The Pot Boils Over: The Ottawa Theatre Network Is Born!

Autumn has always been my favorite season. I love the weather: the dry warm days and the clear cool nights. Everyone suddenly realizes these are the last few weeks of fine weather before the long cold winter and they start making the most of every minute. The collective sense of renewal, energy, and excitement is palatable.

In the Ottawa professional theatre community right now, there is an equally palatable sense of renewal, energy, and excitement.

Its most obvious manifestation is the birth of the Ottawa Theatre Network which intends “[t]o assist in the growth of the professional theatre community in the Ottawa region.” I am very happy to report that I am part of the enthusiastic and dedicated team getting it off the ground.

To learn more about this nascent organization and how you can help, click here.

Although a few of us are taking the lead on this project, it is very much a community-driven initiative. Our efforts are motivated by the professional theatre community’s expressed desire for this kind of an organization and the project will succeed only if all the stakeholders in our community buy-in and contribute to it in the best way they know how. There will be lots of opportunities for everyone to help in very many ways.

For many months, I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that the Ottawa professional theatre scene is ready to boil over and become a genuine hot-spot for theatre. There are a lot of talented and enthusiastic people already working here and, given the existing infrastructure and the large potential audience, Ottawa is a city rich with theatrical potential. If we work together, we can make it happen.

It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s going to take hard work and commitment but it will happen.

Are you ready Ottawa, Canada, and — yes, even  — the world?

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The Community of Comedy: Eddie May Murder Mysteries Promises Fun And They Deliver

Eddie May Murder Mysteries is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary and, last night (May 29th, 2009), I was very fortunate to attend a special presentation of Eddie Get Your Gun. It was (believe it or not) my first dinner theatre experience, my first Eddie May show, and it was a whole lot of fun.

Eddie Get Your Gun is a delightful, high-octane mix of campy comedy, music, mystery, crowd-pleasing gore, and heaps of high-quality audience interaction and participation. When you throw in a decent meal and a drink or two, a solid evening of entertainment is guaranteed. If you are prepared to make a little effort, an extraordinary evening is possible.

I say this because, without a doubt, the highlight of the show is the opportunity for intimate and personal one-on-one interactions with the actors, who meet and greet and chat up the audience through out the evening and never break character. The interactions are important for solving the mystery and, thanks to some very talented and committed performers, they are also a great source of entertainment. This fine bunch of comic actors don’t break the fourth wall; they never allow it to be built; and the result is a whole lot of fun, whether you wade into the comic mayhem or enjoy it vicariously.  

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: what makes the performing arts and theatre special is the shared experience of beauty and there is nothing more beautiful than a group of friends, family, and strangers coming together to enjoy a meal and to play. The cast and crew of Eddie May understand this and they know how to nurture the experience for the benefit of all who attend.

If you live in Ottawa or are only visiting, be sure to check it out. Eddie May promises fun and they deliver it. Enjoy. 

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Art: No Longer That Poor Dude Nailed To The Wall.

I had a couple of T dot friends visit Thursday and I took them down to see the National Gallery of Canada. I cannot overemphasize how good a gallery it is. I’ve been to a lot of galleries all over the world and ours definitely stands up to the biggest and best. The building itself is fantastic and the collection is impressive. The gallery is a must-see if you are from out of town and I reckon Ottawa-folk should check-in on it on a regular basis. I try to anyway. Come on, the permanent collection is free on Thursdays after five! You’d be silly not to take advantage of it regularly.

The contemporary obsession with installation pieces continues and the pieces are becoming more ambitious, interactive, and encompassing. On the one hand, this is pretty fun and accessible which is useful for pulling in the punters. Playing with the art, taking off your shoes and walking around in the art, and being immersed in the art can be pretty damn neat and often leads to a visceral, accessible, and satisfying reaction. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel contemporary galleries are transforming themselves into something more akin to a slightly snooty amusement park. The newbies also come to acknowledge this after awhile. Once they get over the neat-o’s of having a bit of visceral fun in a gallery, they start to wonder aloud, “well, what’s the point of it all?”

And in many cases I tend to agree. It seems to me — on the whole — much less care is taken in the creation and development of installation pieces — especially the larger more encompassing works. The artists tend to rely too much on the neat-o affect of a booming buzzing environment and worry less about creating a genuinely coherent aesthetic experience. The neat result is that too often, I walk away from a piece thinking, wow, I wish I got paid to do drugs and create environments where doing drugs would be a lot of fun.

And in this way the artistic intelligence of the installation piece eats its own tail because the gallery it inhabits is itself the ultimate installation piece. Would I rather sit in a room filled with some neat light, sounds, and found objects or would I rather sit in room surrounded by carefully crafted and selected works of art and drink in the sounds and reactions of the other folks in the gallery? Once the neat-o’s fade, the answer is obvious for me.

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Paris is Dead, A Play in Three Acts

For more of my plays, click here.