“Theatre is everywhere – most of it is free”

Vancouver-based theatre blogger and playwright Simon Ogden (The Blogtender) gets the Umbrella Talk interview treatment over at MK Piatkowski’s One Big Umbrella blog. A sample: “I have a dream about Black Box theatres dotting our communities like convenience stores (convenience theatres?), each of them telling their own stories. As theatre grows again into a common […]

The passion of the blogs

A look back on a good year in the theatrosphere By Simon Ogden and Ian Mackenzie Time to put 2008 to bed? Good idea. But not before we take one last look at the year that was in theatre blogging. And what a year it was! From epic online dust-ups to Internet-wide collaborations, here’s our […]

“Vancouver has too many cheerleading critics . . .”

The good people over at The Next Stage theatre blog have conducted and posted a wonderful interview with Vancouver-based theatre critic Colin Thomas (Georgia Straight). There’s even a choice piece of Toronto bashing as told to Colin by Daniel MacIvor: “Daniel MacIvor told me once that he likes premiering work in Vancouver because audiences here […]

A wake up call for the West

Vancouver-based playwright and theatre blogger Simon Ogden has thrown down an inspiring call to action for the “latent theatre town” he calls home: “. . . we keep plugging away, show after show, using the same marketing tactics and theatres and programs and street cards and posters and fundraisers . . . and theatre doesn’t […]

10 questions: Simon Ogden

1) What the fuck is going on?Oh, left work early to ride my bike to the farmers’ market to buy organic heirloom tomatoes and an amusing pinot on the way to the beach to smoke some hydro and debate olympic spending vs. the homeless “problem”. You know, Vancouvery shit. 2) What’s the current state of […]