Free and Read

I had never heard of the Free Night of Theatre Promotion before and so was quite intrigued by the possiblities. I wonder if we could get something like that going here. I daresay the bigs would avoid it like the plague but it might be a very cool thing for the independents. Maybe we should start this conversation.

And from the Guardian a bit of a rant about playwrights reading their own work. On one hand I did hear a record of June Jordan reading her poem The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones: Poem # one. Now she does not have the best of reading voices but her reading blew me away. That poem became one of my favourites and is still one that resonates. I wanted to do a play using her poetry and it kind of slipped by the way side as politics changed the landscape. Poem about my Rights is a great illustration of that.

Anyway...playwrights reading their own work. I can't think of any. Can you?

Sunday Quickie

I think that all theatres are adapting as best they can to the greater use of the web for marketing materials. We all struggle with "how to" or "what equipment" issues.

Factory Theatre has an amusing season announcement video that I quite like. It has a kind of rough steady cam'ish feel so when I found this article about inventors I figured that this was something that might prove to be of value to the rest of the theatre community that is looking to do video without spending mega bucks. Check out his YouTube videos and go here to get the plans for his steady cam.

The ongoing issue of women playwrights and directors.

Theatre Customer Service.  Ok so how would you rate your theatre experience? Best/worst?

February?

So like is it February already?  What the heck. Trying to find a non-working black actor in Toronto has become impossible. Ok some are in Raisin, some still at Stratford, some working for Ken Gass and his Canadian Rep Company, some flying off to Winnipeg to do Medea, one in Wild Dogs and most everyone else I am trying to hire for the International Playwrights Festival. Ok so it's not so bad unless you count the 6 actors I have still to find for a piece by Kwame Kwei-Armah that features 6 males, 2 females. All Caribbeans or Africans with British overlay accents ranging in age from 20 to 50. I am not having any luck and man o man do I ever hate February in October.

Playwrights x 3

I have talked earlier about how playwrights should get more money. And I have also been known to expound on how the greatest growth for playwrights comes through productions. It seems like the Mellon Foundation agrees. Well they agree with a ton of money which in my book carries more weight than just someone nodding their head over a beer in Little Italy.

I have been obsessing over playwrights recently because, {insert totally shameless plug here}, Obsidian has been working on putting together an International Playwrights Forum, seeing some plays, hearing some readings from local playwrights and generally grooving with some international ones all for the low cost of $5 FOB. I find it hard to believe that we have not hit our target of 100 participants. Frankly I am somewhat appalled by that fact.

Black Canadian plays are a scarce commodity. I wish I was sitting here with so many scripts that I could plan for the next three years. Well I can do that but not with Canadian plays. I am at my wits end for one of those breakout plays. A play that has the music inside it and just hums along. A play that transcends the obvious and playwrights who start to eschew the literal narrative form for other means of theatrical expression.

One of the best things about our Forum is the fact that all the international playwrights are mixed race and their work either explores that fact or leaves it behind for other things that interests them. This is a unique opportunity to have one of those real cross pollination experiences instead of staying inside the confines of the funding reserves.

Maybe if we start to commit to the idea of the playwright as a full partner in the centre of our art then other people will as well and maybe, just maybe, there might be a Canadian version of the Mellon Foundation that will fight against the cult of the virgin play and pour some new money into production