After Dark, December 18, 2012

Lucky '13

Moving ahead by looking back

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois
@gcharlebois

There are goin' to be some big fuckin' changes around here!

That is the battle cry at The Charlebois Post, ltd., as we slide into our third year of life. But as we face our futures we look back at the past and try to make sense of it. That is a puzzle for the ages, dear friends.

One of the things we've done is try to figure out what draws eyes to these websites. We do that quite simply by checking out the stats for which articles, each day, draw the most readers. It didn't take long for us to realize that one thing that pleases readers are reviews. It's tempting to write raves all the time because then the production house receiving the praise will tweet and FB the heck out of the review and sometimes, even - jackpot! - quote a rave in their online and print ads. 

After Dark, December 11, 2012

Dirty Work

Lessons we've learned and here comes The CharPR Prize!

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

I love it when old movies have terrific quotes. In Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Bette Davis, playing the crazy Charlotte, bellows at her elegant cousin, played by Olivia de Havilland, "Let me see, what is it you call your job? Oh yes: Public Relations. Sounds like something pretty dirty to me."

Well, it is dirty. It's a dirty job. It is setting the foundation of a show, keeping the plumbing clean and making sure that the company's next show gets eyes on it. It is the job of making sure critics and directors and actors don't go to war. It is one of the most important - if not THE most important job- linked to every production and it is the one thing small companies think they can do without. And they learn the hard way...

After Dark, December 4, 2012

The Terrible Twos

We celebrate and look to the future

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

On November 30, The Charlebois Post celebrated its second anniversary. Since Estelle Rosen and I launched a little local blog in Montreal, we have grown to three active websites, two in test stage and probably a sixth and seventh to come. We have 30 regular contributors (reviewers, profile writers, interviewers), over 100 artists and theatre people who have contributed to the sites, and have published thousands of items. Each day our sites receive hundreds of visitors and over a thousand pages are viewed. 

And we at CharPo are all, to a person, volunteers. Some of us have contributed money to cover the expenses and all have worked hard to keep the sites hopping with activity. 

Now we are exploring options for expansion and as we do are trying to take into account the kindness of our contributors and to reward them. The reason for this is simple: most of our writers are or have become some of the finest commentators and theatre writers in the country and we'd like to hang on to them. I have already had several of them ask me to write references for them and although I am exuberant in my praise, I am heart-broken to see them move on.

After Dark, November 27, 2012

Lemons, Lemonade and The Sour Taste That Stays

Dutchman hangs around for a bit

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

I have invited the contributors at CharPo to, when the mood strikes them, write what we are going to call "Reconsidered". The idea is that, after thinking about it, many people will revise opinions about a work of art. We come out of a play with friends, we go to a café, and over the carrot cake we parse what we have just seen. The others put ideas into our head, we into theirs and then - hours, days, weeks later - we are hit by a new idea about the show. Those ideas remain largely unexpressed. However, I feel they form the foundations of future considerations not just of the piece seen but of the art itself.

The "Reconsidered" pieces will not be, "I thought it was shit, but now I think it's great!" - though that's okay too. It will be along the lines of a comment a colleague made last year when he was considering his top ten for the end of the year. He said that the plays that he was remembering for his list were, more often than not, the ones he had not raved about. 

After Dark, November 20, 2012

On The Eating of One's Own Head

Can critics' dislikes and the internet be creating precisely what theatre needs?

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

This week Andrew Dickson, one of The Guardian's many very able theatre critics, tweeted thusly: 

"Invitation arrives for Kiss Me, Kate, dir by Trevor Nunn. No, no, thanks awfully, very kind, really don't think so #wouldrathereatmyownhead"

I laughed out loud because I knew what he was talking about. There are productions I get invited to that I would rather eat my own head than spend an evening seeing let alone reviewing. Kiss Me, Kate would be in my top ten for sure, along with Annie (and a lot of musicals), anything by Ionesco, a lot of Albee, mime, a lot of Greek theatre, tons of Shakespeare, most French opera...need I go on?

The fact is, we all have tastes. My uncle loves opera but when I told him I had seen the Ring at Covent Garden he said, "Better you than me." He is, says he, "Saving Wagner for my old age." He's 75.

Review: Les Mutants

(from the company website)

The Lesson
Les Mutants is everything...
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois
@gcharlebois

It's a Thursday evening, curtain is 7pm, and the house is packed with precisely the kind of audience every artistic director dreams of: young (in their late teens, early 20s), respectful, and open to a new experience. To this non-opening-night crowd - as revealed by the standing ovation at the end - this was a new experience.

The actors - all seasoned hands including the delightful Sophie Cadieux who co-conceived the show - were bursting with energy. They sang, they danced, they even played instruments. Dressed in school uniforms (c. 1958), they illustrated the evolution of Quebec with a series of important pamphlets and speeches (for instance, Le Refus Global), poems (one from Leonard Cohen), clips from documentaries, scenes from movies, and a vast array of snippets with, as general theme, cultural strength and - yes - nationalism.

After Dark, November 13, 2012

My First Time
The importance being exposed
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

My mother died when I was 13. You need to know that because it is important to the story of my first time.

My mother was the kind of Catholic who, if Christmas fell on a Sunday, would bring us all to church twice - once for Christmas, once for the Sunday. When my mother died my father - profoundly in love with his wife of 25 years and the mother of his six children - went mad with grief and got through it two ways: by falling in love with another magnificent woman and by blaming the Catholic Church for my mother's death. My mother had not been a well woman since being hit with rheumatic fever as a child and so her seven pregnancies (she lost one) had been hellish. My father thought she had died so young because they had never used birth control because of my mother's Catholicism. (Stay with me...there is a point to this.)

My father, relieved, I believe, of my Mother's staunch Catholicism, became a lot more liberal. When I was 15 he allowed me to start drinking...in the house...with him. (His own father was an alcoholic and he preferred I do my drinking at home so he could see how I handled it.) He brought me to my first x-rated film at about the same time. (I have always looked like I was 30 so he suspected I was already buying nudie magazines. He was right.)

Review: Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)

Hundeling and Gazheli (photo credit: Yves Renaud)

In Dutch
Opéra de Montréal did itself no favours with its new production
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

You know within the first 20 minutes from the beginning of a performance of Wagner's Der Fliegende Holländer if many of the key elements of a successful production are in place. So, tonight, at Place des Arts, with Opéra de Montréal's import from COC in Toronto...

Overture, robust, clear as a bell, lyrical and lovely...check. Conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson (profiled tomorrow by Richard Burnett at CharPo-Canada), helmed a solid Orchestre Métropolitain through an evening that showed assurance for both a conductor and orchestra whose histories don't suggest huge familiarity with the stubborn German. Wilson, especially, surprised for some of the musical moments later in the evening which were even bold and revelatory.

Next on our list, set and lighting...check. And what a wondrously disturbing set Allen Moyer offered - all skewed lines and closed spaces which, to some extent, allowed the voices to tame the hideous accoustics of the hall.

After Dark, November 6, 2012

The (Sacred?) Image
What are an actor's responsibilities?
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois
@gcharlebois

I apologize, but I am obsessed by American politics and that has been reflected on this site. Last week it was about the dangers of a Romney presidency on our culture, this week it's about image.

Not Romney's image (as I'm not sure anyone could define that), but on all our images. Let me tell you how I got to here from there...

As I have a fairly steady diet of CNN and other American networks, I am submitted to a fairly steady diet of political ads too. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of these ads are negative (on both sides). In each ad, we are treated to a number of people who are - through the very act of appearing in the ad - firmly defining their images. In a world of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Jon Stewart, those images never go away. So while Romney is doing photo ops of bagging groceries for Sandy victims, we are inundated by replays of the clip of him saying he hates FEMA and would get rid of it. Obama is forever remembered as saying he would close Guantanamo, tarnishing his first term as he doesn't do it.

After Dark, October 30, 2012

Why We Must Care
An election is coming and it could hurt
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

It was an awful time. Ronald Reagan was president and Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney were prime ministers. Moreover, the three loved each other. There was a pall over the world. When we were not preparing for the end of the world, small-l liberals were watching everything they cared about go into the toilet.

What was worse was the utter lack of organization on the left and by the opponents of the unholy trio. Lesbians and Gays were fighting, feminists and free-speechers were fighting - each other! It was all over the issue of pornography. Miners in Britain were treated like Mongol hordes and sometimes acted like that. The IRA was blowing up innocents when they weren't starving themselves to death in prison. A play about Margaret Thatcher caused consternation - even on the left! - because it was called Ditch the Bitch. (This before a play called The Happy Cunt toured the Fringe circuit.)

After Dark, October 23, 2012

What are the limits?
One critic revives the debate
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

In my third year of acting school, one of my teachers - an inveterate bastard - decided to tell us the facts of life. He told us what we would play when released into the real world. "You," he said to one handsome boy, "would play Prince Hal." To a lovely young thing, "Juliet," to a less lovely one, "Mistress Ford." And on and on. It was a harsh lesson. In the real world, beyond our talent (or lack of), we would get roles based on our looks. (For the record: I would be Richard III...fucker.)

Let's face it (no pun intended) when an actor walks onto a stage his or her first job is to create the illusion. That's the work. If you are playing older, younger, uglier or prettier (or smarter or dumber) than yourself, you will spend a few long minutes of your first few on stage convincing the audience otherwise and then pulling them more deeply into the play. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

But here's the thing...

After Dark, October 9, 2012

Joiners
The strength is there...if we can get past the laziness
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

It's easy - if you're willing to go beyond signing petitions and saying you'll boycott and bewailing - after the fact - the injustice of it all. It is the use of the power of groups to change things. It's why ACTRA, CAEA, PACT and other groups representing an active mass, work, and groups representing non-joiners - the lazy mass - do not work.

There are two issues in the news, lately, that require theatre artists to do more than shriek an (ever-tedious) outrage on Facebook. They require people going beyond saying they are in a boycott (or not).

After Dark, October 2, 2012

Self-inflicted wounds
The internet was supposed to kill print...think again
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

(Patience...this IS about theatre...eventually.)

Scratch a media pundit and they will bemoan the replacement of print journalism by the anarchism and - woe is us! - lack of FACTS of the internet. Where they see chaos, others - especially the young - see a joyful noise - a new world that requires us to use judgment towards what we are seeing.

In Canada, in the last two weeks, we have come to look askance at information and thank Christ and finally! Messes in "real" press didn't start this year. Lies were being printed in newspapers as far back as the Hearst empire and to the great broadsheets of England before that. More recent examples of big media failures are easy to find: how the press colluded with the Bush Whitehouse to drag America into a nonsensical and bloody war in Iraq. Elsewhere - and at another time - new media (The Drudge Report) and "reformed yellow" media (The National Enquirer) were breaking big stories that didn't even appear on the radar of the soi-disant serious press. Yes, the Monica Lewinsky story was risible, but it stopped the world - we all paid attention; it was not only a Republicans v. Democrats story, it was - around the world - a barometer of values.

After Dark, September 25, 2012

Chronicle of a Death Foretold
We know it's coming, why aren't we prepared?
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

When I was 15 I was an apprentice critic at Quebec City's Chronicle Telegraph - North America's oldest newspaper. It was a weekly, then, when before it had been the daily of the not-so-tiny Quebec City anglo community. Things happened. One of the biggest employers of my school-mates' dads, Anglo Pulp and Paper (yes, that was its name), became less Anglo. High-schools and primary schools closed down. Our hospital, Jeffrey Hale, became more bilingual. When I left, one of the last bastions of anglophony, St. Brigid's Retirement Home, became quite, quite franco. (When I was a boy we would take little St. Patrick's Day shows into St. Brigid's.) The community died, moved away to bigger cities for opportunity or because of politics, or was assimilated. According to the Chronicle Telegraph's website, there are more places to buy it in Montreal, now, than in Quebec City. Some consider what happened to Quebec's anglo community a tragedy  - a death foretold. Others (myself included) think of this as an evolution. A transition. Adaptation.

After Dark, September 18, 2012

I Want To Live!
Potboilers and our lives
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

When I was a kid, my mother plunked me in front of our TV and made me watch a potboiler called I Want to Live! Starring Susan Hayward, it was ostensibly a true story about a woman committed to death row for mere fringe participation in a crime that went wrong. She is executed at the end in a moment I remember as being vigorously realistic. My mother tended to plunk us in front of "lesson" movies - racism is bad, justice is harsh, the Holocaust was not nice. She helped me develop a wide streak of leftism (even as she continued to be a mad-ardent Catholic - arguably the least leftist church on the planet).

The lesson I took away from I Want to Live! was that life isn't fair.

I think it's a lesson that hit me again this week when my medical life went swirling around the toilet bowl again. Now, before you turn away from what looks like a poor-me piece, I promise it is leading to a point that I hope will have more universal resonance.

After Dark, September 11, 2012

The Language of Disrespect
Things have actually gotten worse
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Last week I wrote about how politics should be teaching us, in theatre, lessons about respect and civility. You just had to look at political campaigns in Quebec and the United States to understand that when we have grievances in the arts, we clearly should not be as rancorous. Firstly, because our community is too small to contain feuds and, secondly, because somewhere - down the line - most of us will have to work together. Grudges must die (or at least be set aside and painted over with a smile).

After I wrote that editorial two things happened:

- There was an assassination attempt on our premier-elect, allegedly by some guy spouting stupidity about how "The English are awakening!" What made the event more chilling and tragic was that there was an actual death during the attempt, a stage techie named Denis Blanchette.

- I received an open letter (email) about the crisis at Factory Theatre that I suspect I was meant to publish but where the content of the letter was so angry and uncivil I decided I would not put it up on the site. I stated that I would no longer publish pieces that did not advance dialogue that might resolve the situation.

Beyond The Fourth Wall, September 5, 2012

Body movements remain at the heart of Dvorezky’s process.

Zero Gravity Costa Dvorezky

Galerie D’Este

Sept.  6 – 26 (Above: The Hoop)

Shows Of Interest this Week

by Estelle Rosen

Friday Nocturnes / Exhibitions, music…

J.A.S.S. 
Musée d’Art Contemporain
Sept. 7

Is the oil on the mechanic’s hands blood stains? 
Le Méchanicien 
Théatre d’Aujourd’hui
Sept. 11 – 29

Exhibition exploring forestry and its uncharted relationships with planning and design. 

First, the Forests
Canadian Centre for Architecture
October 4 – Jan. 12

After Dark, September 4, 2012

The Tribes
There are lessons we must learn from politics
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Today Quebeckers vote. It has been a rancorous and unpleasant campaign and I'm glad to be rid of it (though suspect by midnight we will have a minority government and be heading back to the fucking polls in no time).

I've heard all the hyperbole I can handle. It didn't come close to the scum thrown in the US, but it did approach it. Because of the confluence of the student uprising and the burgeoning strength of the sovereignist Parti Québécois we were treated to ugly epithets hurled on one side and another not just on Facebook and Twitter - bad enough - but in editorials too. One idiot editorial in anglo Montreal trotted out "fascist" to describe the PQ leader's aspirations. When you've heard that one thrown at the Liberals for nine months, it becomes meaningless.

US politics are uglier than ever. But that seems to be a refrain we repeat every election.

After Dark, August 28, 2012

Outside the (Poor) Box
Reflections on money in a penniless world
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

If you're on Facebook or Twitter you have been seeing two trends: projects - especially theatre projects - crowd-sourcing funding for shows; a backlash against professionals - actors, journalists, musicians - working for nothing except the joy of working, experience and exposure.

These two trends interest me profoundly. As we, at CharPo, have said - out loud and constantly - we pay nothing to our writers (nor do editors, nor publishers, receive any payment). Crowd-sourcing money has been considered so that we can at least offer honorariums.

However, what is happening out there is sometimes exciting to us, and sometimes discouraging. Whereas, as little as a year ago, crowd-sourcing funds was a fascinating idea, we now see a lot of projects who go the Indiegogo route (to name one fund-raising organization) failing to raise even close to what they were aiming at. Some of these companies are solid, even magnificent, organizations. They cannot - for a variety of reasons - get government funding or when they do it's a pittance. Right now, without much research, I know at least four theatre organizations crowd-sourcing money and having a bitch of a time of it.

After Dark, August 21, 2012

Am I Getting Laid?
What's with the mood...?
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

A friend was about to set off on the weekly column journey and asked for advice. I told him, "When you're pissed off, write down what's pissing you off, come back to it in three days and if it's still pissing you off...you've got a column!"

This week, as I was staring at the blank page now unblank before you, I realized that I'm not particularly pissed off about anything! Horrors! What's happening? I'm not getting laid more than usual, but it feels like when I was a younger man getting laid with mind-bending regularity. That young man had all the ugliness of the world around him as this older man does, but he - like me this week - was able to pass beyond the fixation on hopelessness and enjoy what is working.