Volume 1

I’m envious too of something that I have missed out on through being an immigrant: of a seemingly rather old-fashioned way of being of people who live their whole lives in the same valley. I begin to think about vast countries that are of course not homogenous but made up of thousands and thousands of very specific communities. And here – it might be Natimuk or it might be Trois-Rivières - an artist or a group of artists identify and pursue what interests them and hope that this will thus be of interest to others.

Playwright and composer, Nick Carpenter, recently wrote to say: “Oddly enough, it is Fort Mac that feels the most foreign...” and after having been there I completely agree. But I return to the Roland Barthes notion of the Punctum(s) to bring order to my travel chaos. What follows then is a Punctum link travelogue told in 6 cities.

I looked closer to home and came back to a theme that I use a lot. Even in my tattoos. That my life is enveloped by the work of my ancestors and my descendants. Our naming system is based on the idea that souls transfer with names. All the children in that picture are named after beloved elders, including my father and his friends and the oldest of my mother's cousins. So these kids who are exploring the world as if for the first time again, are actually our elders as well.

ur Leboldus students were blown away by the experience – both the high of performing on the Edinburgh stage and the incredible arts feast that is the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. What they originally thought was going to be a good opportunity to go shopping became a desperate fight to see as much theatre as they could.

What I have noted recently, is a number of shows that are not performed by ‘characters’, but the actual people who created or are creating the narrative.

I’d been warned it would happen. That it was inevitable. That the anglophone communities in Montreal were temporary and transient. I’d been based there for 11 years resisting that notion, but that morning when I realized almost my entire posse had packed up for Toronto, I put down my weapon and gave myself a year to make the shift.

over the last weeks, as we have re-rehearsed our remount of THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI, the parallels seem less and less allegorical. on the one hand, its timeliness makes for a great promotional opportunities—retweeting bob rae’s comparison of the play to the ford saga can only help our ticket sales—but on the other, it has risked shrinking the distance between the satire and its subject, a distance (or strangeness—verfremdung) that brecht’s dramaturgical mechanics rely heavily upon.

I want Canada’s theatre-makers to use the theatres and the other tools at SpiderWebShow to communicate who we are to one another. I want work to get created and presented in our show. In a still unresolved opposition, I see the SpiderWebShow as a place, and as a show. A disconnect remains; yet our show is fuelled by connection. The SpiderWebShow needs creative minds to bridge the gap.

Amy: I am more thoughtful in winter. I study things more: faces, reactions. In Fall I slow down and am tired, but I get out of it. Laakkuluk: I'm the same - I need a bit of a lull after summer before I pick up again. Matthew: Ditto Amy: Summer is exhausting!

Meanings are often all we have. Therefore, the melee over the recent name change of Vancouver's queer theatre company was both completely understandable and wholly necessary. It was, in short, a battle of values, not between good and bad and certainly not between right and wrong, but between two equally legitimate conceptions of the company's place in the theatre ecology. It was time to have it out and clear the air.