am grateful to be one of them. Let’s just not take for granted: they needed the financial support in order to get there. More importantly, we don’t always need to get there. As long as your local artists are supported, so will you be. Canada has an incredible mass of amazing artists. If you’re not seeing them then, be assured, there’s a reason for that. But I’m not interested in that kind of work. How do you know? I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that a major theatre in Berlin is currently occupied by protesters who set out to reclaim the building from its administration because the citizens are concerned that the programming is too commercially driven! This is happening as I write … Public funding enables art that does so much more than capitalism demands. And I am grateful to live in a country that has a little. So, Ciarán, are you poor? I am so rich in so many ways. I have been magnificently fortunate. And I am hell-bent on sharing my wealth with you. That is why I've been taking up the space in my brain usually reserved to write plays, perhaps too much, with thoughts about developing my city's cultural sector. I want to make this a place where someone can be an artist and not have to do much else with their time. I admire the Symphony Orchestra for hiring so many full-time musicians! Perhaps the best way I can do that for my city is to simply write plays. But it's impossible to know. And I'm still a little fledgling. Thanks for asking though. 6/2/2017 0 Comments WageWhaddyahmean I'm not blogging about theatre this time??
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne recently announced that the provincial minimum wage will increase to $15/hr by January 2019. So, naturally, the local pockets of my internet exploded. Impassioned, I was quick to join the chorus of two-dimensional, selfishly-motivated, twit-quipper, assertions. This is the mating cry of my natural habitat. I’ve enjoyed a long career spattered across a slew of small independent businesses. I’ve seen almost all my employers suffer. Tragically, I’ve therefore seen most of their employees—martyrs of the minimum wage—catch that suffering and swallow it. In my area, at 40 hours a week, the living wage is juuuust over $16/hr (or at least it was a year ago; I live in one of the fastest-gentrifying regions in the country). In Toronto living wage is somewhere around $18. Now, imagine a restaurateur employing: At least one prep staff for an hour or two every morning. At least two kitchen staff + two waiters over lunch. Five or more people between the kitchen and dining room over dinner. At least one person cleaning up after. And the less people they’ve got working for them, the longer everything takes. So … conservatively, that’s at about 35 hours paid out to staff each day. At my local living wage, that’s about $560. Of course, waiters and bartenders have a lower minimum wage, so let’s pretend that their living wage accounts for tips. So, without doing the math, let’s assume that a generous restaurateur pays $450 in wages seven days a week (not five). Then, of course, add other expenses such as gas, oil, quality kitchen appliances, air conditioning, rent, food, linens, etc. Picture painted. Now imagine a single-income family living on the current minimum wage of $11.40/hr (or less if a student or a server). Let’s pretend the breadwinner clocks 60 hours per week between two jobs. That family makes $684 per week before expenses. Or near $2,500 per month. A family of three might pay $1000-$2000 for rent. Leaving, let’s say, $750 each month for utilities, phone, transit, food, and a half-decent pair of shoes. God forbid they need to take a day off to take their malnourished kid to the doctor. Or a new lens prescription. Yikes. So here we stand: small businesses can’t afford to pay a living wage and families can’t afford the current minimum wage. What’s a province to do? The conversation around raising the minimum wage is far too partisan. People like me tend to shout into their towers allowing the discourse to echo back more and more diluted with each refrain. The primary function of a minimum wage should not be to force major corporations out of slave labour. The function should be to set a standard for all wages from the very bottom of the ladder to the top. Theoretically, with this wage increase happening at the lowest entry-level bracket, mid-management should see a proportionate increase in their wages. It only makes sense, right? This increase should be reflected throughout the whole corporate structure. On the other hand, importantly, the standard of living that is forced upon most of a large corporation’s employees should be reflected in the standard of living that is awarded to the CEO. That is to say, if clerks and labourers have to forge dandelions for dinner, the millionaire that forces that on them can damn well take a pay-cut. Obviously. That is how the minimum wage should function. But that’s not the reality. The reality is, minimum wage is what allows employers to effectively tell you: if I could pay you less, I would. It is the point at which workers are most powerless in all respects. The greatest injustice is not in the absence of equitable negotiations, however. Because the top tier of the ladder is always uninterested in taking a pay-cut, the cost of a rising minimum wage will not be reflected in his or her luxuries, it will be reflected and paid-for in the cost of goods and services. The greatest injustice is that the people paying for an increasing minimum wage are the consumers who live on that minimum wage. The very meaning of affluent capitalism is to trick the population into believing it is rich enough to afford the lifestyle being sold to them. As people’s wage increase almost $4/hr in a brief year-and-a-half, they will feel rich enough to afford the rising cost of living. But that won’t always be the case. I am, however, thrilled to champion the increase. As a part-time artist, part-time barista, part-time producer, part-time teacher, part-time pundit, part-time dad, I have very nearly nothing to gain from an increased minimum wage. Except for a temporarily healthier society to surround my child. An even short-lasting access to a higher quality of life around me is the trump card. It is also worth noting that even this increase fails to maintain a wage that is proportionate to inflation. And that has been hard-won by the sweat and tears of our poorest citizens. Much of this relates to corporate structures. When it comes to small independent ventures however, please sincerely keep in mind, when you tip your server, you are supporting them just as much as you are supporting an employer who truly can’t afford to pay them better. It’s a sour world we live in. Which is why I am a strong proponent of a Basic Universal Minimum Income. A Guaranteed Income, in and of itself, is non-partisan. The various ways that it may be carried out, however, could be severely right or left. And the partisan literature surrounding different ideas of what it means is suffocating. But we are moving towards automation. And desk-jobs are fast becoming the new blue-collar. This means that, not accounting for inflation, the cost of manufacture and supply is poised to decrease in precise proportion to workers becoming increasingly redundant. While raising the minimum wage invents a cost on the backs of employers, inserting a Universal Minimum Income invents a cost on government. Capitalism will be able to make bolder moves towards automation while the government gains tax dollars from the corporations that cut that edge (as well as the elite who run them). Importantly, in direct contrast with raising the minimum wage, the largest demographics of population would then be empowered to support the economy with a spending power that does not directly force retailers to raise their prices. There are those who might correctly argue that a Gauranteed Universal Income makes a nation less desirable to major corporations. But that only applies to corporations of a certain kind. Software companies will be attracted to a passionate and well-educated workforce. Localized farming would boom dramatically. Social infrastructure jobs (such as healthcare, firefighting, and teaching) would become simultaneously more accessible to those interested and more exclusive to those who excel at them. Engineering would necessarily grow. To say nothing of art and culture (which is one of the UK's largest exports for you nay-sayers). A Universal Income also frees small independent companies from the crippling cost of fair labour. In the meantime, those companies can enjoy the benefit of a larger pool of patrons. I, for one, am absolutely certain that I would contribute magnificently more to society if I didn’t have to split my time and energy under the weight of capitalism. Surely those of us who are blessed to live above a certain income bracket pale at the thought of the taxes required to support this. But consider this: for a little less money every 12 months, you could live in a society that is a little healthier, less addicted, more literate, more capable of helping each other, more capable of contributing passionately, and more grateful for the hard work you do to support it all. I know I’m speaking too-simply. But it has only been tested too-simply: on the small scale. Nevertheless, as far as I’ve read, the results have always been positive. 5/23/2017 0 Comments EstateIf you’re tuned in to contemporary (western) theatre right now you’re no doubt aware that the Albee Estate pulled performance rights from Michael Streeter's company because they wanted to cast Nick as a black man. I’ll try to be brief.
It’s been said before but let’s just get the following out of the way before moving on: the Albee Estate has allowed other racialized actors to play other roles in other productions in the recent past. But the text of Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolfe makes multiple direct references to Nick’s aryan race. These references are not just words that flesh out detail in the world of the play; they have specific connotations of power and meaning, making strong social metaphors for the time the play originally premiered. Of course, crucially, those metaphors don’t work in quite the same way anymore. It’s been a while. But they’re there just the same and Albee isn’t here to bring them up to date. That said, we must trust that the director approached this casting choice with the careful and artful consideration of maintaining the play’s meaning to a significantly different audience. Or something similar at least. So the question remains: when interpreting new meaning in old stories, what is more important? -- Are a dead playwright’s words carved in stone? (@lobbywhisperer thinks no. My friend Sevan thinks yes.) -- Should the director be encouraged to move it forward? (Even if the author is alive, what else is the director’s job?) -- Should we even be producing these plays? I was doing my best to stay quiet on the subject of the Albee Estate and cross-race casting because I’m pretty much never a minority in my environment. I studied Irish dancing for more than ten years, that’s me! … you get the picture. But then a friend of mine brought up Beckett. And, with my beloved Mr. B in the conversation, I can’t help but feel a little bit invoked regarding the role of an estate censoring new interpretations. I am confident that if Samuel Beckett were miraculously immortal, he’d still be updating his work so we wouldn’t have to. A Piece of Monologue and Ohio Impromptu testify by their very titles that, despite being a perfectionist, Beckett wasn’t shy of bringing unfinished work in front of an audience. In fact, we know for certain that he updated and altered the smallest details of his very first play until it’s last production before his death. Today I can’t hear his name uttered without a pairing complaint about the stringency of his estate, forbidding reinterpretations with contemporary relevance. In this regard, I side with his estate for the same reason that he would be still updating and altering his work if he were here: Beckett was an innovator. It wasn’t until relatively late in his career that he garnered the recognition his name enjoys today—probably because producers and Artistic Directors were intimidated by his work or, at the very least, didn’t know how to fit it in to a well-balanced season. All the while he held his vision tightly away from the culture of collaboration. He mostly directed his own work and even conducted actors to immoveable interpretation. But he had to! He absolutely had to work like this in order to achieve what he achieved. Beckett’s hardass tendencies are completely responsible for our ongoing interest in him. So he has innovated. And then he died. Now he’s done innovating. And we still love him enough to pick up the mantel. Well don’t. It’s hypocritical to celebrate the fruits of his ego by attempting to break its rigidity. As with almost all my blogs, you can guess the conclusion I’m going to propose. When I proposed starting Informal Upright to Sukhpreet and Shawn, I was drawn to them, partly, on account of the passion and camaraderie that we developed while taking a class on Samuel Beckett in our undergraduate. Nevertheless, our mandate as Informal Upright is to produce contemporary works of theatre. I hope that, sometime in the first five years of our collaboration, we can produce a Beckett play as a double-bill with something brand new. I want to demonstrate that we can continue to develop and produce Samuel Beckett’s aesthetic and philosophies with a different or updated contemporary relevance by producing something other than Samuel Beckett. As a generation of theatremakers we are influenced by him. I want to celebrate that influence. But we go about it all wrong: if you don’t want to honour Beckett’s strictness then you're not producing Beckett: so don't. If you want to honour his memory by advancing it for new audiences then you're still not producing Beckett: so don't. A couple questions for my seniors. How much does it cost to get the rights for a Beckett play? How much red-tape does a producer need to navigate to assure Edward Albee’s estate that you’re going to do it “right?” Do these demand more resources than commissioning a new piece by someone alive right now? Even just a little bit more? If someone wants to produce a four-hand, densely-worded, slightly-bourgeois, kitchen-sink drama with a multi-race cast, hire me to write it. Or, better yet, hire someone who understands a multi-race environment better, like my friend Sevan, perhaps. Or hire Andrea who brought up Beckett in the first place! We've got our pens ready for you. 2/20/2017 1 Comment My Baby's Book ReviewsThe Very Hungry Caterpillar |
This is Mr. Carle’s claim to fame. Its timelessness is owed to the incredible freedom it exhibits within a three-act character arch. Admittedly, I’m quickly won over by the inside cover page’s colourful and graphically congruous chaos. But the naturally presented stages of change, the exploration of food, the bold colours, and the inevitable pay-off at the end of the story is magnificently satisfying. To say little of the artfully understated interaction of story and form, Carle even hides a pun in the two pears. The Very Hungry Caterpillar presents multiple routes of exploration while maintaining a clear and active through-line. Classic! Five Toes ooooo https://shop.carlemuseum.org/very-hungry-caterpillar-board-book-ornament-set |
The Very Lonely Firefly
By Eric Carle
The title makes no qualms about the clear imitation Carle is making of his previous success. Rather than delivering the digestibility of Hungry Caterpillar, The Very Lonely Firefly presents a stilted narrative that cannot seem to settle on a protagonist. The title character turns out to be more of an observer and undergoes no true growth throughout the tale. With Eric Carle, one might expect solace in the striking style of his trademark artwork. But the dark background of the nighttime fails to contrast with still-dark cameos that are made throughout. Almost as an admission of failure, the last page settles on a gimmick with small lights that are embedded in the back cover. This renders the book about as timeless as a small disposable battery. One Toe o https://shop.carlemuseum.org/very-lonely-firefly-board-book |
Love and Kisses
By Sarah Wilson (words) and Melissa Sweet (illustrations)
This charming farmyard rhyme follows a kiss sent from a child to her cat. The kiss travels from the cat to a cow and to other creatures. If not for returning to the cow, before the cat, before the child at last, Love and Kisses could be a great classic. The kiss’s perennial approach to these same bookending characters suggests that the creatures met in the middle may not have the stability of the girl and cat. It also suggests that the kiss does not belong to these middle characters—though they partake in it. Surely the kiss must return to the little girl to achieve the intended moral but if it meandered more thoroughly and less anachronistically, we might have a healthier image of the lengths and borderless abounds of the kiss’s effect. Though Sweet’s illustrations are clear, approachable, and playful, Wilson’s story could use another draft. Three Toes ooo http://www.candlewick.com/essentials.asp?browse=Title&mode=book&isbn=0763673919&bkview=p&pix=y |
Counting (Baby Curious George Edition)
Based on characters created by Margret and H.A. Rey
Illustrations by Greg Paprocki and Patterns by Margret McCartney
Curious George meets various animals, the number of animals increasing with each step. Number 2 sees George meet one rabbit, thus beginning a confusion of continuity: though George and the rabbit make two, we are focused on the rabbit, who is one. Number five amplifies this as we see one chicken, three chicks, two eggs, and one monkey. This is not the best way to learn numbers. In the middle of the book an extra-thick page holds wooden beads across a horizontal peg. The execution of moving the beads to assist counting is completely obliterated by the act of turning the page that harbours them. There is no story because there is no author: an extreme example of discrediting one’s audience. One Toe o http://shop.pbskids.org/curious-george-counting-my-first-book-of-numbers-book |
Hop On Pop (Bright and Early Board Books Edition)
By Dr. Suess
In all senses of the word, this is a sublime example of the rule of thirds in comic narrative. There is no narrative. But the continuity of rhythm and rhyme as Dr, Suess briefly moves you from chapter to absurd chapter creates a language of acceptable insanity. Suess’s tell-tale madness remains rooted in truth as the established nuance of the story forces us to ask how these apparitions can be! Never has an immense height of ludicrousness been so structurally appealing. Five Toes ooooo http://www.seussville.com/books/book_detail.php?isbn=9780375828379 |
Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? (Bright and Early Board Books Edition)
By Dr. Suess
The Doctor does it again! This little board-book starts with a gambling maturity: the first page has a whopping 19 words on it! Quite a lot for the form Mr Brown inhabits. Delivering the promise of a complex-but-digestible rhythm and rhyme we’ve come to expect, this books moves through various sounds, gradually building in bombasity while inviting the audience to participate. Following the mightiest crescendo of thunder and lightning Suess immediately asks us for the softest whisper. The effect is akin to erupting the reader into the stratosphere and then handing us the feather of an angel. Perhaps not as artfully economical as Dr. Suess’s other Bright and Early Board Books, it does not disappoint. Four Toes oooo http://www.seussville.com/books/book_detail.php?isbn=9780679882824 |
Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb (Bright and Early Board Books Edition)
By Al Perkins (words) and Eric Gurney (illustrations)
Another classic, Perkins and Gurney create a vivid world of musically chaotic monkeys. If this sounds unnerving to you, you’re in good company. The rhythm is transfixing: an absolute page-turner. The urgency of its reading progresses the audience through a world of obsessively contagious music-making. This becomes truly surreal as the book’s continuity rests on the extreme proliferation of monkeys as long as the music continues. This hyper-generates until an ominous ending where we are left with a single monkey, staring greedily into the reader’s soul as it repeats the incessant beat with nothing but it’s thumb. A necessary addition to any pscho/horror-enthusiast’s library. Four Broken Toes pppp http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/129589/hand-hand-fingers-thumb-by-al-perkins-illustrated-by-eric-gurney/9780394810768/ |
Animal Farm
By George Orwell
I pulled it off the shelf today and began ravenously chewing its ominous cautionings after hardly a page’s deliberation. Not the most poetic member of this library but a still-relevant classic for the ceaseless reprise of political tides. Each thousand words paint more than a picture. Four Toes oooo (Found at your local bookstore) |
Little You
By Richard Van Camp (words) and Julie Flett (illustrations)
Little You is a parent’s love letter to their baby child. The words and images alike are poetic in their simplicity. It is also extremely refreshing to have Métis characters illustrated in a genre otherwise colonized by a landscape of blonde Caucasian pink. The firm elegance of the images catch any audience’s attention but the story seems to be directed more towards the parent than the child. This may be a shortcoming but succeeds in capturing my sentimentality. My one structural criticism is that the final page doubles the amount of written information than what is presented on all the previous—as if Van Camp had more content to offer than Flett. Nevertheless, in an overexcited library, Little You is an absolute breath of fresh air. Four Toes oooo http://www.orcabook.com/Little-You-P827.aspx |
I Went Walking
By Sue Williams (words) and Julie Vivas (illustrations)
Here we have two important literary devices framing an educational piece on animal recognition. One device is handled with the enviable precision of masters at flow, the other seems a grossly fumbled afterthought. With episodic familiarity, we are shown a small clue as to what the next page will bring; a beautifully implied guessing game brightens the hero’s whimsy and amplifies the book’s educational element. Then somewhere in the middle of the book, the main character starts undressing—not inappropriately but incongruously. There is no continuity about the rate or selection of the strip and, by the climax and denouement, seems completely ambivalent to moral or instruction. This is no classic but Williams and Vivas may prove a team to watch out for. Three Toes ooo https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/books/i-went-walking-by-sue-williams/ |
In My Jungle
By Sara Gillingham and Lorena Siminovich
When it comes to character and story, minimalism and simplicity can be overstated. The telling of a nonchalant journey home leaves the reader wanting explanation. The images balance this with beautiful composition and a modest attention to creative detail. To say absolutely nothing of the interactive dimension of the protagonist themselves, there is something alluring about the shape of this book … something mysterious yet drastically familiar in the curve of the pages’ cut. Needs further exploration. Two Toes oo http://www.chroniclebooks.com/titles/in-my-jungle.html |
Each Peach Pear Plum
By Janet and Allan Ahlberg
This book employs a wide cast of classic fairy-tale characters to demonstrate the multifarious relationships of a utopic community. While almost everyone seems to be richly flawed they manage to coexist with humour and ease. The artwork is nostalgic and detailed but busy enough to divert the reader’s attention in too many directions. The continuity of rhythm, however, manages to elevate a simple and nearly-obvious conclusion to surprising satisfaction. It is full of mysteries—as it should be! Each Peach Pear Plum is as worth returning to as the world it exhibits is worth striving for. Four Toes oooo http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/293553/each-peach-pear-plum-by-allan-ahlberg/9780140506396/ |
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
By Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault (words)
Lois Ehlert (illustrations)
This book is an ambitious attempt to personify the entire English alphabet. It owns moments of great creative integrity inside a frustratingly uncommitted rhythm. It’s a wonder that it took two authors to build an obtrusive lack of rhythmic continuity. Or perhaps two authors is the cause of this shortcoming. Ehlert’s illustrations must be praised for their incredible clarity. However, at times, the two-dimensional representations run the risk of appearing more a designer’s equation than an artist’s expression. This book may be good for frequent study but need never be read to its conclusion. Two Toes oo https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/chicka-chicka-boom-boom/9781442450707-item.html |
Please be sure to support your local independent book store.
1/10/2017 6 Comments
(Fashionably) Late
To me, this says so much more than our nearly-exhausting criticisms of Trump. It’s about moral relativism. Which, to me, means it’s about postmodern sensibilities. Which again, to me, means it’s about popular storytelling.
I was born in 1987 so you’re welcome to project all your “millennial” notions onto me. My peers and I entered the workforce in the middle of a recession and proceeded to make fun of ourselves with lofty literature and mustaches we love to hate. We also participated in Donald Trump’s political triumph … dude.
In the mid 20th century artists were experimenting with ambivalence. I’m thinking of Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, John Cage, my belovéd Samuel Beckett, … art that reflects a world without a moral centre. That is, while the work might be morally charged in it’s context, it so often represents content that is not. To continue oversimplifying, the last century saw us become passive observers of ourselves, ironic critics of the world that we participate in generating.
Filter this down to me and the wide demographic of millennials. My university days saw a brief epoch of fashionable self-depreciation. I’m not merely referring to the concept of growing a mustache simply because you hate mustaches. But also to the isolation of our peers; becoming attractive by behaving aloof. Within my own small context this trend of disinterest-for-status didn’t last terribly long (thank God) but tiny pieces of the fallout from that can be seen in other facets of millennial culture (tindr, career ennui, and boycotting election day you idiots).
I didn’t set out to talk about millennials.
Growing up, the stories we consumed reflected the ambivalent experimentation that came before them. Homer Simpson has no moral centre. Tim the-tool-man Taylor had very little moral centre. No one in Seinfeld had a moral centre. Or Animaniacs. Or Ally McBeal. That 70’s Show. More recently than that we’ve seen the rise of the “anti-hero” fill our TV screens, characters who’s personal moralities revolve around the destruction of others (Tony Saprano, Dexter Morgan, Walter White, Don Draper, etc etc).
All this is to say that we grew up being reflected and fed by narratives that promote such an ambivalence as to permit, even encourage, a destructive sense of self-importance in our culture.
As I hypothesize that John Cage left a ripple that eventually contributed to Homer Simpson then Dexter Morgan, those who experiment with culture today will leave a footprint for the more popular narratives in the future. And of course that will eventually ripple back to something else which will create it’s own responses and the flux and flow between left and right expressions will continue forever. Unless the icecaps melt in this millennial lifetime.
Luckily, now we’re all sharing this cleverly edited cartoon which says that moral relativism of postmodernism is a sham! Culture gave us this tool to say that we are wrong sometimes and that, more importantly, what is right cannot move or change because it is right. Of course there’s a political danger in prescriptive truths as well but the implication is that we have a responsibility to justice. The implication of that is to say that humility is, once again, a virtue. Because we cannot hear those who correct us without a smidgeon of humility. And it is the ability to listen, more than the ability to know, that can best move us forward, out of postmodernism and into a hopefully brighter, more accountable, future.
The popular-narratives are already starting to shift in this direction as well. Audiences are desperately clinging to John Snow in Game of Thrones (don’t even think about it, R.R. Martin!) Amy Pohler’s sitcom Parks and Rec is another prime example because, while each character lives within a different bias, they are able to build healthy relationships by their similar attraction to goodness. It’s beautiful. Bob’s Burgers is a sitcom that obliterates the shock-mentality of Family Guy’s disinterested sadism because the narrative is centered around the characters’ love for each other.
So what is this that comes after postmodernism? Are television narratives, once again, ripe to be used for propaganda? Perhaps. But the millennial in me likes to believe that we’re smarter now than we were when televisions entered middle-class livingrooms. And I hope that we’re about to all learn how to celebrate a little intelligent humility.
May the reactionary emptiness of postmodern narrative culture recieve the poetic justice of a swift and empty death. Rest in peace and quiet my dear moral reletivism.
Who is experimenting with culture now? Outside of the industrial fascets of it … who are the Jackson Pollocks and Samuel Becketts that will inevitably influence a drastic but unknown shift in pop culture after they're dead?
You already know my answer. I end half these blog posts with the same thing: go to the theatre. Small theatres. Poorly funded theatres. Walk around an art gallery. There’s always one or two galleries with free admission in your city. Find them. When you do go, allow yourself to challenge the artists to challenge you more. They already want to whether they’re able to or not. And they’re extremely busy but absolutely willing to talk to you. So do it. Challenge them to challenge you and you will be contributing to history.
Post Script:
Despite having seen the edited cartoon every time I opened my computer for almost a week, it took me ages to find it again! Was it sensored? Copyright infringement thing? Or conspiracy against rising complexity? Or maybe I'm bad at using search engines? We'll go with that last one.
9/12/2016 0 Comments
When is Theatre Not Theatre?
I remember an upper-year class when we revisited this. I had the gaul to argue with Guillermo Verdecchia, our professor at the time, when he told us that theatre sometimes happens by accident. His example was if a couple argues in a public place they may draw attention from those around them, thus causing theatre to occur. I’m still not 100% on board with calling that “theatre” but why squabble? It’s a wonderful example for Guillermo’s argument because it employs so many other devices of the art form: dialogue, character progression, the community and discomfort of shared space, a relationship between the performers and the spectators in which the spectators have a real effect on the performance …
I think I prefer to think of theatre a little more conservatively than that. Specifically, a storytelling event in which the audience and the performer(s) share an agreed contract to work together. I’ve held to this view for probably longer than is healthy. Drama happens between or among the characters of the story being told and theatre happens between the drama and the audience. Actively, willingly, knowingly. That’s not to say that a couple fighting in public can’t become theatre—but if the example is considered purely, I don’t think it is.
So what about guerilla theatre? Or even solo theatre? While the latter may still contain drama, the former … well … it usually sets out to reveal itself at some point. Not always, but that’s the heritage it owns.
And minimalist theatre? – Even Beckett’s Breath tells a dramatic story.
But I think Beckett would agree, nothing is precise or can be perfectly pegged under the titles we give it.
If you’ve read enough of my bloggegejjing here before you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m not setting out to talk about couples fighting in public. I want to talk about the liveness of theatre. And it’s changing relationship to technology.
Two months ago Peter Bradshaw wrote a review for Kenneth Branagh’s production of Romeo and Juliet at the Garrick Theatre in London. At intermission, as planned, Bradshaw left the Garrick and walked into a nearby cinema where the same production was being screened in real time. The idea, of course, was for this seasoned critic to judge the strengths and differences of live theatre and video streaming.
What better production to choose than one of Kenneth Branagh’s? He has a terrific history of adapting Shakespeare for cinema. And Peter Bradshaw was the man for the job because of his history of critiquing both mediums as well! Bradshaw weighed his review carefully, with a meticulous British temper that darn’t distress anyone. But with Brannagh directing for both audiences, the reviewer couldn’t hide his preference for cinema as a superior visual medium.
To echo my cantankerous view of what the art form is, Bradshaw is deeply mistaken to judge and compare theatre as if it were a primarily visual medium.
Sure, great visuals are important to dramatic storytelling and certainly make an integral part to the quality of a production but if you’re hungry for magnificent images you’d be better off going to the circus or an art gallery.
There is an overlap between probably all art forms. Theatre and film are as intertwined as sculpting and carving. So much the same but so very different. When I think of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, a carefully composed soundscape comes to mind, music and sound taking a principal role in the pace, progression, and impact of the dramatic narrative. But people didn’t buy tickets to listen to an orchestra. They bought tickets to absorb the dramatic narrative (and badass action montages … I guess).
When I think of Romeo and Juliet (rarely), I don’t first wonder what the set and costumes are going to look like. I wonder how the actor is going to navigate Romeo’s shift from infatuation with Rosaline towards Juliet, or how this actress permits Juliet to sleep with her cousin’s murderer, or how the most intimate moments between R and J are made public with and for their audience, or how the audience does or does not permit themselves to be engaged or shocked or moved by an ending they know far too well.
And THEN I’ll ponder about the setting, the casting, the composition, etc. and how those elements will function to usher the above. Of course, all those secondary things are necessary to achieve the art form’s central pillar …
… which is nothing more than the relationship between the drama and the audience.
But I’m not writing to talk about people fighting in public. Film has all this stuff. Cinema is an event. It has drama and an audience. It shares most of the same devices that hold these pillars luminous. One might even argue that a film-going audience has a direct effect on the construction of a film. And, further down the rabbit hole, when a live theatre event is streamed into the cinema as it was with Brannagh’s R and J, is there really any difference at all?
This is important to be questioning right now because the livestreaming and filmic distribution of theatre events is becoming more and more common. Opera has been doing it for at least ten years. It's becoming a trend in West End Shakespeare productions, and the Stratford Festival is doing it too. As with Branagh's R and J, it is having a profound effect on the way plays are being directed.
In fact, if a play is being directed for video-streamed release, and a film-going audience shows up to the cinema to watch it, is it still theatre?
Of course there is a live audience participating in a live event where the “movie” is being filmed. But when the event is distributed cinematically this theatre audience makes up the smallest fraction of those who view the piece.
It is also worth noting that television has a long history of filming episodes live and streaming them to TV audiences in real time. From ongoing live serials like the Dick Van Dyke Show to live sitcom one-offs like certain episodes of the Drew Carey Show, Home Improvement, The Red Green Show (I’m showing my age here), to say nothing of over 40 years of Saturday Night Live, etc. etc. Does a live studio audience make TV into theatre?
No? Maybe! Because of Guillermo Verdecchia’s careful example of accidental theatre occurring: the relationship between the audience and the drama has to have an impact on how the drama is presented. When an actress decides how to justify Juliet having sex with her cousin’s murderer she has to consider the audience: allow them to participate in her hots for Romeo, she has to develop a shared language of nuance and subtext with the audience in order to become able to demonstrate how her relationship grows without actually having sex with him on the stage (in most productions, anyway). Most importantly, how that occurs exactly will change evveerr so sliiightly in each performance.
Incidentally, this is the reason that stage actors have to rehearse the same scene over and over for three weeks and film actors don’t—usually.
So then is a West End or Broadway production of The Lion King still theatre? Because Disneycorp has the execution of this show monitored and specified to its smallest sharpest edges. There is much less wiggle room for the performance to engage with the audience in subtle and nuanced ways. Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t theatre. (I've never actually seen it on stage, oops).
A film (or most episodes of most TV shows) is meticulously designed by the director to elicit a specific relationship with the audience. Importantly, it is a relationship that the audience does not participate in building. And then, it sits there, in perfect existence, continuing to be a film and or a TV show even when nobody is watching it. | A play is developed by a team in order to reach a maturity that is capable of a healthy two-way relationship with its audience. And when its over it ceases to exist entirely. |
Maybe there’s a magnificent opportunity here. Maybe something drastic happens like an actor forgets his lines. Or some adjustment of Branagh’s design gets made in performance on account of that night’s particular audience resulting in a camera angle getting lost and 30 seconds of empty film. The effect this may have on the audience would last the rest of the show. Maybe theatre can challenge the dominant naturalism of film?!
It is the dawn of a new age.
And yet. And yet, theatre’s effect on film still only happens to the cinema audience, not with them. And so, while exciting, it doesn’t actually bring the theatre out to other audiences. It may bring the play, but not the form it inhabits.
My colleague Clotilde de Verteuil makes puppets. For her BFA dissertation she built an automaton. Pretty awesome! Unfortunately for her she was docked marks on it because the automaton was not a puppet. A puppet is animated through performance and is only characterized by an audience’s ability to project their reality and understanding onto it. Puppetry is an ultimate theatre because it magnifies the necessary living relationship between performance and audience.
An automaton doesn’t change or respond to the audience except by mistake. It may tell a story. It may develop character. It may even require its audience’s intersession in order for it to function. But it doesn’t change and grow with its audience the way that an actor, a character, a puppeteer, or a puppet are designed to do.
As closely alike as film and theatre, sculpting and carving, puppets and automatons are completely different from each other.
Are automatons still cool? Fuck yeah!
Is film still awesome? You bet!
Does Beckett think things fit neatly into the titles we give them? Not very likely!
So why squabble?
Because! It is important to me that we don’t think theatre is failing when it constantly refuses to be film. It is when theatre is least filmic that it is thriving.
Also, hey Peter Bradshaw! Let’s judge theatre for what it is, shall we?
A higher place in our theatre ecology also opens opportunity for the kind of work being made. What if Richard moved on and D’bi.young Anitafrika took his place? Certainly a new kind of work would be harvested in the mainstream. Maybe Victoria Urquhart could shift into D’bi.young’s previous place and then any Sue from Fringe could suddenly be as acknowledged as Victoria is finally becoming after her years of unrecognized work. You get the … etc.
So who is cut out to build our National Theatre? Where should it come from and how should it function? Obviously it can’t be harvested from seedless soil.
The twitter discourse started around a gentle hint in The Star that Soulpepper wants to function as a national theatre (if not The National Theatre). To which the twits suggested alternative options – including myself. Soulpepper can’t be it because their mandate prevents them from running a season of primarily Canadian content. @michaelwheeler put forward Luminato because they have the heart as well as the infrastructure of cash flow married to a physical address. I could be wrong but I understand Luminato to derive from “illuminate Toronto.” Am I right? I don’t know. But if I was from Regina or Yellowknife and learned that my National Theatre was born from a Toronto-centric focus I’d be a little … peeved.
I suggested that the Magnetic North festival was already functioning as Canada’s National Theatre. The festival elevates indie artists, is accessible to audiences all over the country, and is already tethered to our National Arts Centre. But Magnetic North doesn’t develop its own work and doesn’t provide an important place for the Richard Roses and Antoni Cimolinos to retire from their stations and into creative glory, freeing their seats to a deserving younger generation.
But I still feel that Magnetic North is our best National Theatre. In Canada, we can’t be represented by a single company. And I do not say this on account of our geographic magnitude. But we’re a colonized country. A National Theatre would have to be able to put Native voices on the masthead. It would have to equally represent the sympathetic development of the majority (white) colonizers. And it would have to program our POC citizens as our brothers and sisters in a country where absolutely everyone is a somehow misplaced denizen. It would have to be bilingual. Or multi-lingual, including Native languages as well as French and English.
While it is not happening perfectly, to my knowledge Magnetic North is better set up for this than any other theatre or festival. But since I’ve brought up Native theatre, let’s be absolutely real here: more often than not, Native voices don’t represent our very best work. The reason for this is that our Native communities are still in the long ugly process of rising out of the trenches we plowed them into when we stole their identity with residential schools and exploitative land deals. They have come to lack the artistic heritages that we have been able to bring with us from Europe. The Canada Council for the Arts is working to aid this restructuring of their creative voices and heritage by funding First Nation artists with the justice of abandon. Magnetic North is then situated to cradle new Native plays after the funding has enabled them. this process of encouraging new Native culture is mandatory and just.
But they must also be focused on presenting our best work. And, to echo, that’s often not First Nations theatre. It is in looking for our best work across all voices that presenters like Magentic North will truly discover and enable all of our very best work. Because only once it is seen can it be improved upon. And who else has a history and producing model to represent all of Canada in this particular important way? Certainly not Soulpepper. Maybe Luminato. For Magnetic North, it’s there. In fact, for Magnetic North it’s everywhere; all over the country with clockwork regularity.
As far as I can tell, the only thing between Magnetic North and our functioning National Theatre is that extra rung it should place at the very top of the ladder. But maybe they can do that. They’re still a young festival. All it takes is one of their own shows per year, no more. After a few years of finding their feet, still elevating the very best indie theatre from our full diaspora by presenting it across Canada, maybe Magnetic North could commission artists to develop our own War Horse, our own Les Miserables … it’s only one more rung on the ladder, not that far from reach.
Incidentally, if you like, you’re welcome to sit on that top rung and make it happen. Magnetic North is currently in the process of hiring a new Artistic Director. Applications are due tomorrow! Go!
6/14/2016 1 Comment
Following Trend
I am writing this blog now to shout foul! No fair.
The straw on the camel’s back to have me bother writing this between burping and changing my beautiful infant daughter was when my friend and colleague posted this short interview on facebook. In the short introduction that precedes it Ian Strickland criticizes the theatre industry for embracing digital technology at their box office “while neglecting other aspects of theatre practice.” He wants to see digital adaptation inside the auditorium. The following paragraph reveals his suggestion: we would use, for example, mobile phone apps to “enable the audiences to engage more intimately with what’s happening on stage …” His suggestion is to use a gratuitously familiar technology in order to (literally) change the (camera) angle on an ancient art form. But this would not change anything about what is actually happening in the auditorium. He wants to see a play on stage, in front of the audience, and for that audience to look away from it so they can watch it on the tiny TV in their hand. Sure it might be cool the first two times it happens but how does that actually adapt or advance the art form?
Surely there are nuanced approaches to staging that a director might employ in such a scenario. But they’d still be staging the same plays that they’d always been staging. Throwing a phone at the audience is not the same thing as making theatre arrive at the digital age.
In 2013 the Donmar Warehouse premiered Privacy, a well-constructed, non-narrative play about the lack of privacy that comes with our addiction to iphones. It was great and, at moments, employed the use of a phone in the space very well (despite their audience’s apprehension to use their phone in the theatre). It is an important production to mention as long as I’m criticizing Ian Strickland because the use of the phone was integral to the actual content of the play. This is paramount: any other use of the phone in the theatre is nothing more than a gimmick. It would have to take part in the play because it has to take part in this particular play.
(Ironically, in this case, the Donmar’s Privacy served as a doomsville warning against the evils of technology to their blue-haired, upper-crust, London audience.)
There are only so many structures and narratives you can build around a smartphone until you’ve run the gamut. But, Ciarán, the technology will keep changing, offering better and newer opportunities all the time! Of course it will! So should theatre chase technology? Should we maintain relevancy by scrambling to invent narratives around the newest thingamajig? I’d argue that’s a faster route to obscurity than the art form’s present course.
When the industrial revolution brought an influx of laborers into cities and swelled the “middle class” theatre changed forever. Our spaces and relationships to it changed, our audiences changed, our economic models changed. Now that we are living in what many call the digital revolution, they are expecting a similar bounce-back from the arts—especially community-driven arts such as theatre. But the nature of this revolution won’t allow for the same kind of drastic shift. The very technologies that we’re implored to chase make it impossible for necessary change to be so immediately drastic.
For the first time ever, every little thing we possibly present can and will be judged on a global scale. A good friend of mine, the artistic director of a small social-justice theatre company, criticizes Tannahil’s piece at CanStage this year because it is being subtly marketed as an advancement, as theatre in a new format, while we all know it isn’t at all. (But we have the wherewithal to step back and say that’s okay, at least it’s not ANOTHER kind of Jersey Boys.) In this ecology, even cool-dude, queer-prodigy, nay-sayer, opportunity-maker Tannahil can’t win. For him and the rest of us, if he’s making work that’s truly new then it falls outside of the theatre tradition. Everything else has been done before. And we have the knowledge that modern tech provides for us to thank for that.
When I told Michael Wheeler that I was interested in writing narratives that necessarily require an investigation of the traditional form, he nodded his head and encouraged, it’s smart to follow trend. But I’m not. If I was following trend then the Stratford Festival wouldn’t have such a boring season this year (yeah, I said it!). Big theatres with deeply-pocketed patrons are sticking to the tradition because that’s what keeps them alive. If we’re so worried about the art form floundering than we can “follow trend” by re-writing three-act imitations of Checkhov for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …
I firmly believe, however, that tradition is best upheld by altering it. There IS something to be said for responding to the times. What terrifies me is the grotesque specificity by which we’re implored to respond. In my self-righteous opinion, the more tech a play leans on for it’s worth, the further it moves itself away from theatre. The reason anyone does this work when they have the skills to make more money in film and television (or more freedom online) is because they love the intimacy and immediacy of the stage. When the West End’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory makes a drawn-out gag with complex and beautiful projections, stifling the actors as they flounder across an oversized stage, I could … gag.
So how should theatre respond to a digital age? Sometimes, maybe, by not using any technology at all. Sometimes, only sometimes, that might be a gentle enough respite to sell some tickets, move people to new emotions, and make culture.
My Nana used to warn not to present a problem unless you can also suggest a solution. So here we go. If you want theatre to change then change the funding model. Don’t tell artists to develop their craft; we’ve been trying to do that every day since Sophocles rocked the Dionysian festival. Worse still, don’t tell artists to develop their craft in a certain direction because, as history tells us, they’ll be absolutely certain to aim for the opposite (unless you’re a funding body, in which case, they’ll do whatever you tell them to. Reluctantly).
Change the funding model:
Shorten the ridiculous length of time between conception to application to realization. This will encourage and enable experimentation and keep momentum behind error and discovery.
Subsidize rehearsal spaces so that they’re more accessible. This will take power away from gatekeepers to the industry and allow unheard voices to develop.
And most importantly, to rustle some damn feathers, stop rewarding financial success.
To expand on that last … Soulpepper, for example, is excellent at collecting donations and keeping subscribers (after all, they’ve been “following trend” for about a thousand years). So stop funding them. Give all that money to my disgruntled friend with his small social justice company. Then, once he’s used it to make a strong momentum, take a bulk of his funding away and give it to someone else. Sure artists will suffer. But no more than they do now. And we’re used to taking care of each other. Why not ask it of us more formally?
I absolutely guarantee you that, without forcing us to focus on it, without even talking about it, with no shadow of a doubt, you will gain a whole movement of theatre art that responds to the digital revolution. And the powerful members of the art form, the Caryl Churchills and the Morris Panychs, they won't lose their power---but they may become more accessible to those who idolize them.
If, instead, you keep rewarding those who “follow trend” for the sake of their wealthy subscribers while forcing them to make theatre about technology, you will harvest a younger generation of theatre-makers who think they have to build shows around technology. And those poor suckers who may have something to say won’t get their hands on decent funding until the tech you’ve made them obsess over has has lost all its juice.
Ultimately, if you absolutely must insist I make work around the technology of the digital revolution then I absolutely must insist you to stop funding Shakespeare.
All this being said, I like living when I do. I spend way too much time on twitter. And I'll surely make work around a technology that represents the digital revolution. But when I do, I can only hope that the critics and funders lie awake at night wondering if I made that work because I wanted to or because they're forcing us to.
6/19/2015 0 Comments
On Digital Theatre
Reposted this article (below) from Howlround and Pat the Dog Theatre Creation. When it comes to a conversation about adapting theatre to a digital age, I get an itchy feeling in my gut and can't help but spout my own editorial
http://howlround.com/bringing-theatre-into-the-digital-age
digitaltheatre.com and digiticaltheatreplus.com are truly magnificent things. I use them and love them. But, as discussed in the comments at the bottom of this article, this kind of filmic distribution of a play is really only good for a few different kinds of plays -- typically proscenium-oriented designs on plays that are driven by image and story. Truthfully, most theatre. But it requires a movement away from almost any other kind of exploration of the artform (even plays that don't explore the form but might be immersive, participatory, or movement-driven; plays that may or may not incorporate more than one or two of the audience's five senses).
What I'm describing when I say "proscenium-oriented designs, etc" resembles early film. Pioneers of Hollywood started on stage and created stage-plays for the singular mechanical audience of a camera. There's nothing wrong with that; I adore film. It's a magnificent form of storytelling. But please don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that a digital distribution of theatre is breaking new ground in any way.
When I arrived in the UK two years ago, the hottest ticket in London was for "The Drowned Man," an immersive collaboration between Punchdrunk and the National Theatre. I never managed to get a ticket (usually sold-out despite a higher-than-average price and a long performance run) but the piece used masks to incorporate the audience into a complex maze of spaces and told a story through the self-guided fragments of audience exploration using dance. It would NEVER work on film. But I'm sure it made plenty of dough for the producers before transferring to New York --a classic example against the money-hole perception that taints experimental theatre.
One of the playwrights I've been privileged to familiarize myself with while studying here is Tim Crouch. Crouch's work is typically much simpler in terms of production than The Drowned Man. In fact, rather than using production elements to push against the tide of digital storytelling, he leans into the artform as we already have it. Perhaps "innovation" is too strong a word, perhaps it isn't, but Crouch forces the audience to rely on the liveness of their imagination: he incorporates false props or asks non-actors to read parts or has a "translator" speak on behalf of the audience while he treats them as a character. These kinds of devices are exploratory and excitingly challenging but strictly theatrical--not filmic! He is exploring theatre for theatre and audiences for audiences. It is this that has made him into a "name" in British theatre and he is in demand everywhere from elementary classrooms to The Royal Court Theatre (he also, like, so totally follows me on twitter, yo!).
Last night I saw a popular comedy that I didn't really like: "One Man Two Guvners." It is a proscenium story-driven comedy that, by all accounts, might translate into digitaltheatre.com's medium. But the very best parts of the play would have been the very worst moments of the filmed product. [Caution, spoilers approaching ...] A very small and "classic" bit of audience interaction was bolstered by a couple of plants in the audience so that, for a little while you thought, "Oh no, I hope they don't pick me," and "wait, is this real or is this fake?" and most importantly, "holy shit, we're genuinely in the same room as the actors!" It's exciting and playful and frightening. There's nothing like it. And although I wasn't keen on the play as whole, this particular production serves as another example against the money argument: possibly the largest theatre I've ever set foot in was nearly sold-out.
Sometimes theatre actually makes money.
Albeit, it's rare.
Ultimately, if theatre feels challenged by the more globally accessible, on-demand, juggernaut force of the internet, don't allow your tiny financial pay-back to to bully you into altering theatre into film. If it's money you're worried about, maybe spend less of it on production-value and, instead, harvest audiences by doing what Tim Crouch does: live, challenging, exciting theatre.
By all means, allow "the digital age" to inform your work! Make work for now. There's no need for another imitator of Chekhov. Instead, maybe do what Chekhov did and allow what you do to invent; invent a new audience or a response to an artistic movement or something other than re-inventing cinema. Cinema's already evolved and it's already awesome.
I keep meaning to re-read Grotowski as the Canadian dollar drops in value. Now there was an artist whose contribution to the artform was really a bi-product of his investment in people! An accidental inventor--one of our best.
Invest in people.
Or go make movies instead of theatre. Movies are great!
While waiting for them all to load I’d like to help my self by talking about what they contain.
For the final assignment of my master’s degree I’m defending the artistic choices I’ve made over the past year by looking at a small window of Polyculturalism and re-examining Jacque Ranciere’s theories of political equality and action. My understanding of the philosophies is still developing but its relevancy seems to be compounding. This morning, I opened my newsfeed and saw how hideous we all are.
Dylan Roof shot and killed nine black people in Charleston, admitted that it was a race crime, and is being tried for mental illness.
Rachel Dolezal is facing trial-by-media for being a white woman in blackface. Less formally, there is a plea of mental illness growing around her as well.
Donald Trump is running a racist presidential campaign on the popular moral grounds that he has a lot of fuggin’ money.
These individuals are not mentally ill. Their homes are. Their families are. Their countries are. Their media and role-models and businesses are mentally ill. These individuals are the proliferated bacteria of the contagion. We can put them up for trial, quarantine them, maybe even eradicate them, but the disease will sneeze new soldiers into our midst and the plague will keep on spreading.
Canada and the UK are making immigration harder and harder.
Pope Francis released his encyclical on our theological relationship with the planet and is making enemies for the Church (many of whom consider themselves members of the Church).
What things to wake up to. I could just cry.
Our collective mental illness is widespread because we are trying to identify the world and ourselves as singulars. Dylan Roof is a white supremacist because we have somehow taught him that it is better to be not-black. And he identifies himself within this white, not-black singularity. Donald Trump has power because people think money is good. We see him singularly: a symbol for capitalist status. Immigration laws and political borders only exist to enforce the singularities of one homogenous group against another.
Polyculturalism states that there is no such thing as a homogenous group. That a group of black activists contain women and men, a group of black women activists contain old and young, a group of old black women activists contain the abused and the blessed, a group of old abused black women activists contain Christians and Muslims … ad infinitum. Feminism refers to the relationship between these identities as intersectional. A person’s race intersects with her gender to create a stew of experiences that is unique from just the race or just the gender.
In a leftist polycultural utopia, the powerful will create systems to elevate the non-powerful and, with respect to the intersectionality of the non-powerful group(s), the powerful will not police the functions or development of the very systems they’ve put in place for elevating the non-powerful. In this way, the non-powerful group(s) will be able to not only control and manage itself, but to also identify itself. Without the hierarchical guide of the powerful there is necessary room for the non-powerful identities to be fluid.
So where does Rachel Dolezal fit into all this? As someone who is empirically white but claims to be culturally black, surely she cannot possibly be a symbol of this wicked singularity that is eating us all. She must be a product of the polycultural utopian regime, no? Her (non) blackness is built on the privilege of academia: therefore, even if black, she is intersectional with a powerful group (academia). As such, she has a responsibility to elevate her black peers. Regardless of whether she does so, her voice in the policing (organization, management) of that group should be muffled. I am speaking in terms of the polycultural model.
Much more importantly, however, her blackness is free of an upbringing and background that includes being stopped and frisked, free from being judged by the gatekeepers of opportunity, free from the literal inheritance of a certain kind of American poverty, free from being murdered by cogs like Dylan Roof. Surely she brought a lot of that on to herself but that is not the world she grew up in. As such, within the polycultural model, her voice is necessary in the elevation of Black America, but banned from the management of it.
But wait! There’s a contradiction here. If the powerful have to give up their power, who becomes the powerful? That is why the polycultural utopia is fluid.
Cue Jacque Ranciere! An onomatopoeically fun-French-philosopher who states that … wait for it … you may need to sit down … this is the most radical statement in my ramblings … he states that we are all equal.
Yeah. Let that sink in.
I stayed up late last night reading the first few pages of Pope Francis’s Encyclical. I’m as impressed as I thought I would be. He touches upon our singularity as humans and, sticking to traditional Catholic doctrine, brings attention to our universal Communion as a species, mystically united to each other in Creation for the very purpose of developing relationships that elevate the greater good. Please, read it.
For Ranciere, inequality only exists in the formation of a group, homogenous or not. Inherently we are all already equal. Equally good, equally bad, equally potent in our humanity. If I was as familiar with his work as I’d like to be, I might even venture to say that he has a very Catholic view of humanity. Inequality only exists in our rife and cruel system of separate singularities.
But just to keep things confusing, Ranciere’s equality is an overall singularity. For Ranciere, political action is anything that moves towards the whole singularity of equality by existing outside of the behaviors we have built and normalized to expect from each other. As my tutor put it, voting is not a political action … because it is an expected behavior that exists within our constructed singularity. Political action is an action that exits whatever singularity we’ve made to define ourselves. But I’d argue that murdering black people is not a political action despite our collective agreement that murder is wrong; it is not a political action because our society already attacks black people; it is not a political action because it does not motivate us towards our inherent basic-state of equality; it is not a political action because it enforces our collective mental illness of separate singularities.
Is Rachel Dolezal’s borrowed identity a political action according to Ranciere? I might argue, yes. Her lifelong blackface exits the boundaries of our previously agreed normalcy and demonstrates the potently human sameness of black and white people. Rachel Dolezal’s intentions have always been to move us towards our inherent equality. Does that excuse her?
As a member of the most privileged singularities, and according to the polycultural utopic values, I dare not monitor or manage Rachel Dolezal. I can only point to her. Her biggest contradiction is not in her race but in the way that she can, and should, draw attention to herself as a political action, as a system against our racist norm. While, being a privileged individual, she should not police or take part in that system which is herself. She has the responsibility to offer the political action of her mushed identity but not the right to do anything with it. She’s acted politically towards Ranciere’s equality but is too privileged to take part in the action.
There. Do you feel better now?
Neither do I.
So what can we do about it?
Well, I had crunchy granola for breakfast this morning so I’m going to offer a crunchy granola solution. A solution that I think is paramount to our deeply infected mess of unequal singularities.
Go to the theatre.
More importantly, go see stories with characters that don’t look like you. Drag your friends out. Because the theatre is perhaps the only space where we can exist in a forgiving, demanding, supportive, thorough, unapologetic, fun discourse with ourselves! The only other spaces that happens are at church and sporting events. But one of those isn’t fun and the other is not forgiving. So go to the theatre.
Storytelling is the birthplace of empathy. Empathy is the strongest medicine we have to fight this horrible disease. Theatre is the storytelling platform that has more freedom than film and television. It is a place where the storytellers are standing warm in front of you, proclaiming (with the triumph of all their years of hardships this vocation has inflicted upon them) that we have a responsibility for each other. They're proclaiming that we have so much to learn from each other. Proclaiming that we are all fuggin’ nuanced. Proclaiming that two opposing views can both be righteous at the same time. Proclaiming that we are all very much the same. Proclaiming that we've got a long long way to go!
If our sickness is going to demand our discomfort, we might as well seek discomfort in places where we can enjoy it—in places that prepare us to face the real thing more gracefully and humanely.
If we go see stories that represent the non-powerful, created by the non-powerful, and take part in those stories by being an engaged audience to them, then we will be fulfilling our duties towards the polycultural utopia. We will deliver the system for the non-powerful to grow and, by witnessing, allow it to unfold for all our sakes. We will celebrate our Ranciere-ish equality by being empathetic for a singularity that was once systematically isolated. We will remove that isolation without policing it.
Empathy is our best medicine and theatre is our best source.
How can we look at Rachel Dolezal if we have not practiced our empathy? How can we understand the manufacturing of Dylan Roof without empathy? How can we face God without empathy?
Go to the theatre.
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