Theatre Passe Muraille

Contact Festival Does Up the Town…Tale of a, That is.

Kendra Fry — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:26:05 +0000

This weeks guest blogger is Danielle Lombardo of Little Blue Lemon Photography and Cinematography (www.littlebluelemon.com). Danielle took some great shots of Tale of a Town Queen West which we produced with Fixt Point in the fall. One of the photos is featured in the Contact Festival this week and will be shown as a part of Sport Cultures: Movement, Identities and Inclusion at the Metro Hall Rotunda May 14-25.

Danielle had the following to say about her work:

PHOTOGRAPHY THE TALE OF A TOWN by Danielle Lombardo

Performance Art is one of those things that excites me as a photographer because the composition revolves around movement. To be able to capture that key moment – the essence of a movement the performer wants to convey to their audience – is art that lives and breathes beyond a performance and is recorded as history.

Before my life as a photographer, I had a very successful career as a professional acrobat. I was a part of (at the time) the only all-female hand-balancing act known as Artistica. Movement, form, and shape were our focus as the goal was to create forms and shapes so that our audience could not tell where one body began and the other ended. My background in this art-form sensitized me to the fact that movement can enhance and intensify the emotion of a performance.

Theatre for me, whether conventional or not, is a creative platform that allows me to capture the emotion of the character at that particular moment in time. The beauty of shooting a performance that is not held within the boundaries of a stage, enables me to add creativity to my composition in a way that enhances what the actor, in my mind, is trying to express. Being able to shoot my own perspective without being held to the conventions of a theatre space, is both freeing and incredibly inspiring.

Tale of a Town was and is one of those performances that gave me the freedom to capture an incredibly talented performer and the genuine reaction of the audience surrounding her. Being able to view, experience, and capture both the actor and the audience at the same time was transforming and a creative experience that I hope I will have the pleasure of repeating.

Here’s the sound cloud link to the Tale of a Town Queen West radio show as well. http://soundcloud.com/fixt-point/sets/small-time-stories-from-the

Additionally, another Contact exhibit is happening within the walls of Theatre Passe Muraille, concurrent with the PanAmerican Routes Festival (http://www.alunatheatre.ca/) that Aluna is producing in association with us in the Mainspace. It’s Across the Americas: a Glimpse of Life by Lola Reid Allin and students from Colombia.

Theatres in Turkey under pressure from conservative government

Andy Mckim — Sun, 13 May 2012 23:55:13 +0000

This is an article that was in the Denver Post about the challenges to freedom of speech that are being faced by theatres in Turkey.

Andy McKim

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People carry a banner that reads “O Sultan, take your hands off theaters!” during a May Day rally in Ankara, Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday backed a move by Istanbul’s mayor to take over decision-making in the Istanbul City Theaters group, which staged a play that outraged conservative critics. (Burhan Ozbilici The Associated Press)

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ANKARA, Turkey — In a recent play in Turkey, two actors wore trench coats in their roles as assassins posing as perverts planning to flash girls near a school.

The scene and its themes of nudity and sexual depravity are at the center of a debate over freedom of expression in Turkish arts, where the Islamic-rooted ruling party has become increasingly critical of plays and television shows deemed to violate moral or religious values.

Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership, is less strict than many other nations in the Muslim world. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week backed a move by Istanbul’s Islamist mayor to take over decision-making at Istanbul City Theaters, a theater troupe which is funded by the city and staged the play that outraged conservative critics.

Erdogan also threatened to privatize state-run theaters — essentially cutting their funding — in response to resignations and protests by secular- minded artists against alleged political interference.

That stoked fears that the government, which has a strong electoral mandate, might be seeking to put an Islamic stamp on daily life in this predominantly Muslim country that has long been proud of its secular political system.

Erdogan for his part accuses artists of arrogance.

“They have started to humiliate and look down on us and all conservatives,” Erdogan said.

The prime minister’s remarks triggered an overnight sit-in by hundreds of artists outside an Istanbul theater. The protest came days after hundreds of artists, beating drums, marched through a main city street.

Artists marched again on May Day with banners that read: “Oh Sultan! Take your hands off theaters.”

“This is political interference on freedom of art,” said Nazif Uslu, an actor and official from the Theater Actors’ Association of Turkey.

The scene with the flashers comes in the political comedy “Secret Obscenities,” by Chilean playwright Marco Antonio de la Parra. It criticizes human-rights abuses in Chile during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Yildirim Fikret Urag, the Turkish director of “Secret Obscenities,” said the play will likely be removed from the repertoire of Istanbul City Theaters due to pressure from the board of the pro-Islamic municipality.

The play, which was restricted to audiences above the age of 16, was described as “vulgarity at the hands of the state” by Iskender Pala, a conservative columnist for daily Zaman newspaper. Pala, however, said that he did not watch the play but only read its script.

“The play has nothing to do with obscenity; it is pure black humor,” Urag said. The play was staged more than 70 times between February and mid-April as originally scheduled. “I think, the word ‘obscenities’ in its name and the tag of plus- 16 are used as excuses to seize control of theaters.”

Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay sought to reassure the public. “I wish for everybody to get rid of this worry. The artistic and cultural life in Turkey will in no way go backward,” Gunay said.

But Erdogan suggested that state support for theater should be contingent on stagings that meet state approval. “If support is needed, then as the government we provide sponsorship to plays we want,” he said.

Erdogan’s proposal came after Mustafa Isen, secretary general of the presidential palace, proposed establishing conservative artistic norms.

The government is currently scrutinizing a weekly TV police show, “Behzat C,” in which the lead character, a homicide detective, drinks alcohol, curses and beats suspects.

The broadcaster, Star TV, said it has no plans to remove the show. But Muzaffer Balci, the president of the country’s Green Crescent Society, which fights alcohol and tobacco consumption, has predicted it will not last.

It’s hard to fight an enemy that has outposts in your head

TPM Guest Blogger — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:11:16 +0000

By TPM Guest Blogger Alan Dilworth

“It’s hard to fight a enemy that has outposts in your head.”
Sally Kempton

Recently I have been thinking a lot about the narratives we live by, the stories we tell ourselves to make some sense of our lives and our experience living in the world. Some narratives seem to lock us up– threatening to throw away the key, others seem to set us free to take great leaps of imagination, intuition and love.

As we worked on CRASH I kept thinking about all the ways we cope with pain in our lives. And how the ways of thinking we develop to cope with pain sometimes threaten to define the narrative of who we perceive are, and how perceive the world around us.

I read that fear is a neural circuit in the brain, effecting emotions, feelings and memory. I think that fear of pain must be a very strong writer of life narratives. Then, what do we need to let go of narratives that bind us -that make us repeat patterns that lead to more pain and misery? In the CRASH narrative, love becomes the driving force for working through and loosening the grip of fear-based life narratives. And I think it is fair to say that a narrative of love, in the case of CRASH love for one’s father and one’s family, provides an alternative to the narrative of fear.

What is between the narrative of fear and the narrative of love? What happens in the mind when one moves from one narrative to the other? Obviously I have more reading to do. But I do think there is great mystery in the narrative of love. It has the power to ‘un-stick’ the bonds of twisted and fearful ways of thinking.

Stories are powerful things.

Do you have a minute?

Kendra Fry — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:41:00 +0000

Charles Ketchabaw and Lisa Marie Diliberto, artists creating an audio documentary in our Theatre Beyond Walls season, spent an afternoon asking this question at the corner of Queen and Bathurst. “Excuse me, do you have a minute? What does this corner mean to you?” Here’s an audio clip of the response that they got.

http://soundcloud.com/fixt-point/excuse-me-do-you-have-a-minute

So, now we want to ask you:

What does this corner mean to you?

What does it say about Toronto?

What’s your best memory at the corner of Queen and Bathurst?

Please use the comments section below to respond.

Thank you

Kendra Fry

Women on Stage

Kendra Fry — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:27:21 +0000

I read this article this week via the Huffington Post on the oft considered (at least here at Passe Muraille) question of great female roles. On a potentially related note (ya think?) come and see Pamela Sinha in Crash (written by her as well) or Carmen Aguirre in Blue Box during the upcoming Panamerican Routes Festival.

Theater’s Audiences Are Mostly Female: Why Not the Roles?

Lauren Gunderson | Apr 05, 2012 04:09 PM EDT

Comments (13)

It appears that in many major theaters across the country, men’s roles out number women’s by half. One out of every three roles go to women. (An informal survey of 10 theatrical seasons from across the country that I did put women in only 35% of the total roles). This means that men’s stories out number women’s by the same amount.

Those of us noticing this could be considered big old whiners if it weren’t for some solid business-y sounding facts:

Women buy 70% of theater tickets sold
Women make up 60%-70% of its audience (see here and here)
On Broadway, shows written by women (who statistically write more female roles than men) actually pull in more at the box office than plays by men

In any other market the majority of consumers would significantly define the product or experience. Why not theater?

Steve Yockey’s Bellwether at Marin Theater Company. Photo: Sasha Hnatkovich

I will disclaim right away that this is not about women playwrights, though plays by women represent less than 20% of the works on and off-Broadway and in regional theaters (and also in the UK, as The Guardian illuminates). I consider August: Osage County and In The Red And Brown Water plays about women though men wrote both.

This is about modern theater telling its predominantly female audiences that the human experience deserving of dramatic imagination is still the male one. In TV, this might be a top-down insistence. In politics or business we see it all the time. But in theater?

Sean Daniels, Artist-At-Large/Director of Artistic Engagement at Geva Theater, says:

“In addition to it being inconceivable in 2012 to not program any female playwrights (or really any year past 1913), it’s also just bad business. Just from a business model, look at Menopause: The Musical. Though we may take it to task for not hitting all of Aristotle’s Six Elements, it’s a show that looked at who the main people buying tickets were, and allowed them to see themselves on stage — thus making millions and not only preaching and loving the choir, but getting tons of new patrons into the theater.”

But what would it be like if this were more common? What if American theater equally reflected and projected its own audience (at least 60% women) and their audience’s wallets (which are in their purses) in their season choices?

Theaters might make more money. A friend and artistic leader at a major regional theater remarked on the marked success of Molly Smith Metzler’s plays Elemeno Pea, a play about sisters. Or what about Tracy Letts runaway hit August: Osage County (a play with incredible parts for women including three sisters), or Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, or Margaret Edson’s Wit, or John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt or Steve Yockey’s Bellwether (with seven parts for women)?

We wouldn’t lose our classics. Shakespeare’s plays are notoriously under-femmed, but not all of them are. Give me Much Ado About Nothing or Twelfth Night or wacky Midsummer. Or re-imagine the Bard for us. I saw a truly fresh and powerful production of Julius Caesar at Oregon Shakespeare Festival last year in which Caesar was unapologetically played by a woman (it might have been the best show I saw all year, including my own). I didn’t think “Oh look at that woman playing a man’s part.” I thought, “Oh my god she’s channeling Benazir Bhutto.”

Ibsen also gave us stunning women’s stories. So did Shaw, Chekov, Williams, Miller. And don’t forget the female playwrights of those same eras. Complex parts for more than one token women are there for the planning.

We might inspire new classics. I’m not telling playwrights what to write.Wait. Hell yes I am. And I’m hoping they get commissions to do so. Please write those complex and shocking and profound parts for our great female actors. Lead roles, supporting roles, lots of roles. Imagine writing for Stockard Channing or Viola Davis or Amy Morton or Meryl Streep. How about putting all of them in the same play. Oh my god, I just died a little thinking about it.

However, the now famous study by social scientist Emily Glassberg Sands about gender bias in theater says that though female playwrights write more roles for women, they are aware that plays with female protagonists aren’t as likely to be produced as plays with male protagonists. “One way women have compensated for writing female stories is to write fewer [female] roles, which make their plays accessible to more theaters,” the study finds.

So American theater might need a theatrical version of the The Bechdel Test for movies which names the following three criteria: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.

There are bright spots however. Chloe Bronzan and Robert Parsons of Symmetry Theater in San Francisco have already put into practice their own version of the Bechdel Test. They built their company around the precepts: “We will never produce a play with more male than female characters,” they said, “We will never have more male than female union actors on our stage and we will produce plays that tell stories which include full, fleshed out and complex women that serve as propellants to the human story being told.”

We won’t lose our audiences, but we might just gain new ones. Another Artistic Director colleague noted that if theater companies counted Menopause: The Musical as part of their actual season (as opposed to the touring or rental production it usually is) it would be the best-selling show in their histories. Why? Women go to the theater and they bring their friends if they have shows that reflect their experiences. A dear friend connected with August: Osage County‘s fierce females so much that she flew from Atlanta to New York three times just to see it as many times on Broadway.

As Hanna Rosen has pointed out in her articles and lectures — there is a definitive rise in women as breadwinners and moneymakers in this country. I live in the Bay Area and am delightfully surrounded by brilliant women running major intuitions, businesses, and government orgs. Smart institutions will notice this and deliver. Women are already your majority, and women share experiences with other women, so it shouldn’t be hard to bring new women into the theater patronizing community.

Sean Daniels again:

“I think there’s a hidden thinking in here that men won’t watch women centric plays, but women will watch men centric plays — which really just sells everyone in that equation short. There are men watching The Hunger Games, but eventually there won’t be ladies watching dude filled plays and seasons.”

We might help the world. Women are always underrepresented in positions of money, power, and personal safety. This comes, as most inherent biases do, from a lack of understanding and empathy. If we see more stories of women on stages across the country and the world we can change that.

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Maybe what we really dream of is the day when plays by and about women would stop being “women’s plays” and start being — oh, y’know — really successful, moneymaking, audience-supported, universal, true, bold, smart plays. Everyone wants those plays, no matter what your gender.

Theater audiences want the designers of theatrical seasons to pay attention to the women onstage. Count them (as Valerie Week is doing in The Bay). The women in your audiences will.

Joy Meads of Center Theater Group in LA says:

“It’s frustrating that we have to have this conversation in 2012. But I’ve experienced this in my conversations about plays with colleagues across the country. Colleagues dismissing a play because its female protagonist was ‘unlikable.’ Producers should recognize that ‘we just choose the best plays’ is no longer an adequate defense: no one believes that there’s a shadowy cabal of avowed misogynists determined to keep women offstage. We need to be brave and rigorous in examining the shadowy, unconscious ways gender bias influences our decision making.”

Theater should be in the complex and necessary business of illuminating the human condition, of inspiring empathy and community, of provoking understanding, of entertaining and surprising and exposing and making beautiful the complete world of our time.

You know what helps that?

Telling everyone’s stories.

Molly Smith Metzler’s Elemeno Pea at South Coast Rep. Photo by Henry DiRocco

Fuzz creates Fuss Over Futz, Which Kickstarts Passe Muraille in 1969

Andy Mckim — Wed, 02 May 2012 15:29:34 +0000

This weekend at our May 5th Gala we are celebrating “Speaking Out” which has been a theme throughout our history as a theatre.

Theatre Passe Muraille began in the basement parking lot of Rochdale College in 1968, then North America’s largest “free university” and a radical student residence. Theatre Passe Muraille (Theatre Without Walls) aimed to break down the barriers between audience and performers. Stressing theatre as event, it was the first of Canada’s so-called “alternative theatre” companies.

Theatre Passe Muraille gained early notoriety in 1969 with a production at the Central Library theatre.It was a production of Rochelle Owens’s Futz, an avant-garde piece about a farmer who outrages a small town in rural America by engaging in sexual activity with his pet pig. Obscenity charges were laid against the producers, director, actors and stage crew, but 4 subsequent convictions were eventually overturned.

It is worth noting that Garrard moved the company to a church hall at 11 Trinity Square, producing such plays as Jean Genet’s The Maids and Lanford Wilson’s Home Free, both featuring a young Kate NELLIGAN.

This incident with the police issuing summons to performers at Theatre Passe Muraille was only the first of many such incidents, most notably I Love You Baby Blue which caused a stir with its full frontal nudity and brought the police out to make public indecency charges that didn’t stick.

If you want you can see CBC archival footage of the police raiding a production of Futz in 1969. Watch the video about Futz.

See you at the Gala May 5th at 6:30.

Andy McKim

If I were cooler, had more time and didn’t have a four year old

Kendra Fry — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:03:16 +0000

I would look more slick and have a more artistic, better put together house. Don’t get me wrong folks, I like how I look and I love how livable and easy breezy my house is, but ‘ya know, sometimes you long to be a better put together version of yourself.Like say this:

I feel like this would be achievable with the work of some professionals. Like say the folks at Michael Kluthe salon Or Harlots on Queen West, who it must be said gave me a great cut and colour awhile back, but I am miserably bad at maintaining it.

And I would wear a hat like this on bad hair days. I must admit that I’ve been in love with Wildhagen Hats since I saw them at the One of a Kind show a few years back. I think that they’re very 30′s looking. My house would look like this because it would have been designed by Kendall &Co. Design & Decor . Meanwhile, my lovely husband and I would make beautiful gourmet meals, having taken cooking classes at Hooked , and go out dancing because we would look so fantastic and would have taken dance lessons at Big Bird’s Ballroom. Sadly, with the four year old, sweet as she is, it seems like this vision of my self may be a bit distant and my house might look a bit more like this.

If your alternate vision of yourself looks something like mine, come to Theatre Passe Muraille’s gala on May 5th and bid on any of the items from the lovely folks mentioned above. It could help youto recreate yourself into something more gorgeous then you already are; or failing that, it could help make Passe Muraille more gorgeous (inspiring, oustanding, engaging, place other adjective here) then it is!

PS: you could also bid on pole dancing lessons, a kindle, golf rounds, custom cuff links, organic food baskets, one of a kind kids costumes and other cool stuff; but I couldn’t figure out how to put that in this blog!

Why is graffiti art under attack?

Andy Mckim — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 02:09:00 +0000

I need to confess that I do not much like tagging. I think it is a form of bullying or visual appropriation, but I do love Toronto’s graffiti art. It is surely one of the things that distinguish us as a city. In particular I love the fact that our Passe Muraille neighbourhood has a treasure trove of quality graffiti art in all of our alleyways. Each year there is a time set aside to renew these walls with new works. And famously Rick Mercer uses these alleys for his weekly TV show Rant.

This weekend there was a picture and article in the Star about Rob Ford removing graffiti as part of his Earth Day clean-up in Toronto. I found that an interesting choice. To remove graffitti from walls in lieu of picking up the garbage that litters our city. Why has the Mayor such a passion for removing graffiti? I don’t know, but I do know that it has encouraged a lot of artists to step up their commitment to graffitti art in the city. One such artist is Deadboy, whose stencils of Rob Ford you’ve probably seen before.

What follows is the first in several films about graffiti artists in Toronto and this one features Deadboy.

Andy McKim

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Graffiti Talks Webisode 1 – Deadboy from betweenthelinesdoc on Vimeo.

Web series is produced by Kelli Kieley and James Gen Meers in association with Torontoist.ca. Between the Lines is a documentary about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s war on graffiti and its impact on the City, artists and citizens. You can check out their website or Facebook site for more info.

“Graffiti Talks” is presented in conjunction with a documentary that is currently in production. This web series will differ in style and story-line, but presents a great opportunity to share some footage and raise awareness about the film project, as well as to showcase the scene in Toronto.

Episode 1 of Graffiti Talks premiered on Torontoist.ca on March 5/12. The web series is presented by Between The Lines, a documentary about the fall out from the War on Graffiti declared by Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Featuring well-known Toronto graf writers and a host of amazing Toronto based music, the film and web series celebrates Toronto culture.

What happens when the creation takes over…

Robk — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:26:17 +0000

What happens when your creation takes over your show? That’s exactly what has happened to the folks at Dutch Uncle Puppetry, and their newest incarnation of Gregori’s Phantastik Big Time Show–part of After Hours @TPM.

Gregori’s started out as a puppet variety show, a series of vignettes by the troupe using different characters and settings to tell short, narrative-based stories. Think of it as puppet sketches, but not exclusively funny. Some were poignant and beautiful, some gripping and challenging, and some downright hilarious. They represented a group of puppeteers and storytellers who really know what they’re doing. But the whole of the show was hosted by Gregori–the often-hilarious, always-innocent, slightly-irreverent grave-digger who titles the show. And he was a hit.

Mostly improvised, this character really took flight in “hosting” the event, and now Dutch Uncle Puppetry is looking to a slightly different format for their show–one which allows special guests to come into the folds and one which highlights Gregori’s superlative hosting skills. In other words, their creation started making choices about what they’re creating, and I think that’s a pretty magical thing for a character to do. They’ve also opened up into the community, and by including other performers in the show, they’ve created something of a puppet community. And who wouldn’t want to be a part of it?

You can catch the next Gregori’s Phatastik Big Time Show here tomorrow night as part of After Hours @ TPM. It all kicks off in our upstairs Cab Space at 10pm, with a PWYC admission (suggested $10).

The event (and a complete performer listing) is on Facebook.

And check out this incredible video of the charming Gregori at work:

Gregori’s Phantastik Big Time Show

The Joy of Books (and Queen Street West Neighbours)

Andy Mckim — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:25:12 +0000

At the beginning of the year Sean Ohlenkamp created a video- THE JOY OF BOOKS -that went viral.

In case you didn’t see it we have posted it here just because it is so darn good and because it was filmed at the bookshop, named Type, which is a neighbour of ours on Queen West.

If you want to know more about the creation of the video then check out this article in Quill And Quire.

Andy