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: 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: Critical Condition, November 16, 2011

November 16, 2011
@MargaretAtwood, may I call you Mags, now?
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

This week I had one of the highpoints of my career. Margaret Atwood retweeted one of my postings on Twitter. I had drawn attention to a terrific article Vanessa Porteous had written for CharPo about an all-female production of Atwood's Penelopiad. Suddenly 276,000 people knew about this terrific article and the web traffic for it exploded and I suddenly had a ton of new followers on Twitter.

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: 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!"