It’s Opening Night!!!!!!!

What is that song from the musicial The Producers...."it's opening night, it's opening NIGHT!!!!!"

Guess what, it's OPENING NIGHT! Our Tototoo evening of One Act plays opens TONIGHT. So finally Tim’s and my work is done. The show is now Linda’s, our Stage Manager, and we can just sit back and enjoy it with the audience.

Last night was a bit rough for all the actors in The Soldier Dreams - well for them rough is still GREAT - I was secretly hoping it would be. Is that wrong? The curse goes that if you have a smokin’ Dress rehearsal you have a lack lustre opening night. However, if you have the opposite then your opening will rock it! Hopefully that happens but only to the first one act, because Remembering Shanghai has really taken off and was great last night. It was just lovely to watch. At one point I stopped taking notes, held Tim’s arm as he held mine. I had tears in my eyes. The connection between Elyot and Victor was so beautiful to watch.

One thing I hate being a director though…is having the audience for the first time – and something happens that isn't what you directed – you feel helpless, want to yell at the stage….like last night we only had 5 audience members who were invited. Jesse, our young lad, finished his “Her Majesty” scene with Tish, with wine glass in hand, got confused as to what scene was next, proceeded to walk into the bedroom and move the chair and stand beside the bed with a wine glass…something he never does in the show. It took him a minute to clue in “gee why am I standing here with a wine glass in my hand?”…then he walked off. I wanted to calmly yell at the stage, “uh sweetie, you are suppose to exit Stage Right after your speech not Stage left”, but if this happened live I wouldn’t be able to do that. So Tim and I bit our tongues, then giggled to each other once he figured out he wasn’t suppose to be there. I might add Jesse is blonde..and oh so adorable.

I think I am getting better at this “letting go” business as a director though. Perhaps in maturity or experience. I recall directing my first one act play at Ottawa U for directing class. I was nervous as HELL as were my fellow classmates also with shows that night. We all went out before and got tispy to soften the nervous blow..then proceeded to hold each others hands. Tonight I can just hold Tim’s hand and he can hold mine with confidence, not nervousness. No matter what anyone says, we did a good job, we have two fantastic casts of actors who know what they are doing, and we can now sit back and enjoy the show with the audience for the rest of the week!

And tonight after the show is $5 MARTINI’s at THE BUZZ, the official Tototoo sponser! YAHOO!

A $300 Million Dollar Waste of money for an Ego Maniac

After today I'll go back to some theatre stuff, but we just had an expensive few weeks FOLKS!What a wonderful day it is! The government pretty much looks like it did yesterday except Canadian Taxpayers are out $300 Million dollars. OH JOY!

"Let’s call an Election against our law and spend $300 Million of tax payers money for basically the same results!" Thanks you bunch of morons. The only positive thing that might come out of this election is a new Liberal Leader…..I say groom Hottie Julian, but put Rae or Ignatif in there for a few years, until Trudeau Jr. is ready to rule. Oh come on, am I the only who wants to see a hottie in the PM’s hot seat???….yummy Julian….

So riddle me this: only 58% of Canadians voted yesterday (SHAME on you and you know who you are) , The Bloc got 10% of the vote in Canada, and The Greens got 6%, YET the Bloc get 50 seats and the Greens NOTHING…what is wrong with this picture.
Harper’s Conservatives (or I should say Reform party cause they are NOTHING like the old PC’s) got LESS votes this time around but got more seats! Harper received 168,737 less then the last election. Our system needs re-vamping for sure.

To be a really representative democracy we need to update our elector system to be a bit more reflective of the percentage of the popular vote. And here is what it would look like after last night if this were the case:

Party Proportional Seats
CON 116
LIB 81
BQ 31
NDP 56
IND 2
GRN 21

Elector reform is needed.

In the mean time, the Arts will suffer once again because Harper believes Ordinary Canadians don’t do Culture….I’m sorry last time I checked most “ordinary” Canadians I know read books, listen to their IPODS and watch TV…um I hate to tell you Stevie-boy but that would be CULTURE and The ARTS. Chump.

I found this lovely sarcastic comment on CBC.ca...enjoy - next week maybe i'll talk about Tototoo!
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"I started voting Conservative in the election a few years ago. I think I am going to vote conservative from now on. Who cares about the future of the environment and the health of our children and there children? We won’t be around when they die of cancer and other pollution related disease. I buy two new cars every year so the cheaper GST helps me. It helps me a lot more then those lazy poor people who can’t even afford to buy things that GST is charged on. It helps the rich get richer and poor get poorer. THE WAY IT SHOULD BE. All there other tax credits and bonuses are just so wonderful! Like the 1200 dollar a year childcare credit. I know I can’t find a daycare anywhere, but my wife doesn’t work. Furthermore, in bad economic times the conservatives make it easier for foreign businesses to take over Canadian businesses. Canada doesn’t need to own their businesses. We should not aim to be self sufficient. Those foreign companies can use there own manufacturers in China and Canada will get more service industry jobs. Even the working class can’t complain, because service jobs are WAY more fun then working in a factory. Conservatives are for here and now, and everyone gets nice little tax breaks. Cleaning up the world is for another generation!"

LOL that's funny eh?

Theatre Freebies and Extraordinary Canadians!

I love freebies and generous people. THEY ROCK. So Tim and I have been very busy as of late rehearsing the shows we are directing called Of Their Reflection – An Evening of One Acts. And we’ve been quite the travelling gypsy group of actors, from rooms at the University, to Crichton Community Centre to Lawrence’s, or our living room to Nancy’s basement. You have to be creative when you do theatre, and this includes places that are cheap or FREE to rehearse and props to use (we’ve been known to substitute martini glass with Bridgehead take-out coffee cups or coke cans instead of Ensure).

That is what is kind of fun about low budget theatre. We still get the professional standards up there – hopefully – and yet we do it with little to no money, operating off freebies, what we have at home or generous supporters. Even the other day, there is a girl in my neighbourhood who goes to my gym. I know she’s a nurse, so I asked her about what our Nurse in our play would be doing with a Drip line. After the conversation she asked if we needed a bag filled with Saline and a real drip line….of course I said YES! Another freebie.

And Tototoo is great for getting connections for “freebies” or for borrowing. Trivoli is lending us plants, another sponser may lend us a bistro set, we are getting a Scrim and a VERY reasonable rental rate.

In life you have to go with your connections to get anything you want. If you don’t try or don’t ask you won't get. And isn’t free always better?

So Mr. Harper, I guess we are Extraordinary Artist since we use our creativity to save money – since we spent it all on those Galas, expensive designer dresses and Canapés you seem to think we Artists attend all the time – since we spend so much money on those things we can’t afford rehearsal space or props obviously! HMMMMMM, not being able to afford simple things sounds to me a lot like ORDINARY Canadians!

On another theatrical note, a bunch of us ladies met at my friend Riley’s house to start a collective theatre project called Virtue. Riley is writing the show on a smaller scene he did many years ago for the NAC Atelier. Based on our feedback and ideas about each character he’s assigned us, he will write scenes or we will improv them. It is going to be a very interesting and creative process. Hopefully by next year it will be good enough to do a staged reading and move on from there. If only Ordinary Canadians would do this...how much fun they would have instead of watching TV like Ordinary Canadians do every night.

Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers - The Bailout in Plain English

I found this great article on Counterpunch today that I wanted to share. Written by Joe Bageant. It sums up exactly what is going on. I know we are now starting to feel a little of this over in Canada. I myself have been facinated by this all going on on Wall Street because. 1. I don't have money in any stocks, although I am sure my pensions are wrapped in this somehow, 2. I knew this would all happen like LAST YEAR, and have been watching the signs over the year leading up to this...but part of me didn't believe it or else didn't really care...but still it's facinating that my friend who go me on to this was SO RIGHT! Anyways, we are not immune here. We are only lucky that we are in Ottawa (lots of government which still has to keep chugging away), and at least we do have better laws about giving out housing loans (except for those 0% down, 40 yr loans lately...now that was STUPID of CMHC).

Anyways , read and enjoy.....and if you have some extra cash, might be a good time to invest...
I hate gambling so I won't be taking part in that, but fill your boots!
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The Bailout in Plain English
By JOE BAGEANT

Any number of cultural historians have noted the American belief that success is a sign of God’s favor. And over the past couple of decades he has had a downright love fest with the already-rich. So much so that the richest 400 Americans now have more money stashed away that the combined bottom 150 million Americans. Some $1.6 trillion bucks.
This was accomplished by selling off or shipping out ever available asset, from jobs to seaports, smashing usury and anti-monopoly laws, raiding the public coffers and manipulating the medium of exchange and blackmailing the peasantry regarding common needs such as heath care and energy to keep their asses warm … to name a few. The ultimate coup was to convince the entire nation that the well being of the rich, meaning the well being of Wall Street, was indeed the common man’s well being.
All went well for a while. People went into credit card hock up to their noses in order to provide 26% credit card interest to Wall Street, etc. And when that became untenable, flimsy mortgages were cranked out by the millions ensuring that every American who could hold a cray on could sign to purchase a home. To facilitate this all sorts of shaky ‘mortgage instruments’ were created – balloon, (sign here Jeeter, you’re gonna flip it in a year and make a hundred K on this house trailer) interest only, and finally negative balance mortgages where you only paid part of the interest and the rest was rolled back into the principal balance. And joy of joys you could refinance a couple of times while the inflated value of these houses was on the way up. Life was good for everybody. The bill was never gonna come due because, god in his wisdom, had deemed that capitalism would defy the second law of thermodynamics and expand forever. So every time a bank made a mortgage loan of say, $400,000, even though the debtor had never even made a payment yet, the loan was declared a bank asset and another $400,000 was loaned against it. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank yelled whoopee and printed another $800,000 in currency. Of course at some point the country had to run out of customers, so the loans got easier and easier. No matter that debt is not wealth. Wink and call it that and most folks won’t even look up from their new big screen high resolution digital TVs.
Problem was that all the jobs to pay for this stuff were stampeding off toward places in China with names containing a lot Xs, Zs and praying for a vowel. It was becoming clear that the entire economy was running on fumes. In fact less than fumes. It was running on the odor of paper. Mountains of the stuff. Bundles of mortgages and very strange securities and derivatives of unknown origin and value. Paper that stated its own worth and signed by some mystic hand no one could quite identify though the blurry signatures looked to read Greenspan, Paulson and Bernake.
But there was a rub. Things reached the point where there simply was not anything left to defraud the public out of, nothing left to steal from the nation’s productive capability, no matter how much paper Jeeter and Maggie signed for that trailer house, no matter how secure Brian and Jennifer out there in Arlington Virginia and Davis California thought they were. So the only thing left to do was steal from future generations of Americans and accept an I.O.U. which the government would happily sign on behalf of the people and enforce. By the wildest coincidence, under the Bush administration this I.O.U. happened to tally up to about $700 billion.
Seeing the oncoming train of financial disaster, the financiers just about wet their pants, and screamed “We want it all now! And if we don’t get it the “economy” will lock its brakes and crash. Remember, we control the medium of exchange. Nobody gets a paycheck if we don’t. Remember that it’s lines of credit from us that backs every working man’s and woman’s paycheck in the country. So pay the hell up”
Folks, they’ve got us all by the nuts and nipples. McCain knows that. Obama knows that. In the end, regardless of the so-called dissenters in the House and the Senate, we will pay up. It s election season and the dissent is for show. So it looks like we will get some “concession.” For example, we will get shares in these “toxic assets” that are stinking up the joint. The rich need to dump them and dump them fast. In another magnanimous concession, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will ra ise the insurance on “our savings” to $250,000 (how many readers have 250 K in the bank?). But it will be redeemable in even more inflated currency amid an inflationary environment. And, in case you didn’t know, the FDIC has up to ten years to pay up on that insurance. So don’t get any ideas about running off to Mexico, to which by the way, we are a net debtor nation.
We will pay. We will pay because the European banks holding all that bad paper we wrote demand that we make good on it so even more of their banks will not fail. We will pay because the Chinese, the Japs and everyone else will cut off the loan tap with which we pay the interest (not the principal) on our exploding super nova of national debt. We will pay because God loves the rich. We will pay because we will not be offered any other choice. We will pay because George Bush worked hard for all those Ds in school and became20the first MBA president. We will pay because our media has internalized the capitalist system so thoroughly they can only talk in Wall Speak. We will pay because the only language we have to describe our world is that of our oppressors because we have been taught to think in Wall Speak. We will pay because we hitched our wagon to last stage capitalism and even though the wagon has now two wheels over the cliff and roars forward, we don’t know where the brake handle is located. And because we don’t know any better or understand any possible resistance to the system because we have been kept like worms in a jar and fed horse shit.

And as we all know, worms do not rise up in revolt.
That takes a backbone.