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Urban Planner: December 1, 2009
Urban Planner is Torontoist’s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to [email protected].
Photo of Nathalie Claude in The Salon Automation by Rolline Laporte. Courtesy of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
THEATRE: The Salon Automation is a one-woman, three-automaton show created and performed by Nathalie Claude. Claude sets the show in a literary salon with three life-like robots—The Dandy Poet, The Cabaret Artist, and The Drinking Patroness—specially made for her to interact with in the show. The automatons act as centrepieces to an eerie presentation of existentialism meets turn-of-the-century automation. The Salon Automation features fantastic set design by Raymond Marius Boucher and robotics “designer/performer/teacher” Simon Laroche. After playing to sold-out shows in Montreal’s Usine C, this will be The Salon Automation‘s first showing in English. Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (12 Alexander Street), 8 p.m., $15–$29.
MUSIC: It’s World AIDS Day and Toronto’s Casey House is holding a benefit concert to help raise awareness and funds. This is the second year that Voices of Hope: A Concert for World AIDS Day will be held as a coordinated concert with Voix D’Espoir in Montreal, held by La Maison du Parc. The show will be hosted by the CBC’s Tom Allen, and feature performances from jazz musician Julie Michaels, men’s chorus Forte, the Metropolitan Silver Band, and the Muhtadi World Drummers. The lead performance of the night will be from pyrotechnic electric violinist Dr. Eugene Draw. After the concert there will be a candlelight bell concert with hot cider served in the courtyard. Metropolitan United Church (56 Queen Street East), doors at 6:30 p.m., FREE (donations are appreciated).
WORDS: Get a head start on that winter reading list when CBC radio personality Jian Ghomeshi announces the list of books and panellists to be featured in the Canada Reads 2010 competition this afternoon. Last year’s winner, The Book Of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, also won the 2007 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and is already being developed into a film. The Canada Reads people will be giving out a gift basket with all five books in the competition, and the authors will be there to sign books and chat after the announcement. Canadian Broadcasting Centre (250 Front Street West), 12 p.m., FREE.
LECTURE: The sixth and final Make Some Noise event is taking place tonight with Polaris Music Prize founder Steve Jordan hosting a workshop titled “Getting Into the Scene.” Jordan will be going over some of the history of the Polaris Prize, as well as doling out advice on how to make it in the Canadian music industry. Toronto Public Library, Northern District Branch (40 Orchard View Boulevard), 7 p.m., FREE.