Urban Planner: June 5, 2014

In today's Urban Planner: healthy gardens, Yonge Street's musical past, and a back-to-the-future ball.

By Torontoist

Photo via The Power Plant.

• Food: Reduce waste and grow healthier gardens this summer by getting into Backyard Composting. Join compost facilitator Mike Nevin and agronomist Orlando Lopez Gomez to learn how you can turn your veggie peels and other organic cast-offs into rich soil in just one month. The workshop will cover best practices for household composting, troubleshooting, and more. FoodShare Toronto (90 Croatia Street), 5:30 p.m., $75. Details
• Music: It’s almost impossible to talk about live music in Toronto without someone bringing up their favourite venues and bands from “the good old days.” Get educated on the topic with a Music History on the Yonge Street Strip walk, courtesy of Heritage Toronto. Visit sites of past and present venues, including Massey Hall, The Colonial, and the Eaton Auditorium, while hearing about the artists who graced their stages. Multiple venues, 6:30 p.m., $20. Details
• Art: Power Ball, the Power Plant gallery’s annual fundraising event, is rolling back around, and we caught up with the gallery’s director Gaëtane Verna to find out why it’s still one of Toronto’s quintessential art events. After 16 years of Power Ball themes, Verna said it was difficult to cook up something different. Instead of focusing on the future (e.g. 2013’s “15 Minutes” and 2012’s “Quarter-Life Crisis” themes), the June 5 event will celebrate analogue technology and sci-fi visions of the year 2000. The Power Plant (231 Queens Quay West), 7 p.m., $165 (incl. partial tax receipt for $90). Details
• Art: Canadian art is the name of the game at the June edition of AGO First Thursdays. Artists will be creating interactive one-night-only pieces all throughout the gallery’s Canadian collection, with opportunities for everyone to try their hand at creating an artistic work of their own. Oh, and Sloan will be playing live. Act quickly on this one—these nights tend to sell out, and there won’t be any walk-up sales at the door once all the tickets are gone. Art Gallery of Ontario (317 Dundas Street West), 8 p.m., $12 in advance, $15 at the door. Details

Ongoing…

• Art: If The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China’s Emperors has a mascot, it’s Emperor Yongzheng. The image of the 18th-century Chinese ruler dominates the promotional material of the exhibition, which is one of the centrepieces of the Royal Ontario Museum’s centennial year. His portrait certainly has visual appeal, but Yongzheng is also a figure associated with surprising elements of life within the former imperial palace. Royal Ontario Museum (100 Queens Park), all day, $27 adults. Details
• Art: “The greatest art always returns you to the vulnerabilities of the human situation.” – Francis Bacon

  “In the human figure one can express more completely one’s feelings about the world than in any other way.” – Henry Moore

  These quotations, which welcome visitors to “Francis Bacon and Henry Moore: Terror and Beauty,” immediately establish the exhibition’s tone and focus. Each artist’s distortions of the human figure, shaped by their wartime experiences, capture the vulnerability of our mortal forms. Art Gallery of Ontario (317 Dundas Street West), all day, $25 adults. Details

• Theatre: If we’ve learned anything from slasher flicks, it’s that having sex leads to death. Returning to the stage to mark its 25th anniversary, Brad Fraser’s Love and Human Remains pursues this dark train of thought. Set in Edmonton, the play tells the story of a bunch of sexually frustrated and dysfunctional twenty- and thirty-somethings grappling with life and love, while a killer lurks in their midst. Unit 102 Theatre (376 Dufferin Street), 8 p.m., $20 + fees. Details
• Performing Arts: Few fads have stood the test of time quite so well as dance movies from the 1980s. Now, one of the best films from this era has been adapted for the stage. Flashdance—The Musical revisits the story of a young female steel welder with a desire to dance, set to a score of iconic songs such as “Flashdance… What a Feeling,” “Maniac,” “I Love Rock and Roll,” and many more. Ed Mirvish Theatre (244 Victoria Avenue), 8 p.m., $36–$130. Details
• Theatre: Unexpected sparks fly when Aboriginal palliative care worker Hunter meets and falls in love with anxiety-ridden addictions counsellor Jake in A Spirit’s Face. Watch as the characters remove their masks in this story of heartbreak and discovery, brought to the stage by Spiderbones Performing Arts. Aki Studio Theatre (585 Dundas Street East), 8 p.m., $10–$20. Details
• Theatre: The dead metaphor in George F. Walker’s Dead Metaphor is the term “freelancer.” As government bureaucrat Oliver Denny explains, it originally referred to a knight in the joust who didn’t belong to any particular family or military—a free lancer. For those without a full-time employer (and there seem to be more and more of them every day), this is a pretty bad-ass piece of information to bring with you out of the theatre. Unfortunately, there’s very little else in this production that feels new—although the play, on now as part of the Off-Mirvish series, does have a long list of positive qualities pulling in its favour. Panasonic Theatre (651 Yonge Street), 8 p.m., $19–$79. Details

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 us with all the details (including images, if you’ve got any), ideally at least a week in advance.