Activism - Trans Day of Visibility

 Activism - Trans Day of Visibility

Being a good Ally is getting the FK out of the way and elevating the voices of those marginalized and oppressed. So here's Samantha St Cameron's post.

Theatre - World Theatre Day 2021

 Theatre - World Theatre Day 2021

What a strange time for theatre. In days a decade ago, colleagues of mine and I were actively trying to sort out live performance, online performance, distributed audiences, disassociative theatre that was still distinctive from broadcast or recorded mediums like television and film.

We were often laughed at by our contemporaries. "It'll never work, the magic is lost, you should just practice film, people will never watch theatre online."

How different the last year has been. Faced with a kind of cruel and casual extinction, the embrace of the medium has had to change. And no one has come to me in the last year saying "It will never work." It simply has to work, or it dies.

And lo has there been ground gained. Stories by people have taken on new mediums, imperfect in their art, but art nonetheless. A kind of rabid desire to express and be expressed to.

I have been 'practicing' roleplay games for years now, and to see the transformative medium change in these pandemic times has been exhilarating and heartbreaking. By almost equal measure.

At the same time, theatre is having this distributed awakening in the wake of Black Lives Matter. In the wake of a year of protests, long and difficult conversations are finally starting to take place. Will there be realized change? I don't know. We've been at this precipice so many times before, and I think of all the shattered lives that have vanished by the wayside in the wake, but a practitioner of theatre somehow must still hold onto a kind of hope.

That this time, things will be different.

Design - On Common

 Design - On Common

Common as a language system in d&d is a simplification in order to facilitate design around getting people moving forwards more quickly.

But you should also be adept enough to recognize that it is rooted in a deeply colonialist idea.

Life - Not Worth Celebrating

 Life - Not Worth Celebrating

I have been grappling of late with the feeling of being a friend in passing. Where people only message when they need something, or as a perfunctory thing in between actual events, with no stakes, and often only with responses of "Nice" and "Yeah".

And it makes me want to socially withdraw, which seems to compound the issue. It is this feeling of being socially outcast, where I have no one to discuss thoughts or emotions, even though I'm not actually 'down' or feeling negative, these connections are profoundly unsatisfying and commonly feel not worth the energy to develop further. I don't feel like the summation of human contact with others should be constantly through the lens of suffering or needing help.

Covid has emphasized this feeling of societal drift. I feel like I don't have anyone to celebrate with.

Maybe there's nothing worth celebrating.

Maybe I'm not worth celebrating.

Wire Run - Wreck

Wire Run - Wreck

Breathe in.

Breathe out. 

Breath in. 

Breathe out.

Breathe.

Stop. The last glimmering rays of a setting sun over the mountains. Refracted light bounces off steel and glass, these fading whispers of daytime, giving way to the neon shine of halogenic LED and false cathode crackle.

Stop.

Covid - On Empathy

Covid - On Empathy

I watched this video today.

It's funny, and it's a little silly, and then it's shocking...and then it is sad.

It's really, quite profoundly sad. As you watch these 8 people from outside the US observe just a series of clips, and images, and facts, presented honestly for consumption.

Theatre - On Covid

Theatre - On Covid

Patrick Lundeen posted a question on facebook that I happened to see, which made me go off a little bit. Not at him, but at the general trend of theatre in our ‘uncertain quarantine times’ in general.

Patrick wrote: 

Are Edmonton people planning on still trying to produce theatre in the fall?? 

Would you go see theatre in the fall?? 

Would you rehearse and perform a play in the fall?? 

Interested to hear my community’s thoughts on all this…

I wound up responding off the cuff with:

I have no plans or am included in any plans to produce in-person theatre in the fall or really anything before 2021. And I wouldn't go see any either. Truthfully, I don't think producers are taking very seriously the actual consequences of worst-case scenarios for their audiences, or for their performers and crew. The burden for years has fallen unnecessarily on talent, stage managers, and crew to absorb the burdens of leadership failings and in the past (and today), those burdens caused injuries, trauma, and abuses of pay and time.

Now that those failings could literally kill multiple people in and around our communities, I see no real reason to trust theatres on that front.

But since that reply, I've added a lot more personal thoughts here.