Ottawa Arts Newsletter: Discover Who You Are and What You Want!
PREAMBLE
“Who are you? Who? Who? Who? Who?”
I bet and hope you are wondering who you are! Seventy-five kind souls filled out the survey. As promised, I’ve posted a summary of the results for you to consider and discuss!
One undeniable fact to emerge from the survey: you are a fairly easy-going bunch when it comes to the question of when you would like the Newsletter to arrive. With this flexibility in mind, henceforth, I will deliver the Newsletter on the first and third Monday of every month.
Hopefully, it will help you plan your week in Ottawa arts and, hopefully, I won’t mind staying in on a Sunday evening to get it out to you in time!
If you like anything in this newsletter, please forward it to three people who you feel might also like it. If you are one of those people, welcome to the next adventure in Ottawa arts. Sign up for the newsletter now!
OTTAWA ARTS NEWSLETTER
FRITZI GALLERY presents original art work by Paul Wing created in dialogue with the play The Shadow Cutter by Pierre Brault. Opens: Mar 10, Thursday, 6-8 P.M.
THE NEXT TWO WEEKS!
It looks like Cube Gallery’s Don Monet will be busy over the next two weeks. He officially launches Trinary at Cube Gallery on Thursday, March 3rd, which features the work of three emerging artists. Then, on the 10th, he opens Paul Wing’s exhibition at GCTC’s Fritzi Gallery. Also on March 3rd, Patrick John Mills has a highly anticipated opening for his latest exhibition, Naked, Naked, Naked. On March 4th, Gallery 101 launches it’s new exhibition, Well Formed Data, which “brings together a selection of works that are formally linked through their use of research aesthetics and the moving image” and features a guest curator, Jesse McKee.
In theatre, Pierre Brault’s latest, The Shadow Cutter, opens in preview on March 8th at the GCTC. French NAC also has an opening on March 8th, Vérité de soldat, which will be performed in Bambara with French surtitles. On March 12th, you can attend a fundraising event “in celebration of women and to raise awareness for the issue of trafficked women,” which will feature a staged reading of a new play about sex trafficking by Catherine Cunningham-Huston. On March 13th, raise some funds for Deluxe Hot Sauce and design and enjoy your own Artist’s Spa Day Workshop. If you are feeling more academically inclined, on March 4th (11:30AM), Professor Veronika Ambros is giving at talk called, “Of Golems and Robots: Modern Metamorphoses on Stage and Screen,” at the Ottawa U Theatre Department.
In the literary arts scene, the big event of the next two weeks is VerseFest and you should learn now how it will change the way you think about Ottawa poetry. If you can’t wait for Versefest, A B Series has a pre-VERSe Fest EXTRAVAGANZA featuring Banff, Alberta poet Steven Ross Smith and Ottawa’s own Sandra Ridley in performance.
And for some homegrown fun online, check out Sweet Tarts Takeaway, “a delicious web series about two women who take up repo to keep their catering business afloat.”
In the mixed bag category, why not celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th with a variety of fun at I Might Be A Feminist But..
In music, on March 8th and 9th, NAC Orchestra celebrates, well, it’s own gosh darn week with two free lunch time concerts. Barb Popel also thinks you would be very unwise to miss the next Seventeen Voyces concert on March 11th.
My pick for best Ottawa arts blog post of the last two weeks belongs to Rusty The Poet. It features something he doesn’t normally do and does something more of us in Ottawa arts should do–celebrate the lives and experiences of the public service!
UPCOMING!
The Rideau Award Nominees Are Announced! Photo: Jan Paskovich.
Yesterday, the Rideau Awards announced the nominees for their fourth annual celebration of local professional theatre. The award gala takes place on April 10th. Prairie Scene also announced this year’s line-up. I loved BC Scene two years ago and I expect this Scene to be as rewarding. Mark your calendars.
It’s a ways off but a world premiere is a big deal and Musica Viva Singers of Ottawa has commissioned the renowned Canadian composer, Donald Patriquin, to create a new suite of world music arrangements for combined adult and youth choirs. World Music Suite Three has its world premiere on May 7th.
Are you an actor, poet, visual artist, theatre company, or playwright who cares about the environment? Right then, that should be all of you! BearIAm Productions seeks participants for a cross-art event “to warm you up” for Earth Day. The application deadline is March 18th.
SPOTTED by The Jessie!
Writing for a public forum carries with it risks and hazards. Why just last week Jessie was moved to respond to a particularly tiny-minded comment some philistine had dropped like a wet turd into our tweetstream; but alas, the nail polish we had only brushed on hadn’t come anywhere near drying and before we knew it our keyboard looked like it had fought a long war with a pomegranate, and finally brought it to a pulpy defeat.
But in many countries, fruit torture is the least of a real writer’s worries. Those persecuted scribes worry about the real thing; finding themselves on the business end of a secret policeman’s truncheon, or having their genitals tested for electrical resistance. Or getting locked up in a dark hole for a very long time.
It’s for people like them that the local chapter of PEN Canada held a fundraiser last week at Raw Sugar, the charmingly retro cafe under the Chinatown arch.
Organized in part by Ottawa Tonite’s Cheryl Gain, the theme was “Censored Out Loud”, and a delightful cross-section of Ottawa’s working journalists, literati, and bloggers were in the house to read out daring passages of once–and sometimes still–censored works, to celebrate Freedom of Speech. There were far far too many celebs in the place to keep track of, but Jessie did manage to scribble down some notes with a free hand; the other had been conscripted by Nadia Kharyati, Raw Sugar’s manager, to keep the Cabernet Sauvignon from toppling over in the crush (“since you are clamped onto the bottle anyway”, she said).
It’s hard to believe Gone With the Wind was ever censored for anything but if the delectable Kady O’Malley of CBC’s parliamentary news bureau says so, we believe her–she hopped up on stage to read from a GWTW passage that just may have been insinuating that we gals have the right to our own love life, with Daddy none the wiser. Steady on, Scarlett! But if Kady’s appearance was all-too-brief (and it always is for this fangirl) the next reader’s selection was far, far too drearily long.
Step forward noted theatre webby Ryan Anderson, who brought an iPad stuffed with the writings of Ray Bradbury, and who just may be reading still from Fahrenheit 451 in some alternate-universe-Philip-K-Dick-version of Raw Sugar. How long did he go? Well, put it this way: Jessie’s taken 451 off her must-read list, not because it’s no good, but because after Anderson’s marathon filibuster, there’s nothing left this gal hasn’t already heard.
Much better was book critic and arts journalist Nigel Beale. The mellifluous Beale was the perfect interpreter for the salacious Nausicaa chapter from Joyce’s Ulysses, and as the bare-ankled Gerty MacDowell teased Leopold Bloom beyond the point of no return, Beale brought us all with him, right to the rocket-launching climax of the 20th century’s most famous self-pleasuring.
Soon it was the turn of statuesque expose-writer Kerry Pither of Maher Arar fame, reading passages from Tal al-mallouhi, a Syrian blogger and poet currently in prison, for the crime of not praising that country’s ruthless dictator often enough. Of course, with her height and elegant posture Pither could have been reading from the instruction manual for a Pitney-Bowes model P700, and we’d still be listening to every word.
And speaking of fetching speakers, finally it was the dashing co-host, ex-Algonquin flack and house concert impresario Bob LeDrew, he of Ottawa’s most devilishly attractive goatee, who saved the sexiest bit for the very last, picking out the very naughtiest bits of the still-censored oeuvre of Lenny Bruce. Memo to Bob: We’d listen to you talk dirty and influence people anytime at all!
SPOTTERS BADGES THIS WEEK: BM, SL, SRS, and AS. Kisses to all!
ENDGAME
Variety! Diversity! Abundance! There’s a lot happening in Ottawa Arts. I will tell you about it, if I know about it. Send me an email, include OttawaSneezers on your Facebook invitations, or send me a tweet. Remember, keep talk talking up the Ottawa arts you love!
If you like anything in this newsletter, please forward it to three people who you feel might also like it. If you are one of those people, welcome to the next adventure in Ottawa arts. Sign up for the Ottawa Art Newsletter now!
The Ottawa Art Newsletter Survey Results: Discover Who You Are and What You Want! Pearl Pirie Wins Robert Kroetsch Award!
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Catching!
Pizza slices are one of my major food groups. I blame the Grade one teacher who taught me that pizza was healthy because it contained all of the four food groups.
My favorite Ottawa slice, right now: Gabriel’s on Rideau — slightly east of Dalhousie. Decent cheese, decent pepperoni, good crust, decent and flavorful level of grease.
For me a good slice is all about convenient value for dollar. So, at THREE bucks (sometimes, $3.25, depending on whether or not they remember to charge tax) , this is a winner!
My only real beef is that they aren’t super committed to staying open late. A quality late night slice is key to an easy recovery the next day.
Do you know where I can get a better slice in Ottawa?
Not an Ottawa writer. But I did read it in Ottawa. And I sourced it at the AMAZING Ottawa Public Library.
If you are thinking about social media and all the possibilities of the connected age, read this book.
Easy reading. Useful ideas and analysis.
Read it.
This has loads of potential -> The Ottawa Rock Lottery
Click the title of this post (above) to get to the original.
The Ottawa Rock Lottery
I’m helping to plan a local event called the Ottawa Rock Lottery.
The gist:- 25 musicians from all different genres and bands.
- 5 bands determined by randomly pulling names out of a very stylish hat.
- 24 hrs to create a 20 – 30 minute set of all original music.
- 1 night only.
If you live in Ottawa, you know the Manx (370 Elgin). If you’re passing through, it’s one of the finer pubs in Ottawa and ground zero for a lot of literary types.
For either of you, try the god damn pork chop! My god, is it good! It comes with macaroni and cheese and some yummy greens. Instead of beer, try the Sauvignon Blanc by the glass.
I can’t overstate how good this meal is. Then, NB the price: $16!
SIXTEEN BUCKS for an orgy of deliciousness!
Have you been to the Manx? What did you think? Have you had the pork chop yet? Just try to tell me you didn’t love it.
If you think you know a place that makes a better pork chop meal, I want to know!
Every time I approach this building on Gilmour, I think, super cool. This picture doesn’t do it justice. Do you have a better pic?
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