As of January 7, 2013, this website will serve as an archive site only. For news, reviews and a connection with audience and creators of theatre all over the country, please go to The Charlebois Post - Canada.
Looping the Loop
Publishing on the web is both an exciting and frustrating business.
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois
It is has been an incredibly loopy week here at the old digital ink mill. We had a blast, Sunday night, with our Oscar Twitterama (the tweets making for considerably better entertainment than the awards show). This bodes well for our upcoming event, Twee-atre (we have the writers, we are about to set a time and a date). Another thing is that, last week, we surpassed our all-time record for pageviews (the one established during the WildSide Festival and when comic Mike Birbiglia tweeted our review of his show to his thousands). This week it looks like we will surpass last week's record.
The most-read articles, needless to say, were those connected to Patrick Goddard's 10 Things I Hate About Theatre (Joel Fishbane's subsequent edito, and Patrick's response to all of it). All the articles and the 50 or so comments to them were widely read and discussed in the community and proved, at the very least, that theatre people do not sit on their hands when they have something on their minds.
10 things I Hate About Theatre Post-Scriptby Patrick Goddard
Last week, I touched off a firestorm with the introductory post to this series. Although I knew it would be provocative, I naïvely didn't expect that my personal opinions would be taken as representative of the views of the Quebec Drama Federation as a whole. The question of how personal an opinion the President of the QDF could express, and in what forum, is a large one, and was addressed by the QDF's Board of Directors. It was pointed out that we did have a policy in place that journalists could not sit on the Board of the QDF, borne out of the concern that one member of the Board could unduly influence the livelihood of other QDF members. With that in mind, I can no longer be a contributor to what has very quickly become one of the most important and vital media outlets in Montreal English Theatre. Although I'm hardheaded enough to withstand controversy personally, I don't want to risk the reputation of the QDF, an organization that is growing more and more exciting and relevant.
GODDARD AS MY WITNESS
For the 2010 edition of the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe, Hour asked a few us to contribute to their Fringe Fanaticism blog. Jeremy Hechtman agreed to do a year-by-year account of his experience with the festival. This inspired me to do the same, albeit with a twist: I'd look at the evolution of the Montreal Fringe by reviewing a single show from each year. So here, collected for the first time in one place, is how I've seen it...
1993: DIARY OF A MADMAN
1993 was my first Montreal Fringe. I had finished my first year at Concordia Theatre and was volunteering my ass off in order to see free shows. Volunteering gives you a very different perspective when it comes to choosing Fringe shows: something may look great in the program, but then you meet the performer and decide they're a dick unworthy of your Fringe Bucks. And then there was Rush Pearson. Rush was doing a one-man adaptation of the Gogol story and had come up from Chicago with his partner and his dog; they were the darlings of the volunteer crowd. His pre-Fringe promotion campaign became legendary: he faxed the media constantly before coming to Montreal, with a series of increasingly incoherent messages. And the show rocked. Fringe solo shows often seem like they were created that way out of financial necessity rather than for artistic reasons, but this needed to be done solo to truly convey the madness of the narrator. Rush had crafted a very solid adaptation of the text and was an engaging and warm performer. Diary of a Madman was funny, sad, sharp, and touching. 4 Bucks out of 4.
