snow sculpture from last year's event

For Edward Yersh, reclaiming public space is a good way to strengthen a community by providing an opportunity for the collaborative creation of art.

“I want to help people experience what a joy it is for us to create culture for each other rather than consuming it from the standard corporate sources,” Yersh says of the annual NDG Winter Solstice Celebration,  “I want to give the community a chance to reflect itself back to itself.”

Yersh started this celebration last year and it brought out “a good 2 dozen revelers” who created a spontaneous lantern-led parade around the park which eventually culminated in people lighting candles one by one and placing them in niches on a snow sculpture while casting “their hopes for themselves, their community and the world into the stream of time.”

For this year’s event, happening today in Girouard Park, Yersh plans to have nicer lanterns and provide participants with tools to build the snow sculptures during the day and incorporate light into the sculptures at night.

“I’m being more deliberate about inviting musicians,” he added, “so the lighting up of the sculpture ceremony should have some fine entertainment associated with it.”

While Yersh has nothing but praise for his community, he is less impressed with the municipal bureaucracy he dealt with leading up to this event.  The borough claims he needs a permit for an event like this, while other uses of the park like pick-up hockey games and pic-nics don’t.  Yersh does not see any difference and will proceed as planned while making an effort to respect the “zillions of statutes and by-laws” that regulate the various activities involved.

“Apparently the only form of fire that is permissible are matches and lighters for smoking,” Yersh comments, “they even want you to apply for a permit to light  candles.” Despite this, his attitude remains: “It’s our park. We pay you to manage it for us.”

Yersh sees this event as a five-year ritual that will culminate in 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar.

“The ultimate goal is to provide a thread of hope and constancy for the community as we move through the Great Shift that reaches a culmination on December 21st, 2012,” Yersh states, adding that on a community level, this project has a goal of giving people “a sense of their own magic. How entertaining we can be to each other.”

NDG Winter Solstice Celebration takes place Sunday, December 21st in Parc Girouard, noon-5pm and 7-9pm

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Friday night, over 15 artists will play for free to collect toys for underprivileged children and at the same time show that the concept of Le Maître Chanteur is still alive even though the place itself has closed its doors.

Marie-Suzanne Brossoit, Louis-André Bourque, Jean-Marie Pelletier and others will participate in Sourire d’enfant, an event founded over 10 years ago by singer-songwriter Landriault, who will be on hand to perform in a duo with Monique Paquin.  The two of them will also co-host with Michel Parent of QuébecPop.

Cover is a new toy and the toys collected will be given to the non-profit organization les enfants de Béthanie.  The event will take place at L’escalier.  It is being organized by the team that put together the series at the now closed cultural bistro Le Maître Chanteur in Montreal.

Since November 2006, Landriault and his team produced over 500 shows featuring over 175 singer-songwriters and musicians as well as visual art exhibitions, book and record launches on the Maître Chanteur stage.  They also participated in the infringement Festival in 2006 and 2007, offering a new show every night of the events.

In early December Le Maître Chanteur closed its doors, but the team is currently determining the best way to ensure the continuation of the project.  Maybe it will be new investors, maybe it will be a grant, or maybe even a new gathering location.

We don’t know just what form the future of Le Maître Chanteur will take but we can be certain that the spirit of original art and giving to the less fortunate is alive and well in the artists that will play at Sourire d’enfant.

Sourire d’enfant, Friday, December 19th, 8:30pm, L’escalier, 522 St Catherine East, metro Berri-UQAM, cover charge: new toy (unpackaged)

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Manny Fried at the opening of the space that bears his name.

by Jason C. McLean

Manny Fried was once called the worst subversive in Buffalo.  Now this actor, playwright, union organizer and all-around artistic activist has a theatre named after him thanks, appropriately, to Buffalo’s Subversive Theatre Collective.

“We hope to represent the connection between theatre and community activism,” says Kurt Schneiderman, Subversive’s artistic director and the co-founder and ‘overall scheduling dude’ of Buffalo’s infringement festival, “Fried is the embodiment of that connection.”

Fried began his career as an actor in New York City in the 30s and 40s and moonlighted as a factory worker.  He felt an ethical obligation to join a union and eventually rose to a leadership role.  After red-baiting and government crackdowns, he was forced out in 1956 and blacklisted for 16 years.

During his exile, Fried turned once again to theatre, writing dozens of plays theatrically documenting what had happened to him and others in the union movement.  In 1970’s Drop Hammer, Fried tackles the bitter differences that ripped apart one of Buffalo’s industrial unions in the 50s.  Subversive is currently presenting this work at the Manny Fried Playhose.

After Saturday’s performance, Fried will speak.  Not only will he be taking the stage in a venue named for him, but in a building where auto workers once built cars for the Pierce Arrow corporation.

Buffalo is filled with abandoned buildings and low real-estate prices.  According to Schneiderman, the collision of the two factors helped to make it possible for an activist collective like Subversive to get its own space, something that is a bit of a rarity in other communities.

“Buffalo also has the most theatres per capita,” Schneiderman adds, “it also has many themed theatres.  There’s an Irish Classical theatre, a theatre for the Gay community, a Jewish Repertory theatre.  They speak very explicitly to a specific niche.”

There wasn’t a theatre in Buffalo specifically dedicated to work trying to bring about social change and now thanks to the Manny Fried, that void has been filled.  This is a good fit because, according to Schneiderman, Buffalo has a long history of activism.  In fact, the University of Buffalo was even considered the Berkley of the north by many back in the 60s.

construction of the Manny Fried Playhouse

The Manny Fried Playhose will house Subversive productions and also be a venue in this summer’s Buffalo infringement festival.  It is through this event that Schneiderman met a dance troupe that has their own space in the Great Arrow.  They introduced him to the building that may very well become Subversive’s long-term home.

Schneiderman is happy with the potential that such a place brings and observes that groups without a home are “always a victim of the winds of fate.”

Some of the old reactions do persist, including the almost hostile one from members of the theatre community to the group’s policy of making all events pay-what-you-can, but Schneiderman doesn’t want to stop making shows accessible to all, regardless of their income.  In fact, he doesn’t want to change much in hopes of getting a broader audience.

“Focus on what makes you different rather than what makes you the same” he states, “and don’t let anyone talk you out of it.”

Categories: artists, community activism, interview, news
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During Quebec City’s 400th anniversary celebrations this past July, officials decided to give the key to the city to the Canadian military in an early morning ceremony.  Protesters showed up, including some infringers who decided to challenge the ceremony with an ironic scene talking about the “real key” that can open doors in our time:

Later in the day, there was a military parade and a protest.  This time, though, there was the start of a new type of protesting.  Yes, we’re talking about the Hardcore Disco protest, have a look:

Thank-you to J-F Noel for the performances and to Guerilla Video Productions for the clips.

Categories: community activism, culture jamming, video
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Reclaim the Main is preparing to deal with the latest violation of our historic site: “scaffolding wrap”.

Late spring, scaffolding went up around the building on the southwest corner of the Main and Sherbrooke Street…

To read this article, please visit the Recalim the Main website: www.optative.net/reclaimthemain/news.html

Please feel free to comment below

Categories: July 2008, community activism
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by Jason C. McLean, The Talking Stick
originally published on Outside The Box (http://jasoncmclean.blogspot.com)

With over 300 projects in over 50 venues, the fourth-annual Buffalo Infringement Festival, opening this Thursday, promises to be the biggest infringement yet. We now present a look back to last year’s event, from the point of view of a Montreal infringer…

For the third year in a row, Car Stories played the Buffalo infringement Festival, for the third year in a row, I made it down and for the first time, I found a bit of time to write about it.

Now entering it’s third year, the Buffalo festival is, without a doubt, the largest in the International infringement circuit (so far). While the Montreal infringement improved audiences and developed the local infringement community this year by pulling itself back and focusing on less shows centered around the Plateau neighborhood, Buffalo’s event keeps getting bigger and better.

With over 140 acts this year (up from last year and almost quadruple the number of acts in the original 2005 Buffalo event), the growth in the festival’s size is matched by it’s growth in intimate community feeling and original, spontaneous ideas.

That’s not to say that the festival doesn’t have it’s critics, or should I say critic. Among all the praise and in-depth coverage found in Buffalo’s media, there was one editorial (um, “survival guide”) in the Artvoice urging the festival to drop it’s claim to support and represent underground artists with something to say by giving them a place to say it.

I’m not sure if anyone took that advice to heart, but it sure didn’t look like it on the streets of Allentown (the festival’s epicenter) during the festival’s opening weekend and the subsequent few days we were in town.

As people were busy completing their “self-infringement” assignments, pulled out of a box at Rust Belt Books, four separate public performances turned Allen Street into a spontaneous artistic celebration. On Monday night alone, three of them co-existed simultaneously.

The surreal experience started when Subversive Theatre’s fantastic street-theatre version of Berthold Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule (which I had the chance to catch a day earlier) made it’s way down Allen parade-style past MC Vendetta’s Open-Lot (a musical open-mike in a parking lot) to Day’s Park.

We started preparing for Car Stories, while taking in some of what was happening around us. Just before our first showtime of the evening (with a new show every 30 minutes, Car Stories has several), The Exception and the Rule made it’s way back to Allen Street and took over the parking lot next to Nietzsche’s, briefly trapping one of our actors behind the scene. It moved on to the parking lot where Open-Lot was taking place, just as they went on break.

Categories: analysis, reports
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by Donovan King, Optative Theatrical Laboratories Radical Dramaturgy Unit

An analysis of Quebec’s 400e Celebrations from a post-colonial viewpoint, related to the subject matter of OTL’s Sinking Neptune.

It can be read online in PDF format here:

http://optative.net/library/kings400eanalysis.pdf

Sinking Neptune runs tonight at 11pm at La Maison de l’amitiee, 120 Duluth East, no cover, voluntary contribution

Categories: analysis, community activism
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by Maria-Hélèna Pacelli, The Talking Stick

When I sat down to write this article, I had a series of brilliant punchlines that I knew were only interesting to myself. But this article really isn’t about punchlines. It’s about how we construct and deconstruct ideas surrounding activism and art and all the intersectionalities that convergence entails.

The evening kicks off with La toune a Landriault playing in the background.

In the midst of an exhibition of political works of art entitled Non à la paix, ça ferait trop de chômeurs, the debate begins.

If art can be loosely defined as creative production and activism can be loosely understood as intentional actions that are meant to raise awareness or bring about social or political change, what happens when you combine the two? The convergence of art and activism raises a number of questions in terms of how we think about art and activism on their own.

The debate hinges on four themes, including legality/illegality, public/private spheres, sponsorship and communications. But of course, it goes on to include much more.

Some would argue that art has always had a subversive component at its heart, and though the expression artist-activism may seem redundant in this optic, it also reminds us of the radical spaces where art comes from. Indeed, there are so many definitions of art and activism surrounding the pseudo-conferences table pieced together from café tables at Le Maître Chanteur, that is becomes almost overwhelming and yet somehow exciting to navigate the different ways that activists envision the practices they share so seamlessly.

Several important questions are raised about the future of these subversive practices and about the ethics involved in building this movement. There is a looming danger of emulating the very structures that we aim to disrupt in our organized efforts to dismantle them. Power differentials remain. The inability to reach the mainstream population through traditional channels seems both challenging and yet almost undesirable. As one panelist explained, “When we don’t participate in the fight, we maintain.”

There is a necessity within activist circles, to recognize that there are fundamentally conflicting visions of the world at odds here. When working on the front of cultural resistance, we must ask ourselves, as another panelist expressed so pointedly, if our goal is create a parallel (alternative) culture, or to deconstruct what is already in place.

As most artists know, empowerment begins from within. We all have the power to change things and reappropriating this power will come from the use of many different methods and practices on a local scale and then sharing our stories and experiences on a larger scale. It’s something that we all carry and share with those around us; it can’t be forced or indoctrinated – and it’s up to us to take it back!

Categories: analysis, reports
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Canada Economic Development, a Federal Ministry, has decided to cut the grant annually awarded to First Peoples’ Festival. There was no forewarning of this cutback, announced less than four weeks prior to the event. It will have a destabilising impact on the event’s activities and is a serious blow for the continuation of the only annual event of international scope devoted to the First Nations in Quebec’s major city.

As First Peoples’ Festival has a proven record of excellent performance, this decision is very difficult to understand, while other events with greater access to budgets and funding have seen millions pour into their already deep pockets.

Political repression? Influence peddling? A fit of pique on minister Blackburn’s part after AFNQL’s testimony at the UN? We can only conjecture on the motivations lurking behind this brutal cutback. It seems obvious that the timing and approach chosen are intended to inflict the greatest possible damage on the festival’s prospects for survival.

As a first step, we call upon partners and friends of First Peoples’ Festival to support our appeal, demanding that the Ministry rescind this unacceptable decision.

Here is a form letter we are asking you to send to the minister concerned, Jean-Pierre Blackburn blackburn.j@parl.gc.ca, with a copy to the Prime Minister’s office pm@pm.gc.ca. Feel free to add any personal statements and comments, but at this stage, please remember that the tone must remain polite.

Thank you for supporting First Peoples’ Festival

André Dudemaine

Director, Land InSights

Categories: announcements, community activism
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Gary Corbin thought that once he had survived cancer, people would be fair with him and he could continue to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. Unfortunately, he found out that the world of stage and screen just wasn’t ready for a one-legged man.

“I believed in the American Dream, that everybody has an opportunity,” he said in a telephone interview from New York, “but people said that it’s just not true in my case.”

Having lost his right leg to bone cancer (osteogenic sarcoma) in 1975, Corbin found that he wasn’t getting any scripts or auditions and eventually realized that he wasn’t going to get any work as an actor by waiting around for it.

He was walking down a street in Harlem one day when it hit him. If he wanted work as an actor, he’d have to make a show for himself.

This led to the creation of his critically-acclaimed one-man show “….four one-legged men!” which premiered at last year’s Buffalo infringement Festival.

In a series of short pieces, Corbin plays four different characters, each with one leg, in four different time periods.

“We’re people with the same types of trials,” he says of the characters in his show and physically unique people in general, “this show is about the universal human spirit in all of us.”

Looking for a place to perform it was the next step. The Franklin Furnace Foundation let him know about the Buffalo infringement Festival and he applied.

He credits the fest with helping him dust off the demons that were torturing him at the time: the loss of his grandmother and the loss of love. He tried sex and religion but realized that what really works is performing

“I wasn’t rejected,” Corbin remembers, “I was supported; they helped me put it up there. It let me know that I could probably produce it myself in New York City.”

The show has received rave reviews, both in Buffalo and later when it played The Producers Club in the heart of Manhattan’s Theatre District. Corbin was able to produce the show himself with support from just about every source available to individual artists including: The Franklin Furnace and Jerome Foundations, The New York State Council on the Arts, and The New York Foundation for the Arts.

Corbin is now considered an “emerging artist” who is on the verge of contributing something major to the world of theater and performance art.

He feels his show offers a service that can open doors so more physically unique people can get their stories told. Corbin argues that while many people in the theatre world say they support and show diversity, there is a resistance to presenting physically disabled characters in a rounded way.

“I show people with disabilities as multi-dimensional,” Corbin comments, “theatre needs a facelift, we need new ideas.”

Those new ideas will be presented this June as “….four one-legged men!” comes to the Montreal infringement Festival.

Corbin has never been to Montreal and is very excited about coming to play.

“People who go out of the country come back more rounded, with a broader perspective on life” he observes, “I’m looking forward to performing again.”

And judging by the buzz already building on message boards and through word of mouth, Montrealers are excited about Corbin’s show, too.

Categories: artists, interview
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