Theory: Episode 2

June 7, 2016

“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 Ashlie Corcoran

June 1, 2016

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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 Michael Wheeler

May 31, 2016

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”.

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 Daniel MacIvor

May 31, 2016

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 Sarah Garton Stanley

May 31, 2016

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 21^st century, and Barbara and Asher bring tremendous 21^st 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 Michael Wheeler and Adrienne Wong

May 31, 2016

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