Call for Submissions - Vancouver

Green Thumb Theatre is currently casting the role of "Stan" in the premier production of "Cranked" by Michael P. Northey. "Cranked" uses spoken word and hip hop to explore addiction and drug culture. This character must rap and freestyle throughout the entire play, therefore actors must show ability in this area of performance.

Cranked will tour throughout BC from October - December, with rehearsals beginning in September. Actors from all Provinces will be considered.

email: natalie.ackers@greenthumb.bc.ca
Phone: 604-254-4055

Equity members will be seen first at all open audition calls. Equity members cast in this production will be engaged under an Equity form of contract. CAEA members: please bring your membership card to the audition.
------------------------------------

* Source: Equity e-drive

Auditions held to play Middle Eastern Villagers - G&M

Auditions held to play Middle Eastern Villagers

Canadian Press

EDMONTON — Dozens of people hoping to help Canadian soldiers prepare for duty in Afghanistan auditioned Saturday for the chance to play Middle Eastern villagers in realistic training scenarios.

The auditions were organized by DB Entertainment, a production company which has been hired by the military to produce realistic exercises for its soldiers at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright this fall.

The cast will live in mock villages and experience simulated suicide bombings and riots. It's all part of a plan to help Canadian soldiers understand Middle Eastern conflicts, culture and language, the production company said.

Many of those auditioning on Saturday were Muslims, and some with Afghan backgrounds.

Zahir Azizi, who was born in Afghanistan, said he is glad to have the chance to help educate soldiers and in turn, people in the Middle East.

"When these soldiers go to Afghanistan everything is strange to them, the topography, the culture and the traditions," Azizi said.

"In villages (in Afghanistan) the people are mostly uneducated and they can't understand why they (Canadian soldiers) are there. They just take what the Taliban or other parties or groups tell them about the soldiers."

Azizi is hoping to get a $250 per day speaking role.

People who can speak fluent Farsi, Pashtoun and Dari are being offered $100 more a day than people without the language skills.

Ninety people from Edmonton and Calgary will be cast for the training. A security screening is required to take part.

Casting organizers said that similar training has helped the United States and Great Britain reduce their incident, injury and death rates.

Kris Rurka, a casting agent, said the actors would not be cast in a stereotypical way.

"I think people are comfortable because they are helping so many people in their own countries," he said.

A military spokesperson was not available to comment.


Source: Globe and Mail

Modern Times at SummerWorks Theatre Festival

"I hold that the world is sick of armed rebellions." - Mahatma Gandhi

Modern Times Stage Company presents the English-language premiere of:
Interrogation
by Mohammad Rahmanian

A chair. A shaft of light. A voice.
Two youth are questioned after their participation in a violent ideological revolution. Their stories tell a timeless truth: nothing enduring can be built on violence.

translated and adapted by Soheil Parsa and Peter Farbridge
directed by Soheil Parsa
sound design by Thomas Ryder Payne

Featuring Leanna Brodie, Michelle Latimer, Ali Momen, Earl Pastko
Stage Manager Brenda Kamino


----------

Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace - 16 Ryerson Ave (Queen & Bathurst, Toronto)
August 5 - 1:30 pm, August 7 - 7:30 pm, August 8 - 9:00 pm,
August 10 - 10:30 pm, August 11 - 4:30 pm, ugust 12 - 6:00 pm

No latecomers will be admitted once the show has started.
Tickets $10 at the door, $12 in advance (416-973-4000)

Part of the SummerWorks Theatre Festival


-----------

Modern Times Stage Company presents Interrogation, by internationally acclaimed Iranian playwright, Mohammad Rahmanian. This English premiere directed by Soheil Parsa promises to be one of the most timely and incisive performances of the Festival.

Two youth, Naeem (Ali Momen) and Safiya (Michelle Latimer) are being questioned after their participation in a violent revolution. Unable to stop their acts of violence once the war is won, they have continued to commit crimes, this time against those closest to them.

Interrogation is set in Algeria, 1962, yet the historical context is irrelevant. In Naeem and Safiya, we see the complexity of young people in countries around the world who have sacrificed youth and passion for ideology. Their stories tell a timeless truth: nothing enduring can be built on violence.

Translated and adapted by Soheil Parsa and Peter Fabridge, with a supporting cast of Earl Pastko and Leanna Brodie, and sound by Thomas Ryder Payne.

Modern Times is an artistic collaborative dedicated to creating culturally inclusive, alternative theatre experiences. Creators of the 2002 SummerWorks hit: Stories from the Rains of Love and Death.

b current's ensemble members at Summerworks!

Collective Trinity presents

th[is] [this] t[His]

Written, Directed & Performed by Collective Trinity:

Rebecca Fisseha
Debbie Y. Nicholls
Christine Nicole Harris

Also featuring
Lucky Ejim

Stage Manager: Jennifer Trinier
Set/Costume Designer: Kara Springer
Producer: Joan M. Kivanda

Factory Studio Theatre
125 Bathurst St. (@ Adelaide)
Thurs. August 3, 10:30pm
Sat. August 5, 6:00pm
Sun. August 6, 9:00pm
Wed. August 9, 7:30pm
Sat. August 12, 3:00pm
Sun. August 13, 7:30pm

She and He have been friends for years but tonight is the official first date:

in a deluded attempt at seduction, She offers up parts of herself;
in a mockery of intimacy, She hides her medical condition;
in an abyss of confusion, She converses with God;

Perhaps steak, sex, and Miles Davis are all the analgesic She needs.

Rebecca Fisseha, Christine Nicole Harris and Debbie Y. Nicholls, all members of b current's the sun ensemble, have had their short multidisciplinary pieces “The Exhibition of Love, Ten Redefined and In This Place respectively" featured in past rock.paper.sistahz festivals and raw materials showcases. Upon the suggestion of another ensemble member, they decided to amalgamate all three scripts, which resulted in the birth of th[is] [this] t [His] and Collective Trinity. The story follows a woman's emotional journey through the transition of a platonic relationship, while she struggles with conflicting aspects of her personality and a divine voice.

This is made possible by the support of b current

Poetry Reading at Harbourfront in English & Spanish

Short Story and Poetry Series
Studio Theatre Saturday, July 22, 1pm
Moderated by: Maria Angelica Enriquez
In English and Spanish

Readings by:

*Emma Beltran

*Claudio Andres Kuczer

*Rosario Gomez

*Pastor Valle Garay

For more information please visit:

www.harbourfrontcentre.com/wr/festivals/ryc.php

Production on Substance Abuse

Last Friday, CAST Canada held a full day training session for front-line workers in Burlington. CAST (Clean And Sober Thinking) is run by Tom Regehr, who focuses on delivering key messages to professionals in the addiction field. Tom also runs support groups for many addicts at any stage of recovery. For his training session in Burlington, Tom invited Draft Theatre to do a talk-back theatre piece to engage the participants to ask the questions they need to learn the answers to.

The morning consisted of an educational session on the stages of change by recently-turned 10year AA, Murray. Tom followed him with an activity to grasp the feeling of truly being disenfranchised.

The afternoon consisted of Draft Theatre's first production! We had the audience sit in a U-shape and had the four actors nearly complete the U with their chairs. After an introduction by the facilitator (me) explaining the process of the show, the actors sat and told their stories of the night before.

The audience then had a chance to ask questions of them, delving into their complex histories. The audience questioned the lifestyles, homes, jobs, drug use, triggers, beginnings of substance use, present situation, future plans... The audience was free to guide their conversation with the characters to explore the questions that they particularly needed to find the answers for. I think that it is this conversation and interaction that is beneficial for the audience, and where much of the learning takes place. Next time, I'm toying with the idea of making the script even shorter, with less information, so the audience needs to engage in that relationship still further.

The actors were Jessica Moss (currently acting in the Fringe Festival's Rejection Rate), Garth Sherriff, Alex --- and Danielle Szlawieniec-Haw.

To follow: More and more research on my part. I have interviews lined up with front-line workers and with addicts at all stages of recovery.

The next CAST Canada/Draft Theatre workshop will be in Guelph on August 18th. The format will combine the "talk-back" theatre piece with a live panel of addicts in maintenance.

Mini Conference on Dramaturgy

Cahoots attended the Mini Conference on Dramaturgy this week! The conference was put on at the Theatre Centre in Toronto by Brian Quirt.

The speakers ......

Rosa Laborde discussed her Tarragon hit Leo, about three Chilean youths in the midst of a revolution.

Sarah Stanley described the creation process for her new work, Press.­

Nina Lee Aquino talked about her work as artistic director of fu-GEN Asian-Canadian Theatre Company. In particular she discussed dramaturg-ing Leon Aureus' process of adapting Terry Woo's Banana Boys from novel to play.

Linda Griffiths outlined her extraordinary improvisational writing process - much less "tap tap tap" on the keyboard, and much more live creation in front of an audience. She performed a section of Baby Finger.

Alisa Palmer discussed her role as assistant director for Lord of the Rings. A unique process!! This stemmed much conversation on what happens when there is no dramaturg.

Trey Anthony discussed the international success of her play Da Kink in My Hair. She took us through the differences of producing it for Fringe, for Passe-Muraille, and for Mirvish.
Trey also read us an excerpt from her new play: I am Not A Dinner Mint about "The crap women swallow to stay in a relationship!" It runs beginning July 21 at theHarbourfront Centre Theatre. Visit http://www.iamnotadinnermint.com/ for more information, or call the Box Office at 416.973.4000.

In fact, the great thing about the way that Brian put this event together, was the emphasis on making sure everybody had a chance to get to know each other. The morning of the first day of the conference was spent with public introductions so that we could all gain a sense of everybody else's particular theatre interests as well as their current work and projects. This stemmed lots of great conversations over the breaks! It was wonderful to have been given significant time during these breaks to really have good conversations with the speakers as well as the others attending the conference!

Dusk Dances 2006

Dusk Dances 2006

Dufferin Grove Park
July 11 - 16
(south of Bloor on Dufferin)

Featuring new works from Nova Bhattacharya and Louis Laberge, Lucy Rupert and William Lau; and from Montreal, Solid State and Roger Sinha.

Opening Band: Quilombo do Quiemado Grupo de Capoiera
Post-show artist talk-back: July 12
Moving Pictures Festival outdoor screening: July 13, 14 and 15 after the show

Hosted by Lisa Anne Ross
Band starts at 7pm, Dance starts at 7:30pm
Info: 416 504 6429 ex 41
Pay-What-You-Can

Click Here for more information on Dusk Dances 2006 tour!

"An event to celebrate.” Toronto Star

“These wildly popular, family oriented concerts are one of the premiere dance events of a Toronto summer.” Globe and Mail

Perpetuating the Yellow Peril

Perpetuating the Yellow Peril
By Lakshmi Chaudhry

At first glance, Jeff Adachi's Slanted Screen is an earnest documentary that covers familiar ground. The shameful depiction of minorities—in this case, Asian-American men—in television and film is hardly news. What makes the movie special, however, is that it offers a rare view of Hollywood from the inside. Apart from the occasional talking head, the interviewees are actors, producers, directors and screenwriters.

Part of the movie's interest lies in their horror stories, which are likely to make even the most jaded viewer cringe. Producer Terence Chang—whose big-budget credits include Mission Impossible II, Face-Off and Broken Arrow—describes being told to change the race of the white villain in the script for the Chow Yun Fat vehicle, The Replacement Killers, and make him a Chinese druglord instead. The logic: "If the hero is Asian then the bad guys have to be Asian as well." The racism is open and unapologetic.

As gruesome as such anecdotes may be, Slanted Screen is most compelling when its subjects explore the conflict between who they are and what they do. It may be hard to watch a repulsive Long Duk Dong slobbering over the girl in Sixteen Candles, but it's harder still to be the guy who plays him: Gedde Watanabe, a Japanese-American actor born and raised in Utah, who put on a fake accent to utter immortal lines, such as "No more yankie my wankie. The Donger need food."

In the seven-minute short film The Screen Test—which was screened along with Slanted Screen in San Francisco—actress Judy Lee sums up every Asian actor's moral dilemma: "Our paychecks come from stereotypes." When there are practically no roles for Asians, a script
that calls for an "opium den mistress" is a cause for celebration.

The art of survival lies in enduring what you must, and quietly changing what you can within Hollywood's stifling parameters. What may look like just another stereotype from the outside may in fact be a serious attempt to challenge industry norms. A good example is what has become Hollywood's favorite Asian character: the martial arts warrior. Bruce Lee may seem to be just another uni-dimensional macho hero, but his rise marked an epochal shift for Asian Americans, both as actors and as men. After decades of being demonized as sly yet effeminate "yellow peril" in the post-World War II era, Lee represented a positive, vigorous version of masculinity. And it's this consolation that actors like Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa cling to when they play similar roles in movies like Mortal Kombat, even when they're negative. "If the choice is between playing wimpy business men and the bad guy," Tagawa tells Adachi, "I'd rather play the bad guy. … I want kids to know that Asian men have balls."

When Hollywood allows Asian leading men to be macho, it rarely gives them the privilege of being "American." "Asian Americans tend to be looked at as perpetual aliens," says author and poet David Mura. "In other words, an Asian-American male can't be seen as representative of
all Americans in the way Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks or even Denzel Washington can."

According to University of Delaware English professor Peter X. Feng, the benefit of safely foreign heroes such as Jet Li or Chow Yun Fat is that "they come to these shores to solve a problem and then they leave. So there is never any question of integrating them into the
American body politic." In this sense, Mura argues, Asian-American men are worse off than women, who "are more easily assimilated by the white psyche in part because they are seen as sexually available to white men." Hence Lucy Liu can be one of Charlie's Angels, but no one
would cast, say, Jason Scott Lee in a remake of Starsky and Hutch—though Hollywood execs were only too happy to cast him as an Indian in The Jungle Book.

While there have been exceptions to this depressing norm—Dustin Nguyen as Officer Harry Ioki in "21 Jump Street" or more recently, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle—the predicament facing Asian male actors today is grim compared to Hollywood's silent era, when Sessue Hayakawa rivaled Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and John Barrymore in
popularity as a leading man. But despite his Rudolf Valentino-esque persona, even Hayakawa almost never got the girl—not unless she was played by his own Japanese wife, Aoki. His present-day counterparts are no better off. Chow Yun Fat never gets to kiss Mira Sorvino in
Replacement Killers, while the creators of Romeo Must Die edited out the sole kiss between Aaliyah and Jet Li. "To say it doesn't affect us is bullshit," declares Tagawa, the anguish bubbling to the surface as he exclaims, "We're not eunuchs!"

The stark contrast between the sexual images of Asian men and women on-screen follows the dictates of age-old colonialist logic, where the sexual appropriation of women is accompanied by the emasculation of the men. That the documentary never includes a discussion of women, or
their perspective, is a glaring omission. The very action hero roles that seem to affirm Asian masculinity can be deeply problematic from a feminist perspective. Is a Schwarzenegger-like machismo really the kind of Asian male identity that we want to promote?

The sexual politics are even more complicated. Take, for example, the comments of Gene Cajayon, who directed one of the first Filipino-American movies, The Debut (2000). Cajayon says it was important for him to make his lead character "someone who is attractive to white girls" so as to establish his credentials as a bona fide "cool kid." But how subversive is this character if his masculinity requires a white seal of sexual approval and treats white women as mere markers of his prowess?

A more compassionate interpretation of this desire is to see it instead as a hunger to be seen as sexual, period. That it entails white affirmation is merely a sad acknowledgement of the requirements of the broader culture we live in. "It seems to me unfair to question the desire of Asian-American men to feel sexually attractive," says Mura. "If an African-American man were to say, for instance, that he wanted to be appreciated for his intelligence and not just stereotyped for sexual or athletic prowess, would we say he was succumbing to a trap which defined real male worth by intelligence?"

Mura argues that Asian men "desire a complete picture of ourselves and to be valued as complete individuals. We desire respect in those areas where we feel we are disrespected. We don't get to pick and choose where those areas are." But we are more likely to see a more "complete" picture of Asian men if we portray them as they are rather than as ethnic versions of Hollywood gender-laden fantasies of manhood that haven't served white men well. In fact, those kind of movies will be just as valuable for the rest of us, male or female, Asian or otherwise.

Lakshmi Chaudhry has been a reporter and an editor for independent publications for more than six years, and is a senior editor at In These Times, where she covers the cross-section of culture and politics.

This article available at:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2705/

Obsidian Theatre Company Apprenticeships

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS - TORONTO

------------------------------

Obsidian Theatre Company

Apprenticeship Positions Available

Obsidian Theatre is a company of seasoned theatre professionals who come

from the many diverse cultures that make up the African Diasporic

experience in Canada. We are passionately dedicated to the exploration,

development and production of the Black voice on the world stage.

Funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage, Obsidian Theatre Company

is offering 4 paid apprenticeship positions as part of the 2006/07

season, to work alongside the company of Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for

Young Audiences' production of The Seussical, directed by Allen MacInnis

and Obsidian Theatre's world premiere production of Austin Clarke's The

Polished Hoe directed by Colin Taylor at the Harbourfront Centre

Theatre.

Apprenticeships will range from 6-8 weeks in the fall of 2006 and 6-8

weeks in the winter of 2007, the precise dates depending on the

position.

There will be 4 apprentices chosen from the following 6 positions,

depending on the interests and abilities of the applicants:

Apprentice Director

Apprentice Set Designer

Apprentice Costume Designer

Apprentice Lighting Designer

Apprentice Production Manager

Apprentice Dramaturg (this position will also include working with

Nightswimming, CanStage and others)

Requirements:

You are a Canadian citizen or landed immigrant

You are, or identify yourself as, a member of the African Diaspora

You are a committed individual who is actively pursuing a professional

career in the theatre

You have some degree of experience at the community level, in an

educational

institution or in a professional organization

Applicants must submit a bio/resume and letter of intent indicating

career goals and how an apprentice position would help in achieving

those goals. Interviews will be conducted during the last week of July.

Submit Applications to:

Naomi Campbell

Apprenticeship Coordinator, Obsidian Theatre

943 Queen Street East

Toronto ON M4M 1J6

For more information call Naomi Campbell at 416 703 5491 or Philip Akin

at

416 463 8444 or email naomic@interlog.com.

Application Deadline: July 20, 2006

------------------------------------