Archive for September, 2010

Last night Sad Mag attended the open­ing of Fair Enough: A Lit­tle Moun­tain Art Show. Show­cas­ing the work of Lit­tle Mountain’s artists who live and work in the Mount Pleas­ant Com­mu­nity. The show is open this week­end for the Drift-Art on Main Street fes­ti­val.

Fair Enough: A Lit­tle Moun­tain Art Show
Part of The Drift — Art on Main Street

Sep­tem­ber 28 — Octo­ber 3, 2010

Drift Hours Sat­ur­day and Sun­day 12-5pm

Artists:

Kathryn Best
Helen Eady
Dan Elstone
Kristina Fiedrich
Robert Fougere
Tanya Goer­hing
Tina Krueger Kulic
Scott Lewis
Justin Lon­goz
Korey Moran
Marina Nazarova
Eric Thomp­son
Xiaoyu Zhang
Nicholas E. Zirk
Daniel Zomparelli

Made Pos­si­ble by the Van­cou­ver Foun­da­tion and
Mount Pleas­ant Com­mu­nity Cen­tre Neigh­bour­hood Grants Initiative

Mag­a­zine Friends (L to R) Daniel Zom­par­elli, Sean Con­don, Leni T. Gog­gins and Deanne Beattie

Sad Mag was joined by friends from Poetry is Dead, Mega­phone, and Lester’s Army at the Mag­a­zine Life Tent at this year’s Word on the Street fes­ti­val. Thank you to every­one who came out to hear us talk about “How NOT to Pub­lish a Mag­a­zine.” We had a great time hear­ing from the edi­tors how—and why—they started their magazines.

Please sup­port these vision­ary and hard-working pub­lish­ers by sub­scrib­ing or donating:

• Poetry is Dead web­site
• Mega­phone web­site
• Lester’s Army web­site

If life gives you lemons, put on a play that fea­tures a sup­posed ency­clo­pe­dia sales­woman, a lonely bach­e­lor and, of course, lemon­ade. Oh, and make sure the audi­ence is hydrated (free-of-charge!) with cute lit­tle glasses of the refresh­ing cit­rus bev­er­age before the show begins. Such is the pre­rog­a­tive of Rele­phant Theatre’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Stew­art Lemoine’s short play, “The Exquis­ite Hour.”

Set in the early 1960s, wit, whimsy and a minor dose of nos­tal­gia are stuffed into this hour-long two-hander, which pro­vides the audi­ence with a good many laughs and even a few rather ten­der moments.

Josue Labou­cane is fan­tas­ti­cally uptight and nerdy as the bach­e­lor Zachary Teale, whose back­yard the whole play takes place in. And Nevada Yates Robart plays the enthu­si­as­tic ency­clo­pe­dia sales­woman, Mrs. Dari­mont, with such a bal­ance poise and neu­roses that we’re not sur­prised to dis­cover more than we bar­gained for in her. A nod must be given to direc­tor Julie McIsaac as she pro­vides a strong cohe­sive­ness and momen­tum to the piece as a whole.

Lemoine’s words are so hilar­i­ously chalk full of pop-cultural and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, that we not only get swept up in the blur of plot and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, but we might also learn a thing or two about a Catholic Saint with a hal­lu­ci­na­tory ded­i­ca­tion to ani­mals and nature or a Euro­pean royal fam­ily who names all of their men Fred­er­ick and all their women Agnes.

Played out in real time, “The Exquis­ite Hour” is an hour of the­atre that does great things with a cer­tain prover­bial sour citrus.

The Exquis­ite Hour
Part of the Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tional Fringe Fes­ti­val
Carousel The­atre
Remain­ing Per­for­mances:
Sat­ur­day Sept 18, 7:45 pm
Sun­day Sept 19, 4:00 pm

Update [Sep­tem­ber 20, 2010]:
“Dr. Hor­ri­ble…” wins the National Pick of the Fringe and will be shown twice more!
Water­front The­atre
Thurs­day Sept 23, 7:15 pm
Sun­day Sept 26, 10:00 pm

Not being a the­atre con­nois­seur, the first thing I judged about “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” cre­ated by Joss Whe­don of “Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer,” was the rowdy audi­ence. I could imag­ine each theatre-goer brush­ing up on their Whe­don, per­haps watch­ing the Buffy musi­cal, before excit­edly mak­ing their way to the Fire­hall Arts Centre.

Rele­phant The­atre poured the satire on before the play even began, first per­form­ing a num­ber about a cell phone game (the moral: please turn off your phones, audi­ence). Another pre-play skit poked fun at racial stereo­types in verses about the lone Asian cast mem­ber going back­stage to do math and play the violin.

And then, the play began. The tragi­com­edy was as absurd as a val­ley girl fight­ing vampires. Whedon’s voice, rife with irony and self-awareness (epit­o­mized by Dr. Horrible’s clas­sic line, “Wow, sar­casm — that’s orig­i­nal”) is unde­ni­able throughout.

Dr. Hor­ri­ble is a nerdy mis­fit who also hap­pens to be a mani­a­cal genius that can­not seem to reach his ulti­mate goal of induc­tion into the “Evil League of Evil.” But as the action unfolds, he falls in love with Penny, an inno­cent phil­an­thropist. Both roles are emphat­i­cally por­trayed by Jon Lach­lan Stew­art and Christina Hardie, respec­tively. Their fer­vour is bal­anced by a third char­ac­ter — the cool, calm and self-involved Cap­tain Ham­mer (played by Shane Snow) who wants Penny, and the glory, for himself.

All three actors knew how to deliver lines with per­fect comedic tim­ing, mak­ing the orig­i­nal dia­logue sparkle. I walked away from “Dr. Hor­ri­ble…” with the same feel­ing I had after watch­ing “Buffy: The Musi­cal” - let’s see it again. Right now.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
Part of the Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tional Fringe Fes­ti­val
Fire­hall Arts Cen­tre
Remain­ing Per­for­mances:
Fri­day Sept 17, 7:00 pm
Fri­day Sept 17, 9:00 pm
Sat­ur­day Sept 18, 2:00 pm
Sat­ur­day Sept 18, 9:00 pm
Sun­day Sept 19, 9:00 pm

The claus­tro­pho­bia is pal­pa­ble in the tiny Lit­tle Moun­tain Stu­dios space off Main Street. One gets the sense that at the inevitably sold-out per­for­mances later in the run, the audi­ence itself will expe­ri­ence panic attacks. But this is all part of the show with “Hep­ta­demic Redux,” a remount/reworking of one of last year’s Risky Nights show­cases from a tal­ented bunch of Stu­dio 58 graduates.

In another “end-of-the-world-epidemic-lock-down” kind of piece, seven peo­ple from dif­fer­ent walks of life find them­selves locked in a non­de­script room con­tain­ing enough sus­te­nance for twelve days, and a tiny bath­room. There is a sense of urgency in all of them, and their lay­ered, inter­wo­ven text is beau­ti­fully fran­tic. To help indi­cate the pas­sage of time, direc­tor Anthony E. Ingram (and pre­vi­ous direc­tor Rachel Peake) offer some of the most amaz­ingly exe­cuted move­ment sequences you’ll find on a Van­cou­ver stage.

The pro­duc­tion is full of sur­prise gifts. In ensem­ble work of this nature, the struc­ture can get pre­dictable as we slowly get a glimpse into each character’s fan­tasy life. And though not all of their inter­nal lives are as curi­ous and intrigu­ing as some, the ensem­ble itself is expertly used to fully inhabit these alter­nate worlds: Sean Oliver deliv­ers an endear­ingly inno­cent dog, Andrea Yu is a knock­out as a bird. Aaron Adams and Gui Fontanezzi also deliver strong work.

As the inten­sity of their sur­round­ings increases, alle­giances start to form among char­ac­ters, and for this audi­ence mem­ber, the stakes were pal­pa­ble. The per­form­ers them­selves are so com­mit­ted (Raes Calvert in par­tic­u­lar) and the action is occur­ring in such prox­im­ity to the audi­ence, that there is no choice but to believe whole­heart­edly in the dan­ger of the piece. What a gift to an audience.

The writ­ing is not with­out its expos­i­tory scenes — mostly sur­round­ing Lisa Goebel’s dog, and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mate­r­ial could be bet­ter bal­anced — we know that the char­ac­ter Mary has a grand­fa­ther some­where, and that she works as a nurse, but Emily Rowed’s radi­ant per­for­mance makes us crave more story.

But these new writ­ers are still find­ing their legs. So don’t let the premise fool you, this play sweats out orig­i­nal­ity and risk, and for any­one con­sid­er­ing three years at Stu­dio 58, there is no bet­ter show­case for the kind of tal­ent you’ll find there.

Hep­ta­demic Redux
Part of the Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tional Fringe Fes­ti­val
Lit­tle Moun­tain Stu­dios
Remain­ing per­for­mances:
Fri­day Sept 17, 6:00 pm
Fri­day Sept 17, 8:00 pm
Sat­ur­day Sept 18, 6:00 pm
Sat­ur­day Sept 18, 8:00 pm
Sun­day Sept 19, 6:00 pm
Sun­day Sept 19, 8:00 pm

Sad Mag cel­e­brates one year of pub­lish­ing magic on Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 9 with SAD MAG LIVE!

We’re bring­ing the mag­a­zine to life on stage, spot­light­ing some of Vancouver’s most inno­v­a­tive young artists, orga­niz­ers and performers.

Hosted by CBC Radio 3’s Lana Gay, SAD MAG LIVE fea­tures live, on-stage inter­views with:

CAMERON REED (Direc­tor, Music Waste)
GRAEME BERGLUND (Founder and Cre­ative Direc­tor, The Cheaper Show)
LIZZY KARP (Co-Founder, Rain City Chron­i­cles)
DAVE DEVEAU (Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Zee Zee The­atre)

With per­for­mances by:

BARBARA ADLER (Accor­dion, sto­ries, poems)
JASPER SLOAN YIP (Singer-songwriter)
SAMMY CHIEN (With guests—New media artist)
ISOLDE N. BARRON (Drag sen­sa­tion)

This event is a fundraiser ben­e­fit­ing the Sad Mag Writ­ers & Artists Fund. Tick­ets are $18 and can be pur­chased from www.thecultch.com or at the box office. The cost of your ticket includes a copy of Sad Mag issue 5.

SAD MAG LIVE is gen­er­ously spon­sored by The Cultch and CBC Radio 3.

Sarah Ruhl gets off on quirk. The acclaimed Amer­i­can play­wright behind “The Clean House” and “Melan­choly Play” offers a bizarre and play­ful look at death and our depen­dency on cell phones with “Dead Man’s Cell Phone.”

This Equity Coop pro­duc­tion is a rare treat at the Fringe –an expert group of pro­fes­sion­als hav­ing some fun together. Sit­ting in a charm­ing café, Jean (a note-perfect Eileen Bar­rett) dis­cov­ers the man across from her (Stephen Aberle) has died. Fur­ther­more, his cell phone will not stop ringing.

So what does she do? She answers it, thereby cement­ing a rela­tion­ship between them. Jean then spends her time vis­it­ing var­i­ous fam­ily mem­bers and acquain­tances of the dead Gor­don, cre­at­ing alter­nate real­i­ties and happy end­ings for them, and going to tremen­dous lengths to do so.

The play goes from quirky, to silly, to down­right ludi­crous and back again, but through it all the pro­duc­tion remains level – level and won­der­ful. The per­for­mances are exquis­ite: Suzanne Ris­tic soars as the scorned widow with a pen­chant for divulging sex­ual secrets, whereas Zena Daruwalla com­mands the stage with lip­stick. Mar­ion Eis­man chan­nels Chris­tine Baran­ski as Gordon’s mother who invites Jean into their lives, for bet­ter or for worse. Aberle offers expert deliv­ery of an excep­tional mono­logue about the mun­dane nature of life. It’s so deli­cious, that its abrupt end is heart­break­ing. If I could, I’d hand him a Jessie dur­ing cur­tain call.

In all its cut­ting and manic hilar­ity, the play explores the per­cep­tions and assump­tions peo­ple make of each other, and how tech­nol­ogy can destroy and con­fuse those things. As the play­ful under­dog Dwight, Ari Solomon asks “Peo­ple say I love you on cell phones and where does it go?”

Direc­tor Kevin McNulty makes great use of what could be a cav­ernous space at Fire­hall, and together with set designer Pam John­son, they’ve made the exces­sive scene changes and mul­ti­tude of loca­tions a real treat to watch unfold. In see­ing so many pro­fes­sion­als in a Fringe pro­duc­tion, one can’t help but think of the dev­as­tat­ing cuts our arts com­mu­ni­ties are cop­ing with.

But that’s not to say that there’s any­thing wrong with pro­duc­ing in the Fringe. More than any­thing “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” feels like a love let­ter: to Van­cou­ver the­atre, to what the Fringe can be, and to a down­right won­der­ful production.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone
Part of the Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tional Fringe Fes­ti­val
Fire­hall Arts Cen­tre
Remain­ing Per­for­mances:
Thurs­day Sep 16, 6:00 pm
Sun­day Sep 19, 7:00 pm

Alice Nel­son and Jacque­line Rus­sell give them­selves the daunt­ing task of sum­ma­riz­ing and lam­poon­ing the his­tory of fem­i­nism in sixty min­utes, all while hold­ing an audience’s inter­est. Inspired by Ariel Levy’s book “Female Chau­vin­ist Pigs: The Rise of Female Raunch Cul­ture,” “Raunch” is a series of sketches inter­spersed with quotes from Levy and other for­mi­da­ble feminists.

“Raunch” delves into the cur­rent state of fem­i­nism and whether such phe­nom­ena as real­ity tele­vi­sion, breast implants, and fit­ness strip­ping are empow­er­ing or if we have sim­ply reverted back to a 19th cen­tury mind­set. Is it choice or is it pres­sure, they ask.

Nel­son and Rus­sell are truly amaz­ing per­form­ers and deftly han­dle their cho­sen sub­jects but it would have been inter­est­ing had there been less focus on main­stream tar­gets such as Hoot­ers and more on blurry top­ics such as bur­lesque. “Raunch” is at its strongest with its slap­stick com­men­taries rather than its more obvi­ous parodies.

The quotes, while infor­ma­tive and rel­e­vant, were some­what over­whelm­ing in length and quan­tity. Be warned if sit­ting at stage level — the screen can be dif­fi­cult to see.

With “Raunch,” Nel­son and Rus­sell cre­ate an infor­ma­tive and engag­ing per­for­mance full of laughs — it just leaves you want­ing more.

Raunch
Part of the Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tional Fringe Fes­ti­val
False Creek Gym
Remain­ing per­for­mances:
Fri­day Sept 17, 8:15 pm
Sat­ur­day Sept 18, 11:50 am

Sad Mag pro­files local trail­blaz­ers in art and cul­ture at Granville Magazine’s Secret City blog twice per month. Read the lat­est post about Mal­colm Levy, head cura­tor of the New Forms Festival.

“It allows peo­ple to think about par­tic­i­pat­ing in the art,” says Levy of the New Forms Fes­ti­val. “It allows peo­ple to think about cre­at­ing their own lit­tle piece for that moment in time.”

Read more.

Never read show descrip­tions, espe­cially at the Fringe. Because then you’re deny­ing your­self half the fun — the dis­cov­ery, smugly unearthing “the next great show” before your Fringe-going friends.

With Mor­gan Brayton’s “Rac­coon­ery!”, I don’t know what I was expect­ing. Rodents? Rac­coon Cos­tumes? Non­sen­si­cal mono­logu­ing? What Bray­ton in fact deliv­ers is intel­li­gent, cut­ting comic char­ac­ter work with a polit­i­cal undercurrent.

Bray­ton starts us off by offer­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of “rac­coon­ery” itself (some­where past shenani­gans and tom­fool­ery),  a term her own departed grand­mother once used that has obvi­ously helped inform Brayton’s own comic sensibility.

In this lat­est show she offers up a feast of char­ac­ters – a weight-loss pro­gram infomer­cial host, a Class of ‘84 high school vale­dic­to­rian, and an irre­sistible girl with a pen­chant for ice cream, among others.

Almost more enchant­ing than the char­ac­ters them­selves are the musi­cal inter­ludes that serve as tran­si­tions. Mun­dane, every­day lyrics set to whim­si­cal tunes offer gems like “I want chips. Give me some chips” or my favourite, a hosting-a-party song ask­ing guests to “put that gui­tar away, I know you think you sound good… you don’t.”

For those who have never expe­ri­enced her, “Rac­coon­ery!” is a fine exam­ple of why Bray­ton is cel­e­brated as one of the city’s, if not the country’s, top come­di­ennes. Not every char­ac­ter can be as infec­tious as the last but each has its own strength, be it a cut­ting com­men­tary or even a sin­gle guffaw-inducing line.

But don’t read this review! Just go dis­cover it. Sink into your seat and allow Bray­ton to release that belly-laugh you’ve been sup­press­ing at your day job. It’s the best way to wel­come the Fringe to town.

Rac­coon­ery! by Mor­gan Bray­ton
Part of the Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tional Fringe Fes­ti­val
Per­for­mance Works on Granville Island
Remain­ing per­for­mances:
Sat­ur­day Sept 11, 8:35 pm
Thurs­day Sept 16, 10:25 pm
Fri­day Sept 17, 7:00 pm
Sun­day Sept 19, 12:25 pm