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

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)

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.”

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.

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

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

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