10 Questions for Arkady Spivak

Posted on April 21, 2012 by barczablog

Arkady Spivak is a classic Canadian success story.  Founder and Artistic Producer of Talk is Free Theatre (TIFT), Spivak earned a BA in Theatre and Business from York University in 2000, immediately joining Barrie’s Gryphon Theatre as a summer student.  While working at the Gryphon full time, Arkady started TIFT, an artist-driven, award winning theatre company based in Barrie that has produced fifty productions concentrating largely on new and neglected work.

Some of TIFT’s productions include The Inspector General (at Barrie City Hall), The Marriage, The Tale of Ivan vs. Ivan all by Nikolai Gogol; Accidental Death of An Anarchist by Dario Fo, Canadian musicals Harvest Moon Rising, Colette: The Colours of Love, Emily (two productions), Variations on a Nervous Breakdown (World Premiere), Playground (World Premiere), Napoleon (In Concert) among others; productions of Canadian plays This Is a Play, Tales of an Urban Indian (held on a moving city bus for a total of 70 performances).  Other notable productions include the highly acclaimed Canadian premiere of Anyone Can Whistle (In Concert) by Arthur Laurents & Stephen Sondheim; the North American Premiere of Trees Die Standing Tall written by Argentinian playwright Alejandro Casona in 1949; first Canadian regional production of the musical Kiss of the Spider Woman; and productions by local writers of world premieres – Chaplin: About Face, Laughton Common and Redemption.

Among the artists who have worked with TIFT are Graham Abbey, Maja Ardal, Leslie Arden, Jim Betts, Adam Brazier, Evan Buliung, Juan Chioran, Darrell Dennis, Wayne Gwillim, Kate Hennig, Jeffrey Huard, Aleksandar Lukac, Joey Miller, Jonathan Monro, Mike Nadajewski, Richard Ouzounian, Jennifer Phipps, Glynis Ranney, Jennifer Stewart, Sam Strasfeld, Blythe Wilson and many others.

Assassins banner

Last year: Assassins

In 2010, TIFT and Birdland Theatre co-produced Assassins in Toronto. This critically acclaimed production sold out its entire run and won the Dora Award for Best Musical. It was remounted this past January with five new cast members and once again, it sold out for 6 weeks, including two extensions.

TIFT also toured its productions to Serbia, England and Russia with recent production of The Tale of Ivan vs. Ivan, and in 2008 the annual International Bulgakov Festival of Creativity in Kiev, Ukraine with excerpts from the 2005 production of Moliere or League of Hypocrites. The Canadian musical Emily, twice produced by TIFT, was a selection finalist at the prestigious Festival of New Musicals of the National Alliance of Musical Theater (NAMT) in New York in 2010. Previous to that Emily was showcased as part of the Songwriters Showcase at the same festival in 2007.

Talk Is Free Theatre recently produced a fundraising benefit of The Producers (In Concert) in support of the Actors Fund of Canada. The performance starred major theatre critics, personalities and members of various arts service and funding organizations, raising $36,000.

While managing a very dynamic and rapidly growing arts organization, Spivak continues to be active in the community as a Member of the Kiwanis Club of Barrie, as a Juror for the Theatre Projects Program of the Ontario Arts Council, as an adjudicator for Sears Drama Festival as well as contributing monthly columns on arts topics in The Barrie Examiner.  Spivak is the recipient of an inaugural Barrie Arts Award for Excellence in the Arts.

This past week Arkady Spivak announced TIFT’s 2012-2013 season.  I ask Spivak ten questions: five about himself and five about Talk Is Free Theatre.

1) Which of your parents do you resemble (what’s your nationality / ethnic background)?

Arkady Spivak

Arkady Spivak, Founder and Artistic Producer of Talk is Free Theatre (TIFT).

I believe I resemble my father who passed away when I was almost 6 years old. I don’t remember him very well, but people tell me I do. Other than that, I am a Russian Jew, though in a way that term is an oxymoron.

2) what is the BEST thing / worst thing about being artistic director of a theatre company?

In order to do the job properly, it has to be more than a job. It’s a lifestyle, it’s a set of philosophical believes, it’s a cult. I think the trickiest thing is to achieve a balance in your life. I mean you don’t want to be in a position that when you retire, you have nothing.

3) who do you listen to or watch?

Never turn on my television other than an occasional newscast. Love listening to obscure Broadway musicals. I am really, really boring in this regard.

4) what ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

Admire ballet dancers a lot. Being able to express one’s self non-verbally is the greatest gift, I think. There’s also something tragic having such a brief career after such demanding training.

5) When you’re just relaxing (and not working) what is your favorite thing to do?

Travelling. Love flying around.

Five more about being Artistic Director of TIFT.

1) How does leading TIFT & programming plays challenge you?

I think that the programming of plays is not all that challenging for me personally. I have the luxury of “going on the gut”, rather than satisfying a set of purely commercial obligations, such as the necessity of selling a certain number of tickets to meet the budget, etc. Our revenue generation is highly diversified, which means that I am lucky to be able to take risk, a feeling so important in order to remain visionary and entrepreneurial. The challenge for me is not so much being creative as it is to make things happen practically. I have been very lucky to attract artists who are deeply invested and interested in the work they’re doing, again because of the prevalent ability of the company to take risks. They make me look like a hero, although it’s ultimately not me going to the battle, it’s the artists. And there’s so much talent.

2) what do you love about TIFT, and the plays you’re presenting next season?

Because of our track record, we have the expectation upon us to come up with fresh ideas and visions. To be honest, to achieve anything new in theatre is impossible. Since Aristotle we have seen everything at least once before. I think that success is a certain collective ability to cheat an audience that they’re watching something new. They’re not.

I am looking forward to our cross gendered version of Guys and Dolls – this tactic is known to theatre, but not to musical theatre; simply because the form has a certain degree of mechanical requirements, which are hard to avoid.  I am also very interested in experimenting with creating a new musical using largely improvisational techniques. It’s not enough to look for new works, but it’s equally important to look for new processes, new creation models at the same time.

3) Do you have something you’re especially looking forward to, or a favorite play in the upcoming season?

I think pretty much everything in the new season is something I have been after for quite a while. Nothing is incidental. Everything has been brewing in my brain for years. But in the end the availability of artists for whom these works are the right challenge is what is most important.

4) How do you relate to the Ontario Theatrical Community as a modern man?

I am for total lack of restraint, I guess. Ontarian theatre audiences are not stupid, they will tell you if you’re holding anything back.

5) Is there anyone out there who you particularly admire, and who has influenced you?

Tom Rooney

Tom Rooney

Everyone I collaborate with. I have no business associating with artists whom I don’t at least admire if not love. But if I am threatened with execution, I’d have to say that I am totally fascinated with Tom Rooney these days. A textbook example of a true artist and a brilliant man. He’s totally immediate, yet completely unattainable. In other words, a genius and a huge element of national pride. A unit of measure for what’s good in theatre.

Next up? Spivak &  TIFT close out their current season with Parkdale Peter Pan:  an adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s seminal work, which begins in modern day Canada, journeys to the timelessness of the Never Land and back again.….May 31-June 16.

And next season?

  • A cross gendered version of Guys and Dolls
  • Axis Theatre Company’s The Number 14.
  • Possible Worlds by John Mighton
  • A world premiere musical Dead Souls, adapted from the epic satirical novel by Nikolai Gogol

For more information, go to Talk is Free Theatre’s website.

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Meeting Titurel

Posted on April 21, 2012 by barczablog

I wrote this as a Facebook “note” in August 2009, a kind of diary entry seen only by friends.  It came to mind today in an online conversation, and so I decided to revisit these thoughts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am not sure whom this is addressed to. It’s really a public diary entry, blogged meditation.

I went to see my father-in-law Joe this morning, as I sometimes do. Joe lives in a home, suffering from Alzheimer’s. He’s gradually getting worse, which is precisely what they predict. While prognoses are usually a series of predictions, they’re a sketchy scenario at best. You know the rough curve of the decline, not the ups and downs along the way. Who would expect that this man who worked most of his life among other men (a contractor) would often forget the women blood relatives of his family, yet remember me, the chief man in this life that he still remembers. Some days are better than others, but mostly he sleeps the day away since his wife passed away in April and stopped coming to see him regularly (yes: she exhausted herself with visits to him, and now he lives on, vaguely aware that something in his life is missing).

I’m going to make a comparison that will sound grandiose to some people. And maybe that’s what it is; but I am trying to make sense out of things, so if this works for you, great, and if not, that’s life….

In Wagner’s opera Parsifal, the story concerns the Holy Grail. It’s almost impossible to talk about the subject without invoking hysterical laughter, as we recall Graham Chapman’s King Arthur (God bless him), John Cleese as “Tim”, the woman in the weigh scales with the duck (to see if she was a witch). Symbolic stories full of portents make people laugh, often because the underlying truths are expressed in such absolute language –either this or that, with no gray areas–that reminds us of church and other places where laughter was prohibited. I used to think nursing homes would be like that, but in fact laughter is allowed and encouraged. Parsifal, though, is as serious as they come. When it’s presented at Wagner’s Bayreuth Festival the tradition is that you’re not supposed to applaud at the end of Act I; and sometimes you’ll hear people shushing others. No it’s not an opera about spontaneous emotions, but something more like a visit to a church or a shrine.

Speaking of shrines, in the story of Parsifal, the story itself is a bit of a shrine. Not only do we see the holy grail revealed in the course of the opera –twice in fact, and i hope that doesn’t spoil the story for anyone about to see it–but there’s something in some ways even more magical than the grail.

More magical than the grail? Well how about someone who is almost dead, ready for a crypt, who comes back to life whenever he sees the grail. The Grail ritual renews everyone who sees it, especially Titurel, who is barely alive.

I couldn’t put my finger on it today, when I visited Joe, but there was something curiously familiar. Yes, it was Parsifal. Joe has to be fed by the staff, as he gets weaker. This big strong man has become a 120 pound shadow of his former self. One thing that he loves is chocolate. Today for instance, I brought him the usual — a diabetic candy sweetened with aspartame rather than sugar–to offer to him. When I arrived he was asleep, at 11 am. I stood beside his bed, CNN blaring away on the TV (he doesnt’ seem to understand what’s on, but it’s really a kind of company he wants rather than a specific show), wondering if he would wake up. Then I felt his presence, looking down, suddenly i saw that his eyes were open. He said “good night”, as he often does. And he closed his eyes.

I talked to him. I was trying to re-engage him, to see if he’d wake up. I said hello, and asked if he knew who I was. He was blank…and then when i said “son in law” he nodded and said “son in law” and i said Leslie. And he nodded but didn’t say anything. I am a lot bigger than him, so i wonder sometimes if he’s agreeing because a big stranger is looming above him, and offering him chocolate. Why argue?

Today for the first time, he had serious trouble taking the chocolate from me. Four time he reached towards his face. His hands were having trouble closing on the candy. Once he dropped the chocolate, and it fell alongside his body (he was in a semi-foetal position throughout my visit). And he seemed to drift off to sleep.

I asked him a couple of times if he wanted the chocolate. He’d say yes, reach for it, open his mouth to accept it on his tongue, but couldn’t get his hand –a hand that had powerfully held a hammer and driven nails to build the garage and shed behind my house –to close. His fingers were stiff, bending where they met the hand but otherwise refusing to articulate or curve. His chocolate repeatedly fell from his hand. One time, he closed his eyes as if to just drift off into sleepy surrender. I cleaned off his hand with a kleenex, where the chocolate had partially melted.

Finally I asked him if I could feed it to him. It’s a very intimate moment as you can imagine. He looked up, our eyes met but he said nothing. I brought the chocolate closer, and his eyes widened. I said “let me feed you the chocolate” and he opened his mouth wide and took it. He started to chew…then seemed about to fall asleep again.

If he were to fall asleep with the chocolate in his mouth he could choke. So I woke him up, engaging him in a conversational red herring (and please excuse the mixed metaphor…chocolate herring can’t be very tasty). I asked him if it was good. And told him to chew it. And asked him if it was coconut. Coconut was my favourite. Eventually he chewed it. And then it was as if Titurel came to life, the great king revived and resumed his regal posture for a bit. Joe came back into the room for awhile. He became more animated. I don’t recall what we talked about because i was so delighted to see so much life from him, the strongest and most animated he’d seemed in a few weeks. He said “good night” a few times.

I was struck by the torturous aspect of the encounter, which is why Wagner is sometimes useful. His tales are mythical, which is another way of saying that he paints in broad strokes without being realistic whatsoever. At times like this realism has nothing to do with it. I need a symbol, that i can then imbue with my own meanings. In the opera Titurel has been wasting away because his son has a wound inflicted while sinning. Or in other words, Amfortas had the holy phallic symbol (the holy spear) stolen from him while he was busily having sex with a beautiful woman. Sounds a bit like VD or a psycho-somatic illness brought on by guilt. Amfortas has guilt alright. And so he rarely unveils the grail anymore because the grail torments him and reopens his wounds. By avoiding the grail he is aging his father Titurel. Lordy, everytime we visit Joe and unveil the grail –chocolate flavoured in our case with coconut–to bring him back to life, it’s torture. He is drifting closer and closer to the afterlife where i think he dreams of re-uniting with his recently departed wife Irene. When he sleeps i am sure he sees her. When he eats chocolate, aside from the yummy taste, it pulls him back into this world. But he is gradually getting weaker, his death more and more certain. Today i was shocked that instead of eagerly taking the chocolate, he could not even hold it anymore. What exactly do i accomplish, pulling him back to life, away from his sleep?

In Act III of Parsifal, when the hero finally retrieves the spear from the bad guys, and returns it to the castle of the grail, we hear that dear old Titurel finally passed away. It’s a sad moment but nobody is immortal. I am trying to reconcile these two contrary wishes in my own opera: the desire to feed Joe his chocolate to bring him back to life, and the wish that he will wander off in sleep to be with Irene.

As you all get older, unless there’s a miraculous leap forward in our understanding of Alzheimer’s, there will be more Titurels, on the edge of life and death. Good luck.

~~~~~~~~~~

Epilog: at the time I wrote this in the summer of 2009, I was a regular visitor to my father-in-law, at a home where he was living with Alzheimer’s, having outlived his wife (my mother-in-law,  who had passed away in April 2009) until he too passed away in February 2010.

Posted in Food, Health and Nutrition, Opera, Personal ruminations & essays, Psychology and perception, Spirituality & Religion | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Muse of Fire

Posted on April 19, 2012 by barczablog

When the Prologue to Henry V confronts us with the limitations of the medium, inviting the audience to employ their “imaginary forces,” because it is our “thoughts that now must deck [their] kings” we are encountering yet another part of the never-ending conversation that is Shakespeare.

Muse of Fire was an ambitious anthology of Shakespearean excerpts, readings about the Bard and modern song settings of Shakespeare.   Presented on two evenings this week, we were taken deeply into a special discursive space where we could both sample Shakespeare in several guises and think about him, in the company of Talisker Players & Groundling Theatre Company.

Muse of Fire was structured in such a way to permit reflection, alternating Shakespeare in performance –songs or readings—with brief commentaries about various aspects such as “language”, “humanity”, and “tradition.”  I couldn’t help wondering about the process whereby our evening was composed, a part of musing that naturally enhances the unfolding performances.  We were happily placed in a critically informed space as if dramaturgs, sharing a meditation on what it is to make theatre.

Or so I felt.

In Muse of Fire we had the wondrous experience of sampling five different compositional flavours of Shakespeare, each sung by Norine Burgess, with a brief reading by Graham Abbey in between to act as baguette to cleanse our palate for the next taste.  Abbey began our evening with the aforementioned Prologue –the one that invokes the Muse of Fire—as a foretaste of the second mature tetralogy of history plays (even though the history in those plays actually comes before the matter shown in the first tetralogy) that is the source for the concluding work on the program, The Breath of Kings.

Bennett

Nigel Bennett

Where the first portion of the evening went back and forth between musical adaptations of Shakespeare and commentary, Breath of Kings was a crowd-pleasing anthology, a virtual greatest-hits compilation from these, the four best-known history plays, completed by judiciously chosen excerpts from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons adapted by Laura Jones in chamber form.  We had been taken to a speculative place of which I believe the Bard would have approved, whereby we were freed of our habitual dependence upon our eyes, and opened up to hear the music of the text irrespective of the gender of the speaker.  Each of the Groundlings had their magical moment.  For Rosemary Dunsmore it was one of Richard II’s great speeches.  For Nigel Bennett, it was the opportunity to perform the entire arc of Falstaff from roaring drunken lout to the heart-break of Henry’s rebuke the day of his coronation.  For Gareth Potter, Henry has the wondrous moments of inspiration at Agincourt, and the courtship of Sophie Goulet as Catherine his queen to be.

A composer who adapts Shakespeare is taking on a role something like that of a dramatist (and excuse me if I unconsciously echo Joseph Kerman’s dictum from Opera as Drama, that “the composer is the dramatist”), and in so doing surely contemplating how much or little of Shakespeare should come through in the process.  I am reminded of Linda Hutcheon’s use of the metaphor of the palimpsest in speaking of adaptation, calling attention to our pleasure in discerning the underlying layers that have been partially covered.  Some composers –Stravinsky’s songs come to mind especially—are busily going about their business of making a musical structure, not necessarily concerned that their work should serve the poet whose words they employ.  The songs of Howard Blake took a more tonal approach, perhaps reflecting Blake’s career in film.  Each composer brought a fresh understanding to the texts.  Alexander Rapoport’s composition was wonderfully rhythmic, a cheery beginning to the concert.  Mark Richards undertook a sonnet in a more spare language, eloquently structured to allow the voice to soar freely.  Having said that, I have to allow that Jean Coulthard’s setting of sonnet XCI was every bit as elegant, sharply divided in its approach between the first eight and the last six lines.

Burgess

Mezzo-soprano Norine Burgess    (© Johannes Ifkovits)

Burgess was particularly impressive with the serial Stravinsky composition, finding pitches across bold intervals with pinpoint accuracy, but warmly musical throughout.  Burgess is a singer of many voices, who showed us different ways to sound beautiful, never singing harshly or out of tune, and always with a touching sense of ensemble with the musicians around her, never the star but an equal.

Speaking of self-effacement and generosity, I am very proud of Massey College at University of Toronto for their role in fostering this wonderfully intellectual experience.  In the middle of the concert John Fraser came forward to offer a bit of background, reminding me of what an exceptionally well-conceived program we were watching.  Talisker Players are to be congratulated, while Massey College is to be thanked for keeping the conversation going.

Groundling TheatreImage from Groundling Theatre’s Website (click to see more)

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Opera Atelier’s Armide in Toronto

Posted on April 18, 2012 by barczablog

I have to rethink my week, because somehow I have to get to see Opera Atelier’s production of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Armide again.  Possibly the finest opera of the 17th Century, and certainly one of the greatest operas ever written, it’s almost completely unknown to most people.

Why see it again, and why should you see it?

ArmideForget what you think baroque opera is supposed to do.  Instead of the alternation between recitatives and arias, singers showing off their skills with elaborate coloratura and high notes that stop the story in its tracks, Lully’s arioso writing keeps moving, often punctuated by dance, and avoiding the stasis one finds in an Italian baroque aria.

Armide is a story of love and duty.  Set in the Crusades, Armide is an Islamic Princess, while Renaud, her chief antagonist –and eventually her lover— is a Christian Knight.  The story elicits so many odd moments of personal conflict and ambivalence that when Jean-Luc Godard set passages from the opera in the film Aria, they illustrate a kind of misogynistic torment of women that seems to lead to madness.  I don’t encourage you to see Godard’s film, at least until you’ve encountered the work as written.

Watching the opera tonight I thought of a film with a similar offbeat mythology, namely Mr & Mrs Smith, a story about a husband and wife who are hired killers.  For awhile in the film they try to kill each other, not so very different from the antagonism one sometimes experiences in marriage, but taken to a comical extreme.

Or as Pat Benatar tried to tell us, “love is a battlefield”.

That metaphorical understanding of the opera’s epic battles –in other words, that Armide is less a matter of crusading and more a matter of loving—is the key to the new production.  In OA’s previous take on Lully’s opera, at least in what Director Marshall Pynkoski spoke of in his notes– they seemed to focus mostly on the politics, so that it ended on an anti-climax, as Armide was abandoned by her lover Renaud.

This time Pynkoski paid less attention to matters of state and instead concentrated on matters of the heart.  In Lully’s style of opera, dance is integral to the action, and so it’s no wonder that choreographer Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg was involved more in Armide than perhaps any previous opera from OA.

Dancer Jack Rennie is the most memorable personage in the work (even without singing), playing the figure of Love.  For awhile Armide seeks to escape from love, and enlists the aid of Hate, a demonic figure from Hell, to exorcise Love from inside her.  The small part of Hate was memorably sung by Curtis Sullivan.  Hate brings demons to torture Love, but in the end Armide chooses Love and rejects Hate (which makes him even angrier).

Colin Ainsworth

Tenor Colin Ainsworth

Both leads were outstanding.  Colin Ainsworth as Renaud reprised the role he sang in the previous production, every note exactly on pitch.  The voice is as gentle and sweet sounding as ever, but seems to have grown bigger.  Peggy Kriha Dye as Armide has a far more difficult part to play.  Where Renaud has to mostly look heroic and then fall in love, Armide is a far more ambivalent character of contradictory passions.  The dramatic highlight of the evening was Dye’s scene when she comes upon the sleeping Renaud, intending to kill him.

This sequence –complete with daggers–might be why Jean-Luc Godard decided to show Armide as a window on the oppression of women, with his chief insight being that love makes women crazy.  We saw Dye’s portrayal change from the confident attacker, seduced by Ainsworth’s vulnerable form, and tormented by indecision, finally incapable of striking.

The throbbing heart of the production is Tafelmusik Orchestra led by David Fallis.  Singers were never covered, but always supported sensitively, even though the score is full of drumming and strong rhythms reminiscent of military music.  The other highlight came unexpectedly from Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, in a sequence where we are being told about the delusory nature of reality.  The music is a delightfully sensual lure, even as the text tells us otherwise.

Designer Gerard Gauci’s lovely sets are more elaborate than before, in anticipation of being toured first to Versailles Theatre, and then Glimmerglass for the summer.

But first they’ll finish out the week at the Elgin Theatre until Saturday April 21st.

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10 Questions for Norine Burgess

Posted on April 15, 2012 by barczablog

Norine Burgess’s stage presence and elegant singing keep her busy in opera houses and on concert stages around the world.  Recently she was heard in Beethoven’s 9th (Vancouver Symphony), Clairon in Strauss’s Capriccio (Pacific Opera Victoria), as Annio in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito (Opera Vancouver), and in recital in her native Calgary.  An extended run as Miss Mary Lloyd in the Vienna Volksoper’s production of Kálmán’s Die Herzogin von Chicago earned her rave notices: “she is so perfect in the role that it is almost impossible to imagine a production without her.” (MusicWebInternational). She debuted at the Salzburg Festival in 1997 in Die Zauberflöte, and has worked with such notable conductors as Sir Charles MacKerras, Manfred Honeck, and Helmuth Rilling.

Her extensive discography includes the Healey Willan Requiem with the Kitchener-Waterloo Philharmonic Choir (EMI); Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2, “Lobegesang”, with the Internationale Bachakademie conducted by Helmuth Rilling; a Christmas CD Michael Schade for the Canadian Musical Heritage Society; and a DVD of the Vienna Volksoper production of Die Herzogin von Chicago, which was featured as DVD of the Month in Gramophone: “A strong cast headed by the attractive Canadian soprano Norine Burgess…tremendous fun!”

Muse of Fire, to be presented this coming week in a co-production of Talisker Players and members of Groundling Theatre Company, a celebration of Shakespeare, via six composers: Igor Stravinsky, Howard Blake, Jean Coulthard, Alexander Rapoport, Mark Richards, and Antonio Vivaldi.  Five of the six compositions in Muse of Fire are for mezzo-soprano & instrumentalists, so in a very real sense Norine Burgess will be playing The Muse.

I ask Burgess ten questions: five about herself and five about Muse of Fire.

1) Which of your parents do you resemble (what’s your nationality / ethnic background)?

Norine Burgess

Mezzo-soprano Norine Burgess (photo credit: Johannes Ifkovits)

When I was a toddler, I looked exactly like my dad; but now, not only do I look very much like my mom, I apparently sound exactly like her on the phone; people can’t tell us apart. My family tree is rooted mostly in England, with a Scottish branch thrown in for flavour.
2) what is the BEST thing / worst thing about being a singer?

The best thing about being a singer is the emotional connection the human voice has for people; unlike an instrument, we all have a voice, so it seems to go straight to people’s hearts & emotions. Of course, that’s the worst thing too, because whatever I am affected by in my life tends to show up in my voice, sometimes making performing challenging.

3) who do you listen to or watch?

I listen to Ella Fitzgerald, the Barenaked Ladies; I watch Smash, because I love the process of building a musical (that’s where I got started)

4) what ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

The ability that I wish I had? well, to be honest…. (I have kids, & I’ve read & watched Harry Potter a LOT)… I wish all that magic were possible, & I could use a wand!

5) When you’re just relaxing (and not working) what is your favorite thing to do?

I love to do yoga, read, garden, hike… paint (but that requires more time than I usually have)

Five more about Muse of Fire

1) How do the songs in Muse of Fire challenge you? 

The songs challenge me, each group in a different way: Stravinsky is especially tricky because it is so sophisticated & intellectual, especially the first piece. It has taken a little while to find the tunefulness. The Couthard was also a challenge in terms of pure mechanics–counting & intervals. It took awhile to find the melody & the arc of the song. The other groups were perhaps less challenging in that respect, but had other challenges of fitting the ensemble together, or vocal technique, dealing with high notes, long-held notes, etc. Of course, singing in English, the challenge is always to make the words as clear as possible, & infused with meaning.

2) what do you love about Muse of Fire

I always love working with the Talisker Players–I feel like it’s a team effort, a discovery together, rather than an instrumental group with the addition of a vocalist. I always learn a great deal (shifting! who knew?), & I enjoy the rehearsal process almost as much as the performances.

3) Do you have a favorite number or moment in Muse of Fire?

I think my favourite piece is the whole group of Blake songs, perhaps the final one most of all.

4) How do you relate to Shakespeare & the presentation of his works in Muse of Fire as a modern woman?

Shakespeare wrote clear, beautiful, evocative words which we still find touch our hearts even now.

5) Is there anyone out there who you particularly admire, and who has influenced you?

So many people I admire & who have influenced me–dear friends, singing teachers, my children (parenting is an amazingly life-changing experience!)… too many to name.

Muse of Fire
A celebration of the Great Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare

Tuesday, April 17 & Wednesday, April 18, 2012 at 8 PM
Pre-concert chats at 7:15 pm
Trinity St. Paul’s Centre, 427 Bloor Street West

Norine Burgess, mezzo soprano;
members of Groundling Theatre Company
The Talisker Players Email: words.music@taliskerplayers.ca

TICKET INFORMATION
Individual tickets:  $30 / $20 (seniors) / $10 (students)
Tel: 416-978-8849 ~ General information: 416-466-1800
http://www.taliskerplayers.ca/

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CAGE MATCH (!)

Posted on April 14, 2012 by barczablog
Tom Allen

CBC broadcaster & trombone player Tom Allen

The title, all in caps, is meant to invoke the voice of Tom Allen from CBC, as he used to say it on a program, that, alas is no longer part of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)’s schedule.

CBC keep changing and re-tooling their programming.  A few years ago some big changes led to the departures of some much-loved hosts, to be replaced by a new younger cohort.  Ironically I am now going to celebrate one of those “new” shows that was in turn swept aside in another subsequent re-tooling.

Once I got over the frustration of the changes –which as always seemed to lead to more popular music, less classical, and in general, the dumbing down of CBC—I started to notice some things I liked.  Please note: this is past tense.  I am remembering what was, not what is.

Tom Allen hosted a morning show (damn I can’t recall what it was called!!).  I listened to it regularly.  I was going to say “Disc Drive” but no, that was one of the cancelled shows, hosted by Jurgen Goth (hope i spelled that right).  The chief thing I recall about it was a most post-modern idea in the midst of this classical music show.  Allen would have a weekly feature called “Cage Match”, presented complete with smack-down intro music and a nasty macho voice.  This was all parody of course, which means you do it with a straight face.   Allen would say “CAGE MATCH” as if we were about to hear a wrestling competition on the radio.  Two pieces of music would in effect have a cage match: a kind of fight to the death.  Monday we’d hear the two pieces, and then we’d be invited to comment via email or telephone, phoning in our preferences (i once or twice sent comments and heard my name on air at least once).  Friday we’d find out who won.  In so doing, Allen would deconstruct some of the pomposity that is usual in classical music discourse, mocking the seriousness of the pieces & their performers.

Of course Allen’s a trombone player so this is natural.  I sat beside the trombone players (euphonium & tuba here, in the UTS band of yore… George Stock, wherever you are, you were the funniest trombonist i ever met God rest your soul), the vaudeville comedians of any band.  Same with double bass I think. When you’re far from the boss at the front you can heckle quietly, while you’re counting the zillions of bars of rests until your next entrance.

And so…. I’d like to imagine a few possible cage matches of my own.  Yes I am vicarious, wishing I had been able to do such a show of my own.  Well done Mr Allen, I know I am not presumptuous in saying that we miss Cage Match (although please note, the CBC had the good sense when re-tooling to keep their best tools: such as Mr Allen).  I can’t be alone in missing this wonderfully unpretentious breath of fresh air.

And so, without further ado, here are Cage Matches we might have seen, which I will call Virtual Cage Matches: because we’re going to have to imagine them without any voters.

Virtual Cage Match #1: big vs small

One of the big questions for me is the matter of big vs small.  Has anyone ever really shown which is “better”?  Sometimes an unaccompanied little tune is better than hours of grand opera.  Some people might say that this is ALWAYS true.

Leonard Meyer in his wonderful –if self-important—book Music, the Arts & Ideas wanted to argue that Beethoven’s Ninth is a better piece than Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun (and i think his reasoning is pompous nonsense… to fasten to a dart board alongside Joseph Kerman’s nonsensical dismissal of Tosca).  I would have liked to have heard such a cage match, taken to its extreme, perhaps pitting something short & tiny against something long and massive & pompous.  Is Mahler’s 8th Symphony really better than one of Satie’s Gymnopédies?  I suppose some might say, that’s why we need Cage Match, to get CBC listeners to call in and vote.  Then again, –like my hero Claude Debussy—I mistrust the voice of the people.  Does that make me an elitist jerk?  I worry sometimes that market forces are not to be mistaken for truth.  I prefer water to cola (or heavens diet cola), and drink carrot juice whether or not the majority like it.  Of course I am a bit leery of the taste of the majority: because I am an opera lover after all.

Virtual Cage Match #2: funeral music

I grew up hearing Chopin’s  funeral march in its cartoon parody version.  But it’s a splendid tune when you finally hear it (or play it!… but that’s rather hard to do if it’s your funeral, right?). 

And then there’s the music for Amenhotep III (I hope I have the right Pharaoh….) in Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten. 

Which music would YOU rather have at your send-off to the after-life?

Virtual Cage Match #3: morning

Another piece I grew up with is Grieg’s music for Peer Gynt (and boy was I amazed when years later, I finally encountered the play…but that is another story entirely).  “Morning” is a sunny pastorale that never fails to make me smile.  In the other corner? Let’s spin between any of the three acts of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, each of which gives us an evocation of something like the morning.

Virtual Cage Match #4: The meaning of life

Okay, why not let cage match answer some really deep questions? No wait.  If we put it to a vote, I might find myself against my will in a faith group I don’t recognize.  But even so, it’s rather intriguing to imagine pieces of music as advocates for a position or doctrine.  Come to think of it, that’s one of the brilliant implications of the original Cage Match: the recognition that music exists in context, and is never just music.

So imagine the following ways of determining the meaning of life.

  • John Lennon singing “Imagine” 
    vs the soprano of your choice, singing Handel’s “I know that my redeemer liveth” 
    What do you believe?  I love the simplicity of both compositions.
  • Does either of these compositions work for you
    “Stairway to heaven” via Led Zeppelin
    vs Mahler’s 4th last movement: Bernstein and the radiant Edith Mathis…(sigh)
  • And finally (a slightly different way of asking the question posed by John Lennon), do you accept Queen’s assertion that “nothing really matters” as we hear it in “Bohemian Rhapsody”? 
    or do you accept Handel’s glorious statement “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain”?  

Thanks CBC for a wonderful idea, thanks Tom Allen for a terrific program, gone but not forgotten.

Posted in Essays | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Met Walküre

Posted on April 14, 2012 by barczablog
Robert Lepage

Robert Lepage (Canadian Press photo)

Before I begin this review, I want to give a quick shout out to my pal Robert.

“Salut Robert.  Oui je sais que je suis “easy”, ou, comme on dit  “You had me at “Wes Herd dies auch sei/ hier muss ich rasten.” (ou l’opera commence).  Bravo.  N’écoutes pas aux idiots. You rock!“

And so, after having seen the four Ring Cycle operas in High Definition broadcasts (including the encores of Rheingold & Walküre) I had a chance to see the Lepage – Metropolitan Opera Die Walküre tonight in person.  I had a decent if not outrageously good seat –which is to say in the middle of Grand Tier—that allowed me to see how the spectacular design effects of this production look and feel inside the theatre.

I repeat the assertion I made earlier, that “the machine” (as the elaborate set for Lepage’s Ring is often called) is miraculous.  We see mountains complete with avalanches, trees, snow, flying horses… yet at the same time we’re watching a high-tech robot creation that moves and responds to the music-drama unfolding before us.  When Siegmund pulls the sword out of the tree, not only does the music give us an eargasm, the set moves into a kind of parallel sword shape, a harmonious moment of exquisite beauty.  We’re watching something real enough to easily signify the various moments of this magical tale, even though we get the contrary signals reminding us that this is entirely artificial.  When the vertical shapes of the machine somehow become trees in a forest, through which Siegmund runs to escape the pursuit, the illusion is spectacular even as it is patently arbitrary.  The machine is a protean shape-shifter, able to signify anything. I believe we’re seeing the world in microcosm, a world whose most fundamental characteristic is change.  Things change, the old order passes away.

This world of Wagner’s requires several astonishingly difficult feats from the set designer, such as lightning, flying horses, nymphs swimming in a river, magic fire… It’s so difficult that we usually go to see Wagner’s Ring operas with low expectations.

In the HD broadcasts, where one sees mostly close-ups of the singers, one can’t always tell how the effect works in the house.  As I alluded above, I may not be the right person to judge.  I love Wagner’s operas, and simply wanted someone to give me a way to enjoy them.  I don’t think I am picky.  Just don’t give me too much stupidity, and I’m there, eagerly gobbling it up.

So let me be honest.  I love the Ring and first came to Wagner via Die Walküre.  The very first opera I saw at the Met was a Walküre starring Rita Hunter as Brunnhilde when I was in my teens.  While I was star-struck, and a complete Wagner nerd (you know the way kids know every single line of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings?  I was that way with the Ring Cycle… still am by the way) this is the way I once used to listen to this opera:

  • Eat up every second of Act I, especially scene iii
  • In Act II? different story.  I’d devour the opening scene between Wotan & Brunnhilde as a display piece of the soprano’s voice, nothing more… then reluctantly dig in for Fricka’s abuse of Wotan in scene ii, and Wotan’s slow introspection with Brunnhilde in scene iii, because those were usually static discussions, before we get to the really good stuff, namely the scenes when Siegmund appears.
  • For Act III roll my eyes while the Ride of the Valkyries plays famous tunes over an impossible scene to stage, followed by the wonderful scene with Sieglinde, and the scene between Wotan & Brunnhilde.

Okay, now I’m older.  I’ve seen several approaches to Walküre over the years.  Lepage  scrambles my expectations, by making some parts of the opera work better than I’ve ever seen before, in effect re-writing the way I listen to the work.

  • (as I mentioned in my review of the HD broadcast)The Ride of the Valkyries: it’s something of a set-piece, really a bit of comic relief between two ultra-serious scenes.  How do you show valkyries riding horses to gather the dead?  Usually they don’t, because it’s a strangely silly scene (Wagner wrote it that way) calling for effects that are beyond most designers.  Lepage gave us something quite believable, considering.  It serves as a wonderful setup for the arrival of Brunnhilde & Sieglinde, a shift in tone that –for once—means something.
  • The opening of Act II, where Wotan and Brunnhilde have a brief exchange before Fricka’s arrival is usually a moment where the soprano shows off her high notes and not much more.  Bryn Terfel as Wotan & Deborah Voigt as Brunnhilde begin to show us the astonishing chemistry between them.  It was already beginning to be there last season, but now has grown.  Tonight Terfel’s playful teasing of Voigt actually caused her to miss a line –because she was laughing—in a way that I believe Wagner would have forgiven.  Their relationship seems so genuinely loving that it makes their later schism –when Brunnhilde underestimates the seriousness of Wotan’s command that she abandon Siegmund and blithely proposes that she will disobey her father—not just credible, but nearly inevitable.  We’ve always heard that Brunnhilde is Wotan’s favourite, but with this opening scene, we see it and believe it.
  • The two best scenes in Walküre? Surely not the scenes one would expect.  Looking back with the benefit of hindsight from having seen the rest of Lepage’s Ring, I believe I can say these scenes need to be this good, because they’re the emotional centre of The Cycle, namely the second and third scenes of Act II.  While I always understood that from the libretto, I had never seen anyone who could make it work: until now (let me elaborate).

Having begun Act II with that wonderful little scene between Wotan & Brunnhilde, Lepage raises the stakes in each of the next two scenes.

Stephanie Blythe arrives as Fricka exactly as stipulated, namely in a chariot drawn by rams.  But more importantly, she sits as if on a throne in the middle of the stage.  Wotan attempts to avoid her powerful critique, which means he dances around the entire stage, while she remains stationary in the middle of everything as if on a throne.  Lepage gives us a simple eloquent image that is the most important thing we will see all night.  As Shakespeare showed us in Richard II in the deposition scene, the one with the real power (whether it’s Bolingbroke or Fricka) stands still, while the one who is insecure (Richard or Wotan) moves.  Power confers the right to be still, even if Fricka seems to regret her power, seeing the estrangement from Wotan that ensues.    That Blythe is also stunningly good in her vocal portrayal, capturing the nuances of insult & thwarted love is icing on the cake.

The next scene can be tough sledding.  Lepage knew that, creating a wonderful visual image.  We know that Wotan gave up one of his eyes in a bargain for insight, wisdom & power.  In this scene we’re looking at images of the world Wotan is describing in his conversation with Brunnhilde, projected onto the eyeball.

In the HD broafcast I could see the centre of the eyeball & some of the projections; but from my seat tonight I could se so much more, including the lovely curvature of the scarlet tinged cave enclosing that eyeball, as if to suggest an eye in its socket.  At the beginning of this scene Terfel sang the lowest notes very softly. As the part changes from bass-baritone to baritone, in the growing agitation, Terfel seized those moments.  When Voigt as Brunnhilde innocently decides to honour the rapport she felt from her father, Terfel’s sense of pain makes wonderful sense.  The character’s arc is fabulously detailed in the last act as we see him begin to soften in the presence of the Valkyries, and finally relent in his one-on-one conversation with Brunnhilde.

Maestro Fabio Luisi

Maestro Fabio Luisi

I was very moved by Voigt & Terfel tonight, particularly in combination with Fabio Luisi, the conductor on this occasion.  When it was still James Levine –and the tempi were much slower—the roles required an entirely different approach.  Luisi’s pace makes many of the scenes astonishingly direct.  The opening of Act II had me bouncing in my seat with the raw energy of the Met orchestra’s playing.   In the last act, because of Luisi, the pace isn’t just energizing, but transforms the way the singers have to work.  At one point Wotan has a series of lines summarizing the change in his relationship to Brunnhilde due to her betrayal.  When conducted at Levine’s pace it’s perhaps a bit easier to enunciate; at this pace, Terfel had to really work to get all the syllables enunciated.  But wow, he was so electric at this moment, the lines flying out of his mouth, his body bouncing around the stage:

Wunschmaid /warst du mir:
gegen mich doch hast du gewünscht;
Schildmaid / warst du mir:
gegen mich doch hobst du den Schild;
Loskieserin / warst du mir:
gegen mich doch kiestest du Lose;
Heldenreizerin / warst du mir:
gegen mich doch reiztest du Helden.

Debbie Voigt added something new that I didn’t see in the HD broadcasts: several times she cried out –in joy, later fear, and anguish –animating her scenes.

Stuart Skelton was new to me as Siegmund, with a voice reminding me vaguely of James King (which is to say, a complimentary comparison).  Eva-Marie Westbroek benefitted from the presence of Luisi & his quick tempi.  I’d found her approach –targeting a note somewhere between a tone or two south of the correct pitch and then pole-vaulting up via that lower note—totally irritating.  But with Luisi’s fast tempi she didn’t have time and so was forced to sing the notes as written.  When she had time –as for instance on the paused climactic high A when she names her brother—then she reverted to form, and sang first a G then clicked up to the A, a moment later.  But for most of the evening I believe the tempi helped her to sing better.

I am usually a sucker for this opera, but for me this production is a better experience than ever before.  The visuals are powerful, stirring, and completely relevant.  The performance was more thrilling in person than I expected.  Where I shouted myself almost hoarse at the first two intermissions, at the end I was so moved (tears etc) I couldn’t find my voice to bravo until just before the applause ended.

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Tina Fey — Bossypants

Posted on April 13, 2012 by barczablog

Don’t trust a man who claims to be writing about feminism.  We have agendas.  Now of course sometimes I fool people because they see “Leslie Barcza” and think I am a girl.

But I can’t be trusted.

There are several different struggles all going on at the same time.  Who’s to say which one is the most urgent?  I felt that when Obama faced off with Hillary Clinton –and what does it say that I had to give you her first name? —that it would have been a bigger deal had Hillary won the Democrat nomination & then the White House.  In most families, however emancipated they may seem, there is still that permanent underclass known as female.

I have a selfish take on feminism.  Every struggle is much broader than merely the fight of a class against its adversaries.  Women’s liberation is male liberation as well.  It’s the same with gay rights.  While I am as hetero as they come, I am outraged that I don’t have the right to be gay if I want.  Why should I have to show solidarity with morons who are homophobic? No way.  That’s like the coercive dialectic of fascism, where you had to shut up while Jews or gays or communists were beaten by thugs on the other side of the street.

Women’s liberation is my liberation as well.

It may not be news that Tina Fey’s book Bossypants is a wonderful piece of work.  The book came out in the middle of 2011, and i’ve only had the good fortune to find it this week, so absorbed reading it on the airplane today that i kept reading even when the turbulent ride was giving me motion sickness.  Laughter is a great cure for nausea.

I frame it with this feminist preamble, typing this with Bridesmaids playing in the background, occasionally yanking me away for a quick guffaw. I recently saw Young Adult, a film that has me thinking about the conversation surrounding women and success in western society, enjoying the discursive space won by the unexpected images we encounter in both Young Adult and Bridesmaids.  When we talk about one gender, we’re inevitably talking about both, in the same way that women’s liberation liberates me.

I’m not saying Tina Fey is a liberator, but as much as anyone can be said to be carrying the feminist banner within mainstream media, Fey is a fabulous candidate.  This is humour that makes me feel good about humour… is that an odd idea?  How delicious to read something that makes me want to think, pulling me out of the despair I sometimes feel when confronted by….

  • Attack ads
    they have the dual effect of both destroying the credibility of the target candidate, while turning us into cynics who stop voting and become passive & fatalistic
  • Social Media
    Shouldn’t they call it “antisocial media”? There was that party for instance when, about 40 minutes in, I noticed that the room was almost silent as most of the guests retreated into their Iphones, trying to figure out whether they were having fun or not.  I would not have been a very gracious guest, but I almost shouted “hey.!. Remember conversation?”
  • CBC
    There’s the ongoing conversation about the CBC here in Canada, in the face of a Conservative Government that doesn’t seem to believe in what they offer.  While we still have a CBC –and Americans may think that the CBC is still a big deal—the CBC keeps getting smaller and smaller.   In the meantime, CBC brass seem determined to turn a unique and irreplaceable service into a bad copy of what’s already available from other media.  Something good may still be worthwhile diluted; hm, but i am drinking my Dalwhinnie neat.

Fey is adept in every arena (meaning not just films & TV but also, the varying types of writing she undertakes), with a sure touch.  Yet she is completely vulnerable, without any pretence.  Bossypants may not set you free, but it will set you laughing, and at this crucial time in our history it feels legitimate to say she’s fighting the good fight.

Thank you Tina Fey.

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Young funny adult people

Posted on April 10, 2012 by barczablog

When you run into a film unlike any you’ve ever seen before, there’s a temptation to attempt to make sense of it through other films one has seen.   How else would we know a unicorn, except by our previous experience of the horse + a horn?  Newness is so rare in the film business that perhaps we don’t respect the challenge posed by originality, both to the perceptions of the viewer, and more particularly, to the money that would make a leap of faith to back such an original beast.

In Robert Altman’s 1992 film The Player we get a glimpse at the process whereby films are pitched in Hollywood.  Everything seems to be sold on the basis of what’s come before.  We hear pitches for films that (for example) are described as follows:

“It’s like The Gods Must Be Crazy except the coke bottle is an actress.
Right. It’s Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman.“

OR (and this one is even more twisted)

“It’s a cynical, political thriller comedy… he has an accident. And he becomes clairvoyant, like a psychic.  So it’s a psychic, political, thriller comedy with a heart. not unlike Ghost meets Manchurian Candidate.”

If this is how it works –and it’s so disgustingly corporate that one can’t help but believe it—then no wonder the industry is so derivative, no wonder films are all spin-offs, sequels and imitations.  And how could the money help itself, but to conservatively work from existing models that have worked..?

Sure, Altman was after laughs –and got them—but this is an edgy satire precisely because it contains more than a grain of truth.  Genres can be many things, but in my opinion the key part about genre is that they furnish a way to help us understand what we are seeing and what to expect.  When those executives describe films based on what’s been made before –naming lists of films, no matter how comical—they are only seeking to understand the unknown.  If they were scientists staring at a newly discovered life-form on the Martian surface, you’d hear hypothetical possibilities based on what we know.

“It’s insect-like” (if it has multiple legs and/or an exoskeleton)
“It’s quasi-reptilian (if we see the appropriate structural features of a reptile)

And so, silly as those descriptors sounded in The Player, you can’t blame them for trying to make sense of the unknown.

I am remembering Altman’s generic hypotheses today because I saw a film whose plot superficially resembles another, yet in so many ways is so unique as to be very difficult to describe.  I am less inclined to see Altman’s dialogue as comical, feeling far more sympathetic to that sense of being lost in a strange place.

Young Adult first caught my attention because of its talent.  Directed by Jason Reitman, written by Diablo Cody, and starring Charlize Theron, I was thrown completely by its trailer.  WTF? The film is presented as a very dark comedy.   The stats I saw online suggest that it cost $12 million to make, earning $20 million worldwide.

Does Young Adult really resemble any film I’ve seen?  There are a couple that come to mine.  I am embarrassed that I have to resort to plot templates as if I were one of Altman’s pathetic pitchmen in The Player.  but in so doing I am not so dismissive as I once was.  Perhaps I underestimated Altman in seeing only comedy in those lines.

Speaking of comedy, I am finding the boundaries of the genre are changing.  When someone speaks of an “edgy comedy” that’s another way of saying that the material challenges the usual boundaries of what’s acceptable.  Perhaps the plot is so serious that some won’t see the humour, or the laughs are dark at best.

Young AdultEarlier this decade we saw comedies showing off darker shades of the male American psyche, such as The Hangover (which recently saw its sequel), Superbad, and Wedding Crashers.  Films from such talents as Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler have all made money, while celebrating variations of male dysfunction & failure.

With Bridesmaids, the male neurotic comedy of post-adolescent anxiety was successfully cloned in female form, and was not only every bit as profitable, but perhaps even edgier because the situations and characters are still too new to be conventional.  That’s another way of saying that one doesn’t really know what to expect.  Enjoy the freshness while it lasts.

Young Adult is much more than a clone.  I had the magical experience of being truly disoriented, unable to orient myself according to precedents.  The only film I can easily compare it to is Funny People, Judd Apatow’s lengthy exploration of the comic sensibility starring Sandler opposite his wife Leslie Mann.  The lead in each film is a narcissistic egomaniac, each egomaniac seeking to revive a hopelessly failed relationship.  The key difference between the films is simply the difference in our society between men and women.  Where we seem to love charming male egomaniacs, when that strutting ego is female, it’s very threatening.

By reversing the genders everything becomes problematic.  Is Young Adult even a comedy?  I was blown away by Theron’s work, Cody’s writing, Reitman’s direction.  Without giving anything away, I believe the ending problematizes the kind of ending we see in Good Will Hunting.  Where Apatow lets us down gently in Funny People, Cody, Reitman & Theron take us deep into the heart of the American soul at a time when success has never seemed more elusive.

I am looking forward to seeing it –and them—again.  The fertile ground for the next decade is not so much in the cross between existing genres, as in crossing genders.  I think the new formula (or one of them) is to take an existing template, and then giving us its mirror image using females instead of males.

It’s not so new as to be unrecognizable, but new enough to be truly explosive.  In case it’s not clear, i totally love this film. I think it’s the most original film I’ve seen this year, a film with important lessons. See it while it can still disorient you.

Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments

The voice among the corn

Posted on April 5, 2012 by barczablog

In big cities development & culture seem to be big powerful forces, beyond either our understanding or control.  Plans are made, enormous amounts of money are committed & spent, and the buildings go up.

It happens in smaller towns too, but because of the size, the process seems less daunting.

In spite of myself, I got a glimpse of urban renewal on a recent trip to downtown Barrie Ontario.  Barrie is a town about an hour away from Toronto, only recently wearing the “suburb” label, having simply been a cute little town on Lake Simcoe.  Maybe I shouldn’t call it little anymore, given that Google says their population is over 125,000, “one of the fastest growing towns in the area.”

Some of you may recall that a major fire destroyed some landmarks downtown in 2007.

It was quite traumatic for residents.  While there was no human loss of life the historical part of downtown Barrie was heavily damaged.

But as I said, Barrie is growing.  The town is small enough that one can observe the drama of loss and subsequent regeneration.

Last week I visited the new Mady Centre for the Performing Arts, to watch Great Expectations, presented by Talk is Free Theatre (TIFT).  It’s quite a lovely little theatre, situated at one of the main intersections of Barrie, in fact right beside the area that was hurt by the big fire in 2007.

Opened just last fall, it certainly feels new. 

After the show we strolled around a bit downtown, noticing that there were people hanging around the downtown.  We drifted over to a nearby restaurant recent enough that it doesn’t yet appear in Google’s street view.

“Si Senor” calls itself “Barrie’s only authentic Mexican Restaurant”.  The tortillas filled with spicy fish were unlike anything I’ve encountered in Toronto, followed by fried ice cream.    The inside of the restaurant was gleaming almost as brightly as my smile after I’d had my dessert, which left me wonderfully buzzed.  As we surveyed the traffic in the heart of Barrie I was thrilled to see the natural regeneration taking place before our eyes.

Richmond Hill Centre

Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts

Speaking of tortillas, I was reminded of a voice in the corn.  In the film Field of Dreams a voice whispers from amid a field of corn “if you build it he will come”.   Something similar seems to be at work in any community.  Just as in the film, they don’t know why they’re coming, but they come, perhaps to hang out, maybe to meet their friends.  It’s very healthy, and wonderful to see.  In recent years we’ve seen theatres go up in the small towns that ring Toronto (Richmond Hill & Brampton come to mind, but there are others of course), reflections of a growing sophistication.

“Great Expections” is a perfectly apt title under the circumstances.  Nevermind Dickens or Pip, this is a town with Great Expectations.

Great Expectations

Posted in Personal ruminations & essays | 1 Comment