After Dark, December 18, 2012

Lucky '13

Moving ahead by looking back

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois
@gcharlebois

There are goin' to be some big fuckin' changes around here!

That is the battle cry at The Charlebois Post, ltd., as we slide into our third year of life. But as we face our futures we look back at the past and try to make sense of it. That is a puzzle for the ages, dear friends.

One of the things we've done is try to figure out what draws eyes to these websites. We do that quite simply by checking out the stats for which articles, each day, draw the most readers. It didn't take long for us to realize that one thing that pleases readers are reviews. It's tempting to write raves all the time because then the production house receiving the praise will tweet and FB the heck out of the review and sometimes, even - jackpot! - quote a rave in their online and print ads. 

After Dark, December 11, 2012

Dirty Work

Lessons we've learned and here comes The CharPR Prize!

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

I love it when old movies have terrific quotes. In Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Bette Davis, playing the crazy Charlotte, bellows at her elegant cousin, played by Olivia de Havilland, "Let me see, what is it you call your job? Oh yes: Public Relations. Sounds like something pretty dirty to me."

Well, it is dirty. It's a dirty job. It is setting the foundation of a show, keeping the plumbing clean and making sure that the company's next show gets eyes on it. It is the job of making sure critics and directors and actors don't go to war. It is one of the most important - if not THE most important job- linked to every production and it is the one thing small companies think they can do without. And they learn the hard way...

After Dark, December 4, 2012

The Terrible Twos

We celebrate and look to the future

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

On November 30, The Charlebois Post celebrated its second anniversary. Since Estelle Rosen and I launched a little local blog in Montreal, we have grown to three active websites, two in test stage and probably a sixth and seventh to come. We have 30 regular contributors (reviewers, profile writers, interviewers), over 100 artists and theatre people who have contributed to the sites, and have published thousands of items. Each day our sites receive hundreds of visitors and over a thousand pages are viewed. 

And we at CharPo are all, to a person, volunteers. Some of us have contributed money to cover the expenses and all have worked hard to keep the sites hopping with activity. 

Now we are exploring options for expansion and as we do are trying to take into account the kindness of our contributors and to reward them. The reason for this is simple: most of our writers are or have become some of the finest commentators and theatre writers in the country and we'd like to hang on to them. I have already had several of them ask me to write references for them and although I am exuberant in my praise, I am heart-broken to see them move on.

After Dark, November 27, 2012

Lemons, Lemonade and The Sour Taste That Stays

Dutchman hangs around for a bit

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

I have invited the contributors at CharPo to, when the mood strikes them, write what we are going to call "Reconsidered". The idea is that, after thinking about it, many people will revise opinions about a work of art. We come out of a play with friends, we go to a café, and over the carrot cake we parse what we have just seen. The others put ideas into our head, we into theirs and then - hours, days, weeks later - we are hit by a new idea about the show. Those ideas remain largely unexpressed. However, I feel they form the foundations of future considerations not just of the piece seen but of the art itself.

The "Reconsidered" pieces will not be, "I thought it was shit, but now I think it's great!" - though that's okay too. It will be along the lines of a comment a colleague made last year when he was considering his top ten for the end of the year. He said that the plays that he was remembering for his list were, more often than not, the ones he had not raved about. 

After Dark, November 20, 2012

On The Eating of One's Own Head

Can critics' dislikes and the internet be creating precisely what theatre needs?

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

This week Andrew Dickson, one of The Guardian's many very able theatre critics, tweeted thusly: 

"Invitation arrives for Kiss Me, Kate, dir by Trevor Nunn. No, no, thanks awfully, very kind, really don't think so #wouldrathereatmyownhead"

I laughed out loud because I knew what he was talking about. There are productions I get invited to that I would rather eat my own head than spend an evening seeing let alone reviewing. Kiss Me, Kate would be in my top ten for sure, along with Annie (and a lot of musicals), anything by Ionesco, a lot of Albee, mime, a lot of Greek theatre, tons of Shakespeare, most French opera...need I go on?

The fact is, we all have tastes. My uncle loves opera but when I told him I had seen the Ring at Covent Garden he said, "Better you than me." He is, says he, "Saving Wagner for my old age." He's 75.

After Dark, October 30, 2012

Why We Must Care
An election is coming and it could hurt
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

It was an awful time. Ronald Reagan was president and Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney were prime ministers. Moreover, the three loved each other. There was a pall over the world. When we were not preparing for the end of the world, small-l liberals were watching everything they cared about go into the toilet.

What was worse was the utter lack of organization on the left and by the opponents of the unholy trio. Lesbians and Gays were fighting, feminists and free-speechers were fighting - each other! It was all over the issue of pornography. Miners in Britain were treated like Mongol hordes and sometimes acted like that. The IRA was blowing up innocents when they weren't starving themselves to death in prison. A play about Margaret Thatcher caused consternation - even on the left! - because it was called Ditch the Bitch. (This before a play called The Happy Cunt toured the Fringe circuit.)

After Dark, October 23, 2012

What are the limits?
One critic revives the debate
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

In my third year of acting school, one of my teachers - an inveterate bastard - decided to tell us the facts of life. He told us what we would play when released into the real world. "You," he said to one handsome boy, "would play Prince Hal." To a lovely young thing, "Juliet," to a less lovely one, "Mistress Ford." And on and on. It was a harsh lesson. In the real world, beyond our talent (or lack of), we would get roles based on our looks. (For the record: I would be Richard III...fucker.)

Let's face it (no pun intended) when an actor walks onto a stage his or her first job is to create the illusion. That's the work. If you are playing older, younger, uglier or prettier (or smarter or dumber) than yourself, you will spend a few long minutes of your first few on stage convincing the audience otherwise and then pulling them more deeply into the play. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

But here's the thing...

After Dark, October 16, 2012

We Need to Talk About The Kids
Out of the mouths of babes...
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

I was having a conversation with a bunch of much-younger-than-me film students, a few years back. We were working together on a movie project and I mentioned that the style we were shooting it resembled what I had heard and read about the shoot for Midnight Cowboy - very guerilla. To a person the group of four looked at me with a blank stare. I was confused. Yes, I realized that guerilla art was a fad of my own youth.

But Midnight Cowboy!! They had never heard of it. I blustered. Midnight Cowboy! I repeated over and over again, like the repetition itself would make this film iconic to them. It gets worse...except for Dustin Hoffman, all the names linked to this film (director John Schlesinger, actor Jon Voigt) meant nothing to them.

This was the moment my attitudes about art changed - I thank the four youngsters for this. I realized, later, that these young people were not a bunch of baboons - they had given me the same look I gave my older sisters and brothers when they talked about Rickie Nelson (pop star and star of the TV show Ozzie and Harriet, and cute - my sisters insisted). The roll of the eyes I gave my elder siblings was exactly that given me on Midnight Cowboy and for the same reason: this is not important...now.

After Dark, October 9, 2012

Joiners
The strength is there...if we can get past the laziness
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

It's easy - if you're willing to go beyond signing petitions and saying you'll boycott and bewailing - after the fact - the injustice of it all. It is the use of the power of groups to change things. It's why ACTRA, CAEA, PACT and other groups representing an active mass, work, and groups representing non-joiners - the lazy mass - do not work.

There are two issues in the news, lately, that require theatre artists to do more than shriek an (ever-tedious) outrage on Facebook. They require people going beyond saying they are in a boycott (or not).

After Dark, October 2, 2012

Self-inflicted wounds
The internet was supposed to kill print...think again
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

(Patience...this IS about theatre...eventually.)

Scratch a media pundit and they will bemoan the replacement of print journalism by the anarchism and - woe is us! - lack of FACTS of the internet. Where they see chaos, others - especially the young - see a joyful noise - a new world that requires us to use judgement towards what we are seeing.

In Canada, in the last two weeks, we have come to look askance at information and thank Christ and finally! Messes in "real" press didn't start this year. Lies were being printed in newspapers as far back as the Hearst empire and to the great broadsheets of England before that. More recent examples of big media failures are easy to find: how the press colluded with the Bush Whitehouse to drag America into a nonsensical and bloody war in Iraq. Elsewhere - and at another time - new media (The Drudge Report) and "reformed yellow" media (The National Enquirer) were breaking big stories that didn't even appear on the radar of the soi-disant serious press. Yes, the Monica Lewinsky story was risible, but it stopped the world - we all paid attention; it was not only a Republicans v. Democrats story, it was - around the world - a barometer of values.

After Dark, September 25, 2012

Chronicle of a Death Foretold
We know it's coming, why aren't we prepared?
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

When I was 15 I was an apprentice critic at Quebec City's Chronicle Telegraph - North America's oldest newspaper. It was a weekly, then, when before it had been the daily of the not-so-tiny Quebec City anglo community. Things happened. One of the biggest employers of my school-mates' dads, Anglo Pulp and Paper (yes, that was its name), became less Anglo. High-schools and primary schools closed down. Our hospital, Jeffrey Hale, became more bilingual. When I left, one of the last bastions of anglophony, St. Brigid's Retirement Home, became quite, quite franco. (When I was a boy we would take little St. Patrick's Day shows into St. Brigid's.) The community died, moved away to bigger cities for opportunity or because of politics, or was assimilated. According to the Chronicle Telegraph's website, there are more places to buy it in Montreal, now, than in Quebec City. Some consider what happened to Quebec's anglo community a tragedy  - a death foretold. Others (myself included) think of this as an evolution. A transition. Adaptation.

After Dark, September 18, 2012

I Want To Live!
Potboilers and our lives
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

When I was a kid, my mother plunked me in front of our TV and made me watch a potboiler called I Want to Live! Starring Susan Hayward, it was ostensibly a true story about a woman committed to death row for mere fringe participation in a crime that went wrong. She is executed at the end in a moment I remember as being vigorously realistic. My mother tended to plunk us in front of "lesson" movies - racism is bad, justice is harsh, the Holocaust was not nice. She helped me develop a wide streak of leftism (even as she continued to be a mad-ardent Catholic - arguably the least leftist church on the planet).

The lesson I took away from I Want to Live! was that life isn't fair.

I think it's a lesson that hit me again this week when my medical life went swirling around the toilet bowl again. Now, before you turn away from what looks like a poor-me piece, I promise it is leading to a point that I hope will have more universal resonance.

After Dark, September 11, 2012

The Language of Disrespect
Things have actually gotten worse
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Last week I wrote about how politics should be teaching us, in theatre, lessons about respect and civility. You just had to look at political campaigns in Quebec and the United States to understand that when we have grievances in the arts, we clearly should not be as rancorous. Firstly, because our community is too small to contain feuds and, secondly, because somewhere - down the line - most of us will have to work together. Grudges must die (or at least be set aside and painted over with a smile).

After I wrote that editorial two things happened:

- There was an assassination attempt on our premier-elect, allegedly by some guy spouting stupidity about how "The English are awakening!" What made the event more chilling and tragic was that there was an actual death during the attempt, a stage techie named Denis Blanchette.

- I received an open letter (email) about the crisis at Factory Theatre that I suspect I was meant to publish but where the content of the letter was so angry and uncivil I decided I would not put it up on the site. I stated that I would no longer publish pieces that did not advance dialogue that might resolve the situation.

After Dark, September 4, 2012

The Tribes
There are lessons we must learn from politics
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Today Quebeckers vote. It has been a rancorous and unpleasant campaign and I'm glad to be rid of it (though suspect by midnight we will have a minority government and be heading back to the fucking polls in no time).

I've heard all the hyperbole I can handle. It didn't come close to the scum thrown in the US, but it did approach it. Because of the confluence of the student uprising and the burgeoning strength of the sovereignist Parti Québécois we were treated to ugly epithets hurled on one side and another not just on Facebook and Twitter - bad enough - but in editorials too. One idiot editorial in anglo Montreal trotted out "fascist" to describe the PQ leader's aspirations. When you've heard that one thrown at the Liberals for nine months, it becomes meaningless.

US politics are uglier than ever. But that seems to be a refrain we repeat every election.

After Dark, August 28, 2012

Outside the (Poor) Box
Reflections on money in a penniless world
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

If you're on Facebook or Twitter you have been seeing two trends: projects - especially theatre projects - crowd-sourcing funding for shows; a backlash against professionals - actors, journalists, musicians - working for nothing except the joy of working, experience and exposure.

These two trends interest me profoundly. As we, at CharPo, have said - out loud and constantly - we pay nothing to our writers (nor do editors, nor publishers, receive any payment). Crowd-sourcing money has been considered so that we can at least offer honorariums.

However, what is happening out there is sometimes exciting to us, and sometimes discouraging. Whereas, as little as a year ago, crowd-sourcing funds was a fascinating idea, we now see a lot of projects who go the Indiegogo route (to name one fund-raising organization) failing to raise even close to what they were aiming at. Some of these companies are solid, even magnificent, organizations. They cannot - for a variety of reasons - get government funding or when they do it's a pittance. Right now, without much research, I know at least four theatre organizations crowd-sourcing money and having a bitch of a time of it.

After Dark, August 21, 2012

Am I Getting Laid?
What's with the mood...?
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

A friend was about to set off on the weekly column journey and asked for advice. I told him, "When you're pissed off, write down what's pissing you off, come back to it in three days and if it's still pissing you off...you've got a column!"

This week, as I was staring at the blank page now unblank before you, I realized that I'm not particularly pissed off about anything! Horrors! What's happening? I'm not getting laid more than usual, but it feels like when I was a younger man getting laid with mind-bending regularity. That young man had all the ugliness of the world around him as this older man does, but he - like me this week - was able to pass beyond the fixation on hopelessness and enjoy what is working.

After Dark, August 14, 2012

If I was a Millionaire...
Ten shows I'd be gadding around the country to see before Christmas
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Yes, we are in the dog days of summer, but it is now that theatres are slowly climbing out of the heatwaves and realizing that it is time to make some noise for the upcoming season. It is also the time when Estelle Rosen, our Editor-in-Chief, and I look at what is out there in the first half of the subscription lineups across the country and, subsequently, set to pestering publicists.

It is my duty, when reviews start coming in across the land, to sit down and format them for the various sites. I am, basically, a code-monkey. My job would be so much easier if I just cut and pasted and went on with my life. Instead, though, I read everything (before Estelle then proofs the stuff) and revel in the many kinds of art the reviewers are seeing and imagine what it would be like to be there, in some far-away hall, sharing the night with each and every one of them. I fantasize about getting a nice roomette on a train (do they still have those?) and whistle-stopping all over the country to see just what I like. (Forget flying...I have a phobia and need a case of Ativan and an SO rubbing my shoulders to get anywhere in an airplane.)

If I could do this, now, I have the next months laid out. After removing the three must-sees of my hometown, Montreal (Metachroma's Richard III, Jean-Duceppe's Thérèse et Pierrette and Opéra de Monréal's Flying Dutchman) I have narrowed the huge field (and my travel intinerary) down to ten shows and, obviously, kept it to those already announced. Let me say this before I proceed, though: it's the little gems which pop up at the little theatres which - season after season - steal my heart. Now...the ten (in order East to West and ignoring chronology).

After Dark, August 7, 2012

Ambivalence
Big stories have me at my wits' end
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

A very dear and trusted friend of mine who works in the environmental movement told me that at conferences now the backstage talk is not, "What do we do?" but, rather, "It's too late."

Think about that for a moment...

Now. Doesn't that put everything - and I mean EVERYTHING! - into perspective? Perhaps it's my friend saying that or old age or experience or some damn thing that makes me ambivalent about so many things I used to really red-rage about!

After Dark, July 31, 2012

Evolution
CharPo is not what I planned
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

This week is the first anniversary of our podcast, This Is The CPC. In a month it will be the first anniversary of The Charlebois Post - Canada. In four months The Charlebois Post - Montreal hits two years old. The Charlebois Post - Toronto is a month old and already a huge success. CharPo-Alberta and CharPo-Atlantic Canada are being beta tested and we are examining the feasibility of a CharPo-BC. We have launched a new award aimed at publicists called the CharPR Prize (pronounced "sharper") and are looking into creating an electronic publishing house: CharPoFolio. All this while jumping through hoops towards incorporation.

What the hell am I doing?! How did this happen?!

As I have said before, CharPo Montreal was begun as a response to the lessening coverage of English-language theatre in Montreal (two English-language arts weeklies have died since). It was a simple little blog I went ahead with together with Editor-in-Chief Estelle Rosen.

After Dark, July 24, 2012

I Know I'm Right
Reviewers, artists and the gray in between
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

As I walk the dog I listen to podcasts both to relax me and to feed my writing. There are three in particular: This American Life, WTF and Analog Hole. As I've said elsewhere, Marc Maron on WTF has turned out interview after interview that is personal, funny, and truthful with a wide variety of celebrities. Last week he did one with Fiona Apple.

Apple was talking about the insanity around her first album and tour and Maron asked her how she dealt with it all - the adulation, the critics. "I don't read reviews," she answered, "because I know I'm right."