Inspi­ra­tion by Monique Jeanne Wells

For more, visit Monique’s web­site!

Project Run­way is great and all, but wouldn’t you like the chance to see a crazy fash­ion com­pe­ti­tion and sub­se­quent fash­ion show live? Of course you would, you’re not a soul­less robot! Cos­tumes, cock­tails and a mer­ci­less panel of judges are three of the finest plea­sures in life, and you can have them all on March 9th at Walt Street Fash­ion Design Competition.

The Art Insti­tute of Van­cou­ver is host­ing this no-sew design com­pe­ti­tion and fash­ion show. Accord­ing to the press release, Walt Street is a “fusion of clas­sic Dis­ney char­ac­ters with icons of pop­u­lar cul­ture,” includ­ing a tantalizing-sounding Lady Gaga/WALL-E combination.

Key words in the press release included: home­made glue paste; cat suits; polka dots; capes; and blue hair. Sounds like the most amaz­ing fash­ion show ever to us.

Fri­day, March 9th
Vinyl Retro Lounge (455 Abbott)
Doors @ 8PM, Show @ 9PM
Tick­ets $10**
More info on Facebook

**avail­able at the door or in front of the AIV Art Gallery from 12:30PM to 1:30, March 2nd-8th

Rachel Aberle and Adrian Glynn McMor­ran, by David Cooper

In 1974, Leonard Cohen was asked why his album New Skin for the Old Cer­e­mony was a fail­ure in North Amer­ica and the U.K. but a suc­cess in Europe. “Maybe it’s because they can’t under­stand my lyrics,” he replied. Both Cohen’s self-deprecating wit and the achingly sad poetry of his lyrics are on dis­play in Tracy Power’s play Chelsea Hotel, which is at Fire­hall Arts Cen­tre (280 E. Cor­dova St) until March 3. Chelsea Hotel adds inven­tive dance pieces and impres­sion­is­tic sto­ry­telling to Leonard Cohen’s clas­sic songs, often totally revamp­ing their musi­cal arrange­ments so fresh asso­ci­a­tions are cre­ated. The young cast scam­pers around a set made of paper filled with dis­carded poetry drafts, while adeptly switch­ing off on an astound­ing vari­ety of instru­ments. Adrian Glynn McMor­ran stars as the Writer, who acts out roman­tic regret and cre­ative strug­gle and sings beau­ti­fully. His solo turn, a wrench­ing ren­di­tion of Tonight Will Be Fine, is a show highlight.

The­atre­go­ers famil­iar with Cohen’s work will hear new and often faster paced ver­sions of his songs, such as a sexy cabaret-infused I’m Your Man and an ironic hard-rocking take on Amer­i­can Idol favorite Hal­lelu­jah. The cast’s voices are very, well, dif­fer­ent from Cohen’s self-admitted lim­ited range. Neo­phytes to Cohen will find Chelsea Hotel an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to Canada’s unof­fi­cial Poet Lau­re­ate. And any audi­ence should rel­ish the oppor­tu­nity to appre­ci­ate the depth and beauty of Cohen’s catalogue.

Rachel Aberle is a cast stand­out, play­ing a Sis­ter of Mercy — a com­bi­na­tion nun, nurse, and muse — with play­ful­ness and intel­li­gence. Sad­mag spoke to Rachel Aberle about Leonard Cohen’s cur­rent caché, want­ing to be a muse, and the state of the the­ater scene in Vancouver.

Sad Mag: How famil­iar were you with Cohen’s work before you started Chelsea Hotel? how did your rela­tion­ship to his work evolve as you were doing the play?

Rachel Aberle: To be hon­est, I wasn’t super famil­iar with Cohen prior to this sum­mer when I started to do some research for the audi­tions. I was famil­iar with Hal­lelu­jah, as I guess pretty much every­one in North Amer­ica is — but to be hon­est, the ver­sion I was famil­iar with first was the Jeff Buck­ley ver­sion — which I loved. I remem­ber when I finally heard a record­ing of Cohen singing Hal­lelu­jah think­ing, “This is awful! This guy can’t sing!” This was sev­eral years ago, in my late teens. The cast is all within about 10 years of each other in age, and we all talked about how Cohen’s voice was some­thing that put us off when we were younger, that it’s some­thing we’ve grown to appre­ci­ate as we’ve grown into adult­hood. Can’t remem­ber who, but one of the cast said at a talk-back that “Cohen’s not for kids,” and I think there’s some­thing to that.

Through work­ing on the show I’ve come to appre­ci­ate him so much, not only in terms of music, but in terms of incred­i­ble poetry. I’ve always been a pretty lyrics dri­ven lis­tener, and for that you can’t get much bet­ter than Cohen. He was a poet before he was a song­writer, and it shows.

SM: Yeah, i think that’s one of the great things in the show. You can appre­ci­ate the lyrics as a cap­tive audience

?RA: that’s great to hear. It’s been a really inter­est­ing process to con­nect such poetic lan­guage to some kind of playable acting

SM: Were there any Leonard Cohen songs that you wish had been used in the play, or that you rehearsed and didn’t use?

RA: Those deci­sions were made before I came on board. We did change and add some of the poetry used in the piece — just cer­tain pieces get­ting moved around or short­ened or changed to other things that Tracey felt told the story and got the audi­ence on board faster and more effec­tively than what she had orig­i­nally cho­sen. Because my knowl­edge of Cohen was admit­tedly pretty low before the show, and because we use so many songs (27 to be pre­cise) there aren’t any that I wish were there that aren’t.

SM: Were the writer’s lines in between songs also snip­pets of cohen poetry?

RA: Yes. Every word spo­ken or sung in the show comes from Cohen.

?SM: OK, a cou­ple more Cohen questions…Do you have a favorite song? Or a favorite line from his lyrics?

RA: I love Tonight Will Be Fine. I think the cho­rus speaks to some­thing so pro­found and so hon­est about feel­ings that linger long after one might hope they would. More specif­i­cally the line “We swore to each other our love would surely last/You went right on lov­ing, and I went on a fast/Now I am too thin and your love is too vast.” I feel like I’ve been on both ends of that state­ment — prob­a­bly every­one has at some point. That feel­ing of regret, wish­ing you could feel things that you don’t, or that feel­ings you have could be matched, when they can’t.

I also think that Famous Blue Rain­coat is one of the most beau­ti­fully heart­break­ing songs I’ve ever heard. I’ve never lis­tened to a song that made me sad so repeatedly.

SM: What do you think Leonard Cohen means to Cana­di­ans of your gen­er­a­tion? How is it dif­fer­ent from how he’s viewed by baby boomers?

?RA: To be hon­est, I don’t think Leonard Cohen means much to most of our gen­er­a­tion, and I hope that changes. I won­der partly if it’s because so much of his music has been so widely cov­ered by other artists, but I know for many peo­ple our age that I’ve talked to about this show, the most com­mon response has been that they’re not that famil­iar with Leonard Cohen — which, prior to the show, was pretty much the case for me as well. I think a lot of peo­ple my age think of Cohen as some­one that their par­ents lis­ten to, that they weren’t that into when they were kids.

Hope­fully it’s like a lot of music that’s just too mature for younger audi­ences, and peo­ple start to give it a lis­ten now that they’re old enough to under­stand what the hell he’s talk­ing about. I feel like it’s the kind of music peo­ple in their twen­ties should be lis­ten­ing to all the time. One of my friend’s fathers saw the show and said after­wards that he was tear­ing up through most of the first act because it brought back so many mem­o­ries from his twen­ties. He said you don’t feel those incred­i­ble highs and lows for­ever. I think that’s prob­a­bly what it means to a lot of peo­ple my par­ents’ age — it’s a reminder of the later years of their youth. His lyrics cap­ture so per­fectly what incred­i­ble love and incred­i­ble loss mean, but at a deeper level that any­thing you feel at ado­les­cence. The love is vast because you’re old enough to feel like it actu­ally means some­thing real, and the loss is dev­as­tat­ing, because it feels like a much deeper invest­ment that’s come up dry.

SM: What instru­ments can you play? Did you have to learn any for the show?

?RA: Oh the instruments…

I played the cello reg­u­larly for about 11 years, but those years were between age 4 and 15… so a bit of it’s in the “rid­ing a bike” camp, in that I learned so young that some of that knowl­edge will never go way, but I also had been out of prac­tice for so long until about this time last year that my musi­cian­ship is def­i­nitely still a work in progress in my opinion.

I started play­ing the ukulele this sum­mer for the fun of it. I played the piano in high school, and actu­ally got to a pretty high level, but have been out of prac­tice so long that it’s really crum­bled back into a pretty rudi­men­tary skill

And the bass gui­tar, which I play in the show — I had never touched until our work­shops for the show in early Decem­ber. Our first day of rehearsal Steve said, “Rachel, how do you feel about play­ing bass on [First We Take] Man­hat­tan?” I said, “Well, I’m will­ing to try, but just so we’re all on the same page here, I’ve lit­er­ally never even tried before.” Steve paused for a sec­ond and then said, “Oh yeah. I think you’ll be fine.” I leave that to the audi­ence to judge. The more work I get in the­atre, the more I’m start­ing to feel like half of the bat­tle is decid­ing what you’re crazy enough to agree to try, and then deal­ing with the fall­out of that agreement.

SM: Have you done much musi­cal the­atre before?

?RA: I’ve done a bit. I was one of those kids in high school that was really into musi­cal the­atre, and then I sort of drifted away from it when I went to uni­ver­sity, and then to the­atre school. I’d pretty much stopped think­ing of myself as a musi­cal the­atre per­former. Then in the last year all the shows I’ve wound up doing, while they haven’t all been full musi­cals, they have been full of music, and have required me to sing.

SM: What was it like grow­ing up immersed in the the­atre world? Did you always know you wanted to be an actor, or did you ever have phases of rebelling and want­ing to go into busi­ness or some­thing bour­geois like that?

RA: I had bouts of think­ing that maybe I wanted to be a writer, and for a time even a lawyer — I don’t think they came from a place of rebel­lion how­ever (and you couldn’t really call becom­ing a writer bour­geois). Grow­ing up with a Dad who was in the­atre taught me from a young age that it was a pos­si­bil­ity — that the idea of try­ing to pur­sue a career in the­atre (while maybe still insane) wasn’t impos­si­ble. Peo­ple did it. Hav­ing that knowl­edge meant that I never went through the phase of think­ing “Well, yeah, I want to be an actor, but nobody actu­ally does that… so what am I going to do for real?”

?SM: And I bet a lot of your peers did go through that phase, right?

RA: Yeah — I mean when I think of the peo­ple I went to high school with who I did the­atre with, I don’t think many of them are doing it any more. And to be fair, for some of them it was never some­thing that they wanted to pur­sue after high school — but I do won­der how many more young peo­ple might con­sider going into the­atre, or music, or any artis­tic field for that mat­ter, if it dawned on them that it was a viable option.

SM: How do you feel about the cur­rent state of the the­atre scene in Vancouver?

?RA: That is a tough ques­tion to answer. I guess what I would say is that I know for sure that I’ve been incred­i­bly lucky with the oppor­tu­ni­ties that I’ve had, not only because oppor­tu­ni­ties are scant (and that’s true of the­atre any­where), but also because the projects I’ve got­ten to work on have all been very ful­fill­ing, and very dif­fer­ent from each other, and have all involved incred­i­ble peo­ple. Of course I wish there was more fund­ing — that should go with­out say­ing but unfor­tu­nately we need to keep say­ing it, and keep say­ing it, and then say it some more. And I wish I could fig­ure out what would get the aver­age Van­cou­verite more inter­ested in see­ing plays.

There is so much to do in this city. I get why on a sunny day peo­ple want to go to third beach, and I get why on a rainy day peo­ple are more inter­ested in going up on a moun­tain where it’s snow­ing and rid­ing boards and skis back down the moun­tain. What I wish for is a way to make peo­ple who are inter­ested in those things also inter­ested in sit­ting down and watch­ing some fan­tas­tic sto­ry­telling. I would like to fig­ure out a way to build the the­atre into the recre­ational vocab­u­lary of this city … I’m just not sure how.

SM: In Chelsea Hotel you play a muse. Have you ever been a muse? Or had a muse?

RA: (laughs) If I’ve ever been a muse, nobody told me. In terms of hav­ing a muse, I’ve def­i­nitely wrote some things based on or about peo­ple that have come in and out of my life — and I’ve def­i­nitely used rela­tion­ships I’ve had with peo­ple as a way to con­nect with mate­r­ial I’ve worked on as an actor.

SM: Is it strange singing the same songs over and over again? Do you start mak­ing up your own ver­sions of the songs?

?RA: It hasn’t seemed strange yet, and I think part of that is that the mate­r­ial is so rich that there are a lot of new things to find every day. I have an unfor­tu­nate habit of replac­ing words with other words com­pletely sub­con­sciously, and have def­i­nitely sang the words, “Sup­pose that he froze when the wind took his NOSE,” instead of, “CLOTHES” a few times in rehearsal, and once while rehears­ing Take this Waltz I sang “I’ll bury my soul in a sand­wich” rather than “bury my soul in a scrap­book.” But inten­tion­ally? No, I’m happy with the mate­r­ial so far

SM: (laughs) Sand­wich!

RA: I know, I always think that if those were the lyrics it would mean that she dealt with the break up by eat­ing her feelings.

?SM: It’s a good Freudian slip, some­thing to sing when you are hungry.

?RA: Right?

SM: Right!

Chelsea Hotel
Fire­hall Arts Cen­tre (280 East Cor­dova)
Now until March 3rd, 2012
$25 reg­u­lar, $20 stu­dents and seniors
Ticket info here

Rye­berg Curated Video is a Toronto event fea­tur­ing writ­ers dis­cussing their favourite YouTube videos. In March, its first show ever is hap­pen­ing out­side of Toronto– right here in Vancouver!

The line-up is great, with fea­tured writ­ers and web cura­tors Char­lie Demers (author of Van­cou­ver Spe­cial); Miriam Towes (author of A Com­pli­cated Kind­ness); Michael Turner (author of Hard Core Logo); Stephen Osborne (pub­lisher of Geist Mag­a­zine)

Don’t miss it!

Rye­berg Live Van­cou­ver
The Wal­dorf (1489 E Hast­ings)
March 6th, 2012
Doors at 7PM, show at 8PM
$12 in advance, $10 at the door (includes a copy of Geist)
Full details at Ryeberg.com

“Would you ever con­sider rolling with some­one who was polyamorous?”.… “No.”

By Monique Jeanne Wells. See more art by Monique here!

On Mon­day night, Vancouver’s swag­ger­ing funk-rap group Pan­ther and the Supafly will be play­ing live instru­men­tal ver­sions of hip-hop clas­sics while karaoke hope­fuls get live on the mic. If you’ve never been to For­tune Sound Club’s Hip-Hop Karaoke, widely con­sid­ered to be Vancouver’s best Mon­day night out, this is an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to check it out. And if you’re already a Hip-Hop Karaoke fan, you shouldn’t miss the chance to see the night go unplugged like Jay-Z and the Roots on MTV. Pan­ther and the Supafly will also be rock­ing tracks from their debut EP “Nikazi.”

Sad Mag’s explo­ration of the com­plex moti­va­tions of Hip-Hop Karaoke per­form­ers con­tin­ues here:

Tim Mortensen

Shmuel Mar­mostein: What got you into Hip-Hop Karaoke?

Tim Mortensen: I was at a Nice ‘n Smooth show here wear­ing a Gang Starr t-shirt, and they pulled me on stage.It was right after Guru died and they were pour­ing out orange juice on stage, it was crazy! A friend of mine who knew about HHK saw that and sug­gested we per­form DWYCK, the song Nice n’ Smooth were doing.

SM: What was your favorite song that you performed?

TM: Half­time by Nas, on Hal­loween. It was one of the hard­est songs I’ve ever done. It was fun because I was dressed as b-boy priest in gold chains.

SM: What about by another performer?

TM: A Busta Rhymes song by local MC Kaboom Atomic, he did it perfectly.

SM: That’s hard! How much do you usu­ally practice?

TM: It depends on the song. For some of them I’ve already liked the song for a while, so it’s eas­ier. I usu­ally prac­tice the song 15–20 times. I always rap over the vocal, and then I switch to the instru­men­tal, which is a lot harder! For the Nas one, I did it 30 times or more.

SM: What do you love about per­form­ing here?

TM: The good vibe, and the fun I always have at the night itself. It’s a priv­i­lege to per­form. You do it once or twice and you get addicted. It’s great expe­ri­ence if you want to be a per­former because you have the spot­light on you. And I love hip-hop, so I get to do what I love.

Chad Iver­son, event orga­nizer and co-founder

Shmuel Mar­mostein: What made you start the Hip-Hop Karaoke night?

Chad Iver­son: Paul [Gibson-Tigh, the other founder and orga­nizer] told me about the HHK night in Toronto, and said we should do it here. It was just a drunken con­ver­sa­tion on Third Beach, and I though hhk sounded like the illest idea.

SM: What was your favorite song that you performed?

CI: Earl by Earl Sweat­shirt, or the one I just did, Tried by 12 by East Flat­bush Project. I love that song and I’ve been want­ing to do it for­ever. It’s an under­ground classic.

SM: It was awe­some, you killed it! What about by some­one else?

CI: That’s a really hard question…maybe Kyprios doing Passin’ me by at the one-year anniver­sary show?

SM: How much do you usu­ally prac­tice before performing?

CI: Way too much. If you take a look at my lastfm site, all my top songs lis­tened to are ones I’ve performed!

SM: What do you love about per­form­ing here?

CI: The ego boost. It feels good! It’s a rush being on stage. I’m also pay­ing homage to a genre of music and a cul­ture I love. I never thought I would be run­ning a hip hop night in Van­cou­ver, that’s for sure.

SM: How has putting on this night changed your life?

CI: Well, this night has made For­tune a sec­ond home. I do pro­mo­tion here and I’ve learned a lot about, I don’t want to use the term, the “club­bing scene.” It’s a poten­tial career changer. The changes have all been pos­i­tive, definitely.

Hip-Hop Karaoke: Pan­ther and the Supafly

For­tune Sound Club (147 E Pen­der St)

$4 cover before 10:30PM, $8 after

Full details on Face­book

Emmett Hall is some­thing of a com­edy over­achiever. He is one half of heavy metal band Knights of the Night, per­forms with the Sun­day Ser­vice and is fea­tured on their monthly pod­cast (A Beau­ti­ful Pod­cast), and still finds time to hang out with Sad Mag when he’s not illus­trat­ing My Lit­tle Pony. You’ve prob­a­bly seen him all over town, but tomor­row night you can see him on the mag­nif­i­cent Cobalt stage. Read on!

Jeff Lawrence: Tell me a bit about your­self and what you do when you’re not being funny. Or are you always funny?

Emmett Hall: I am a British Columbian by birth who’s been work­ing in the ani­ma­tion indus­try for about 8 years. Cur­rently sto­ry­board­ing on My Lit­tle Pony. My face is crooked, so I am always funny.

JL: I heard you are in a band called “Knights of the Night” where you play metal dressed as actual knights. Discuss.

EH: Come­dian Ken Law­son and I real­ized we had a mutual love for heavy metal. Ken’s an extremely accom­plished gui­tar player and I can fake my way through the bass and sing. We fig­ured we could con­vince peo­ple to watch us play metal so long as we mince about in a joc­u­lar fash­ion. It’s tricky because we want to stay true to the glory of the music itself, but never stop tak­ing the piss out the bom­bas­tic chival­rous per­sonae blast­ing it out.  Our armour con­sists of long –johns and altered dresses.

JL: What do you like about doing comedy?

EH: I like that I can invent con­texts that are com­pletely unac­cept­able and inco­her­ent in any other form of expres­sion.  Com­edy is also a very enter­tain­ing way exercise/exorcise my per­sonal con­fu­sion and ego.
And most impor­tantly, in the end times…when there’s noth­ing left, there will still be some­thing funny.

JL: What do you dis­like about it?

EH: The lack of sat­is­fac­tion in per­form­ing, I guess. When peo­ple laugh at some­thing I do, then I set­tle on the objec­tive that that was merely the intended response. Gen­er­ally noth­ing more. When I bomb, the weight of the all the work and effort I put in top­ples down in the wake of humil­i­a­tion I sub­jected myself to.
How dra­matic! Non­tended response [sic]!

JL: What kind of humour do you find the funniest?

EH: Mine. Done prop­erly. So not by me.

JL: On a scale of 1–10, where do you place your feel­ings on Valentine’s Day and why?

EH: I’d give it a 2 because Valentine’s Day is so important.

Sad Mag Com­edy Show: Valen­tine Edition

Feb­ru­ary 9th

The Cobalt (917 Main Street)

Doors at 8:00PM, Show at 9:00PM

$10 cover, includes a 1-year Sad Mag sub­scrip­tion and dance party admis­sion

RSVP on Face­book

We could not be more delighted that Sad Com­edy: Valen­tine Edi­tion will be hosted by the lovely Caitlin How­den. Orig­i­nally from Mon­treal and trained in the­atre at Ryer­son in Toronto, she has a very long list of awards for being funny and also has a pretty amaz­ing worst-show story. Read on!

Sad Mag: Who is Caitlin Howden?

Caitlin How­den: “OH, that’s me.” I emerge from the back of the room look­ing guilty and afraid.