Mary Elizabeth Winstead (right) stars James Ponsoldt’s Smashed
Mary Elizabeth Winstead (right) stars James Ponsoldt’s Smashed
From the story of doomed lovers with a penchant for heroin, (think Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish in Candy) to biopics of individuals who succumb to their addictions (Gia, Factory Girl), substance abuse is the subject that keeps on giving.
Depicted through countless filmmakers’ lenses these films have a tendency to glamorize addiction by linking it to a specific locations or by making relationships seem more intense and passionate as a result of the use of drugs and alcohol.
This is why we’re lucky to have films like James Ponsoldt’s Smashed. The film removes the hazy lens of romanticism and instead favours a clear, hard look at the struggle of alcoholism and trying to get sober.
Elementary school teacher Kate, (played brilliantly by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, whom you’ll recognize from the gory horror film Final Destination 3 and borefest Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), is madly in love with her husband Charlie (portrayed by Aaron Paul, best known as Walter White’s sidekick on Breaking Bad.) As much as they love each other, there is a third partner in their relationship, and it’s name is alcohol.
While Charlie is able to drink as much as he wants and still end up sleeping in his own bed, Kate winds up finding herself in different situations, each one more depressing and dangerous than the next. She boozes in her car, steals alcohol when the store clerk won’t sell it to her and unceremoniously throws up in front of her class one morning. But it’s when she ends up smoking crack with a homeless prostitute after leaving the bar one night, that she decides to get sober.
Enter her colleague Dave, played by Parks and Recreation’s Nick Offerman, who takes her to an AA meeting. There she meets Jenny (Octavia Spencer, who is criminally underused in this film) and seems to be on her way to recovery. Yet Kate faces the biggest roadblock in Charlie, who despises recovery programs. Their relationship begins to disintegrate as he stubbornly keeps drinking while she sulks alone and sober, at home. The turmoil eventually reaches a peak as Kate and Charlie have a tempestuous fight, and it’s both the most memorable and hair-raising moment in the film.
The strongest vein of Smashed is Winstead’s performance, which carries the entire film. While the other actors are equally entrenched in their characters, the script does not allow for them to be as fully fleshed out as Kate, which is unfortunate.
Visually, it’s stunning. The shots where Kate is waking up in parks and under bridges are, despite their starkness, beautiful. Ponsoldt gives a lot of camera time to faces, especially close-ups of Winstead, as if he were trying to use the camera as an x-ray machine to show us exactly what they are thinking.
There’s a reason why Smashed turned heads (and picked up a Special Jury Prize at Sundance this year). There is a tangible sense of reality that permeates through the film. Smashed excels at honestly portraying the stigma of alcoholism and showing how resisting the urge to drink is only the first of the complications that being sober brings.
While an excellent film, its harshness leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, not unlike that of the whiskey Kate favours. But sometimes watching — or doing something that feels difficult is a good thing.
Smashed is playing at Cineplex-Odeon Forum, check your local listings for showtimes.
A good piece of literature should always leave one feeling that each page was worth the time it took to turn it.
Unless it’s truly horrid writing (or has been penned by anyone with a reality television show), most books will accomplish that. But a great book will see the main character reaching their arm out of the pages to grab yours and let you feel everything they’re feeling.
That’s the case with former Concordia graduate Rawi Hage’s latest novel, Carnival.
The son of a trapeze artist and flying carpet pilot, Fly is a taxi driver who likes to wander but doesn’t like customers who smell. Or puke in his car. We meet him just as the carnival arrives in town, attracting hordes of tourists and bringing with it a sense of the strange and mysterious.
Fly identifies with a group of drivers that are called, well, “flies” because they like to drive around to pick up customers, unlike the drivers he calls “spiders” because they simply sit at a hangout called Café Bolero all day and wait for customers to come to them.
It’d be easy to peg Fly with the timid loner archetype – after all, his mother is dead, his father is gone and the bearded lady who raised him is also dead. But that’s not the character Hage presents. Fly interacts with many people throughout the book, has friends and, for lack of a better word, is a total badass. He beats up steroid-heads, works for a dealer, goes to an S&M dungeon and says gems such as, “I could substitute their cocaine lines with fishing ropes that sailed up their nostrils and down their brains.”
That’s not to say he doesn’t have his hang-ups. Interspersed among the novel are lengthy passages describing what he fantasizes about when he masturbates, which he does lying on his father’s old flying carpet, in the middle of his book-filled apartment. While they show his creativity (he often imagines himself fighting wars and rescuing maidens), they hint at a desire to escape from his life, or to have done something else with it. “It is always a pleasure to meet dirty novelists,” he tells a customer. “I once contemplated becoming one myself…but instead I stopped trying and picked up another creative habit that has kept my fingers busy ever since.”
The story is told through little vignettes with titles such as, “Dogs” and “Guns.” Fittingly enough, the passages evoke the feeling of being at a carnival – catching glimpses of strange faces and acts in quick succession and becoming entranced in the atmosphere. Coupled with the lack of quotation marks, it’s an interesting format that, as one works though the five acts that make up the story, makes sure the reader is paying absolute attention.
It’s easy to see why Carnival made Hage one of the finalists for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Although Fly doesn’t belong with the spiders who work around him, the strands of the story weave tightly around the reader, leaving one tangled in a web of enchantment.
Every spring, thousands of Montrealers step out of their homes, where they’ve been hiding since November, surviving on chicken soup and repeats of their favourite sitcoms. But they don’t just sleep in the park all day. Instead, they get to enjoy the myriad of festivals, films, plays and unique events that the city has to offer. It’s hard to confidently argue that Montreal doesn’t offer one of the best summer experiences. So whether this is your first summer in the city, or you’re a Tam Tams veteran, check out our picks for the best arts events around town.
FESTIVALS
Kick off the end of exams with Elektra, which celebrates the best of music and art made with the latest technologies. Last year’s festival saw performances featuring robot dancers and an installation with pods that responded to changes in light by opening and closing like flowers. You can pretty much bet that they’ll top that this year when the festival starts up again from May 2 to 6. Visit www.elektrafestival.ca for more details.
Ste-Catherine Street is subject to many protests and parades, so it’s nice to see art laying its claim for space. This year, the Festival international Montreal en arts (FIMA) will take over a portion of Ste-Cats for its 13th edition, turning it into a BoulevArt. Last year saw nearly 140 artists display their work to over 250,000 passersby. This year, check out the self-proclaimed “greatest open air art gallery in Eastern Canada” between June 27 and July 1. Visitwww.festivaldesarts.org for updates on this year’s edition.
Did you know that laughing is a great way to work your abs? Get your beach body ready with Just for Laughs Festival. Celebrating its 30th anniversary from July 12 to 29, Just for Laughs promises to have you rolling on the floor with their comedic star lineup including Bo Burnham, Caroline Rhea, Daniel Tosh, Debra DiGiovanni and many, many more. To see the full lineup of comics or to book your tickets, visit www.hahaha.com.
Montreal is proud of its LGBT community and even more so of the annual Divers/Cite Festival. This event promotes the value of diversity with mostly outdoor events from all walks of art. The festival will showcase modern dance, blues, jazz, pop, Latin, rock, world, funk, ambient, techno and electronic concerts, drag queen performances and an outdoor cinema. The festival is in its 20th edition and will run from July 30 to Aug. 5. For more information visit www.diverscite.org.
Hot air balloons are usually reserved for family films (see Up and Around the World in 80 Days), which may be why hundreds of thousands of people flock far out to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu for its balloon festival. You can book a flight, or if you’d rather stay on the ground, you can enjoy the view (last year they had a balloon shaped like Spider Pig!) from their beer terrace. It goes down on Aug. 11 to 19, and you can check out www.ballooncanada.com for more details.
FILM
Fantasia is a true underdog story. Started by alternative film fanatics in 1996 (way before the “turn-all-comics-into-films” great geek revolution of the past few years), it has become the ultimate summer event for anyone who likes their films dark, subversive and shocking. Details on this year’s edition will be released closer to Fantasia’s run from July 19 to Aug. 7, but you can keep your eye out for them over atwww.festivalfantasia.com.
For a little cultural diversity in your movie-going experience this summer, don’t miss the World Film Festival, Aug. 23 to Sept. 3. The goal of this festival is to promote cultural diversity internationally by promoting films from around the globe. To find out what films will be showing, visit www.ffm-montreal.org.
VISUAL ARTS
Everyone knows of Warhol and Lichtenstein, but how often do you hear someone name-drop Tom Wesselmann? Following last summer’s Gaultier extravaganza, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is keeping in the pop culture tune by putting on the first major Canadian exhibition on Wesselmann, the third major pop artist. The exhibit runs from May 18 to Oct. 7. You can check out more details over at www.mbam.qc.ca.
You don’t have to drive to Granby or put up with the questionable smell at the Biodôme to celebrate the animal kingdom this summer. Zoo is an exhibition featuring art from Quebec, Canadian and international artists that explores the way animals are perceived nowadays, through filters such as mythology, natural science and even the economy. And, of course, it’s contemporary art so it will be done in a way that will leave you turning your head. It’s being shown at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal from May 24 to Sept. 3. Visit www.macm.org for more details.
BOOKS “No gods, no masters, no bosses, no borders,” proclaims the poster for this year’s Anarchist Bookfair. Taking place on May 19 and 20, the fair will feature authors and booksellers offering zines, books and all other kinds of print works that you just won’t find at Chapters. But it doesn’t stop there—there will be film, art and workshops that will touch on current issues and reiterate the fair’s mission to fight all forms of oppression. Check out http://www.anarchistbookfair.ca for more information.
Authors love giving their most unfortunate characters ironically bright names, and then cruelly dumping misfortune after misfortune on them while also giving them an optimistic demeanour. Ed the Happy Clown has been put through horrifying ordeals (not the least of which includes his member coming to life and naming itself Ronald Reagan) since Chester Brown first conceived him in the ’80s. This summer, Brown is giving poor Ed a definitive story, after coming up with a new ending and revising past books. The tome, simply called Ed the Happy Clown, will be released by Drawn & Quarterly on May 22.
Another oldie getting the re-release treatment is Chuck Palahniuk’s 1999 novel Invisible Monsters. Written before Fight Club, it was rejected the first time he submitted it to his publisher for being too disturbing. Since then, thousands of people have fallen for the story of Shannon McFarland, a former model whose face is horribly disfigured, and her adventures with Brandy, a transgender woman who is awaiting her last big operation. With added chapters and extended scenes, Invisible Monsters Remix will take this satire even further. It comes out in hardcover on May 29.
THEATRE
One of the best parts about summer is being able to experience art outdoors. This is what makes Repercussion Theatre’s Shakespeare-in-the-Park performances so magical. Travelling from park to park around town, the performances usually take place in the afternoon, meaning you get to see some top-notch Shakespeare as day turns to dusk, while the setting becomes an enchanted forest. Last year they took on Macbeth, but they’re going lighter this summer with the comedy The Taming of the Shrew. Did I mention the best part? It’s absolutely free (though when they pass around the hat, be nice and donate—actors gotta eat!) Check out www.repercussiontheatre.com to see when they’re coming to a park near you.
The St-Ambroise Fringe Festival is one of the most celebrated theatre events in Montreal, because it gives people a chance to see fun, quirky—and sometimes just plain weird—shows for dirt cheap. The participating theatre companies are chosen lottery-style and performed in venues scattered across the Plateau and Mile End. If you can, try to make the shows in smaller venues—it makes the experience super personal and memorable. This year, Fringe Fest runs from June 4 to 24. Visit www.montrealfringe.ca after May 7 to check out this year’s shows.
If Fringe isn’t your thing, then maybe the Infringement Festival is. Started as a response to advertisement-heavy festivals that make it difficult for alternative and controversial shows to get in, Infringement encourages artists and activists of all kinds to participate. Artists don’t have to pay registration fees and most events are pay-what-you-can. This year’s edition runs from June 14 to 24. You can go to www.infringementfestival.com for more information.
Debt. It’s that spidery little tingle-inducing word—and not the good kind―that comes just before a shudder suppresses that thought. Yet with so many of us facing it due to blindingly high-rising tuition, it’s a nearly inescapable part of student life.
And sometimes, yes, it does lead to the move back in with folks. Which is not the end of the world, in a certain aspect. But with moving out being one of the hallmarks of independence and freedom, having to live with mom and pop and maybe even—shudder—sharing a room with a sibling? No thanks.
It’s a situation in which more and more people are finding themselves, and they’ve even been ascribed a catchy name: Boomerang Generation.
That’s where Rob Carrick’s How Not to Move Back in With Your Parents comes in. This handy book provides a wealth (mind the pun) of information on everything you never thought you’d be interested in learning—RESPs, credit loans, budgeting and insurance.
Carrick brings over 20 years of experience, having penned previous tomes on finance and writing a column in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business section. But more importantly, he provides frank advice and instruction on subjects that the average student may understand as much as, say, alchemy. “You’ll find no lectures here, just clear and unbiased guidance,” he writes. Thank God.
He moves from subject to subject with ease, with chapters touching on determining whether you can afford university, how to repay a student loan and a section dedicated to weddings and starting a family. Also included are case studies from real students to illustrate some of the chapters, as proof that even that pesky $28,000 loan can be paid back without booking a room under a bridge.
Carrick’s tone is authoritative and reasonable throughout the book, infusing a sense of calm into even the direst of situations. Yes, he says, it’s possible that you will fuck up, but there are ways to fix things and even prevent awful situations. His simple language is a godsend, as he writes the way many professors tell you to write your essays—as if your audience doesn’t know anything about the subject (and let’s face it, a lot of people don’t).
In the end, Carrick acknowledges both sides of the argument concerning the struggle of recent graduates. While he says the grads fuel the problem because “they aren’t helping themselves as much as they could be” (i.e. they worry too much about being able to afford things they want now without thinking about the future), he rightly argues that older generations who grumble about young people expecting everything to be handed to them don’t take into account the many obstacles in the way: a job market that’s thinner than Kate Moss’ waist, the crippling cost of post-secondary education, rising house prices and a plethora of other factors.
Whether you’re graduating this spring, putting the finishing touches on your first post-secondary year, or if you’ve ever broken into a cold sweat reading your credit card statement, Carrick’s book will put things into perspective. You may have to move back in with your parents at some point—but hey, it’s okay.
Rob Carrick’s tips on saving money while you study
1. Rent your textbooks from sites like BookMob and BigMama
2. Trade your study table at Starbucks for the library
With the fight against tuition hikes escalating, becoming more unpredictable than mid-season weather, it’s refreshing to hear that some Concordia class projects are going swimmingly. This includes the ARTX 480 (advanced integrated studio in contemporary art practices) course’s year-end exhibition entitled Work.
The course began in the fall semester and the culminating exhibition, an integral part of the class, will feature pieces from all 19 students. “We thought that it could be a great opportunity to connect outside of Concordia and represent Concordia, represent artists in [the] community,” said contributing artist Joy (Jee Yoon) Lim.
The choice of theme was crucial, as it had to represent both the subject matter and media that varied so widely between the participating students, ranging from video to installations and performance pieces.
“Because we are just an arbitrarily thrown together group of students, we wanted a theme that could be pretty flexible to us all,” explained artist Zoë Ritts, describing the different ideas within the theme, such as work in relationships, work as labour and work and the body.
Some pieces also have an element of audience interaction, as in Lim’s piece, Coffee/Tea Break, which has attachments around cups and plays with the smell on top in order to stimulate different senses.
“Usually you’re not supposed to touch the art, not supposed to go near it […] for me, the artwork itself is the experience, not the cup,” explained Lim. “So I don’t mind if the cup is ruined, as long as the person has some experience and goes home and thinks about that.”
Attendees will also have a chance to have their future divined for them through Marlee Parsons’ performance Psychic Cell Reading, which involves taking a swab of saliva from two volunteers, placing it under a microscope and projecting an image of the cells, from which she will do her reading.
The group of ARTX 480 students ventured out into the city, and chose the Grover building on Parthenais Street as the site to put on their exhibit rather than the Concordia art gallery hub, with its reigning champions being VAV and FOFA.
“The place is a former textile factory, which is really obvious when you’re looking at the architecture inside. It’s these big rooms that are now perfect for galleries […] Different generations of people such as artists have moved into the building, and so we were really interested in using this as a site, because the artists have fought to keep it [from becoming] a condo building,” said Ritts.
The exhibit reflects the interdisciplinary element of ARTX 480.
“It’s called interdisciplinary studies―interdisciplinary meaning connecting art with other disciplines, other issues around the world or community-based,” explained Lim. “So we’re basically not creating art just for the sake of making art, just to display, but […] to convey some messages through that.”
They showed their support by adorning their poster and postcards with a little red square, keeping the student strike in mind, of which they were generally in favour.
“By the time the strike started, our classes had begun to happen off Concordia campus anyway because we were in the gallery space working,” said Ritts. “So in that sense we didn’t have to cross any picket lines. Our class was able to continue within the spirit of the strike. And I think it also fell under the aspect of the strike, which is an emphasis on creating art and continue supporting each other outside of the physical university space.”
Ultimately, through Work, the ARTX 480 students are hoping to introduce visitors to taking in a different kind of contemporary art.
“For those who don’t really know art, I think we have great examples that [are] not very conventional, and that’s very interactive,” said Lim. “Usually people don’t expect that. […] Coming here, they can experience a greater range of all kinds of contemporary art.”
Work runs at the Grover building (2065 Parthenais St., metro Frontenac) until March 31. There will also be a panel discussion on the intersections and contradictions of the many kinds of labour in the lives of four invited artists and cultural workers on March 27 at 7 p.m. For more information, check out workyourwork.weebly.com.
Thirty is a landmark year. For most people, it can mean the beginning of regular mirror checks for wrinkles, getting a real adult job and relinquishing the shield for their mistakes known as “well, I was in my twenties…” Inanities aside, the bigger picture is that, like wine, things get better with age. So don’t wait for tantrums from the International Festival of Films on Art, which hits the big three-zero this month.
The festival, which spans over 11 days in nine venues this year, celebrates all kinds of art forms captured on film, including “painting, culture, architecture, but also design, fashion, photography, literature, dance, music,” noted FIFA director and founder René Rozon. “So it’s open to all the arts, of all periods.”
The festival was born out of Rozon’s realization when he was abroad in Europe. He noted that there were films on art that most people wouldn’t see simply because they were unaware of their existence.
“I was working for an art magazine and so I used to see a lot of exhibitions, go to art fairs, and I used to see quite a good number of films on art, which never even came here, which nobody even heard of,” he recalled. “So I thought, after a few years, maybe I should bring these all together and start something, start a festival.”
FIFA debuted in its first year with just 50 films from 12 countries and a single venue. In contrast, this year’s edition will see 232 films from 27 countries, with over 35,000 attendees expected.
Like most people celebrating their 30th, FIFA is going all out by introducing special films and events. This includes Une idée folle—Un hommage au FIFA, a film by Alain Fleischer that looks back at the last 30 years of the festival.
“It’s a film about the 30 years, so there will be the people who know the festival well, professionals are being interviewed, and there will be excerpts from a selection of films within the film to celebrate our 30 years,” explained Rozon. “So that’s a gift from the filmmaker to us, we had never planned to make a film ourselves.”
Keeping with the new James Cameron-approved cinematic trend, the festival will also be presenting its first 3D film, Lost Action: Trace. Its opening film, Pieter Bruegel’s The Mill and the Cross, features special effects as well.
“Sections of paintings are animated alternatively, and it’s fascinating,” said Rozon.
FIFA will also give spectators a break from the screen by holding art installations, such as Jim Verburg’s Séquence/Still, at the Cinémathèque québécoise, that will be ongoing throughout the festival’s run.
For students looking to dip their feet in the FIFA pool for the first time, Rozon suggested beginning with films close to one’s comfort zone. He mentioned Wild Thing, a rock ‘n’ roll doc featuring Iggy Pop, and branching out from there.
Most of all, Rozon wants to see the biggest possible number of people experiencing films on art, fulfilling his mission for starting the festival.
“I’m looking forward to having as many people [as possible] taking advantage of the festival, which was created, really, to enhance our lives,” he said. “Because the artists always have a great vision of life, and it’s fascinating, it brings us into a new world.”
The International Festival of Films on Art runs from March 15 to 25. Venues include Concordia’s J.A. De Sève Cinema in the LB building. For more information, check out www.artfifa.com.
Five films worth your buck this weekend
March 16
Cinémas d’horreur: Apocalypse, virus et zombies
Cinémathèque québécoise, Salle Claude-Jutra, room 11, 8:30 p.m.
Wild Thing
Place des Arts, 5e Salle, room 15, 8:30 p.m.
March 17
Il était une fois… A Clockwork Orange
Cinémathèque québécoise, Salle Claude-Jutra, room 42, 8:30 p.m.
Behind the Poster
Goethe-Institut, room 44, 8:30 p.m.
March 18
Blue Alchemy: Stories of Indigo
Cinémathèque québécoise, Salle Fernard-Seguin, room 66, 6 p.m.
If you subscribe to early ‘90s gender theory, men and women hail from different planets (Mars and Venus, respectively). But when it comes to leaving their mark in the arts, there’s no disputing that the recognition goes two ways. Whether it’s Clara Bow gracing the silver screen in her cupid-lipped glory, or the works left by Sylvia Plath—which, after the oven debacle, made her the first poet to win a Pulitzer posthumously—women have, through history, shaped the arts in ways that are embedded in our subconscious. They are the reason why we can’t look at a subway grate without also picturing a white dress (Marilyn Monroe), have a single name at our lips at the sight of a unibrow (Frida Kahlo), or look at a cone-shaped bra and not complete the image with astoundingly toned arms (Madonna). Immortalized through their works and achievements, the women below took Helen Reddy’s words (“I am woman, hear me roar”) to heart and for this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8, we are honouring them.
Orlan
An artist among artists, Orlan considers the operating room her studio. She deconstructs our ideas of beauty by serving herself up as the canvas—having volunteered her body for many unnatural alterations. A self-described neo-feminist, she had nine plastic surgeries
in the early ‘90s, which referenced beauty in traditional western art. Some of her alterations include implants to mimic the Mona Lisa’s protruding forehead, changing her mouth to look like François Boucher’s The Rape of Europa, and modifying her chin to look like The Birth of Venus by Botticelli. Born in 1947 in Saint-Étienne, Loire, Orlan first engaged in this form of surgery-art when she was preparing to speak at a symposium in 1978 but had to be rushed to hospital. She almost died because of an ectopic pregnancy (where the fetus is outside the womb and cannot survive), but while the surgeons were removing the fetus to save Orlan’s life, she insisted that she remain conscious and that the film crew she brought with her be able to film it. The images on film inspired her career. Orlan is a well-known multimedia artist in France and her work questions whether what we project is a reflection of our real selves, or a fabrication based on what is seen in the media. Her interest in cosmetic surgery has seen her labeled as anti-feminist by some, but the unique product of her alterations are clearly only cosmetic in name.
– Elysha Del Giusto-Enos
Patsy Montana
Patsy Montana was the first woman in country music to sell a million records with her 1935 single “I Want to be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” But, with that face and that yodeling, who wouldn’t want to be her sweetheart? The single also became a mainstay on the National Barn Dance on Chicago radio station WLS for many years, station of which she was a cast member in the early ‘30s. She was influenced by the music of “America’s Blue Yodeler” Jimmie Rodgers, and as a child she learned to yodel and play organ, guitar and violin. Montana was also a star of the stage; she appeared in numerous western films, including one with the “Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry. Her success in the music and film industry encouraged the traditionally male-oriented country music business to welcome and respect the female performers that followed her. She was known for making extensive tours and played many radio engagements during the ‘40s. Women in those days weren’t supposed to travel alone without their husbands or a male family member, but this was not going to stop this cutie from moving forward. She did it anyway and broke some ground by doing this. Yes, she was that badass. Montana’s intricate yodeling inspired many other female singers throughout the years and she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996, the year she passed away and became a yodeling angel.
– Giselle MacDonald
Phoebe Greenberg
Phoebe Greenberg is an innovative force behind the arts in Montreal. Not only has she founded the DHC Gallery, the theatre company Diving Horse Creations and the PHI Centre, but she is also a film producer, most notably working on the 2010 Oscar-nominated Incendies. Greenberg studied theatre at Concordia University before moving to Paris to study under Jacques Lecoq and work with LEM (Laboratoire Étude du Mouvement). On her return to Montreal in 1990, she started Diving Horse Creations, which offers parody-based theatre that is quite unique, integrating visual art, theatre and the great classics into original productions. She founded the DHC Gallery in 2007 and it has since become, according to tourism website The Montreal Buzz, one of the city’s go-to destinations for contemporary art. The gallery aims to provide a platform for young Canadian artists, but also attracts works by world-renowned artists such as Marc Quinn and Jenny Holzer. Greenberg’s current project is the PHI Centre, which will open its doors in the spring of 2012. The PHI Centre’s purpose is dedicated to fostering, producing, promoting and distributing original, artist-driven projects. Greenberg’s passion and dedication to serving all of the different facets of Montreal’s artist community make her a true woman of the arts.
– Amanda L. Shore
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren’s life makes the scandals and achievements of modern-day stars pale in comparison. After all, how can a coke-induced breakdown compete with being involved in a bigamy scandal, rejecting a marriage proposal from Cary Grant and racking up 50 international awards for your acting in the process? Breaking out in the ‘50s, Loren quickly became the most famous Italian actress in the world, making heads in Hollywood turn with her wit and exotic beauty (in her earlier films, her name appeared as Sofia Lazzaro because people said her looks could raise Lazarus from the dead). Her strong chemistry with actor Marcello Mastroianni gave way to 14 films together, making them one of the most realistic couplings ever captured on camera. Yet she was devoted to her husband, film producer Carlo Ponti, who was 22 years her senior—they met when she was 14 and he was a judge in a beauty pageant she’d entered—and whom she married twice because of the aforementioned bigamy situation. She stayed with him until he died. If the names of her contemporaries are delicately written in the history of cinema, Loren’s is positively gouged in. Whether she’s portraying a prostitute to Mastroianni’s commitment-phobe player in Marriage Italian Style, a protective mother in the harrowing Two Women, or a countess in Charlie Chaplin’s last film, A Countess from Hong Kong, Loren’s screen presence is powerful and unforgettable, with her fierce gaze practically being seared into your mind. After all, what else could you expect from the woman who famously credited her body to spaghetti?
– Sofia Gay
Brie Neilson
The lovely and talented singer-songwriter and painter Brie Neilson does not have to do much to make an impact on the musical community as her creamy alto voice does it for her. One lady with a guitar is not a new musical formula, though Neilson has managed to make it a category of her own. Unlike the angst that can sometimes accompany a woman going solo, Neilson’s music resonates with thoughtful lyrics and beautiful melodies that allow the listener to enjoy her music without feeling obliged. Beyond her solo work, which you can now hear backed by her band, Brie Neilson and Her Other Men, Neilson also lends her voice to the 10-man gypsy-circus-folk band (never ordinary!) The Unsettlers. It was her friend B.W. Brandes, the frontman of The Unsettlers who, long before the band had come to be, encouraged Neilson to nurture her songwriting talent. But why stop at voice? Neilson is also a talented painter. Her interest in art began during childhood after finding she was not as adept at sports as she would have liked. Expressing herself in other activities such as finger painting and choir, the artist inside had begun to bloom. After attending the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, she supported herself by selling oil paintings of flowers for a commission. Never one to be ordinary, Neilson’s floral paintings go beyond what the average eye sees in a flower: “My interest in taking familiar objects and examining them in a new way, allowing the viewer to re-encounter them—close up, out of context and re-framed—is an ongoing objective in my painting.”
– Sara King-Abadi
Gertrude Stein
To the American ex-pats living in Paris in the ‘20s and ‘30s, she was an editor and a mentor; to emerging and innovative painters like Picasso and Matisse, she was a midwife who helped to shape and guide their artistic ventures; to those across the globe who read her works and were intrigued or disgusted by her non-linear, non-grammatical experimentation with the English language, she was a literary curiosity. Pop history might venture to call Gertrude Stein something akin to a “tastemaker” for a generation, but although the modernist works she produced and encouraged are now part of widespread taste and considered classics, Stein is perhaps best described as someone who helped the artists around her realize their capacity to move forward into a new moment in art, take risks and explore the limits of their self-expression. Working from her Paris salon, where she bought Picasso and Matisse pieces long before they were worth millions of dollars, she edited and mentored such greats as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. With her partner, Alice B. Toklas, she amassed an art collection that showcased the best of modern art, and which will be shown in an upcoming exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, entitled The Steins Collect. She was an artist in her own right as well, penning, among others, the poem Tender Buttons, the experimental written style that plays on the musicality and tonality of language, as well The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written from Alice’s perspective, but providing invaluable insight into the history of one of the most exciting moments in 20th century art and literature history. Although editors of her anthologies often joke about the pervasiveness of “Steinese” in modern artistic expression (think of sayings like “a rose is a rose is a rose”), the truth is that Gertrude Stein shaped the art of a generation, and the tastes, attitudes and culture which arose with and after it.
– Rebecca Ugolini
Mayim Bialik
Actor, writer, neuroscientist, spokesperson, mother, certified lactation educator counsellor, co-founder and chair of the youth branch of the Jewish Free Loan Association are just a few of the labels Mayim Bialik can be headed under. Best known for starring as Blossom in the 1990s sitcom of the same name and currently as Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, Bialik is a highly regarded member of the arts community. Her first book comes out March 6, and when she’s not busy writing or acting, she’s taking care of her two boys. The horrible tales of what happens to child actors after their shows end have been assuaged slightly by Bialik’s amazing success story. Not only is she an exceptional actor, but she represents the myriad of possibilities available to women, proving that you don’t have to stay within a label, and that you can do virtually anything you want. Bialik currently holds a PhD in neuroscience and is consistently getting involved in new projects. She represents a woman who not only wears many hats, but excels in everything she’s involved in.
– Amanda L. Shore
Patti Smith
Where does one begin to describe Patti Smith? You could list the many endeavours she’s taken on—artist, poet, singer, playwright, author, actress, music critic—or maybe name drop the famous individuals she’s rubbed elbows with, including Salvador Dali, Jimi Hendrix, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, Sam Shepard and dozens more. But even that wouldn’t quite cover it. Smith’s story is riveting, from her exodus to New York City in the ‘60s after giving up her child for adoption and promising Joan of Arc’s statue in Philadelphia that she’d make something of herself, to touring the world with her band as The Patti Smith Group, earning the moniker “Godmother of Punk” for her unique hybrid of poetry and rock. She had an intense relationship with controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe—which she recounted in 2010’s Just Kids—and was a presence in legendary ‘70s New York City landmarks, such as the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel and CBGB. An artist through and through, her decades-long career led her to an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the title of Commander from the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honour France bestows to artists. Her debut album Horses—for which Mapplethorpe photographed the iconic cover—has been featured prominently in many “greatest albums of all time” lists, including Time magazine and Rolling Stone. Perhaps what makes Smith such a remarkable artist is her dedication. The ‘80s saw her with a husband and kids, away from the spotlight. But when she came back, she did so by touring with Bob Dylan, putting out more albums and scribing more poetry. Needless to say, Joan of Arc would be proud.
– Sofia Gay
Aretha Franklin
You’d be wise not to mess with Aretha Franklin. She demanded R-E-S-P-E-C-T in the ‘60s, a less-than-idyllic era for African Americans. Poet Nikki Giovanni called Franklin “the voice of the civil rights movement, the voice of Black America.” “Respect” remains her biggest hit and solidified her spot as the original sassy sister. She was the first woman to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987; she is the winner of 18 Grammy Awards and the recipient of two honorary Grammys, the Legend and the Lifetime Achievement. Forty-five of her singles have reached the Top 40. Her influence on the industry and artists who have followed in her pioneering footsteps cannot be ignored. There would not have been a Whitney, a Mariah, a Mary J., to name a few, if it weren’t for Aretha. In the No. 9 spot, she is the highest-ranked female on Rolling Stone’s 100 greatest artists of all time list (the next woman on the list is Madonna at No. 36). What makes Aretha a super special woman, though, is that her career started as a girl at age 14 in 1956. She is pushing 70 and released an album in 2011 through her own record company, Aretha Records, which she launched in 2004. In the immortal words of Ms. Franklin herself, sisters are certainly doin’ it for themselves.
It seems like the only time people want to see dancing is in the movies, whether it’s Patrick Swayze making knees sway in Dirty Dancing, or one of those many films where kids Step Up to the dance floor against the background of thinly-veiled class issues.
But real-life contemporary dance? No, thanks—after all, you won’t understand it, right?
That’s the sort of scenario dance company Wants&Needs is trying to change. Started by childhood friends Andrew Tay and Sasha Kleinplatz, the company strives to give artists a smaller artistic venue as opposed to Place des Arts-sized spectacles that invites people to break down the barrier of intimidation between themselves and contemporary dance.
Events such as Piss in the Pool—where choreographers take over empty pool Bain St-Michel—and Short&Sweet, where choreographers are given three minutes for their performances (the next instalment of which is taking place Feb. 16), are giving Montrealers less and less of an excuse to miss taking in some dance.
“We wanted to create an atmosphere that was more fun and unintimidating for people to see dance work. That’s why our shows aren’t in traditional venues, they’re usually at bars or unique spaces, like Piss in the Pool is in an empty swimming pool,” explained Tay. “That was one of the goals. And another one is to expose dance to people who don’t normally see dance work, and I think again it goes back to some people are scared of going to see a show that’s gonna be an hour long and they’re gonna hate it, or they’re not gonna feel like they understand it […] We want to expose dance to those people by making it more fun.”
Tay and Kleinplatz invite the choreographers to participate in the events; they encourage artists to send their work along to be considered for the next event. In the first round of Short&Sweet choreographers were allowed five minutes to present their work. The time limit was then changed to three minutes “to challenge the choreographers, to see what they could do in a short amount of time,” explained Tay.
Why do such short shows in the first place?
“[It’s all about] the idea of challenging yourself with what to say in the three minutes, what’s possible to be said in the three minutes and what different approaches you can do in the three minutes,” said Tay. “We thought that was fun for choreographers to think about. And also to create a format where people don’t edit themselves. A lot of the time when you’re choreographing bigger works, you’re like ‘oh, I shouldn’t do that,’ or you start to over-think, but when you have three minutes you can really just do one idea and that can be your three minutes.”
That’s not to say that performers haven’t tried to step out of the limit before, though. Past events have seen people trying things such as bringing their own lights to turn on and keep things going when the lights at the venue turn off to signal the end of the performance.
This year’s theme is collaboration and will present a different dynamic than past shows. “People are collaborating with theatre people, with filmmakers, with visual artists, so there’s gonna be a lot of cross-disciplinary work, and we think that’s gonna be really fun,” said Tay.
Next up for the company is to keep trying new ideas and, of course, continue to put on the events it has become known for. But for now, the dance-curious can—Valentine’s reservations aside—put away the remote and check out something that’s Short&Sweet in real life.
Short&Sweet goes down Feb. 16 at Sala Rossa at 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $10. For more details, check out www.wantsandneeds.ca.
It’s common knowledge that Montreal is a mecca for all things art. But on Nuit Blanche, happening this year on Feb. 25, the creativity often confined to galleries is set loose among the streets and social inhibitions are dropped as people mingle and proudly come out as fanatical art lovers. It’s also a chance for those hoping to break the schoolwork cycle and, for one night, eschew the lack of time excuse that hinders them from taking in art. So behold, our picks to make the most out of your Nuit Blanche.
VISUAL ART The staple of every teenage girl’s wall, collages are one of the most self-satisfying and least frustrating art forms you can partake in. What better way to get down with crafting than a party? Galerie Monastiraki is throwing its third annual collage bash, where they invite people to fulfill all their collage whims and enjoy art by Jaynus O’Donnell at the same time.
The collage party goes from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. at Galerie Monastiraki (5478 St-Laurent). Admission is free.
If you’re looking to really cover some ground, make like Alice and explore the wonderland that is Art Souterrain. With hundreds of installations and performances trickled along the six-kilometre passageway between Place des Arts and Complexe Les Ailes, you can turn your night into the artsy explorer’s trip of your choice. Not sure where to start? Diana Thorneycroft’s Chuckie flashback-inducing Doll Mouth Series will be at McGill metro; Martine Frossard and Isabelle Guichard’s hopscotch game installation will be at Square Victoria; and Paul Abraham’s Du rêve à la réalité installation, evoking a POP sensibility with its depictions of Superman, will also be at McGill metro. Lace up your shoes and don’t limit yourself, because with the hundreds of other exhibitions, it seems more is better.
Take a look through all of Art Souterrain’s offerings at www.montrealenlumiere.com and create your own map for your underground arts journey through the city.
CINEMA
No-show at last year’s SPASM? No problem! The festival will be taking over Café Cléopâtre, presenting a best-of showcase from their 2011 edition. With categories including the expected comedy and horror fare, to more intriguing films that fall under “WTF” and “Trash,” SPASM will colour your Nuit Blanche weird, gory and exhilarating all at once. If the film roster doesn’t win you over, the presenters will—the night will be hosted by the café’s drag queens.
Café Cléopâtre (1230 St-Laurent Blvd.) opens its doors for La Nuit SPASM at 8 p.m. Entrance is $5.
PERFORMANCE
When it comes to boxing—and other gruelling, teeth-clenching sports, albeit this may be a generalization—artists will usually stay in the sidelines. The closest they’ll come to those sweat-stained gloves is to maybe make a film about it (here’s looking at you, Clint Eastwood). Well, the Art Matters folk are not only getting up and close, they’re stepping right into the rink with In Our Time, a late-night dance, film theatre and music performance being held at a boxing club. Oh, and just to completely bust your art radar with anticipation, there will be visual art, too.
Load up on the energy-boosting substance of your choice and head over to Blue Cat Boxing Club (435 Beaubien St. W.) at midnight. Admission is free.
THEATRE
Are you looking to be amazed? Maybe you’d like a dose of laughter to cure that stubborn winter cold? Look no further than the selection of free theatre performances available at this year’s Nuit Blanche. First on the docket from 5 p.m. until 2 a.m., Animagie presents a magical nighttime voyage guided by the Knights of the Order of Templars, where you’ll meet fantastical creatures straight out of Quebec folktales. The show takes place at the Olympic Park and promises to be a larger-than-life experience.
Starting at 8 p.m., you can choose between an evening of madness with the Ligue d’improvisation montréalaise or an evening with vengeful lovers and the crimes that made them famous at the Musée du Chateau Ramezay. LIM is promising electrified sketches and continuous live performances featuring the best and wildest performers of song, intimate theatre and collective madness. The Musée, on the other hand, wishes for you to step into history with them as they remake three historical murder trials that scandalized Montreal between 1658 and 1702. LIM will be done largely in French and takes place at the Lion d’Or (1676 Ontario St. E.) and the madness lasts until 3 am. The Musée du Château Ramezay’s trials will go on until 11:30 p.m., with representations every 30 minutes at 280 Notre-Dame St. E.
All shows are free.
COMEDY
If straight up rolling on the floor laughing is what you’re looking for out of your Nuit Blanche experience, then French speakers will be satisfied with this year’s comedy selections. En français, Rocambolesque is offering theatrical improvisation featuring competitive matches, humourous performances, improv, puppet shows and guaranteed magical moments. The laughs start at 7 p.m. and go until 3 a.m. at the Union Française (429 Viger Ave. E.) Also in French at the Place Deschamps, an evening of comedy and wine has been promised. Check out the laughter at 175 Ste-Catherine St. W. Both shows are free.
Television stars—especially of the fist-pumping and “real” housewife variety—take a lot of flak for their on-screen behaviour. Since gracing the screen, they’ve been on the receiving end of accusations of falsity for their words and actions.
But who’s to say that a large part, or maybe all of, human behaviour is not “faked,” too, and is not just an extension of our culture? Where does reality end and culture begin?
Those are one of the many mind-bending questions MAP Project deals with. A group of artists who’ve walked the halls at Concordia, MAP (that’s Mind, Action and Personality) works through different art media—most notably theatre—blurring the lines between reality and fiction to make you ponder deeper thoughts than where the lead actress on stage got her top.
Currently working on MAP Series (comprised of monthly episodes and currently in its first season—think reality TV meets real life meets the stage), the group presents a blend of images and dialogue borrowed from your favourite cultural icons—whether their skin be orange-hued or not—and their own dialogue and actions from their real life.
Since its inception in 2009, the members of MAP have met every Sunday night to have “social labs.”
“We meet at my apartment, and have cameras filming us and a camera in the bathroom, and we usually drink and eat and talk, sometimes we have activities that we want to do,” said MAP director Rio Mitchell. “David [di Giovanni, MAP’s associate director] and I sort of structure what happens into a show. We’ll ask specific questions, we’ll write them on the wall in the bathroom to be answered by the actors. One of our episodes was about competition, so we were playing lots of games with each other.”
After doing a successful run of shows—One, Two, Three and Four—MAP found a home for its Series project at MainLine, allowing for a regular audience that could follow the plot as it developed. Needless to say, their “reality TV-inspired live performance,” as di Giovanni described it, is not exactly easy to wrap one’s head around.
“We’re interested in where reality TV and live theatre intersect. If there’s such thing as reality theatre, which is can you have someone on stage playing themselves in an authentic way?” said di Giovanni. “Or does the fact that an audience is there completely change them and then they begin performing themselves, rather than being themselves?”
The performers play both themselves and their alters, which are “characters that they’ve created in conjunction with us and each other that have pop cultural influence,” explained Mitchell.
There’s Taupra Waugh-Waugh (played by Amy Kitz), a mix of everyone’s favourite daytime talk show host and car-giving double threat, Gordon Ramsay and Barbara Walters. Then there’s Jessandra Jones (played by Iris Lapid), a Real Housewife type of character, and Johnny Sharpe (played by Jake Zabusky), a Bachelor meets Rock of Love blend.
“We sort of play into streams where the alters are usually still kind of taking material from the real person’s life, but are using these famous lines and famous forms and is really heightened and exciting, there’s all sorts of stuff happening,” said Mitchell. “People get hit by a bus, people get pregnant and cheat on their husbands, there’s all sorts of crazy stuff going on.”
The way the audience experiences the show is also influenced by the presentation, which includes videos on top of the real bodies cat-fighting (and sometimes arm-wrestling) on the stage.
“We do a lot of layering of live bodies and projection on stage,” said Mitchell.
“Projection of them, and then also the projection of maybe some of the scenes in the popular culture that we’re using,” added di Giovanni. “Sometimes we’ll even have the scenes of popular culture interacting with the actors on stage and sort of talk to them as well, that’s when things get really messed up.”
With the nature of MAP’s works being influenced by the lives of the group members, it’s hard to pinpoint what lies in store for them.
However, Mitchell and di Giovanni have very clear hopes for where they want to take the project.
“All the way, man,” said Mitchell.
“[Montreal is] kind of a transient city, especially for people who are English-speaking,” added di Giovanni. “And students, too—they come here and they meet people and they go back to wherever they came from. But most of us have decided to stay in Montreal, which I think is a big step for MAP, which is that we want to ride this out as long as it can go.”
Episode five of MAP Series is being performed on Feb. 3 at 9 p.m. at MainLine Theatre. Tickets are $10. For more information, check out 5mapproject.wordpress.com.
History may look fairly solid on textbooks and slideshows in lecture rooms, but once in a while there comes along another discovery proving that, much like other disciplines, there is room for change.
Such is the case with Canada’s involvement in the making of the atomic bombs that landed on Japan in 1945. The fact that a mine on Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories provided the uranium to make the bombs was obscured by a lack of documentation and research, leading it to be overlooked in history.
This week, two professors who delved into the subject, Julie Salverson, who teaches at Queen’s University, just finished a book manuscript, and wrote the libretto for a clown opera about the atomic bomb, and Concordia’s own Peter C. van Wyck, who penned The Highway of the Atom, will do a reading as part of the English department’s Writers Read series.
“The Dene of Great Bear Lake never really realized what they were up to in their dealings with the white miners (from 1930-1960),” wrote van Wyck in an email. “[..] It wasn’t until much, much later that the Dene came to realize that the project they had become involved in was killing them, and had culminated in the massacre of over 227,000 Japanese civilians and 30,000 or so Korean labourers […]”
Having encountered the subject after watching Peter Blow’s Village of Widows (which sees the Dene who worked in the mine and along the transportation route suffering from cancer due to unprotected exposure), van Wyck and Salverson began to do research on the subject—at least, as much as possible given the scant documents on the subject.
“After seeing this film, I realized that this was the next thing I needed to do. In a way, it is the Canadian back-story to what is otherwise a kind of proprietorially American story of the bomb,” he said. ”So I started to poke around a bit, to see what there was, to see what the state of the archive was. I quickly came to realize that it was secret! And within a very short time, I was able to see that the hermeneutic circle of citation really began and ended with the work of one scholar, who was hired to write a corporate biography of Eldorado, and had been given access to the company papers. His story didn’t have Indians in it either. Or apologies.”
With a research grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, van Wyck and Salverson traveled to find out more, reaching many places, from Great Bear Lake itself to the deserts of New Mexico.
In the end, van Wyck had material for his book, and Salverson for her book and opera, which will premiere later this year.
“It was almost my first response to this story, that it was so huge it needed to be an opera. And so absurd, it needed to be done through clown. I’d already written a play about land mines for the Canadian Red Cross, and that script was developed through work with Vancouver clown artist Steve Hill of Leaky Heaven Circus,” said Salverson. “[…] I am drawn to the absurd and the comedic as forms for telling huge stories, in particular stories of violence. It is my desire to avoid a kind of sentimentally tragic approach that can awe but also paralyze an audience or a reader […]”
While history may not be up some students’ alleys, van Wyck and Salverson believe this is a story Canadians should be aware of.
“When I visited Japan in 2010 I was very aware that my country had played a role in developing the bomb. I was also aware that it was important to visit Hiroshima and see the vitality and life of the city, not just its tragic past. I feel this way about how Canadians learn this story of Great Bear Lake,” said Salverson. “There is a community of Sahtugot’ine Dene people who are known for their pioneering self-governance and who have undertaken a number of initiatives like land stewardship, community radio. It matters that Canadians know about the richness of this community and others like them. And that there was a uranium mine on Great Bear Lake.”
Canada and the Making of the Atomic Bomb is taking place Jan. 27 at 7:30 p.m. in the York Amphitheatre (EV 1.605).
Musical theatre plays a small role in most people’s lives, popping up here or there, maybe at the end of a long day on a trip to New York after being sandwiched next to fellow tourists all day, or when you find out your best friend knows all the words to Grease, too.
But for a group of young people, ages 17 to 29 to be exact, who are part of the West Island Student Theatre Association, musical theatre is something they live and breathe every day.
This year, the group is coming at full force by tackling an original production called Show People.
Set in ’80s-era New York, the show follows the auditions for a new Broadway show. The spotlights are set and lines are memorized, until the show’s star abandons her role. Faced with a production missing its biggest cast member, they turn to a producer’s ex-lover to fill the role. However, she immediately clashes with an ingénue chorus girl, leaving room for drama and more than a few dance numbers.
“I’ve been working with WISTA for a long time, so I knew there was a bunch of stuff I wanted to do with them,” said Trevor Barrette, who wrote the script and is choreographing the show. “The plot came after I found a few of the main songs that I wanted do with WISTA, that I want to take forward […] and the story came out of that.”
Calling itself a jukebox musical, Show People will feature songs from some of the most famous musicals through time, from A Chorus Line to Chicago, basically “songs that I’d always pushed for, that I’d always wanted to do with the group,” explained Barrette. Putting on an original production will also allow members to show off their talents.
“Part of what makes WISTA special is that it’s largely student-run, student-produced, student-performed, and I think student-written is just another thing that we’ve taken on before with the Cirque d’Orandour, and that we wanted to highlight again because it’s so much fun to see what everyone can do,” said Stephanie Zidel, who plays the role of Nancy the stage manager.
“It’s our chance to show us at our best, instead of following a script that was made by someone that we don’t know, something that’s already been done,” agreed Megan Magisano, who plays Betty, a chorus girl. “This is our way to really make it ours, and make it WISTA’s.”
Another advantage of putting on Show People is that it allows for a bigger cast. With WISTA’s growing numbers, it would seem that more really is merrier.
“We started off with seven members. We currently have 45 members, whether they be performing or non-performing—so that’s directing, choreographing, helping with costumes,” said Marie Alexiou, WISTA membership representative, who plays bar patron Jen. “[..] This year WISTA is celebrating its fifth year. So in five years we went from seven to 45—that’s huge.”
New York will be created on stage with the help of five set-ups and iconic images from the city, while the wardrobe will range from the classic ’80s dichotomy of Jane Fonda (leg warmers and headbands galore) and Madonna (tulle skirts), with a retro look at ’70s suits for the cast members portraying the management team.
With the entertainment industry cocktail of rivalry, backstabbing and jealousy being a staple of many stories, what will make WISTA’s production unique?
“I think it’s gonna be the fact that, if you look at us, we’re the only type of theatre company that’s student-run,” said cast member Craig Dalley, who plays Steven, the director. “You look at any of the other ones—yeah, there might be students involved, but if you look at our cast, we’re all completely students.”
“Everyone really wants to be doing what we’re doing,” added Zidel. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t work.”
At the end of the day, spectators will get to see what WISTA is all about—a group of dedicated young people who are doing what they love.
Alexiou said people can expect “a good time. A professional-looking and -feeling show, a quality show [..] If they’ve never heard of WISTA before, I think their minds will be blown, and they’ll become just as addicted as we are.”
“I want the people walking out of the show to say, ‘damn, these kids are the real deal,’ and not just some teenage high school show put together,” added Dalley.
“We have amazing performers, some great dancing, some beautiful singing,” said Barrette. “And it’s hopefully a show that will attract a lot of different people who enjoy musical theatre, who are new to musical theatre. I hope people are entertained, in the end.”
Show People is being performed on Jan. 27 at 8 p.m. and Jan. 28 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., at Beaubois Theatre (4901 du Collège-Beaubois, Pierrefonds). Student tickets are $13 and can be bought online at www.wista.ca/tickets or by phone at 514-998-7229. For more information, check out www.wista.ca.
