I can’t remember much before I hit ten years of age, but this memory has stuck.

I have an older sister. Her name is Nicoletta, Niki to her friends, but mostly I call her Ni. She is seven years older than me. She got me to do the dumbest shit when I was growing up. I’m sure we all have similar stories. She was a big Bay City Rollers fan. I remember vividly sitting in front of our TV in the basement taking pictures of the band playing a live tv concert. She took her fanaticism one step further one Saturday afternoon (would have been more poetic if it was a ‘Saturday Night’) and gathered a few of her friends to air band a Bay City Rollers concert in our garage. I was forced to play the drummer. She invited the neighbours. Some came. The whole thing was ridiculous.

Your brother. Remember? is the latest work by Obie Award winning American performer Zachary Oberzan. “The work splices home videos, Hollywood film footage, and live performance. As kids in Maine, Zachary and his older brother Gator loved making parodies of films, most notably Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Kickboxer, and the notorious cult film Faces of Death. Then twenty years passed. Zack returned to his childhood home to re-create these films, shot for shot, as precisely as possible–but now seen through a twenty-year lens of emotional and physical wear and tear.”

I was fortunate to see Rambo Solo, an earlier work by Zachary, at the FTA in Montreal in 2009. The work was a brilliant retelling of the First Blood story. To understand his intensity as a performer, you have to watch this trailer where Zachary plays all the characters in the Rambo movie from his Manhattan apartment.

Please join us at the Theatre Centre from January 26-28 for the performance.

Franco

P.S.

I wish I had videotaped that Bay City Rollers concert!

Posted: January 10th, 2012 under Franco's Blog, January 2012 Newsletter, Theatre Centre Blog.
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Happy new year to all – we hope everyone had a lovely holiday season!

I don’t have any brothers. But I have been thinking about brotherly (and sisterly) love, familial relationships, growing up and apart, growing up in the 80s, Jean-Claude Van Damme and other interesting things a lot recently – all because I have been looking forward to seeing Your Brother. Remember? and participating in the bizzare experiment Zachary and Gator Oberzan put together.

Your brother. Remember? by Zachary Oberzan plays January 26-28 at 8pm.

Your brother. Remember? uses scenes from Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Kickboxer, cult flick Faces of Death, home videos of Zachary and his brother Gator acting out parts of those films twenty years ago and them acting out the same bits now. Zachary is the sole performer on the stage, complementing the videos with commentary and singing. I am convinced I HAVE to see this show. Are you?

Here is what media and audiences thought of past performances of Your brother. Remember?:

• Goosebumps, one doesn’t receive a gift like that every day in theatre… Clumsy, honest and… unavoidable. (De Morgen, Belgium)
• Intellectually complex but emotionally simple, Your Brother. Remember? is a moving work of experimental drama. (newyorktheatrereview.blogspot.com)
• Your Brother. Remember? is a show that everyone should see – a touching, humorous, serious and twisted piece about brotherly love throughout life’s many battles. (Adresseavisen, Norway)

Tickets are available for sale now! Just call 416-538-0899 or buy from TOtix. Bring your sibling to get a 2-for-1 deal!

Posted: January 5th, 2012 under By Lilya, Coming Up..., January 2012 Newsletter, Theatre Centre Blog.
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Yes, it is that time of year. The time of excessive sugar, excessive spending and squealing at the sight of sparkly plastic snowflakes. Here are a few things that have been happening with us this December:

1.We are in residency mode! Kitchenband Productions are in the space at the moment. We will take a peak at what they have been working on during our final Residency Showing on December 20 at 7 pm – all are welcome! View the invite here.

2. We have been following Toronto Budget Committee deputations on December 7 and 8 remotely – thanks to multiple Twitter correspondents and extensive reports by Torontoist: Day 1 and Day 2. Amazing to read some of the arguments and suggestions that deputants brought to help oppose cuts to the City’s essential services, including arts and culture funding.

3. Holiday music marathon - non-stop, with brief breaks for Regina Spektor. Battles JB vs MJ vs Mariah vs Hanky, the Christmas Poo – ongoing.

4. Holiday Office Decorating Party on December 3 complete with pizza, ginger bread cookies, candy cane, mulled cider and Franco handcrafting a garland out of a piece of ribbon and green and red shiny balls. Check out the photos!

Posted: December 8th, 2011 under By Lilya, Dec 2011 Newsletter, Theatre Centre Blog.
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Quiz: what happens at The Theatre Centre every year around mid-December?

Absolutely right – ’tis the City of Craft, the arts and crafts show that is the awesomest and craftiest of them all! This year City of Craft happens on Saturday, December 10 and Sunday, December 11 both inside our space and at Thrush Holmes Empire next door.

Here are some of the things not to miss this year:

• Cool installations and interactive programs, including writing letters to the dear city of ours at the Knit Cafe.
• A myriad of amazing vendors offering unique handcrafted pieces for your viewing and buying pleasure – be done with all your holiday shopping this weekend!
• Workshops where you can learn some craftiness yourselves! C’mon, you’ve been dying to learn how to make your own pom poms!

Posted: December 8th, 2011 under Dec 2011 Newsletter, Theatre Centre Blog.
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On November 28, the City Manager presented the 2012 Operating Budget to the City’s Budget Committee. The proposed budget recommends a 10% cut to arts grants. If passed, Toronto Arts Council’s grants budget will be reduced by just over $1 million.

This reduction will be very difficult for Toronto’s arts community. Toronto Arts Council and Toronto Arts Foundation, along with many arts organizations and associations are working hard to prevent this recommendation from passing.

As one of the Toronto Arts Council funded organizations we would like to reach out to our volunteers, donors, audiences and supporters to ask you to join the voices opposing cuts to Toronto’s arts funding.

Here is what you can do: call, email or write your City Councillors to ask them to protect arts funding (City Council contact information here). Any little bit will help attract attention to the matter.

For more information and updates check out Toronto Arts Foundation’s Arts Advocacy page.

Posted: December 1st, 2011 under Franco's Blog, Stop the Cuts, Theatre Centre Blog.
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Hello everyone! Just wanted to pass on a quick message to invite all of you Equity members in good standing to an exceedingly important regional meeting on this Sunday, November 20th, 7 p.m. – at Theatre Direct, Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie Street.

On the night’s agenda will be three issues that will impact you directly as an Equity Member: Insurance Survey Report, Independent Theatre Review Report, and Dues Referendum discussion (plus additional yelling and screaming). There has never been a more important meeting to attend with regard to all three of these issues. I really need your support on the night. Feel free to forward this to any Equity members in good standing that you know. (And don’t forget to bring your Equity card!)

All my love and thanks,

Franco

Posted: November 17th, 2011 under Franco's Blog, Theatre Centre Blog.
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Aside from battling with the flu last week, I was honored to take part in an amazing conference that brought together scientists, cultural producers and some genius thinkers to imagine collaborative art projects that bring awareness to global warming – Cape Farewell. Heard some inspiring talks including: Alanna Mitchell, a freelance journalist and authour of Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis; Tom Rand, an author, speaker and entrepreneur working at MaRS here in Toronto and former Toronto Mayor David Miller.

David Miller gave a great talk about the role that he and other Mayors across Canada played in introducing climate change projects and programs. In particular, he spoke about Transit City, a plan that was going to add 120km of new light rail to Toronto’s transit system. Most of the new rail was going to serve dense and economically challenged neighbourhoods in the city. The current Toronto City Council of course canceled Transit City; it was one of the very first things to be cut.

I’m not moved to tears very often, but David Miller told a great story about a woman who on average spent 2.5 hours traveling on public transit every day to get to her job, to pick up her daughter from daycare and then to travel to her second job. It was emotional to hear this story because it reminded me of my own. I grew up in areas now known as priority neighbourhoods – up until Grade 3 I lived in the Jane/Finch neighbourhood, and later I moved to Rexdale. As a family we all relied on public transit – I didn’t get a car when I turned ‘16’ – in fact, I still don’t have a driver’s license.

I was happy to participate in the discussion this weekend, and I’m positive that good things will come as a result of my being there. As a cultural producer (I would say facilitator in my case) I was reminded – by an artist in the room (Mel Chin) – that it is our responsibility to ensure that ‘ideas’ are allowed to survive and to prepare our audience for absorption (listen).

Despite the setbacks to the Transit City plan, David Miller was hopeful that it could be saved. Inspirational! My personal responsibility – keep the idea and discussion alive. As part of Free Fall’12, The Theatre Centre’s biannual festival of new work (to be announced soon!), we are hoping to present a piece that will be a part of this discussion.

Posted: November 15th, 2011 under Franco's Blog, November 2011 Newsletter.
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As many of you know, The Theatre Centre has quite a few wonderful things planned for the future. We thought we’d give you a quick update on where things are right now.

We are still operating out of the performance space on the lower level of The Great Hall building at 1087 Queen Street West. Just recently we found a bunch of photos taken during the time when this space was made into a performance space in 2004. Check some of them out on our Facebook page. Since then, many artists and collectives presented their work in this space. We will continue working in this space for most of 2012, presenting our own programming and hosting works by other artists, and we are looking forward to welcoming you here again and again!

On the logistics side, for a couple of months now the entrance to our current theatre space has been on Dovercourt Road. We are working on making the entrance more noticeable for everyone and creating a small public lobby space inside the theatre for our patrons and visitors. There are certain challenges with that given the physical environment of the space, and we hope for your patience and understanding.

Now on to the new home of The Theatre Centre. In 2013 we will move into our permanent new home at 1115 Queen Street West to retrofit The Carnegie Library. Here is what Artistic Director Franco Boni says about the project: “We are in the early stages of raising $5M+ from private and public sources to make our 30 year dream a reality. This building is especially important to us, not only because it will provide a permanent space for artistic innovation, but because it’s a beautiful Toronto heritage building that will be re-opened for public use and cultural purpose for our neighbourhood. It will be a community anchor for many Parkdale and Queen West residents. We have made great strides as we begin our campaign efforts, but we would love the support of our fellow neighbours in the months and years ahead.”

Please email us if you have any questions about the campaign for our new home.

Posted: November 8th, 2011 under A New Home for The Theatre Centre, November 2011 Newsletter, Theatre Centre Blog.
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Twitter’s obsessive. Difficult to keep up with. Great for having conversations. Great for reading other people’s conversations. A universe with its own etiquette, but no order whatsoever. A great waster of time. A great source of useful and useless pieces of information. A collection of witticisms. A collection of absolutes. Here are some recent finds dug out from our Twitter feed:

Google Books launches in Canada.

PuSh Festival announces its 2012 lineup. (One of the shows presented at PuSh this year will be coming to The Theatre Centre right after – to be announced shortly!)

Canadian Theatre Opening Night Directory run by the Globe’s theatre critic J.Kelly Nestruck.

Ivor Tossel’s column on ‘hanging out with a dead cat in Parkdale’ in The Toronto Standard.

New favourite Twitter inhabitant we follow:

Posted: November 4th, 2011 under By Lilya, Theatre Centre Blog, Weeklies.
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It seems that Halloween costume idea No 1 this year is Steve Jobs. Not sure how to react to it. Not sure how to react to Halloween, but here are some bits and bobs I thought I’d share to fit in with the spirit of the festival:

Torontoist’s Ghost Map of the city

Also from Torontoist: appropriately themed round-up of theatre pieces to “shock, titillate and unsettle”. I particularly like the ‘secret location’ trend that seems to be happening.

Trick or treating extravaganza in our own West Queen West on October 29.

And – for your viewing pleasure – a video of paranormal investigation of The Great Hall and The Theatre Centre. And I am definitely not saying that I believe those meters!

On to something different: yesterday I attended an interesting discussion on how the online media influence theatre criticism. The conversation featured 4 different perspectives: a critic from a national daily (J. Kelly Nestruck from The Globe), a critic from a Toronto weekly (Glenn Sumi of NOW Magazine), a representative of an independent theatre company that maintain a strong online voice and experiment with online media in their artistic work (Aislinn Rose of Praxis Theatre), and a creator and editor of an online theatre publication (Megan Mooney of MooneyOnTheatre), with moderator Michelle MacArthur and students from UofT theatre criticism course. Some very interesting and valid points made, great anecdotes shared, but the most exciting part for me was to watch the conversation go beyond the walls of Robert Gill Theatre, via Twitter, and see it continue in various forms a day after, when I am writing this post. Do check it out.

And since I mentioned Praxis Theatre, I thought I’d tell you that they are Occupying Bay Street next Friday, November 4th. In the true spirit of the times, and yes – on Bay Street – there will be a 1930s-themed party to celebrate the premiere of Jesus Chrysler and help support a theatre company with an active voice. I think you should be there. A little music video from 1930s about jelly, depression and unemployment to inspire (disclaimer – I do not like jelly and have never heard of the company the video is a commerical for):

Posted: October 28th, 2011 under By Lilya, October 2011, Theatre Centre Blog, Weeklies.
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