west uptowner

After Echavarria

2011-10-02T02:54:00.002-04:00

JM Echa at MAI, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Went to the MAI (Montreal Arts Interculturels) gallery space today to see Juan Manuel Echavarria’s “Requiems”, the photo and video exhibit that had inspired much of our work on Nohayquiensepa. I had only seen it online - never in person - before. Seeing it now really makes me think about what a photo exhibit can say vs theatre.

Briefly: the exhibit is a visual recreation of a section of the mausoleum in Puerto Berrio, Colombia, a port town on the Magdalena river, where many unidentified body parts wash up (a sad result of the civil conflict) and are interred pending identification. On these graves the coroner marks a tracking number, and ’NN’, meaning ’no nombre’: no name. Seeing these as souls lost to the families who might pray for them, locals come in and ’adopt’ them: praying for them, tending their mausoleum plots, and offering them water because lost souls get thirsty. In return, the living ask the dead for favors.

The exhibit had a surreal quality to it for me. Bea and I went to Puerto Berrio ourselves in 2011 to visit the cemetery and interview the groundskeeper. He told us that NN’s were placed in various areas as space allowed, and that the ’NN section’ (of Echavarria's exhibit) was in fact the area dedicated to children. What often happens is that the parents of many children, either from grief or poverty, stop coming to do upkeep on their children’s graves, which, unpaid for, fall into disrepair. Many of these squares would be claimed in the night by people looking for good luck, who quickly paint over them, and adopt them as NNs.

So when I go back to the source material that gave us our start on a visual vocabulary for our show, I am deeply aware of what we tried to uncover and how we presented it to an audience. I don’t believe that Echavarria was hiding part of the story, but I do think there are gaps in what he knew. So do I. What intrigues me is where he stopped asking questions: at a point where the beauty of a kind of tribute brought the story to a satisfying close. He pointed out a terrible situation, and the consequent human reaction to it, which made me want to cry and make art. But he did not, for instance, introduce the sports fan who adopted an NN, in a kind of spiritual contract, to get supernatural blessings for his team.

His photography showed us a moment of human empathy, a tribute to the spirit of hope.

So in contrast, I ask myself: what did our play show?

We created situations. I know their limits: part of me wanted to shout raw condemnations at transnational firms implicated in a number of practices that would expose them to criminal penalties and lawsuits if they happened in Canada. But that kind of polemical politics was not the place, emotionally, that we wanted to occupy. So we held on to some ambiguity towards "who did what" in the tragedy of Puerto Berrio, and instead focused on the people affected by these violent events: locals, victims of violence, the displaced, and even the ’company men’ dealing with the aftermath. Through them we tried to recover a sense of how life and death are balanced out in Colombia and here at home in Canada.

So in some way I have done exactly what Echavarria did: I told only part of a story. I suppose that is what all of us do. The fact of telling a story, through any medium, requires a beginning and an end: these do not truly exist in our lived history, where tomorrow and yesterday always leave a mark. But hopefully I held to the truth of the situations as I found them, and did not alter that truth, in the midst of our abstract reportage, by omission.

Of course I know that ultimately I will fail at this, but that is a truth so common as to be nearly meaningless.

This lumberjack

2011-06-16T20:33:00.001-04:00

ready for the harvest, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

He is a 74-year-old expat german who came to Canada in 1958 - he's been a Canadian longer than I've been alive. He has been a door-to-door Encyclopedia Salesman, a Furrier, a Rabbit Farmer, a Real Estate agent, and a Landlord. On this Eastern Ontario morning he wrapped a towel around his head to absorb sweat and protect against mosquitos.
He is my father.
Last week I spent some time with my parents, and each morning Dad and I would pull out the wheelbarrow and chainsaw and head out into the bush to chop up recently-fallen trees. I was the wheelbarrow man, carting logs along the deer path across streams, roots, and rocks like a chuckling hillbilly as he cut debris into lengths that fit a woodstove.

anger does not open the reluctant heart

2011-03-18T09:04:00.002-04:00

aluna fleitas 4800, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

(photo by Katherine Fleitas of Nohayquiensepa)

I was interviewed yesterday by Mary Ito from CBC's Saturday morning show, Fresh Air. She asked me about something I wrote on this blog, one or two entries ago, about what I meant when I said that we try to move towards beauty and not anger.

First thought: someone reads this blog?

Second thought: I was hesitant to respond - nerves probably. And the trick of the question is that it makes me talk about things that I get angry about when I start talking about them: the way big money moves around the world, influencing events in ways that are fundamentally autocratic. The way our country has slipped into a position where it supports firms that are doing really nasty things in communities across the globe.

(For more on that, check out www.miningwatch.ca )

So when I talk about it I get angry. Creating performance gives us the chance to look at it twice, to craft a response in movement and image that conveys things in a way that is open to the viewer's interpretation. And if it is beautiful, as we hope it is, it can possibly touch the heart of someone who would be unmoved by our anger. It is a catharsis. A return to life after seeing awful things.

strong moments

2011-03-14T00:42:00.002-04:00

where are my children, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Silenced voices. One of the recurring images in our show - Nohayquiensepa (No one knows) is the idea of telling someone else's story. Or telling a story about them. You like to think: for them.

But beside that there is the idea that some people cannot safely tell their stories - that they need someone else to be their voice. Whether it is distance from the place where decisions are made, or personal risk is speaking out - some things must be said, but by others.

I can't express some things with words - so I got some people to help me put this play / dance piece / video installation together. And I think the lovely outcome is that this piece says a lot without many words at all.

I've been told we aren't pushing the issues hard enough - that here in Toronto people won't get all the information about abuses by Canadian mining companies in Latin America, for instance, or by various armed factions in Colombia. Well, that's true - they won't get a lot of hard information in the show. But they get enough to feel the need to know more. This isn't - can't be - a documentary. The medium we are discovering doesn't do that as well as film. But to get people to care? -- I think we can do that, which is often harder than to give them a straight up, factual brief on a pressing issue...

NOW preview of the show

loading into the theatre next week

2011-03-02T23:25:00.001-05:00

nh letterdance1, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

It amazes me that I am exhausted, way behind on everything I need to do for anything that is mine to do, and yet feel myself compelled to put up this picture and say a few words about it. As if blogging were a primal instinct like eating or mating.

I am a lucky man. I have such cool people giving their all to this process - and it has been a weird, let's-invent-a-way-of-working-none-of-us-has-ever-done-before adventure. Because that's what this is: a collective discovery, no scripts, just design and action and movement coming together in a series of passes as something takes shape underneath us that we slowly recognize better, and bring that recognition back into the next go-round. We are evolving this show.

if you reading this I hope you get to see it: March 13-27, 2011 at the Theatre Centre in Toronto. (416 538-0988).

If you don't see it, oh well. more updates here soon.

The other challenge with this piece is the importance of the issues at stake here: that after 50 years people outside the major cities of Colombia (and even in them) are not safe from large-scale violence. And our country is taking advantage of that instability to promote our businesses, making it profitable for some to work to maintain the status quo there. The Canadian mining and petroleum industries are at the forefront of a modern gold rush in Latin America, and they don't take no for an answer when the local population has reservations. Furthermore, our government has actively supported this with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to encourage legislative reforms, loans, and insurance guarantees to these companies. And we feel lucky to get $15000 from the Canada Council to put on a play that tries to raise the human spirit.

Making a gorgeous performance piece feels like a ridiculous excercise sometimes, when you think about what 80% of the people in this world have to go through to make a modest living. But by going towards beauty, versus anger, and focusing our gaze on the human issues, versus polemics, I hope we can play a small role in a larger struggle against the ugly destructive side of our way of life in Canada.

and that's as close to a rant as I'll get in public. By me a beer for the personal version. or come to the show.

rehearsing / inventing / re-inversing a show

2011-02-19T00:14:00.001-05:00

nohay shadow dance, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

getting shadows to dance didn't sound so hard when the idea first came up. But I think we've learned a thing or two about how to do it. Had a few days of tinkering with things now, and I'm beginning to get my head around a few scenes. Gotta find the line - well, the way the lines weave - to stitch everything together...

This (the show, I mean: Nohayquiensepa) began as an experiment in something, but I'm at the point where I just want it to work now... there are so many people involved in a piece of theatre, it gets exhausting just to keep everyone on track, let alone push the envelope a little further each day in what we can do. But I trust this group to live in the world we invented together.

Just gotta get some people to come see it now...

March 13 to 27th at the Theatre Centre in Toronto, people.

cloudy skies in Vancouver

2011-01-29T03:28:00.001-05:00

winter raven - vancouver, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Running around with a company of 7 dancers has been glorious and exhausting. I spend 6 hours a day working on stuff for back home, and the rest of the time here on whatever it is we are doing (a show called 'relay'). I can't really see my way through to the end of anything right now, but that feels very Vancouver to me. Which is where I am, at least for another day.
My mind is constantly returning to our next show in Toronto, Nohayquiensepa. And to home, to my mom, to my lover, to my cat... I guess that's part of the gift of touring: appreciating everything that is beyond you but part of you.
I will miss the food, and how people just blurt out what's on their mind on the bus. Mind you, the #20 bus between the hotel and the theatre runs along East Hastings, right through some rough neighbourhoods, so that might be part of it. For instance: a guy starts telling me (after failing to sell me his wet gobby dube) about how well he's doing in business. I ask him what his business is. He shows me his fancy watch, and says he installs windows. Someone half way up the bus turns his head and says "I love windows!"

early january mourning

2011-01-08T11:33:00.001-05:00

early january with pluto, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

a brief word / leaving Bogotá

2010-12-02T15:55:00.001-05:00

a brief word, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Once we had put up Nohayquiensepa I relaxed my mind, but before I left Bogotá I was involved with a number of other projects we were facilitating. One of these is IXOK' - a story about an indigenous woman surviving the Mayan Genocide in Guatemala in the 80's. We put this show up in a theatre called La Macarena.
After a quick rehearsal in the space I headed back to our hostel - and saw our poster, partially covered, on a post. I took a quick snapshot - quick because I never know how the young men acting as military police will react to a camera. but they wandered into the frame just as I snapped it. They were closing in on the homeless person scuffling next to the post. I didn't get to see what happened next - probably nothing, I hope nothing.
I had a few moments of feeling utterly hopeless in the face of larger issues while in Bogotá - one afternoon I packed into a cab with just enough money to get me where I was going and back, and just as we got onto the highway that skirts the city along the mountainside (the circumalar, which offers great views of the city) I realized that I didn't know the town, barely got by in Spanish, had no local cell and that every phone number I had was out of date - i.e, no way of phoning for help. At that point I had no choice but to trust the driver - a kid who liked to play with the door lock button in time to the music on his radio while waiting for streetlights.
And now I'm back in Toronto, again feeling a little helpless as the new mayor decides to trash our transit plans for an unaffordable fantasy that will not work, and all the jobs waiting for my attention leap in unison into my field of view.
Lucky me I love my work.

Showing in Bogota

2010-11-29T00:45:00.002-05:00

a very brief clip of the performance - I think we did well to just get through the show, though we had a glitch or two. For the 7pm showing we actually lost power for a second right after we got the house, and had to wait for a projector to cycle through a recovery for a minute to start the show. I thought we would be sitting for ten minutes - but no, we got lucky.
Can't say enough about the value of a good team of dedicated people. The kind who solve a problem when they see it, instead of asking for answers to every question they bump into.

Theatre in the season of rain

2010-11-24T00:56:00.001-05:00

la tercera in the season of rain, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is a shot of the street we are living on - la Tercera - and every afternoon around 2pm we get vicious rain. We flew within spitting distance of the Equator for Vancouver weather. Actually , the rains have caused numerous landslides this year, and the city is quite chaotic because of it.
so. It's the day of our show. I arrive with a some help from Heather Braaten, Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, and Chris Stanton - we had a couple of hours in the room last night to rig our projection screen, run some cables, and set up a camera or two.
This morning we start getting out a few other items: I pull out our projector and our playback gear, while Heather and the boys prep the space. We rip a big mirror off the wall by the mens' washroom to give our rear projector enough throw distance. This will force us to re-block about four scenes, but we have no choice at this point.
By 9am we are in pretty good shape to set up wings, sound, and lights, but Jaime, our house tech / the man who fixes everything in the building, doesn't arrive until 10:30am and then has to solve some electricity issues in the theatre - namely, that there is none in most parts of it. No problem - it gives me time to hang our front projector, and the cast trickles in to begin warming up.
We were hoping to start tech-ing the show around noon, but Jaime is in and out of the booth because every 20 minutes someone yells into the room "Jaime!!" and he gives his stock response, "Dime!" ('talk to me'), and then gets sucked back out that thing that happens outside of the theatre - life.
We do manage to stumble through the show, tweaking - that's a kind word - completely reblocking chunks of the show as needed. When there is no choice but to launch in and make brave choices, that's what you do.
And I believe it paid off. But that's another story.

Sala Seki Sano - first time in the room

2010-11-22T17:04:00.001-05:00

Sala Seki Sano - first time in the room, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

It's two days before our first presentation of a very technical show. We waited for a few hours the day before, to get a chance to enter the theatre and play in the space, but recent rains had flooded the room so some work had to be done to fix the floor. It is the rainy season in Bogota, and it's also our first day acclimatizing to the altitude. We decide, after a few hours of waiting and dithering, to relax and get ready for a good workout on the next day.

It's the day before our presentation of Nohayquiensepa. We were told to show up from 11am to 3pm. I knew we would be asked to leave early - after all, another show is being presented in that room at 5pm - but I didn't anticipate that on our arrival we would be told to wait an hour because the fresh paint on the floor and walls had not dried.

So we worked for 2 hours, walking through the show, performers getting black feet from occasionally finding the tacky spots on the floor.

But we are all here to make this work happen, so you do what you have to.

palimpsest

2010-11-18T00:44:00.001-05:00

NN small and large, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Our new piece-in-the-works, Nohayquiensepa, flies (well - the ten of us involved in the making of it fly) to Colombia to present at the "Women on Stage" (Mujeres En Escena) festival this week.

I am exhausted - I was accused of directing this thing a year and a half ago, and now I suppose that's what I'm doing. It's daunting but refreshing as well - aspecially when I have a brilliant group of performers willing to launch into things with me.

more on our trip in the next week or so..

drawn in

2010-10-27T23:44:00.001-04:00

nohay drawn in 650, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This last week and a half has been completely engrossing. I have honestly been rivetted to a project - my project, not someone else's, for a change. This shot is of a brief moment that will form the backbone of an idea that I hope will coalesce into a ... better moment. For those who didn't know before, that's how workshops work: see something in a moment of play, figure out some sense of why it might be speaking to you and hopefully others, then file it in with all the other moments tumbling about you until the gestalt of ideas begins to tell you something that you didn't know that you knew.

Repeat.

We'll be taking this work (Nohayquiensepa, or 'No One Knows') to Bogota, Colombia next month. It's a little bit about living on the edge of violence, a little bit about the death of strangers, and a lot about wondering how and why we should care. Us, specifically, the people in the room, but also more generally the social circles around us - our friends, communities, cultures, countries...

I don't think I can talk about anything else right now, I'm that far gone into my absorption with this project, so that's all about that for now.

elevator wedding party

2010-09-20T00:21:00.001-04:00

elevator wedding party, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Here we are in a city hall elevator with our friend Razi and soon-to-be-wed Angelica. Bea and I seem to pick up cameras and attend weddings every year or so now, and it's one of the most pleasant things we do with the skills we have.

I hear people talk about city hall weddings and something about it usually seems sad. Like it's a second class event. That's completely false - they are perfect for people who just want to get married with a few friends present - there is no lack for emotion and depth of sentiment here, just a bunch of people who want to be together and not spend endless days on planning and logistics.

As in, "let's do this beautiful thing and go party".

No way to get rid of nerves, though.

striations

2010-08-07T02:31:00.001-04:00

mj chartier striations3, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is Mari-Josee Chartier - making movement in front of a set-in-progress. We were working on art in Peterborough, and it was glorious. Then I jumped onto a bus to be in Almonte Ontario to do the lights for a puppet show called "Star Sisters" at the Puppets Up festival. All this while two plays I designed / helped produce went up in Toronto at the SummerWorks Festival. That's four shows in a week, bitches.

Anyway - a bit exhausted, to say the least, but gratified for a variety of reasons with everything. One piece - Homegrown - is getting huge press because it is about the 'Toronto 18' terrorist cell that had plotted to blow up a bunch of buildingd in Toronto. Being told off by the sensationalist press and the Prime Minister's Office was about the most thrilling and cool moment of my short life as a producer. They slam our morality while giving us a plug on the front cover! All without a bit of hard evidence...

Anyway - the road is great for a bit but the other best part of the week is being able to crash and visit my folks. I had a full conversation - or at least, a complete one - with my mother on the phone today. Her Lou Gehrig's / ALS has pretty much cost her the ability to use the muscles in her neck, making eating and speaking extremely challanging. So to get anything across in a phone call was absolutely uplifting.

A taste of the police state

2010-06-27T12:02:00.001-04:00

june26 g20 queen spadina (4), originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

It's not news that there are tens of thousands of police in Toronto this weekend. Wandering around a bit on Saturday brought me to a line of riot cops blocking Queen West near Spadina. Behind them a police car was burning. Most of the crowd was curious - taking pictures. A few guys were provoking the cops - young men without shirts, some obvious street kids... people who have had a bad relationship with police for a long time. The crowd gave them an opportunity to let their anger out. A few bottles were hurled at the police line, which the cops ignored, to their credit. If the riot squad advanced a few feet, we all ran back.
And then the lines of police retreated, and left the area. As they began to back off, some chanted: "Who do you protect?! Who do you serve?!" - I thought of Otto Vass and Robert Djekanski, and almost joined in. Then as the cops fully disengaged and moved south on Spadina, the chants became pure sports stadium cliche: "Na na na na --- good bye". One officer turned around and shot something (to no discernable effect other than create a brief moment of panic) at the crowd, but otherwise the police were very restrained and completely professional.
This wasn't a protest. If the cops weren't there, there would have been no crowd. The anger - what anger there was - was directed at the fact that our city was filled with cops. No cops = no action, as I progressed further along the street and elsewhere into the city.
I'm thankful that the police were basically static, moving walls, and not actively clearing streets - there was very little escalation, and they were cool about the situation as I saw it. But it seems ridiculous that they were there to begin with. The g20 meetings were a mile away.

why can't this happen here

2010-04-14T20:08:00.001-04:00

iberamericano opens - bea, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is a shot of the opening parade for a theatre festival in Colombia - the Iberamericano. No movie stars, no dignitaries from anybody's government. These people are swarming in the streets because of THEATRE. Who loves Bogota? I love Bogota. So should you.

However: I wasn't there. This is Bea's picture. I was in Toronto at the time, skidding over an ice slick with my bike and smashing my elbow into a pulp (no bones broke, but I can't lift more than five pounds with my left hand). She was at the festival, making international connections and such.

This picture makes me embarrassed for how I watch theatre in this town. The audiences here - this includes me - are positively tepid compared to a place like Bogota. There people are strenuously absorbing a performance, can discuss it at length afterwards, and appreciate the proposals within shows, distinct from their execution. When we presented a workshop piece there in 2008, we felt like we were in conversation with intellectuals - that such a class of creatures existed, wild and free, and that we were part of their world.

Here those minds exist, but the culture around them is undernourished and underappreciative. I am trying to avoid thinking that appreciation is a biproduct of having actual time to think, and that time is the scarcest resource in Toronto's artistic / intellectual ecosphere.

politics in progress

2010-03-13T22:21:00.003-05:00

anitoquia - road to Puerto Berrio 2, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Sunday (March 14) is election day in Colombia. And guess what? No one is allowed to sell booze this weekend. Does that make sense to you? I didn't get it. This is Colombia, people like to drink, why are they being punished this way?

But then Bea found out: it's not the booze that's the dangerous factor in this equation, it's the politics. At election time people 'get angry' about things and fight a lot, and if there's too much booze, they pull out their guns and shoot each other.

So then she gets advice - given the fact that tomorrow is voting day and everyone stocked up on liquor during the week anyway - about what to do if someone pulls a gun on you.

You should never say 'don't shoot me' - it's too confrontational for a guy who has a gun. It's like you are daring him to shoot. Instead, one should say, 'I don't like guns' - then it all becomes a matter of taste, which is an acceptable difference of opinion.

remembering in Medellin

2010-03-07T13:20:00.002-05:00

remembering in Medellin - Bea, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

A few days after I arrived in Colombia, Bea's mother - Julia de Maria Auxiliadora Echeverri Pizano - died. She was 81, played golf, and survived her husband by 2 decades. She was Bea's aunt, but adopted her after her birth mother died when Bea was 2.

It was a long journey to the end for Julia: she spent the last five years in a home for the ageing, as she began to succumb to Alzheimer's. She was a good mother.

The photo above was taken the day after she died, after the funeral service. We were with Bea's cousin, who lives in a 16th floor apartment on the side of a mountain. The last few days I have met a couple dozen of Bea's cousins, as we shared the weight of Julia's death, and I struggled to keep up with what they were saying.

Living in a valley creates a particular kind of culture - you are always aware of the city, it's always around you, and the world outside is a distinctive step away towards something foreign. I can't quite get my head around it, but I feel like it affects the culture here.

...hm. Maybe I'm needing something to think about while we are remembering.

Maria in Florida

2010-03-02T01:44:00.001-05:00

Maria in Florida, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is my mom in Florida. Dad took the shot.

They spent January and February touring the southern States - Mom's ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease, a slow paralysis) is 'progressing', and she decided that she didn't want to sit under 10' drifts of snow outside of Arnprior all winter when she could be enjoying these days in balmier climes. They came home a little early when it seemed that the States was getting hit worse by winter storms than the Ottawa Valley.

Regardless, they seem to have had a bit of fun.

Lately I find myself telling her I love her every time we speak. It just comes out. I can't wait to say it to her.

One of the things I've discovered makes her cry is thinking of us - her kids - not staying in touch with each other when she's gone. I don't think that will happen though. Everything seems more precious now.

De-icing at YYZ

2010-03-01T01:11:00.001-05:00

De-icing at YYZ, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Flew to Montreal this week for a couple of days at a workshop of "Out the Window" - a piece based on Liza Balkan's experience of witnessing a man die while resisting arrest, and the six years of legal ramblings as the legal system churned over her.

De-icing: what we do to planes to prevent their wings from collecting material that distorts their airfoil shape. If we let ice build up, the wings don't work and people (along with the planes that house them) fall from the sky. The Greeks got it wrong with Icarus - as we scale the heights it gets cold, not hot. Maybe if they had had bigger mountains they would have known. Regardless, either way can kill you, I suppose.

What I didn't know about de-icing was that it essentially is a spray coating of antifreeze that pretty much blows off over the course of a flight. All those houses under the flight path - especially just after lift-off - get a light shower of hydrocarbons as the anitfreeze sloughs away into the noise of takeoff and landing. I felt gross about it. Can't wait for the high-speed bullet train along the Toronto-Montreal corridor.

entering the theatre

2010-01-16T12:16:00.001-05:00

buddies antechamber jan2010, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

To enter the theatre to see our latest work, La Comunion, you must first cross through a passage lined with photographs taken by youth from Medellin, Colombia. Some of these kids are youth at risk of becoming involved in the civil conflict, some are kids in a reintegration program, having been former child soldiers themselves.

Their stories form the backbone of our show - which is about a young woman who joins an illegal army as a way to escape poverty and domestic abuse.

Hopefully the threshold is a real thing to the audience - a bridge to another reality - moving from Toronto to Medellin, en route to a place of storytelling that is here and nowhere.

breaks in the routine

2010-01-01T19:43:00.001-05:00

winter walk near Arnprior, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

We've been cursing the difficulties of putting a show together over the holidays - the rehearsals mess up our chances to hang out with friends and family, and the holidays mess up our schedule for creating the piece. Why is everything always so fucking dialectical. Surely something good will come out the other side of it all - several resolutions to work differently, a scattering of new friendships, renewed familiarity with local take out, and right - a fabulous piece of theatre and a story that demands an honest telling.

So we interrupted our busy work lives to see my folks up near Arnprior (or "the Prior" if you live on the outskirts of this town on the outskirts of a city).

Looking at this shot makes me think that maybe we went walking around for excercise, sure, but also to measure ourselves in relation to trees.

I don't know, it means something to me.

repeating each other

2009-12-18T01:25:00.001-05:00

DSC_0228, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

it's a good thing, actually. taking someone else's words and movements, and bringing them into yourself -- then letting them out again. We do it all the time - quoting Sesame Street, the Simpsons, Spinal Tap, or Sid Vicious - why not the real people we know as well? It's more than mundane, it's what we call culture.

So I've watched a bunch of that going on this week, while spending more time on Aluna's next show, La Comunion - a walk in the shoes of a child soldier in Colombia, going up at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in January. That one will be special: it's in English AND Spanish. I don't like either of the words 'subtitles' or 'surtitles' - I'm calling what we are proposing 'ubertitles.' see it - you'll see why...

Dance workshop for Relay - being as one in the future

2009-10-20T00:07:00.001-04:00

relay october workshop, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I have, in the past, regretted my lack of foresight. The truth is that sometimes a little consideration about what the future might bring can save us a great deal of trouble - but how can we know the future.
Probably we never can, in any absolute sense - but we do sometimes make very good guesses. And if we know ourselves, and each other, we can guess together, and perhaps stumble into some undiscovered moment of surprising unison - each of us from our own unique position.
Or maybe what's more interesting isn't that mythical moment of harmony but the questioning and struggle en route to an unattainable goal.
Not sure if I'm talking about movement anymore, but that's where I started with this.

3 days of art-making in Montreal

2009-10-18T16:31:00.001-04:00

relay october in montreal 1, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

it's fun, it's unnatural, it's beautiful, it's the future.

blowing kisses

2009-10-08T20:05:00.001-04:00

blowing kisses through the screen, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

A month ago Bea and I attended a country wedding in Prince Edward County, on the edge of a lake in late summer. It was a single blissful day of celebration with friends in an otherwise relentless month of competing demands. I look at that picture and it feels like I took it 6 months ago.

We've just had a couple of slower days, but not by design: as soon as Bea finished her last project (playing a Chilean revolutionary in exile circa 1974 in "Refugee Hotel") - and a couple of things wrapped up for me (2 nuit blanche gigs) - we both got sick. I guess this bug is going around, perhaps you've had it yourself? Feels like a stomach flu, chills, slow digestion, bloated belly, etc... It's forcing us to get lots of sleep at least. It's my belief that we are both, in fact, errant children in need of parenting and becoming ill is the only form of discipline we respond to.

So hooray for time off, with or without bloating.

Now Bea is preparing to travel to Colombia to hold a workshop for former Child Soldiers, and I remain here working on a couple of dance projects-in-the-making and drawing preliminary sketches for theatre stuff down the road.

when you can't stand the view, look up

2009-09-09T11:03:00.002-04:00

plane over stclair sep2009, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I took this picture of the sky over St.Clair west - if you stand where I stood in that moment, and look anywhere else, all you see is construction. Who isn't sick of construction around here. This street has been in pieces for over two years, so it feels like we're all camping out in the neighbourhood, waiting for mom and dad to bring us home to a real city where traffic actually moves and stores are full of viable businesses.

St.Clair west Refugee camp.

We left town for a day over the long weekend to attend a country wedding - it was our first escape from the city in months. It was intoxicating. And on our return, Bea gets sick. This is bad timing, but there is no good timing for us on this point. Perhaps it is its own gift in disguise. Last month I pulled some ligaments in my foot, forcing me to stay home for a few days. It gave me a good excuse to stay off my feet, which was (sadly) glorious. I hope she can take a day to get some rest. She yells at me to slow down, but she's a bull herself when it comes to her own craft.

There are two seasons in Toronto:

2009-07-13T11:42:00.001-04:00

subway reno - St Andrew, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

winter, and construction.

This week our strip of St.Clair west has been getting new sidewalks. Buses hardly move, dry days are tinted with blowing dust, and when the workers go home the street looks like it's been bombed. huge piles of garbage here and there don't help.

Frankly, passing improvised dumps in the city parks, detouring around construction on every other street, and waiting 30 minutes at improvised busstops INSIDE of subway stations make it feel like the city is falling apart. An ode to a broken metropolis to follow.

trying to hit the thing we all know at once and together

2009-05-28T22:42:00.001-04:00

Relay workshop in Enwave, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Lots of things in the air this month, one of the most intriguing being a dance workshop that has been both deeply mysterious and hilariously up front. Which is nice.

Last week the skateboards came out, this week we had a day in the Enwave theatre, where the show will premiere next spring. Through it all the challenge was to remember past work in the body - I'm not going to explain anything right, I'm not a dancer and I don't have a useful "body memory" to get me through anything beyond how to balance up my own front steps when staggering home after a bender - and bring the memory out - and when memory fails to try to find the impulse driving the other dancers and match it.

It turned into - in my limited sense of things - an attempt to reinvent how people connect through movement. I felt that I was watching people try to read each other's minds, or find some intangible sympatico in the midst of group movement. Not following each other, but both reading and reacting in synch - you can't teach this stuff.

And I wish more of us tried it every day or two in all the other things we have to do in our lives. Wouldn't it be great to prove your identity, not with a password or a bunch of stupid numbers, but by demonstrating that you can connect with another human being?

Yeah well. Until that happens. Other stuff:

Our experiment in video and movement, Nohayquiensepa is going up at the SummerWorks Festival this August, and Bea and I are also working on her script of La Communion, a play about girl soldiers in Colombia, and we got through taxes again and our house is a mess with the basement torn up and us in limbo awaiting some bureaucrat to stamp a permit so we can get on with it, and we are looking to get back to Colombia with a couple of different initiatives, and my mom was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.

The other night, at the Harold Awards, Kirsten Johnson said that she and the other founders of the award realized that they took a lot of things for granted. A lot of amazing acheivements, a lot of hardworking, dedicated people. They saw the award as a reminder to appreciate that... which is the thought I'm hanging on to this week.

A cold day at the Brampton courthouse

2009-04-02T23:15:00.001-04:00

cold day at the brampton courthouse, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

If I told you specifically what I was there to see (on my only "day off" in the last month and a half), I would be in violation of a publication ban.

Well I can tell you why my personal life led me there: a new play in the works based on an event that took place 3 years ago involving a number of young men doing something that looked like a legally unfashionable form of rebellion. I wanted to see why they are still in pretrial, these now 11, not so young, brown men.

I got to listen to a polished and powerful man run rhetorical rings around a defense lawyer who was struggling to get an answer to a complicated question. I almost nodded off a few times. I've forgotten how even intense, charged language can be deadly boring - which is one aspect of strong rhetoric (i.e, words with power).

more of the good stuff

2009-02-06T09:35:00.002-05:00

I can't resist. More from our workshop:

(The song is "Beggar's Prayer" by Emiliana Torinni)

And this:

Coming down from Nohayquiensepa at HATCH

2009-02-05T23:50:00.003-05:00

I was allowed into the Studio Theatre at Harbourfront last week and got to play so long as I showed the results to people. With a few friends we did stuff like this.

most of our focus was on more sober things, but when you set up a space with cameras and projectors, things have a way of happening...

This one was Ravi Jain's inspiration once he got familiar with the setup.

This week I thought I would be coming down, but we started renovating the basement - right now contractors are digging up the floor to give us real headroom down there. And three or four shows are piling up in front of me demanding attention. So I guess no weekend now, but the tired that leaves me with is okay, because good shit's happening.

Desplazados on stage in Defenestration

2008-11-30T02:42:00.001-05:00

desplazados on stage in Defenestration, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

We have presented our final performance of "Defenestration", and the group is now off to their next projects. This image is from the show, a moment when, as one friend put it, "a number of people arguing about stupidities stop arguing, and let the harsh reality of Colombia walk through their midst, transforming their perspectives".

I'm not sure if I had seen it like that, but that's what's nice about audiences: they tell you what you are doing, because you can't be sure of it yourself.

In this picture the Canadian performers are standing upstage, seeing a group of displaced people enter slowly, and one of them, a woman named Christina, enacts a moment from her forced eviction from her former home.

We were particularly gratified that Christina could perform with us at all: within days of our arrival in Colombia, she had been accused, along with a number of students, of being a terrorist. In Colombia such an accusation - basically any suspicion - is enough to prompt a legal arrest. There was no evidence to support the arrest, but here the authorities have the power to arrest first and find evidence later. Fortunately for Christina, a good lawyer supported her situation, and after a week and a half, her status was downgraded to house arrest (with permission to also attend the theatre) At this point the company of artists we have been working with went to her house, and with the backup of a Mariachi band, serenaded her.

Fortunately, by the time we presented our work, she had been freed.

Jostyn

2008-11-27T12:54:00.001-05:00

J vs camera, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

A quick shot of a young man I met last Sunday at a big BBQ - style get together we had with about 120 displaced people, with the help of a group called Corandicol. I was shooting the event, which included a number of installations in which kids re-created their journey from their homes, through forced displacement (a phrase which glosses over a variety of practices, mostly violent, in which families are pushed off the land they occupy through force - some killed outright, some "disappeared", some simply threatened), to their arrival in Bogota.

Jostyn stood behind me for about half an hour before I relented, at which point he became the cameraman, and I his assistant.

"defenestration" sneak peek

2008-11-27T12:46:00.001-05:00

defenestra sneak peek, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

We are at the end of three weeks of work in Bogota with director Patricia Ariza. This shot is of one of the quieter moments of the piece that has come together in that time.

For me, it has been an uphill labour to get the setup I needed for the video component that has been my main focus. 15 minutes before our first presentation yesterday and I was finally hooking up a video monitor - I didn't know what the show would look like until we did it before an audience. Add to that the mundane fact that all of us were feeling pretty greasy because a water main had burst in the neighbourhood and we had been without water for 2 days.

The beautiful thing about Bogota is that you can see the impact of theatre on the people around you. It carries weight. It speaks to their concerns - because they all have deep and immediate concerns. And in the beauty of this community is the sad fact that they are made stronger because they have to live in a country that faces so much adversity. I read the newspaper and wonder what theatre could matter to people here. Then I see how much strength a displaced person takes from seeing - or better yet, participating in - a piece that speaks even indirectly to what they face. It really is a question of engaging in a process that analyses a society's challenges intelligently, and feeds, even a little, the human need for hope.

The mountains above Bogota

2008-11-17T22:16:00.001-05:00

Vicki's casita, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Bea and I spent a day at her sister's place, a little house in the country just over the watershed from Colombia's capital, Bogota.

It's been a week, and we both needed a chance to do nothing. Every time I go to this place I feel like a little kid - mostly because the thin air (at 3250 m above sea level) makes me feel small and wimpy, but also because I get seriously molested by loving dogs, and it's been awhile since I've had that in my life. When a well-muscled boxer wants to show affection, your face is going to get wet. In a good way.

The other news in Colombia: four days of rain have caused flooding on the larger rivers, and a mudslide in the mountain city of Medellin. A financial scandal involving a pyramid scheme has shocked ... well probably no one, but a very big scheme has apparently collapsed. The President has accused a number of students at the national University of being left-wing terrorists - these students have subsequently received death threats. His announcement came mere days after a prominent General has resigned over a military scandal involving the massacre of several thousand innocents to meet what amounts to a quota for dead guerillas.

In La Candelaria, the old part of town, we are working with a group of artists to learn their methodologies for the creation of theatre. more on that on Aluna Theatre's website: www.alunatheatre.ca

Fabulous parties and shifting schedules. A city experiencing growth and decline. Beautiful, unprocessed food made by hand and no restaurants open in our area on a holiday evening. In a place full of contradiction, everything we do seems that little bit more intense.

post boom sundown

2008-10-24T21:47:00.001-04:00

post boom sundown, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

As the day ends in a nervous city, I am trying to hope that the economic shitstorm coming our way is going to simplify our lives. Cut out the spurious buying of well-marketed garbage, move people to invite each other into their homes more often than going out to an overpriced bar full of leches -- the kind of lessons we learned in the blackout of 2003 and promptly forgot two months later.

It's a big world to slow down a little.

knowing the mind of G*D

2008-08-11T15:20:00.001-04:00

phelps rehearsal1, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is a rehearsal moment during a walk-through of "The Pastor Phelps Project: A Fundamentalist Cabaret", on the day of its opening. Outside the room, out at the corner of Queen and Cameron streets, a crowd of maybe a hundred to a hundred and fifty people were milling - some carrying banners and signs, some taking pictures, and a dozen cops to watch out for trouble. They had arrived to counter-protest a small contingent of picketers from the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka Kansas, who objected to this play, which in all fairness is a play is about them.

Outside the crowd was expecting them to arrive with signs proclaiming that God Hates Fags (that's the name of their website, if you're curious: www.godhatesfags.com ). Inside I was wondering about lighting levels and marvelling at the human arrogance of anyone who would think they understood what amounts to the basic Will of the Universe.

But I think the Bible is a cultural document, and they think it is a manual for life.

They never showed up. They were stopped at the border, and all those folks outside the theatre, in their rainbow masks and riffs on Phelps' message of hate ("God hates Me", "Welcome to Canada, Land of Sodomites", "Down with this sort of thing"), ended up staring at each other, chatting, sharing an hour doing something they believed in. Once again, having a villain brought people together in a community, made them feel good about their choices.

And we, in the theatre, were going through a different version of the same thing.

face on slate bar

2008-06-14T20:46:00.001-04:00

face on slate bar, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

hey.

been a while.

Today I wandered around a bit, feeling good about being back in Toronto, as if I understand the place I'm in. But feeling like I don't understand anyone, though that's alright. Everyone on the street is beautiful. I'm home.

...actually there are not-beautiful people here -- people poisoned by wealth (not everyone who is wealthy - there is a difference) -- there is an extra level of ugly reserved for those who truly have choices.

big snow in T-O

2008-03-09T18:17:00.001-04:00

brickworks winter1, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

We hit some kind of record today for snowfall in Toronto. This is announced in the press as if it were some proud achievement of ours. We are now in training, and next year, with hard work, we will top this personal best once more.

I took this shot at the Brickworks a couple of weeks ago, on a reconnaissance mission for a possible lighting gig. I don't imagine I got it - I haven't heard from them yet. But what a hoot it was to sneak around this enormous set of unusable industrial buildings on the flood plain of the Don river, seeing the gorgeous decrepitude of semi-abandoned places.

Semi-abandoned: the phrase of the week, as Bea prepares to leave for 2 months to Colombia. No snowfall records for her: there are three festivals, an ailing mother, family, and research for her next script -- as well as a quiet place to hide away and write -- in store. I will stay behind because someone needs to clean up after the cats.

winter construction

2008-03-06T23:16:00.001-05:00

winter construction shmee, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Things flow at a different pace every day - movement held back or sped up by a car stopped in the wrong lane or a clean run when construction stops. It made me a little crazy while the pressure to do a hundred things was on this past month, not knowing how long it would take to get anywhere.

Then I returned to reading books on the TTC instead of reports or work-related stuff. Now the commute can't be long enough.

in tech

2008-01-25T08:38:00.001-05:00

madre sneek peak - anita and carlos dream, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

exhausted but happy about why we are exhausted.

often confused but building up a habit of discovering some way through it

longing for rest, but unwilling to shut down

half life of a language

2007-12-31T17:24:00.001-05:00

easy easy etc, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I was wondering out loud the other day to Jacob Z about the chances of packing up our language and starting something fresh. Not for practical reasons, really, but just because ...

... well I think that one day the rest of the world might just get fed up with English. Not because it is ubiquitous, but because it is increasingly being used as the language of choice by liars.

More and more people are learning to speak English for the reach of its imperative tense : "don't miss out" - "get yours before the price goes up" - "find a Russian bride" - "stop your WMD program (or we'll use ours)"

When commerce and false diplomacy take a language hostage, how long can it really last before people tune out? I imagine that within my lifetime people around the world will (as the French do) hear a few words in English and stop listening, because they are tired of being sold something.

don't try to understand it all

2007-12-19T01:40:00.001-05:00

frank on the break, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

You'll only hurt something.

Long day, but very satisfying. Early disappointment: a friend's van got stuck in the snow, so I got moving late, and without the wheels I thought I might be borrowing. Ran to the vet for cat food, then in to the Theatre for the next bit of workshopping on Jacob Zimmer's ongoing saga about the difficulty of demonstrating anything about the scientific revolutions. Good times.

Speaking of which, above is a group of people doing something which you might think you understand. You would be wrong to think this. Theatre, like life, is much more ridiculous than one initially apprehends, and this particular moment is no exception. But I won't spoil the show by telling you anything more.

Also attended a lovely Christmas doo, and then updated a website before getting home to shovel half of the snow out of my back alley.

I am (as is my habit, it seems) missing my lover again. She sang me a message today, and as I crossed the city in a packed rush hour streetcar, I listened to her serenade me from Montreal. Cramped by the crowd, I closed my eyes and when I opened them realized that I had been smiling like a drunk for the duration.

psychogeographical

2007-12-02T11:22:00.001-05:00

psychogeographic mapping 2, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This shot is from Friday night's "Block in one Spot" at the Theatre Centre. Laura Nanni and Erika Hennebury run this project where they create maps based on how people live in places. In this picture folks are drawing their routes through the city that day, and marking places that are important to them. At the end of it I turned off the projection and all we could see on the paper on the floor was the lines of people moving and stopping and having special moments (eg, put a green mark in a place where you've had sex in public, put a little heart on a place you would miss most if everything ended tomorrow...)

psychogeography.

After all the art, it turned into one of the better parties I've been to in the last year. Working all the time, it's easy to forget how many fabulous people there are in my life.

back and forth

2007-11-25T21:28:00.001-05:00

spadina - november rain, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

It's tech week at George Brown: we're getting our lighting cues together for Arabian Nights, and because I'm too busy building cues I don't yet have any pictures. So I'm throwing up this shot taken on a rainy trip home up Spadina after a night's drinking - one of life's great urban pleasures is taking pictures after drinking. The colours in this shot are similar to what I'm using in the show.

Bea's in Colombia, and loving it. Thinking about retiring there. And she's coming up with fabulous edits for her script. If I get through this year in one piece, I will figure out how to go with her next time. Or the time after that.

focus

2007-11-02T10:28:00.001-04:00

samples on the dining tables 2, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This image is from the AGO Halloween fundraiser, the "Shadowball" - held two weeks before Halloween, actually. Machel Reeves brought in these intriguing table settings.

It was one job in a flight of jobs. Good times I guess. Our latest challenge at home is a project that could be called Take Back the Weekend. Every week we try to get a day off. Maybe two days. We do this to give ourselves a little time to relax, and perhaps fix up a few things around the house.

Now, if you live in downtown Toronto, you might look at this plan and scoff at the luxury of a day without answering emails, or writing a quick promo blurb for the pending project, or catching up on the accounting -- but I assure you, there are historical precedents for taking a little time off. And perhaps beyond time off - time in which nothing is planned: not cleaning, not fixing up, not visiting - time in which we might even aspire to the rumoured state of boredom.

Tanya's big day

2007-10-22T12:41:00.001-04:00

break in the festivities, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Bea and I just got back from Arnprior, where my sister was married over the weekend to her guy, Steve.

They have lived together for something like 5 years. As the priest (Catholic) delivered his lines (yes, lines, he had the book there and was reading right from it), I really felt the gap between the ceremony he was giving and the lives of the people to whom he was speaking. The glories of marriage, the difficulties, the miracle of "two people becoming one flesh" -- Tanya and Steve have gone through most of that, on a practical level, already. They could have told the priest a thing or two about patience and fidelity.

( One flesh! I quietly giggled - church does that to me, with its old world speech whose words now only creep up in fetish stores )

But somehow the ritual still has power. Tanya's joy and Steve's pensive smile where hard to ignore. There is power in people coming together before their friends and families.

Then a lengthy string of photo sessions and drinking as we all tried to chill out from the tension of hoping that things would go well. Because hope does make you tense.

back in Italy

2007-09-20T11:29:00.001-04:00

terni facade at san martino, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

we landed this morning, and now are sipping capuccinos at the festival central area in Terni, Umbria. I'm here with the crowd from /dance/songs/, we are taking over a chunk of parking lot (though in italy parking lots look like plazas) and doing three 11pm shows this week.
www.exsiriterni.it

We are seriously lagged, but also so relieved to be here and actually see what we have for equipment and support. The organizers are beautiful people, and the city itself is lovely and tourist-free. Aside from us, I guess. I wasn't sure what to expect from Terni: the lonely planet didn't even have a city map for this place -- they only mentioned it as St.Valentine's hometown and called it "the Manchester of Italy".

But this place is the perfect change of scenery for me right now: I am connected to home but not surrounded by it, so I can work and then put the work down.

God bless my lover Bea who is packing boxes as I write this.

late night maintenance of daily life

2007-09-17T20:38:00.001-04:00

ulster coin wash late, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Night time is the right time for laundry.

Finally took a slow breath tonight, after I don't know how many days of running. I can feel the pressure to stop working, to take time off -- the temptation to fuck off like a surly adolescent instead of going to that meeting and drinking beer all night at the pool hall instead.

I used to call that "lack of vacation sickness".

This week I draughted four discrete shows: two touring gigs (my drawings were based on assumption and questionable communication, so I am not going to put too much stock by them - especially since one of them has been redone 3 times, and could be once more, tonight), one gig for someone else, and a preliminary set design. On the periphery are three other set drawings begging for attention.

If that was all I'd be okay - I love that kind of work. But we just bought a house, and are dealing with a thousand minor details that assault us in waves like surprise attacks from a distant antagonist. And today was a grant application deadline for two huge 3-year programs.

So the tension has been a little heavy at home. At some point yesterday, as she was telling me things that would mean hours of rewriting, and I struggled to grasp everything, I said, "No, but Bea -- tell me that one more time because I'm either slow or stupid right now." She said, "yes. you're stupid". the conversation went down from there.

But today we breathe with confidence, and walk two inches taller, despite exhaustion. For the grants went into the mail, and out of our lives for a few months at least. The pleasure of dreaming up a new life in our own house is sinking in, despite the insurers and bankers telling us our business. And my busy work schedule is about to take in a trip to Italy.

even so, I am surprised by how the mind simply ... stops working when it has had enough. like an old battery.

approach with caution

2007-08-31T23:10:00.001-04:00

approach with caution, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

this is Laura (left) and Adam (right) during some work in Trinity-Bellwoods park, figuring out their upcoming performance piece (Time Out / Game On) for the Queen West Arts Crawl this fall. Adam is quietly hilarious, and Laura the perfect straightwoman.

I feel like hiding lately too. We've been looking for a house, Bea and I, and it looks like we've found one we can afford (i.e, one the bank will afford and charge us for until we die). The stress has been intense - just trying to keep up with work while this (a full time job in itself) is going on is CRAZY. I've had tension headaches like nothing I've felt in memory, and we are particularly short with each other. Now that the deal is just about sealed, perhaps things will open up again. Right now, though, it's hard to be sociable - something about mortgaging your future and not being sure it will happen -- as well as the race to make huge decisions in a flash in the overheated Toronto Real Estate market -- all makes life seem like a surreal romp through a stressed-out neverland that leaves you without much room to relax and appreciate anything, let alone laugh and joke about bullshit with friends. Ah, friends....

So if you're anywhere near St.Clair and Landsdowne/Keele, give a shout - there's going to be a bit of a party on in October and you're invited.

Lots of small-scale productions

2007-07-08T14:41:00.001-04:00

sneak peek dropping shit chad erika, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

It's been a real juggle - lots of things going on, lots of new things waiting for a bit of attention so they can start to gestate.

Mostly I'm grateful for working with amazing people. I don't know if I should admit how scary it can be working on Jacob Zimmer's stuff, because of the process of finding the work. It is truly a collective creation, with careful sculpting by Jacob (and all others involved) - but a week away from opening, we are still creating and finding things. You would think it would get easier as we do more of these pieces - the process becomes familiar, in some way, and the aesthetic of this project (which will involve a series of 7 pieces, ultimately) is taking form. But I feel like it gets more nerve wracking, in some ways. Perhaps for me it was because I had so little time to be in the room workshopping with everyone, so I never saw the whole of it until a couple of days before opening.

Anyway, the piece is up in the MaRS building at University and College, as part of the Fringe, and seems to have found itself in very good health. It's called "I Keep Dropping Sh*t"

I also worked on a wacky thing with Lisa - a friend from Jumblies - called "A Tale of a T-shirt" , also at the fringe.

Now: gearing up to do the lights at Factory for Summerworks, and workshopping a very special piece called "Bird's Eye View", also in Summerworks.

blah blah work.

Bea's back!! She was in Colombia to care for her Mother, and work out some theatre connections with the fabulous Corporation de Teatro in Bogota. Lots of ideas and thoughts are flooding out of her this morning. It's inspiring - but after the torrent of thoughts and words, she passed out. Poor thing - the flight back is an overnighter, and it was packed.

Apparently the Colombian economy is very strong right now - Bea found it quite pricey, compared to previous visits, and the exchange has gotten much worse. The Canadian dollar is undervalued in Colombia right now - relative to the US, we're still low. I'm sure there's a way to play that to advantage, but the ultimate effect is that Colombia is not as cheap a it once was.

Makes me wonder when a country stops "developing" and becomes "developed?" When North American and European businesses have to treat the locals (and their currency) with respect?

what we do it for

2007-06-06T21:18:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I wonder why we work until midnight every other night on grants and proposals for things that may or may not turn into underpaid work six months to a year from now... and something like this comes along to make you go: ah. A beautiful piece of life.

Bea and I are going to Ottawa this weekend to mount Diane Flacks' "Bear With Me" at the Magnetic North Festival. Lots of scrambling for the simplest, most portable and affordable elements, and honing it down to what the show is really about: watching Diane do her thing. She is the most amazing Jewish Lesbian mother I've ever met - more on why later.

dance in Mtl

2007-05-31T23:44:00.001-04:00

dance in Mtl, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Doing dance/ theatre in a bar is great: the mood is loose, and the connection between performer and audience is immediate -- and, as mentioned, you are in a bar. People tell you right away when they love the work, and can buy you drinks to prove it.

Doing dance/ theatre in a bar sucks: everything you first created in a theatre must be reinvented in a ghetto-style improv with half the time you would otherwise expect. You have no place to warm up or escape the noise and crowd before you have to step up and do the show. It's hard to do it well, and when you don't quite achieve what you are going for, you feel like an abject failure.

But hey, you're in a bar: and better yet, this bar is in Montreal.

It's been fabulous bumping into all sorts of people I haven't seen in a while -- a lot of folks are in town for the FTA (Festival Trans-Ameriques), and playing in an "off-FTA" venue.

Montreal makes you look at yourself. The other day I felt good about our work here, but because I was so absorbed in it, and worried about stuff back home, I felt apart from the artists around me. Like when you are lonely and want to connect, but don't know how to be around people. Thinking that you mess up good moods by opening your mouth. It's all nonsense, really, compounded by lack of sleep and other things... We are in a beautiful city surrounded by talented people struggling to make something precious; but at those times I wonder if my longest list of achievements is an interminable sequence of beautiful moments that I somehow mess up... and when I say that, I don't mean my work as a designer, but as a human being.

And then someone tells a joke and you respond, and that moment of doubt is gone.

to Montreal

2007-05-25T14:31:00.001-04:00

I've spent the last week designing several things, and redesigning others. This clip is from our November production of /Dance/Songs/ in Toronto - now going to Montreal as an off-FTA event at Main Hall in Mile End. check out www.publicrecordings.org for more info.

Challenges: make a bar do things a theatre does without losing the sense that you're in a bar.

More dispatches from la Belle Province to come.

surrounded by technology

2007-05-13T11:38:00.001-04:00

birds eye goggles with monitor, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I spent a Friday night geeking out in the corner of my study completely hemmed in by wires and tools to make a head-mounted video camera with a few bells and whistles for a show going into Summerworks this August. (It will be called "Bird's Eye View" and it will be gorgeous so come out)

I haven't had a chance to make funny looking shit in a long time. What a hoot.

But I do think, wacky mad scientist fun aside, that this image might also be a cry for help - I need to spend more time on a patio having a few pints with friends.

the week after the monster show

2007-05-04T22:02:00.001-04:00

bridge of one hair sneek peak - pots, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I have rediscovered what a home is. It has been a half-busy week: many little things to do for various jobs, not all of which are for money, some are even for our home life. Many meetings and the like.

I don't think I can talk much about the show I've just done: it ate my life, it was glorious and meaningful and confusing and gorgeous and overwhelming and satisfying and nuts. Community theatre on a grand scale. Quotes:

"do not bring your televisions tomorrow!"
"I am a womanist and I fight for the woman"
"if you are a pigeon, go to where you think you're supposed to be"

A variety of projects are coming quickly along. A few projects I won't work on this year:

- a synopsis of new developments in stupidity
- developing a system of voting in which voters get 3 votes:2 votes for and 1 vote against
- a photo series from the Age of Air Conditioning
- a gesture that means "trust yourself, you're on to a good thing"

we didn't change the world

2007-04-13T11:51:00.001-04:00

self portrait as an alien doctor on the subway, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I had thought that we would do something that would shock the world into a different way of thinking. We would bring ideals and practical work and real information together: the synoptic generation.

Growing up in the 70s - submerged in the glow of the sexual revolution and with civil rights movements actually making headlines on the evening news - we all knew the problems: I knew that littler was pollution from that TV ad with the Dakota Chief shedding a single poetic tear over garbage on his land. I knew that injustice was recognized and abhorred. I saw images of poverty from Africa, war from Vietnam, and of the moon from NASA. It was an exciting challenge to consider growing up in a world that would steadily be getting better.

well.

It would be idealistic to say now that my generation is revolutionary is any significant way. Our moments of political protest - Seattle and perhaps Quebec City - were a brief blip. Our concerns are many, and valid - but the cohesion and strength and endurance of anything resembling a political movement has not been exercised.

And I fear losing the generation that lived through WWII. They went through hell, rebuilt the world on a simple and practical basis, and in so doing learned things about the human character that we no longer cherish: the value of struggling in doing, how we already have most of what we need...

We are not allowed (or don't allow ourselves) to say that we have enough. Integrated media and mobile devices shower us with unprecedented information daily. We know less about more than ever before.

morning in the portlands

2007-03-31T15:26:00.001-04:00

morning in the portlands, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

It is the season of lists:

- shows opening
- props to find
- wood orders
- plots to draw
- schedules prioritized by levels of desperation
- groceries
- parties to attend, graded by the ratio of washrooms to the number of drinkers invited
- emails to write
- emails to respond to
- emails to ignore
- shows to catch
- hours spent with loved ones
- books to read before 2008
- places to put magazines that will make it more likely that I might read them before the next issue is published
- debts to pay before being able to apply for a mortgage
- faces that I wish I had punched
- splinters healed
- friends to speak to before I lose the right to call them friends
- lists to write

London, ON makes homage to Banksy

2007-03-23T01:35:00.001-04:00

homage to banksy, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

So what to say about London. Ontario. The graffiti is a little derivative of London (the other one). But it's okay... the downtown area is a little strange - so many empty storefronts in one part of town, none in others. I went to see 300 at the mall (The London Galleria) and only the movie theatre and a college were open on the entire second floor. It was an indoor ghost town. Reminds me of upstate New York. But you can walk everywhere and the people smile at you on the street if you bother to nod at them. I've forgotten what a friendly mood on the street can feel like.

I'm here with Anna Chatterton and Evalyn Parry, putting up Clean Irene and Dirty Maxine for the week. It's fun, easy going, and there's time during the day to refine designs and such for the next big show.

Kind of surreal, though, sitting in the green room while the big musical upstairs is playing through the speakers. ("Say what you want! Say what you will! Somethin's cookin' at the Spitfire Grill!") Sitting there, in the basement, it's like the three of us are survivors in some post-apocalyptic world with singing crowds of performers belting songs at hundreds of bourgeois Londoners over our heads, while we put cookies in sandwich bags and prepare our humble show for an audience of a couple dozen lesbians and bohemians.

I like it that way.

backstage at the debate

2007-03-15T00:22:00.001-04:00

backstage at the debate, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This photo was taken on Saturday. Sunday this show went up -- it was wacky. Then we struck and left, and I fled to Theatre Passe Muraille to finish up the strike of The Sheep and the Whale. Then back to Hub14 with a load of scrap wood in the van to have a moment with the peeps of Small Wooden Shoe. Perfect way to end an intense day. At 3am.

And up again at 7am to bring the scrap to the junk yard.

Then the week got busy.

Bea and I have been talking a lot lately, mostly to keep each other from flying off the deep end. She has been slammed with so many things, and is having tax issues to add to the aggravation. I feel like we are our own little nation of self-help.

We talked about being successful, powerful, and rich. As if that would make our lives easy. As we spoke of this George Bush showed up on TV, and Bea said that on his recent stopover in Colombia he had to leave after FIVE HOURS because the Colombian government could not guarantee his safety.

So the moral is that success and power have an upside, I'm sure, but what you lose when you gain fame and influence is honest and open relationships with people. I look at Dubya, and once I get over my anger with him, I pity him: can he shake hands with someone and know that that person actually wishes him the best? Can he look at someone smiling at him and know that that person is simply being friendly, and doesn't want something? Can anyone be sincere and honest with a millionaire or a politician?

winter happy hours

2007-03-07T23:13:00.000-05:00

winter happy hours, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Took this shot last week in the snow. Remember when the snow fell, and we oo'd at it, and loved it despite the (or perhaps a bit because) fact that it slowed everything in the city down...

Now it's mostly ice and blackened heaps of crust on the street edge, and it's been too cold to snow.

Anyway. I decided to post this because I realized that a lot of this year's favorite colours (based on what I've been doing in lighting design lately) are in this shot: the ambers, light purple, cool white.

reasonable people reasonably rehearsing

2007-03-05T18:52:00.000-05:00

reasonable people sneak peek - ame and evan, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is from today's rehearsal of Reasonable People, Reasonably Disagreeing - on for one night only (Sunday March 11) at the Harbourfront Studio Theatre. It's a debate, with some allowances for theatricality and other forms of exagerration.

Tried to bike today but my bike was trapped by ice in the backyard shed. Tried to plan some cues but the show hasn't really solidified yet. Tried to save money but I forgot to pack a lunch.

... If this trend persists I'm going to "try" to procrastinate.

in a dark room, seeking

2007-02-11T21:37:00.000-05:00

sneak peek sheepandthewhale invasion, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I have been a bit lost to the world lately, spending more thatn half of my life the last two weeks in this room -- the Mainspace at Theatre Passe Muraille -- putting up The Sheep and the Whale. This shot is emblematic of the story's take on the relationship of Africa and Europe, from European eyes. I think. Then again, maybe it's late as I write this, and I'm stretching to try to see too much in an image that may only be emblematic of my technical problems with focusing in low light.

No, it's art. I think it's a key moment of a beautiful show (which is on until March 11, so come see it, eh -- 17 people on stage in an independent show!! how can you not?)

It's crazy how hard it is to really step back and see if you've got good work coming together, while you are in the midst of working through technical problems. In the last run, I thought my lighting transitions were messy and several cues were ridiculous. Then an experienced director, Jovanni Sy, told me he loved it. I want to believe him -- I do, in a way -- but until it's officially open, and I have had a week or two away from it, it might not be possible to really see what it is that I have created. My small part of a huge team effort.

workshop to rehearsal to wrap up to introduction...

2007-01-18T22:02:00.000-05:00

madre sneak peek doctor, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Workshops. we get into a room and try to say a bunch of things and stand or sit or move about in ways that we think would be interesting to someone and then go home wondering about our choices in life.

I love my life.

Production. Running around the city worrying about the expense of the rental van and whether the favours you've gotten from friends to borrow stuff for the show will burn out those friendships. Discovering that they won't use the stuff you brought in after all. Then encountering new problems with your approach to building a stage, the colours you chose, the whole idea of the thing...

I hate my life.

Meeting with the last group I worked with -- genuine warmth and companionship, an appreciation of each other's efforts, an eagerness to do it again, and better.
Meeting the next group you will be working with. Smiles, fresh thoughts, a whole new approach and stimulating set of possibilities. Unexpected perspectives and good energy.

I love my life.

Back home to write invoices, grant applications, re-jig schedules, juggle budgets.

I ... hate ... ...hating.

... but that seems a remarkably easy thing to walk away from, in this case.

late night streetcar ride

2007-01-13T16:36:00.000-05:00

late night streetcar ride, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

That's us the other night, coming home from - something I can't remember.

I'm name-blanking quite a lot these days. It's not always so bad - when you blank on someone on the street, and they blank on you, there is a kind of openess and forgiveness, and probably an increased friendliness about the encounter. After all, you have something in common: you've both forgotten the other's name. Hurray, a bonding moment.

That's the exception. The thing about working within an industry of freelancers is that, even in a large city, your range of contacts is its own small town. With all that implies. Misunderstandings, frequent re-introductions to acquaintances, polite ellipses in conversation to avoid discussing the show that X was in at which Y fell asleep, or the common lover you both had back in 2000.

But somethings I don't forget. Like the loosening feeling of relief when you're rolling home on the streetcar, just awake enough to watch for your stop, still warm from a party, with your baby snoozing on you.

the charms of anonymity

2007-01-11T07:55:00.000-05:00

connect the dots sneak peek live chat, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is a sneak peak of the show I've been working on, Connect The Dots, that runs TWO NIGHTS ONLY - friday and saturday Jan. 12-13th, 2007, in the Cabaret at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

They are playing Avatars - in this case, faceless voices in an internet chatroom - so they could say anything. Anonymity makes all sorts of things possible. Unfortunately, when we have opportunities to be anonymous, we rarely do interesting things with it -- who's got the time, right?

And anyway, maybe anonymity is actually the norm in our society, and the charms of new forms of anonymous behaviour available on things like the internet are mostly lost on us. Unless you're a predator, or in marketing, or something.

leaving the family

2007-01-02T21:43:00.000-05:00

leaving the family, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

So far this winter I have lived through about 4 hours of snow, most of that time in a car driving the highways from Arnprior to Brockville. Then we left the whiteness behind and we've been wondering if there will be any more this year. Someone said to me with a chuckle, "Oh, we're gonna pay for it later..." - which usually means a wicked cold snap is coming. I wonder, though, if the payment this year is going to be a low water table and drought this spring.

Running between rehearsals for Connect The Dots, preproduction for The Sheep and the Whale, and building Aluna. Second day of the year and we've jumped into things at a cracking pace.

remembering the UCLA sculpture garden

2006-12-20T23:14:00.000-05:00

UCLA sculpture garden, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

So we left Los Angeles a couple of days ago. Still getting over it - literally: I've been running every day so by the end of a day the jet lag catches up and I get a little stoopid. Good for not much but watching movies and eating. mmmm food.

L.A. is one of those cities that are exciting to visit, and even more exciting to leave. It reminds me of the boring friend you make in grade school because he has the best toys or because his mom always makes hot dogs and kraft dinner: it's awesome to go there after school, but the next day you have to sit with buddy in the cafeteria while he picks his nose and flicks it. At that point it's not fun for everyone anymore.

I do miss the gig though. It's always a bittersweet thing, closing a show -- the intensity of the work, the feeling of being away in a new place with only these few new friends to explore it, the solid feeling of travelling with one clear purpose. But when it's all done, there's something unusually beautiful about a quick goodbye.

flyhouse grid UCLA

2006-12-15T05:13:00.000-05:00

flyhouse grid, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is the view from the stage at the Freud (pronounced 'Frood') Playhouse theatre, where we are staging "Recent Experiences". Why do they pronounce it 'Frood?' ... there are 2 theories: First: the family that sponsored the construction of the building were actually related to Sigmund, and after emigrating to California changed the pronunciation of their name to distance themselves from his less acceptible eccentricities. Second theory: they were just too stupid to know how to pronounce their own name.

We loaded both "Recent" and "Revolutions in Therapy" into UCLA, and opened them, all in 4 days. It's been a marathon, and now we are able to relax a little and see the city during the day before the shows.

Los Angeles is both gorgeous and horrifying. Warm sun and sweet air -- LA is an idlyllic place if you can let it be just that. Problem is there is always so much going on. Cars racing at you as you cross the street, work scheduled into a tight clump of dense hours, and nothing, absolutely nothing, is available without cash.

Unless it's in your rider.

Nowhere is humanity more plastic than here.

tech workshop

2006-12-04T23:39:00.000-05:00

victor con text, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

this is Victor Gomez as a Colombian science fiction writer, from our tech workshop of Madre - Bea's current script-in-development. we're playing with some lighting things and ... well I don't want to talk much about it other than to say workshops are fabulous things and I feel like an actual artist when we are experimenting with how to create our art. Often I get a day to set things up and a few hours to create anything interesting out of that setup... usually not really giving us a chance to tweak and discover new technical methods of making interesting work.

on the wall

2006-11-28T18:47:00.000-05:00

zimmer on the wall, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is a shot of Jacob, seen through a video camera and projected onto the brick wall in the basement of the Great Hall. Ame thought it would be cool. It was.

We've closed \dance\songs\ , but life has only sped up. We were striking until midnight on Sunday, then I got up at 6am to proofread a script before going to a warehouse to check up on an exhibition I'm consulting on lighting for. I am some pooped, but I am not going to complain anymore: it's an interesting life. I will try not to mention having no time ever again. Sujet fermé.

During the development of the show I wondered if we had been getting lost in our own language - of movement and sound and how our sense of what's going on in each segment of the show gets deeper - that in deepening the meaning of the piece we had gone too deep, so to speak. That we were too weird, and maybe out of touch with the casual observer off the street. Now I feel differently. We didn't let ourselves get weird because we kept our eye on people, on mixing up -- or feeling -- the audience as we went along, checking in between tracks, doing slightly different things for them every night as we got to feel them out. I mean, sure we are kind-of weird, but not alien weird. And acknowledging the people in the room is key to that. Lesson for life.

\dance\songs\ opens

2006-11-18T01:10:00.000-05:00

dancesongs sneak chad and matija 2, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

The picture is from \dance\songs\ -- now on at Toronto's Theatre Centre (1087 Queen W at Dovercourt) until Nov 26 2006.

I had a moment today -- the business of getting the show up and being firm on my lighting cues (and making a million last minute minor changes) had me so distracted that it wasn't until about 15 minutes before the show was to start that I looked up, saw someone enter the theatre whom I am eager to make an impression on, and suddenly -- really it was on me in an instant -- I got nervous. Stage nerves. That heightened sense of tension that really forces you to focus tighter than an undersized set of speedos.

Then we had a beautiful show and all decided to love the world.

Tomorrow we'll work again.

check out the Zoilus review

dancesongs break for Chad and Claudia

2006-11-14T23:04:00.000-05:00

dancesongs break for Chad and Claudia, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Chad and Claudia, seen chilling between moments in our chillin' corner - it's a bizarre little pocket in the corner of the old Theatre Centre (sorry - now "The Great Hall Downstairs") that looks inexplicably cozy. I think we'll just keep it for the show - though it's not part of the stage or audience, it's too nice to lose. I'll post more pics of the show as they come in: it's a dance piece, a very theatre-and-performance-art-influenced dance piece, and it opens nov 17 2006 - runs until nov 26th. It's a very easy show to enjoy, I am loving working on it and with these people.

Meanwhile Bea is in Medellin with her mother - she will be hiring someone to look after her, the Alzheimer's has progressed in the last 6 months.

I've got to go now to paint another coat on the deck.

reflections on getting stupider

2006-11-10T09:04:00.000-05:00

parking meter solar panel, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Feeling a little stupid today - I am wondering if I have lost a bit of my ability to think. What does it mean, though, "to feel stupid?" ...if you are getting stupider how do you really know? Wouldn't you be too stupid to notice? And couldn't that be fun?

It was my performance that tipped me off (as it will do among men). My first clue was a tepid run at this week's Sudoku's, and now everything else seems to take too long to do as well.

Bea does this thing, when she's forgetting names because she's juggling too many tasks. She puts her hand to her mouth and says: "oh no! It's the Alzheimer's!"

It's a busy week - I'm trying to get a lot done for all the other shows (Jumblies, Aluna, Sheep + the Whale) because next week is tech week for "\dance\songs\" - which means I'll spend more time inside the Theatre Centre than out of it. So, along with sporatic meetings, it just takes a long time to get all the homework done at once. Maybe I'm not stupid in the hands-on, slog through jobs sense -- I'm dumb in the multiple priorities, why-can't-you-focus-on-your-own-life-and-its- priorities sense. It's the kind of busy that starts to distract you - it can MAKE you stupid if you're not careful.

Meanwhile I took another consulting gig to do lights for an Art installation / opening in early December. Very excited about that one, actually.

And all this time Bea is in Colombia at the Magdalena Festival, making connections, taking video, submerging herself in a world of art. And dealing with family. Here we work too much. There it all seems to be about family.

i think that in some unrecognized way, work is our candy.

hunh - and doesn't that sound like a protestant talking.

place of goodbyes

2006-11-02T20:19:00.000-05:00

exploring ingo maurer at pearson2, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

airports. I have come to know Pearson's Terminal 1 a little too well lately. A little too well for me, how about. Today I brought Bea away and stayed for a bit to see her off - we have had so little time together this past month, I had to stick around. It was lovely - we didn't say much, but we sat together, speking a little, enjoying the feeling of love while we waited.

Then she walked through security and cruised off into the southern sky.

Airports are inevitably sterile, wide-walled, and efficient - made for harmonious traffic of many bodies, easy to clean, modern in spirit. What an odd counterpoint to the simple fact that people are often going through intense emotional moments in these brisk environments. I didn't care that I was in an architectural monument to the glory of global travel, I just wanted to spend time with my baby. It was a nice surprise to bump into this aquatic sculpture again - it's to your left as you enter the final departure area before the security gates. It's called "Earth - Unbound", by Ingo Maurer. It reminds you that some things move slowly.

The goodbye cost $7 (coffee) +$9 (parking) +$10 (gas in borrowed car) = $26.

tripping out the AGO school room

2006-11-02T20:00:00.000-05:00

gizmo test 3 - AGO 06, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Our "Zoetrope" in action. This is before the pre-Halloween Fundraising event at the AGO, and on the day I had to shield the lights within so they couldn't hurt the eyes of the wealthy diners.

We've done this gig for four years now (designed by Steve Lucas) - each year we swear we're done with it. This year was no different, only I seemed to have more fun on the night of than ever before. Why is that?

inside the zoetrope

2006-10-26T11:22:00.000-04:00

inside the zoetrope, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

another halloween, another fundraiser at the AGO. this is the interior of what we called a 'zoetrope', but is really more of a 'dream machine' á la the Beat poets. It does its job: it looks cool. This gig is busting my nards, though - I told Steve Lucas, the design wizard behind this gig, that we've got to stop working like this, on such tight / non-existant margins, and he said: "you said that last year - and the year before that. At about this time, too" -- meaning now, the day after a grueling load-in that lasted into the wee hours of the morning.

We just keep saying yes to things that hurt us. Taking on extra gigs to pay the rent, or the credit debt, or whatever. I watched "Thank You For Smoking" the other day, and it lead me to think that if our age has an anthem, it is "For The Mortgage!"

people as design elements

2006-10-16T21:29:00.000-04:00

people as design elements, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is an old pic from a rehearsal in 2005 for "Little Dragon". I just spent a few hours in a workshop for a dance piece called "\dance\songs\" going up at the Theatre Centre November 17th.

It's been a few months since I was in a workshop -- longer since being at the formative stages of something based so deeply in movement. It is sometimes a deeply surreal experience, watching performers exhaust themselves in an abstract set of movements, in a search for the few that will be in the show itself a month from now. They do fascinating things, not really knowing what they are searching for, but trusting that how they work will lead them to finding it. Sometimes they know when they see something worthwhile. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

unlearning

2006-10-10T08:55:00.000-04:00

silhouette kensington power lines, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

The word of the day yesterday was "unlearning" -- trying to unlearn bad habits, self-destructive behaviour, weird relationship shit that grew out of the quotidian traumas of early family life... Not stuff I usually dwell on too much myself, but it was Thanksgiving yesterday, and I was in a car with women who were discussing the male and female influences from parents to their children.

anyway.

... the idea of unlearning fascinates me. It has huge implications: what is the Environmental movement but a huge effort to unlearn destructive habits? ...and it has more subjective implications: if we don't forget all the little forgettable details of our everyday lives, would there be room in our heads for the next day's worth of living?

Is this something you can take control over? Can you get up and say, "Today I will unlearn my macho ways?"

more importantly: would that be any fun?

looking forward, thinking back

2006-10-07T16:33:00.000-04:00

church tower reflection, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I just did a little time check on my last week and realized that I spend an average of about 30 minutes a day re-learning to do things.

Things like how to make and keep a schedule, to communicate, to pay bills. Some of it is unavoidable -- the phone bill was getting silly so after some research I think we have found a way to cut it almost in half. But even that involved learning a new way to make phone calls. And that's the thing about this kind of re-learning: it's not recovering from having forgotten something, it's having to cope with the yearly reinvention of how people do business these days.

So if I spend half an hour today learning a bit about online document sharing, or some new feature on google, that's half an hour I could have been working or reading or writing or doing whatever it is people with free time do. And tomorrow it will be some bookeeping tips, and next week it will be spreadsheets, and after that some other computer-generated whizthing that replaces the old pen-and-paper ways.

I feel like an old man everytime I rant about the techno-treadmill -- but did people a century ago lose as much of their lives to keeping up with all these little techniques for minor increases to efficiency? If I wasn't having so much fun I'd go back to an analog life in a minute. If I can remember how.

uncle

2006-10-03T00:03:00.000-04:00

Arno and rose, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Whenever I have had the chance lately, I have passed through Berlin to see my uncle. This past month I was in Sweden on the way home and spent a day (I couldn't stay longer). We walked for an hour around a little lake where he sometimes jogs, then drove to another spot, in Wannsee, where a trail follows the Havel river. After another hour and a half we had coffee and came home. That was all the walking uncle Arno was good for -- he is down to about 80% of his normal lung capacity since losing a chunk of a lung to cancer. His recovery is very good -- he is on track to recover almost 100% of his capacity. But it takes time, of course.

He says he came to a decision while in recovery. A decision to live. Funny how we have to decide such things, but it's true, we do. Otherwise we coast along and several years later wonder what it is we've been doing. I find myself thinking that I am waiting for life to begin, that this week I am busy with a few things, but next week, or the week after, I will do the things I have been putting off for a while (a month, a year, a decade...). That story I want to write, that picture I want to compose, that chair I've been designing in my head, that row of plants in the garden, the renewed commitment to my lover...

And I was walking past a soon-to-be-developed chunk of land in Toronto today, thinking that we do the same thing here to this city we live in. Put up a few buildings in isolation from the neighbourhoods around them, hoping that somehow it will turn into a place for people that works. But it turns into a whateverland with no place to do groceries and a great view of train tracks, a cellphone tower, and a soap factory. As if someone with a sense of heart will come along later and turn it into the place we really wanted but didn't have the time to set up properly when we were doing it.

I think Arno's come to a new understanding of himself. Maybe us, too.

close up of a corner of Stockholm

2006-09-24T06:09:00.000-04:00

69 Kronor, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I should have been able to predict that the mild cold I was fighting off all week would stay dormant until the pressure of running the show was over. Woke up feeling woobly and stupid, with a head full snot sloshing heavily as the alarm went off. Had to steal a half-box of Kleenex from the hotel room to survive the morning.

Some of us took a boat tour throught the archipelago - it was like a well- developped version of Georgian Bay's 30 000 islands, or a less hedonistic Thousand Is. in the St.Lawrence river. I got a tan - the crosswise light at these latitudes shoots at you almost horizontally, but it takes forever to burn.

Anyway, we got off the boat, and made our way back to the hotel.

- that's lovely

- the park?

- yeah.

- who's that?

- what, the statue? (we could only see it fron behind)

- yeah, do you know?

- I think it's the guy who invented ex-lax

- so they put him on a pedestal : aaaaahhhh (gospel worship sounds)

- do they need ex-lax here? ...they have muesli

Strindberg in the street

2006-09-22T14:24:00.000-04:00

egelbundna, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

This is an excerpt of a word excerpted from a text from Strindberg, one of Stockholm's cultural poster boys. The text is embedded in the center of the street like a median, along a mile-long pedestrian outdoor mall. This was at night, when there are fewer people walking on it and therefore it is possible to get a picture - otherwise, it is always crowded.

We opened last night to a fabulously warm audience. There are things a show can tell you about the audience that sees it. Different shows will tell you different things, of course. This show is about introspection, self-doubt, stillness, and the struggle to live a peaceful life in a world filled with too much social injustice. The Swedes GET this show -- they giggled often, in sympathy with the characters as they work through the show. When you get that kind of positive response, though, it hardly feels like work...

I finally wandered around the waterfront - there is an awful lot of it, and most seems to have walkways and bicycle paths along the edge. A fleet of small NATO ships is in port, there are many boats that are obviously unseaworthy, but now seem to be someone's home. ...booms stripped of rigging and bolted in place to hold chimneys, greyed out coamings cracking apart at the dovetailed joint, that kind of thing.

from the kulturhuset roof

2006-09-21T11:44:00.000-04:00

from the kulturhuset roof, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

this is the lunch patio of Stockholm's version of the NAC. It's a monstrously large building housing... well a whole bunch of civic and artistic stuff in Swedish, so I'm not sure what's all in here. Grand view, though: the image above was taken at noon, but note the angle of the shadows: they are lower than 45 degrees -- the middle of the day registers in my 40 degree latitude brain as late afternoon / almost evening. Whenever I'm outside I feel like I'm getting places early or I'm out a little late. There's a relaxed urgency in the air, for me.

And for our technicians, who wander around the Kulturhuset for adaptors and gel and microphone stands that are stored, it seems, 5 floors away and two blocks over. They are very casual about it all, which slows things down just that little bit: we are never starting on time, but things get done. It just never feels like we're quite on track.

Tomorrow I'll finally get out a bit more. Life in buildings is great and everything, but I need to check out the water in this "city of 24000 islands".

in the Netherlands

2006-09-17T12:23:00.000-04:00

dutch power, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

nowhere seems better to be a human being. wide streets with proper separation of bicycles, walkers, and cars, train stations a level below the airports and bus stations, all timed to help people make connections in good time. Design is not a subject, it is a rhythm in life in this place.

We are just closing in Rotterdam, and moving to Stockholm tomorrow, with "Revolutions in Therapy". The shows are moving along well. Aside from an unco-operative overhead projector, show stuff is running smooth.

I do find it odd that I seem to have no time here. Looking at the schedule, there are hours everywhere, but I can't get to sleep early yet, and am waking up late -- I miss a big chunk of the day and then have to run to the show.

I keep wondering if I am related to people I meet here. You ever get that?

19 years ago

2006-09-08T19:32:00.000-04:00

19 years ago, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I had a chat with Layne yesterday. He was talking about the fabulous summer he had in Blyth this year. And somehow conversation turned to a wonderful show in Goderich that he took in (forgive me for not knowing its name, I'll edit it into this post when I find it out) -- it was about the loss of a large ship and a substancial number of people, back in an autumn storm in 1913.

I said "oh that's a story that used to be common on the Lakes," and immediately started yarning about my times sailing the training ships and getting the shit kicked out of me on Lake Huron in the late season's storms. I've limped into Goderich. I have friends who've done worse than limp in -- but those are not my stories to tell. Here. Buy me a beer, though, eh...

Anyway, as luck would have it this clipping was near to hand, and it gave me a chuckle. That's me, exactly half a lifetime ago, in late September 1988: disgusted with the state of my ship, disgusted with the lack of help from people that (I thought) should have helped us prevent this, not disgusted enough with the state of my hair apparently, and overall too exhausted to have the couth to hide my shame (for the state of that ship - The glorious St. Lawrence II -- was my shame) from the reporter.

building structure

2006-09-07T09:34:00.000-04:00

stalkers view from the alley, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I've been back in Toronto a month and haven't seen enough of it. I get home and feel drawn to work. Work on grant applications, business plans, letters and meetings and figuring out programs and bla blah blah.... who decided to make a business out of Art?

I've been laying the ground floor of Aluna Theatre, the company Bea started five years ago, that we have nurtured together (time permitting) since. This year we have an opportunity (thanks you Canada Council for the Arts) to create something more sustainable out of it. It's more work now, but it does pay off in different ways. We're just beginning to discover some of those payoffs (like a space to do your thing - sure it's an office, but it's space). It's like looking into the neighbour's yard. Through an opening door.

sentinels of Regent Park

2006-09-01T09:52:00.000-04:00

sentinels of Regent Park, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I took this picture in late July -- these 'towers' (stairwells that didn't crumble as easily as the rest of the buildings) are long gone now. I feel a little conflicted about the whole thing -- If I was a busted up stairwell, I would be the guy on the left. I'm eager to see something beautiful take the place of the dreary housing that was there, but concerned that the people who were there won't be able to afford to come back to the place they were kicked out of.

It has been a busy month - I should post more stuff about some of the amazing groups I worked with at this year's Summerworks Festival, and the little puppet show I toured after that, but I should really finish this grant application sitting next to me. Grants never end. They eat up about a quarter of the time I work with Aluna Theatre. Dream, write grant, work the idea, write a grant, call some people to join the project, have a meeting, write a grant, go to the bathroom, write another grant, and on and on.... like construction, it never ends, and seems more intense at those times when you want to take a vacation.

missed that gig in the Imperial Forum

2006-07-17T11:45:00.000-04:00

Imperial Forum of Augustus, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Rome -- worn stone, white marble monuments that crest like a wave of wedding cake, curbs made of the same exquisite stuff, creepy guys jerking off in the shadows, gorgeous rot flanked by smart style sitting within warm and generous plazas.

Every day exhausts us.

view of San Biagio

2006-07-14T11:13:00.001-04:00

view of San Biagio, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Viale della Rimembranza

2006-07-14T11:13:00.000-04:00

Viale della Rimembranza, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

We've been wandering the surrounding hillside. To the south side is the 'Tempio di San Biagio'. To get there, you must pass through a half-kilometer stretch of road with small headstones on either side, each by its own cedar, all from WWI. It's like a found monument: a well-used road and a sacred space.

morning in "Monte-P"

2006-07-12T05:03:00.000-04:00

Viccolo, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I wake up and Bea is getting dressed before she goes to the Italian language class she takes every morning. It is a little early for her to go, I think. She is thinking about breakfast: the choices are a bit of cereal and melon here at home, or coffee and croissant in a cafe by the school.

“Maybe I'll just have a cappuccino and a pasta, like they do here.”

“A pasta?” ...I'm still waking up.

“Yeah”

“A PASTA?”

“A pasta?” she says, mocking my tone.

“PASTA? ... PASTA pasta?”

“Shut up” she says, because I am getting repetitive.

“But... we're talking about a croissant here, aren't we?”

“Yeeeessss.”

“And they call it a PASTA?”

“Yes.”

“But don't they call Pasta Pasta?”

“Yes.”

“But why would they call a croissant a pasta?”

Bea gets up and waves her arm as she moves to the bathroom.

“Because it looks like a big pasta to them.”

watching the World Cup in Montepulciano

2006-07-10T05:35:00.000-04:00

World Cup from Montepulciano, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Sunday

The World Cup final: half the town of Montepulciano gathers in one of the plazas around four tv's and a big projection screen to watch the match between France and Italy. Cars cannot pass. Kids yell frantically at the men who are adjusting the television antennas. The half of the crowd from Germany or the U.S. has nowhere to sit. The last goal is scored, the crowd explodes, and fireworks go off INSIDE the narrow stone streets. Then the honking begins. Men pee in convenient sewer gratings, young toughs leave skid marks in the Piazza Grande, and worried mothers bustle their children home. A band strikes up, although no one can say where it is because sound travels so well here.

Florence - tourists in the picture

2006-07-10T05:34:00.000-04:00

Florence - tourists in the picture, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Saturday

We spent the day in Firenze (Florence). The centre of the city is gorgeous. Full of things only seen in books. It was overwhelming, visually – I needed to stop seeing by the mid-afternoon. Truly exhausting, however, was the constant fight through the crowds to get across town. I don't see line ups for concerts like the one to get into the Duomo cathedral or the Uffizzi gallery. Legions of tourists. I can't believe that people actually live here and put up with this. I started taking pictures of people getting between me and the fabulous vistas and the famous art. Pictures of people taking pictures. It was easier than getting a good view of anything.

It made me think that perhaps Centro Historico of Firenze, with its touristy markets, jewelry shops, hotels, and cafes, is living in its own past, and is effectively a dead city. People can't live in the kind of spaces we passed through. It's a tomb, a very busy and inspiring tomb, in which nothing new will grow.

It's good to travel with Bea. Most grand pieces of culture and architecture don't impress her. She enjoyed the city, but a good meal satisfies her better – something tangible that is before her, a part of her life.

in Montepulciano

2006-07-10T05:32:00.000-04:00

renovation in Montepulciano, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

Had the worst airplane / train experience of my life getting here. Every flight was delayed by an hour -- one late flight messed up my connection to the next, and that late flight got me to Rome 7 minutes late for the last train out to Montepulciano. Poor Bea was waiting for me at 1am at the train station, when it pulled in and I was not on it. Our communication was incredibly difficult. I am amazed that we are still speaking to each other.

Now that the travel trauma is over, though, we are settling in to a lovely round of days: getting up early, having a quick bite. Then Bea goes to her Italian course and I clean up or loaf a little, before going down to meet her on her break for a cappuccino. Then I wander some more, taking pictures, getting bread, etc. She gets home and we lunch, chat, then nap. Then we get up and wander around to taste local wines, and maybe even buy some. They approach wine tasting differently than in Ontario: you get a little less, but it's free. They encourage you to sample it all – they want you loosened up quickly to make the sale, but it's also more fun for them that way too I'm sure. I think I'm becoming very partial to the Chianti.

Friday

We stumbled upon an Etruscan cellar, where wine has been kept for almost 3000 years. The buildings here seem to all have deep roots into the mountain, and are moulded around the hills. Everything extends 3 or 4 stories above ground, and also a few below. Even in small house-sized places, you can find four homes, one to a floor, and no entrances are on the same street.

Mild spring moves to muggy summer

2006-06-30T01:09:00.000-04:00

Queen and the Don, originally uploaded by plastictaxi.

I kept getting caught in the rain today. I had a lot of meetings all over town, and the weather was so lovely in the morning I didn't prepare for rain. My bad. I would try to chill and wait out the passing cloudbursts, and three times I lost patience, jumped out on my bike, got soaked in two blocks, and then the rain stopped within three minutes. In the evening, AFTER the squalls had passed over the city, I went and bought a decent wet weather jacket.

Because I am a person, and people are dumb that way.

Recently invented:

A method of ensuring that you actually say what you mean.

Integrated input from children to evaluate the honesty of politicians.

A trust meter.

cool spring ending

2006-06-15T23:47:00.000-04:00

Wards I ferry returning, originally uploaded by trevorsc.

Took this shot from the Ward's Island ferry, returning from a meeting on Algonquin Island. The Toronto islands are such a treasure.

Also had a few other things happen lately: a marathon drywall session for two and a half days at Steve's, jumblies over and fringe stuff beginning... and Bea has left town for two months to take directing workshops in Belgrade (Serbia) and Spoleto (Italy). Two months!! what is this woman thinking? Well anyway, she's blogging (link on the sidebar at the left) irregularly about the trip. She's already in love with Belgrade.

I am flatlining right now, so I won't drone on much longer. I have to print out more invoices because I 'm doing taxes for three years at once because I'm stupid like that.