Here’s a fun publicity shot for The Pastor Phelps Project – which is slated to run at the upcoming SummerWorks Theatre Festival in Toronto. It also takes the cake for longest photo credit line in the history of theatre. Ever: “Photo credits: Carey Wass as Fred Phelps, production design/makeup by Matt Jackson, hair by Robyn […]
Author: Ian Mackenzie
The Pastor Phelps Project
Sex and the Saudi
Publicity shot from the upcoming SummerWorks show, Sex and the Saudi. How is this show not going to be awesome?
The definitive, abiding, iconic image of theatre
Useless theatre fact of the day
Using google’s image search functionality, you get approximately 44,700,000 image results for “theatre”. This is the first one:And this is the last one:Try it yourself. Click here (with “Moderate SafeSearch” enabled). Results may vary by geographic location. Do you agree with google? Are the drama masks really theatre’s most significant image? If not, then what […]
What the hell does Michael Rubenfeld think he’s doing with SummerWorks?
If you’re in theatre in Toronto, you’ve probably seen the SummerWorks Theatre Festival promo video, and are following the heated comments thread that’s followed. So what do you think? Harmless irony or dangerous distraction?
What theatre can learn from spaghetti sauce
“Theatre does not exist on a hierarchy. Theatre exists, just like tomato sauce, on a horizontal plane. There is no good theatre, or bad theatre. There is no perfect theatre, or imperfect theatre. There are only different kinds of theatre that suit different kinds of people.” This is 18 minutes of your day you’ll be […]
Actors’ unions
Some advice for new theatre artists from Grinder of Grinder’s Grumblings: “The CAEA is not your ticket to stardom – in fact you’ll be slamming the door shut on just the sort of places that would be happy to have you and where you can un-learn all the pretentious, holier-than-thou attitudes you picked up when […]
Hamlet – Just do it
Corporate sponsorship. In-theatre advertising. Naming rights. How far would you go to get funding for your next show? And how much of your artistic direction would you yield to the corporate dictators in exchange for that production budget you’ve always dreamed of? Have advertisers finally gone too far and sunk their yellowing fangs into theatre’s […]
Theatre questions for theatre people
Questions about theatre. There are so many. And over the course of this blog’s “10 questions” interview series, we’ve asked a bunch (720 to be exact, including repeats) to 72 of the world’s great theatre makers. That’s not nothing – but we can’t shake a nagging feeling that we’re missing something. What questions haven’t we […]
How to build an audience base
What’s the better way to build an emerging theatre city’s audience base: by showing them local productions about local issues or by showing them “great”, time-tested plays with universal themes? Vancouver-based playwright Simon Ogden asks the question today at his The Next Stage theatre blog: “Would they prefer to see plays set in other cities […]
Factory girls
Dancers Amy Hampton and Keiko Ninomiya go palms up outside Toronto’s Factory Theatre after their show Love, So Says . . . Love is slated to go to Japan in January. Spotted any hot theatre talent out and aboutin your neighbourhood?Send us your starstruck theatre photos:celebrity@praxistheatre.com
10 questions: Michelle Ramsay
Photo by Kelly Clipperton. 1) What the fuck is going on?Right now, I am in Australia coming off the Honouring Theatre tour with Native Earth Performing Arts. We were in Rotorua and Manukau, New Zealand as well as Perth, Australia. It’s a rough life. 2) What does it mean to you to win this year’s […]
The shame of the arts administrator
Adam Thurman on artists versus administrators: “It seems like the current trend in the theatre world is to make that term ‘arts administrator’ a dirty phrase. To some artists we are the keepers of the wealth, gaining salaries and health benefits at their expense. We are the people that build the bloated institutions that produce […]
Fringe festival volunteer
2008 Toronto Fringe Festival volunteers. Thank you. Spotted any hot theatre talent out and aboutin your neighbourhood?Send us your starstruck theatre photos:celebrity@praxistheatre.com