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Sister Spit began in 1997 as a lesbian-feminist spoken word and performance art collective founded by Michelle Tea and Sini Anderson. Since then, Sister Spit has toured North America’s theatres, universities, and festivals, performing at the Casto Street Fair, Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and San Francisco’s LadyFest. Today, the legacy continues with Sister Spit: The Next Generation, a no longer exclusively female continuation of the original collective. Renowned writers and poets hit Vancouver’s Wise Hall on April 14 as part of Sister Spit’s 2015 North America tour.

Hosts Esther Tung and April Alayon introduced Sister Spit and ran through the preliminaries of the night before passing the mic on to Virgie Tovar. Virgie, ‘a hot fat Latina femme’ writer and activist, M.C.’d the show and broke up the string of poetry with engaging, hilarious and quirky personal stories. An excellent story teller is rare to find, and she has the talent to unearth something sparkling and extraordinary in everyday life situations. Poets Myriam Gurba, Mica Signourney and Tom Cho surprised the audience with the diversity of their styles and their dedication to performance. Each artist was honest and unabashed, able to express their uninhibited thoughts through performance and movement. Sister Spit established a strong sense of community throughout the night; the audience was comprised mostly of friends, family and Commercial Drive locals, and all bathrooms were gender neutral.

The content of the program was generally amazing and, most often, hilarious. Poets’ use of voice, tone, volume, accents, facial expressions, and gestures added so much to their words; it was a completely different experience to watch, rather than read, their work. This is why Sister Spit is so brilliant; it is obvious that these artists belong on stage, sharing what they love and hate and think about the world. Their performances were inspiring, empowering, and educational, wrought with humour and strong opinion.

The next time Sister Spit rolls into Vancouver, I’d like to be there, because I know that this brilliant collective will continue evolving, creating, and finding original ways to express itself to whomever they encounter along the road.

This month, the annual Capture Photography Festival in Vancouver welcomed exhibitions to galleries across the city. The festival focuses on celebrating local and international photography and lens-based art, making it a great way to get acquainted with Vancouver-based art galleries and artists.

On Friday, I attended the opening reception at Access Gallery for their exhibition Field Studies: Exercises in a Living Landscape. Walking into the gallery space, I was immediately confronted with a dozen maps of Hadden Park, a local park at the north end of Kitsilano Beach. The series of unconventional maps were produced by specialized practitioners and community members as part of the Hadden Park Map Exchange, a project orchestrated by local artists Rebecca Bayer and Laura Kozak. In this “field study,” each practitioner used the same template to organize the park according to his or her own background. Each map highlighted different aspects of the park, ranging from an exploration of the sensory experience of walking through it to a tally of electrosmog emissions in the area. By using identical templates for each map, the artists called attention to the subjectivity of individual interpretation. The collection successfully documented the inventive ways in which our everyday landscape can be experienced and imagined.

The Act of Constructing a Telecommuning Object by Emilio Sepulveda

The next wall housed a video installation by Eden Veaudry, a multi-disciplinary artist based in Vancouver. I watched as the artist’s hands wove together still photographs and tapestries on screen. Next to Veaudry’s work were beautiful weather kites by Emiliano Sepulveda, another Vancouver-based artist originally hailing from Mexico City. His works emphasized the way in which photography operates, documenting everyday landscapes through the interplay of light and colour. Both Veaudry and Sepulveda effectively used the gallery space to create a landscape of their own, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in their own perceptions of the works. Much like the Hadden Park maps, the installations encouraged viewers to develop unique interpretations and perspectives. The eye, these artists remind us, is just another lens with which to “capture” the environment.

Field Studies: Exercises in a Living Landscape takes place at the Access Gallery until May 23^rd. The related Hadden Park Open Field Mapping event will take place on May 9^th, followed by and an artist talk on May 23^rd.

Capture Photography Festival runs until April 29^th. For upcoming events and current exhibitions, visit the festival website.

The 2011 Canadian Federal Election Leaders Debate was by no means scintillating television. Jack Layton sprayed zingers, Michael Ignatieff made strained attempts at showing off his erudition, and Stephen Harper, for some reason I couldn’t figure out, adopted the manner of a particularly patient kindergarten teacher, speaking very slowly and avoiding any words that were liable to trouble an undecided Canadian voter, such as “climate change,” “Coast Guard closures,” or “oil spill.” He sopped up the other leaders’ barbs with a wide and creepy smile. I remember thinking it was impossible he had so little to say about, well, anything. You shouldn’t be able to win a debate while revealing nothing of your character, personality, or even basic opinions, right? Harper went on to win his first majority Government, of course. And everything in Canada has been fantastic ever since.

The uproarious recent comedy Proud, written by Michael Healey and playing at Strathcona’s Firehall Arts Centre until April 25, reimagines the Prime Minister who (as a particularly inspired piece of invective has it) seems like “a bag of mashed potatoes in a suit.” Set in an even more dystopic Canada than the one we currently inhabit, the Conservatives extend their landslide to Quebec, winning ridings with placeholder candidates who entered the race thinking they had no chance of winning. The play opens with the Prime Minister of Canada (Andrew Wheeler) directly addressing the audience while congratulating all his rookie MPs and lecturing them about discipline, just so the audience could discover for themselves what it feels like to be condescended to by Harper in person. After the opening monologue, the PM sits with his aide (Craig Erickson, amusing in twinkling sycophancy) and plans out Parliament seating arrangements—namely, how to get Conservative MPs who had wronged him in the past out of his line of eyesight. Into this den of propriety walks Jisabella Lyth (Emmelia Gordon), a newly minted young Quebec MP, wondering whether anyone could lend her a condom so that she can get it on with Evan Solomon (not a cameo performance, sadly). In the character of Lyth, Proud locates the perfect foil for our Prime Minister: a normal human woman.

Lyth becomes the PM’s ally, sometimes adversary, and sharp debating partner. She is a single mother and bar manager with no personal or emotional connection to politics. As she takes part in the PM’s scheme to distract the public from his true goals by tabling a no-hope anti-abortion bill (she is pro-choice and mentions how misleading the term “pro-life” is), she realizes that politics can be great fun if you are willing to abandon any real conviction. Healey’s script is wise and cynical about how people form their beliefs, positing that citizens just want to rant about what they oppose and find parties that hate the same things they do. The dialogue is consistently hilarious (characters tell each other to “pretend sex is like the United Nations: meaningless”), knowing, and chock full of quality CanCon jokes. I loved Lyth’s natural way with profanity, telling the Prime Minister “I’m gonna be fucked for names for a while,” though the script may over-rely on Stephen Harper dropping F-bombs.

Proud couldn’t work without fully committed lead performances, and both are fantastic. Emmelia Gordon is a force of fucking nature (I think that’s what her character would say), getting maximum laughs from each line reading. She has excellent timing with the difficult dialogue and her glee in achieving power is infectious. Andrew Wheeler’s Harper impression is uncanny, but the much more challenging task he accomplishes is to humanize the Prime Minister. He moves past the officious automaton of the opening scenes and reveals a man whose biggest problem is that he can’t let the public see his large vision for Canada. He is caring, pragmatic, and (horribly, horribly) sexy. I will never see Stephen Harper’s cardigan in the same way after having seen it ripped off in passion, no matter how much I may want to.

The play’s tone shifts between battle of ideas and sex farce, sometimes unsuccessfully, and I found the ending, which gestures at the next generation of Canadian politicians, to be incoherent. The script’s highlight is a bravura monologue in which the PM lists all the many things he only pretends to care about (Israel, the long gun registry, arts funding), naming and slaying every sacred cow of Canadian outrage from either side of the House of Commons. The PM only pursues these side issues so that he can give Canada “an appropriately-sized government,” an ideally mundane dream. Proud‘s conspiracy theory is that the people who are in power are secretly plotting to make the country much better, that when you get to know the man behind the curtain, he’s actually really swell.

It’s very comforting to think that our rulers only want what’s best for us, but (in my opinion and experience) it’s not true. So if you only leave your house once this year, for God and country’s sake, please use that trip to vote in 2015’s Federal Election (in October, unless chicanery occurs). But if you do happen to venture out more than once, go see Proud. You’ll have a fun time.

Proud will be playing at the Firehall Arts Centre April 7 – 25, 2015.
Info and tickets found here.

I’m painfully on time for everything, so I arrive at Yuk Yuks for Yo! Vancity Laughs Vol.9 with a friend at 7pm sharp. Which is great, except it turns out that it doesn’t actually start until 8pm. So we grab a seat and chat as we watch the night’s comics filter in.

Two of the comics, who turn out to be the show’s MCs (and who will later transform into their glib hip hop alter egos, Game Genies, complete with literal money bags, a Tupac mask, and a comically large watch that I could have used earlier…) come over and introduce themselves.

Gracious and welcoming, they joke that they want to say hello because, in a minute, we’re going to think they’re “really ignorant.”

And in a minute the show does start, but they don’t start it – because no proper hip hop show starts without a hype man. As I learn the minute the show starts. Then, once we’re all hyped up, Game Genies take the stage.

“If you’re here tonight this means you must love comedy, and you must love hip hop,” they exclaim. “Who is your all time favourite hip hop artist?”

With their pick of people who look like they hail from Kitsilano, they choose a young woman who doesn’t manage to dart her eyes away fast enough.

“I like musicals?” She says, in the kind of adorable upspeak that gets the other guy the job.

But the hosts are charming and adept at loosening up a crowd, and the diverse pool of talented comics doesn’t hurt, either: Devon Alexander, Kwasi Thomas, Jonny Paul (who is never more charming than in those improvisational moments brought on by “helpful” audience members), Brendan Bourque, and headliner, Patrick Maliha (who does one dope urban impression that is as natural as me typing dope – but it was hilarious).

By the end, the audience is as comfortable screaming “How old school iz you” as they are asking if that loaf of bread is gluten free. The only thing the show was wrong about is that you have to love hip hop to have a great time – you don’t. You just have to love comedy and let yourself get swept up in the hype.

For information about upcoming shows, visit: yukyuks.com

My_Rabbi_web1 — Religion, jokes, friendship—My Rabbi is a strangely perfect blend.

My Rabbi begins with its two main characters, the young rabbi Jacob (Joel Bernbaum) and the recently turned devout Muslim Arya (Kayvon Kelly), each praying on their own. The solemn dignity of the prayers filled the Firehall Arts Centre with a sense of awe, but as the two men moved closer together, the chants blended into a single, mildly painful cacophony. The play, which was also written by Kelly and Bernbaum, presents religious dogmas as dangerous ideologies that stop us from seeing the basic humanity of other tribes, though the script does try to depict the appeal of spiritual quests. My Rabbi is a thoughtful meditation on the meaning of culture, family, and most of all friendship, but at the same time is scabrously funny. In other words, I’ve never seen a play before that contains both the holy Jewish prayer of the Shema, and musings on how to calculate the exact calorie count of semen.

The main action of My Rabbi takes place in an anonymous Canadian bar, and flashes back and forth between the two men as close school-age friends, and as slightly older, less intimate, and more pious acquaintances years later. Kelly and Bernbaum’s timing and chemistry gives the early scenes a riotous energy—both characters are irreverent horndogs, bugging each other about who got laid, how it happened, and whether dry humping counts as sex. Their respective cultural heritages are merely grounds for mockery, directed both at each other and themselves. They exuberantly greet each other with “Mazel Tov, bitch!” and “Burka burka Mohammed jihad,” and they crack (hilarious!) jokes about taboo topics like money, terrorism, and the tensions of Jewish-Muslim relations.

This same tension tears the older Jacob and Arya apart, as Rabbi Jacob deals with attacks on his Toronto synagogue and Arya deals with the fallout of his conversion to Islam. Jacob’s discovery of religion is not as well-dramatized as Arya’s, which includes a lovely lyrical passage about his Hajj to Mecca. The religious versions of these men can no longer communicate through their old jokes, and the invisible wall between them is painful to watch. I wasn’t totally convinced by the play’s overly dramatic ending—the mundane and universal story of friends drifting apart worked quite well on its own. And it would be nice, just once, to see a show about Muslim characters that doesn’t end in violence. That said, the characters’ ability to overcome their ignorance is inspiring and cathartic.

Bernbaum and Kelly play a variety of characters successfully, including each other’s skeptical fathers and a Canadian interrogation agent. Bernbaum has a gangly stage presence and a deadpan wit, while Kelly is a magnetic performer, who can spout off about seemingly anything—I particularly enjoyed his rant about why he’d rather be called Persian than Iranian (“Iranian” is associated with airline attacks, but “‘Persian’ reminds people of nice things, like kitty cats and rugs!”). It might be a betrayal of my Jewish brethren to admit that the Muslim had the funniest lines. But no matter your background or religious beliefs, My Rabbi is a moving and provocative experience.

I left the cinema feeling like I’d just woken from a very beautiful dream after watching Stéphane Lafleur’s Tu Dors Nicole (You’re Sleeping Nicole) at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival. Cute, quirky, and just a little absurd, the film has all the qualities of surreality—strange characters, unexplainable happenings, and an overriding sense that nothing is really as important as it seems.

22-year-old Nicole’s (Julianne Côté) vacationing parents have put her in charge of their suburban home for the summer, leaving her to spend those hot months mowing grass and working a dead-end job in the small Quebec town’s thrift-store. Along with her best friend, Véronique (Catherine St-Laurent), she spends the rest of the daylight hours biking around, impulse-buying with her new credit card, and drinking beers while her brother’s band records an offensively loud album in her parents’ living room. At night, Nicole discovers what her eclectic neighbours do while they think no one is looking. She hasn’t been sleeping well lately, and spends many insomniac hours ambling through the dark streets.

Night and day are almost indistinguishable in this grey scale world, thanks to Sara Mishara’s breath-taking cinematography. LaFleur employs very few background extras, enhancing the film’s dreamlike quality. The streets are almost as deserted during the day as they are at midnight, and so Nicole appears as a lone figure drifting through an unending series of empty frames. Time likewise is unending, and each day feels just as hot, stagnant and aimless as the last. Events don’t follow a classic cause-and-effect sequence; just as in a dream, they occur almost inexplicably.

The surreal treatment of time and space recreates a moment many of us experience growing up: the moment we realized that mini-golf isn’t as fun at 22 as it was when we were 7 and that buying ice cream with a Visa card doesn’t make it free. It recalls that painful moment when we learned that best friends don’t always tell us the truth, and that ex-boyfriends move on with their lives, even when we don’t. Finally, Tu Dors Nicole reminds us of that moment we noticed that summer holidays can be just as dull as school—that waking life can be just as strange as dreams.

In the stifling heat of yet another inconsequential day, the girls ask, “Is this going to be our summer?” In this seemingly simple question lie a million more, pushing the audience to reflect on their own lives. Do we, like Nicole, bump through our days buying ice cream after ice cream to fill the time? Are we, too, passing through life in a half-awake stupor? Watching one slow moment slip into the next, it’s hard not to ask: “Is this going to be my summer? Is this going to be my life?”

The Sad Mag Archives

Sister Spit: The Next Generation

Capture Photography Festival Review / Field Studies

Review / Proud

Review / Yo! Vancity Laughs Vol. 9

Review / My Rabbi

VIFF Review / Tu Dors Nicole