American Expat Tells Queer Tales Of The American South

If a Canadian and an American get into a conversation that lasts more than five minutes, inevitably the topic of healthcare is going to come up.

I’m having coffee with American ex-pat author Thom Vernon, now a Toronto resident, to talk about his new novel, The Drifts, which was launched by Coach House Books earlier this month. But in predictable fashion, we’ve started our discussion with the differences in how our two nations treat the sick.

“In America, we have this demonization of sickness,” he says. “It’s like if you get sick it’s your fault and you deserve the consequences. Canada’s totally different. Here, there is a social safety net, and the dominant cultural value is that when people get sick, the state should be responsible for helping them.”

Read the rest at Xtra.ca

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Bigots Upset About New Ontario Health Curriculum

In September 2010, Ontario children from grades one to eight will have a new physical and health education curriculum. The provincially-mandated program includes comprehensive information on healthy eating habits, maintaining a physically active lifestyle, and reducing the spread of common illness through personal hygiene.

The curriculum also contains detailed anti-bullying information. Children learn that bodies come in different shapes and sizes, that people come from different cultural and religious backgrounds, and that not all families look the same. They also learn that not everyone grows up to be heterosexual or sticks to their birth gender, and that none of these aforementioned characteristics give them the right to hurt or discriminate against anyone.

Children in older grades learn about sexual health, contraception and issues of consent around sexual activity. While the curriculum stresses abstinence as the best option, students are given information about what to do if they decide to have sex as well as the potential consequences of choosing not to follow those practices.

A number of parents, particularly those in the Catholic school system (which is also mandated to teach the curriculum) are upset. The predictably bigoted Life Site News (a Catholic website) states that "the curriculum's revision is the attempt to instill a sense that homosexuality and transgenderism are perfectly normal." It is unclear whether parents in Ontario will be able to withdraw their children from classes where information that violates their religious teachings is presented, as is the case in Alberta after Bill 44 was passed last year. The underlying fear in all this, if I understand the bigots correctly, is that if kids learn that queers exist then they'll turn out to be queer.

Read the rest at Xtra.ca

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Why Women Choreographers Suck (According to Glenn Sumi)

This past weekend, while I was waiting for my take-out pizza to be heated up, I picked up a copy of the latest issue of NOW Magazine to read the cover story on dance legend Peggy Baker. It seems like every time I read NOW, I’m reminded again and again why I never read NOW. This week’s issue is no exception.

After his article on Baker, Glenn Sumi produces a list of some of the city’s top choreographers (all of whom happen to be women) and talks about why they are not the next Peggy Baker. While I’m all for critics asking hard questions and pushing artists to make the best work possible, lining up a group of female choreographers and then taking stabs at each of them for not being “the next Peggy Baker” shows questionable journalistic judgement.

Even worse perhaps, is the fact that Sumi’s criticisms of these women are woefully inaccurate. He states that Sasha Ivanochko “has yet to find her choreographic voice”. I’m sorry, what? Are you fucking kidding me? Sasha Ivanochko has yet to find her choreographic voice? Is this supposed to be a joke? That’s like saying the dancers of the National Ballet need to pay more attention to their technique.

Making a statement like this would incline me to believe that Sumi has never actually seen any of Ivanochko’s work, except for the fact that I’ve been in the audience with him at some of her performances.

Sumi then goes on to slag Susie Burpee because apparently “her dance is overshadowed by her theatricality”. Again, are you fucking kidding me? The theatricality of Burpee’s work is precisely what makes it distinctive and interesting and I fail to see how this could be considered a bad thing.

He goes a bit easier on Kate Alton. Instead of simply making a blanket statement about why she doesn’t measure up in his eyes, he poses the question of whether “her links to other disciplines [are] detracting from her dance or expanding her audience”. Though I appreciate his ability to at least posit this as a question, I still think it’s a pretty stupid question. Part of the reason why Alton has the success she has is precisely because she works across disciplines and has established connections with audiences outside the traditional dance core.

And while I’ll agree with Sumi that Sarah Chase is high demand around the world, and therefore not able to perform in Toronto as often as I’d like to see her, can a Toronto-based artist achieving international success really be considered a criticism?

It’s hard enough for dance artists to get coverage in mainstream publications, who’d rather dedicate ink to the latest Mirvish musical, than some obscure series of duets at the Winch. Why NOW would take an opportunity to spotlight six female choreographers, only to slag them for not measuring up to some undefined theoretical standard is beyond me. Our community deserves better than this steaming heap of shit passed off as arts journalism.
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Oklahoma's Intrusive Abortion Law Heads to Court

Rogers and Hammerstein's beloved musical Oklahoma! has charmed audiences around the world for almost seventy years. The tale of handsome farmhand Curly MacLain and his courtship of innocent farm girl Laurey Williams, has garnered critical praise, numerous awards, broken records on Broadway, and grossed millions at the box-office. The show is so frequently performed, in professional, community, and high school productions, that there is an average of one performance every day somewhere in the world. While Curly and Laurey wait until after they've tied the knot to consummate their love, things could have turned out differently for them if they'd ended up getting it on before their wedding night. And if they were living in Oklahoma today and had to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, things could be pretty bad.

On Feb 19 a hearing will begin in Oklahoma State Court regarding a controversial new abortion law passed last fall but put on hold by a judge until this week. Known as the Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act, the law requires all women who have abortions to complete a form with more than 30 questions including their age, race, level of education, and marital status, as well as detailed questions on their reasons for choosing to terminate the pregnancy. The information is then posted on a website. Women who refuse to complete the form cannot be provided with abortion services and doctors who try to side-step the process would face criminal sanctions and lose their license.

Check out the rest at Xtra.ca
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Keith Cole Announces Toronto Mayoral Bid

On Friday February 12, local performance artist and provocateur Keith Cole announced his plan to run for mayor in the Toronto municipal election next October. Amidst cheers, as well as some shocked faces, he told the crowd that it was time for change.

"For the last six years I have felt that this city has been nothing but a long, dry hack of a cough," he said. "In 2010 we actually have the opportunity to change how the City of Toronto is going to be run and how it is going to be organized. It is up to you."

Since Cole is best known for his outrageous stage antics and unconventional approach to drag performance, many were surprised by his announcement. The most common question that comes up when his candidacy is mentioned is whether he is actually serious about his intentions.

"Yes, I am totally serious about running for mayor," Cole says, on the phone from his Jarvis and Wellesley apartment. "I went down to City Hall on Tuesday, paid my $200, and got the big binder of information and rules they give out to candidates."

Check out the rest at Xtra.ca

Watch the official announcement on YouTube.
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d'bi.young at the Rhubarb Festival

You’d be hard-pressed to find an artist more prolific and hard-working than d’bi young. The 32-year-old Jamaican-born, Toronto-based, queer dub poet, writer and performer has recorded four albums, published two books, contributed to numerous compilations, written half a dozen plays, won two Dora Awards and performed on stages across the Americas and Europe. She is the founder and artistic director of anitAFRIKA! Dub Theatre, a company that teaches dub poetry to youth, and has taught and lectured internationally.

Currently on a year-long performance tour that is taking her across Canada and to Ecuador, Belize and England, young is doing her best to balance her many projects with life as the single mother of two young children.

So how exactly does she manage to do it all?

“I don’t know!” she laughs, on the phone from Montreal, where she’s currently performing. “Some days I’ll have three or four hours before rehearsal that I plan to use working on lines or something. But you know, I’ll spend the whole time making food and changing diapers.”

Her newest piece, She, which explores a young woman’s obsession with a pop icon, is being presented as part of the second week of Rhubarb at Toronto's Buddies in Bad Times. The piece is the first part of a new trilogy entitled She Raw Now, which examines “the state of affairs of the world today.”

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REVIEW: Talking Masks, Review by Aurora Stewart de Peña

Talking Masks

Written and Directed by Adam Seelig
Presented by One Little Goat

Featuring: Richard Harte, Jane Miller, Andrew Moodie, and Cathy Murphy
November 13th-28th, 8pm

Tickets 416-915-0201

Last February Norman and I saw Adam Selig’s production of Someone’s Going to Come by the mysterious Norwegian Jon Fosse. It was the best thing that either of us had seen in the city in a long, long time, and the reception afterward was really, really fun (cheese platter). We still talk about it, but as we’ve exhausted all of our superlative adjectives all that’s left is:

Norman: Someone’s Going to Come.

Aurora: I know, I know.

Norman: They really nailed that.

Aurora: They really did.

So we’ve been looking and looking forward to Adam Seelig’s next show with One Little Goat, and finally it came.

Talking Masks is about history’s monumentally troubled sons; Oedipus, Isaac and Ishmael. There are certainly more, and certainly other contemporaries, so I gently wonder why this combination of people was chosen by Seelig. Mostly, I don’t care. Make it about whoever you want, this piece was really interesting.

This production was built by a dream team of collaborators. Seelig himself is unfailingly innovative with text (“…Towards a Poetic Theatre…” is One Little Goat’s motto), so the dialogue, at times not dialogue at all but a rapid fire series of words and sounds with tenuous connections, is front and centre. This abandoning the I-Talk-She-Talks model serves the subject: it’s Oedipus, so we all know what’s going on. The narrative experimentation is welcome, and it allows the mind to walk down fascinating, previously unexplored paths.

Jackie Chau is the set designer, and the most unique, specific, beautiful and intelligent things fall from her brain on to the stage. It is always a pleasure to see what she’ll come up with. Her sets could sit onstage by themselves, there is so much to look at, and the negative space is just as interesting as the positive space.

Christopher Stanton’s sound design is an organized mess of crackles, static and echo. It is fortunate because Selig’s complicated picnic of words and sounds may have risked atonality without the layers laid by the loop pedals and amplifiers.

This work is based on stories so universally known they’ve become part of our language, just the very lightest hints of plot are all that is required. Just a touch of Aeschylus in Francis Bacon. Talking Masks, with all of its unconventional components, might seem incomprehensible to some. I think that’s fine. We don’t need to understand everything we see, and we don’t need to hear from the artist about how we should be interpreting what they’ve given us. It’s not interesting. It defeats the purpose of having a brain. In Seelig’s play, some participation is required on the part of the audience. Innovators like this are exactly what we need in Toronto. Read more!