Category Archives: Art

Win a Date with raincoaster

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Shakespeare Got to Get Paid, Son

Only your taste (or is that “tastes”?) can say whether a date with raincoaster is a prize or booby prize. As you know, we’re all about the boobies lately around these parts. These specific parts, that is.

My parts are superfine, if somewhat bruised lately, just ask anyone who’s seen them, which includes you if you clicked on the link (you just went back and did that, didn’t you?). And they and the rest of me will be going (thanks to an invite from the generous and omnipotent Rebecca Coleman, publicist to…productions successful at getting pimped out on raincoaster.com and Twitter) to the West Coast premiere of Eugene Stickland‘s play Queen Lear at Presentation House Theatre. Want to come as my date? It’s easy (unlike me).

All it takes to win is to post the comment that I think contains the funniest literary joke. Tasteless is extra points, Shakespeare is extra points, King Lear is extra extra points, tasteless King Lear jokes posted by Kenneth Branagh are an automatic win. Sorry, boys, I have a weakness for blustery Irishmen.

Queen Lear at Presentation House

Queen Lear at Presentation House

Life Lessons and Sh8kspeare: Queen Lear

NORTH VANCOUVER, BC: Presentation House Theatre, in association with Western Gold, are pleased to present the West Coast premiere of Eugene Stickland’s Queen Lear. The older generation has much to teach the younger generation about theatre… and life. Or is it the other way around? Queen Lear runs March 25-April 10 at Presentation House Theatre.

An accomplished aging actress, suffering a dearth of decent roles for older women, is cast in the title role in an all-female production of King Lear and, terrified that her memory will fail her, employs a young girl to help her memorize her lines. Text messaging meets iambic pentameter in this amusing and touching story about courage and the strength of spirit. Both women struggle with fear, loss and challenge, illustrating how time and experience both separate and unite them. This new play, featuring celebrated actor Shirley Broderick, newcomer Jennifer McPhee, and acclaimed cellist Peggy Lee, is not to be missed.

Western Gold Theatre produces outstanding professional theatre that expands horizons and enriches the lives of mature artists and their audiences. The company offers powerful role-modeling, creative opportunity and active engagement to a rapidly growing senior population and provides inspiration to diverse generations of theatre lovers. Artistic Director Colleen Winton is particularly interested in creating mentorships between senior artists and emerging artists and sees this play as a wonderful opportunity to celebrate what the generations have to teach each other.

Queen Lear is part of The Third Street Theatre series. Founded in 2005 by Artistic Director Brenda Leadlay, The Third Street Series is the banner under which Presentation House Theatre (PHT) presents and produces a professional season of plays. The vision for the series entails a fusion of accessibility and artistic risk, in order to achieve a season that is appealing and marketable but challenges and educates our audiences about new artistic practices.

Queen Lear previews Thursday, March 25, and opens Friday, March 26 at 8 pm. It then runs nightly (Sunday evenings and Mondays dark) through until April 10. There will be weekend matinees on Saturdays at 4, and Sundays at 2. All performances are at Presentation House Theatre, 333 Chesterfield, North Vancouver (3 blocks from the Seabus). Tickets are $24 for Adults, $22 for Students/Seniors. All tickets are $2 more at the door, and $2 more on Friday and Saturday evenings. All seats for the preview are $12.

For tickets or more information, please call 604.990.3474 or email boxoffice AT phtheatre.org.

www.phtheatre.org

We’ve done this sort of thing before, so you know how it works: no complaining that it’s arbitrary because…well…this is a dictatorship, and when in the history of the known universe have I ever hesitated to be arbitrary? Deadline is noon Friday, and don’t expect me to phone you: mah Jeebusphone has gone AWOL. I’ll hit you up on email or Twitter.

You know what to do, so do it in the comments. And for god’s sake, clean up after yourselves when you’re finished!

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Welcome to Copenhagen!

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The coalition of the willing, to power

There’s nothing like the wholesome exercise of free speech and the right to peaceful assembly in the presence of the leaders of the Free World.

(remember the Free World? I know, so old-skool!)

Well, for those of you who remember what that was like, here’s a little slideshow of photos taken in Copenhagen during the recent summit by Vangroover homeboy Kris Krug and assembled by Vangroover muse Fiercekitty.

Enjoy?

A little background:

Krug is taking photos at the international summit for the TckTckTck coalition of prominent non-government organizations, including World Vision, Greenpeace and Amnesty International.

“It’s a little strange,” he said of his brush with Danish police.

“I’ve never been in an environment like this. I only kept myself from being arrested by showing my media credentials.”

Despite a wave of more than 1,100 arrests over the weekend, Krug said the majority of people at the conference are working peacefully to lobby through activism and social media campaigns.

And after you’ve watched this, go check the front page of your local paper. What’s on it? Happy Team Spirit Olympics? Adorable Cute Kid Story? Lost Puppy Found in Sitcom-Worthy Mixup? Single Mom of Thirty-Seven Wins Lottery? The Same Damn Thing As On The Other Paper? And then realize: You PAID for that paper.

You can do better.

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Olympic Mural Rises Again

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crying room original olympic mural

original photo by The Blackbird

Have you seen this mural?

Not recently, you haven’t, because it was removed on the orders of Vancouver City Hall, which is apparently in the business of making sure the Olympic Committee don’t get their feelings hurt, rather than in the business of defending the rights of Canadians to the free expression guaranteed them under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The gallery says in 10 years, it has never before been asked to remove any work.

The city issued the order under its graffiti bylaw, but it comes in the wake of a debate over a controversial city sign bylaw that opponents feared would allow officials to stifle anti-Olympic expression.

“It was pretty clear to me that it was because of the context of the work,” says Colleen Heslin, who runs the Crying Room, a small studio focusing on emerging artists.

Ms. Heslin points out that over the years she has hung about 30 murals there, and has never had any trouble. She has also used that space as a giant chalkboard, allowing passersby to write or draw whatever they wanted (which included swear words) and was never asked to remove that either.

In fact, when her landlord, Peter Wong, received a notice from the city telling him to remove the graffiti from his building, he had no idea what they were talking about. “I called them and said I cannot find the graffiti. And they said the sign [the mural] is graffiti…”

Patrick Smith, director of Simon Fraser University’s Institute of Governance Studies, said the removal of the sign is symptomatic of the high demands the “Olympic movement” places on its host cities. He believes Vancouver will be the beginning of a shift away from the modern Olympic era, with communities saying the cost of hosting is too high.

“A lot is asked of communities, and it seems to me this is a perfectly good example of where we’ve gone too far,” he said. “There’s no other way to describe it other than overreaction, but it’s the city trying to protect a brand that’s not the city’s brand. It’s the Olympic movement’s brand.”

Malcolm asked if the one in the bottom right-hand corner was Gregor Robertson.

And there was mourning throughout the land, or at least the Downtown Eastside. Even the revered and untouchable Globe and Mail, which had at first featured the image in its article, got out the virtual putty knives and scraped it right off their website, and the bittersweet little mural was removed from the face of the Earth AND the Googleplex.

But not for long, for over on Facebook a spontaneous, outraged movement started, a movement with sharpie-inscribed samizdat tee shirts and all manner of Olympic Mural as Facebook Profile Pic mayhem, and soon, just like in Peter Pan when Tink is dying and you clap your hands to save her (you DO clap your hands, don’t you? And ring a bell at Christmas, so an angel gets its wings? Of course you do, because you don’t want me to come over there and give your sorry motherfucking ass the beat-down), the heartfelt wishes of the good little boys and girls and the undecideds notthatthere’sanythingwrongwiththat all over the Downtown Eastside were heard and the mural rose again.

Here it is as of now:

Crying Room Olympic Mural Dec 13 2009

And, for as long as it lasts, you can see it in my Flickr stream, in my Facebook photos, on this blog, and at Main and Cordova.

As far as I can tell, it’s the original piece, with a little bit of touching up around the smiley face.

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Thought for the Day: them sonnets ain’t gonna scribe themselves

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Shakespeare got to get paid, son.

There’s a lot of this particular thought going around lately: does that make it a meme?

Vancouver International Film Festival Contest

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]Vancouver International Film Festival Contest

You’ve got ONE day, Vangroover. Contest ends tomorrow.
What are you doing sitting at home when you could be at the Vancouver International Film Festival, watching movies that the nasty greedheads you know and love from Entourage never got their filthy paws on? How can you be there? Easy:

You win my contest, you get tickets. Two tickets to one of these films FOUR tix to the film of your choice. (not includig galas, not including sold out performances, not including getting the star’s phone number; you’re on your own for getting those) Simple, right?

How do you enter? You leave a tasteless joke in the Comments section right here, preferably a tasteless Hollywood joke. Or, if you can’t think of or Google a tasteless joke that nobody else has told yet, you can just leave a plain old vanilla comment. But tasteless jokes get automatic priority in my completely slanted system. Tasteless jokes featuring Cthulhu count triple!

We’re talking Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. You want to see Heath Ledger‘s last (and possibly best) movie, don’t you? Support the twisted genius of Terry Gilliam and piss off major studios while you’re at it.

We’re talking The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector. Who doesn’t want to know what twisted, murderous mania lurks under that hideous fright wig? A man who is capable of convincing himself that THAT looks good is capable of anything.

(sorry, the Beeb took down the trailer and it’s not on YouTube yet. You KNOW what you must do, little soldiers)

We’re talking Beyond the Game, World of Warcraft made actually interesting for non-WoWers. I just want to see if this can be done in the first place, really.

We’re talking…hell, just READ this:

Empire State Building Murders (France,
73 min.) <EMPIR>William Karel (The World According
to Bush) has created something entirely
new. He’s “mixed” scenes from more than 50 classic
film noir and recruited the very much alive
Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Mickey Rooney and
Cyd Charisse to play along from the point of view
of today, adding whole new layers of meaning.
Ben Gazarra leads us through this seductive maze.

I dunno about you, but frankly Ben Gazarra can lead me through a seductive maze any time. It’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid meets … well, every film referenced in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. Trailer is here: Empire State Building Murders

and we are talking about The Great Contemporary Art Bubble, which is basically every story John Richardson ever wrote for Vanity Fair magazine, in documentary format. Watch Damien Hurst sell dead critters for more digits than you’re accountant has ever seen! Watch ostentatious Eurotrash frenemies air kiss in Monte Carlo auction houses! Watch…the auction audience, trying to spot the prostitutes.

Let the Great Tasteless Joke Contest for Vancouver International Film Festival Tickets begin!