This year’s Rhubarb Festival will feature the puppet exploration of mortality, The Day You Died and the Hour You Were Born. Photo courtesy of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

Rhubarb Festival
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (12 Alexander Street)
February 20 to March 3, various times
Evening Passes $20, One-To-One Performances PWYC, Mobile Works FREE

It might not be time for rhubarb in your neighbourhood community garden just yet, but there’s plenty to be found at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. The annual Rhubarb Festival—a showcase of new theatrical creations, experiments, and oddities—returns this Wednesday until March 3, with a wide variety of names and faces both new and familiar. Coming up are two weeks of dance, puppetry, theatre, music, and discussion programming, taking place both on-site and off, for large-scale audiences as well as extremely small ones. There’s sure to be something for everyone—as long as you’re not a critic (this is a star rating–free zone). Here’s a sampling of what’s making this year’s Rhubarb Festival especially spicy:

Week One (February 20 to 24)

Feel free to dance your face off at the Rhubarb Festival Kick-Off Bash with Vag Halen and DJ Vanessa Dunn on Wednesday night, but be sure to save some energy for seeing plays.

Sook-Yin Lee makes her theatrical debut in How Can I Forget? Photo courtesy of Buddies in Bad Times.

As the biggest name on the docket, former The Wedge host, star of Shortbus, director of Year of the Carnivore, and CBC host of Definitely Not the Opera Sook-Yin Lee makes her theatrical debut (well, unless you count her first attempt at playwriting at 14 years old) with How Can I Forget?, which will be on the topic of memory. It plays February 22 and February 23, at 9:30 p.m.

Engaged is a silent film–style analysis of romantic relationships and their financial implications. Directed by Leora Morris and featuring Scott Christian (Hero & Leander, Through the Gates) on piano, it also boasts an all-star cast including Hume Baugh, David Christo, Collin Doyle, Sochi Fried, and Andy Trithardt. Not convinced? Get a sneak peek at the track list here. Engaged runs February 20 to 24, at 8 p.m.

Ravi Jain knows his way around a two-hander. He co-starred in Spent (currently finishing a remount at the Young Centre) and paired up with his own mother in A Brimful of Asha. Now he moves offstage as the director of The Faroe Islands, starring the always mesmerizing Claire Calnan and Jessica Moss. The play is the conclusion of playwright Nicolas Billon‘s Fault Lines trilogy, preceded by the acclaimed Greenland, winner of the Outstanding Production prize at the 2009 SummerWorks, and Iceland, coming to Factory Theatre next month after a hit run at the 2012 SummerWorks festival. The Faroe Islands has a very limited run
February 22 to 24, at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., for audiences of 15 people.

Week Two (February 27 to March 3)

Michael Runbenfeld with his mother Mary Berchard in mothermothermothermother…. Photo by Marjan Nemat Tavousi.

Following the trend of actors sharing the stage with their real-life parents (Jain started it with A Brimful of Asha, World Stage will continue it with She She Pop & Their Fathers: Testament in April), mothermothermother… will unite Michael Rubenfeld with his mom, Mary Berchard. Sparked by a tense moment between Rubenfeld and his somewhat estranged parent while she was waiting for some important medical test results, this show is, by Rubenfeld’s admission, partly a way for him to improve his relationship with his mother. It could also be a universally moving story about the bridging of generations. It runs nightly throughout week two at 8 p.m., which is the same timeslot occupied by Step by Step, which presents a new dance each night inspired by a different how-to video on the Internet (so go two nights to see both).

Going from the realistic to the whimsical, Brescia Brixia Bloodbeard’s The Day You Died and the Hour You Were Born combines her breathtaking shadow puppetry with her slow, soft folk music. Sure to delight the eyes and ears, the show will also attempt to do something for the mind: its subject matter is the space between life and death. It runs nightly throughout week two at 8:30 p.m.

Montreal choreographer and performer George Stamos arrives in Toronto with his piece, Dandy Decay. As the creator, editor, and director, Stamos articulates his own coming out amid the AIDS epidemic, while exploring the evolving freedoms that different generations of the queer community have benefited from. Dandy Decay runs March 1 and 2 only, at 9:30 p.m.

Mobile Works and One-to-One Performances

Moving Installations will pop up in unexpected places. Photo by Frédérique Bérubé.

Rhubarb’s free Mobile Works program is geared towards impromptu audiences. For instance, Moving Installations is a series of dance pieces that erupt unannounced in public places, to music by Ratatat and Daniel Belanger. Times and locations will be announced on the Mandoline Hybride blog, though we know the show will appear during week one only.

Week two’s only Mobile Works offering, Vigil(ance), requires a small pre-registered audience to embark upon a reclaiming mission through a selection of public Toronto spots that, at some point, made someone feel unsafe or uncomfortable. The group, led by Videofag’s Jordan Tannahill and William Ellis, will hold several one-minute candlelight vigils to vanquish fear in those spaces.

Meanwhile, the One-to-One Performances program returns to drastically heighten the performer-viewer relationship. Visit the pasts of a curated collection of objects in Eulogy, create your own disco ball light formations in Fearful Ghost of Former Bloom, or get a custom-embroidered piece of art on your clothing in Silver Threads and Golden Needles. All One-to-One Performances take place at the 519 Church Street Community Centre.

CORRECTION: February 22, 2012, 3:50 AM This post originally misspelled writer and actor Michael Rubenfeld’s name in a photo caption. We regret the error.

Photo courtesy of the Toronto Fringe Festival.

The 2012 Toronto Fringe Festival is upon us!

Over 130 shows, 26 venues, and (probably) countless kegs of beer are being prepped as we speak, all for our enjoyment. So let’s take advantage, shall we?

As always, Torontoist has a few thoughts on what shows to catch. You’ll find links to those recommendations below.

But of course, half the fun is going in blind and seeing a play, dance, stand-up, or visual art installation on a whim. And trust us, the offerings this year are full of potential. The festival is stacked with great emerging performers, and even some who have travelled the world over. It’ll be very, very hard to go wrong.

Take your pick of three preview guides, each on a different theme:

And here are a few other tips for new Fringers:

• Grab a program. You can find them in various locations in the GFA (Greater Fringe Area).
• Set your watch to CBC time and pay attention to it. No latecomers are admitted to Fringe shows.
• Follow along on Twitter at @Toronto_Fringe or #FringeTO.
• Hang out at the Fringe Club, located in the parking lot behind Honest Ed’s. You’ll find happy faces, sunshine or shade (depending on your preference), good conversation, beer, food, open mics, and a great lineup of daily Tent Talks. It’s also where you can find the Visual Fringe and AlleyPlays (new this year).
• Check in with Torontoist daily throughout the festival for our reviews and updates.

And have a happy Fringe Festival. It’s the most wonderful/odd/quirky/touching/who-knows-what-else time of the year!

Image by Jonathan Goldsbie.

Independent theatre in Toronto spans plenty of genres—documentary, physical, clown, musical, monologue, abstract, and so on. But one genre it always tries to steer clear of is “safe.” To many people involved in making live performances, the art form is at its best when audiences feel a little uncomfortable. And so Free Fall ’12, The Theatre Centre’s eight-day biennial theatre festival, is very appropriately named.

It opened earlier this week, so you’re already running out of time to catch some of the fest’s unique programming, featuring both international and local artists, who are putting on projects that take place both on- and offline. Here are a few highlights:

Route 501 Revisited
Jonathan Goldsbie (Toronto)
Tuesday, March 27 at 7 p.m., Saturday March 31 at 1 p.m.
Route 501 Streetcar

When City Hall reporter and Tweeter Jonathan Goldsbie was presented with a budget of $1,000 to put on a performance piece as part of Free Fall ’12, he had just one thought—to rent a streetcar. Blending this desire with his observation of commuters who spend more time interacting with their iPhones than they do with fellow passengers, Goldsbie came up with Route 501 Revisited. Members can hop aboard (for a ticketed, chartered ride on Tuesday night, and a free, public ride on Saturday) for a guided tour of Queen Street, conducted solely through Twitter and the hashtag #route501. No speaking allowed.

James Long and Maiko Bae Yamamoto in WEETUBE 5400. Photo by Gunther Gamper.

WEETUBE 5400
Theatre Replacement (Vancouver)
Tuesday, March 27 and Wednesday, March 28 at 8 p.m.
The Theatre Centre (1087 Queen St. West)

Even though YouTube commenters can sometimes seem like bottom feeders, they are, in fact, people just like us. (As terrifying as that is.) James Long and Maiko Bae Yamamoto of Vancouver’s Theatre Replacement remind us of this by taking YouTube comments and placing them within scenes more commonplace in daily life. Which could end up being horrifying.

DoggieWoggiez! PoochieWoochiez!
Everything Is Terrible! (Chicago)
Thursday, March 29 at 7 p.m., the Drake Underground (1150 Queen Street West)
Friday, March 30 at 8 p.m., the Drake Lab

DOGGIEWOGGIEZ! POOCHIEWOOCHIEZ! TRAILERWRAILER! from Everything Is Terrible! on Vimeo.

Images of kittens make everything—from sweaters to online videos—exponentially more popular, that’s the rule. But Chicago’s Everything is Terrible, a VHS mash-up collective, is turning their focus onto the under-appreciated genre of videos featuring canines, by recreating Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film The Holy Mountain with found footage of various dogs.

Behold, music fans: some favourite shots from this past week.

Rub your eyes, take a big stretch, unplug your ears, and cut off your wristband—for the 2012 Canadian Music Week has come to an end, to the sadness of our dancing feet, but much to the relief of our sleep-deprived brains.

We started out the week by asking “What do we really think about CMW?” As the festival is so often described as the colder, more industry-focused version of NXNE, why do we keep going out year after year for musical acts big and small? With another CMW under our belts, well, it’s impossible to say for sure. Each individual experience varies so greatly, and one person’s disappointment is another person’s triumph—sometimes based solely on uncontrollable factors like weather, timing, or a last-minute cancellation. There does seem to be one constant from year to year, though: umbrellas.

It’s hard to make a “mistake” during CMW, if you choose to participate. There is something for everyone, if you’re willing to look for it. For a music lover in Toronto, really, the only mistake would be to ignore the fest completely. So bring it on, CMW. You’re not perfect, but we would never want a music festival that was.

Last night was the official close to the festival, so here’s what we checked out, along with a summary of our favourite acts of the entire week.

Pinky Piglets
FROM: Tokyo, Japan
PERFORMED: March 25, 9 p.m. at Horseshoe Tavern

Pre-Show Hype: Notably low. Despite being openers for the Horseshoe’s Closing Night Party, any hoopla over the headliners—antiquated British rocker David Gedge and whatever backing band he is calling The Wedding Present these days—is not what it used to be.
Crowd: Just a small gathering, perhaps owing to the fact that the band hit the stage about 10 minutes prior to the posted start time. Most fans cluttered the front of the room; some emphatically pumped fists.
Performance: First of all, Pinky Piglets are no more. They now call themselves Toquiwa, announcing the name change with a large banner behind the drummer even as a Pinky Piglets sticker on one of their guitars hinted at the band’s former identity. They laid down an infectious confection of punk-pop that veered from easily digestible Go Go’s–style candy to four Japanese girls doing their best Rage Against the Machine. Often, it was hard to distinguish when the singing was in English or Japanese, though every once in a while there was a discernible instruction about moving to the left or the right.
Best Moment: At one point, the lead singer declared she was thirsty, and urged a drink to the stage by adorably cheering, “Come on, beer!”
Miscellaneous: The association with Gedge dates back to taking part in his self-curated Edge of the Sea festivals. When Toquiwa was accepted to play SXSW this year, Gedge invited the band on his North American tour.
Verdict: 6.5/10

The Elwins
FROM: Toronto
PERFORMED: March 25, 11:00 p.m. at Rancho Relaxo

Corbin Smith/Torontoist

Pre-Show Hype: High, as fans of The Elwins had been awaiting the band’s return to Toronto after their US tour.
Crowd: It’s always difficult to get a good crowd out to a Sunday show at Canadian Music Week, let alone to a show that bleeds into Monday morning—which is what makes the fact that Rancho Relaxo had to turn people away at the door that much more impressive.
Performance: The Elwins showed no signs of road-weariness from their tour, and blasted out a fun, high-energy set.
Best Moment: The coordinated audience dance-and-singalong to “Foxtail” at the end of the set.
Miscellaneous: The Elwins were glad to be back home, and we were glad to see them.
Verdict: 7.5/10

Topanga
FROM: Toronto
PERFORMED: March 25, 12:00 a.m. at Rancho Relaxo

Corbin Smith/Torontoist

Pre-Show Hype: Moderate, but definitely growing.
Crowd: Though a few fans of The Elwins called it a night before Topanga took the stage, the crowd was still pretty packed. Extra points for impromptu mosh pits.
Performance: The shouty-yet-melodic pop-punkish set was definitely turned up to 11 on the energy scale.
Best Moment: Seeing that Topanga was nervous about playing a brand new song as their encore performance, only to have the crowd love it just as much as every other song the band played throughout the night.
Miscellaneous: We’re starting to hear more and more good things about Topanga. Some big CMW acts are big-time supporters of this band, as we were told by both Wildlife and Rich Aucoin that we would not be disappointed by Topanga. They were so right.
Verdict: 7.5/10

The Joel Plaskett Emergency

Corbin Smith/Torontoist

Our review

Jenn Grant

Corbin Smith/Torontoist

Our review

John K. Samson & The Provincial Band

Corbin Smith/Torontoist

Our review

Dan Mangan

Corbin Smith/Torontoist

Our review

Rich Aucoin

Corbin Smith/Torontoist

Zeus will capture your heart tonight at the Arts & Crafts showcase. Photo by Derek Branscombe.

It’s once, twice, three times the CMW, and here’s what’s going on tonight.

BADBADNOTGOOD
Wrongbar, 12 a.m. (1279 Queen Street West)

Because their name is BADBADNOTGOOD, one could be forgiven for thinking that this jazz/rap trio, born out of the Humber jazz program, are very, very bad and not at all good. Then there’s, you know, the pig mask thing. But wouldn’t you know it, the band’s Island of Dr. Moreau style of music has members Alex Sowinski, Matt Tavares, and Chester Hansen grabbing the cover of this week’s NOW as Toronto’s biggest, hottest, rockiest, moshiest party-makers. Acts like BADBADNOTGOOD are the poster children for the digital age we live in—friends goof off on camera (like when the members of BADBADNOTGOOD recorded a jazz version of Odd Future’s “AssMilk”), people recognize its amazingness online, and fun and creativity turns into international praise and a real, promising career.

Go if: You’re interested in a mosh pit that’s a bit classier than normal.

CATL
Comfort Zone, 8 p.m. (480 Spadina Ave)

Local purveyors of dark, sticky swamp blues, Catl are described on their CMW artist page as sounding similar to “dead Mississippi blues guys,” but that’s only part of the story. More accurately, they are an amalgam of Americana soul and rebel sensibility—purveyors of tunes that make a person think of spitting in defiance and slugging down Jack, though maybe not in that order. The trio, comprised of keyboard player/percussionist/vocalist Sarah Kirkpatrick, drummer Johnny LaRue, and singer/guitarist Jamie Fleming, may not be a household name, but in a relatively short amount of time they’ve garnered some solid accolades, including winning 2009′s Toronto Blues Society Talent Search and a couple of residencies at the Dakota Tavern. Not too shabby for a bunch of ex-punk rockers with a penchant for bourbon-tinged nostalgia.

Go if: You woke yourself up last night by sleep-speaking the words “Kentucky sour mash.”

Slash featuring Myles Kennedy
Phoenix Concert Theatre, 11 p.m. (410 Sherbourne St.)

What else can be said about Slash? The eternally top-hatted virtuoso guitar player has collaborated with seemingly everyone over the course of his career, and he’s managed to stay friendly with pretty much all but the one person with whom he had the most success: Axl Rose. After carving out a legacy of jams with Guns ‘N Roses that will forever live on in football stadiums and easy-listening Sheryl Crow covers, the flesh and blood muppet has moved on to add titles like author and actor to his already impressive resume.

For those hoping to witness a dramatic GNR reunion at CMW—or any time soon for that matter—it may be best to skip this show. But for anyone looking to catch a glimpse of one of the world’s best guitar players in person, this is a rare opportunity that is not to be missed. He will be appearing with vocalist Myles Kennedy, the frontman for rock group Alter Bridge who must now carry the cumbersome (and quite unfair) burden of not being Axl.

Go if: You want to be “that jerk” who shouts out ultimately unfulfilled requests for “November Rain” all night long.

Revelstoke
Sennheiser Lounge Library Bar, 10:30 p.m. (100 Front Street West)

Toronto’s Revelstoke is a bit of an enigma: arresting harmonies and soaring, symphonic arrangements, achieved with little more than a mandolin, a banjo and a slide guitar. Befitting Revelstoke’s celebration of spaces as living phenomena, its sound evokes a natural grandeur that elevates a tiny town like Revelstoke, British Columbia over even Toronto, which is a big part of the idea at the heart of the project. Perhaps that’s the operative word: elevate. Andrew Seale, the man in this one-man band, set out to celebrate what he found during a trip to the west coast a few years ago. In the world enshrined by Seale, trees sway, dance and laugh, and the Rockies themselves are the hands clapping to the music that Revelstoke creates. Is the town the music? The musician? If it’s the latter, what we have here is a study in the transcendental.

Go if: You like the idea of the most made from the least, dialed up to eleven.

Zeus
The Horseshoe, 1 a.m. (370 Queen Street West)

It seems like the more obsessed a band is with a certain era’s sound and style, the more obsessed we become with them. That happened in 2010 when Zeus released their debut album Say Us, which was joyously influenced by the bouncy rock of the late ’60s. Their latest, Busting Visions, is a step forward into the ’70s, but it still has their signature fun style, and that’s sure to carry over into their live show. Catch them at The ‘Shoe tonight with fellow Arts & Crafts artists Snowblink, Gold & Youth, Eight and a Half, The Darcys, and a secret guest.

Go if: The 2010s have got you down.

Saul Williams
The Great Hall, 12 a.m. (1087 Queen Street West)

Saul Williams apparently hates being labelled, which is good, because in his case, it’s not so easy. He’s a multi-faceted artist whose writing and acting have earned him acclaim. His music fuses hip-hop, soul and industrial sounds, and is steeped in the lyricism that launched his career as a slam poet. With such a varied skill set, his CMW show could take any number of directions—but we’re crossing our fingers for a high-energy, booty-shaking affair, which he certainly has the ability to provide.

Go if: You like a man with balls and brains.

Cloud Nothings
Lee’s Palace, 12 a.m. (529 Bloor St. W.)

Fresh from impressing audiences at SXSW, Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings are one act to which you might be tempted to bring earplugs. But don’t—that would only dull the experience. The group plows through songs at maximum volume, unleashing their rock fury like trained martial artists delivering relentless barrages of carefully considered punches and kicks. Raw, explosive, and guttural, there is an audible abandon that somehow manages to coalesce into a ramshackle vitality rather than the utter noise you may hear at first listen.

Though the group began as a solo project in the mind and basement of Dylan Baldi, Cloud Nothings have now expanded into a full-fledged band, even if their signature lo-fi post-grunge sound sometimes gives their performances the feel of a one-man show. Their newest album, Attack On Memory, was released in January, earning many raves, including some from the all-too-important website Pitchfork.

Go if: You don’t mind sacrificing your eardrums for the sake of a stellar rock show.

Cadence Weapon
The Great Hall, 9:30 p.m. (1087 Queen Street West)

Cadence Weapon, aka Edmonton’s Rollie Pemberton, is something of a styistic sponge when it comes to hip-hop. The Edmonton-born rapper cites everything from Basement Jaxx to Daft Punk as having laid the groundwork for his style—an aggressively tight delivery that weaves effortlessly between high-energy beats and downtempo chill. It’s a unique way of doing things that inevitably invites associations with acts like Shout Out Out Out Out, whose 2009 release “Coming Home” notably featured a Cadence Weapon cameo. Also, Pemberton is really tight with Final Fantasy, otherwise known as Owen Pallett, and any friend of Pallett’s is a friend of ours.

Go if: The idea of having your face melted off appeals.

Sheezer
Sneaky Dee’s, 3 a.m. (431 College Street)

What better to end a raucous Friday evening than a gentle goodnight kiss from Sheezer, Toronto’s favourite all-lady Weezer cover band? These gals play the Pinkerton and Blue Album hits you know and love—none of that super-sad, space-age crap that came later—and are very adorable while doing so. Sheezer: If it feels good, do it. (Full disclosure: Sheezer member Robin Hatch writes for Torontoist, but she definitely did not ask us to say that her band is really cool.)

Go if: You like Weezer, and also girls.

The Cowgirl Choir
Comfort Zone, 10 p.m. (480 Spadina Ave)

The Cowgirl Choir’s self-description of their sound (“It’s like being in church, except you get to drink”) is sort of true—it is, after all, a choir, and performances do tend to be held in booze-friendly digs—but even the most shamelessly youth-pandering megachurch choir probably wouldn’t dare touch Dolly Parton, the likes of whom The Cowgirl Choir have happily covered on more than one occasion. The country-singing choral ensemble, comprised of 10-or-so women at any given time, were a last-minute scheduling write-in at NXNE last year; after their performance, legendary music booker Dan Burke approached the group to let them know they’d been a highlight of his night. Now, at CMW, listeners will have a chance to experience what Burke was on about: great tunes, wicked harmonies, and (probably) very little plaid. Yee haw.

Go if: You wear your heart on your cowboy boots.

How were yesterday’s shows at Canadian Music Week? Allow us to recap.

Ben Caplan
FROM: Halifax, NS (by way of Hamilton, ON)
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 5 p.m. at The CN Tower’s 360 Restaurant

Pre-Show Hype: There was some significant hype for this show, since it was part of an invite-only event inside the CN Tower, and was also an opener for Joel Plaskett.
Crowd: It was a small crowd that was largely made up of industry folks and media, but Caplan impressively got everyone engaged in a call-and-answer song. It was great to see everyone getting excited about a show, and not acting all too cool for school.
Performance: Though we’ve enjoyed Ben Caplan backed by The Casual Smokers before, he’s more than capable of enchanting a crowd on his own. His vocal stylings sound like a fog of gritty second-hand smoke, and they’re enough to captivate any audience.
Best Moment: Either Caplan getting the audience to sing along, or the simple fact what we were all watching a show over a hundred stories above the ground.
Miscellaneous: Thoroughly enjoyable performance. Caplan’s call-and-answer “La-dee-diddy-da-de-ditty-dada” bit with the audience is still stuck in our heads a day later.
Verdict: 7.5/10

Pre-Show Hype: JPE. A new album. Kicking off CMW. 351 metres above ground. The show was as high in hype as it was in elevation.
Crowd: Very intimate for such a big act, and mostly made up of industry types and journalists. But they were pumped.
Performance: Though Plaskett admitted to being put off by the heat and the altitude, his performance with the Emergency (Dave Marsh and Chris Pennell) was stellar. The trio hit their instruments full force, and Plaskett had an energy that put the dropped ceiling in harm’s way.
Best Moment: Besides the opening of “Nothing More To Say” (“All the leaves are gone, and I don’t give a fuck”), and the crowd yelling along with “Work Out Fine” (“All my friends, where did they go? To Montreal, TORONTO!”), one of the best moments was Plaskett’s line, “Time’s flying, let’s fly with it,” which he sang as a plane took off from Billy Bishop Airport behind him.
Miscellaneous: Scrappy Happiness, the band’s first release in five years, doesn’t officially come out until the 27th, but since songs from the album have been debuting every week on CBC Music, they were already familiar. Mixed in with older tracks, the set was a good combination of favourites and new material, though Plaskett’s face often suggested he’s still suffering from the heartbreak of 2007′s Ashtray Rock.
Verdict: 9/10

Joal Kamps
FROM: Calgary, AB
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 8 p.m at The Rivoli

Pre-Show Hype: Not much. Though Kamps is gaining traction in Alberta, he has yet to catch on here.
Crowd: Smaller, subdued, and sitting—yet supportive.
Performance: For a guy who only started playing guitar four years ago, he’s damned good. Kamps really reminded us of Glen Hansard’s solo acoustic work, and even had moments reminiscent of Joni Mitchell and John Butler.
Best Moment: Though Kamps’ vocals and lyrics are solid, his instrumental piece was killer.
Miscellaneous: Though his guitar didn’t agree with the unseasonably warm weather and he lost some time to constantly re-tuning it, his music somehow feels like perfect listening for hazy late nights on a back porch under a starry summer sky. He was a treat for anyone who showed up to the opening act of Rivioli’s first night of CMW performances.
Verdict: 7/10

Ali Milner
FROM: Vancouver, BC
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 9 p.m at The Rivoli

Pre-Show Hype: Probably more intense than we realized. Milner took part in Cover Me Canada on CBC, which may have been a big deal.
Crowd: Weak, considering how good Milner was.
Performance: Holy hell, this gal has got some serious soul power. Absolutely gorgeous vocals and all-around solid musicianship.
Best Moment: Pretty much any time Milner was singing.
Miscellaneous: Never having heard Milner before, we’re definitely converts and full-fledged fans after seeing her CMW set. Would it be inappropriate to ask her out on a date in a review? Just wondering.
Verdict: 8/10

Louise Burns
FROM: Vancouver, BC
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 10 p.m. at The Drake Underground

Pre-Show Hype: Medium.
Crowd: Burns’s music isn’t designed to get people jazzed, but the amount of head-bobbing among the fair-sized crowd was promising.
Performance: Burns’s voice in a live performance has a grittier, angrier, twangier bite than it does on her records. In any case, it’s mesmerizing.
Best Moment: When she introduced “Drop Names Not Bombs” by saying, “This song is about industry events.”
Miscellaneous: Burns rebels against her past in pop music as a member of the band Lillix, which she co-founded when she was a tween. Her album, Mellow Drama, is, well, pretty dark. With covers of Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt, she’s trying to play with the big boys, but without the edge that comes from age.
Verdict: 7.5/10

Will Currie and the Country French
FROM: Waterloo, ON
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 11 p.m. at The Rivoli

Pre-Show Hype: Medium.
Crowd: Fair for the opening night of the festival, though despite the band’s uptempo tunes, most everyone stood and swayed. (Currie himself noted “Don’t feel like you have to stand still just because everyone else is standing still.”)
Performance: If the crowd was motionless, Currie definitely wasn’t—even while confined to the keys. The keyboard-driven sextet was also joined by a four-person brass section to add extra bop and vocals, making their eccentric lyrics seem even more whimsical.
Best Moment: Currie’s remark on the band’s dinner: “A bunch of us ate kangaroo sausages before we got here, so now it smells. I think it’s the heat, it’s wringing it out and it’s disgusting. I’m glad I shared that with you.”
Miscellaneous: Having toured Canada with Sloan in 2008 and Dan Mangan in 2009, they’re now promoting their album, Awake! You Sleepers, released in October of 2011.
Verdict: 8/10

No one, actually (not a band name)
FROM: Nowhere… because there was nothing to see
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 12 a.m. at The Hard Rock Cafe

Pre-Show Hype: Given that it was a “CMF Showcase” event, we expected that there would be at least some degree of hype. Such was not the case.
Crowd: Literally non-existent. Apparently the crowd peaked around 20 people earlier in the night. When we arrived at 11:30 there were only a few members of a band that had already performed, and a couple of the performers’ girlfriends around.
Performance: We came to see Burnz N Hell, who had dropped out without any announcement. We caught the tail end of a performance by an MC/DJ duo. We can’t remember if their set was any good, as the memory of how painful it was to watch them perform to a completely empty room is all that stands out.
Best Moment: Talking to different staff members about how terrible a show it was, how much money Hard Rock Cafe was losing from this show, and how brutally empty the venue was. Also, when we left.
Miscellaneous: This isn’t only the worst CMW show we’ve ever seen, it’s the worst show we have ever seen. We’d have to get assaulted by a band or something to have a worse experience—but even then we’d actually get to see a band.
Verdict: Negative Infinity/10

Armen at the Bazaar
FROM: Montreal, QC
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 12 a.m. at Rancho Relaxo

Pre-Show Hype: Low.
Crowd: Small but enthusiastic.
Performance: Short (the set lasted roughly 20 minutes).
Best Moment: A three-way-tie between the three moments when the solo performer took to banging and scraping an embossed pewter mug (which we initially mistook for a chalice) for percussive effect.
Miscellaneous: A reformed choir boy (repping the uber fancypants Toronto Children’s Chorus, no less), Armen at the Bazaar/Armen Bazarian still bears the pipes of his boyhood training, a distinguishing factor against the catchy but unexceptional electro-pop dance beats he sets up to back them.
Verdict: 6/10

Trap Tiger
FROM: Waterloo, ON
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 1 a.m. at Rancho Relaxo

Pre-Show Hype: Low.
Crowd: Itty bitty.
Performance: Lively!
Best Moment: When the ponytailed sound man joined the band onstage…with his flute. (He was good.)
Miscellaneous: If the band was fazed by the tiny, end-of-the-night audience that witnessed its debut Toronto performance, then its members’ collective poker face is something to be admired.
Verdict: 9/10

Kirsten Scholte
FROM: Toronto
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 6 PM at Cameron House (front)

Pre-Show Hype: Minimal. Considering that Scholte plays the venue every Wednesday from 6 to 8, booking her wasn’t exactly a coup.
Crowd: When she took the stage, there couldn’t have been more than five or six people in the place. But a few songs in, nearly all the seats in the small room were filled. It was like some sort of CMW opening-night miracle.
Performance: She should be called Kirty. That’s how she introduced herself to the audience and the name would look better on a poster. With her talented backing band, she played a brand of bluegrass-folk that alternated between tender numbers and rousing foot-stompers cut from a similar cloth. She has a feisty charm and a sweet, delicate voice that transformed nicely into a convincing growl on the faster numbers.
Best Moment: Her cover of Tom Waits’ “I Want You.” Because any injection of Waits is usually a Best Moment.
Miscellaneous: Fantastic work on guitar and mandolin by Matthew Bailey. And not a bad voice either when he stepped to lead vocals on a song he wrote.
Verdict: 6/10

Bryan Callen
FROM: New York
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 8 PM at Yuk Yuk’s

Pre-Show Hype: Considering Callen’s work on MADTV, his small roles in both of the Hangover films, and his frequent appearances on comedian and UFC commentator Joe Rogan’s popular podcast, expectations were moderately high.
Crowd: Perhaps because of his affiliation with Rogan, Callen attracts a large number of MMA fans, and they were out on this evening in full force.
Performance: Callen did not disappoint. He had solid material on subjects like gays, animals gone wild, and his kids. Often, he finds unlikely and interesting angles on what could be deemed tired premises. He even managed to smack a few more laughs out of the comedy pinata that is the Canadian beaver. There are times when he does seem to play down to the lowest common denominator. But hey, a cheap laugh is still a laugh.
Best Moment: His suggestion that people get guard ostriches.
Miscellaneous: Opener Graham Chittenden warmed up the crowd nicely, even if he came down a little too hard on a thirty-year old in the audience for renting, rather than owning, a parking spot. Do people own parking spots? Is that even a thing?
Verdict: 7/10

Gloryhound
FROM: Halifax
PERFORMED: Wednesday, 10:15PM at Horseshoe Tavern

Pre-Show Hype: Gloryhound hasn’t released an album since 2010′s Electric Dusk, so it seemed likely that much of the crowd had shown just because the band happened to be playing on the first night of the fest.
Crowd: There was a healthy turnout. A small crowd of excited girls danced with an alarming fervor. Many on hand looked like they were in bands or were at least thinking about starting them.
Performance: There is a very fine line between ironic and the inane. It’s the moment you realize that The Darkness were in on the joke. Gloryhound, it seems, are serious. They play a form of “stock rock” steeped in ’80s hair metal nostalgia and heavy on big, repetitive hooks that are more than often expressed in halfway-melodic shouts. The guitarist, David Casey, wore the requisite leather jacket, the drummer, Shaun Hanlon, an open jean vest. Their high energy could not make up for their unabashed penchant for a showy guitar solo or the collection of overly dramatic lyrics.
Best Moment: The drummer’s strike of a cowbell elicited an appreciative yelp from many in the audience. Thanks, Will Ferrell!
Miscellaneous: Sample ballad lyric: “Why am I stuck in the middle?/Why am I alone with the devil?”
Verdict: 3/10

(Kevin Scott)

]]> http://torontoist.com/2012/03/cmw-2012-day-one-reviews/feed/ 0 http://torontoist.com/2012/03/so-what-do-we-think-about-cmw/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=so-what-do-we-think-about-cmw http://torontoist.com/2012/03/so-what-do-we-think-about-cmw/#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:30:31 +0000 Carly Maga http://torontoist.com/?p=143647

And so it begins! Canadian Music Week, which is part of the Canadian Music Festival (CMW or CMF, respectively). Aren’t we excited? Well, aren’t we? Yes, this could be the first CMW in recorded history that won’t have coat checks or cursed umbrellas hindering intrepid concertgoers, and there’s a pretty great film docket and comedy [...]

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Janelle Monáe goes crowd-surfing at the 2011 Indie Awards, while audience members snap pictures and a creepy man wears a black mask. Ah, CMW. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wordfreak/5527609511/"}Roger Cullman{/a}, from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

And so it begins! Canadian Music Week, which is part of the Canadian Music Festival (CMW or CMF, respectively). Aren’t we excited? Well, aren’t we?

Yes, this could be the first CMW in recorded history that won’t have coat checks or cursed umbrellas hindering intrepid concertgoers, and there’s a pretty great film docket and comedy lineup to boot. But for those who watched as a few anticipated acts cancelled their appearances or failed to show up at all, or who are still recovering from SXSW, or who are simply saving their money for NXNE, vigour for the fest could be waning in the event’s 30th year.

So, how do we feel about Canadian Music Week? Torontoist asked some local music writers, bloggers, and lovers to share their thoughts.

Frank Yang
Chromewaves/Polaris Juror

They have real trouble attracting any kind of talent to play it, and what they do get they stack onto a single lineup such that there’s one show that everyone tries to get into and dozens that no one bothers with. This year, an astonishing number of international acts have cancelled appearances after being announced—not sure what to make of that. I feel obliged to cover it but am hardly excited. There was a time that CMW and NXNE were on about a level playing field but NXNE has gotten astronomically better and CMW…has not.

I’ve had to delete so many bands I was genuinely keen to see from my calendar that it’s hard to get remotely excited. And moving it from before SXSW to after is an inexplicable logistical pain in the ass. I touch on this in my festival preview post from last week. but the fact that they’ve not made comment on their website or Twitter about one of their ostensible headliners—Childish Gambino—cancelling his show, and that Jeff Beck is still listed in the big graphic on the artists page despite cancelling over a month ago is telling.

Jesse Ship
Assistant Editor, Tribute Magazine, Freelance Writer for AOL Spinner

It’s so easy to jump on the jaded hate-wagon but come on.… It’s still a huge opportunity for tons of bands to get exposure and love and an international business conference for the industry.

Scott Honsberger
President and Founder, Toronto Music Industry Association

In my opinion, Canadian Music Week is an integral part of the music industry of Toronto as well as Canada. Venue festivals/conferences such as CMW are chances for the music industry to come together, meet, collaborate, and enjoy an enormous amount of live music. It also offers a chance for us to show off our venues, our talent, and our city to people from all over the world. It’s a permanent part of my yearly schedule.

Ashley Carter
Editor, AUX

Mostly it’s just annoying that it butts up against SXSW, which would be fine if it seemed like they were taking advantage of booking bands touring back from that festival. But judging by the lineup, that can’t be the idea. Maybe it’s a conspiracy to burn out journalists that have to cover both?

Joe Strutt
Mechanical Forest Sound

CMW is extraordinarily draining because of the merch/corporate slant. There are so many bland bands that want to become cogs in “the industry” that it’s painful to try and sift through them to try and find something interesting to see. (For proof, look at my troll through a sampling of artists’ bios.)

It also seems like a big scam inasmuch as they’re peddling $75 wristbands for bands that you either a) can’t get into or b) could go see around town for 10 bucks or less during the other 51 weeks of the year. More rambling in my festival preview.

Anupa Mistry
Regular contributor to NOW Magazine

I think it’s worth getting excited over any festival that gives local and international artists a chance to perform. CMW/CMF might not have as many “big name” acts but I think it can function as a nice throwback to the lost art of “discovery”! I’ve got a show, or multiple, every night of CMW that I’m really looking forward to. It’s a nice mix of local and not-local acts too: The Get By, Cold Specks, Dabrye, BADBADNOTGOOD/Lunice/Zodiac, Spoek Mathambo/Cadence Weapon, Nicolas Jaar, and Georgia Anne Muldrow.

Ricky Lam
The Panic Manual

[I] have no idea why they would put it after SXSW, when most people are tired from seeing shows.

Lisa Lagace
TurntheRecordOver.com

There isn’t a huge difference between the two, so I’ve never quite understood why so many people seem to prefer NXNE. Generally, both events have great conferences with similar keynote speakers and workshops, and the quality of bands that play are of the same level. I love both festivals for the same exact reasons. I get a week of nonstop amazing live music and fun parties, and I get to see all the bands I love play during that short time. There’s also a really great music documentary film festival attached to both, that seems to be getting get stronger each year.

If everyone is talking about what a great place for music Toronto is right now, it’s because of what happens at festivals like CMF. It may never feel as significant as the bigger festivals south of the boarder, but within Canadian music, it will always be an important time for discovering emerging bands. Bands I can’t wait to see play CMF this year are Teenage Kicks, Attagirl, The Dirty Nil, Pat Wright, Poor Young Things, Cold Specks, Wildlife, Topanga, The Sweet Mack, Zeus, Eight and a Half, The Darcys, Bright Lights Social Hour, and Jane’s Party.

Dave Jaffer
Freelance Music Writer/Polaris Juror

It’s not a festival for music fans as much as it’s one for the industry. It’s not very well organized either, and, in the places that it is, it’s hyper-managed to the point that incredible performers will get like, 25 minutes and then get the hook. The first time I did CMW I had a lot of fun, and some of my friends—who were from Toronto and who had been in the industry longer than I had—referred to that year as an anomaly. I was like, “No, you guys are jaded, etc,” but they were right.

Jessica Lewis
Roundletters/Static Zine Editor-In-Chief

It’s still relevant in the sense that it’s a music festival and that’s always needed whether it’s for the music industry or fans. People are still greatly benefiting from it whether they enjoy it or are making money off it, and isn’t that good? I’ve seen a ton of people on Twitter saying they’re really excited about it. Sure the lineup’s not great this year to our standards, but it’s a fest and I think it’s good we can still even have two big ones let alone a ton of small ones in this city. It has decreased in relevance this year in the sense of putting it after SXSW, the lineup’s not as big, and NXNE has definitely revved it up.

Aviva Cohen
Photographer/Static Zine Managing Editor

NXNE has started to do things that make the festival feel special—big shows at Y&D Square, Booze Cruise, utilizing smaller indie venues, etc. The best thing about CMW are the in-stores at Sonic Boom.

]]> http://torontoist.com/2012/03/so-what-do-we-think-about-cmw/feed/ 7 http://torontoist.com/2012/03/luminato-2012-program-announced/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=luminato-2012-program-announced http://torontoist.com/2012/03/luminato-2012-program-announced/#comments Wed, 14 Mar 2012 18:00:18 +0000 Carly Maga http://torontoist.com/?p=141749

As Toronto joyfully transitions from winter to spring, art lovers begin thinking about another type of season—the festival season. Right on cue, the sprawling beast of art, creativity, and crowds that is Luminato has released information about the programming for its sixth edition, taking place this June 8 to 17. This year will be the [...]

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Luminato will present the Canadian premiere of the avant-garde opera Einstein on the Beach by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass. Photo by Lucie Jansch.

As Toronto joyfully transitions from winter to spring, art lovers begin thinking about another type of season—the festival season. Right on cue, the sprawling beast of art, creativity, and crowds that is Luminato has released information about the programming for its sixth edition, taking place this June 8 to 17.

This year will be the first time up to bat for new Artistic Director Jorn Weisbrodt, who is taking over from founding artistic director Chris Lorway. Weisbrodt is an international man of culture and glamour, Hamburg-born, New York-based, and soon-to-be married to Canadian Rufus Wainwright. He has developed a program with an emphasis on international collaboration under the theme, “Revolution and Transformation.”

“Artists are not citizens of a city, but are global citizens,” he said at today’s press conference. “I want Luminato to be the best home for the best artists…in a world where passports are turning into works of art.”

Likely to be one of the biggest draws at this year’s festival is the avant-garde five-hour “fusion of sound, image and movement,” Einstein on the Beach, by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, which will be remounted in Toronto 20 years after its last production. It’s the first time the piece has been staged outside of New York, which is meaningful, since Glass wrote most of it in an old farmhouse in Cape Breton in the 1970s. Tickets will cost $25. That’s $5 per hour of opera. “Any seat left empty in the Sony Centre will be a personal failure,” Weisbrodt said.

Rounding out the theatre and dance program is Robert Lepage’s highly anticipated Playing Cards 1: SPADES, the first in a series of in-the-round productions inspired by a deck of cards. SPADES will explore themes of war, illusions, and risk, jumping back and forth between Las Vegas and Baghdad. Weisbrodt said he’d seen a preview, which he called “a tornado of a production.” Literally: there is a tornado in the show.

Montreal theatre companies Théâtre du Nouveau Monde and Lemieux Pilon 4D Art will present their multimedia jawdropper, La Belle et la Bête, a contemporary retelling of Beauty and the Beast in 3D (no glasses necessary). It will be the production’s English debut. Finally, Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company will present the North American premiere of Sadeh21, choreographed by artistic director Ohad Naharin in his own unique physical language, which he calls Gaga.

Plans for Windscape at Pecault Square, the inaugural year for the square to be the cultural hub of the festival. It will feature daily Illuminations, nightly concerts, and a "windsock ballet" that will occur every half an hour. Image courtesy of Diamond Schmitt Architects.

Most of the music programming falls in the classical, folk, or cultural categories. There will be concerts by Michael Franti, Rufus Wainwright (he’ll be presenting the Canadian premiere of his new album, in fact, with special guests), Dan Mangan, Kathleen Edwards, Lemon Bucket Orkestra, Shantel and the Bucovina Club Orkestar, and a kick-off concert with K’Naan and Rae Sun, in Pecault Square. Closing out the festival will be the first open-air concert by the TSO in about ten years, where they’ll perform Tchaikovsky’s rousing 1812 Overture and Philip Glass’s brand new Overture for 2012, in commemoration of The War of 1812.

Luminato is a known supporter of the Wainwright/McGarrigle clan, and this year is definitely no different. Besides showcasing Rufus’s newest album, the festival will also be holding a tribute, called Love Over and Over: The Songs of Kate McGarrigle. It will feature 20 musicians, all family or friends of McGarrigle, in a concert of her music. Performers will include her sisters Anna and Jane, her kids Rufus and Martha, Bruce Cockburn, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Emmylou Harris, Kevin Drew, Andrew Whiteman, Ariel Engle, and Amy Millan.

And for the music lover with guts, concert pianist Stuart Goodyear will perform The Beethoven Marathon, which is exactly what it sounds like. On June 9, Goodyear will perform all 32 Beethoven sonatas in one day. That’s 103 individual movements, and over 10 hours of music, accompanied throughout the performance by Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo.

The Literary series includes a number of impressive names, like Irvine Welsh on his prequel to Trainspotting, Linden MacIntyre, Vincent Lam, Chris Cleeve, Alice Munro, Lewis Lapham, Young Jean Lee, Adam Gopnik, Calvin Trillin, and too many more to name all at once.

Festival favourites like 1000 Tastes of Toronto and Luminato’s “Magic” series will return. There will also be a series of discussions and visual projects to celebrate the anniversary of The War of 1812—including The Encampment, an installation of 200 white tents at Fort York that has a call out for public participation. More information can be found on Luminato 2012′s website, which will fully launch on April 5.

]]> http://torontoist.com/2012/03/luminato-2012-program-announced/feed/ 1 http://torontoist.com/2012/03/theatre-moves-toronto-to-tennessee/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=theatre-moves-toronto-to-tennessee http://torontoist.com/2012/03/theatre-moves-toronto-to-tennessee/#comments Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:00:06 +0000 Carly Maga http://torontoist.com/?p=140348 The Tennessee Williams Project is pairing independent theatre companies with a familiar name, but in unfamiliar territory.

A trip from theatre to theatre in Toronto can feel like a trip around the world. So far this season, we’ve seen stories from Africa, India, Japan, Europe, the United States, Canadian aboriginal reserves…the list goes on. But while these plays offer windows into the lives of people and places halfway around the world, theatre-goers [...]

]]> The Tennessee Williams Project is pairing independent theatre companies with a familiar name, but in unfamiliar territory.

Tour Toronto's neighbourhoods as you tour the canon of Tennessee Williams.

A trip from theatre to theatre in Toronto can feel like a trip around the world. So far this season, we’ve seen stories from Africa, India, Japan, Europe, the United States, Canadian aboriginal reserves…the list goes on. But while these plays offer windows into the lives of people and places halfway around the world, theatre-goers rarely venture out of Toronto’s more art-friendly downtown locales to see them.

Fortunately, a new project being put on jointly by nine independent companies is hoping to burst the city’s theatre bubble. From May 1 to 8, The Tennessee Williams Project will present a series of one-act Tennessee Williams plays in venues scattered throughout seven different neighbourhoods—Cabbagetown, Greektown, Roncesvalles, The Annex, North York, Leslieville, and St. Clair West. They won’t be staged in traditional theatres. Instead, they’ll unfold in bars, restaurants, or stores. Casts and crews won’t have a chance to get comfortable in these unconventional spaces, as they’ll tour from location to location each night.

Creators Daiva Zalnieriunis and Alex Johnson came up with the concept for The Tennessee Project while in a situation familiar to many recent theatre school grads: they had lots of ideas, but almost no resources, and they were facing imminent unemployment.

“We bemoaned the obstacles before us. ‘I don’t have the money to do this show,’ or ‘I don’t have an actress to fill this part.’ It became increasingly clear to us that we needed to reach out,” said Johnson at a recent fundraiser for the project, surrounded by many of those on the receiving end of their outreach, all of them now participating in the project.

Creators of The Tennessee Project, Daiva Zalnieriunis and Alex Johnson, with production manager Suzan Balogh.

Johnson and Zalnieriunis say the feedback they got from Toronto’s independent theatre community was immediate and overwhelmingly positive. After setting the limit at nine groups, they’re still receiving requests to join. Artistic leaders—like Soulpepper’s Albert Schultz and actress Diane D’Aquila, and even the renowned New York City-based company The Wooster Group (in town with their own adaptation of Williams’s Vieux Carré at the Harbourfront Centre later this month)—have also expressed support for the project.

Thrilled though Johnson and Zalnieriunis are at the response (they hope to expand the project in the years to come), mainstream participation was never really the goal of The Tennessee Williams Project. In fact, it was born out of a perfect storm of altruistic intentions.

To Johnson, it began simply enough. “We just did it because we wanted to work,” she said. But the pair also hoped to support quality and collaboration between Toronto’s independent artists—including this year’s participants: The Red Light District, Another Theatre Company, Birdtown and Swanville, Theatre Caravel, Afterglow Theatre, and Quixotic Arts Collective—by taking on all of the administrative tasks of the festival.

“We realized what a gift this was to give to these companies. To say, ‘We’ll take care of the production side, you just focus on the art,’” said Zalnieriunis. All the casts and crews have to worry about is perfecting Williams’ one-acts, like This Property is Condemned, I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix, and Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen.

“And from there we developed kind of lofty ideals about outreach, about values of a community. We adopted a philosophy,” added Johnson. “Our goal is to get enough money so that we can pay our actors to take off work so they can actually just help. So it can become a more consistent part, a three or four month lead-up to the shows.”

The inaugural festival focuses on Tennessee Williams specifically, both because of the fact that theatre-goers know his name and because of his canon of strong one-act plays. But Johnson and Zalnieriunis aren’t limiting their ideas for the years to come. They’d like to expand their reach to Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods and perhaps involve local playwrights who might create pieces about each specific area.

“These neighbourhoods are amazing,” said Zalnieriunis. “I think they’re so beautiful, and I think it’s great that every one has their own personality, and it’s fantastic.”

“But I think it also isolates the city as a whole, and I hope that eventually, [The Tennessee Williams Project] helps create more of a connection throughout the entire city.”

Images courtesy of The Tennessee WIlliams Project.

]]> http://torontoist.com/2012/03/theatre-moves-toronto-to-tennessee/feed/ 4 http://torontoist.com/2012/02/smwto-meets-a-new-digitalculture/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=smwto-meets-a-new-digitalculture http://torontoist.com/2012/02/smwto-meets-a-new-digitalculture/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:30:47 +0000 Carly Maga http://torontoist.com/?p=134674

The internet is to Social Media Week Toronto what beer is to Homer Simpson: “The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.” At last week’s series of over 100 workshops, lectures, interactive art installations, and even a game of hoops, that sense of dichotomy was the feeling among entrepreneurs jazzed about their new [...]

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The audience at the SMWTO event Twitter Tea Time.

The internet is to Social Media Week Toronto what beer is to Homer Simpson: “The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

At last week’s series of over 100 workshops, lectures, interactive art installations, and even a game of hoops, that sense of dichotomy was the feeling among entrepreneurs jazzed about their new gaming network, and among marketing experts looking intrigued (yet slightly terrified) of the nebulous online space. Even in 2012, the digital world is still a new frontier for those making a living in and off of it. And they seemed, as they have in the past, to dominate the conversation among the events at SMWTO—which is Toronto’s edition of Social Media Week, which took place across 21 cities worldwide.

Throughout the week, it was “social media” coming at you in “real time.” Turn “Likes” and “Retweets” into “fans” and “engagement” both “on the internets” and “IRL,” and increase the “ROI” of our time spent on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram, and whatever else claims to be one of “the fastest-growing online communities.” (For a translation, simply click here.) Buzzwords are often inescapable when you’re dealing with something that’s “hot” or “emerging,” but they can also be hella alienating when you’re not the one using them. Considering that they’re driven by their everyday users, initiatives to analyze and discuss social networks have been made by companies looking to use them for marketing purposes, not by the self-proclaimed internet addicts actually using them for entertainment rather than profit.

But as memes, videos, blogs, and networks have born a unique and independent culture of their own, this year’s Social Media Week marked a shift to represent that—a shift that should keep growing in the years to come. Under the organization of Amanda Lynne Ballard, who has a background in arts events and festivals like Nuit Blanche and the Toronto Fringe, SMW changed focus from a marketing and communications conference to more of a celebration of digital culture in all its forms—visual art, theatre, lifestyle, sports, activism, even dating.

“It was still heavy on marketing and communications, but that’s what [SMWTO] is by its nature. This year though, we moved away from sessions that were basically product pitches or 101 course work,” she said.

The transition from a social media marketing un-conference (no strict schedule and multiple venues) to a full-on festival for the digital community makes sense given SMWTO’s free admission policy, one which allows the same access to Twitter newbies as it does to CEOs. Marketing and networking will probably always have a place, but in due time the novelty/fear of social media marketing will wear off, leaving lots of room for more industries to develop their own conversation. Soon, Ballard hopes to involve more leaders in education and health care, hold interactive panels, and bring new products like GestureTek into the mix—along with whatever other innovations happen to pop up in this unpredictable world.

“It’s ever-changing. Eventually, social media won’t be the new and the fancy, it’ll be integrated into everything. But that’s part of our challenge, to keep Social Media Week relevant and to keep new audiences engaged,” Ballard said. Not that this initiative will be achieved by next year, but rather it’s part of a long-term plan for SMWTO.

In one panel called The Social Media Ref, Tweeter/blogger/8-bit dreamer Lauren O’Neil said “Social media is real life,” contending that it involves the same things as reality does: social norms, practical judgment, and a variety of languages and interests. Luckily, SMWTO is taking steps to bring real life online, then off-line again.

]]> http://torontoist.com/2012/02/smwto-meets-a-new-digitalculture/feed/ 2 http://torontoist.com/2012/01/the-best-of-the-next-stage-theatre-festival/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-best-of-the-next-stage-theatre-festival http://torontoist.com/2012/01/the-best-of-the-next-stage-theatre-festival/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:00:24 +0000 Carly Maga http://torontoist.com/?p=118538

If you haven’t rung in the new year with a show at the Next Stage Theatre Festival yet, well, you could very well be alone. Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the festival is having a smashing year: ticket sales are breaking records and the quality of the shows is consistently solid. Running until Sunday, January 15, [...]

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An innocent kiss at a party leads to imprisonment in Loving the Stranger or How to Recognize an Invert. Detail of a photo by Alistair Newton.

If you haven’t rung in the new year with a show at the Next Stage Theatre Festival yet, well, you could very well be alone.

Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the festival is having a smashing year: ticket sales are breaking records and the quality of the shows is consistently solid. Running until Sunday, January 15, there are still plenty of opportunities to catch nine of the 10 shows (the entire run of Morro and Jasp is sold out)—but here are the ones we think are the hottest in this most unseasonably warm of seasons.

Tomasso’s Party
ROOFTOP CREATIONS

Simon Bracken and Leah Doz in Tomasso's Party, the first play from author Jules Lewis.

Wide-awake in the early hours of the morning, unable to calm a relentless and deep-rooted anxiety, layering analysis upon analysis of the smallest of details—it’s a situation that is never happy, never pleasant, and not really something that sounds enjoyable to experience on a stage for an hour. Fortunately, Tomasso’s Party is a neurotic trip we’re happy to take.

Hugo (Simon Bracken) paces back and forth in the bedroom he shares with Madeleine (Leah Doz), who is sleeping (or attempting to) on their bed with her back forever facing the audience, on a mission to get her to confirm his suspicions—that she is having an affair with her boss, the charming Tomasso. Jules Lewis’s script playfully keeps this question unanswered as the two dive deeper into their respective insecurities. Lewis’s script is thick with repetition and subtext, but both Bracken and Doz uphold it excellently. Bracken in particular does the heaving lifting, not only in his pointed and intense delivery of lengthy monologues but in his commanding physicality, facial expressions, and control over his rather lanky limbs. Doz is a worthy partner, saying more with a pointed finger than she needs to with the rest of her body.

With a male writer, a male director (Nigel Shawn Williams), and a male doing most of the talking, it can’t help but feel like a one-sided argument. But lucky for the audience, these are some neuroses we don’t have to take to bed with us. (Carly Maga)

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Modern Love
THEATRE CARAVEL

Jessica Moss finds love in a faceless place. Photo by Kyle Purcell.

Marking a common theme in this year’s Next Stage Festival of love in the digital age, or lack thereof, is Jessica Moss’s one-hander Modern Love. Written and performed by Moss, it tells the story of Trish, a girl who finds that having hundreds of friends on Facebook doesn’t mean she has any real ones IRL, which leads to her pursuit of a connection that isn’t mediated by wifi and screens. It’s not a hugely novel concept, but Moss is charming and loveable as her stage alter-ego, and is probably one of the few people able to capture the essence of a Twitter conversation in live action.

Moss is making quite a name for herself as an actor in Toronto’s theatre scene, which will only be bolstered by her performance in Modern Love: she moves from lovesick Trish, to Tweet-fiend friend, to chat room troll, to an overly skeptical mother. But she also shows her writing chops with a clever script, including quirky online romantic interest Charlie Brown that had audience members audibly sighing in adoration.

Moss’s writing and performance, Eric Double’s direction, and Kyle Purcell’s multimedia projections take the audience through the jungle of online social networking—Facebook, Twitter, Skype, online dating sites, chat rooms, and the Internet help call centre—and get us out alive, even with a little hope. (Carly Maga)

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Uncalled For Presents Hypnogogic Logic
UNCALLED FOR

The fellas of Uncalled For. Photo by Jeremy Bobrow.

Not to sound like a broken record, but we really, really like the guys of Uncalled For and their show Hypnogogic Logic. A “best of” choice at the 2011 Fringe, the show still takes audience members through a series of scenes as outlandish and incongruous as a person’s subconscious as they fall asleep, including a few signature scenes like an episode of post-apocalyptic MasterChef, a pair of sleepless sheep, and a Freddie Mercury musical number—scenes which, if you missed last summer, would be foolish to sleep through again.

But this show isn’t simply Fringe 2.0. Fifteen minutes of new material, updated jokes, and a few crack-ups on stage are evidence that these guys are keeping each other precariously balanced on their toes. And as random as their sketches seem to be, there is a calculated design to the show that brings everything together in a satisfying, yet similarly zany, ending. What results is a 75-minute-long smorgasbord of sketches that we’re relieved, and saddened, to wake up from. (Carly Maga)

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Loving the Stranger Or How to Recognize an Invert
ECCE HOMO

If there was a “most improved” award at Next Stage this year, we’d be giving it to Ecce Homo for this remount. We liked the 2010 SummerWorks production well enough, but in comparison to their previous shows, that version of Loving the Stranger was lacking in focus and cohesion, and wasn’t firing on all cylinders. This might have been because playwright/director Alistair Newton was incorporating changes into the show, based on developments as they were unfolding in California. (The play draws parallels between Nazi laws on homosexuality and the fight for same sex rights via the Proposition 8 legislation in California.) The current version is still plenty topical, with references to developments from the past six months, but Newton and his cast and creative team have had the time to refine the content and the effectiveness of its delivery in Ecce Homo’s signature cabaret and found text style.

Gay artist Peter Flinsch (Hume Baugh), who left Germany post-Second World War after a period of imprisonment and made Canada his home, remains the most revered real life figure Ecce Homo has featured in their shows; his insights into the Nazi rise to power, and the development of gay culture in the post-war years (up until last year, when Flinsch passed away), now seem to be more evenly spaced and solidly anchored in the show. An important secondary character, sexuality doctor Magnus Hirschfeld, provides a rational period counterpoint to excerpts from National Socialist propaganda speeches and statements—and uneasily similar sentiments from Prop 8 opponents. The singing, dancing, and stripping performed by Ecce Homo’s ensemble remains strong, and Newton’s subtle refinements underscore the need to continue to fight for equality and civil rights. “Because things can change,” the show points out, “we must do as much as we can.” (Steve Fisher)

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Morro and Jasp: Go Bake Yourself
Morro and Jasp

Morro (Heather Marie Annis, at right) and Jasp (Amy Lee, at left) serve up comedy in Go Cook Yourself. Photo by Alex Nirta.

It seems almost unfair for us to recommend Morro and Jasp‘s cooking show playlet, given that tickets are sold out for their entire Next Stage run. But we are obliged to tell those lucky folks who already have tickets that they’ve picked a great one, as the clown sister act (and director/dramaturg Byron Laviolette) has whipped up yet another gleefully funny and participatory experience.

We also have a few tips for attendees. Do be careful with any implements you may be handed, as one overzealous volunteer vegetable peeler has already drawn blood. Don’t lean too far forward to get a look at what’s going in the bowl if you’re in the front row, as the exuberant Morro (Heather Marie Annis) has already cayenne-peppered herself in the face while mixing maniacally. Do follow the directions of the polite but manipulative Jasp (Amy Lee), who may turn her coquettish charms on men in the audience.

Above all, know that the whip-smart ladies behind the slightly manic clown personalities can and will capitalize on any chance opportunities that present themselves in the moment, whether they be a song coming from outside the performance space, or a temporary power outage leading to a haywire blender. (Steve Fisher)

]]> http://torontoist.com/2012/01/the-best-of-the-next-stage-theatre-festival/feed/ 0 http://torontoist.com/2011/08/ten_highlights_of_the_2011_summerworks_festival/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ten_highlights_of_the_2011_summerworks_festival http://torontoist.com/2011/08/ten_highlights_of_the_2011_summerworks_festival/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:00:00 +0000 Carly Maga http://torontoist.com/2011/08/ten_highlights_of_the_2011_summerworks_festival/ After 42 plays and more than a dozen bands, the sun set on the 2011 SummerWorks Festival this past Sunday. And with about 20,000 audience members and 1,500 to 2,000 Music Series tickets sold, the 10-day celebration of progressive theatre, dance, and music seems to have weathered the storm of losing its government funding just fine.

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The Lemon Bucket Orkestra surprises the SummerWorks closing party on Sunday night. Photo by Stephanie Tonietto.

After 42 plays and more than a dozen bands, the sun set on the 2011 SummerWorks Festival this past Sunday. And with about 20,000 audience members and 1,500 to 2,000 Music Series tickets sold, the 10-day celebration of progressive theatre, dance, and music seems to have weathered the storm of losing its government funding just fine.
Though Heritage Canada’s refusal of grant money and the subsequent publicity and nationwide fundraising drive is no doubt partly responsible for the increase in numbers from 2010, SummerWorks routinely shows an increase in annual attendance. Perhaps when artistic producer Michael Rubenfeld reapplies for government funding next year, which he has said he plans to do, this year’s success might make the case again. Or maybe not. Just in case, Rubenfeld has said he is looking for other fundraising and sponsorship opportunities to avoid the last-minute rush for cash again.
Fortunately, government grants don’t impact the quality of the SummerWorks festival—so while Rubenfeld was busy making sure the books were balanced, local and national artists focused on making the 2011 productions some of the best so far. From open to close, we were consistently pleased with the performances we saw, with a few moments that stood out from the rest as particularly exciting. Here are our 10 favourite moments and highlights from the 2011 SummerWorks Festival that give it, in our opinion, a sunny forecast.

Michelle Monteith plays a twisted sister to Joe Cobden in Hannah Moscovitch’s Little One. Photo by Omer Yukseker.

Hannah Moscovitch’s writing in Little One
So, surprise surprise, we liked Hannah Moscovitch’s new play, Little One. With the same team of playwright Moscovitch, actress Michelle Monteith, and director Natasha Mytnowych that created the SummerWorks success The Russian Play in 2006, we (and everyone else) pegged it as a must-see before the festival even started. But that doesn’t change the fact that Moscovitch’s monologues are expertly crafted—telling a chilling narrative, exploring provocative themes without being explicit, while creating bitingly funny moments in a completely unfunny situation. However, our favourite part about Little One‘s script was its Ottawa setting, which she describes in the way only someone who grew up there can. Claire (Monteith) tells the audience how the Vietnamese mail-order bride across the street slowly adjusts to her new home: “She’s even finally started to get used to Ottawa, to the sound of a million people all being very quiet together.” Anyone who’s spent an extended amount of time there will understand the genius of that line, which, in our opinion, should have earned Little One at least one award on closing night (though Monteith and Cobden received honourable mentions for The Spotlight Award for a featured performer).
Another writer who did win an award, however, was Cliff Cardinal, who received The Theatre Passe Muraille Emerging Artist Award for his script Stitch. Don’t ask us how this twenty-something male was able to write a one-woman show about an oxy-addicted single mother and porn star so well. But this new script definitely demands a shout-out, along with Richard Sanger’s Hannah’s Turn, a smart, engaging new drama about philosophy and the role it played in the Holocaust (and an illicit affair). Canadian audiences are very likely to see these three shows at another theatre near home soon.
(Carly Maga)

SummerWorks Spotlight Award winner Cara Gee (at centre, in teal dress) poses for the camera, between Birdtown & Swanville’s Aurora Stewart de Peña and Shakespeare in Action’s Kaleb Alexander. Photo by Stephanie Tonietto/SummerWorks.

“Double duty” standouts Cara Gee & Steven McKay
Every year, a few SummerWorks participants distinguish themselves by contributing to multiple shows and projects, which can make for some very tight scheduling. This year, while there were quite a few we noticed (such as Shaina Silver-Baird’s appearances in both Little Crickets and Program, and Beth Kates’ contributing design work to Malaria Lullaby and set design to Freda and Jem’s Best of the Week), two people in particular stood out for exceptional work in exceptional productions. Steven McKay was the SummerWorks Music Series MVP, contributing a charming set of his own material on opening night and backing the revitalized Bruce Peninsula on the drum kit while they weaved their choral magic. And Cara Gee, whose sensational turn in Cliff Cardinal’s Stitch garnered her the SummerWorks Spotlight Award, also impressed us in the large ensemble of funny and fierce lady “strongmen” in Birdtown and Swanville‘s The Physical Ramifications of Attempted Global Domination.
(Steve Fisher)

Amber Borotsik traverses the River Styx in ONE. Photo Courtesy of SummerWorks.

The reinterpretation of the Greek myth in ONE
Modern theatre as we know it was born of ancient Greek choruses, and thus they have always been an integral part of the art form. But this summer, the Greek myth seemed to have a bigger presence than ever before—though sometimes you’d be hard-pressed to recognize it. Take ONE, by Jason Carnew, which tells the story of a young woman who travels to the underworld to rescue her true love, George, who has drowned (loosely based on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth). Instead of a chorus narrating the drama in unison and avoiding the melodramatic monologues so characteristic of Greek theatre, ONE uses a series of incredibly moving images to bring young Philistine to a dusty archive of memories, through a nightmarish River Styx, face to face with demonic creatures reminiscent of Silent Hill‘s Pyramid Heads. In fact, the direction from Ghost River Theatre‘s Eric Rose (which earned him the Canadian Stage Award for Direction) was so strong that we wish the actors would only dance and not speak. An umbrella floating up through the air, Philistine (played by Amber Borotsik) literally swimming in red fabric, a dance sequence that bravely shows off Kristi Hansen’s missing foot, and a stunning lightning sequence are just a few examples of the theatrical magic SummerWorks audiences witnessed in ONE.
But ONE wasn’t the only twist of the Greek myth. Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl also provided a stripped-down but quirky interpretation of Orpheus’s myth, helped greatly by Justin Rutledge’s music, and Kevin Shea’s Hero & Leander was a welcome fresh take on the Greek gods, exposing them as even more flawed than their mortal aides—Neptune (Rick Jon Egan) is fickle and insecure when Leander refuses his advances, and Venus (Kimberly Persona) is the total opposite of grace and beauty.
(Carly Maga)

Larry (Ishai Buchbinder, at left) confronts Mr. Marmalade (David Storch.) Photo by Simon Bloom.

David Storch’s death scene in Mr. Marmalade
Mr. Marmalade, inventively staged in and around a bright kindergarten classroom by Outside The March‘s Mitchell Cushman (co-winner of the Emerging Artist award with Stitch scribe Cliff Cardinal), was blessed with fine performances from all its cast members, including Sebastien Heins as a perky but mistreated personal assistant and Amy Keating’s effervescent but lonely young Lucy. But veteran actor David Storch made the deepest impression as the increasingly malevolent title character, an imaginary “friend” onto whom Lucy projects the poor behaviour of the adults in her life. Weaving back and forth between charm and drug-addled debauchery, Marmalade comes to a grisly but entertaining end, and Storch’s ritual suicide outside the classroom, seen through the window by the constantly shifting audience, was a fitting underscore of the narrator’s (a confident Ava Jane Markus) warning towards the end: “…which ends in death—which is where all stories go if you follow them long enough.”
(Steve Fisher)

Tommy Taylor’s caged wisdom in You Should Have Stayed Home. Photo by Will O’Hare.

Water in You Should Have Stayed Home and White Rabbit, Red Rabbit
For a very political festival, only two shows had overtly political themes—You Should Have Stayed Home by Praxis Theatre and The Original Norwegian, which is Tommy Taylor’s story of incarceration during the G20, directed by Michael Wheeler (winner of the RBC Arts Professional Award), and White Rabbit, Red Rabbit by Volcano Theatre and Necessary Angel, a script written by Iranian Nassim Soleimanpour and read cold by a different actor every performance. Both examined the idea of civil and human rights, their fragility, and their value to a free and good life. Both also used water as a representation of these rights. In YSHSH, Taylor’s story is at its most dire when he and the rest of his caged inmates are forced to beg for a Styrofoam cup of water. Meanwhile, in WR, RR, Soleimanpour (who received the SummerWorks Contra Guys Award for Outstanding New Performance Text) forces the audience to act upon their freedom of choice to save the actor from a maybe-poisoned glass of water, whereas the playwright, unable to travel or leave Iran, is forced to live without such a sense of agency. As an essential necessity for life and health, water is an obvious indicator of quality of life. But in these shows, the flavourless, colourless, odorless liquid was strong enough to instill a sense of anger and incredulity at the vulnerability of human rights, both overseas and at home.
(Carly Maga)

Aerialist Holly Treddenick floats above Allison Bradbury on the bed in a fever dream sequence from Malaria Lullaby. Photo by Beth Kates.

The visual flair of Malaria Lullaby
In a festival full of indelible images—the mouth stretching in Shudder, the inventive staging with simple props and precise movement in ONE, the bear puppet in Exit, pursued by a bear—Company Blonde and CANDLES ARE FOR BURNING‘s Malaria Lullaby was the show that infected our minds most virulently, with a combination of aerial acrobatics, fascinating projection, and sound design by The Playground’s Beth Kates and Ben Chaisson, and the use of a diverse selection of backing music, including several tracks from Arcade Fire. The show, following a young woman (Allison Bradbury) who flies to a tropical country and is preyed upon by disease-carrying mosquitoes, ended with a bravura sequence where dancer Holly Treddenick climbed up a silk above the ill protagonist’s bed and mirrored her feverish shifting in an “out of body” experience. Our only criticism of the show would be that we’d have liked to have seen it in a space a little wider that the usually amply sized Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, as the airborne dancers needed more open space around them when they ascended three in a row.
(Steve Fisher)

Kristy Kennedy in Combat. Photo by John Lauener.

Toy warfare in Combat
Set mostly in the sales department at a TV shopping network, employees treat each stint on the phones as a battle in no man’s land, and the guest appearance of Marie Osmond as a special op of extreme importance. Combat wove together the goofy and the intense, exploring how violence and anger can seep into the most trivial situations. While we thought the characters and premise of such an office felt too exaggerated in the script, what we loved most was the use of toy soldiers, tanks, and helicopters in the staging—with the childhood idea of “playing war” itself the perfect combination of silly and serious.
(Carly Maga)

The cast and band of Oracle, post-performance. Photo by Stephanie Tonietto/SummerWorks.

The delivery musical number in Oracle at the Musical Works in Concert Series
Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli’s Oracle may have been the musical least far along in staging at the festival, with its singers rooted in front of music stands, but it had the most evolved character development, streamlined plot, and polished book and lyrics. The three singers—Patty Jamieson as Leigh, the directionless hardware store clerk; Julie Martell as Phoebe, a no-longer-chaste Oracle banished to the present day from ancient Greece; and Jeff Irving as “Bagel Boy” Jim, a jack of all trades who’s keen to make a home in Delphi, IN, with Leigh—were all full of life and did ample justice to Turvey’s clever book and lyrics. The anachronistic differences between 4th-century (BC) Phoebe and 21st-century Leigh and Jim were never played for a cheap laugh, until a climactic and hilarious scene where “BB” acts as doula for Phoebe, who used the 21st-century’s f-word in the funniest way we’ve seen on stage in a long time. We laughed at other musicals in the fest, like at Kimberly Persona’s raunchy Venus in Hero and Leander—but Oracle was the only one we’ll admit to tearing up a little while watching.
(Steve Fisher)

Danny Wild, Susanna Hood, and Alanna Kraaijeveld in Shudder. Photo by Frédérique Ménard-Aubin.

Not shying away from juvenile sexuality in, well, a lot of shows
Okay so before you send in your hate mail—we don’t actually like child sexuality. Not at all. But, for some reason or another, it seemed to be a common theme among several of our favourite shows. In Little One, it’s never stated outright, but there is strong evidence that Claire was sexually mistreated as an infant. In Strange Mary Strange, the titular Mary is hyper-sexualized since the age of nine. Young Lucy in Mr. Marmalade takes playing House and Doctor a little too seriously with her imaginary boyfriend and four-year-old Larry. And the dancers in Shudder displayed all sorts of taboo behaviour between a daughter, father, and mother, in their Francis Bacon–inspired nightmare visions. Watching these shows explore the sexuality of their characters was never comfortable, but for taking on these issues the plays’ creators deserve recognition, and watching their work certainly was jarring, edgy, and captivating. Which is exactly what SummerWorks intends to be.
(Carly Maga)

Graham Van Pelt’s Miracle Fortress set used lasers to accentuate his sonically layered performance. Detail of a photo by Stephanie Tonietto/SummerWorks.

Miracle Fortress’ light and sound show at the Music Series
This was the year that the SummerWorks Musical Series, which has had exceptional programming since its inception in 2008, really came into its own. The series enjoyed a 25 per cent boost in attendance over last year, as music fans figured out where the Lower Ossington Theatre was, and theatregoers cottoned onto the fact that there were great bands on every night of the series. Hooded Fang packed them in on opening night, Bonjay earned an enthusiastic welcome home (from Berlin), as did a reinvigorated Bruce Peninsula, who’d been on hiatus while lead singer Neil Haverty underwent treatment for leukemia. But the best set of the fest came from Miracle Fortress; Graham Van Pelt, who’d been at the series in 2009 with both Miracle Fortress and his “party” band Think About Life, came back with a fantastic set of tunes from his new album Was I The Wave?, and also made the best use of the black box space, incorporating lasers that spilled beams all across the walls and appreciative crowd.
(Steve Fisher)

CORRECTION: August 17, 2011, 3:45 PM The photo caption for the picture accompanying “Double Duty Standouts Cara Gee & Steven McKay” originally suggested Kaleb Alexander is associated with the Classical Theatre Project when, in fact, the company he’s working with is “Shakespeare in Action.” We regret the error.