Ame and Jacob singing "Space Boys." Jacob is "floating in space" There is reverb.
I like genre pieces. which shouldn’t be surprising.
I learned to read and imagine in the worlds of pulp fantasy and slightly better science fiction. Even now, when I read fiction, it is usually some clear genre – sci-fi and fantasy have been joined by mysteries (the harder boiled the better), spy novels and historical fiction.
I’m not an expert in any of these genres, which is maybe why I don’t identify them as influences as much as maybe I should. But writing about up-coming work recently, there were two science fiction projects (Upper Toronto and Perhaps in a Hundred Years [opening at Summerworks on Thursday]), one ghost story and I had just received an email about a hard-boiled radio show I had done 10 years ago. Dedicated to the Revolutions is a science vaudville – not a common genre, but I think still a genre.
Genre obviously gives a frame and some distance that allows for different stories to be told, for a different kind of thought experiment or “what-if.” This observation is nothing new, but in theatre it’s less talked about.
It’s certainly not part of the critical discourse or “legitimate art”* theatre.
Why is that?
*I’m not even show what I mean by that, but I still think it holds true.
More coming on this subject. I would love to hear thoughts or get links.
and Thank you to everyone who participated, helped and joined us forLife of Galileo. It was a remarkable and moving night with 32 people on stage, over 500 people in attendance and over $4,000 raised for the Actors’ Fund. Pictures (some already here) and a recording of Laura Barrett and Matt Murphy’s beautiful song will be coming soon. [Subscribe to our blog here or become a fan on Facebook here to be alerted when we do things. I try to keep emails to a minimum (so that you know I mean it) – but if you want more Small Wooden Shoe in your life, those are the best ways.]
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1. Join us in Kitchener-Waterloo from June 16-19 as we perform Dedicated to the Revolutions as part of Magnetic North Theatre Festival. We’re honored to be part of the festival and to be performing in the dense pocket of science and technology that is K-W – home to RIM and the Perimeter Institute.The show has grown through the pleasure of returning to work after time has past, so if you saw it in Toronto, we’d be curious to hear what you thought of the difference. And if you didn’t see it the first time at Buddies, this is as close to Toronto as we’re going to get for a while.
There’s a few things happening around the show and festival:
On Wednesday June 16, there is a bus that’s part of the “THE TORONTO SPECIAL”: For June 14, 15 and 16 Toronto arts practitioners can buy a one-day special for $100. It includes the bus leaving at 10 from Toronto to K-W and back late, access to the day’s Industry Series programming and tickets for two shows. All reservations must be made in advance through Gayle Diguer at GDiguer@nac-cna.ca or 1-519-772-3783.
On the Thursday June 17, after the show, as a Magnetic Encounter, there will be a short and raucus debate: Whereas: String theory is not like poetry and Whereas: The Uncertainty Principal does not apply to romantic comedy plots; BE IT RESOLVED THAT: Science and Art may no longer share metaphors. Arguing for the Opposition will be Evan Webber and CBC Radio’s Bob MacDonald (Quirks and Quarks), arguing for the Affirmative will be Jacob Zimmer and a guest from the research community of K-W. Very good times.
On Friday we do a talkback after the show and Saturday we do 2 shows – so the matinee fans can get in there. On Sunday we travel home – which won’t be so fun to watch.
2. Small Wooden Shoe is offering 20 LIFE TIME SUBSCRIPTIONS. Yes – exactly what it sounds like. You can get a ticket to any Small Wooden Shoe show, anywhere in the world any time for the rest of your life. You let us know when in the run you want to come and we give you a ticket. Happen to be in Wales at the same time as us? You can get a ticket. In twenty-two years, as we celebrate 30 years of making theatre and bringing people and ideas together with a huge show – you can get a ticket.
How much for this unlimited thing that also shows your support and belief in the work we do? $500.
Click here to buy using Paypal.
We will send you a nice card, individually numbered, that you can use for the rest of your life.
If you buy before Monday June 14 – your subscription includes Magnetic North.
3. A workshop with Jacob and Michael Trent at Dancemakers.As part of Dancemakers Emerging Dance Artists Project, I’ll be joining Michael Trent (Dancemakers Artistic Director and resident choreographer) in leading a six day workshop July 19-24. It will be for theatre and dance practitioners wherein everyone is invited to train, perform and generate. Six days of doing and talking about the intersection, conversation, overlap and difference between disciplines without relying on slashes or hyphens.
Mostly physical, occasionally heady but never boring. Strategies in composition and creation including Viewpoints, debating and other improvisation tactics as well as writing and lots of moving will be used.
Led by Trent and Zimmer and informed by the participants’ contributions, the workshop is $400 and spots can be reserved by emailing edap@dancemakers.org
EYE MAGAZINE – Christopher Hoile
DUBIOUS ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
THE “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?” AWARD
Small Wooden Shoe’s Dedicated to the Revolutions, in which theatre artists attempted, badly, to explain scientific concepts they did not, or could not be bothered to, understand. What’s next: Hairdressers Teach Shakespeare
I would like to answer the question, “What were we thinking?”
(At least for myself, I can’t speak for the others.)
I think your question was rhetorical, but it’s always a fair one.
I also think it’s fine if you didn’t like the show – of course that’s going to happen.
But I do think that questions should be given some kind of response.
When we made Dedicated to the Revolutions, I was thinking a lot about expertise and knowledge – about broader social questions of specialization and the assumptions that go along with them.
A culture in which some people are allowed to speak of certain things and others (hairdressers, actors and the like) should just sit quietly and then applaud at the end is what I was thinking about. I was thinking that science (and art) are areas where this opinion is particularly strong – areas where non-experts fear to venture due to possible scorn and humiliation at the hands of the experts.
It’s an attitude that can lead to catastrophe as expertise removes itself from the everyday and we suddenly find ourselves with an economic crisis we can’t understand, a world we have to take on faith and hairdressers that aren’t allowed to do anything else.
I was thinking about how there might be room for something other than a particular kind of virtuosity and showing-off. And I love virtuosity and showing-off, and I think from your list that it’s the style of art you prefer too, but I wonder about other options – of proposing other strategies.
Of proposing vulnerability and even the importance of exposing our vulnerability in public. The show was loose and goofy in parts – maybe too much for your tastes – but it was intentional. The act of standing in front of people and trying to think, as opposed to recite, with pleasure, desire and not a small amount of vulnerability was a proposal for the loosening of the structures that dictate who can think about what.
Questions of expertise and virtuosity in art are long standing and always shifting, but those aren’t the most important questions – taste in theatre and the people who write about it will change and change back. It’s the social questions I return to.
Of course a 90-minute performance isn’t going to solve these problems. But maybe we can be part of a discussion; maybe we can open up the conversation even just a bit.
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This is a space for commenting, thinking and writing informed by and related, mostly, to the work of Small Wooden Shoe, and our world. Written, mostly, by Jacob Zimmer.
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