Theatre - Catalyst: The Invisible

 Theatre - Catalyst: The Invisible

Many thanks last night to Kristi Hansen for inviting me to see The Invisible, playing at the Cultch. It was wild to go out to a theatre show after two years of staying literally as far away as I could from any manner of human.

It was wonderful to see old friends, many of whom I have not seen in years. Shout out to Lana Larisse Matthew and Michael Caron who it was lovely to see. And for Patrick who came with me to ensure I didn't stab anyone who coughed too close (or to help me bury a body if necessary).

 I have a myriad of thoughts about the show, some of which I discussed last night with crew and friend, some of which need to percolate through my brain as I consider them and reflect. But one I will share is that I think of the me of ten years ago, and my own views as a younger man of Catalyst shows. Which was the strange contrast of grotesque beauty we were all transfixed by. The combination of sound, music, movement, and design made its ethereal qualities engaging. The Catalyst that I watched then however was dominated by whiteness, they were European stories, done by white performers, with no voice given or space shared for anyone else. This weakness was overlooked because Catalyst was so 'amazing'. Or so we told ourselves then.

 The Invisible, I'm pleased to report does have People of Colour represented, (and is entirely performed by Women as well!). Though it is again a predominantly European story, there are people of colour on stage, telling metaphors about colonialism, and not just in a token way, but there are great strides being made forwards. Is it perfect? Well no, no piece of theatre really ever is. But they perform, they bring their voices, they bring their stories, and those things are intricately woven into the fabric of the spectacle that is a Catalyst show. They aren't merely tokenized and discarded, at least that was my feeling. If you told me, even five years ago that this is where we'd get to, I'd have scoffed at you. "That is not a theatre that cares about the voices of the marginalized that way." And yet last night, I am happily proven wrong.

 I'm glad to have gone out last night to see it. If you get the chance, either in Vancouver or sometime in the future, I would encourage you to do so as well.

Break legs friends.

https://thecultch.com/event/the-invisible/

Culture - On Music and Erasure

 Culture - On Music and Erasure

So normally when playing d&d in person, I score all my games.

Obviously, with covid and everyone playing remote now, I haven't been doing scoring because it's kind of a technical headache.

We played the other week though when Emry was in town in person, and I kicked on my old playlist.

And realized it didn't really fit though. Because it's mostly western fantasy music. A lot of European/American film scores and things like that.

Thinking I should source more Asian music, more Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian, etc.

And then I realized I've never actually composed any Asian music really (I did a couple Japanese style tracks back in uni) but nothing since then.

I've composed a lot of Western music, studied Italian masters, German composers, messed around with modern rock styles and transitioned into instrumental and post-rock.

Only extremely rarely studying Japanese rock music. But my knowledge of their styles and work are mostly confined to video games or anime.

And I'm thinking a lot about that invisible erasure I didn't know existed until today.

And I grieved this missing piece of myself, stolen perhaps by colonialism and my own missing ignorance.

Thoughts - On Space and Community and Race

Thoughts - On Space and Community and Race

I was thinking about a conversation I had like two weeks ago.

With an old friend, I hadn't talked to in a month or two.

We were talking about the internet and space, and how people form communities and communicate.

It came from a conversation about d&d, having to learn the skills to communicate and express oneself online and to form communities with other people having those skills.

And how there are no hard rules around things like that, they are all learned social interactions.

And she said something about that, about how she doesn't like those spaces because she doesn't want to interact in them, and doesn't need to. So she doesn't have that skill set. She doesn't like communicating that way. She doesn't need to if it isn't part of work.

And I talked about how with a two-year pandemic if I didn't have them, these spaces, this way of communicating, I wouldn't have any friends or anyone to talk to.

And I think I just realized tonight how angry that made me.

Ukraine - Zelensky's Speech

Ukraine - Zelensky's Speech

President Zelensky's gave this speech tonight. Glory to Ukraine.

I am grateful to every Ukrainian who stays to defend our cities, even in the encirclement.

Our Freedom

But I also know that there are people who really need to get out.

Who cannot stay.

And we heard the promise that there would be humanitarian corridors.

But there are no humanitarian corridors.

Instead of humanitarian corridors, they can only make bloody ones.

A family was killed in Irpen today.

A man, a woman, and two children.

Right on the road.

As in the shooting club.

When they were just trying to get out of town. To escape.

The whole family.

How many such families have died in Ukraine!

We will not forgive.

We will not forget.

We will punish everyone who committed atrocities in this war.

On our land.

We will find every bastard.

Which shot at our cities, our people. Which bombed our land.

Which launched rockets.

Which gave the order and pressed "start".

There will be no quiet place on this earth for you.

Except for the grave.

Tragedy - Gaza

 Tragedy - Gaza

I will say that for days as the conflict has been unfolding this week. It is very difficult to feel equipped to comment in any meaningful or fair way. But it's also important to me at least that I say something, anything. And saying anything is to condemn the politics and policies of attacking civilians of Palestine. It is impossible to categorize the 'war' going on as anything other than aggression of a colonizing force, and possibly at worst, some form of ethnic cleansing.

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.