Ontario Off Stage

by Brandon Moore, Communications Coordinator

Conversations

• Brendan Healy, Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, explores the question “why theatre?”
• How Canada is “holding its own” in new musical theatre development, from Acting Up Stage Company’s Musical Notes
• Gwydion Suilebhan explains the difference between waterfall and agile software development, and the benefit of applying that thinking to the way we create theatre and run theatre institutions on HowlRound
• Why children’s theatre matters: yes, we need to educate children to be able bridges, but we also need to educate them to imagine the bridge in the first place, and to create a different kind of bridge, and to ask whether we need to build a bridge at all
• Life lessons that the CEO of Twitter learned studying improv at The Second City
• I came back from holidays to an overflowing inbox of emails and notifications.  But among the mix of valuable messages, pointless garbage, and everything in-between, was a notification of a blog post by Sue Edworthy that in turn pointed me to a Globe and Mail article from Ivor Tossell on why email is broken.  While I don’t agree that all email is the enemy, I do think we need to challenge ourselves constantly on what we may be doing to contribute to our shared problem, and how we can be part of the solution

From The Wire

• Etobicoke Musical Production has had to cancel their November  production of Bye Bye Birdie as their performance facility, the Toronto District School Board’s Burnhamthorpe Auditorium, has been closed indefinitely due to safety issues; they had no other viable performance facility and all their production sets and equipment were in the theatre
• Unrelated: two new Health and Safety Guidelines for the Live Performance Industry in Ontario have been published by the Ministry of Labour—Application of Industrial/Construction Regulations and Flame Effects
• The Metcalf Foundation has engaged db 3rd Sector Consultancy to “study the feasibility of creating a shared platform for the arts and explore the greater potential for the arts community to share high quality administrative services”—and they want your input

TO Toasts

David Yee receiving the Carol Bolt Award from Playwrights Guild of Canada

• To the winners of the 2013 Tom Hendry Awards from Playwrights Guild of Canada, including David Yee who won the Carol Bolt Award for carried away on the crest of a wave, to Irene Sankoff & David Hein for Best Musical in Development for Come From Away (that aforementioned “Canada holding its own” show), and to Lucas Foss for Best Comedy in Development for Little Voices
• To Chris Abraham, Artistic Director of Crow’s Theatre, winner of the Siminovitch Prize, and to Mitchell Cushman, Artistic Director of Outside The March and Associate Artistic Director of Crow’s Theatre who Chris named to receive the protégé prize
• To the nominees for the Capital Critics Circle awards in Ottawa, including member theatres Great Canadian Theatre Company, St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival, Ottawa Little Theatre, Kanata Theatre, and Orpheus Musical Theatre Society nominated in their respective Best Production categories for professional and community theatre.  The awards are December 2
• To Michael Hennessy, Talent Bank member, honoured with the City of Sault Ste. Marie’s Cultural Advisory Board 2013 Community Recreation Award for Performing Arts

In Case You Missed It

• Tom Mackan receives Theatre Ontario’s 2013 Maggie Bassett Award
• Join us on December 3 for GivingTuesday
• Training a new generation of adjudicators

Today is Arts Day in the City, and we send best wishes to our colleagues at the Toronto Alliance for Performing Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, and everyone participating in bringing this important message.