Artistic Directors, marketers, musicians, artists, and artsy types, take note: this is the future of cultural connecting and opportunity. Totally inspiring.
I always marvel at the ability to be able to write strictly for voice, building narrative and shaping tone through sonic means alone. The power of sound can’t be underestimated. It’s something I was reminded of lastnight when I received word that a radio documentary I’d made in 2006 is going to made available online.
Two-and-a-half years ago, I made a trip overseas to see my father. I made a documentary about my experience that aired later that year across Canada on CBC Radio One. It was a part of Outfront, which focuses on personal stories.
“Lanyod” (Hungarian for “daughter”) has been chosen as being among the best of Outfront documentaries, and I’m pleased to announce that it’s available for download at the program’s website this week:
http://www.cbc.ca/outfront/podcast.html
The documentary’s taken on a different meaning for me since my father’s passing this past December. The power of sound has taken on a whole new significance, too. I may never write a radio drama -but then, I’m reminded with “Lanyod,” that I was already part of my own real-life one.
Enjoy.
The Next Stage Festival may be wrapped up for another year, but Toronto’s theatre scene is hopping. The Groundswell Festival, celebrating Canada’s incredible female playwrights, kicks off January 26th at the Berkeley Theatre.
Wednesday morning I’ll be speaking with one of the writers featured at this year’s fest: Florence Gibson.
Originally trained as a medical doctor, Gibson is known for her powerful portraits of family and relationships. Her new work, Augury, revolves around the 1879 abortion trial of Emily Stowe, one of Canada’s most important historical figures.
Tune in, just after 9am ET.
Toronto local:
89.5FM
or
Listen live online:
http://ciut.fm
Click the “listen live” button on the top right.
http://take5.fm
Now here’s a neat example of the power of online media in the arts world.
Mention this blog to receive a $15 ticket for Tracy Dawson’s Them & Us, on now through January 31st. That’s for any ticket, any night, any time.
Them & Us is made up of a series of vignettes exploring the ins and outs of modern relating. By turns funny, poignant and… well, salty (the skit involving a 16-year-old propositioning her father’s business partner is one you won’t soon forget), Dawson’s work goes way past the boring “relationship drama” cliches. That can only be a good thing. And it features a quartet of awesome Canadian talent; as well as Dawson, there’s Sarah Dodd, Gray Powell, and Michael Healey (A comment about his performance I overheard at the opening: “If he were any more dry, he’d bleed sand…” True story.)
It’s cold and wintery. You’re not in Utah. So go to the theatre already.
Call the Arts Box Office (416.504.7529) or check out the TPM website.
Tell ’em Play Anon sent ya.
I don’t like lists. It’s the main reason I resist writing hoary old “Top Ten Shows of 2008” sorts of things. Unless a writer/artist experiences a heck of a lot of different things (not just theatre, but music, cinema, telly, & you know, life) they’re going to be creating from inside a navel-gazing bubble. So instead of doing a formal list of shows I liked in 2008, I’m going to provide a few favourite live moments from 2008, along with stuff I’m looking forward to in 2009. Call it the Ghosts of Good Stuff, Past & Future.
2008:
–Festen / Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me: The Berkeley Street Theatre ended the year with a duo of powerhouse dramas in both its upstairs and downstairs spaces. Both about families of different sorts, the skillfully directed and acted works were punches to the gut, and stayed with me far past my exiting the theatre’s doors.
–The Music Man / Moby Dick: The yin and yang of the Stratford Festival this past season. Both seeming-opposites, playing in the largest and smallest festival spaces respectively, and yet both had so much in common. I had to think for hours which one was actually more epic -the story of man vs. whale or man-in-a-small-town (on the surface anyway). Brilliantly directed, with charismatic leading men, the Festival made a brave, brilliant choice to have two such works playing at the same time.
–Rachid Taha: The Algerian-French singer’s concert at the Phoenix in July was a mix of Arab, rock, pop, dance, punk, chaabi, and… everything else. In an interview last year, he quoted Frank Zappa in describing his music as couscous. No kidding. A sweaty good time, Taha and his 7-man band played for a riotous, celebratory two-plus hours. Not a word was in English, either. It didn’t matter. Brilliant.
–The Williamson Playboys: Opening the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival with a host of other acts, the Playboys (played with ferocious playfulness by Doug Morency and Paul Bates) won over the crowd with their mix of gentle, fierce, silly and profound. I haven’t laughed so hard, for so long, in… too long. Lesson learned: you just haven’t lived until you’ve heard Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog played with just a ukelele and tuba.
–Nigella Express / Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen: I know, I know. This isn’t technically a series, so much as it is a chance to ogle the British Domestic Goddess. But the tips are really practical (if you can pay enough attention) and the results are damn good. In this case, it is as easy as it looks. Honest. And Nigella’s love of food is a joyful expression of life -something we all need to remember.
–Election night: After the drama of the Democratics, then the even-more-dramatic U.S. election campaign that featured an assortment of interesting players, the whole thing culminated in a huge gathering in Chicago. Jesse Jackson’s tears, chanting masses, Oprah’s runny mascara, and the President-Elect’s confident waves and smiles made for a moving, affecting piece of real, live theatre. I’ve never seen anything like it. Part 2: The Inauguration, coming soon.
2009:
–Blackbird: Written by David Harrower and directed by Joel Greenburg, Studio 180 is back at the Berkeley after last year’s stunning Stuff Happens, David Hare’s deconstruction of the politics behind the Iraq War. If Blackbird is anywhere near as thrilling and compelling, the Berkeley will have another solid play under its roof.
–Antigone: The timely Sophocles tragedy gets the Soulpepper treatment. A favourite play of mine (personal disclosure: I starred in a production in London moons ago), I can’t wait to see powerhouse actor Liisa Repo-Martell in the lead, chewing the scenery a host of other great Canadian actors, including David Storch and Claire Calnan.
–Them And Us: Actor/writer Tracy Dawson’s take on modern relating gets a theatrical exploration. I know, I know, I can hear every male friend of mine yawning at the thought of sitting through a play about… relationships. But if Dawson’s energy is anything to go on (I interviewed her recently), the show is sure to be sarcastic, funny, insightful, and have something for both genders.
–The Entertainer: John Osbourne’s rarely-performed piece (in Canada, anyway) receives a production at the Shaw Festival, courtesy of Shaw Fest Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell. Exploring notions of “entertainment” and our expectations around it, the piece has a timely relevance, and features some of Canada’s finest performers, including Benedict Campbell in the lead.
–The Soloist: Joe Wright’s filmic adaptation of the Steve Lopez book. Lopez is a columnist with the L.A. Times who met the homeless Nathaniel Ayers years ago; the book explores their relationship, and the vitality of music, art, and writing. Featuring Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez and Jamie Foxx as Ayers, I’m thinking this will be one for the Oscar voters next year.
–Jessica Lea Mayfield: The singer/songwriter from Kent, Ohio caught me with her beautiful tune, “Kiss Me Again.” Thoughtful without being pretentious, uncomplicated without being folksy, she’s an interesting combination of Cat Power, Patti Smith, and Joni Mitchell, but definitely brings a style all her own. And she’s only 19. Holy smokes.
It’s been a long time. Too long.
Between family drama and… more family drama, it’s been a challenging time. The holidays always tend to throw a wrench into things too. For now, some linky goodness -thoughts on a few things that have been sitting on online tabs now for ages, and deserve a line or two.
First, and most recently, Harold Pinter has died. Pinter was one of the most important playwrights of the twentieth century, and, for many of us drama students, was our first introduction to truly disturbing characters. Disturbing, because they said so little, but conveyed so much. Silence, in Pinter’s hands, became a weapon, a shield, an absolute zero, to be placed within any and every concept of one’s choosing. From his written work, he seemed to love actors -and he trusted them. I workshopped scenes for Old Times during my time living in London, England, reading the part of Anna. I’ll never forget the whirlwind of possibilities that swirled around a perfect eye of stillness within Pinter’s writing. It was after that experience that I began to realize just how much Pinter changed the course of modern drama. Grazie, Harold.
Switching gears, this article from the Guardian examines the changing role of theatre writing and criticism in the internet age. Fascinating, challenging, compelling. Being a person who cares deeply about the intersections between culture and technology, I am still flummoxed at the level of ignorance displayed by those in … let’s just say other, arts-related areas, who ought to be more concerned about reaching new and younger audiences. Internet reporting is going to become the cornerstone in arts reportage, and yet there still exists this strange attitude (is it endemic to the Canadian persona?) that online reporting isn’t somehow as relevant or “real” as print or broadcasting. Well, I guess it depends who you’re marketing to, and writing for. Rule #1 of writing: know your audience. But to quote the article’s author, Andrew Dickson (bold mine):
it’s important for editors to commission robustly independent reviews; but it’s also important for us to encourage differing opinions, and allow people to tell us about things we’ve missed, whether the price of tickets or the horrors of restricted-view seats. Yes, we should support specialist voices and encourage experienced judgment, but we shouldn’t allow theatre critics to become isolated from what’s happening in other art forms or the wider world. Yes, we should care about the written word and encourage it to flourish – but we must also experiment with other ways of reaching audiences too, whether it’s via video, social networking, Twitter, or whatever else is waiting round the corner. Yes, we should cover shows when they open, but we shouldn’t shackle ourselves to a diary decided in advance by PR companies, as if every performance after press night wasn’t worth bothering with.
While we’re on Twitter, a fascinating article from the New York Times about the mini version of blogging; I have a theory Twittering could be the next big trend in arts criticism and writing. Can you imagine reading Twitters on the latest theatre shows, concerts, films, even television? And then gathering up a bunch of Twitters on the same? Talk about a conversation-starter (or two). The possibilities are endless.
So is print really dying? Or is it -like radio -just re-defining itself and its audience? Here’s a good piece on how employees of Denver’s newspaper, The Rocky Mountain News, are using the internet to try to save their paper. Interesting, how it takes a crisis to provoke a marriage -it’s usually the other way around, but in these times, everything is gone topsy-turvy. I still wonder what print writers -specifically arts journalists -think the whole online/print/economic situation might ultimately mean for them (us). I ran into a major Toronto critic who works in both print and radio earlier this month; she said her outlets are “going the way of the doh-doh bird” and encouraged me to continue pursuing online opportunities. Who knows, she said, “I could be working for you someday.” It was the weirdest compliment ever, and, come to think of it, quite Pinter-esque.
There’s certainly plenty of great drama out there lately.
If you’re in London, there’s the Tony Award-winning August: Osage County. New York has the recently extended one-man show Taking Over, while Chicago has Lynn Nottage’s Ruined. If you’re in Toronto, there’s no shortage of goodness either, with the disturbingly brilliant Festen running into next week, and Frank McGuinness’ timely (timeless?) Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me opening this Saturday.
But oh, the best drama for us Canucks right now is in our own Parliament. The drama! The speeches! The fist-shaking fury! It would all be very entertaining, if it weren’t also real. Ouch. The best part is the level of engagement it’s provoked among average Canadians; considering our last election saw some of the worst voter turnout rates in electoral history, being a part of something so starkly different in terms of mood and passion is… refreshing. The downside is the deep cracks in unity the Ottawa drama is revealing to all of us. Forget the “one” part; we’re just simply “not the same.” Or so we’re being told.
Objectively interesting as it all may be, the cause of national unity isn’t helped by our politicians giving deeply dramatic, occasionally hysterical Bernhard-meets-Kean performances. Makes the fuss over the use of a real skull in an RSC version of Hamlet seem tame by comparison. Then again, I can think of a few people who feel as if their own skulls have been bashed around, watching the frantic arm-flapping of Canadian politicians over the last week. I can only hope there’s a great playwright (or two) watching, listening, and writing. We’re going to need someone to make sense of this for us, and I can’t think of any other way to see it, other than a dramatic presentation in the theatre. If Frost/Nixon taught me anything, it’s that human behaviour is often at its most desperate and revealing when put through the fire of politics. Stay tuned for it: Harper Hears A Hoard, on tour soon.
I came across a fascinating piece on the art of staging warfare yesterday. Written by British freelance journalist and indie theatre director Imogen Russell Williams, the piece explores the whys and wherefores of staging war onstage, noting, quite rightly I think, that most theatre directors revert to some kind of cinematic equivalent in depicting fights. In reading her description of shadow play and slow-motion moves, I couldn’t help but think of the innumerable productions I’ve sat through where both were utilized, along with pyrotechnics. To quote Williams:
Bang! Flash! Up goes a huge pile of money in undulating smoke. We’re supposed to find it impressive that such crashes, bangs and wallops can be achieved even though we’re in a theatre, not a cinema. But it’s probably the uniting factor in bad stage warfare that director and production team are determined to pull off the cinematically spectacular even though they’re making a play, not a film.
This explains (at least partly) why I didn’t like Black Watch, part of Luminato this past summer. Or why so many productions of Shakespeare (and one of Marlowe) in Stratford have been disappointing; lost in the wonder of great acting, design, and staging, I’ve found myself jolted out of the spell by ridiculous, over-the-top fight/warfare scenes.
Note to theatre directors: try talking with some of this city’s awesome puppeteers. Work with them. They’re super-creative. Incorporating puppetry is just what The National Theatre in England has done with War Horse. Williams says this production changed her mind about the depiction of war onstage, and from what I’ve read, the piece seems genuinely moving, and thought-provoking. Puppets aren’t just for kids, and never have been.