CharPo's Real Theatre, January 13, 2012

First-Person: Matt Goldberg on Confabulation

Montreal Confidential

(Intimate) True stories are what Confabulation is all about

by Matt Goldberg

I've been trying to write about Confabulation since I started it last year. It's funny to me how tricky it's been to write about an event whose main rule involves performing solo with no notes. But this week is special. Friday night at Mainline will be Confabulation's 22nd event. If you've missed our first 21, Confabulation is a showcase of all-true stories. Each month, we get six storytellers to share stories of their lives, without notes, props or gimmicks. In these first 21 events, we've had over 120 full-length stories, plus 23 micro-stories (at February's The Shortest Story challenge). We've played at six venues -- Freestanding Room, The Grand Bayou, Mainline Theatre's Mini-Main and Mainstage, Shaika, and Shift Space.  We've had lawyers and lay-people, librarians and students, actors and directors, journalists and editors, comedians, dancers, artists and unemployed people. We've had confessions, tell-alls, revelations, refutations, analyses, analogies, and apologies. And now, for the first time ever, we'll have a show hosted by someone other than me. Which feels so good.

Profile: Arthur Holden on his play Ars Poetica

POETS DO IT IN RHYMING COUPLETS

Arthur Holden and his new play Ars Poetica

joel fishbane

“I can think of nothing more completely useless and utterly indispensable than a poetry magazine,” says playwright / actor Arthur Holden. “When the stakes are simultaneously high and low, people get twisted in knots.”

The remark is typical of Holden, whose wry tone often hides a clever theatrical mind. A Montreal success story, Holden is putting his pithy observations about poetry magazines to the test with Ars Poetica, his latest work which will have its world premiere at the Bain St. Michel at the end of January. The comedy pits the employees of the eponymous magazine against one another as they try to save their beloved magazine from the slaughter.

CharPo's Picture of The Week, January 12, 2011

Another chance to evaluate Arthur Miller's early work, 

All My Sons, at Casgrain Theatre directed

by Terry Donald

Review: Bliss (Wildside)

Trent Pardy, Jean-Robert Bourdage, France Rolland 

(photo credit: James Lavoie)

The Oracle of Walmart

Engaging, shocking, powerful, bliss

by David Sklar

I had the experience of seeing Bliss two years ago at the SummerWorks festival in Toronto. The story written by Olivier Choiniere, a graduate of NTS (National Theatre School of Canada) playwriting program on the French side, explores the extremities of the world as seen through a Walmart cashier/oracle. The play moves about in a quick, quirky and unpredictable way, edging on disturbing. Its director, Steven McCarthy, who also doubled as one of the actors in the summer production, believes that “Céline Dion is the goddess of the play”. (Thanks Pat Donnelly).  Having won the CanStage award for Best Direction, you should take him at his word.     

First Person: Anna Hopkins on All My Sons

When a Company Forms the Process

As rehearsals progress, it is the beauty of the play itself rather than its tragedy that has become most apparent to me.

by Anna Hopkins

The Montreal Theatre Ensemble will be putting on Arthur Miller's "All my Sons" from January 12th until the 28th at the college's Casgrain Theatre. The company is being hosted by John Abbott College through its Stage II program initiated by Terry Donald. This program allows for professional theatre students to audit rehearsals and partake in talk-backs, while giving MTE the opportunity to mentor Montreal's future actors. Although I had never been a student at the college, I heard about auditions and made my way out to Sainte-Anne de Bellevue from my apartment in the Mile End (for the first time!). To my delight it was a trip that would be the first of many. 

Beyond Our Fourth Wall, January 11, 2012

How Ukrainian actor Sasha Samar copes with the Soviet Union coming apart.

Moi dans les ruines rougees du siècle

Jan. 10 – Feb. 4 Théatre d’Aujourd’hui

Theatre…en français

by Estelle Rosen

Brecht’s Threepenny Opera- five states of human misery…

L’opéra de quat’sous

Jan. 24 –Feb. 11   Usine C

Following a fire, two ornithologists dig through traces of their secrets in the rubble of their nest.

Le Nid

Jan 16 – 27 A La Petite Licorne

Remount of Brecht’s La Noce; wedding meal reunites 8 family members.

La Noce 

Jan 24 – Feb. 11 Théatre Prospero

After Dark, January 10, 2012

The Tempest Which is Coming (or may already be here)

Technology must be accommodated but must first be understood and tamed

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

One of my favourite comics, Patton Oswalt, fought an unpleasant battle in the live vs. tech war this week. He was in a club, working for free, testing new material. He noticed someone started filming him. It threw him off because the material was so raw, the taping had begun well into the bit and he didn't want it being exposed to the world before it was ready. All good reasons for being perturbed. But Oswalt, despite his bitter onstage persona, is a fairly decent person who, right that moment, became (reportedly) a little undecent at the filmer's, a woman's, expense. 

The Upstage Interview: Alex McCooeye on Pit and The Pendulum (Wildside)

Quoth the Raven...

Upstage and Charlebois Post contributor Sarah Deshaies spoke with Alex McCooeye  about his adaptation of The Pit and the Pendulum presented as part of WildSide Festival. Below is an abridged version edited by Estelle Rosen, CharPo editor-in-chief.

UPSTAGE

You’ve adapted one of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories The Pit and the Pendulum. Are you a big fan of Poe?

McCOOEYE

I loved Poe as a kid, curled up under my blanket with my flashlight looking up words. I sort of think of him as the Shakespeare that never wrote plays or much about love.

The Pit and the Pendulum is one of his middle of the ground lesser known stories. It’s not The Raven, but was popular once. It’s been done a couple of times on film. Vincent Price did a lame version; there was a film in 2009. Sort of a teen horror sexy film that was awful so I want to do justice to the title.

Ford's Focus: Quincy Armorer

Just Hitting His Stride

It begins with a conversation in a kitchen...

by Barbara Ford

Like many parents, Quincy Armorer’s hoped their sons would become successful lawyers, doctors and businessmen and Armorer gave it an honest shot. Though he was excited by the text and language acting in MacDonald Cartier High School Shakespeare productions on the South Shore, he made good use of his high school math and science scores to register in Health Sciences at CEGEP, with the intention of eventually becoming a doctor. After a year, “I just knew it wasn’t me.” So as not to lose the time he had already invested and the credits he’d accumulated, he pragmatically switched to commerce, which allowed him to take a few minor courses in arts and still finish in the usual two years.