“Audiences tend to focus on the loveable parts of Pearle. But there are deep and dark parts, too. I wanted to make her go through it,” says Justin Miller, creator of Pearle Harbour.
“The centre of this piece is not the pain and the suffering and the trauma. It’s the transformation of that: a full expression of rage.”
“I’m not afraid of combining things that don’t always go together logically,” says Crypto creator Guillaume Côté.
This isn’t necessarily an anthology you can bring into a classroom to read together. It’s not Hamlet, and it’s not George F. Walker.
“The timeline of your body is different from the timeline of your spirit, and there’s a world where if everything is aligned right, certain rules don’t apply anymore,” says Yvon Soglo, AKA Crazy Smooth.
My process with solo shows involves sharing bits of text with audiences when I don’t really know where it’s going, or how it’s going to end. I’m pivoting myself to the responses from the audience — I sniff out where I want to go, and how I want to shape the piece. Through creating solo shows, I discovered how much I love this direct, unfettered relationship with an audience.
“I want audiences to see Black joy through these historical figures, and not just see the trauma,” says playwright Luke Reece.
“Next Stage’s structured and positive approach has always inspired us to come back,” said Yaghoubi in an interview with Intermission.
We wanted an opportunity for more flexible seating so you could have different configurations — we wanted technical upgrades and general upgrades also. Later we recognized the need in the community to have a dance-friendly space. So that’s a need that we’ve found and added. Like with any kind of process, I think we started with an idea and started to break that down. I think we’re still in that process.
“It’s beautiful and strange, the permanence of it,” says Cushman of Lessons in Temperament. “Every time we chose a take, we had to be, like, ‘okay, that’s the way it is forever.’ We’ve really been grappling with permanence in relation to it.”
“We need to re-establish a dialogue with our spectators. We need to establish a creative dialogue with them. The community of spectators and artists need to be together and have an exchange. It’s about bringing people outside, and making people safe, of course, but leading them to the threshold, to let go, to walk towards the unknown.”
“I mean… what does it actually look like to create work? To produce work? To move into a production? We’re constantly working with these finite resources — time, money, space — and so a lot of our internal reflection has been looking at how do we make this process of making and sharing art more human? More flexible, more adaptable to being a human?”
We sat down — over Zoom, of course — with Artistic Director Chris Abraham and Executive Director Sherrie Johnson to chat all things Crow’s: where the company’s been, where it is now, and where it’s heading as the world makes sense of yet another new normal.
Justine Abigail Yu interviews Alison Wong on the creation and artistic significance of ‘nowhen,’ part of Canadian Stage’s Dream in High Park programming.
We aren’t trying simply to shift art that is meant to be experienced live to carbon copies online. Online collaborations that produce work that is meant to be experienced online can continue along with attending concerts at the concert hall.
“The show must go on” is not true. We could have laid this one to bed. But I think it’s been a real treat for us to rally around this little project, embrace this humble medium, and make something.
