Page 18

Briefing Notes for Hiring Committees

By

Board Room Table

We’re in the middle of a major shift in artistic leadership in Canada. A vacancy at London’s Grand Theatre made way for a shift at Theatre Calgary; A vacancy at the Citadel then made its way West to us in BC at Western Canada Theatre. Two other major jobs are available here in Vancouver – Touchstone Theatre and Theatre La Seizieme.  This week, Magnetic North. This may be just the first wave of some significant changeover in leadership. In the arts community, we talk about change a lot – and this is an opportunity for organizations to be transformed from the top down. We also talk about responsibility – and with a change in leadership comes a temporary change in who holds the responsibility.

Will some of these positions go to women and/or artists of colour and/or artists with disabilities? If not, to someone committed to cultivating and showcasing such artists?  The decisions lie with the hiring committees of these organizations, likely assembled from board members, current or former staff members, or members of the community.

I’d imagine they’re going to talk about the candidates’ artistic vision, their body of work, experience with large organizations. But will they discuss candidate track records and vision for cultivating and promoting work from women, people of colour and artists with disabilities? Will they be cognizant of the opportunity to break the overwhelmingly white, male majority of artistic leadership in Canada? I argue championing these values is more than a matter of ‘optics’ or ‘political correctness’ – it’s an imperative for the viability of these organizations.

In today’s theatre ecology, creating a diverse and inclusive theatre isn’t ‘forward thinking’ – it’s just keeping up. Prospective Artistic Directors, Executive Directors, or General Managers who don’t demonstrate a solid track record and a strong vocabulary for diverse and inclusive programming should be considered a liability. Funding bodies – including the Canada Council – have strongly signaled that diversity will become a major factor in granting. Choose an artistic director unprepared for this important shift in priorities, and major institutions may find themselves losing funding previously considered stable.

Programming and staffing choices are being examined and discussed in a new light, and ADs must be prepared to engage with the national dialogue – over the last year alone we’ve seen multiple examples of ADs unprepared or unwilling to do so. Problematic casting and programming that previously passed without comment are now subject of analysis in print and social media. Beyond presenting a PR problem, these snafus send a message to artists about who is welcomed, valued, and respected at their institutions, perpetuating the cycles of distrust that often make it impossible to cultivate meaningful exchange.

Artistic leaders are not only responsible for programming and staffing, but for curating audience experience. Imagine the transformation that could happen when an organization’s artistic leader has a genuine commitment to creating inclusive spaces for audiences. Smaller organizations are leading the way in creating sharable resources – for example, Cahoots’ DATT document detailing their findings serving the Deaf community, or IPAA’s resource guides for smudging and Indigenous protocol. What if major institutions became the pioneers of new audience practice, rather than waiting for indies to forge the way?

A local case study of such leadership is the 2012 appointment of Jovanni Sy (previously of Cahoots) as the Artistic Director of Gateway Theatre, a two-stage large theatre company located in the City of Richmond, just next to Vancouver. The exciting addition of Gateway Pacific Theatre Festival (billed on their site as “a showcase of world-class contemporary theatre from Hong Kong and Canada”) demonstrates Gateway’s new commitment to serving its community. Jovanni was specific and clear in his approach to engaging new audiences, and the results are showing.

Often, we see organizations instead taking a predatory approach to “diverse audiences” – occasionally programming one show targeted at a specific audience and expecting to cultivate lasting relationships with those communities. What’s missing in those cases but present at Gateway is an authentic desire to broaden the perspectives of both the theatre’s leadership and staff, and their audiences. Which leads me to the question – if prospective ADs haven’t shown such initiative so far in their careers, are they prepared to take such steps at the helm of a new organization? Who is responsible if they aren’t? I’m looking at you, hiring committees.

Finally, there’s the question of moral imperative – a nebulous, complicated, confusing and essential question. The risk is to view this moral imperative as charity, but to my mind it’s about the responsibility of publicly mandated organizations to serve the communities they exist within, and to advance the state of arts and culture in Canada.  When yet another regional theatre announces a season dominated by plays created by, directed by, and starring straight white men, the loss is profound. The loss of space for narratives featuring people of colour and women to be shared; the loss of audiences and artists who leave these spaces and don’t come back, never seeing their presence valued at these institutions. No hiring committee would choose a candidate who has consistently hemorrhaged money at their previous organizations – will they then turn around and hire leadership that lets this intangible cultural capital slip through their fingers?

We’re often conditioned to view work by artists currently in the minority as niche, intended for specific audiences. Particularly in the context of major institutions, work by artists of colour and artists with disabilities can be marginalized by their positioning within the season as token programming, side-stage events, or community outreach.  I would argue that our long-held assumptions that this work is marginal, risky, or simply not mainstream are assumptions that actively work against the perception of artists who champion or identify as marginalized artists. But selecting such an artist as a leader means choosing someone who has fought against those assumptions – someone who is most likely resourceful, tenacious, and strategic. The moral imperative is present, yes – but the benefits to organizations who prioritize diversity are clear, tangible, and essential.

We’re at the precipice of a massive change in thinking, and the relevance and viability of our cultural institutions depends on leadership that is prepared to lead the charge.  Women, artists of colour, and artists with disabilities have been waiting too long for representation in leadership positions. If the positions don’t go to artists currently kept in the minority, they must go to those who have demonstrated a commitment to programming and developing work from such artists.

Of course, there is no guarantee that a change in leadership – even to such a candidate – will bring about substantial change. The idea is as infinitely complex as our individual identities. But someone in these decision-making rooms must ask the questions and press forward. The hiring committees have an opportunity to start a shift in organizational thinking away from the status quo and towards the future – to position their organizations to be responsive and forward-thinking. These committees must recognize the profound value in changing the face of cultural leadership in our country.  The viability of these institutions depends on it.

 

 

No, seriously, who make up the 1% in the arts?

By and

Editor’s Note:

Recently, CBC Arts published an article by RM Vaughan titled, Who makes up the 1%? In the arts, it’s the bureaucrats. It drove me nuts for various reasons. 

When Devon Ostrom – a visual artist whose other accomplishments include playing a key part in creating The Billboard Tax that led to an 60% increase to the Toronto Arts Council budget, and the Pan-Am Path that I use to ride my bike to work every day, posted to FB a rebuttal in the form of a Hill Strategies report, the following (edited) conversation ensued.

Michael Wheeler:

I have an article about that article in me – but as an artist and administrator I’m pretty busy making not that much money.

Devon Ostrom:

I’d collaborate on that with you. Original piece was such a stupid distraction from the areas we do need to focus on.

Michael Wheeler:

Ok. That would be fun. Will send you a mess tmrw.

Devon Ostrom:

Michael Wheeler maybe we do it like a dialogue and back and forth starting now. Then clean up and publish? For me one of the most disturbing parts [of the article] was the use of ‘shock / outrage anecdotes’ at the top. Reminded me of right-wing anti-art stuff from the culture wars used to pit people against the NEA etc.

Presentation style was also very reminiscent of gravy train / anti-elite politics applied to the cultural sector. Heavy on the personal anecdotes, nothing resembling reliable research  – sewn together to generalize / tar / demonized large numbers of people. Author even invited people to witch hunt through the sunshine list like an article from the Toronto Sun.

Also found it pretty gross in that the vast majority of arts admin people I am in contact with are seriously underpaid, have made significant sacrifices and constantly at the edge of burnout. Article was a pretty cruel statement to make. I can almost hear them saying ‘…okay and now I am publicly demonized too, f-this’.

Michael Wheeler:

Ok good idea. I went in with high hopes – I’m not unsympathetic to some of the problems he [Vaughan] points out where buildings and the staff to run them are consistently prioritized over artists living in poverty. My fave writing on this is this piece is by Mike Daisey on the scene in Seattle circa 2008.

But after identifying a legit problem [Vaughan] conflates it with many of the people who are also living in poverty. There are some institutions in this town with some outrageous salaries, and I actually wish he would name them. Instead all “arts administrators” are lumped into the category, which is frankly insane.

In the almost 2 years since I became Executive Director (this makes me a bad guy now apparently btw) at an organization tasked with assisting indie artists and orgs with new/better ways of producing – probably the single biggest challenge is that arts administrators are paid 30% less in the arts than they would be in another field. (I don’t have stats to back this up – basing it on my experience of $30-40K for admins in the arts vs $45-$50K for similar skill sets in private sector.) So we are constantly losing the good ones.

Meanwhile, the other evolution we have clocked is that – like myself – many administrators are also artists. So the pitting artists against administrators argument is gonna make a lot of us schizophrenic in our hatred of ourselves. I don’t know what boards he has sat on, but no one I know who gets a raise if their org is in deficit. I found it poorly researched, using anecdotes that happened once to someone and extrapolating them to be a common practice in an industry with no facts or stats to back it up.

Ok I gotta sleep but will come back tomorrow (right after I tag all 13 of my friends in this convo who posted the article)

Devon Ostrom:

Agreed – there are big problems with the sector around artist pay. Also agreed on the divisive aspect – encouraging people to fight over crumbs rather than making the pie bigger.

The institutional critique angle is interesting – we should exercise care there too though. There are some [organizations] which take a market leader position and create widely available benefits / expand and stabilize the ecosystem – others that are likened to money vacuums on life support. Others who have acted extremely strangely like when the National Gallery was accused of spending more money on lawyers than artist fees (to fight against paying proper artist fees!) That case was a pretty sad reminder of how far some orgs have wandered from their core mission. It should not take the Supreme Court of Canada to re-align national arts organizations to the basic needs of living artists.

Re: your wish, l am unsure about the idea of publicly calling out individuals with high earnings who are arts administrators or practicing artists. For quite a few of them we would be in much worse shape without the revenue they can pull in, or if they were working in different industries. Objective should be to pull people up to an acceptable level, not pull some down. Usually ends with the people who do the pulling down replacing the ‘elite.’

I would be in favour of proposing a new rule on public funding where generally it was unavailable if less that 1/2 – 1/4 of total revenue was going to living artists. (Incl. of OPX and Proj.) Would that work? Minimum Fee schedules are also a big part of the solution.

Michael Wheeler:

On a fundamental level I agree about fighting over scraps instead of fighting to improve a system, but there is also a level of inequity that is related to class and privilege that I think needs to be called out – or we just fight for more money for elites to entertain themselves with.

Two of the four the examples in this article – The International Arts Festival with an Exec Director that made $400k and no budget to pay an artist, and the Canada Prizes that were budgeted but never happened (Thank God), are both brainchildren of the same two businessmen who could only do this because of their privileged connections. If you want to open that can of worms further, one of those businessmen was also Board Chair of another org that paid their head of a publicly funded public institution $1 Million a year – so I’m in favour of calling that out (obvs).

The problem is then governments turn around and are like, “we invested X # of dollars in the arts last year” but really it is circulating amongst a few players and it goes without saying it never trickles down to artists. If we don’t start calling that out then we will get more public funding for the arts and then they will swoop in – give us a few Richard Florida quotes, some fast talk about innovation and disruption – and take off with the cash.

I really love the idea of publicly funded orgs being mandated to have a certain percentage of their budget go to artist fees. This could maybe solve some of these problems above. I think CARFAC does a great job for visual artists that way – I get scared when I think how badly CAEA would F that up for theatre though. I wrote a whole thing about why and erased it to not muddy the waters – but trust me – minimum fees are harder in a collaborative artform that requires a significant budget if we want more than elites making theatre. So I love the idea of a % of an institutional budget going to artist fees overall.

I guess this doesn’t solve the problem of arts administrators being largely underpaid though…..

Devon Ostrom:

I would agree that we should not measure and reward our ‘elite earners’ based on their ability to secure support from existing pools of government funds – but ability to pull in new resources and expand those pools.

Michael Wheeler:

It is my experience this is not the case though. Last year – every org got cut by 5% by The Ontario Arts Council, meanwhile orgs with well connected boards were given extra payments in the millions that skipped the peer review process entirely. The game is rigged and because we’re Canadian and nice or something – or maybe because troublemakers get punished – no one ever talks about this publicly.

Devon Ostrom:

I think our best option is a renewed focus on living artists / core creators. Try to build systems that do properly pay artists and let the ones that don’t do that reform or die off. I am unsure about open inter-tribal warfare. Like what are the limits if we start fighting with each other for resources? From my perspective and prejudices, dance, literary and visual get consistently less financial support – should we unite and start taking theatre and music’s lunch money?

MAKE YOUR VOICE COUNT // BEAUTIFULCITY.CA from themanifesto.ca on Vimeo.

Michael Wheeler:

I just want to say that fundamentally you are right Devon – that inter-anything warfare is a waste of everyone’s time – and everything that you and your colleagues accomplished with The Billboard Tax is a pretty good Exhibit A.

HOWEVER

The stuff I’m raising is the reason why 13 people I know that I consider to be smart posted that article. Because these inequities are pissing people off, they can see the game is rigged, and it makes people susceptible to emotional poorly-researched arguments.

Devon Ostrom:

We were able to do the Billboard Tax because we were all pushing together….the big and small orgs. Also the private intervention of ‘elites’ was one of the things that finally pushed release of the funds through.

Agreed – the inequities / lack of attention to the fundamentals have created a toxic situation.

Michael Wheeler:

I also had the Praxis Theatre name removed from the Creative Capital Gains Report (that name is hella LOL btw)  because the consultation was a farce and the report was already written. At the end of the day, I couldn’t get behind some of the core arguments elites made to be part of that process. I think linking the value of art to economic growth could be MORE harmful in the long run.

Devon Ostrom:

Yeah it was a pretty rushed through thing without timelines and not fully balanced. It did contribute though in the end and was an important tool. I do agree that an over-focus on the economic arguments is garbage and part of the problem. Once we start treating art as an investment, the tendency is to focus on the safe and boring. That is how Canadians do investing.

Michael Wheeler:

At the time we got over 20 diverse arts groups together at Native Earth Performing Arts old office in the Distillery – we rehearsed what we thought should be in [the CCG Report], what the community values were that we wanted to represent, how consultations worked. Not a single sentence in the report reflected this. Nothing drives me crazier than this, and the people responsible have to understand that this is what generates the animosity. We were ready to play the game – we just didn’t understand that the game was to play us for fools.

Devon Ostrom:

Yeah. The purpose was to convince a right wing ruled council to spend and the language and arguments used reflected that.

Elite accommodation is an interesting topic to me within our public systems. For example, if elites don’t have a stake in the public systems then generally the trend is that those public systems deteriorate. The people with disposable time are needed to push it forward. Part of our responsibility is to make sure they are correctly informed.

Michael Wheeler:

This whole conversation is pretty good and no longer about how the article was lame, which I like. [But check out this scathing doc Devon made that specifically addresses everything wrong with the article.] And I do get what they say about making sausages and laws. Thanks for proposing this.

Thanks to Jacob Zimmer for making this a google doc that we could collaborate on. 

 

#CdnCult Times; Volume 7, Edition 4: POWER SYSTEMS

By

In this country, first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the culture.

(Adapted from Tony Montana)

This edition is all about power and culture.

Where does it come from? Who exercises it? To what end?

Each article seeks to address this question from a different perspective. Christine Quintana looks at the hiring practices of our artistic leaders. Thomas McKechnie examines the late capitalist economic system that defines power in our society and how it is reflected in our cultural institutions. Devon Ostrom and I discuss a recent CBC article on ‘the 1%’ in the arts and what that term means to us.

At the core of each of these articles is cash money. Who controls it and what they do with it plays a huge role in determining who makes what art, and just as importantly, what art doesn’t get made. If we exist in a system where trickle-down neoliberal economic theory is a guiding principal – what culture trickles down through our artistic institutions?

Certainly culture exists outside of funding and institutions, and there will always be culture generated by artists and creators regardless of what is green-lighted. The questions explored in this edition speak to what work we support and who can have the opportunity to make a living as an artist, a key factor influencing culture on the whole.

Michael Wheeler
Co-Editor: #CdnCult

Theory: Episode 3

By

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

“You’re so blinded by your tolerance that you don’t see your offence.”

Isabelle is a young, liberal professor of film theory. She creates an Internet discussion board for her class as a learning tool and encourages them to speak freely. A mysterious student posts questionably offensive comments and videos, testing Isabelle’s open-mindedness. When the student starts sending her racially and sexually charged emails and videos – she tries to shrug it off. But when someone leaves an open knife at her front door, she reports the student to the university. The harassment intensifies and becomes more violent until Isabelle stops goes to class to escape her tormentor. She soon realizes there is nowhere to hide.

Theory was written was Norman Yeung. It features Sascha Cole, Ash Knight, Starr Domingue, Qasim Khan, Kyle Orzech, Darrel Gamotin, Audrey Dwyer. The original production was directed by Joanne Williams, and the workshop production was directed by Esther Jun.

Theory: Episode 2

By

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

“Wouldn’t want piss off the wrong student nowadays. They have a tendency to surprise.”

When Isabelle, a young liberal professor of film theory sets up an Internet discussion board for her class, a mysterious student starts posting derogatory material on the board. Students demand she intervene, but it isn’t until she starts receiving racially and sexually charged emails that she reluctantly decides to block the student from the board. She reports the student’s offense to her department head who questions if she is the one being offensive. He tells her if she keeps pushing her liberal agenda, eventually someone is going to push back.

Theory was written was Norman Yeung. It features Sascha Cole, Ash Knight, Starr Domingue, Qasim Khan, Kyle Orzech, Darrel Gamotin, Audrey Dwyer. The original production was directed by Joanne Williams and the workshop production was directed by Esther Jun.

Ashlie Corcoran

By

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

What I am thinking about this morning is how difficult it is to find space to have deep thoughts sometimes. As an artistic director, our jobs are so multi-faceted and so busy. On Sunday night I got home late from the PACT conference, Monday morning I started rehearsals for Blithe Spirit, but before that, I had an interview on CBC, at lunch time I had meetings, after rehearsals I had an interview for a new staff member and after that meeting with my assistant director. I really love my job, I love how many different skills it takes to do it, but I am really looking forward to this thought residency to carve out space to think.

This is Ashlie Corcoran with my second thought. Today we a started staging Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit here at the Thousand Islands Playhouse. This is the first Noel Coward piece that I have directed and I am finding myself thinking about the usual suspects like action, and events and objectives, and I am also thinking a lot about style and etiquette, this is something I am really curious about and I look forward to learning more about it.

This is Ashlie Corcoran and my third thought. When I’m directing I notice I am often obsessing about and thinking about the themes of the piece I’m directing, the ideas behind it, maybe the history. Sometimes that is an overt obsession and sometimes it’s more – um – subconscious. What I am noticing with Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit is that my vocabulary has vastly improved. I am calling everything supercilious and also overpoweringly demure, hideous and facetious. I am enjoying this part of directing this piece.

This is Ashlie with my fourth thought. One of my favourite parts of my job is how many decisions I both have to make and also get to make. This is right from the many detailed decisions that we’re making together in our rehearsal hall to the larger macro decisions about season programming and planning and artistic vision. I am so far into 2017 season planning that sometimes I am not even sure what year it is. 2016? 2017?

This is Ashlie with my fifth thought. This morning I am waking up thinking about our incredible production team at the 1000 islands playhouse. We had a production meeting over lunch yesterday and I was looking at each member of the team, thinking about how diligent, patient talented and hardworking they all are. I feel really lucky to be working with this group of people and it really brings to mind how much of theatre is a team effort and how many different kinds of talents it takes to put on a show.

This is Ashlie Corcoran with my sixth thought. My thought this morning is simply if you haven’t watched the James Corden’s Broadway Karaoke I encourage you to do that. I just watched it this morning and I have to say it is so delightful and even though there are 5 big stars in that car driving around downtown New York City, you also see 5 goofy, talented, very funny theatre people. And, Ya! It has put a bit of a spring in my step this morning as I head off to rehearsal.

This is Ashlie and my seventh thought. This morning I am thinking about what happened in Orlando and while I don’t believe that I have a unique perspective to add in this 30-second thought I did want to say how deeply saddened and angered I am by the entire situation.

This is Ashlie Corcoran’s eighth thought. What I am learning about today is that during tech I am bad about being preoccupied with thoughts. We are in tech for Blithe Spirit so it’s all about making a lot of decisions in the timeliest of manners because our tech week is so tight at the Thousands Islands Playhouse. And as such I forgot to do my thought This morning and so I apologize.

This is Ashlie with my ninth thought. This morning I am thinking about and being grateful for all of the people in my life who support me and take care of me especially at such busy times like tech week. A couple of nights ago I came home and my roommate who is one of the actresses in the show had harvested some rhubarb from my back yard and had made two pies. I am proud to announce that I ate an entire pie in about two days. And – yeah – Krista Colosimo is the best.

This is Ashlie and my tenth thought. This morning I am thinking a lot about artistic focus. And that is because last night at our studio S concert – which is our classical music series here at the playhouse – We had the amazing young Italian pianist Luca Buratto come and play for us. Last night there was also a huge thunder and lightning storm and at one point during the concert we lost power – I’d say we only lost it for maybe 10 or 15 seconds, maybe a little bit more. And what happened was, even though the theatre was in complete pitch black, Luca carried on playing his music not missing, literally a beat. Not missing any moment musically and also physically, completely being at one with the piano. I was really impressed with that and I have been thinking a lot about that this morning, how when we meet as theatre artists, different challenges or bumps in the road how do we keep that artistic focus and carry on

This is Ashlie with my eleventh thought. I spent this morning driving from Gananoque to Toronto to attend a workshop of our final production of the season: You Are Here. And in the car with me was my dear friend and colleague, Jason Hall, who is a playwright and director, and we talked about everything from art to politics to our personal lives. It made me realize how lucky I am to have people like that in my life. Hard to sum up our conversation in 30 seconds. But important to have people who you can these big deep conversations with, sometimes agree with sometimes disagree with. And I feel very fortunate.

This is Ashlie and my twelfth thought. Today I am thinking about patience. Out of all the virtues this is the one that I have tried the most to cultivate in my life both personally and professionally. I really actually also mean how to develop patience for myself. It is obviously easy to be patient when things are going well but when things are tougher where does this patience come from? Something that I am working on every day.

This is Ashlie and my thirteenth thought. On Monday evening I was at the Dora Mavor Moore awards. And this has led me to think a lot about community. Even though I now live in Gananoque, 3 hours up the 401, I no longer reside full time in Toronto, I still very much part of that community and feel very, very grateful for that.

This is Ashlie with fourteenth thought. This morning we started rehearsals for “Into the Woods” here at the Playhouse. A piece that I first fell in love with as a 10-year old when a friend brought over a VHS recording of the PBS Broadcast of the original Broadway production. It’s a piece that has been part of my life ever since then, and its one that I dearly love. Now as a director looking at it with dramaturgical, textual, musical analysis I have realized how much those first experiences watching it as a child affected me. This piece really has shaped how I think about theatre but also how I think about life. Everything from relationships to the relationship between parents and children to the difficulties and benefits of growing up, growing older, growing wiser and changing. So I feel very lucky over the next month to be delving deep into this favourite musical of mine So feel very lucky for the next month to be delving deep into this musical

This is Ashlie with fifteenth thought. Happy Canada Day everyone. It has been a real pleasure doing this thought residency and I am so grateful for the opportunity, it has taught me a lot about myself. Mostly about how I feel, um, like I go from one problem or idea or solution or thought very quickly to the next, and so I have learned that I am not always great at recording them, and putting my thoughts out into the world. But it is something that I have had a lot of fun doing and I am very, very again grateful for the opportunity.

Harolds 2.0

By
IMG_2672_2
In 2015, Aislinn Rose gave made me a Haroldee, and also distributed embarrassing pictures of old headshots. Well done Aislinn.

The first time I went to The Harold Awards, I knew I had found my people.

I had been running The Praxis Blog (as it was known in the late OOs), and I think it is fair to say that the overall vibe of the site was in opposition to the mainstream theatre superstructure. We used the word “Fuck” regularly, wrote posts about how Luminato got all their funding through businessmen who had inappropriate connections with elites, and devoted our coverage to the exploding largely unpaid but exciting performance scene in Toronto.

The Harold Awards seemed to be a physical manifestation of this ethos. Unlike so many of the theatre events I had attended, The Harolds seemed hardwired to oppose the status quo. Swearing: Check. Disdain for value-affirming theatre: Check. Mad respect for artists that aren’t mainstream and all the other people that are required to create theatre from stage managers to volunteers: Check.

What kind of amazing Anarcho-Communists were funding this enterprise –and why hadn’t I heard about them before?

My entire context of who Harold Kandel was comes from attending The Harold Awards. I wasn’t around during the years he would heckle and comment upon the shows as they played. I imagine as a performer, I would have found him pretty annoying. When you are used to an audience that experiences your performance passively (and if you don’t, a critic will devote an entire post to tell you why you are a “Clod”) it would likely be a challenge for many to have that one show where the old guy in the front row was keeping a running commentary.

As a director, I like to think I would have been less pissed off. I find when I watch something I have directed in the middle of a run, I enjoy those moments where I can tell the audience is actively engaged – that the nature of an event being live is having an impact. A big question I try to answer about a show before I decide to direct it is “Why does it need to be theatre?” Could this just as easily be told as a novel or a film or whatever? If I can find a compelling answer to why it must be live – then that is usually my way in.

For better or for worse, certainly any show that Harold attended was “live”.

IMG_2675
Avec Robin Fulford from Platform 9. Never got the Ken McDougall Award – but I did get a Harold and my pic with Robin so stop whining Mike.

I think, if I’m being brutally honest with myself, I started going back each year because I was hoping to win the Ken McDougall Award for an emerging director. Unlike the other awards passed on by last year’s winners to new ones, this award, given out by Buddies, Passe Muraille and Platform 9, comes with $1000 cash. Eventually, I realized I was no longer emerging and that the game was up. But at that point I was hooked. A quick search of the “Harold Awards” tag on praxistheatre.com reveals annual NEVER MISS THE HAROLDS blog posts.

Lately though, the Harolds have been getting me down – the attendance has been smaller, the audience has been less drunk, and the heckling has been non-existent. This is problematic for a number of reasons:

1 – One of my favourite things about The Harolds is all of the trickery that goes into giving out the awards. Ideally, Haroldees don’t even know they are going to receive one. A multiplicity of devious plans are afoot to get unsuspecting Haroldees there that night – and TBH – it only really works if there are other people there that aren’t going to win shit.

2 – Come on people – let down your hair a little! This is one of the other points of the awards I think. That prim and proper will do for opening nights, industry events, and other awards – but the true spirit of independent theatre is wild and problematic. Let’s fucking do this!

3 – There is a changing of the guard going on. Most of the people organizing this year’s awards never met Harold. The awards are no longer about remembering Harold; now they are about promoting an attitude and ethos. I suspect he would probably be pretty damn happy that they have clung to survival this far. Whether this continues to be the case means involving a whole new generation of problem-causers and rabble-rousers. Which there are many of now – maybe even more than when the awards were started. An explosion of indie work has occurred concurrently with The Harolds ,and there is a bigger opposition to the mainstream than ever before. This is partially because the artist/producer revolution means fewer projects have to be green-lighted by an institution – and partially because the majority of our financially healthy theatres are supported by subscription bases that are older, richer, and whiter than the median. Are The Harolds not a perfect place for independent artists to celebrate according to their own value system?

As I write this, I am doing my best not move over into my browser to watch the Dora Nominations come in as they are live-blogged on Intermission. So far, I have flipped over twice – anyhow, I want to acknowledge that even though most of us (probably everyone who doesn’t have one yet) would like to be nominated – I really love that there’s also an evening where, AS A RULE, you are boo’d for mentioning The Doras. I further love that TAPA Executive Director Jacoba Knaapen herself will enforce this rule. Recognition of our peers is important – The Harolds reinforce that keeping it real is more important.

This year, The Harold Awards are on Monday June 6 at The Cadillac Lounge. I am so Goddamn into them I’m gonna have to miss a Playoff Game of my house league basketball team to be part of it. We are undefeated and I am catching a lot of flack for this, but that’s the way it goes because NEVER MISS THE HAROLDS MOTHERFUCKERS.

Money or Power Please and Thank You

By

Cjtkz2pWEAEDgif

I don’t like award shows. I don’t like any award shows. I don’t like what they represent. I don’t like how they suggest it is possible to judge one film or play or performance or song against another. I don’t like their in-group back slappery, or how they all seem to be trying for some representation of American showmanship and the Oscars (a television program that once had a delightful, hovering danger of controversy – a Sacheen Littlefeather or a Vanessa Redgrave – but now is bound and gagged and processed into rich people giving gold statues to rich people). I don’t like award shows and their professing to be seeking out excellence when really they are about popularity or worse fairness, and I don’t like how they reduce the making of art into petty competition and fucking dreams.

A friend of mine once approached a theatre critic in a mid-sized North American city who was known to give consistently boostery reviews. This critic seemed to love everything equally no matter the level of skill or ineptitude on display. My friend asked the critic if perhaps they felt that the community might benefit from a more critical public dialogue. The critic told my friend, very kindly, that it wasn’t their wish to destroy people’s dreams.

“People’s dreams”. Dreams. You see what’s happening here? This is not about work. This is not about a service to a society. This is about the dreams of some people. If our work is looked upon as some dream we hold for ourselves, then how are we not simply engaged in a self-indulgent attempt to gain attention or praise or acceptance that we somehow missed out on at some other juncture in our lives? How can we expect to be taken seriously, that our work is to be seen as essential and important? This is not a dream, this is work. A Job. And, I say, the mimicking of the American award show model does nothing to further the work of the job. It presents us as aspirational dreamers, falling into tears at a sliver of recognition, desperately relieved at the proof of acceptance, bolstered by this shiny encouragement, “You like me! You really like me!” Please. Fuck. Off.

And what’s really disconcerting to me is that, as I write this, I consider how I’m going to piss certain people off and I’ll never get another Dora – or Jessie or Betty or Stirling or Meritt – and how it would be nice to think of getting just one more. Why? Why do I care? Because it feels good? So did smoking. What does it really matter? Will my dreams not be realized? For god’s sake, I’m a 53 year old white dude who struggles with relevance daily, and making theatre is really really hard, and if it’s just about dreams then I’m going to find me some new dreams and I’m outta here. (And to myself I say: please. fuck. off.) Look, if you’re going to give me something, give me money. Or a Harold.

The Harolds were formed in Toronto late in the last century by a group of us who – number one – wanted to honour a true theatre weirdo and – number two- wanted an alternative to the Toronto Dora Awards, a fancy-dress booze-up that even in the last century felt old-fashioned and Oscary. Though technically the Harold is called, and is as an object, an award, if you receive a Harold you are not a winner you are a Haroldee. I, a Harolder , Harolds you, a Haroldee. And when Harolded, you win the opportunity to Harold someone of your choosing the next year. The Harolded becomes the Harolder. And one needn’t Harold for any one thing or any particular position – a stage manager can be Harolded, or an actor, or a sound technician, or a box office worker, or a publicist – one year Asher Turin was Harolded for being an excellent audience member – one can even Harold someone because they love the person’s work and want to meet them, or date them, or what-have-you. There are no nominees, no losers, no rules. So in fact what one wins when one is Harolded is power. A voice. A chance to say “this person in our community who you may not even know deserves to be celebrated”. And interestingly, the Queen of the money awards, the Siminovitch, also offers as its greatest gift to the prize-winner, not the life changing hundred thousand bucks, but the opportunity to give twenty-five thousand of it away to a younger artist. Three cheers for money and power.

(And here’s some background on the Harolds that makes it all the better: Though many will chose to reframe things so that Harold’s attendance at a show was seen as a wonderful endorsement or a great honour, I and many others will tell you that when Harold was discovered preshow in the house – with his plastic baggery and his sandwich eating and his potential random full-voice mid-show declarations, the reaction backstage was more often than not, “Oh fuck, Harold’s here.” And even still the guy gets an award named after him. Now THAT’S community!)

So I say, keep your unwieldy statues and sad/glitzy evening affairs. Give us money or give us power. Give us a Siminovitch or a Carol Bolt or a GG or a Harold. You want to celebrate the community? Take the money it would cost to put on the Doras and split it between d’bi young and Michael Healy and David Yee so that they can make some art and give me four hundred bucks and I’ll organize a BBQ on the island.

This year’s Harold Awards are on June 6th at the Cadillac Lounge.

 

 

CAPS LOCK FOR HAROLD

By
1994 production of Die in Debt, under the Gardiner Expressway. Randi Helmers runs across frame, with Alex Bulmer standing in foreground
Randi Helmers and Alex Bulmer in Die in Debt’s production of Romeo and Juliet under the Bathurst Street Bridge, directed by Sarah Garton Stanley. 1994.

Really, if I am going to write about Harold, I should just put caps lock on and rant in non-sequiturs until word count says stop.

I mean the guy rarely made sense and yet, when he did, it cut through all the bullshit like only a true fool could do. And then it killed him. Well, that or old age or hard living or too many stories filling up his story tank. Who knows, really? I don’t. I never knew anything about him while he lived. But I basked in his attention (whether wanted or not) and I can assure you that being heckled by Harold during a Toronto performance made us feel as though we had arrived. That we were noteworthy. That we had a Harold Heckle story to tell.

It was raining when Harold Kandel’s body was being lowered into the ground. I remember Randi Helmers being there. I remember the rain. And I remember the feeling of throwing a scoop of earth on top of the casket. It was the first time I had ever done this. I didn’t even know Harold was Jewish until the day we participated in his burial. Suddenly, Howard became ever so real to me. Harold was a front row fan with a real wish to be heard. He was larger than life, and he was an upsetter of life. But he came to everything I did. And this was the only event of his life that I made an effort to attend. And I am so glad I did. I think about him so much more as a result, and it probably has something to do with why I was one of the founders of The Harold Awards.

For whatever reason, we trusted him. We trusted his absolute inconsistency of response and placed faith in his consistent attendance at all manner of show. He was indiscriminate in what he attended, but discriminated deeply – or so it seemed to us –in what he lent his bullhorn voice to. He was an original, and this was to be trusted. He was not – in any way – reporting to “the man”. And this was to be trusted. And he was the original practitioner and proponent of Relaxed Performances in Toronto. To my knowledge he was never asked to leave.

He frequented the same venues that we did: The Poor Alex, The Annex, Buddies in Bad Times, The Theatre Centre, Factory Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille. He was a part of the scene. He was like Asher and Barbara, two devoted audience members who are as informed and opinionated as he was, except he wasn’t like them at all. Now, we are deep into the 21st century, and Barbara and Asher bring tremendous 21st century decorum to their attendance. Harold would have just turned on the bullhorn and laughed his pants right off his ass at us.

Romeo and Juliet under the Bathurst Street Bridge. 1993.
Romeo and Juliet under the Bathurst Street Bridge, directed by Sarah Garton Stanley. 1993.

Our first meeting to establish The Harold Awards was held in the back room of The Cameron House. And here is the truth, we all shared a belief in the need for something real-er, true-er, authentic-er than the Doras, but I also think, in our own perhaps prescient way, we understood that we needed to find a way to respond to the early warning signals of the voraciousness of capitalism and the dawning moments of the creative class and, AND GODAMMIT (caps to Harold) the counting of dollars that “THE ARTS” contribute to the general economy. We knew this was coming. We knew that we needed to find some small, yet meaningful way to keep weird alive. We knew that we needed to keep our courage lit. We knew that we needed to choose – revealingly – someone who inspired us.

My choice of Haroldee was Eileen O’Toole. She was a wicked ukulele player and a completely idiosyncratic cowgirl of a performer. And during our first year of creating The Harolds, I saw Eileen O’Toole light up the tiny cabaret stage at Buddies in Bad Times in such way as to change the shape of the room, the height of the ceiling and the color of the air. It was electrifying and wild, and for the life of me I can’t remember anything else about it. Since then Eileen left for Ireland, and given my non-facebook status I never know what wild corner she is living in, or what strange pub, and with what incarnation of performance she is presently playing. She is, and was, a complete original. She has, I have no doubt, left her mark on countless people.

Not unlike Harold. I mean, think about it: Harold loved to show up at theatre. This we know. And now he is remembered annually by requesting that Harolders get honest with themselves in choosing their Haroldee. Being honest about who we love is courage in action. And The Harolds offer us that singular and very personal opportunity on a yearly basis. To be given the opportunity to acknowledge one person in a public way, while they are still living, is Harold’s gift to us.

And while other awards bring other kinds of pleasures, The Harold Awards offer an added breath in our years of desire. They offer us the opportunity to imagine what it might be like to affect one person again. Like how we wanted to when we first were called to this crazy thing called theatre in the first place. This wild need to connect. It allows us to ask, “Who can I acknowledge?” And it gives us the platform to do it. Winning a Harold is cool but getting to acknowledge someone else is cooler. I think Harold knew this. I think this was what HIS show was all about. And as difficult as it was to love, WE DID LOVE HIS SHOW.

 

This year’s Harold Awards are June 6th at the Cadillac Lounge.

#CdnCult Times; Volume 7, Edition 3: THE HAROLDS

By and

The banner image on The Harold Awards website reads:

“Celebrating Shit Disturbers and Community Members since 1995“. This is a good distillation of what’s going on with these awards now celebrating their 21st year.

Founded in memory of Harold Kandel, a notorious and beloved audience member of indie theatre known for his propensity to heckle – the awards are the closest thing Toronto theatre has to an underground institution (okay, maybe also The Wrecking Ball).

The way The Harold Awards work is simple: Everyone who won an award last year has to organize the the following year and pass their Harold Award on to someone new. Anyone can receive a Harold be it an artist, stage manager, volunteer – heck they’re founded in memory of an audience member so that’s cool too. Each Award has it’s own ‘House’ named after the founders of The Harolds  – which you can check out here:

Ideally Haroldees, as they are known, don’t know they are being Harolded so there is a high degree of subterfuge and, well, lying, that goes into the event. Drinking and heckling is encouraged. Any mention of the Dora Awards is rigorously boo’d.

In this edition two of the founders of the Awards, Sarah Garton Stanley and Daniel MacIvor write about what the awards mean to them now, while I reflect on what they mean to someone who never met Harold Kandel.

This year the Harold Awards are June 6 8PM at Cadillac Lounge, if you read these articles and you don’t want to come – that’s cool, but here’s hoping you do.

Michael Wheeler
Co-Editor: #CdnCult V7

 

1...171819...56Page 18 of 56
SpiderWebShow.ca is the first live-to-digital performance hybrid company in Canada. We are obsessed with cultural change.
© 2018 SpiderWebShow