The Enlightenment

Link: PlayMyGame

K.M Hunter Awards

Isabella is one of the recipients of the 2007 K. M. Hunter Awards, in the multimedia category.

Intelligent Community of the Year

Waterloo

And look what this intelligence can accomplish!

Rzewski

Just downloaded from iTunes, Rzewski's The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, 36 variations for piano on the original song El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!, played by Stephen Drury. I confess I had never heard the original, not being a hard-core demo-goer (or even a demo-goer of any kind), but it is beautiful, and poignant, since of course it expresses a wish rather than states a fact. And in 36 variations we hear this theme lost, rediscovered, obsessed over ... a vision of lost solidarity, which is perhaps as good an ultimate end as salvation or enlightenment.

I saw Rzewski (and heard of his work for the first time) at the Open Ears Festival, at the Registry Theatre, where he played a piece called "Stop the War!" and a setting of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis and something else (I can't find the program), and as an encore something he called a nano-sonata, one of many.

Isabella also saw a talk given him where he said something like music should be free and if it isn't, then steal it!

So glad I was introduced to this amazing composer. Thanks, Open Ears.

Le Dernier Caravansérail

Found this at Twelfth Night in Waterloo. A film adaptation of Théâtre du Soleil's Le Dernier Caravansérail, directed by Ariane Mnouchkine, in a 2-DVD set with a booklet. Published by Bel Air Classiques and distributed by Harmonia Mundi. ISBN 2-240-02543-3.

Four and half hours in length cut down from the six hour performance. Interesting doc included showing how scenes in the film looked on stage (but "stage" doesn't really do justice to La Cartoucherie, a former munitions factory.)

It is based on stories gathered from refugees principally from the Sangatte refugee camp near Calais which was shut down in 2002. Episodic with recurring characters but no protagonist as such. The Taliban when they appear are like demons tormenting the damned; the pimps and other human traffickers only a little less so.

Mistaken For Love

Art Film Music

Back from Japan

We have been back from Japan now for I don't know how long -- three weeks? Both got sick when we returned. I especially had a hard time getting back to local time. It took me a week. While I had adjusted to Tokyo time in a couple of days. Because it was spring in Tokyo and we could lie out in the sunshine at Shinjuku Gyoen. Stayed at the Easton Hotel in Nakano-Sakaue. Every morning had coffee and pain au raisin at the Vie de France at the station. There was a Romanian restaurant just down the street but we did not go because Isabella thought it would be just too weird, to eat at a Romanian restaurant in Tokyo.

Saw a lot of Noh plays. 10? 11? Over three days. My impressions of Noh: refined, delicate, at the same time raw, primal. Refined movements, and I must presume the poetry; raw in the drums and drum calls and chanting. (I wonder what effect a soliloquy would have if punctuated with drum calls.) Abstract in the sense that objects or people have significance that is understood, and no effort is expended on illusion. So -- a golden tablet falls from heaven -- the stage hand brings it out and sets it down before the actor. Look! A golden tablet fell from heaven!

We also saw one scene of Kabuki from the 47 ronin. The strangest thing is the stage hand dressed as a ninja (and all the more visible for that) running out to crouch behind the main actor and wait patiently for minutes until his moment came -- to remove the tea tray! Unless he also represented the evil impulse moving Lord such-and-such to goad his companion into drawing his sword.

Tom Paine on Stephen Harper

"The world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any."

Tom Paine to George Washington in 1796. Quoted in William Christian's column in this morning's Record (unfortunately behind the subscriber wall), where he also expresses reservations about other leaders.

GenX Video ...

... is, as everyone knows, a mainstay of the cultural life of Waterloo and even Kitchener-Waterloo, along with the Princess Cinema. However, they seem to be in a turmoil at the moment, or else they have adapted something like Borges' Chinese Encyclopedia as a classification scheme. That is,

1. Documentaries
   
2. Movies sacred to the Emperor
3. The Criterion Collection
4. Nouvelle Vague
   
5. TV Series
6. New Arrivals
7. Armenian Movies
8. Stray Dog(s)
   
9. others
   
10. Movies made by Stanley Kubrick
11. Godzilla

Or something like that. Anyway, it is good that I was looking for a Criterion movie (The Fallen Idol), or else I would have had to ask someone for help! The horror!

Another thing. They have a sticker that goes on a movie to identify it as Gay. I can't imagine why this should be necessary. You pick up a movie and it has a picture of two members of the same sex in a state of undress, or it has a title with Gay in it, or something like that -- and you say to yourself, aha, this is a gay movie, that is not my glass of tea, or it is, whatever -- so what is the sticker for? So gay people can zero in on them quickly? Or so non-gay people don't pick them up and go eek!

Ok, it's this, I want to get out "Angels in America" and it has a gay sticker on it. I'll have to send someone in.

Trip to Japan

We are going to Tokyo in February to attend a writer's workshop on Noh theatre. What an odd thing to do.

If a certain friend in holy orders is in Tokyo and happens to read this, we will attempt to contact you at an address given us by your mother a year or two ago. Or you may write me at the email on my profile page.

Direct Energy

Was just rather "direct" with a door-to-door salesman for (I believe) Direct Energy who breezily asked for my last gas bill. When I suggested in future the company deal with me by mail, he put on a look of astonishment, and then I all but shoved him out the door. I am surprised at myself and feeling a little queasy. I was definitely rude. But I hate this abuse of people's good nature implicit in hard selling. And most of all I hate bad acting.

I wonder if watching all those Toshiro Mifune movies has had an effect on my character.

Monster

Went to see Monster at Buddies in Toronto Thursday night. Left Waterloo at 5:30. Did not arrive in the best frame of mind for an enjoyable performance experience, as we were stuck for some 45 minutes in traffic between the 427 and the start of the Gardner. We took our seats with ten minutes to spare -- no chance to eat and nothing to eat in the Buddies canteen. So I did not have that feeling of self-satisfaction perhaps essential for puncturing by Monster: I already had a dim view of the cosmos and humanity's place in it. (Plus -- should really have used the facilities before settling in but felt ... inhibited. Not because it was a washroom in a gay theatre. But because it seemed rather too democratic -- that is to say, open, transparent -- I mean it was a public washroom! Never mind.)

So had rather a more intellectual reaction to the play than visceral. But it passed my first test for theatre which is that it should keep my mind from wandering. This is a stringent test. My mind wanders easily. Whenever I am in a theatre I am thinking how would one of my plays look on this stage? How would this audience react? And so if the action slows down just a little, I am off into fantasy land. I only had this reaction once and briefly during Monster (there was a representation of a therapy group which I found tedious.) Otherwise my attention was held and snapped back into place whenever it started to waver.

Very well lit and staged. Lots for a writer to envy in the dialog (that is, monolog -- I mean in how speech was represented.) Characters rather thin but intentionally so (I think), but still this puts it on the edge of tedious at times (with the stagecraft pulling us back.) Some amazing passages. In the end a kind of sermon (in effect, showing us hell and inviting us to look inside ourselves) but designedly so I presume (and the Scottish therapist makes me think of Presbyterianism but it seems MacIvor was raised a Catholic -- oh well, hell, damnation, whatever.) Very cold that night. Was reminded of Wyndham Lewis' description of Toronto as a "sanctimonious icebox".

Ate at a restaurant up Yonge that might have been Spanish. Nice private washroom. Glass of red wine, pizza. As Isabella has an accent and I am often mute, the head-waiter asked "L'addition?" and I said with gusto "L'addition s'il vous plait!" Embarrassed when he asked if we were from Quebec. Isabella said, no, we're just from out of town. Sped home and in bed by midnight.

Links:
Richard Ouzounian's review.
There's a review from a 1999 production in the NYTimes which, aha!, uses the word 'sermon'
And the script of Monster is available through Amazon.
(Too lazy to dig up urls.)

Mother Goose

Went to see Theatre Athena's Mother Goose at the Waterloo Entertainment Centre
and will very possibly go again this weekend with both sets of nephews and nieces. I have never seen a Pantomime before and I loved it. Elise Bauman, who read in my reading of Little Crickets last year, was a very convincing Golden Goose. And including Waterloo's own Silly People was brilliant. I think I will try to work some yo-yo tricks into my next script.

The Guardian's Simon Swift went on a panto marathon, seeing seven pantomimes in one week. I suppose we could catch Aladdin in Toronto ...

The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge

at Theatre & Company

December 7 - 31.

And it's Pay-What-U-Can on Wednesday, December 13th (i.e. tomorrow) Tickets available at the door, no advance sales.

LinkedIn Problem

Ok, this is a complaint about LinkedIn. Maybe somebody out there is listening.

The front page on LinkedIn has a section called "Just Joined LinkedIn". It tells me that I have "5 new colleagues from Theatre & Company".

None of these people work at Theatre & Company in Kitchener. They all seem to work at Theatres. My guess is that the LinkedIn software is not handling the ampersand correctly -- perhaps it interprets the phrase "Theatre & Company" as a boolean query.

I have reported this problem twice without any response or action.

Now -- why should LinkedIn care about starving artists? Good question! I can think of a couple of reasons a business contact network should be interested in artists, and why artists should be interested in a business contact network.

1. Artists very often know people with jobs in the real world. They may live with them. They may interact with boards that have members from the real world. So they can act as links between people who might not otherwise know of each other. (There must be an expression for this kind of indirect networking: A-B-A, or B-A-B, instead of A-A-A).

2. Arts organizations need to raise money and market themselves. So they need to network into the corporate world. Here is an idea: theatre companies often give out complimentary tickets as a way to entice people into the theatre. Why not distribute tickets through your LinkedIn network? Hit everybody in Waterloo within three degrees. (Hello, RIM.)

In fact, if the problem above were fixed, I'd pitch the ticket idea to Theatre & Company.

(And off on a tangent a little bit, when I showed Isabella LinkedIn, she called it a "MySpace for Adults". )

Theatre & Company's new AD

And Theatre & Company's new AD is Daryl Cloran, currently AD of TheatreFront (which sounds like MTSpace with a travel budget. Must be nice.)

Theatre & Company ...

... will be announcing the name of their new Artistic Director tomorrow morning. A name I managed to figure out a full 24-hours before receiving confirmation from the Theatre, based on a few telling phrases in a previous email which I fed to Google. Which I will not repeat here. Years ago I had a reputation for 'blurting things out' but I have learned the wisdom of the Romanian folk saying: "If one knows, one knows; if two know, a hundred know." (Prove using mathematical induction.)

Falling Awake

From Lost & Found comes this announcement:

Falling: A Wake

A new play by Gary Kirkham,

(winner of the Samuel French Canadian Playwrights Award for Queen Milli of Galt)

We have been engaged in play development sessions for several weeks

and now we invite you to be a part of the process.

Please join us for a reading of the play.

DATE: Wednesday, 22 November

TIME: 7:30 pm

PLACE: The Registry Theatre, 122 Frederick Street in downtown Kitchener

RSVP to Kathleen at ksheehy@lostandfoundtheatre.ca

The New Quarterly

Issue 100 of the New Quarterly is out, with an essay and illustrations by Isabella, The Naked Truth: Reflections on the history, personal and public, of artists' journals and notebooks

Poor Tom

Poor Tom Productions presents "The Kindness of Strangers", two one-act plays: The Visit by Kenneth J. Emberley, and I Can't Imagine Tomorrow by Tennessee Williams, Nov. 16-18, 8:00 PM, at The Registry. With Nicholas Cumming (who was in Yes or No!) and others whom I don't know.