Committing Suicide in Toronto

THIS BLOG

2005-11-23T13:07:00.000-08:00

This blog is a description of a couple runs of the show A Suicide-Site Guide to the City. It's no longer active. For more information about my work and to see what I'm up to these days please check www.mammalian.ca
though that needs updating too. better yet, send me an email: darren@mammalian.ca, and i'll tell you.

Thanks,
Darren

Final Show

2005-03-22T05:44:00.000-08:00

Things continued to go well through the final show. it was exciting to watch my familiarity and control grow. i've been playing this computer game recently called Marble Blast - you simply control the direction and speed of a marble, navigating it through these obstacle courses, picking up different abilities and tools. i love watching my skills develop - it completely defies my rational mind. i can try to explain how i'm figuring out what i'm doing to get better at it but that always trails my physical understanding - i can tell you what i think i'm doing but until you find it in your body you won't be able to simply apply what i'm telling you. but, what is exciting for me, is the body's incredible quick adaptation to new challenges/problems. by the end of the run of the show, i had such exciting control and space with and within the text that was coming out of my mouth. this is only the second show i've done where i've clocked over 40 performances and the difference that makes is startling. i didn't really notice the growth in control with In On It - and by the end, i was taking it for granted. with Suicide-Site i was able to watch it develop. What seems to happen it that i begin to experience time expanding so that i have so much more of it to make corrections, to contemplate what's coming next, to notice what my body is doing and to remain responsive to the audience. Time seems to slow down - by the end there would be times when i would do the first breathing into the microphone and in my head, my thoughts would go off to so many different places for what seemed like so long.

saturday march 19

2005-03-20T04:37:00.000-08:00

three great shows in a row. took a bunch of notes from rebecca on thursday and have made them work. the general note was that i was loading everything i thought was significant with all these ridiculous pauses. it's weird how easy it was to drift toward that. how i tried to communicate significant by taking all this time - it was becoming too arch - i was telling the audience what was important rather than letting them come to the conclusion themselves. i think it had the potential to be patronizing. the talkbacks are getting better and better, too. there's still the occassional process question - which i do like and am happy to talk about but we're moving more into discussing the role of theater, the state of theater and the relationship between art and activism.

last night was particularly good. audri zhina mandiela from bcurrent was there. we talked about the term cultural worker vs. the term artist. my point was that, in response to the tendency for artists to forget that they are actually working very hard and the tendency they have to consider themselves priveleged, i think it's important to recognize that we are workers slogging away in less than ideal conditions. not because i'm saying poor me, i work so hard, please give me more grants but, rather, as a way of reconnecting the artist with the rest of the working world. i'm looking for some humility in the artist, some recognition that simply labourers - this becoming especially relevant as the economy continues to move toward information and immaterial labour. audri, and i may be getting her point wrong, was reluctant to accept this, wanting to still be called an artist because she found the whole sitution objectionable - that capital would be wanting us to blindly consider ourselves in a seperate class, that so many of us imagine that we will one day be artstars, that we will rich and famous. i understand her distaste for the situation but wonder what good trying to fight against it is - i would prefer to acknowledge the reality of this and then, strategically, respond. i think that adopting the term cultural worker, rather than capitulating to the situation, creates a barrier for those artstar wannabes, a group who will be incapable of uttering the term without a dash of irony. it's a screen that will keep those people out. so that those of us who agree that we're simply workers, doing a job - a job that, for the most part, yields immense profits for other people. and that we've got to figure out how to reconnect our work with other worker Bs. as a way to reestablish social relevance for our work, make some rent money and, mostly importantly, engage politically.

thursday march 17

2005-03-18T04:49:00.001-08:00

had a heated discussion in the Q&A with an audience member. she was particularly troubled by my cynicism about theater. here's the email i wrote her this morning. comments would be appreciated.

i think it's really important for theater practitioners to start reconnecting with other media - mostly visual art, video, performance art, film and relational work. (check nicholas bourriaud's book Relational Aesthetics). So when i encourage young theater makers to skip theater for a while and immerse themselves in these other fields, it's not because i'm trying to punish theater but because i desperately want it to get better. diversifying our gene pool is one of my top priorities and, for me, that means spending what little time i have for art consumption taking-in anything other than theater. i believe this is a responsible act - that it's carefully considered to achieve an impact, that's it a vision rooted in a consideration of a long-term strategy. like i said last night - i only see one or two of my theater peers at film, video and visual art events - i don't even see them at performance art events.

when that mysterious question of attracting audience comes up, people often talk about how difficult the struggle is to win people away from the big musical production and from mainstream film. but we're focusing on the wrong people. there are a whole bunch of people who are interested in being challenged, who are interested in contemporary art, who spend money on experimental film, video and performance. there are tons of these people but, it's been my experience that they're giving theater a pass. i believe we can win them back by revitalizing the form by taking a look and where the disconnect is. when you talk about the importance of the canon as a guide to continue to keep us on track, i think of video art - a form that has a history that only stretches back a few decades - yet video artists are somehow managing to create some of the most vibrant work (benny nemerofsky, david hoffos, mee soo lee). there is no canon for these guys - there may the whole of art history - and taking a look at that would probably benefit but i think the importance placed on "classical training" like we see in theater is a mistake.

the other thing i wanted to respond to was your shocking (to me) statement that our lives are boring and lacking drama. i felt that you missed one important thematic of my show. i mean, i just stood there and rambled on about my disaffection, the only drama that really happened in a traditional sense was that i fantasized about putting my hand in some girl's pants and tried to shock an air marshall with my stupid little anarchy magazine. but people find the show compelling - why? is there drama? i think so - and i locate the conflict and drama between me and the audience and between the audience and the material. when we do our Q&A events, a room full of people ask the most banal questions of the most ordinary people and, believe it or not, most people find it totally compelling. because, i think, they are being ask to actually engage with what's happening. i don't know about you but, for me, our discussion after the show last night was far more thrilling and dramatic than my stupid performance - and you looked more affected by it- i certainly was. if given the choice between sitting silently in the dark, watching some actor/character freaking out about some contrived conflict and being an active participant in some small discussion about the small details of someone's life, for me, there's no contest. i would rather be a participant than an observer any day of the week. after talking to you last night, i was talking to david rhymer, the composer of one yellow rabbit's dream machine. he had been in calgary and had seen our Diplomatic Immunities (for an account of our time in calgary: http://www.diplomaticimmunities.blogspot.com/). and he said (without any prompting on my part) that it was remarkable how compelling the minutiae of ordinary people's lives was.

for me it's comes down to a political or ideological stance - that all the "drama" we see in the typical show is false and, ultimately, unhealthy. i remember as a younger person lamenting the fact that, as opposed to all the crazy fun that seemed to be happening on the television and film dramas i was watching, that 'nothing ever happened in my life', that it was boring. i think this profound dissatisfaction that so many people feel, a dissatisfaction that is most commonly filled with so many mindless activities, with consumption of food, tv, films etc - i think this dissatisfaction is being intentionally generated in order to create a docile citizenry who, like you, believe our lives are boring, lack drama, and who feel the need to find drama, contact, thrills etc by gorging themselves on a kind of entertainment that only reinforces the consumption cycle, that only continues to make us feel our lives are boring and without drama. so i strongly disagree with you - our lives are filled with drama and beauty - even the most everyday encounters are filled with poignancy, humour, generosity, conflict. i mean, there i am, sitting trapped on airplanes - articulated between the air marshall who represents the very real potential of an incoming totalitarianism and a young muslim girl - a girl i have some power over as she sits sleeping in the seat i've given her, a girl who represents the power differntial between man/woman, white/of colour, 1st world/third world. the drama of my position is, for me, heartbreaking - i don't want to be this person in this place, stuck between these two people. and, my situation is ultimately tragic: all i do is fantasize about touching her and try to frighten him in the most pathetic impotent way. what the hell else can i do? total everyday nothingness - yet brimming with such small and (for me) heartbreaking drama. these kinds of moments and situations are scattered throughout my - and everybody's - life. it's important that we reconnect with the tremendous dramatic potential of our own lives and stop being tricked into believing that nothing is happening to us. history is happening to us, even in the most banal interactions. we need to reconnect with this and find some rage at the what we're being asked to perform because, i don't know about you, but this place is killing me.

HER RESPONSE: I think that you misconstrue my position when you say
that I think that our lives are boring and lacking drama. I'm neither
bored nor wanting excitement in my life, but I don't know that I always
find watching representations of the "real" intricacies in others' lives
engaging. I'm referring here specifically to your comment last night
that you enjoy reality television because it offers such a view. I feel
totally the opposite. Reality television is anything but and provides a
truncated version of upwards of 100 hours of footage into a distilled
hour (at a "real" 42 minutes), filled with only staged conflicts and
heightened discord of daily behaviour, not the real life activities that
may be interesting to those actually participating but certainly
wouldn't qualify as engaging cultural air time. These wholly
constructed moments in a seemingly real world representational frame
collude the spectator into seeing these instances as real and dramatic.
I, on the other hand, find them to be false and misleading, staged and
phoney. If someone were to make a reality show of my life I cannot see
that they would find great interest in my dropping my son off at
nursery, doing the mommy shuffle while trying to get to work, engaging
with students, spending hours at the computer writing, organizing meals,
shopping for food, and, at some point, have some time for myself and my
family. Is there drama there? You bet! Is it engaging? To me, yes,
otherwise I wouldn't be doing it but I don't think it makes for
compelling viewing. Anyone with a child will tell you that the drama in
the everyday is some of the most magical that you can ever experience.
Beyond the milestones of first words and steps is the shared laughter,
the beauty in the completion of a meal, a smile, a game, the list goes
on and (thankfully) never ends. But would you want to see all of it -
the diapers, the temper tantrums, the snotty noses, those fucking snow
pants (they'll kill me, I swear!)? Obviously there is a contingency in
our culture that would. I can't say whether this is because we have
been fed such a steady diet of consumer voyeurism that makes us all
peeping toms from the time we enter discourse (as the post-Lacanians
would have us believe) or because, as you suggest, people are so
profoundly dissatisfied in their own lives that we have become a docile
citizenry. I can tell you, however, that I in no way feel a shared
affinity with this group, nor do I feel a profound dissatisfaction in my
own life that requires me to satiate my desires with garbage
entertainment formed to numb my experience and live vicariously through
blatantly staged "real" representational encounters. But perhaps you
are forgetting that not all art, theatre in particular, conforms to this
dangerous description. But how would you know if you don't go?

Your concept for a play (perhaps the wrong term here as I think
syntactically it can inherently imply an authorial/written text) or
theatrical event, on the other hand, in which people are randomly
selected to come on stage and be interviewed about their lives sounds
fascinating and yes, I would be interested in watching that. Why?
Because there is a performative instability in which the real becomes a
narrative that solicits viewer response and engagement (which I agree is
what happened last night after the show and was far more compelling than
performance proper - no offence). My guess, however, is that the nature
of these performances may be short lived, or they will have to
constantly be reinvented and articulated because eventually those that
will be doing the interviewing will fall into regulative patterns that
will become rehearsed through the public performance of doing the
interviewing, as they will have to work against eliciting similar
questions/histories, evoking particular responses, highlighting specific
episodes, etc.

I think that our positions are, in fact, closer than they outwardly
appear. I think we share a desire to examine the partitions within arts
that localize performance and in the ability for art, particularly
theatre, to transcend the social code which regulates performativity and
designates only certain things as performance (as for example in the
work of Case, Brett and Foster, Phelan and Butler - among so many
others). Where I think we differ is in our opinions on the importance
of history in the context of said performances. I found it so
surprising last night that you would denounce history and theatre from
previous eras as unimportant to the creation of contemporary art. I am
hardly staging some strategy to uphold the canon (in fact most of my
work concentrates on the dangers of such institutionalization) but to me
the argument was totally fallacious, particularly as you were in the
process of describing two new projects which have distinct references to
those that have been done in recent history (the collective
interview/investigation/qualitative process of getting to know a subject
to ultimately have them become a character in a play sounds an awful lot
like the Farm Show; and, as I mentioned last night, Bill T. Jones/Arnie
Zane Dance Company have used the interview process in their dance work).
Moreover, your assertion that theatre need to find a way to touch its
audience in a way in which the conflict becomes a part of the reception
experience for the viewing subject reminds me of Artaud's manifesto on
the theatre of cruelty. Clearly, the past continues to inform the
present, sometimes whether we are cognizant of it or not. I think that
it behoves us to understand (and in many cases unearth, re-evaluate,
investigate, and more often than not deconstruct) the past in light of
our present social condition in order to both understand and
rearticulate our contemporary cultural terrain.

MY RESPONSE: you did say "our" lives are boring and lack drama and it wasn't in the
context of our discussion about reality tv. it was when we were in the
aisle as you were leaving and we were talking about the priests in the
dance piece. i responded that i found the contrived drama of Hamlet to
be boring. but, okay, fine, your life is not boring and has drama in
it. like i said last night, reality, tv as a form, has some potential
as entertainment - and it's one of my guilty pleasures - but, i agree
with all you say about it. but i wasn't arguing in defense of reality
tv. i don't give much of a shit about reality tv one way or the other.

but i'm not just talking about garbage entertainment when i talk about
the bad effects of classical narrative strategies. and, believe me,
i've seen enough theater over the years to know how i feel about it.
and enough film and tv to feel the same way about most of that stuff.
and it's not that it's so horrible but, rather, there just so few other
options - so few people making work in show biz that induces actual
encounters between people. i want more of that.

as far as history. like i said last night, sure study it all you like
but when shakespeare remains a gold standard and actors - the people
who are, for the most part, responsible for creation - are still
classically trained with little reference to philosophical and
aesthetic advancements that are happening in other fields, then you
shouldn't be surprised that theater is losing its social relevancy,
that the kids aren't attending and that the papers have reduced their
coverage. i mean, try to find a magazine about theatre at Pages -
fugedaboudit! knowing what happened in the past is helpful, knowing
what's currently happening in other forms/fields is crucial. and most
standard theater training focuses too much on the former and not at all
on the latter.

HER RESPONSE: I don't actually think that we are disagreeing much anymore. In fact, I
think that we have similar opinions on many of these issues,
particularly the application of Aristotelian narrative structures to
most theatre, film and television. It's one of the things that saddens
me most about our contemporary stage, though I refuse to give up on it
because there are fissures in the monolith. As I said on Wednesday
night, there are things that I have seen this season that continue to
give me hope for the form for a variety of reasons. Many of the works
I've seen this year alone have played with narrative, language,
structure and representation in exciting and subversive ways (Bigger
Than Jesus, Trout Stanley, Dream Machine and your Pppeeeaaaccceee all
excited me for a variety of reasons, reminding me why it's so
fundamental to continue to go to the theatre).

The problem with the dominance of the Aristotelian model and the bowing
down to the Bard is not only a problem among actors (though I agree
that's a large part of it) but more so a problem with the current
university theatre system, which is organized around a very distinctive
theory/practice divide that encourages only theatre studies students to
engage with aesthetics, criticism and any kind of critical theory while
acting students focus primarily on voice, movement and the like.
Moreover, the steady diet of canon centred "classics" imbued with their
white, male and heteronormative trajectories encourage students to
continue to identify with these "universal" characters at the expense of
other voices which have historically been disenfranchised and othered
from the annals of history. Students are taught to reconstitute what
they learn in university in their work as practitioners - indeed they
are schooled that this will make them commercially viable as
practitioners - and the divisiveness in the pedagogical approach to
theatre that separates theory from practice, history from contemporary
playmaking, and "theatre" from performance are dangerous binaries that I
think are very much responsible for the reason that younger theatre
artists aren't deconstructing and combining different art forms in their
work.

MY RESPONSE: yeah, for sure about the problem in the universities. i don't know it from the academic side but from the actors' side their certainly needs to be a shift in focus, driven, to a large degree, by the fact that's largely the actors who are now creating theatre. and i do cut too broad a swath when i say all theatre history should be jettisoned - maybe i actually mean that we need MORE history, more detailed histories and histories that don't focus only on the classics but take a careful look at the last 50 years of theatre, other performance disciplines, visual art, critical theory etc etc.

tuesday 15 march

2005-03-16T05:25:00.000-08:00

really great show. super relaxed and enjoying myself. i'm really going to miss not doing this. it would be heartbreaking not to be able to tour it. this touring thing is proving to be the outstanding issue. we've got a lot going on the creative front, lots of activity and lots of interesting stuff that feels like it's taking us into new realms but since first starting to tour in 2001 with white mice we really haven't built much else. it's tough to get presenters out to check the work. it's crazy. american is 1/2 hr away but we've never had an american presenter see ANY of our stuff. i think we need to establish a fund to fly people here and put them up. it's a low priority now because our budgets are so tight - but they will always be tight - and, in any case, that's a short-sighted logic. if we spend some money now on a presenter it increases our changes of hooking stuff up in the future.

my own personal strategy is to begin putting more attention on international opportunities for my performance art career - focusing on projects that only require my presence and nothing additional - no set, no rehearsal. stuff like the talking creature. i think there are more opportunites there - and it's mostly in the visual art community at various performance art festivals. it's imperative that the reach of the work begins to extend beyond canada in a meaningful way. our only international gig has been the fringe festival - which barely counts - as it's a total pay-to-play trade show kind of deal. there are a few mysteries outstanding about this - like, for example, considering we were working with a UK producer and we got some ecstatic reviews from reputable UK press, why can't we hook up a london gig. i guess it must be hard - macivor hasn't even managed to get a gig there.

anyway, the getting out of canada question is an important one. and one that i feel needs some concerted focus.

the show is great, i love doing it, i love the talks with the audience afterwards - it really feels like we're finding a groove and some interesting possibilities for interacting with the audience in a respectful and meaningful way. we just need to be able to do it more often - to continue doing it.. that we won't be producing a new work again until at least 06-07 is depressing. suicide-site should be sustaining us throughout the next two years while we develop diplomatic immunities.

weekend of the 12th

2005-03-14T03:29:00.000-08:00

it was a really good weekend. good audiences. great demographic. i've said this before but it's so so good to be back performing at buddies. it's so obviously the place we belong. there's even occasionally a person of colour in the audience - something that was much more rare in our other venues.

the Q&As are going well. the audience seems to understand that it's okay to just sit in silence. and that it's more about us hanging around in the vibe that lingers after the show.

the kiss isn't really working that well here. it's more often silly and not particularly sweet or tender or whatever. maybe i have a distorted memory of it but it worked better in vancouver and victoria.

i was doing the bob wiseman song section the other day when i had a strong sense that we are making something that is open-ended, or that has attachement points for the audience and that the onus is on them to "finish" the show in their own lives.

the discussions about the role/power of culture and all that blah-bidddy-blah is interesting but i think we have to be careful not to predict a rosy future or anything like that. i think the only thing i would really hope comes out of the discussions is some sense that artists (in particular) should stop feeling so grateful for any opportunity they're given to show their stuff and, instead, feel annoyed at the fact they're being ripped off. again, it's about privilege and the misapplication of that word - how those of us in the 1st world have been sort of tricked into calling ourselves privileged no matter how much we're being scammed. and i know it's such a touchy subject - that inevitably some fool is going to want to invoke a false dichotomy and compare a first world artist to someone mining for diamonds at gun point somewhere in africa but - even so - i would like to recognize and acknowledge that, ultimately, my solidarity IS with the guy mining diamonds and not with the westons even if i do end up having drinks at the Spoke Club - like i did last week.

I end up in places like that - the Spoke Club - a private club in downtown toronto started by the Westons, because of my social capital - i know people who know people. i don't know what to say about it but the obvious: nice place. expensive drinks. i felt like a spy. but not even so much. i talked to the people who were there from Book TV - they told me that they were not allowed to take wide shots of the place - only closeups on people - because the management doesn't want anyone to know what the joint looks like. maybe, someone suggested, because it's not that interesting. it was like some middle-aged professional's apartment that you might see on an american tv show. only bigger. one of my friends stole a couple of soap dispensers. put them in her socks and walked out of the place looking like a cowboy.

thursday march 10

2005-03-11T08:52:00.000-08:00

we're finally attracting the audience i've been wanting to attract. Buddies in Bad Times feels like coming home. It's where i started making my own stuff and it's where the company belongs. i'm very happy to be there again. the audience feels smart and engaged. so much so that, i think, that proved to be a problem in the Q&A tonight. people were very quiet. they didn't ask process questions much but nor did they have much else to ask. i felt selfconscious about trying to trigger some discussions mostly because i felt that the show didn't go all that well. i was a little selfconscious. the show was fine, just a bit on autopilot. there was an Authortity Figure in the audience and that seemed to dampen my spirits. i felt that the AF's critical vibe was leaking out into the whole room. paranoia? maybe. but they say i'm very sensitive - or was it touchy?

three more interviews to go. two today. i'm enjoying them but they are a lot of work. my energy is good but i can feel that i'm just keeping a cold or flu at bay. jp is sick so i'm staying clear of him.

talked with theatre guy Jacob Zimmer about the whole argument around "economic worth" of art. i'm sort of torn about this question. i know many artists are uncomfortable with the tactic of fighting for arts funding on the basis of it's economic contributions and i feel like a bit of a rube arguing for that side in the show. but i think i'm trying to go for something a little different. i'm not saying - we good for the economy so fund us but, rather, we ARE an economy, we DO have power, HOW can we realize this power. But, i think, like the power of the classical worker, this power is only effective collectively and that, standing alone, we're weak. There's something wimpy in the "i create wealth therefore please give me a grant" stance. i wonder if there can be a "i create wealth therefore we're going to shaping the city/world in this direction." i know all this is sort of contingent on all the Creative Cities Rhetoric having some foundation. And there's debate about that.

what i'm interested in, first and foremost, is a recognition amongst cultural workers/artists that our situation is untenable. that we work for too little, for too long and that we contribute whether that contribution is economic or social. that we are not particularly "privileged" and that we should stop being grateful for the pay-play-opportunities that proliferate. We're being exploited - even if only by ourselves. How can we stop this process?

i wonder what michael jackson is thinking about right now.

wednesday march 9

2005-03-10T07:29:00.000-08:00

it was a good show. bunch of students from george brown made up about half of the 90 people in the audience. victor baines marshall from ckln's middle passage was there - his show is great. wednesday afternoons 7-5. lucas costello and melanie carew were also there.

i encourage kisses from the females and got 3 george brown students up and then suddenly felt like an old sleazy theatre creep. oh well. it wasn't tender at all, like it can be. but it certainly was entertaining.

the talk at the end of the show was really fantastic - it started with process questions - which is fine - and then quickly veered into content. there was a guy who had been interrogated recently by security at pearson airport because he "sold cookies" for an antiwar organization in the US while attending school in San Fran. he said that the FBI knew an awful lot about him. most of the talk was about art and agency - whether or not art can actually get anything done. melanie said she was tempted to turn the whole thing into a town hall and call for suggestions as to what we can do - which would have been great - but didn't want to comandeer the whole thing. i wonder what that would have been like. my fear would be that we'd sort of drift into superficial kinds of solutions. one of the sad facts of doing the show is the uniformity of the audience - it's mostly other white artsty types - no surprise but, as much as the show wants to get dialogue going, the experience in the room is pretty limited. and i'm inlcuding myself in this. when it comes to sitting around making plans of action, i think that myself and the people who come to see the show - if we're really serious about action - would be best served by joining any number of groups already out there doing stuff. but, as always, the problem is that activism is only interesting and creative when you can invest a lot of time into it - going to demos and shit is okay but to actually feel you are involved, have a stake and are getting something done, you really have to immerse yourself. it's been my experience with organizations like OCAP is that since they're so busy and working so fast, it's hard to fold oneself in on a casual basis. there really is no middle ground - either you're in full-time and fully engaged with serious day to day case work and organizing or your sort of lingering in the periphery, feeling semi-useless and holding a sign at a demo. and that's no fault of the organizations - it's a fact of any serious work.

i'm curious about whether or not a group of art-types might be able to organize something to coincide with ARTSWEEK in september. something that questions the role of art in the city, that comes up with a list of demands/proposals and presents them to the city. that tries to engage with the political process. i think an ARTSTRIKE or, at least a picket during artsweek would be an interesting way to communicate some of this stuff. for me i would be looking to communicate the idea that artists are first and foremost workers and workers interested improving our lives and shaping our city to improve the lives of others who can find the place inhospitable. as rebecca picherack, the director, always says, anything we do would have to be connected with a wider movement. it seems to me, that we should take direction and guidance from our friends who are on the front lines of activism work. maybe have a conference during artsweek where full-time activist types come to speak to some full-time artist types.

anyway, the conversation was the best yet last night.

tuesday march 8

2005-03-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

decent enough show. for a tuesday night after a day off.

got into a discussion during the Q&A about the concept of privilege. it's a funny term - one that, not so long ago, most people would have denied being but now it's considered progressive to fully admit and accept ones particular privilege. it's such a relative term but it's being used so absolutely. for some good reasons people, particularly 1st world white people - or, for that matter, first world people of all races - have had to do serious work around their privilege. and this is obviously a good thing. it's one of the many good things that came out of all the identity politic struggles in the 80s and 90s. but i think the term has gotten a bit overdetermined and has calcified. to consider oneself "priviledged" is, in some ways, a way of confessing one's shared interests with the ruling class. i think it's important to distinguish between "privileged" in relation to the 4.7 billion people in the world who live in abject poverty and "privileged" in a more general sense. i think in the most significant ways, while still a white male 1st worlder, i have more in common with the worlds 4.7 than i do with the millionares and billionares. many of who do immaterial labour - or infolabour, or cultural labour - get paid very little, work all the time, and fear that the rent won't get paid, that the root canal is going to break us. i haven't bought any new clothing in probably 3 years. some might say that this is a "choice" i make, that i could get a job writing ad copy for some ad firm, but is that really a choice: a stupid boring shit-ass job with pay or creative autonomy and no pay. either one sucks. at this point, once it's acknowledged that the 1st world situation is one of relative privilege, that as a white male, the world is greased for me in a way that it isn't for most, i think it's crucial to then recognize that, for the most part, my labour is being exploited too, i generate tons of surplus value with my work and see none of it. that the social relations i am ask to be complicit in are stupid and, rather than fortify my life, they make my life worse. spivak talks about the white male subject as, in some ways, actually a place of poverty - the privilege we're accorded, simply means that there is so much of the world to experience that we have no access to. this is a poverty of sorts. one that is dialectically related to the monetary poverty of much of the world. i think it's crucial to accept a particular shade of priviledge and then realize that we - even swm - are being ripped off by this stupid place, that our lives our poor and than we have to figure out how to work in solidarity with everyone else to wrest control away from.... you know who.

artists will say they are privileged because they get to jump around and have fun, forgetting, for some reason, that what they are doing is hard work. i think about ARTSWEEK in toronto, how i get so many requests to perform for free, that it's so often the case that the artist will feel grateful for the opportunity to get onstage and perform without getting any compensation. what is that? if the economy is so fortified by culture then we must have some power, and if we have some power, what are we going to do with that power. how can we make our world a more pleasurable place. for everybody.

after a few days

2005-03-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

have had four shows. it's getting better and better. i'm becoming more and more relaxed. funny things are happening. i talk about throwing a brick through a bank window and met a photographer who took a photo of the smashed window back in 1996. it was one of her first works that she sold - to adbuster. we're going to try to track it down.

i don't know. not much to say. the Q&As are getting better. have figure out a few questions to ask the audience so that we can shift the discussion to a more politcal terrain instead of always talking about the process of the show. i was worried that people wouldn't be interested but they were actually more interested, it seemed. even the ryerson theater students want to jump in. i asked if people considered themselves to be cultural workers, and whether people thought they were privileged. we spent most of the time defining privilege and whether it was always the case that an artist - because they get to prance around on stage in tights or whatever - is always a person with a privileged lifestyle.

i've been talking with stef lenk on her blog about some ideas in the show. sort have been getting on her (and some anonymouse scaredy cat's) nerves i think:
http://worldwearysynapse.blogspot.com

also you can read jp - the lightening designer and operator's blog. he actually blogs during the show while he's standing onstage. he also posts pictures of the audience:
http://troismarteaux.blogspot.com/

i'll figure out how to get those into hyperlinks at somepoint. i used to know.

opening

2005-03-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

we opened last night. it went well enough. all the tech happened when it was supposed to and most of my lines were said in the right order. the new part proved to be a white knuckle experience. half way through the show i thought about how happy i would be when this night was over - when i could just start to play the show and relax

the kiss went really well. beautiful man named soheil who was very generously with his tongue.

stupid idiots

2004-08-30T14:35:00.000-07:00

we are stupid idiots. we finally - on the second last night of the festival - made it to the speigaltent and found that - more than anywhere else - it was our kind of scene. very friendly, flirty, dancing, late night food. we had received bad intelligence about it from one of our uk operatives who sort of characterized it as a place where people got "dressed up". so i imagined a kind of high-end event when really he was just noting that people had a little style. it was the most overtly hip place i encountered. it would have been good to check it out earlier - we might have made some friends and even got a little action. naomi's already talking about making sure we find a flat on that side of the town when we come back. (hahaha)

oh well, you can only access the knowledge yielded by making a mistake by making the mistake.

there's been some speculation that all the late night stuff suffered this year because of this speigaltent which has only been around for 2 years, is capturing the attention of the folks who want to hang out at night. combined with that is the possibility that the happening venues of the past - the assembly rooms, and the traverse - are falling a little out of fashion and that there are other more hip and happening spots like the gilded balloon which are managing to combine the various elements - theater, comedy, music and partying. they're able to generate scenes much better and create a buzz around the actual building.

if we were to return we may be better served by another venue. but, whatever, detailed theorizing about the festival is next to pointless. at least with the amount i know about the place.

one more show tonight. we're staying up all the night - at least that's the plan. and leaving really early. home by tuesday afternoon. i hope there are a few days of toronto summer left. the weather here has been so terrible.

sick

2004-08-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

i have a cold. achey. stuffed up. rosina is here. i think i heard her and nick doing it.

dinner

2004-08-28T03:23:00.000-07:00

tonight nick supplied a turnip and some halibut. me some veggies, chinese broccilli (sp?), jp some cheese and bread and trifle, naomi rolled the hash and megan is dealing with the dishes.

totalitarianism

2004-08-27T06:12:00.000-07:00

this place feels totalitarian in that almost no conversation or thought escapes the festival. i've never experienced this so acutely for so long.

lost and found

2004-08-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

a couple on the street seemed to drop somehting. a little package. i picked it up. it looked like it might contain tobacco or something. i opened it. wrapped inside the plastic was a used menstral pad.

another m@b moment.

dinner

2004-08-27T03:10:00.000-07:00

so today i made what my mom calls 'lazy cabbage rolls'. which is the rice-based filling and the sauce and chopped up cabbage mixed in with it, instead of wrapped around it. and then i made some mushroom, dill, miso gravy. i didn't have any flour for the gravy so i used this very fine oatmeal that i bought. it worked well. not sure about tomorrow's meal.

Another Good Review

2004-08-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.threeweeks.co.uk/edaily/edaily_latest.asp scroll almost to the bottom of the page. taking a look at this site will give you an idea of what we're dealing with here - the massive amount of stuff happening.

A Suicide-Site Guide to the City

Mammalian Diving Reflex

I have become a connoisseur of a very particular character trait this Festival. It's a 'realness' trait. I need to know that people (not just performers) 'mean' it, Man! And Darren O'Donnell does. Darren is a strange fruit, his show is a (Molotov) cocktail - 1 part anarchy, 2 parts love, 1 part suicidal tendencies and a dash of talking street cars. It's a beautiful performance both controversial and clever. Home video and soundscapes weave us into his kaleidoscopic world where he searches desperately for the link between himself today and his past self and for any beauty in an increasingly inhibited and suffocating world, ultimately looking for a reason to stay alive. He is searching for a heart of gold, I just hope he finds one to match his own.

useful metaphor

2004-08-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

so i've changed my attitude toward this trip by adopting a metaphor to view this through. the apartment is a space ship, we're orbitting a terrible planet filled with dangerous and tedious people, smokey semi-toxic atmosphere. we're here to meet operatives from other planets so we must occassional head out to look for these people. looking for them involves doing the show, broadcasting our message to the few on this planet able/interested in listening. there are ups and downs like any exploratory work - most of the time is spent waiting for a useful discovery. sitting in the space ship all day, working on other stuff, going down to the holodeck (the community center a few blocks away) for a swim. and then for two hours a night we venture out and set-up our broadcast station, do a quick broadcast and hurry back to the safety of the space ship. for the past two days i've made large meals for the crew to eat at 3AM once we get back from the planet's surface - to celebrate that we've survived another foray. our mission will be complete next tuesday when we return to planet toronto.

artistic director's log
21:04 PM, Aug 25, 2004

the flex

2004-08-25T04:51:00.000-07:00

so this is the flex:
get up at 12,
eat
work
swim
make lunch
do preprep for dinner
do show
come home and feed the crew.

for some reason, making the 3am meal for everybody has provided a meaning to my life here as we orbit edinburough.

i've made: potatoe salad with tuna on a bed of arugula
a carrot, coriander, mushroom, eggplant, onion omlete on a bed of rice.

not sure what i'll do tomorrow. rebecca, if you read this, can you give me your lasagna recipe.

thanks.

it's impossible

2004-08-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

to have a discussion about anything other than the festival. it's pretty incredible. every social interaction is always framed by the festival. nick went out with will, the straight no chaser guy, and he said that they had the same conversation we've been having since we got here. it really is next to impossible to break out of it and talk about other stuff. the festival is all there is right now and its weight pulls everything down with it.

or maybe a different metaphor: the festival is so big and all-encompassing, so powerful, it manages to shape everything, it conditions all social encounters, framing them and harnessing them. this is why socializing is so hard - everybody is so deeply connected in particular configurations of energy that to break out proves very difficult. you can go with the flow and talk, yet again, about your show, your venue, the time slot, the audience, the rest of the fest etc but it allows for so little else. there doesn't seem to be another level of interaction happening here, of circuits of discourse to tap into that address a variety of 'whys'. the only other sort of organized interactions have been brunches where producers meet presenters. there arent' any panel discussions, or artist talks or any thing like that.

i'm giving up on it and settling down to work on pppeeeaaaccceee which we start rehearsing on the 6th.

Hard Times

2004-08-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

it's really tough here. i've always hated festivals, parades, massive gatherings of people. i always feel alone. this experience is pushing further toward reevaluating why it is i'm doing the theatre thing. i really don't like it, don't like the culture, don't like the experience of watching it. there's something wrong with my approach, maybe, have a hard time hooking up on the social front. so few people here to hook up with yet thousands of people here. i've had the same conversation about 100 times. the one about "how's your show going". i went to see a decent show yesterday but halfway through - and it was only an hour - i was feeling, again, that i simply don't enjoy the experience of being an audience member. performing i still don't mind. but even that's getting tough - this chunk of memorized shit that flows out of my mouth while i take great pains to make it sound like it's all just occuring to me. ridiculous. i'm scared to quit theatre, though. how would i make money? i don't have the imaginative capacity to picture andything else. and that's really depressing. i've been doing this so long and mammalian diving reflex has built a decent reputation, we're starting to accumulate more consistent funding but, more and more, i really feel like i need out. wondering if i should just plug my nose and dive into the unknown.

theatre and theatre making itself is not so much the problem but the culture around it, i think, that i don't enjoy. and, maybe the same can be said of all art making. the various reasons people make art are, i think, suspect and that, at bottom, there's mostly a selfish desire for power. the story that artists tell themselves about what they might be otherwise doing: changing consciousness, attempting to create new ways of seeeing, thinking, new forms, commenting on and critiquing the world, holding a mirror up etc, etc, i don't think i believe it anymore. it's mostly about power, reading hardt and negri talking about foucault's biopower and thinking about the so totally evil power that trendiness or hipness exerts over most artists lives.

being here and attending brunches with presenters and other artists where the desire to connect and be picked up is competely open and exposed. we're business people here to ink a deal. i'm reading michael alberts 'parencon' right now. very very clear book on the shortcomings of market-based economies.

i feel like i - and most other artists i know - are wasting our time with artmaking, that art is caught up in circuits and systems that keep our energy locked down and focused on individualist concerns, trivial concerns, fashionable concerns. i imagine a class of active intelligent people who would, if not distracted by the pursuit of a successful art career, would soon grow very weary and angry with current opportunities and configurations. a lot of really smart vibrant people are ignoring the poverty of their situation because, for the time being, their poverty is ennobled by the idea of being art makers. it's starting to feel like a bit of a scam. was talking to fedora and she registered feeling an incredulity while at a recent spin opening - all these people are happy to work for nothing in order to throw their shit up on a gallery wall once in a while, to occupy a momentary place in the imaginations of a few people. what is all this activity creating? why is all that energy being tapped and locked onto the walls of these galleries, or on the stages of edinburgh. the big joke here, like everywhere else, is that there are a few people making a killing and the rest of us are losing money. very strange that we would consent to this. of course we consent to this this because we all enter the arrangement with the hope - delusional or otherwise - that we will be one of the winners. this, of course, is how the whole freaking world works. just out of curiousity, don't you think it's time to stop this? fedora brought up the idea of 'art strike' - something that has been explored. but solidarity among artists is such a fantastic notion. preposterous.

if anyone has any ideas as to what i can do with my life, please email me in person. i really need help right now. thanks. darren@mammalian.ca

it's raining again

2004-08-23T13:13:00.000-07:00

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Bad Show

2004-08-23T01:19:00.000-07:00

show was going well and then nick was having some problems, tried to fix it and crashed his system right at the climax of the the show so we had to stop and i had to keep the audience entertained while he got it up and running. it was pure humiliation. killed the mood for the night. i had actually thought i would attempt to be social but felt like shit after that so i didn't bother.

Bad Dreams

2004-08-23T00:15:00.000-07:00

had a lot of bad dreams last night and this morning. the worst was being back in toronto and having to write a couple of exams. i'm always writing fucking exams in my dreams. and i'm flipping out. screaming. i ended up in a pharmacy in a rage, knocking shit off the shelves, knocking people down. there was a woman standing in front of the window and i leapt into the air and landed on her with my feet, both of us crashing through the window. then cop cars started to arrive and i flew into the air, crying and repeating over and over "i need help, i need help" and thinking that i need to see a shrink.

also dreams of missing people.

i had a

2004-08-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

dream in which i was about to do the show, i was hanging outside the theatre and i saw maura doyle (friend in toronto) with a friend. i went up to them, they were holding glasses of wine and were standing outside a gallery. i said - oh my god, i miss you! the guy said - well, join us. and i said, i can't i have to do a show. and then i went into the theatre to do the show.

remembered

2004-08-21T16:43:00.000-07:00

just how much i hate parades crowds festivals theatre; artcommerce in general.

wish i could have a conversation with someone not in the context of this stupid festival. thoroughly saturated by the current social configurations. hard to meet people here for me. no suitable forums. no one to introduce me to anyone not involved in this shitfactory. i am who i am and who i'm with. when cut off from lots of the people i ordinary hang with my consciousness feels like it shrinks until the only thoughts in my head relate to finding food.

i'm going to go to the flat and sandwich my head between two pillows.

kill me

2004-08-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

or

2004-08-21T03:22:00.000-07:00

maybe i'll keep doing this. thinking about openness and blah-de-blah and getting used to public forums where there is no control of other people. it's an intersting, exciting and annoying challenge.

times here are hard right now and that's informing my attitude. it's sad to see us bleeding money like we are - though, as everyone reminds me, almost everybody loses money at the fringe. menno said that, more and more, he feels that a better strategy would be to do a show in glascow where there would be no competition for an audience and the presenters would still come to check it out because that's where the airport is.

i need some alone time. like some real privacy where there is nobody to report to. ten more days.

we're doing the talking creature this afternoon.

the end

2004-08-20T02:38:00.000-07:00

so this blog thing is getting me down. i've potentially offended/hurt matt b, a guy i barely know. this has depressed me for the past couple of days and made me allergic to this stupid blog. i am able to keep track of the stupid shit i say but the potentially incriminating stupid shit that slips out of my friend's keyboards is not something i'm used to having to deal with. so. the end. i'm going to leave this alone. there's nothing interesting happening here anyway. for a thorough account of what's happening here check out jp's blog - the link is in the link section on this page. he's actually managing to blog while we're onstage. you decide whether you think that's a good thing or not. i have my own opinions but since i'm done with this i'll just be keeping them to myself.

for direct contact: darren@mammalian.ca

banalities

2004-08-20T02:33:00.000-07:00

great reviews. friday night. expected house. 3 people showed. what the fuck? how can great reviews and the weekend translate into a declining house. we don't know. this theatre thing is whack. have i mentioned this?

Another Good Review

2004-08-19T14:07:00.000-07:00

from The Stage: http://www.thestage.co.uk/edinburgh/reviews/review.php/3743

A Suicide-Site Guide to the City

Wow. Darren O’Donnell has created a beautifully written, wonderfully inventive abstract show that challenges some of the basic concepts of theatre. A Suicide-Site Guide to the City is an amazing experience.

As narrator, O’Donnell throws a spotlight on the barriers existing between the writer and the performer. The piece is made up of a number of different, dated writings spread over the past three or four years - each describing a different experience or situation - that are cut up and jumbled together so that time switches forwards and backwards. O’Donnell recites in the present tense words that are self-conscious of being written in the past. The effect is disconcerting to say the least.

Then with musician Nick Murray and lighting designer John Patrick Robichaud, he builds on this by utilising the effects available to a performer working on stage rather than on screen. His understanding of the boundaries or limitlessness of theatre is dazzling.

With no real beginning, middle or end, the stream of consciousness still takes the audience on a journey by challenging the way art conceives the world. It is an awesome piece of work.

Jeremy Austin

Blogging

2004-08-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

so, this blogging thing. it's interesting. not something i think i will keep doing whenn i'm back in toronto. it's been a good way to keep people in my head while away - to keep an idea of me as a member of a particular community of people. with my other writing there's always the assumption that i'm addressing "everyone" - while on the blog there had been initially the idea that it was a small circle of the friends who i had sent an initial email to and people who might surf the mammalian website. but i've had posts from some people who i never expected to read it - the dude from stage.com was the first suprise. and then recently i posted a genuine tribute to m@b when i realized that i had had a m@b moment. well, my friend, rp, blew my cover as a former m@b disliker which m@b then saw. that was depressing and embarrassing. anyway, now i have to assume that everyone is listening but without the luxury i usullly afford myself of editing what i write. and now that other people are free to participate it begins to involve a more complex ethical attitude toward even the everyday - if anyone at any time can blow your cover and reveal things about you, you have to keep yourself very clean on a day-to-day.

How Not to Flyer

2004-08-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

stoned

banalities

2004-08-19T03:33:00.000-07:00

show good. house small. tech problems. fixed them. cut finger. bowed. drank beer. talked. smoked. talked. drank rum. walked. talked.

bad show

2004-08-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

we saw a terrible show. i can't remember what it was. it went on forever and seemed about to end about 800 times. it was fun, though, to sit there with nick who has seen only, like, six shows in his life - 3 of which he worked on. after it was finished he said: i can't believe that hour of my life is gone forever.

actually, that would make a great m@b strip. (comic in eye magazine)

first panel
image: me sitting in a theatre with nick, text:nick and i went to see a terrible play.
second panel
image: me sitting in a theatre with nick. text: no text.
third panel
image: me standing with nick, nick is looking down toward his hand. text: when it was over nick looked at his ticket stub and said: i can't believe that hour of my life is gone forever.

drunk girls

2004-08-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

walking home last night at 3am. we came across a bunch of guys, like 6 or so, and two very drunk girls. like VERY drunk. one was barely conscious. the scene looked really sketchy. the one really floppy one reminded me a little of Y when she was almost killed by hypohydration when she was on E. so we stopped to make sure it was just booze and the guys were really keen on assuring us that everything was okay. at one point two of them, while eagerly assuring us that everything was okay and that we should move on, let one of the girls' head hit the pavement. it was fucked up: "no, no, it's okay, you can go now, she's fine" "clunk!". luckily a nurse pulled stepped up, sat down and started to calm the whole thing down. with the boys' enthusiasm to get rid of us and the weird scene of 6 sober guys and 2 really fucked up girls, i wondered if the girls had been drugged. who knows. they all seemed to know each other. in the end they all piled into a cab and took off. my second favourite moment after the dropping of the head was when everybody was taking off, the guys sort of broke into two groups and thanked each other for helping out with the girls and the nurse heard this and thought, understandably that they were thanking her since she was the only one that had helped the situation. so she turns back to acknowledge the thanks and her face falls when she sees that the guys are not even aware of her. so i shook her hand instead and thanked her on behalf of all of humanity. i hope that was okay with you.

JP to the Rescue

2004-08-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

we're in a conversation with an american presenter we're keen to impress. he's very positive about the show and naomi, nick and i just sort of stand there basking in the glow of his charisma adding our own occasional bits of wit. it's so strange to be so conscious of what we're doing, the power dynamics, that glowing feeling when a power broker talks effusively about our shit. i feel like we're little kids sitting at santa's feet waiting to see what he'll give us. it's teh selfconsciousness that i find so odd - i look across at naomi and we're both happy to be talking to this guy but there's something about it that feels kind of desperate. i don't like to hang lovingly on the words of some guy who i barely know. so anyway, he goes to the bar and we figure we're finished with the bizniz. and we decide to smoke some of the weed nick had finally sorted with his 'straight no chaser' connect (uk based music magazine - much thanks to will). just as we round the corner, coming back from the alley, the producer guy is back, we're stoned and he starts talking about death. now, ordinarily, naomi and i can talk about death with the best of them, there's little about the subject that we find intimidating or discomforting but, in our current state, we were speechless. the producer guy makes some remark about bringing up an uncomfortable subject, we chuckle, assure him it's not that but can't offer any other explanation for our state. then jp walks up. jp is not known for his theatre-bar witty banter but, as he is straigh-edge, he's the only person with the presence of mind to engage. and he does, beautifully, becoming the point person for the rest of the conversation as nick, naomi and i just stand there grinning, happy to be stoned in the uk. finally.

four star review in the scotsman

2004-08-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

this is apparently the most important paper to score a good review in.
it's an good review but an odd one in that she refers to the weightiness of the show without spelling out what some of the heavier themes are. she refers to the infectiousness and dangerousness of the message and i assume she's talking about the shows call for a radical reevaluation of the social sphere and the call for artists to stop acting like fuckheads. but she's not clear on any of this. she talks about it being a polemic but never mentions what i'm polemicizing about. i think this is probably a good thing because any specifics would, in the context of a short review, likely sound cliche. i hope her warning about the show works in our favour by inciting people who fancy themselves courageous to take up the challenge. it's actually pretty amazing that she's claiming the show's effect is so intense. i guess it's something about the fringe - so many people checking shit out - so many people not so accustomed to seeing theatre. i don't know. anyway, sadly the only thing that really matters is the number of stars - we've got our fucking four so now we can get on with life and maybe pull in some numbers so i can buy a new, tighter, pink sweater and naomi some nice pants.

A Suicide-Site Guide To The City

ZOË GREEN

ASSEMBLY ROOMS (Venue 3)

CANADIAN Darren O’Donnell’s show is a feisty, politically risqué show about urban degeneration and death. Half the audience finds his dark humour side-splittingly funny; the other half does not. It is a fast-paced, intelligent show, part observational, part polemic; and it’s both witty and deeply depressing.

Anyone who is in any way sensitive about their own mortality, who has contemplated suicide or who has a history of depression, should probably not see this show because, as O’Donnell tells us, he thinks about death all the time and certainly has a lot to say on the subject. The rest of his show is about the "what-ifs" in life, and that’s a dangerous place to go too.

Of course, O’Donnell’s what-ifs aren’t quite the same as those of the rest of us: he does the comedian’s trick of going one step further than is strictly necessary. But is he a comedian? I’m not sure. He certainly makes people laugh, but you don’t need to be a comedian to do that. He also entertains, but these aren’t the purely anecdotal stories of the stand-up comedian, there’s more to them than that.

His show is billed as "Theatre" rather than "Comedy" and that seems appropriate: it is an act, a performance, and his goal is to make the audience think (not that this precludes him from being a comedian, far from it). But his Suicide-Site Guide to the City is weighty stuff and should be taken only if prescribed, and even then in small doses.

I believe O’Donnell’s condition may be infectious and dangerous. What greater incentive can there be to go and see him?

it's a business trip,

2004-08-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

i have to keep reminding myself. nick was remarking how we haven't clicked with anyone. it's really tough. the theatre thing is just so not my thing anymore. i have no desire to see anything. the whole scene here is really young - lots of theatre student types running around. they give me a rash. the 30-somethings don't seem to be around. most have dropped out of show business i would think. so there's all this annoying youthful ambition. our venue is mostly male comedians. it's a business trip. there's some fantasy in my head about some imaginary interesting theatre makers who i click with who i can hang out with but they really don't exist. or not here anyway. people are too wrapped up in their own shit to be bothered with anyone else. went to an all-canadian party put on by the consulate. they had this ridiculous 4 cd set of the greatest canadian hits from the last 30 years. the only good really good song was the king's this beat goes on/switching to glide. what kind of canadian wants to travel to scotland to spend an entire party listening to fucking celine, loverboy, bto et al.

it's embarrasing

2004-08-16T04:44:00.000-07:00

but there's nothing of any real interest to report. the show last night started badly with a technical glitch. nick's external harddrive was not being recognized by his computer. its a cable or port issue that will hopefully be sorted today. he made it work with duct tape. i think. anyway, i had to start the show with him onstage trying to fix it, him off to the side whispering with jp. a number of the audience seemed to find that more interesting than the show - who can blame them. anyway, it was fixed before we needed the sound. and the show went mostly okay. i started to screw up toward the end for some reason - my concentration went out the window. i find the rhythm in the second half to still be a little elusive and baffling.

i made dumplings for everybody yesterday from a recipe that i saw yvonne use once.

i'm drinking everyday. 2 beers. it's really not hard not to. we sit around all day waiting to do the show. then at 11:30 it flashes by in an hour and at 12;45 we're all jacked on adrenaline and what the hell else is there to do.

it's hard to do much in the day cause i need to be clear for the night. i haven't even seen a show yet. will start to do soon, i guess. but walking around this place is exhausting. we haven't really accumulated any friends. with our schedule it's really tough. if there could be some postshow activity then it could work but at 1AM... and our venue is not the best for socializing. it's a bit on the posh side. we have to find another place to hangout after performing.

i have to start working on pppeeeaaaccceee soon, anyway. today is a day off and we have some kind of consulate sponsered party for all the canucks. i won't complain.

a review

2004-08-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

the first review came out. it was a small mention in a bigger article about solo shows:

"AS WE all agree, the one-person show is a blight on the Edinburgh Fringe and should be banned immediately. Well, maybe not immediately. Maybe next year. Let’s wait at least until everyone’s had a chance to see this month’s bumper bag of solo performances that offer most of the interesting and many of the best experiences in town....The one-person format gives scope for the greatest degree of quirkiness, and if eccentricity is your bag you’ll find it in The Suicide-Site Guide to the City. This late-night show, written and performed by Canada’s Darren O’Donnell, is a self-conscious piece of performance art that rambles entertainingly from the streets of Toronto to a flight from Prague, jump-cutting from one story or idea to the next with considerable technological skill."

and richard, our uk producer, was approached by the editor of, 'the stage', the british equivalent of 'variety magazine' who said our show was "awesome" the best thing he's seen in the festival and that the UK never sees work like this. the magazine comes out on thursday so hopefully he'll write something about it. as good as this might be for us and our box office potential right now, richard was as much excited about the bigger, future, implications.

there's nothing posted about us yet but you can check the site here

underwear mystery

2004-08-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

i was sitting on the toilet yesterday when i noticed that someone had mended my underwear with shiney black lycra. i never consented to this. that i can recall. how could this have happened? does anyone have any clue? do i have an underwear fairy. it's very disturbing. i'm happy to have mended undies but how could this have happened without my knowing about it? maybe i'm losing my mind.

happy black out day

2004-08-14T04:03:00.000-07:00

wish i was in toronto for it.

shooting a bullet into the ceiling

2004-08-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

if you want to create the illusion that plaster is falling from the ceiling, this is a great recipe we've discovered:

75% fine oatmeal
15% white rice
10% talcum powder

the oatmeal provides the initial visual event, the rice creates the sound as it hits the stage and the talcum powder lingers in the air, catching the light nicely.

What Not to Do

2004-08-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

megan takes digestive enzymes. little pills. i took one before eating some fishandchips at 3 in the morning. i thought it would be helpful. 'don't chew it' she said. which compelled me to chew it, filling my mouth with the flavour of stomach contents - pure puke. i've never experienced anything like it except puking itself.

Who Are You?

2004-08-13T03:51:00.000-07:00

hey, thanks for all the comments. really appreciated. sometimes, though, i'm not sure who it is. a single initial is rarely enough and sometimes even two leave me baffled. maybe i've smoked too much weed in my life. obviously do what you want but feel free to use your first name. on the other hand, there is something exciting about not knowing who it is.

Almost There

2004-08-13T03:30:00.000-07:00

we've made some pretty substantial changes. though, i don't think many people who've seen the show would be able to pick them out. we've made one big change that affects everything and seems a little like a final piece to the puzzle. i'm not going to give it away. anyway, the show's getting better and feels like it's almost finished for here. rebecca and trevor head back to toronto on saturday. we really need some reviews to get some more audience. the late hour remains a challenge. the people who've seen it are usually really enthusiastic. we need some word of mouth and reviews.

anyway, didn't do much today. still feeling really tired from our blitz this past week. mostly stayed at home. went for a short walk. but mostly lay around in bed with rebecca and nick. just snuggling. it was raining outside.

nick had a beer before the show and then had some cueing problems. i don't know if there was a causal connection.

this blog is getting boring. i need to make some stuff happen but will only now start to find time. problem is, there isn't much that can happen during the day - socially, i mean. and by the time we finish it's fucking 1am. we need to find some friends. met a couple of other canadians from montreal - katt who does a show called sea peach and the two guys from the hiphop job thing. they came to check us out. i've yet to see their show. the job guys have an opposite kind of predicament - their show is early in the afternoon when all the tea ladies are out. theirs is a hiphop version of the bible's book of job and should not be an afternoon thing. they program all these unknown risks (like ourselves) at whack hours and all the surefire shit in primetime. we would both be killing if we were at 8. anyway, it's hard to socialize after the show at 2am and it's hard to socialize during the day cause i have to chill before the show.

zzzzz

things are

2004-08-11T18:48:00.000-07:00

getting better. we've worked out most of the outstanding problems. i'm still making changes and trying new shit on my feet which is still nerve wracking but tonight was the first time i started to loosen up around some stuff and actually surprise myself. that's always a good sign. anyway. must sleep.

Company Profile #3: Naomi Campbell, producer

2004-08-10T15:06:00.000-07:00

naomi once gave me a this cactus for my birthday, a very beautiful plant with elegant hair-like prickles which, if i so much as brushed against the plant, would get lodged into my skin. and not just at the point of contact but they would seem to jump off the plant and become embedded all over my body. to ensure i don't get pricked i have to deal with the cactus with total respect, giving it a very wide berth - unless i'm willing to get pricked. sound familiar?

naomi is a fantastic producer for a whole bunch of obvious reasons and for some not so obvious ones. for me, one attribute that unites us is her/our committment to high ethical standards, a belief in an even distribution of resources and that all roles from the box office staff to the artistic director are essential and deserving of respect. i think this attitude of hers comes from her many years as one of the best stage managers in toronto - a role which is often overburdened and underrespected. there's no doubt she has had to sit through some bad rehearsal processes while having to keep her mouth shut. her extensive experience in theatre is evident - as she is very adept at not only the business end of stuff but the creative and production aspects. she is able to attend to all aspects of the process and can solve technical problems and come up with the creative goods as well as balance the books. one of the most brilliant moments in a suicide-site guide (the bob wiseman cue card revolutionary message thingy) was hers - it now forms an essential core of the show. and it was with an insight of hers that i managed to finish boxhead when i was in the middle of a freak out. her understanding of theatre is about as multifaceted as you can get. another important and overlooked producerly attribute that she possesses is her interest in maintaining a network of mutual favours and support with other theatre companies. our shows, i think, tend to look like they've got more cash in them than they do - she's able to broker deals between companies, transfering, and sharing resources. the blacks she got donated to passe muraille from canstage when we were doing boxhead are a good example. you can read her philosophy about this aspect of her practice in her essay in the back of the pppeeeaaaccceee playscript. she also has very high standards and a good eye for detail. the sets we've collaborated on: pppeeeaaaccceee, boxhead and whitemice, have all been simply and striking. together we won a dora award for white mice which, considering neither of us had really designed anything in any detail before, was really nice. i'm sorry that i hogged the statuette when we were getting our picture taken. i've made up for that - naomi has maintained possession of it to this day.

the flip side to her perfectionism is that one of her least endearing qualities is that she's sports a little know-it-allness and tends to think her way is the only way. this, often, because she has such high standards, sometimes forgetting that, while they may be high, they're still, ultimately *her* standards.

we have a funny relationships that looks a lot like an insane sibling dynamic. though, the lag time between bitching at each other and laughing about it is getting shorter and shorter. personally i'm a bit of a reactionary and if i'm told not to do something then i generally have to do it. naomi's particularness and desire to have things done in a specific way often triggers my inner anarchist and i act out.

when we're having a hard time, it can be hard between us. as i mentioned we both suffer from some serious self-loathing and can be quite hard on ourselves and each other. this, you would think, would be slowly dissolving as we continue to build on our successes but because the stakes are always rising, it always feels like we're facing imminant failure. hopefully we'll mellow. anyway, this is supposed to be about her not us. but isn't "us" all there ever is?

it's been exciting to watch the last couple of years of naomi's career as it really has started to take off both nationally and internationally. i think over the next few years it will accelerate even more as she becomes a serious player on the international stage both with our projects and with the stuff she's doing with brian quirt and nightswimming, steve lucas and who knows who.

as a sort of side note but somehow central to our relationship are a couple things that have happened in toronto that seemed to be part of a circuit uniting us in intention. in, i think 1996 in february, we had our first real conversation together as we walked home in the rain - she from a show she had walked out on (something she rarely does) and me from working a shift at ckln. it was the night that psychiatric survivour edmund yu had been gunned down by the cops. we talked about it on our walk home. another incident occured on august 9, 2000 when i was last in edinburgh and naomi was conked out after knee surgery - otto vass, another former psychiatric patient was kicked to death by the cops in the 7-11 below our apartment in full view of one of our neighbors. naomi and i attended a bit of the trial against the cops together. yesterday we reinserted a section about otto that we had cut from the play and only realized after the show that it was the 4 year anniversary of his death. anyway i just wanted to mention those two incidents because, somehow, they form part of the core of the impetus for the urgency of the work we do together.

please, if it's not too much to ask, i would ask that you join me in a standing ovation to naomi campbell.

whew!

2004-08-10T03:15:00.000-07:00

okay, so that went much much better. i didn't feel like a fucking fuckhead halfway through the show. the audience was quiet but i think appreciative. there were quiet when i was here in 2000 so i'm not going to worry about that. richard, our british producer came through with some good notes and assures us that nobody has seen a show like this and he's a pretty avid theatre-goer so they may sit back and check it out.

i still need to relax and draw them in. i'm okay off the top but as the show accumulates and the concern about hitting all the right notes starts to weigh on me it becomes difficult to stay warm. i also have this smug problem especially with this kind of material. in my life and onstage.

anyway, all the work we did today paid off. i've never made so many changes, memorized them so quickly and tested them out in front of an audience. i really need to retire. this is too freakin stressful. anyway, thanks again for all the support.

Thanks

2004-08-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

for all the words of encouragement. i know i'm a bit of a pessimist but, really, something had happened to the show. it's pretty specific and i think we've identified and addressed a bulk of the problmes. we'll see. we're an hour and a bit away from doing it again. hopefully it will be a small house so we can try it without too much pressure. i've spent the entire day working on it, changing shit, rehearsing stuff with nick, running through it. it's now 10pm - i've been up since noon working on it after a three hour meeting/freakout last night that went from 1-4. and we'll probably have another meeting after the show tonight. so, we'll have worked, like, 28 hours straight with the one 8 hr sleep break. sheesh. this is ridiculous. i have a massive headache and i forgot my ibuprofen and they don't seem to have convenience stores in the middle of the city. nightclubs, restuarants and chip shops but nowhere to get an asprin.

i'll be in touch.

Freakin

2004-08-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

so we've spent the whole day so far making changes. some small, some big. some cuts some additions. who knows if this will have the desired effect. no even sure what that is. i'm changing the name of this blog to reflect the need to keep an upbeat attitude about this. i'll try anything. tonights going to be a white knuckle night with all the changes. sheesh. we had this great show in canada. like i said yesterday, it blows me away that cutting 10 minutes can so drastically alter something - i suppose it's naive for me to be surprised but surprised i am.

We're Fucked

2004-08-09T03:41:00.000-07:00

so, we're fucked. the changes that we've made to shorten the script have left us with a show with an excised heart. it's really hard to tell what exactly it would require to fix this. we did our 2nd show tonight and i felt like a fucking idiot through most of it. the sound of my own droning was so annoying to me. we're going to try to address this over the next couple of days but it's suddenly become clear that the show, in this context, could well be shit. i should feel messed up about this and i do - but even my panic feels like a performance. ultimatley either i have faith that we'll be okay or i couldn't give a fuck because theatre is a stupid waste of time and i need a good reason to quit.

it was DEADLY tonight. i can't tell you how much it hurts to keep talking when i would much rather be slitting my wrists. there is really nothing quite like that kind of agony - talking on and on while my internal monologue is going: "please, please please let me go home, PLEASE!" oh well, like i said, theatre is a stupid nopay kind of gig and it's time to move on anyway. failure is good for the character, right? because, no joke, we're on the cusp of a total crash and fucking burn. : )

and i'm not just being negative. it was really hurting.

it's so weird how a few cuts can skew the rhythm so totally. i hate scotland and all things scottish including myself.

Difficult Day

2004-08-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

here's a relevant quote from the show:

"for the record i just wanted to mention that almost teh entire creative team behind a suicide-site guide to the city hates themselves. we're very insecure, very neurtotic, particularly the core of naomi campbell, the producer, rebecca picerack the director and myself. we seem to be united by a startling low selfesteem which can occassional pulse up and overwhelm us. i wonder if this registers onstage. i would think it would be obvious. we all share the sense that we're not very good and struggle against a constant need to belive things are going wrong. and, of course, this attitude limits what we're capable of imagining..."

this seems particularly relevant right now. we're trying to finesse the show, discussing fairly drastic cuts or big changes to accomodate the strange circumstances of doing it in the fringe and so late at night. unfortunatley these discussions always seem to involve bitchiness, implicit eye-rolling, sighs - big dollops of passive aggression. why is this? i wonder. are we to blame? are our souls as shrivelled as they seem? are we just frightened? why the fright? we're succussful, talented people with a show we believe in, why can't we just relax and try to solve the problems without treating each other like we think the other is stupid. it's depressing. i don't think i've ever experienced a long-term collaboration that didn't involve some of this. is it me? am i to blame? whether or not i did the shrivelling of my soul myself or it's the social conditions into which i find myself thrown that are responsible for the limiting it seems that, in the end, i'm the only one that can get me out of this situation. but how? therapy? i don't know. any insights?

Balloon: 1, JP:0

2004-08-08T03:53:00.000-07:00

so i haven't read jp's blog but he wasn't really happy with the show. it went as good as it could. first audience. 40 minutes behind so we started at 12:10. some tech problems. but the most beautiful moment was jp trying to blow up this little pink balloon and not being able to get it happening. so i'm up there blathering away, allowing small breaks in my talk to accomodate his blowing and all i can hear is his strained effort to get the thing inflated. if you don't know jp, he's a big bald tattoo-covered guy - he looks a little like anton levay, the head of the church of satan. imagine someone like that popping blood vessels trying to get this pink balloon inflated.

anyway, the show went alright. an old weirdly dressed lady walked out and cursed us as she did.

we've got some false ending issues that need to be sorted out but i think we'll be alright. there was good audience response but generally i wasn't very warm, the whole thing was much like a speedy line run with an audience watching. thank god it's over. now it's 4 am and we're all back at the flat having snacks getting ready for bed. it's going to be a weird month - going to bed at 4 every night.

Big Ups

2004-08-08T03:16:00.000-07:00

to some of the people reading the blog: jim, shiraz, sheila, yvonne, brenda etc.

Late Night Meeting

2004-08-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

I'm writing these words in a red book that my friend yen gave me. i will transcribe them to the blog later. it's about 3am and we just did our final tech rehearsal. it went very badly. our setup is upposed to take 10 minutes, it took about 30 and we still weren't finishede. our setup, in the context of a fringe, quite complicated. we're back in the flat having a meeting bout how to make our setup more efficient. my task during the set up is to mingle with the audience

(as i'm typing this, nick just showed up with naomi. a great moment of celebration! see jp's blog for why:
http://troismarteaux.blogspot.com/

anyway, my task during the setup is to mingle with the audience as they stand in the lineup so i have nothing to add to this discussion. it's an arcane discussion, tedioulsy detailed breakdown of a complicated series of events that has to occur in a really short period of time. i've had some wine and i'm feeling a fondness for everybody here. easy for me since i don't have to do anything. i'm going to grab my video camera and shoot and transcribe a segment so you can get a sense of it:

JP: i will run, i should be able to run power to the cop lights, i should be able to run power to the fog machine, i will -
Rebecca: that's stuff i've always done
jp: is it?
Rebecca: i've always done that.
JP: okay.
Naomi: okay, so...those came out with the buildings, like, came out, just so like, we'll bring everything-
Trevor: That wsa red bag stuff.
JP: But-
Naomi: Theyre not in the red bag, though.
JP: Okay, by this point, even if i'm not-
Trevor:Right now they're just lying loose?
Rebecca: They were loose.
Naomi: They're with the buildings.
JP: but even if i'm not connecting them, i'm testing them.
Rebecca: Oh.
Naomi: So they're out.
JP: So...
Naomi: So i just want to say...just a second...
JP: even if they're not actually connected, if they're not connected by that point, i'm doing it. Basically.
Naomi: but i just, hang on.
Rebecca: yeah.
Trevor: um...can we try to put them in the red bag?
Naomi: yeah, the red bag has got a lot of stuff in it now that could be - some of which could, could come home in between times.
Trevor: i think a lot of it is plastic bags.
Naomi: i know, like.
Trevor: and boxes for stuff that's in
Naomi: it should all, all that stuff should come home until we, it should come home in the black bag.
JP: yeah.
Naomi: so that, and that the red bag could be...all of cour cable, like, could be very much better organized.
Treveor: Okay.
Naomi: Than it is at the moment. Absolutely.
JP: the black bad is going back to the theatre tomorrow.
Trevor: yeah, right.
Naomi: yeah and it should come home with eveyrthing that is spare even the fog machine box.
JP: yeah.
Naomi: all, like, all of that stuff...and the red bag can be filled with the fog machine, the dmx cable actually could go in there, everything but the buildings basically adn the tables and chairs.
Rebecca: well but the police lights are joined to the-
Trevor: the switch box.
Naomi: one of them is
Rebecca: that's a big-
Naomi: whatever, i'm just thinking about people touching them.
Trevor: yeah.
Naomi: although i think the fact that they're out actually that they're probably safer than if they are in the bag that somebody can throw around and not know what's inside. who knows.
Trevor: that' sgood for the police lights, anyway like it's jus tso easy to go walking with an extension cord which is half of what our stuff is.
JP: Right.
Naomi: That -
Rebecca: True.

Almost There

2004-08-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

so nick is here and we just went over the show with he and rebecca listening to the sound through shared earphones. i couldn't hear it but we were just reviewing the cues for nick. we're about to rock it for the first time for an audience. should be scarey!!!!!! wish us luck, sucka.

Friend Profile #1: Kika Thorne

2004-08-06T21:24:00.000-07:00

Thus begins another series in this blog, the friend profile. i believe in a post-individual conception of conciousness where my actually conciousness, my percptions, my intelligence, my very being is always more than just who i am but who i'm with. so that when i'm with you, we will share an energy field and create an entity that is the sum of us. so when i'm away from my friends and before i've met any new people i sometimes suffer withdrawal, feeling, quite literally, that i'm unable to access the parts of myself that i share with my friends. that's one reason why i started this blog - so i could keep people in my mind and keep my consciousness tuned in with thiers. sounds stupid? too bad.

anyway, today's featured friend is kika thorne, one of the two people with who i developed these ideas.

kika is a filmmaker, a video artist, an activist and a culturalista. she's one of the smartest people i know and sometimes uses words that i dont' understand or, at least puts orders together in an order that will occassionally baffle me. she is one of the main reasons why i love my life in toronto. she can be a bit of a nutbar but, then again, so can i. when faced with new people kika seems to be able to approach them and introduce herself fearlessly. she doesn't seem to be intimidated by other brilliant people, in fact she gravitates toward them pulling them into her orbit. beyond her artistic practice she seems to have developed a social practice which situates herself as a nexus point in at least toronto, if not beyond. she is more than part of the community but is, rather, a catylzing force; someone whose being makes thing happen without her having to expend any energy. she is currently working in the media center at oise making shit happen.

actually this profile is both a friend profile and a company profile and she shot and edited a section of video for the show.

ladies and gentleman, please give it up for kika thorne.

Company Profile #2: JP Robichaud, lighting designer and resident tech head

2004-08-06T21:10:00.000-07:00

jp robichaud is, in the case of this show, the lighten designer but, as he is running the show from onstage, he's also a performing and operator of light, video and other stuff like balloon blowing-up, drop activation, card wrangling and other assorted shit. jp is the technical wizard in the company and brings not only his expertise but a digital camera, a palm pilot, a lap top, a spyglass with which he takes photographs of the elderly men playing lawn bowling on the pitch behind our flat. jp is big, bald and covered with tatoos. he began his stint with mammalian diving reflex when my friend libby zeleke urged me to hire him to stage managed white mice to cover the equity quotiant because jp is homosexual. a few months later i learned he's straight. his skill is so crucial to the success of the company we decided to work with a straight person just this once. here's an excerpt from the show:

"jp is the kind of person who remains almost totally neutral almost all the time, in turn providing a beautiful blank screen upon which to project the idea that he's thinking bad things about me. but i don't think he is. but he might be. i don't know, who knows. does it matter? i guess not. if he doesn't mind hanging around someone he doesn't really like. not that he doesn't like me but -"

while that is not entirely true. it is a little true. he does remain pretty neutral. and i do wonder sometimes if he likes me but, if i recall correctly, he did hug me once so i think we're okay.

jp is also a performance artist and creates these striking tableauxs with his body in fairly taxing situations. he's done a couple during rhubarb. as a stage manager he is in great demand and i have some fear that we will lose him in the near future. which would be terrible because i'm writing this on his computer.

jp is the kind of person who doesn't smoke but has owned a series of zippo lighters because they are so cool. he also reads books on his palm pilot and can open his lap top anyway and find a connection as i mentioned in a previous post.

anyway, please give it up for jp robichaud.

The Festival Opens

2004-08-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

Things are all starting today but we're waiting until tomorrow for nick. he had a gig last night at harbourfront. maybe you were there.

i went to the kick-off at the assembly rooms, the space that we're in. it's a multi-theatre venue and features some big shit acts. at the kick-off they had a few people doing bits from their shows. there is a lot of comedy. nancy cartwright, the voice of bart simpson has a show where, from her little teaser, all she seems to do is demonstrate that she is, in fact, bart simpson by doing some of the public's favourite simpson's lines. for example: don't have a cow dude. it was kind of pathetic.

there was one comedian guy- or actually a guy playing a comedian - who was funny who was trying to get the audience to kill paul mccartney.

there was also this insanely underrehearsed las vegas act with these two terribly uncharismatic guys who lock each other in boxes, slip in swords and then escape. there were ridiculous. they seemed completely confused as to how all their various props etc worked - which clasp to undo etc. they had 150 rabbits with them that apparently refused to leave the wings and hop onto the stage because they were too scared. the rabbits who were onstage seemed to have had their hind legs paralysed or something.

there were some "famous" actors doing one person shows - famous in the uk and austrailia.

the front man from men at work will be doing some solo thing. he sang a song. he had a beautiful clear voice and i told him that later and he said: "thank god".

all in all i think we'll do okay. i have no fear about the quality of what we're doing just whether or not it will appeal to the crowd here. not so sure there's the desire to think critically but, as rebecca the director points out, everytime we approach a serious subject in the show we make a joke and change the subject.

Company Profiles #1: Megan Hamilton, assitant to the producer

2004-08-06T01:35:00.000-07:00

thus begins a new series in this blog, the company profile.

today's company member is megan hamilton, assitant to producer naomi campbell. megan is a chipper person who always brings a positive glow to all that she is involved with. her bouncy red (dyed) curls add just the spark to keep us perky throughout our difficult tech hours. her cigarette addiction combined with her generosity make it easy for the reformed smokers in the group (rebecca) to avoid chewing those distasteful nicorettes. megan is a producer in her own right with her company medusa productions. she is also the artistic director of the now defunt creative group, a space on king street where we rehearsed the show. megan has a boyfriend but i can't remember his name. megan is an asset to the company and i really can't express how much i appreciate her presence. i'm not being sarcastic or even stretching the truth. she is very much appreciated. as are her insights about my personality. please give it up for megan hamilton.

More Boring Shit

2004-08-06T01:22:00.000-07:00

Tech is done. We're behind. Since Nick doesn't get here until saturday we had to cancel tomorrows show which means we can use that to get more of our tech shit done. everybody remained calm and respectful throughout the entire time which is paramount here at mdr. not point in getting an ulcer unless you're getting paid real money so you can afford the acupuncture to treat it is my motto.

In the Middle of our Tech

2004-08-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

we're an hour into our tech. there's nothing for me to do. there's an internet cafe across the street so here i am. we're having a few minor (hopefully) complications. our transformer is grounding out and tripping the building's power so there's an electrician on the way to sort that out. it's a new transformer so it should be working. they've also added a cool wash which has changed a bunch of shit so jp has to do a bunch of repatching. we run the light from onstage with an horizon - our own program. as opposed to using the house's board. is this interesting for you?

nothing interesting has happened to me yet.

there were a couple of girls staring at our poster so of course i introduced myself and asked them what drew them to the poster. they said the photo which reminded them of trainspotting which, they told me, is set in edinburgh or, rather, leith which, i think, is a neighborhood here. anyway, one of them said she was buying some pot over the weekend and would get some for me. i got her cell number. she lived in winnipeg for a while. that's been the only, you know, thing thing that has happened. haven't had much of a chance.

the water boils really fast here because of the higher power voltage thing-a-ma-ding. the shower in our flat is great.

i had another dream last night other than the dad dream where i was trying to find underwear to buy in this big old store.

i know all my lines. i wish nick was here. my throat is sore.

Spin the Bottle

2004-08-05T18:09:00.000-07:00

richard our brit point person and his publicist heard about stb from naomi and now i'm doing it twice a week on the streets in front of the theatre. scarey.

today is our tech.

slept well last night. had a dream that my dad wanted me to come back to edmonton to inherit the family business. he was a physed teacher so that can't happen. especially with my back issues.

Smiling

2004-08-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

two attractive people smiled at me without me having to initiate it. this does not happen to me in toronto.

The Show pt 2

2004-08-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

i just went to the bathroom and thought of more to write. i'm a little worried that the show looks to be quite a bit different than the other stuff happening at the same venue. the other stuff looks pretty zany and with our title we look depressing. because of space constraints we were only able to use the part of our promo shot that focues on me and i'm the least interesting looking person in the photo. what makes the photo look interesting are jp, nick and the guy in the background (he's still there). i look like someone who just woke up. see?

The Show

2004-08-04T16:16:00.000-07:00

richard, our british producer, seems like a great down to earth guy. that was a relief. he decided to be a theatre producer when he was 10. the same age i decided to be an actor. i took this as a good omen. his father was a lawyer and his mother was/is a grammer school teacher. my dad was a phys-ed teacher and my mom works at sears. the resemblance is uncanny.

i was told by two members of the company that in a couple of publications they mentioned a bunch of canadian shows but neglected ours. as i state in the play i would rather identify as an american, anyway. but we weren't listed in any accounts of which american shows to see either. i have pointed out that i really don't need to know where we're not mentioned. just where we are mentioned.

as it was four years ago in 2000, the best thing about edinburgh is how great toronto looks in comparison. for those of you in toronto right now i want you to look out the window and appreciate all the beautiful people walking around.
when i stated this aloud naomi claimed that i was 'dying to get out of toronto'. the truth is i was looking forward to getting out of toronto for a variety of reason but feel only warmth for that most beautiful of cities. certain social configurations had started to wear thin but others were only starting to blossom and i look forward to reconnecting with those people when i get back. i'm thinking here of my new two girlfriends laura cowell and cecelia berkovic. i miss you both. next time let me in, would you?

the apartment is nice. of course jp is the only one able to figure out how to hook his shit up to the internet. what's new. he could find an internet connection on one of pluto's moons. we watched hiphop videos. i wanted to dance to that tipsy song but richard the british producer was in the room and i didn't want to weird everybody out. i felt stupid enough just turning up the volume.

like a typical teenager, i couldn't wait for the group to get its shit together to go find food so i've taken off by myself. that, i predict, will be the month's biggest challenge: moving as a group, choosing restuarants and bars as a group, etc.

okay, is this getting boring for you now as much as it is for me? signing off.

Muslim Meal

2004-08-04T16:09:00.000-07:00

i had preordered a muslim meal on the airplane just to see what it was like.

for dinner i got a chicken and rice dish, a small white roll, salad, a piece of aged cheddar cheese. other people got either veggie lasagne or chicken (i fell asleep before i could check if it was the same chicken dish i had), a small white roll, salad, a piece of aged cheddar cheese, a small container of spring water and some ice cream. for some reason muslims are deprived of water and dessert.

for breakfast i got exactly what naomi did - she had ordered a veggie meal: a fruit salad, a very sugary carrot muffin and an artificial creamer. the mainstream receive some kind of small loafy cakey thing and some yogurt.

the studied lack of dairy in the breakfast made me wonder if there was a dairy prohibition going on but they gave me cheddar cheese at dinner so who knows.

when i was stretching at the back of the airplane i was able to look at a list of all the special meals that had been ordered. i was the only muslim on the plane.

Bandaged Heads

2004-08-04T16:06:00.000-07:00

in the airport in toronto there were two 20-something guys who both had bandages on their head. very hospital looking. clean and kind of blue. one guy had a black eye and blood was leaking through the bandage in a perfectly straight line across his forehead. the other guy was really stylishly dressed and wore a hat at a rakish angle over top of the bandage. they were going to brazil.

I Know This Blog is Boring

2004-08-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

i haven't even left yet. give it a chance.

Mole Asses

2004-08-03T06:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.crosbys.com/

5 AM and I Can't Sleep

2004-08-03T05:05:00.000-07:00

It's 5 AM and i can't sleep. Woke up from some dreams. me and my people were under attack. there were some animals - some were our friends and some were predators. there were also british people attacking us. i think i was a first nations person in canada getting wiped out by colonizers. but there were tigers and monkeys on the scene too. anyway, i can't sleep. masturbated. then the phone rang. i didn't answer it. which was good. it was park wanted to talk about women. he tends to talk about women like they're another species. while i generally feel like it's men who are from a different universe. he's constantly in the throes of girl problems. probably because he tends to hang out with 20 year olds.

we head to the airport today at 6PM. i have a bunch of shit to do today. but first i need a few more hours of sleep.

Night of Horrible Dreams

2004-08-02T06:10:00.000-07:00

I had a terrible night of horrible and weird dreams. Alienation. Difficult times. Running from floor to floor trying to find where my play pppeeeaaaccceee was happening. Beating up friends. Lying in bed and snuggling with a married woman. A talking infant. Drunken teenagers. Making out with roommates. Having a difficult time finding words in a dictionary.

August 1, 2004

2004-08-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

we leave in two days. today we did a run of the show. it went alright. we're not together again until we're onstage for the preview. nick will not be there for the tech rehearsal - neither will his gear. so the first time we hear the sound will be in front of an audience. how exciting.