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Vitals is a solo storytelling show about a paramedic. Anna spends her days saving lives and dealing with the darkness, cruelty, and sheer incompetence of the people all around her. How many 911 calls can she deal with, before she has her own emergency?
Vitals is written by Rosamund Small, and performed by Katherine Cullin.
For Immediate Release:
SpiderWebShow Performance launches as Canada’s first National digital performance company.
“Where Canada, the internet, and live performance connect”
October 25, 2016. Canada – Four years after SpiderWebShow.ca was born on a coffee-shop napkin, an angel investor has provided the initiative with the resources to evolve into a digital performance company. Led by Michael Wheeler as Artistic Director beginning in 2017, and Sarah Garton Stanley as Creative Catalyst, the company will develop new approaches to live performance that are ignited by online and digital technologies.
Originally a national collaboration powered by English Theatre at Canada’s National Arts Centre, Neworld Theatre, Alberta Theatre Projects, and Praxis Theatre. Now SpiderWebShow Performance is a new not-for-profit performance corporation based in Kingston, Ontario and in residence at Queen’s University’s Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, working within the Stage and Screen Department.
Stanley, Wheeler and technologist Joel Adria are currently working with rest of the team on a new iteration of CdnStudio – first presented at the LMDA Conference in at Portland State University in July 2016. The goal of this Canadian Internet Registration Authority(CIRA) and LMDA funded project, is to make is possible for artists across Canada to rehearse, and even perform live, with one another, while in different locations and all by leveraging accessible and available digital technologies. The results, so far, have already been amazing.
Other changes include both a new look and rebranding of SpiderWebShow Performance’s website and renaming of the popular artist-driven magazine as CdnTimes. Over three years and 200 articles later, Calgary’s Laurel Green joins Ottawa’s Adrienne Wong as Co-Editor, curating writing from performance creators across four time zones. Moving forwards, the magazine seeks to play an essential role supporting and challenging the national discourse surrounding live performance in Canada.
“This is a historic turning point for many art forms learning to exist in and embrace the disruption of the digital revolution. Live performance has a part to play in that shift. Our mission is to use digital tools not only to discuss work, but to integrate with and create it,” said incoming Artistic Director Michael Wheeler.
Current AD Sarah Garton Stanley, who shifts to a new role as Creative Catalyst, is excited by the growing international reach of the company. “We are continuing to grow our joint collaborations with US-based Howlround and have recently begun a new venture with the UK’s MAYK Theatre. Digital performance innovation like ours spreads fast, and we are ready to mix it up globally.”
Other SpiderWebShow team members include Camila Diaz-Varela in Toronto, Alison Bowie in Montreal, Clayton Baraniuk in Ottawa, Kathryn MacKay in Kingston, Joel Adria in Edmonton and Christine Quintana in Vancouver. The Board of Directors is Yvette Nolan in Saskatoon, Brian Quirt in Toronto and Lois Dawson in Vancouver.
MEDIA CONTACT CAMILA DIAZ-VARELA: Website spiderwebshow.ca/ phone 416-939-2173/ e-mail thespiderwebshow@gmail.com
SpiderWebShow.ca
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Turn down the lights, turn up the sound, and enter the world of Billy Brahm — a troubled boy, hoping to lift a terrible curse with the help of a mystical cat… that calls to him from his nightmares!
After over two-hundred artist-driven articles about Canadian performance from across Canada, there are some big shifts occurring in how our online magazine operates. Calgary’s Laurel Green joins Ottawa’s Adrienne Wong as Co-Editor of the renamed CdnTimes. We’re changing how the magazine publishes content too, with articles devoted to a topic coming out over the course of two weeks instead of on the same day.
My job at Canada’s National Arts Centre allowed me to work closely with and learn from several artists in Canada’s Deaf, disability and Mad arts community at the Summit 2016, a three-day event held by the NAC in Stratford in April. It was because of this privilege that I was invited by British Council Canada to train as an Access Activator Consultant on Relaxed Performance, an aesthetic of performance presentation designed for those on the autism spectrum, people with sensory sensitivities, or access needs related to involuntary noise or movement. As part of the training, I was also invited to the Unlimited Festival in London and Glasgow, the largest Deaf and disability arts festival in the world.
In Toronto, at the initial Access Activator training with Kirsty Hoyle, Founder and Director of London-based Include Arts, I was introduced to the “social model” of disability. Coined by UK academic and disability artist Mike Oliver in 1983, the social model suggests that disability is caused by the way society is organized, rather than by a person’s impairment or difference. It accepts that society has created barriers that restrict life choices for some people, disabling them, and suggests seeking to remove barriers and enable people. I remember Alex Bulmer, one of the Artist/Leaders at Summit 2016, talking about how much more free she feels in the UK as a person with a disability. It was with all this in mind that I set off for London; I was on a mission to witness some access, UK style.
From the moment I landed at Heathrow, I started looking for people with visible disabilities. I began noticing them in shopping malls, restaurants, pubs, markets, museums, theatres, nightclubs, doing the same things I, an able bodied person, was doing. I also noticed it was much easier to find elevators and ramps- there were icons, signs, raised floor tiles and audio descriptions that provided guidance on the street and in the tube. Accessible cabs were at the ready from London to Glasgow, enabling a multitude of activities, at any time of day or night, for everyone. Even the television channels had signed interpretation pop up in the corner of everything from the soaps to news to reality shows. Compared to Ottawa, the access seemed endless. I began to understand what Alex was talking about.
The Unlimited Festival is an incredible legacy of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, featuring a broad spectrum of works in dance, music, theatre, performance and visual art by people with disabilities. It has a dynamic industry component of discussions, readings, workshops and networking events. Unlimited is also a publicly funded, self-administering granting body that commissions and supports production of works by artists with disabilities thanks to Arts Council England. Many of these projects are programmed at the Unlimited Festival and tour in the UK and internationally.
In addition to Unlimited, there is also a considerable number of fully or partially funded Deaf and disability arts theatre companies in the UK that regularly produce new work, and many of these are led by Deaf or disabled people. The Agent for Change initiative provides placement for artists and art administrators, providing more opportunities for Deaf and disabled people to work in leadership roles in major cultural institutions.
Around the country, access formats like signed interpretation, audio description and Relaxed Performances are becoming increasingly common in the performing arts. Disability is being considered in cultural spaces, impacting their designs. Some theatres are even investing in research and development of technologies, like captioning or hearing assist services, that better serve performance platforms. Marketers are promoting accessible performances to primary audiences and communicating their accessibility and/or potential barriers clearly. Deaf and disabled audiences are being spoken to directly through signed introductions, described web pages, easy-read versions and diverse imagery.
Visionaries like Jenny Sealey of Graeae are pioneering embedded access as an aesthetic, building sign, description and captioning into a production in tandem with creation, rather than bolting it on after the fact. Theatre companies, large and small, are making adjustments like adapting rehearsal hours, production time frames and methodologies, as well as considering the effects of ceremonial practices and support mechanisms. Organizations are investing in staff sensitivity training, sign language instruction and sensory audits. Theatres are creating front of house and box office policies that support access, and working with other companies to compare accessible performance schedules to avoid conflicts and create opportunities.
The Ramps on the Moon project is consortium of seven venued theatre companies sharing large scale touring works featuring Deaf Artists and disability artists, and they have an upcoming tour of Tommy. Major companies are employing disability artists in their core works, like the National Theatre’s recent Threepenny Opera, and presenting new work made by Deaf and disability artists and by organizations like Graeae. Agencies and networks for artists and audiences around the UK have sprung up to share ideas, resources and access opportunities like disabilityarts.online. Within rehearsal halls, on stages, and in film and TV across the UK, artists with disabilities are being supported and producing work in great ways.
Unfortunately, just like our own country, funding for basic services for people with disabilities continues to be a challenge in the UK. Despite fairly robust access legislation governing the entire UK (which does not exist in Canada) and an emphasis on arts funding for Deaf artists and artists with disabilities, provisions for day to day needs and support services have seen recent significant cut backs. For artists with disabilities in the UK, just as I have heard in Canada, advocating for day-to-day needs and support can be overwhelming, leaving little time or energy for artistic endeavours.
Yet still, theatres are including access provisions in global budgets to remove perceived fiscal barriers to providing for the needs of Deaf artists or artists with disabilities in production. Well-supported commissioning of new works from the Deaf community and people with disabilities and inclusive casting practices are also enabling artists to put down the activism placards and just be great artists achieving their artistic potentials. Deaf artists and artists with disabilities are starting to lead the way – fostering independence, ownership and a stronger voice alongside able bodied allies. These gains in equity are spawning significant innovation, greater diversity and fantastic creation.
I am looking forward to hearing the conversation in Canada as I head into the final phase of the two-year Cycle with the NAC, culminating just before Canada Day. The Study 2017 and the Republic of Inclusion, are two events that will bring together dozens of leading Deaf artists and artists with disabilities and allies from across the nation. As we turn the page on 150 years of history, I wonder what lies ahead for Canadian diversity and equity, particularly in the Arts. At the NAC, we are working towards inclusion in the near term, playing with embedded access and featuring Deaf and disability artists in our upcoming productions of A Christmas Carol, and Brad Fraser’s Kill Me Now. Perhaps, as Gord Downie said at the recent Secret Path performance at the NAC, the way forward is together, for all of us. Perhaps together we can all be unlimited.
Over the past four years, my priorities as a producer have changed dramatically. When I first started at Rumble my biggest question was, “Where do I find more money?” Now I’m wondering how we, practicing a Eurocentric art form, can create a more level playing field. In a small company, currently under all white leadership with a conventional gender breakdown, how do we avoid perpetuating systemic inequalities?
We are far from answering these questions. But we now allow them to guide how we create work and run the company in a number of ways including the following:
We Acknowledge We Have Power
The theatre community in Canada is very much a culture of poverty. But this sense of lack has distracted many of us from the amount of power we do have. Rumble is a 25-year-old company with operating funding from all three levels of government. Our staff makes a living wage and receives benefits. We work in PL1422, a shared office, production, and rehearsal space. In an industry full of artists living from gig to gig, taking part-time jobs to get by, we are incredibly privileged.
Recognizing this power means that we are able to see our programming, production, partnerships, and hiring as choices – our privilege gives us options. In the past, our casting and hiring looked very much as it does when you first start your own company. We’d talk in the office about who we knew, who we had seen recently, and who we liked. Then we’d offer them jobs. We understand now that this system perpetuates the inequalities already present in the industry.
Now we prioritize inclusion in our hiring. We prioritize scripts that allow for diversity onstage and off (the selection process includes conversations about cultural appropriation and avoiding speaking ‘for’ marginalized groups), and we meet with production folks even when we’re not hiring so we have more connections in the community – more awareness of who is out there.
We’ve heard the argument that we should just “hire the best person for the job” no matter what their background. This argument ignores the fact that cis, able-bodied white male actors, designers, and technicians traditionally receive more, and better opportunities for work, gaining more valuable experience and having the chance to practice their craft while being paid.
This argument also ignores the number of parameters we already impose in our hiring and programming. We need to hire artists who are local, and, until very recently, needed to hire a quota of affiliated artists. We need to program a certain number of Canadian works, and we need to program work and cast artists that Vancouver audiences want to see. Adding diversity to this list of parameters doesn’t limit us any more than the other rules we play by all the time.
We Remember We’re Not “White Saviors”
This is a big one. After seeing how much power we have, how big the problem is, and how much better it could be, it’s very difficult to not run off in all directions trying to fix it. We’ve come up with some very stupid ideas in the office and have learned to run our notions past other people before we act. We’re learning to listen to the conversations diverse members of our community have been having for years, and identifying where we can help.
We Connect Emerging and Established Artists
In selecting the established artists to engage in our mentorship program, we want to be sure to reflect diversity of practice, ethnocultural background, and gender. The emerging artists and artists just out of training that we see at our mentorship events are a diverse bunch, far more so than the established artists regularly seen in the professional community. This indicates to us that it is not a lack of interested or trained artists from diverse backgrounds, but that attrition or ghettoization is happening somewhere along the line. We want to be sure that we’re showing young artists from diverse backgrounds that there is a place for them in the professional community, and we do this by connecting them with potential professional mentors who can help steward them on their path.
We Remember it’s Always Relevant
When contracting for Indian Arm, Hiro Kanagawa’s story of a white family dealing with the accidental death of their adopted First Nations son, we ran into some bureaucratic challenges engaging the two First Nations actors through Equity. When I explained the problem to one artist, she sighed and said, “What a shame. And on unceded land too.”
I initially dismissed her comment as irrelevant. I wanted to focus on fixing the immediate contracting problem at hand. But the longer it sat with me the more it bothered me that I didn’t hear her. Of course it’s relevant that settlers are forcing First Peoples to contract under rules that don’t work for them. There is no aspect of Canadian culture that is untouched by colonialism. And there is no time where that is irrelevant.
People’s lived experience of colonialism, racism, ableism, and misogyny impact all aspects of their lives. These experiences should not be dismissed for efficiency’s sake.
We Admit We’re Wrong
It happens. It happens a lot. We talk constantly in the office, and with our Board, about all aspects of our work through the frame of accessibility and inclusion. This means we have to be okay with having really awkward conversations on a fairly regular basis. There is enough respect and compassion in the office to allow these conversations to happen without ill-will.
But it still happens. We make mistakes and will continue to as we move forward. And when we do make missteps, we’ve learned that the only appropriate response is, “I’m so sorry.” and to figure out how to fix the error in the future. When someone shares something from their lived experience, or tells you how your actions impacted them, you cannot tell them they’re wrong. You can just try to learn more, and do better.
*From image of 2016 Tremors Festival of Emerging Talent, above:
Front L-R: Kellee Ngan, Adam Olgui, Lucy McNulty, Jamie King, Anais West, Vincent Leblanc-Beaudoin, Jessica Keenan, Kaitlin Williams Middle
L-R: Ashley Sutton, Becky Low, Eleanor Felton, Sarah Mabberley, Pedro Chamale, Miriam Barry, Elizabeth Willow, Jenna Mairs, Chris Lam, Shila Amin, Laura McLean, Barbara Clayden, Shauna Griffin, Jeff Harrison
Back L-R: Stephen Drover, Karina Pry, Britney Buren, Sophie Tang, Chris Francisque, Xin Xuan Song, Raymond Hatton, Ryan Scramstad, Arlen Kristian Tom, Joel Grinke, Linzi Voth, Patsy Tomkins, Nicole Weismille
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Turn down the lights, turn up the sound, and enter the world of Billy Brahm — a troubled boy, hoping to lift a terrible curse with the help of a mystical cat… that calls to him from his nightmares!Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Phone rings twice then voicemail recording “you’ve reached 647-280-66(static)leave a message after the tone (beep)
My name is Milton Lim and this is my first thought residency. This first thought goes out to all the torchbearers.
I have been thinking a lot about what diversity in the arts feels like the usual feelings of an uphill battle, of hurt feelings, of misunderstandings, of people struggling to have their voices heard, fighting against being made invisible. I am currently performing a show called “King of the Yees” at The Gateway Theatre in Richmond BC. The piece was written by an American playwright named Lauren Yee, directed by Sherry Yoon and it features 5 Asian-Canadian performers.
I think all of us in the cast knew that the show would feel special, if only because of the nation-wide discussions around diversity and seeing more people of colour on stage. But I think the most surprising thing was that we didn’t know what the process would feel like.
One of my cast mates Donna Soares once remarked to me that this show feels easy, that our task wasn’t to do external research like other shows but a lot of inward reflection instead. This opportunity to bring our own lived experience into the studio and seeing it paralleled so directly in the world of the show has felt so rewarding and affirming.
We’ve been laughing telling stories and connecting to a part of ourselves that we don’t often get to share while doing plays.
I don’t often do character acting as part of my practice, so to have all of this within a theatre setting feels refreshing.
There is still a lot of work to be done but it’s nice to know that this is also what diversity in the arts can feel like.
My name is Milton Lim and this is my second thought residency. This goes out to my parents.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we carry people and ideas with us. My mom used to tell me: “if you love someone, make sure you tell them you love them every time you say goodbye because you never know if it will be the last time you see them.”
I like to think that it is not just about the meaningfulness of saying I love you, but about the repetition and the reminder, a safe-guarding and a just in case.
Tonight we close “King of the Yees”, and we say goodbye to a show that has had all of us involved thinking a lot about our families, and for anyone who knows Chinese culture, sometimes you don’t have to say I love you, sometimes you show it in other ways: (a song begins to play) this is the sound of us saying goodbye. (song continues with sound of warm voices talking)
My name is Milton Lim and this is my third thought residency. This goes out to the rebels.
Today I met up with a friend who is visiting from Hong Kong. We talked about the recent transgressions that occurred during the swearing in of new pro-democracy members in Hong Kong’s legislative council and the subsequent denials of their oaths.
I think about the ripples of the Umbrella Movement still resonating in these actions. I think about the overlapping of the underground and the public. I think about the voices of democracy. I think about Canada’s 2015 Federal election and those rallies to get Harper out. I think about Trudeau’s fleeting promises, in this case specifically proportional representation. And I think about the desire for effort to match outcome. I think about the values of getting rude and being loud in just the right places.
My name is Milton Lim and this is my fourth thought residency. Dedicated to the ESL community.
I’m currently taking part in the Block A program at Playwright’ s Theatre Centre, it consists of weekly writing workshops.
When I participate in the act of writing, I sometimes think of my friend Tyler Russell, Executive Director/Curator of the Centre A Gallery, and the time he asked me why I only create work in English. Why I directly/indirectly support linguistic colonization as part of my practice. At the time, I didn’t have a better answer than the fact that my only operative language is English, but since then I’ve been examining isolated components of language in an attempt to by-pass it, for example looking at the visual or the written instead of the aural or exploring only the affect of second person narrative. The option I’ve been avoiding is that I learn second language so that my artistic choice is not one so seemingly based out of necessity.
My name is Milton Lim and this is my fifth thought residency going out to my fellow otakus.
I grew up watching and continue to watch a lot of Japanese animation; I consider anime both a pastime and a passion. The video essayist behind ‘Every Frame a Painting’, Tony Zhou, once did a video on Satoshi Kon, the man who created Paprika Paranoia Agent, and Perfect Blue among several other influential animated works. Satoshi Kon once stated that he preferred animation over live action, saying that live action cuts too slow for his style of editing. Tony goes on to show two clips of a bag being thrown in someone’ s face, one live action and one animated —and the animated one completes and is perceived in fewer frames: it reads faster because there’s less visual information. I think that lesson, beautifully illustrated for me, the range of differences between perception and cognition.
My name is Milton Lim and this is my sixth thought residency going out to the gamers.
Like a lot of other people, I’ve been thinking about Virtual Reality. A game developer acquaintance of mine, once remarked to me that most people perceive VR as a simple extension of video games, however most video games operate with the principle that you move across a large map or area to achieve your goal. VR on the other hand, often offers limited physical space, wires connecting you to a computer tower, and real-life obstructions, making the same topographical movement extremely tricky.
Certain games and developers are working on ways around this — creating in-game teleportation mechanics, room-based systems, and walking controllers, but at the end of the day, my acquaintances’ assertion was that VR is not about progression via locomotion. That the more innovative or successful video games moving into VR will relinquish this fundamental game mechanic, in order to reimagine our approach to conflict, obstructions, and goals.
My name is Milton Lim and this is my seventh thought residency dedicated to the wandering minds.
During my undergraduate psychology classes, like many other students, my friend Mateusz and I would have a ritual of cramming, sometimes hours before our exams. It always seemed like he was worse off than I was, but maybe that’ s just my hindsight bias. One of the days in desperation, I said “why are we so lazy?!” and he remarked, “HEY, it takes EFFORT to be this lazy.”
I wouldn’t choose those words, but I like that empty space was framed as a conscious decision, similar to meditation but without taking itself seriously. I like to think that he knew the necessity of carving out room to be inspired, for his creativity and his passions. Or we were just lazy.
My name is Milton Lim and this is my eighth thought residency dedicated to the ugly.
Last night I hosted a horror-themed video game night with my friends at the International Centre of Arts and Technology. We primarily played P.T., a demo of a canceled game called Silent Hills by Hideo Kojima in collaboration with filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro. The game prioritizes horror instead of the game aspect. It takes place in one haunted L-shaped hallway that keeps repeating over and over again — a simple gesture both effective and maddening. P.T. forces you to slow down and sit with your fear in order to progress and some of the puzzles are close to impossible. I keep thinking about the simplicity of the gesture, its iteration, and the tension of wanting and not wanting to continue.
It’s late and I’m having trouble sleeping.
My name is Milton Lim and this is my ninth thought residency going out to your eyes and ears.
I just finished watching season 2 of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. So, today I’m thinking about my relationship to technology, especially user interface and design for touch screens. I think about the gesture of swiping as a violent act. Even in definition swiping is suggested to be a strong sweeping blow. I think about
the etymology of the word, suggesting that it was a variant of sweep, and I think about the connections of cleanliness: wiping, sweeping, clearing, but then there’s swiping. For all of its utility, I wonder about these gestures and how it situates me in my experience of news, dating applications, social media, phone calls, people, systems, and notions of self-identity.
My name is Milton Lim and this is my tenth thought residency going out to the consumers and to the future.
I’ve been intrigued by a genre of electronic music called Vaporwave over the last year and a bit. It’s a blend of synthesized 80s and 90s corporate mood music; it is often bright and cheery, modulated and slowed down, playing between the slightly familiar and the very familiar. It plays on retro culture aesthetics, so it’s nostalgia-inducing and by muzak standards, I actually find it quite pleasing to the ear.
Vaporwave potentially gets its name from Vaporware: technology that is introduced or announced by companies that never gets produced. The very idea is fleeting. I find the music so curious because it both suggests its anti-capitalist nature and yet it embraces its own hyper-capitalism through its earnest use of material. It’s ironic and sincere — pleasurable and numbing. It seems to both want to refuse and accept our very likely future.
Sometimes I listen to this music and I think: this is where we’re headed.
Hi David Yee, this is Milton Lim this is my eleventh and final thought dedicated to the incomplete.
I hope that the opening for your show at the Factory went smoothly, I wish I could’ve been there to support you in person.
Today, I’ve been thinking about the preciousness of showing work. I’ve been following this artist called ‘Beeple’ for a couple years. His real name is Mike Winkleman and he’s a graphic designer from Wisconsin. He’s fairly well known for what he called his ‘everydays’ — basically, he publicly posts a work he has been completing from start to finish every day. It serves as a way for him to better his practice and to remove any inhibitions about sharing his pieces no matter how shitty he thinks it is.
It’s a process he’s done for 3,472 consecutive days at the time of this recording and scrolling through his works, you really do see the improvement.
Now, one of the things that I appreciate about your show “acquiesce” is that it’s one of your earliest works and that it was lost behind a filing cabinet for almost a decade. And I know it took some convincing to get you to say yes to having it produced.
I think it takes courage to share something you know you wrote when you were younger, more naïve and less experienced. More than that, it reminds me that things are almost always incomplete, that each project is just part of the practice, and that sometimes it’s best to share things before it’s ready because otherwise, you might never ever share it. I even consider that mentorship is a process of transmitting the incomplete.
I think there’s a lot to see in the raw ideas. Perhaps more than the finished products.
So David here’s to incomplete ideas and to all th—
