I have a bunch of things that I'm about to be able to talk about, but until then, some good things for attending, reading and listening.
Small Wooden Shoe is named after the tools French workers would use to "clog" the machinery when on strike. Their “sabot” – small wooden shoes – gave English the word “sabotage.”
Like them, we want to disrupt the machinery of "business as usual" in hopes for a better world. more about what we do
I have a bunch of things that I'm about to be able to talk about, but until then, some good things for attending, reading and listening.
A year end parable and things to listen to in these dark and magical times: podcasts for the holidays and a video for Fun Palace 3penny Holiday Variety Show.
These letters feel still true and also so aspirational as to be fantasy. In a moment in which I find it hard to find the enthusiasm and promotional confidence that our moment seems to require – it is hard to imagine writing this sort of thing. There is a “we” that in a time of isolation is tenuous. And yet. Remember our asperiations…
Warm up with music, melodrama the Fun Palace Players, Special Musical and Other Guests
Corruption, protest, poverty and oppression. With an unlikely happy ending and beautiful music.
We’ve been working and laughing – oh god is there a lot of laughing – on 3penny, which, like the art I love most, changes meaning all the time. This is a different event now than it was in April. Even when we don’t change the words, the meaning has changed. And it’s a blessing to be in the room with smart, talented superstars who can deal with all that and more, like sing songs that are dark and great and darker for their greatness.
After the week it’s been, I was grateful for the strength and closeness of Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham in “Our ‘Oracle’ Helps Us Process a Trump Presidency” – the lastest episode of Still Processing, a podcast from the New York Times.
It’s been a while. A little too much hermiting, maybe a little too much Facebook. But to the good stuff.
5 dance 9 theatre 3 other 1 party 1 conference-ish
A mix of the work of treasured collaborators, new curiosities and folks I don't know. It will either fill me joy, burn me out. Or both. See you there.
First – I am optimistic. The old structure was a result of very different times, thinking and bureaucratic ideology. Times that both I envy and think ended a long ago and whose remnants have begun to harm, not help, art and society.
A live edition Fun Palace Radio Variety Show was at the lovely Burdock Music Hall and on Facebook, I've been introducing the Fun Palace Players. And I wanted to share that here. Since Facebook doesn't own us, Man.
There are eight words I return to. They are words I heard and haven’t been able to stop hearing. For the past three years, while I have been director of Small Wooden Shoe Theatre Co. in Halifax, they have been touchstones. I see them in the work I did with sabotage group before I heard them; I see them in all my plans and hopes for the future. So, eight words toward a theatre …
Originally posted September 2005
Pre-amble
Most manifestos or labels define a positive rule. To call work “Interdisciplinary” implies that all work will contain a mix of disciplines. That this disciplinary mixing will be a considered assumption of every project. Post-disciplinary make no such assumptions. Having worked though “multi” and “inter,” “post” argues that disciplinary assumptions are no longer useful. That art work and artists no longer require of themselves a primary distinction.
I've had a lot of anxious and/or bewildered conversations with artists and producers about using computers for writing and collaborating, email, communicating with teams and/or file management and more.
There aren't any final answers, because this is a constantly shifting landscape but there is some apps and some mindsets that I think can help.
Canada Council released some more information on the new funding structures they are designing for launch in 2016. This is part 2 of a multipart effort to respond in a bit more detail.
Canada Council released some more information on the new funding structures they are designing for launch in 2016.
Jacob Zimmer and Vicki Stroich talk dramaturgically about the Canada Council #newfundingmodel and the way it's being announced, designed and received.
And the Fun Palace Radio Variety Show
Part of Field Notes from the Festivals, a series of posts, rough and not very edited of my experiences in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto from theFestival Transamerique, OFFTA, Magnetic North Theatre Festival and Luminato
Part of Field Notes from the Festivals, a series of posts, rough and not very edited of my experiences in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto from theFestival Transamerique, OFFTA, Magnetic North Theatre Festival and Luminato.
What Happened to the Seeker / STO Union