Blog: Critical Condition, February 16, 2012

Oh! The Fucking Week

When seven days can be as exhilarating as it is frustrating

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Have you ever had one of those weeks where, while running errands on a gray, rainy day, you are at a stop light and you think: I have two choices; I throw myself into the oncoming, or I cause a catastrophic accident which will kill a dozen, much to my delight. It is a sorry emotional state; a mixture of excitement at how fast things are going and rage at how you seem to be the only one in the whirlwind (it's like no one else notices). You are feeling both love for the world and a deep misanthropy at the same time.

Blog: Critical Condition, February 4, 2012

February 4, 2012
Love From Afar
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

I am confined to quarters. My SO (significant other) has just had surgery, is immobilized and I am not only nursemaid but also cook, housekeeper, errand-runner, washerwoman, dog-walker and anything else that needs to be done. As a result (and because I have to be in bed at ten sharp so I can be up for the fucking dog), I am seeing no theatre and I miss it.

Even the bad theatre. Miss it.

Even the pretentious theatre. Miss it.

Blog: Critical Condition, December 22, 2011

December 22, 2011
Looking for adaptation
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Every year I embark on a summer reading project: all of Shakespeare (several times); the Bible; all of Jane Austin; Restoration Plays (yaaaaaawwwwwwwwn). This year I decided to tackle the Big One: the seven volumes of Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. It took me a whopping six months. (I do believe that is what the kids call a humblebrag.)

Blog: Theatre Night Fever, December 19, 2011

December 19, 2011

White Christmas in Van

by Howard Dai

Nothing’s better to get into the Christmas spirit than a wonderful musical. Since 2009, White Christmas produced by Arts Club had become a holiday tradition for all the theatre goers in Vancouver. This is the third consecutive year of Arts Club’s White Christmas directed by Bill Millerd, with the same cast playing the lead characters, thus I had a really high expectation of this production.

Blog: Critical Condition, November 30, 2011

December 1, 2011
I Don't Need No Nobel
By Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Playwright Steve Galluccio, come awards season, loses his mind on Facebook and Twitter. He doesn't like them. And it's a sincere dislike - so sincere that he is not submitting his screenplay for Funkytown (to my mind a brilliant text) for the Writers Guild Award. Galluccio has done the awards thang - the Radio-Canada series Un gars, une fille won its writing team (including him) a pile of them.

Blog: Theatre Night Fever, November 6, 2011

November 6, 2011

Just The Right Song

by Howard Dai

I’m always searching for a good baritone song for musical theatre auditions that fits me. For me - a 14 year old dramatic baritone who looks like 16 – it’s kind of difficult to find songs that suit me.

“Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” from Les Miserables was the one song I used for auditions for the past 3 months. It’s written by Claude-Michel Schonberg, for the character Marius, a really emotional and powerful number, about how he misses and feels guilty about all his friends’ deaths. The range of the song is an A below middle C to two Gs above middle C (A3 – G5). I had a bit of a struggle hitting that high G in full voice, it’s getting easier as I’m currently working on the upper register of my voice.

Blog: Critical Condition, November 3, 2011

November 3, 2011
Remembrance of Dinks Past
By Gaëtan L. Charlebois

On my first day of theatre school there was a transit strike. The buses were on but the metros were closed. So I got up at five a.m., bussed up to  Montreal North to try to grab a bus to a shopping mall where I would then get the bus to the suburban school. 

Blog: Theatre Night Fever, October 30, 2011

Judge Dee and The Haunted Garden

October 30, 2011

by Howard Dai

For the past week leading up to Halloween, I’m volunteering for Seven Tyrants Theatre in Vancouver, for this Halloween site-specific production named “Judge Dee and The Haunted Garden”, re-written from the famous Judge Dee series by Robert van Gulik. We transformed Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden in Chinatown to make it look haunted-house-like, but instead it’s a haunted garden. The show features nearly 30 actors, dancers, and musicians, with an awesome site and amazing soundscape.  Arguably it's the best Halloween theatre this year in Vancouver.

Blog: Critical Condition, October 27, 2011

Blog: Critical Condition, October 23, 2011

October 23, 2011
Starting up
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

I have been a critic for almost as long as I've been a theatre person. The main difference was that when I was 15 and writing for the Quebec Chronicle Telegraph (reviewing for the free tickets) I usally didn't feel like barfing before the play started. Stage fright (terror?) has been my constant companion since those same days. In highschool I appeared in a production of  Sorry, Wrong Number as the murderer and at the end just as I was meant to stab Christine Taylor to death, I felt the bile rise.  I fought it by hurling myself, instead, onto Christine's bed and stabbing away at her pillow with a butterknife. (It looked rather real in half-light.) I got my first review too when Richard Malone, in the audience, bellowed, "Kill the bitch, Charlebois! Yeah, man!"

Blog: Theatrum, October 22, 2011

by Mark Leiren-Young 
(Reprinted with permission leiren-young.com)

Not long after Never Shoot a Stampede Queen was published, one-man-show sensation TJ Dawe called. He wanted to know if I was interested in adapting the book for the stage. After we met I discovered that he'd read the script for a production of an earlier incarnation of my crazy Cariboo tales that my friend Kennedy Goodkey (co-writer and star of The Beast of Bottomless Lake) performed at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. TJ had never forgotten the script or the stories and he wondered if I'd take another shot at a stage version.

Blog: Paradise Lost's Journey to Atlantic Fringe (Part IV)

Blog: Paradise Lost's Journey to Atlantic Fringe (Part I)