Podcasts about Ontario Arts Council

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Michael Blouin about his poetry collection, Hard Electric (Anvil Press, 2024). Hard Electric is Michael Blouin's third book of poetry, a road-tripping, bridge-burning collection of the author's hard-won and soft-edged reflections that seem to stutter-step towards resolution while tumbling down a decided slant towards disaster. “Where Does My Heart Beat Now” was Celine Dion's first North American hit and in it she asks: ‘Where do all the lonely hearts go?' In Hard Electric Blouin presents a bleakly unsettling but ultimately life-affirming treatise that hints at his fascination with the same question and perhaps shuffles into the neighbourhood of an answer. That neighbourhood is peopled with late-night bars of Key West's Duval Street, the sharp spice of BBQ joints, sunburned beach motels, and Christmas lights frozen to February trees. And Susan Sarandon's cousin. It's a book not for the faint of heart, but for the lonely-hearted, and for those who know them well. About Michael Blouin: Michael Blouin has been a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award, the bpNichol Award, and the CBC Literary Award. He has been the recipient of the Lilian I. Found Award, the Diana Brebner Award and the Archibald Lampman Award from ARC Magazine. His novel Chase and Haven won the ReLit Award for Best Novel, an award he received again for his novel Skin House. He is an Instructor at the University of Toronto, a guest lecturer for Carleton University, and has served as an adjudicator for both the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Two of his novels are now in a permanent archive on the Moon having landed with NASA in 2024. His collected poetry “Hard Electric” is slated to land at the lunar South Pole later in 2025. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children's book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League's BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Michael Blouin about his poetry collection, Hard Electric (Anvil Press, 2024). Hard Electric is Michael Blouin's third book of poetry, a road-tripping, bridge-burning collection of the author's hard-won and soft-edged reflections that seem to stutter-step towards resolution while tumbling down a decided slant towards disaster. “Where Does My Heart Beat Now” was Celine Dion's first North American hit and in it she asks: ‘Where do all the lonely hearts go?' In Hard Electric Blouin presents a bleakly unsettling but ultimately life-affirming treatise that hints at his fascination with the same question and perhaps shuffles into the neighbourhood of an answer. That neighbourhood is peopled with late-night bars of Key West's Duval Street, the sharp spice of BBQ joints, sunburned beach motels, and Christmas lights frozen to February trees. And Susan Sarandon's cousin. It's a book not for the faint of heart, but for the lonely-hearted, and for those who know them well. About Michael Blouin: Michael Blouin has been a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award, the bpNichol Award, and the CBC Literary Award. He has been the recipient of the Lilian I. Found Award, the Diana Brebner Award and the Archibald Lampman Award from ARC Magazine. His novel Chase and Haven won the ReLit Award for Best Novel, an award he received again for his novel Skin House. He is an Instructor at the University of Toronto, a guest lecturer for Carleton University, and has served as an adjudicator for both the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Two of his novels are now in a permanent archive on the Moon having landed with NASA in 2024. His collected poetry “Hard Electric” is slated to land at the lunar South Pole later in 2025. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children's book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League's BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Michael Blouin about his poetry collection, Hard Electric (Anvil Press, 2024). Hard Electric is Michael Blouin's third book of poetry, a road-tripping, bridge-burning collection of the author's hard-won and soft-edged reflections that seem to stutter-step towards resolution while tumbling down a decided slant towards disaster. “Where Does My Heart Beat Now” was Celine Dion's first North American hit and in it she asks: ‘Where do all the lonely hearts go?' In Hard Electric Blouin presents a bleakly unsettling but ultimately life-affirming treatise that hints at his fascination with the same question and perhaps shuffles into the neighbourhood of an answer. That neighbourhood is peopled with late-night bars of Key West's Duval Street, the sharp spice of BBQ joints, sunburned beach motels, and Christmas lights frozen to February trees. And Susan Sarandon's cousin. It's a book not for the faint of heart, but for the lonely-hearted, and for those who know them well. About Michael Blouin: Michael Blouin has been a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award, the bpNichol Award, and the CBC Literary Award. He has been the recipient of the Lilian I. Found Award, the Diana Brebner Award and the Archibald Lampman Award from ARC Magazine. His novel Chase and Haven won the ReLit Award for Best Novel, an award he received again for his novel Skin House. He is an Instructor at the University of Toronto, a guest lecturer for Carleton University, and has served as an adjudicator for both the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Two of his novels are now in a permanent archive on the Moon having landed with NASA in 2024. His collected poetry “Hard Electric” is slated to land at the lunar South Pole later in 2025. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children's book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League's BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Summary In this engaging conversation, Brad Martel shares his journey through the music industry, discussing his early influences, the transition from solo work to being part of a band, and the challenges of songwriting. He reflects on memorable performances, his current projects, and his aspirations for the future, all while emphasizing the importance of collaboration and creativity in music. In this engaging conversation, Brad discusses the evolution of music consumption from albums to singles, the challenges of performing in a smaller music scene, and the emotional journey of creating his album 'We Meet Again'. He shares valuable performance advice, his aspirations for collaboration, and insights into his hobbies outside of music. The discussion also touches on the nostalgia for 80s and 90s music, the legacy of iconic bands, and the struggles musicians face in their careers. Takeaways Brad's first concert was Van Halen, which inspired his musical journey. He values the camaraderie of being in a band after years of solo work. Songwriting has become easier for Brad as he developed a personal methodology. He emphasizes the importance of originality in songwriting but acknowledges the need for creative freedom. Brad's career highlights include an album release show and performing at Ottawa's Blues Fest. He is currently working on new music and applying for an Ontario Arts Council grant. Brad plays multiple instruments, including guitar, drums, bass, and piano. He believes that switching between instruments enhances his musical ability. Brad admires Trent Reznor for his artistic journey and influence on his own music. He envisions a future filled with more music releases and pursuing a full-time career in music. The music industry is shifting back to full albums from singles. A supportive local music scene can greatly enhance an artist's experience. Creating an album can be an emotional journey filled with symbolism. Performance advice is crucial for musicians to maintain composure on stage. Collaboration with talented musicians can elevate one's work. Engaging in hobbies outside of music is important for mental health. Musicians often face burnout but should never quit. Defining one's musical style can involve blending genres. Nostalgia for past music eras influences current musical preferences. The legacy of iconic bands raises questions about tribute acts. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background 02:56 Musical Influences and Early Experiences 05:57 Transition to Band Life 09:01 Songwriting Process and Challenges 12:09 Career Highlights and Memorable Shows 15:07 Current Projects and Future Goals 17:57 Instruments and Musical Skills 20:53 Reflections on Drumming Legends 23:57 Vision for the Future 29:51 The Shift from Singles to Albums 32:36 Navigating the Local Music Scene 38:03 Creating 'We Meet Again' and Emotional Journeys 39:10 Performance Advice and Overcoming Mistakes 41:35 Collaborations and Musical Aspirations 42:20 Life Beyond Music: Hobbies and Interests 46:06 The Struggles of a Musician 48:32 Defining Musical Style and Genre Preferences 52:38 Nostalgia for the 80s and 90s Music 54:32 The Legacy of Bands and Tribute Acts

音樂人訪問 Artist Interview : Vicki Lovelee【OneNightTalk x Jade Music Festival 嘉賓訪問】 主持：Novelle / 金仔 溫哥華盛事 Jade Music Festival 即將在11月6日至11月9日舉行，我們榮幸能訪問參與演出的表演單位。先了解他們的音樂故事，再入場聽他們的音樂作品，必定是雙重享受。 購票查詢 Jade Music Festival : https://jmfa.ca/ 主持：Novelle / 金仔 訪問嘉賓：Vicki Lovelee Vicki Lovelee is a Chinese-Canadian alt-pop sensation based in Markham, Ontario. She merges the luminosity of pop with brooding shadows of dark drama and orchestral instrumentations. Her anticipated album just dropped in Fall 2024. Lovelee is fierce yet vulnerable with an eccentric persona; draped in lush lyricisms that echo the influences of icons such as Lady Gaga, Halsey, Melanie Martinez, Mitski and the legendary Freddie Mercury. Inspired by life's kaleidoscope, Lovelee writes about the labyrinth of struggles, unraveling tales of self-growth, acceptance, mental health, religion, and heartbreak. “I'm a huge advocate for mental health awareness and believe in the acceptance of all cultures and identities,” she says. Her music helps turn painful experiences into empowering anthems, offering solace to those who find refuge in her art. From an early age, Lovelee has always been obsessed with skulls and the colours black and pink. “”I'm ultimately a storyteller — through music, art, fashion and movement“ she says. A graduate of York University's Music Program, Lovelee holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts, a testament to her dedication to the craft. Having completed Canada's Music Incubator's Artist Entrepreneur Program in 2021, she learned the alchemy of turning her passion into a music career. As an independent artist, she has garnered over 85K streams on music platforms and has graced the stages of events like Breaking Sound Canada, Taste of Asia, and Durham Pride. She has been featured on media outlets like Aesthetic Magazine (Toronto, 2023), Canadian Beats (2023) and Lefuturewave (Netherlands, 2022). As well as playlist features such as CBC Radio, and Exclaim! In addition, she has received notable grants from FACTOR and Ontario Arts Council, which proves that Lovelee is an artistic prowess. As the curtains rise on her journey, Vicki Lovelee pulls listeners close with her eccentric performance style and theatrical edge. With every note and lyric, Lovelee invites you into her universe, where music is a portal to self-discovery. 來自加拿大安大略省萬錦市的華裔另類流行音樂人，她將流行音樂的光輝與暗黑戲劇和管弦樂元素相結合，新專輯將於2024年秋季發布。 畢業於約克大學音樂系，擁有美術學士學位；2021年，她完成加拿大音樂孵化器的藝術家創業項目，將熱情轉化為音樂事業。作為獨立音樂人，禕祺愛李被《Aesthetic Magazine》（2023）、《Canadian Beats》（2023）和荷蘭的《Lefuturewave》（2022）等媒體報導，其作品被加拿大廣播公司音樂廣播( CBC Music) 和《Exclaim!》等平台收錄。此外，她還獲得 FACTOR 和安大略省藝術委員會的贊助，證明她的音樂創作實力。 禕祺愛李的音樂風格強烈且脆弱，帶有古怪的個人特質；歌詞華麗深刻，受到 Lady Gaga、Halsey和傳奇人物 Freddie Mercury 等偶像的影響。她的創作靈感來自人生中的種種挑戰，歌曲講述自我成長、自我接納、心理健康、宗教和心碎的故事。她的音樂將痛苦的經歷轉化為賦予力量的頌歌，為那些在她的創作中找到慰藉的人提供支持。從小禕祺愛李就對骷髏和黑色、粉紅色這兩種顏色充滿熱情。「我最終是一名說故事的人——透過音樂、藝術、時尚和社會運動來表達自己。」 https://www.instagram.com/vickilovelee/ https://www.vickilovelee.com/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/3uixGLLBZoBmCg07v7VuGD https://www.youtube.com/c/VickiLovelee https://www.facebook.com/vickilovelee/

In this week's episode, I update you on the exciting projects I've been working on: podcasting, voice / singing coaching, and poetry. My tribute to community and podcasting has taken form in Podcast Pals, a bi-weekly community call for podcasters, podcast producers or editors, and people who want to guest on shows or start their own. It's a space where we can come together to swap tips and tricks and connect through shared experience. I'm so proud of our growing group, and in this episode I celebrate the shows that have started and collaborations that have blossomed since we've been doing Podcast Pals. Be sure to check out the links below if you want to be part of this supportive and collaborative group with lots of free advice and mentorship! Keeping on the topic of sharing your voice, I am about to unveil some new offers for my return to coaching singers. Singing is a fulfilling and joyful experience, sometimes we just need a little help getting started and growing that confidence. Sign up for the waiting list below and be the first to know about these tasty new offers! Finally, we discuss my latest poetry project funded by the Ontario Arts Council, creating a found poetry audio experience based on my great-great grandmother's parenting handbook. The project has come to mean so much to me. I've just scratched the surface when it comes to reconnecting with my family's past, and there may even be more in the works than the audio performance. Listen to hear a glimpse into my thoughts on what's next for my historically focused projects. At the heart of it all, I love connecting with people whether it's through my new podcasting pursuits or my lifelong love for voice and poetic expression. I'm curious what is in your head and heart- was there something you were extra interested in? Did you hear something you want to learn more about? Please share your thoughts - I love finding inspiration in listener suggestions, to deep dive into a topic you're interested in. Connect with me on social or shoot me a message here on substack and let's chat!   Join the waitlist to sing with me: https://bestpracticearts.com/sing.html Get podcasting advice, find collaborators, and grow together with Podcast Pals: https://laurenbest.com/podpals   - - -  Lauren's Best invites you to curiously consider art and life as host, Lauren Best, illuminates the creative process as an entrepreneur, mother and interdisciplinary artist. Join one-on-one reflections with Lauren, and delve into intriguing conversations with compelling creators, as together we discover insightful connections over surprising common ground. Join Lauren's Best on Substack to be the first to comment on new episodes: laurenbest.substack.com Lauren's Best is co-produced by Sam Blake and Lauren Best. - - - Work with Lauren: bestpracticearts.com Follow Lauren on Instagram: instagram.com/bylaurenbest/ Let's connect: linkedin.com/in/lauren-best-48a71232/ - - - Give the gift of poetry, to yourself or a friend, with Just Leaves, an "intimate and unflinching" poetry collection. Paperback or audiobook: laurenbest.com/poetry - - - Are you an entrepreneur looking for expert guidance on your podcasting journey? Want free advice and ideas to implement right away? Book a free consult with Lauren! Learn more about how you can grow your voice as a powerful asset with lifelong returns, and get equipped to tap into the potential of podcasting.  

We're not just talking about saving the environment. What we're first and foremost trying to get people to do is care for the environment and you can't care for the environment unless you feel part of it, unless you feel attached to it, unless you can see outside the building and understand we're not living in bubbles. What I mean by bubbles, especially, is that we're not living in an individual bubble, that we have social responsibility, that we make connectivity with other people, building blocks for community, for betterment of, of various kinds.Robert (Bob) Sirman served as director and CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts for 8 of my 21 years there. He had a distinguished career in the arts with the Canada Council, Canada's National Ballet School, the Ontario Arts Council and Ontario's first Ministry of Culture, among many other contributions. I wanted to speak with Bob because he has had a notable influence in my life in terms of engaging with art, ways of being in space (architecture, design), systems thinking and long term planning.So we sat down at his home in Toronto and talked about art and ecology, aesthetics, the role of art in social change, his legacy as an arts leader and what kind of art inspires him (he mentioned photographer Edward Burtinski).You'll hear a story about a meeting between our staff green committee and Bob about the Council carbon footprint in 2007. Bob listened carefully and noted that the Council's largest carbon footprint at the time was its energy inefficient building on Albert street. I was pleased to see that before he left as Director in 2014 that the Council had moved into, and remains, in a Gold, Class A LEED-certified building on Elgin St. in Ottawa.I want to thank Bob for his many contributions to the arts in Canada and to the arts community. Many seeds were planted during his tenure that have blossomed, or might yet. There were many highlights for me, including Bob's very last statement about how ‘having the conversation again makes us focus and makes us think and pay attention to the things that we really care about.'.I appreciate his statement about ‘how it's critical to empower artists to be able to choose freely the passions that they wish to pursue and to develop the skills and have the resources to actually connect with other people.' *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

This week on ReFolkUs, we chat with Just Prince about his musical influences from both Eastern classical and Western music. Through his superb musicianship and artistry, he weaves these influences together to create a distinctive sound that is uniquely his own.Just Prince also discusses his ambitions for the future as a music artist, his strategies for overcoming self-doubt and discusses his recent achievement of winning the 2023 Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award for his song 'Kamli'.Listen to 'Kamli'Listen to the Hariharan Ghazal in a blues scaleFind Just Prince on social media:InstagramYoutubeWebsite____________________Toronto-based singer-songwriter, Just Prince, is known for seamlessly blending Western and Eastern sounds into a harmonious tapestry. With a captivating style that defies genre constraints, his music weaves elements of folk, rock, blues, and Hindustani classical music into a mesmerizing experience. Just Prince's evocative compositions take listeners on a sonic journey, transcending cultural boundaries and resonating with the soul. Through his innovative approach, he crafts a musical landscape that bridges worlds with the intention of humility and togetherness.At this year's 2023 Ontario Folk Music Awards, Just Prince took home the Colleen Peterson award presented by the Ontario Arts Council which honors an emerging professional singer-songwriter.______________Presented by Folk Music OntarioHosted by Rosalyn DennettProduced by Kayla Nezon and Rosalyn DennettMixed by Jordan Moore of The Pod CabinTheme music “Amsterdam” by King CardiacArtwork by Jaymie Karn

I am super excited to share this episode with visual artist, Laura Payne.  Laura and I have an exciting discussion around ideas of multiple dimensions and how to express the feeling of these other dimensional spaces on a 2-D surface. We talk about her process and how important it is to just show up and get to work in the studio.  Laura touches upon how her way of understanding her work has changed a lot recently, especially in the wake of reading the book “The Creative Act: A Way Of Being” by Rick Rubin.  Laura and I also talk about the power of intuition and how hard it can be to embrace but how ultimately crucial it is.   ------------------------------ Laura Payne (b. 1987, Ottawa) is a visual artist based in Okotoks, Alberta, Canada. She received her BFA from the University of Western Ontario in 2010, and her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her paintings and electronic media works have been exhibited at public galleries, commercial galleries, artist-run centres, festivals, and art fairs across North America -- in Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Baltimore, and Washington DC. Payne has received support from the Saskatchewan Arts Board, Ontario Arts Council, Calgary Arts Development, and Canada Council for the Arts. She was a finalist for the RBC Canadian Painting Competition in 2017, culminating in a finalist exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada. Payne is represented commercially by Galerie Robertson Ares (Montreal) and Slate Fine Art Gallery (Regina).INSTAGRAMhttps://www.instagram.com/alaurapayne/WEBSITEhttps://www.laurapayne.net/UPCOMING:-- November 2023"moments," group exhibition at Soft Times Gallery, San Francisco-- December 2023"Saturnalia", group exhibition at Slate Fine Art Gallery, Regina-- January-February 2024Artist in Residence program at the Residence Inn by Marriott, Calgary-- April 2024Solo exhibition at Galerie Robertson Ares, Montreal See More from Martin Benson *To stay up on releases and content surrounding the show check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠my instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *To contribute to the creation of this show, along with access to other exclusive content, consider subscribing for $0.99/month on Instagram (Link above) Credits: Big Thanks to Matthew Blankenship of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Sometimes Island ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for the podcast theme music! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/martin-l-benson/support

Mark Liam Smith is a painter and TikToker with 2.5 million followers. His content is meant to empower artists of any skill level to enjoy creation and artistic expression. He does this by creating clear, helpful art tutorials that anyone can understand. By doing this, Mark has cultivated a dedicated following of art lovers and those looking to learn. Listen to learn more about Mark's background, theories, and techniques. ___Artist bio from https://www.markliamsmith.com/bioMark Liam Smith (b. 1973, Middlesbrough, England) is a Toronto-based oil painter interested in art-historic tropes, myth, and narrative. He views his colour-blindness as a strength rather than a weakness by accentuating the use of non-local colours in his work.Smith's work has been exhibited in galleries in Montreal, Toronto, London, and New York, and at art fairs such as SCOPE Basel, Art Seattle, Art Toronto, Papier in Montreal, and Toronto Edition. He has been granted the Emerging Artist Award by the Federation of Canadian Artists and two Ontario Arts Council grants. His art has been featured in The Jealous Curator, the Toronto Star, the CBC, Hi-Fructose, Booooooom, Create! Magazine, and Bizarre Beyond Belief Magazine, among others.Mark exhibits with Treat Gallery in NYC and is represented by 19 Karen Contemporary Artspace in the Gold Coast, Australia.Mark is a grateful recipient of the Emerging Visual Artist grant and the Exhibition Assistance grant by the Ontario Arts Council.

Interview with Nicole Smith of the Women's Work Festival. She has lived in and/or travelled around beautiful places like Australia, New Brunswick, Peru and the Eaton Centre, but is now based in Cambridge, ON, where she is from. She is a writer and theatre creator who spends most of her time distracted by the internet. Nicole studied theatre at the University of Guelph and spent 2016-2018 working as a Producer for Pat the Dog Theatre Creation. She is founding Artistic Producer of Sonderlust, a theatre collective dedicated to the creation of original work and the staging of women's stories. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Metcalf Foundation, the Shaw Festival, Canadian Stage, mammalian diving reflex and Pat the Dog. With a mandate focused primarily on broadening a perspective and engaging the community, Nicole is thrilled to share more about Sonderlust's creation processes with the Women's Work Festival and St. John's community this year.Originally broadcast on August 14, 2023 on CHMR 93.5 FM in St. John's, and on other great stations across the country.  Check out As Loved Our Fathers, the latest book from Write Project host Matthew LeDrew: https://amzn.to/3HB7BABIt's a hunt for the Holy Grail taken on by an American Anthropologist and a Newfoundland History professor that unveils hidden secrets within Newfoundland history! Support the showListen on CHMR online at http://www.chmr.ca/​This program, and others like it, are helped by support from viewers and fans on Patreon. Consider helping support Engen Books on Patreon for as little as $1.00 a month for excellent rewards, including books! https://www.patreon.com/engenbooks​Checkout Engen titles at http://www.engenbooks.com/​The Write Project signup for FREE book: http://eepurl.com/c8W9OTEngen Horror Society Signup for FREE book: http://eepurl.com/c8YemrFantasy Files signup for FREE book: http://eepurl.com/c8X4zLEngen's Science-Fiction Newsletter for FREE book: http://eepurl.com/ir5JmgThis recording copyright © 2023 Matthew LeDrew

This week, we continue out look back at the films released by Miramax in the 1980s, focusing on 1987. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California. The Entertainment Capital of the World. It's the 80s Movie Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we are continuing our miniseries on the movies released by Miramax Films in the 1980s, concentrating on their releases from 1987, the year Miramax would begin its climb towards the top of the independent distribution mountain.   The first film Miramax would release in 1987 was Lizzie Borden's Working Girls.   And yes, Lizzie Borden is her birth name. Sort of. Her name was originally Linda Elizabeth Borden, and at the age of eleven, when she learned about the infamous accused double murderer, she told her parents she wanted to only be addressed as Lizzie. At the age of 18, after graduating high school and heading off to the private women's liberal arts college Wellesley, she would legally change her name to Lizzie Borden.   After graduating with a fine arts degree, Borden would move to New York City, where she held a variety of jobs, including being both a painter and an art critic for the influential Artforum magazine, until she attended a retrospective of Jean-Luc Godard movies, when she was inspired to become a filmmaker herself.   Her first film, shot in 1974, was a documentary, Regrouping, about four female artists who were part of a collective that incorporated avant-garde techniques borrowed from performance art, as the collective slowly breaks apart. One of the four artists was a twenty-three year old painter who would later make film history herself as the first female director to win the Academy Award for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow.    But Regrouping didn't get much attention when it was released in 1976, and it would take Borden five years to make her first dramatic narrative, Born in Flames, another movie which would also feature Ms. Bigelow in a supporting role. Borden would not only write, produce and direct this film about two different groups of feminists who operate pirate radio stations in New York City which ends with the bombing of the broadcast antenna atop the World Trade Center, she would also edit the film and act as one of the cinematographers. The film would become one of the first instances of Afrofuturism in film, and would become a cultural touchstone in 2016 when a restored print of the film screened around the world to great critical acclaim, and would tie for 243rd place in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of The Greatest Films Ever Made. Other films that tied with include Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, Woody Allen's Annie Hall, David Cronenberg's Videodrome, and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. A   Yes, it's that good, and it would cost only $30k to produce.   But while Born in Flames wasn't recognized as revolutionary in 1983, it would help her raise $300k for her next movie, about the lives of sex workers in New York City. The idea would come to her while working on Born in Flames, as she became intrigued about prostitution after meeting some well-educated women on the film who worked a few shifts a week at a brothel to earn extra money or to pay for their education. Like many, her perception of prostitution were women who worked the streets, when in truth streetwalkers only accounted for about 15% of the business. During the writing of the script, she began visiting brothels in New York City and learned about the rituals involved in the business of selling sex, especially intrigued how many of the sex workers looked out for each other mentally, physically and hygienically.   Along with Sandra Kay, who would play one of the ladies of the night in the film, Borden worked up a script that didn't glamorize or grossly exaggerate the sex industry, avoiding such storytelling tropes as the hooker with a heart of gold or girls forced into prostitution due to extraordinary circumstances. Most of the ladies playing prostitutes were played by unknown actresses working off-Broadway, while the johns were non-actors recruited through word of mouth between Borden's friends and the occasional ad in one of the city's sex magazines.   Production on Working Girls would begin in March 1985, with many of the sets being built in Borden's loft in Manhattan, with moveable walls to accommodate whatever needed to be shot on any given day. While $300k would be ten times what she had on Born in Flames, Borden would stretch her budget to the max by still shooting in 16mm, in the hopes that the footage would look good enough should the finished film be purchased by a distributor and blown up to 35mm for theatrical exhibition.   After a month of shooting, which involved copious amounts of both male and female nudity, Borden would spend six months editing her film. By early 1986, she had a 91 minute cut ready to go, and she and her producer would submit the film to play at that year's Cannes Film Festival. While the film would not be selected to compete for the coveted Palme D'Or, it would be selected for the Directors' Fortnight, a parallel program that would also include Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy, Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire, and Chantel Akerman's Golden Eighties.   The film would get into some trouble when it was invited to screen at the Toronto Film Festival a few months later. The movie would have to be approved by the Ontario Film and Video Review Board before being allowed to show at the festival. However, the board would not approve the film without two cuts, including one scene which depicted the quote unquote graphic manipulation of a man's genitalia by a woman. The festival, which had a long standing policy of not showing any movie that had been cut for censorship, would appeal the decision on behalf of the filmmakers. The Review Board denied the appeal, and the festival left the decision of whether to cut the two offending scenes to Borden. Of all the things I've researched about the film, one of the few things I could not find was whether or not Borden made the trims, but the film would play at the festival as scheduled.   After Toronto, Borden would field some offers from some of the smaller art house distributors, but none of the bigger independents or studio-affiliated “classics” divisions. For many, it was too sexual to be a straight art house film, while it wasn't graphic enough to be porn. The one person who did seem to best understand what Borden was going for was, no surprise in hindsight, Harvey Weinstein. Miramax would pick the film up for distribution in late 1986, and planned a February 1987 release.   What might be surprising to most who know about Harvey Weinstein, who would pick up the derisive nickname Harvey Scissorhands in a few years for his constant meddling in already completed films, actually suggested Borden add back in a few minutes of footage to balance out the sex with some lighter non-sex scenes. She would, along with making some last minute dialogue changes, before the film opened on February 5th, not in New York City or Los Angeles, the traditional launching pads for art house films, but at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco, where the film would do a decent $8k in its first three days.   Three weeks after opening at the Opera Plaza, Miramax would open the film at the 57th Street Playhouse in midtown Manhattan. Buoyed by some amazing reviews from the likes of Siskel and Ebert, Vincent Canby of the New York Times, and J. Hoberman of The Village Voice, Working Girls would gross an astounding $42k during its opening weekend. Two weeks later, it would open at the Samuel Goldwyn Westside Pavilion Cinemas, where it would bring in $17k its first weekend. It would continue to perform well in its major market exclusive runs. An ad in the April 8th, 1987 issue of Variety shows a new house record of $13,492 in its first week at the Ellis Cinema in Atlanta. $140k after five weeks in New York. $40k after three weeks at the Nickelodeon in Boston. $30k after three weeks at the Fine Arts in Chicago. $10k in its first week at the Guild in San Diego. $11k in just three days at the TLA in Philly.   Now, there's different numbers floating around about how much Working Girls made during its total theatrical run. Box Office Mojo says $1.77m, which is really good for a low budget independent film with no stars and featuring a subject still taboo to many in American today, let alone 37 years ago, but a late June 1987 issue of Billboard Magazine about some of the early film successes of the year, puts the gross for Working Girls at $3m.   If you want to check out Working Girls, the Criterion Collection put out an exceptional DVD and Blu-ray release in 2021, which includes a brand new 4K transfer of the film, and a commentary track featuring Borden, cinematographer Judy Irola, and actress Amanda Goodwin, amongst many bonus features. Highly recommended.   I've already spoken some about their next film, Ghost Fever, on our episode last year about the fake movie director Alan Smithee and all of his bad movies. For those who haven't listened to that episode yet and are unaware of who Alan Smithee wasn't, Alan Smithee was a pseudonym created by the Directors Guild in the late 1960s who could be assigned the directing credit of a movie whose real director felt the final cut of the film did not represent his or her vision. By the time Ghost Fever came around in 1987, it would be the 12th movie to be credited to Alan Smithee.   If you have listened to the Alan Smithee episode, you can go ahead and skip forward a couple minutes, but be forewarned, I am going to be offering up a different elaboration on the film than I did on that episode.   And away we go…   Those of us born in the 1960s and before remember a show called All in the Family, and we remember Archie Bunker's neighbors, George and Louise Jefferson, who were eventually spun off onto their own hit show, The Jeffersons. Sherman Hemsley played George Jefferson on All in the Family and The Jeffersons for 12 years, but despite the show being a hit for a number of years, placing as high as #3 during the 1981-1982 television season, roles for Hemsley and his co-star Isabel Sanford outside the show were few and far between. During the eleven seasons The Jeffersons ran on television, from 1975 to 1985, Sherman Hemsley would only make one movie, 1979's Love at First Bite, where he played a small role as a reverend. He appeared on the poster, but his name was not listed amongst the other actors on the poster.   So when the producers of the then-titled Benny and Beaufor approached Hemsley in the spring of 1984 to play one of the title roles, he was more than happy to accept. The Jeffersons was about to start its summer hiatus, and here was the chance to not only make a movie but to be the number one listed actor on the call sheet. He might not ever get that chance again.   The film, by now titled Benny and Buford Meet the Bigoted Ghost, would shoot in Mexico City at Estudios America in the summer of 1984, before Hemsley was due back in Los Angeles to shoot the eleventh and what would be the final season of his show. But it would not be a normal shoot. In fact, there would be two different versions of the movie shot back to back. One, in English, would be directed by Lee Madden, which would hinge its comedy on the bumbling antics of its Black police officer, Buford, and his Hispanic partner, Benny. The other version would be shot in Spanish by Mexican director Miguel Rico, where the comedy would satirize class and social differences rather than racial differences. Hemsley would speak his lines in English, and would be dubbed by a Spanish-speaking actor in post production. Luis Ávalos, best known as Doctor Doolots on the PBS children's show The Electric Company, would play Benny. The only other name in the cast was boxing legend Smokin' Joe Frazier, who was making his proper acting debut on the film as, not too surprisingly, a boxer.   The film would have a four week shooting schedule, and Hemsley was back to work on The Jeffersons on time. Madden would get the film edited together rather quick, and the producers would have a screening for potential distributors in early October.   The screening did not go well.   Madden would be fired from the production, the script rewritten, and a new director named Herbert Strock would be hired to shoot more footage once Hemsley was done with his commitments to The Jeffersons in the spring of 1985. This is when Madden contacted the Directors Guild to request the Smithee pseudonym. But since the film was still in production, the DGA could not issue a judgment until the producers provided the Guild with a completed copy of the film.   That would happen in the late fall of 1985, and Madden was able to successfully show that he had directly a majority of the completed film but it did not represent his vision.   The film was not good, but Miramax still needed product to fill their distribution pipeline. They announced in mid-March of 1987 that they had acquired the film for distribution, and that the film would be opening in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville, St. Louis, and Tampa-St. Petersburg FL the following week.    Miramax did not release how many theatres the film was playing in in those markets, and the only market Variety did track of those that week was St. Louis, where the film did $7k from the four theatres they were tracking that week. Best as I can tell from limited newspaper archives of the day, Ghost Fever played on nine screens in Atlanta, 4 in Dallas/Fort Worth, 25 screens in Miami, and 12 in Tampa-St. Pete on top of the four I can find in St. Louis. By the following week, every theatre that was playing Ghost Fever had dropped it.   The film would not open in any other markets until it opened on 16 screens in the greater Los Angeles metro region on September 11th. No theatres in Hollywood. No theatres in Westwood. No theatres in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica or any major theatre around, outside of the Palace Theatre downtown, a once stately theatre that had fallen into disrepair over the previous three decades. Once again, Miramax didn't release grosses for the run, none of the theatres playing the film were tracked by Variety that week, and all the playdates were gone after one week.   Today, you can find two slightly different copies of the film on a very popular video sharing website, one the theatrical cut, the other the home video cut. The home video cut is preceded by a quick history of the film, including a tidbit that Hemsley bankrolled $3m of the production himself, and that the film's failure almost made him bankrupt. I could not find any source to verify this, but there is possibly specious evidence to back up this claim. The producers of the film were able to make back the budget selling the film to home video company and cable movie channels around the world, and Hemsley would sue them in December 1987 for $3m claiming he was owed this amount from the profits and interest. It would take nine years to work its way through the court system, but a jury in March 1996 would award Hemsley $2.8m. The producers appealed, and an appellate court would uphold the verdict in April 1998.   One of the biggest indie film success stories of 1987 was Patricia Rozema's I've Heard the Mermaids Singing.   In the early 1980s, Rozema was working as an assistant producer on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation current affairs television show called The Journal. Although she enjoyed her work, she, like many of us, wanted to be a filmmaker. While working on The Journal, she started to write screenplays while taking a classes at a Toronto Polytechnic Institute on 16mm film production.   Now, one of the nicer things about the Canadian film industry is that there are a number of government-funded arts councils that help young independent Canadian filmmakers get their low budget films financed. But Rozema was having trouble getting her earliest ideas funded. Finally, in 1984, she was able to secure funding for Passion, a short film she had written about a documentary filmmaker who writes an extremely intimate letter to an unknown lover. Linda Griffiths, the star of John Sayles' 1983 film Lianna, plays the filmmaker, and Passion would go on to be nominated for Gold Hugo for Best Short Film at the 1985 Chicago Film Festival.   However, a negative review of the short film in The Globe and Mail, often called Canada's Newspaper of Record, would anger Rozema, and she would use that anger to write a new script, Polly, which would be a polemic against the Toronto elitist high art milieu and its merciless negative judgements towards newer artists. Polly, the lead character and narrator of the film, lives alone, has no friends, rides her bike around Toronto to take photographs of whatever strikes her fancy, and regularly indulges herself in whimsical fantasies. An employee for a temporary secretarial agency, Polly gets placed in a private art gallery. The gallery owner is having an off-again, on-again relationship with one her clients, a painter who has misgivings she is too young for the gallery owner and the owner too old for her.    Inspired by the young painter, Polly anonymously submits some of her photographs to the gallery, in the hopes of getting featured, but becomes depressed when the gallery owner, who does not know who took the photos, dismisses them in front of Polly, calling them “simple minded.” Polly quits the gallery and retreats to her apartment. When the painter sees the photographs, she presents herself as the photographer of them, and the pair start to pass them off as the younger artist's work, even after the gallery owner learns they are not of the painter's work. When Polly finds out about the fraud, she confronts the gallery owner, eventually throwing a cup of tea at the owner.   Soon thereafter, the gallery owner and the painter go to check up on Polly at her flat, where they discover more photos undeniable beauty, and the story ends with the three women in one of Polly's fantasies.   Rozema would work on the screenplay for Polly while she was working as a third assistant director on David Cronenberg's The Fly. During the writing process, which took about a year, Rozema would change the title from Polly to Polly's Progress to Polly's Interior Mind. When she would submit the script in June 1986 to the various Canadian arts foundations for funding, it would sent out with yet another new title, Oh, The Things I've Seen.   The first agency to come aboard the film was the Ontario Film Development Corporation, and soon thereafter, the National Film Board of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council would also join the funding operation, but the one council they desperately needed to fund the gap was Telefilm Canada, the Canadian government's principal instrument for supporting Canada's audiovisual industry. Telefilm Canada, at the time, had a reputation for being philosophically averse to low-budget, auteur-driven films, a point driven home directly by the administrator of the group at the time, who reportedly stomped out of a meeting concerning the making of this very film, purportedly declaring that Telefilm should not be financing these kind of minimalist, student films. Telefilm would reverse course when Rozema and her producer, Alexandra Raffé, agreed to bring on Don Haig, called “The Godfather of Canadian Cinema,” as an executive producer.   Side note: several months after the film completed shooting, Haig would win an Academy Award for producing a documentary about musician Artie Shaw.   Once they had their $350k budget, Rozema and Raffé got to work on pre-production. Money was tight on such an ambitious first feature. They had only $500 to help their casting agent identify potential actors for the film, although most of the cast would come from Rozema's friendships with them. They would cast thirty-year-old Sheila McCarthy, a first time film actress with only one television credit to her name, as Polly.   Shooting would begin in Toronto on September 24th, 1986 and go for four weeks, shooting completely in 16mm because they could not afford to shoot on 35mm. Once filming was completed, the National Film Board of Canada allowed Rozema use of their editing studio for free. When Rozema struggled with editing the film, the Film Board offered to pay for the consulting services of Ron Sanders, who had edited five of David Cronenberg's movies, including Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly, which Rozema gladly accepted.   After New Years 1987, Rozema has a rough cut of the film ready to show the various funding agencies. That edit of the film was only 65 minutes long, but went over very well with the viewers. So much so that the President of Cinephile Films, the Canadian movie distributor who also helped to fund the film, suggested that Rozema not only add another 15mins or so to the film wherever she could, but submit the film to the be entered in the Directors' Fortnight program at the Cannes Film Festival. Rozema still needed to add that requested footage in, and finish the sound mix, but she agreed as long as she was able to complete the film by the time the Cannes programmers met in mid-March. She wouldn't quite make her self-imposed deadline, but the film would get selected for Cannes anyway. This time, she had an absolute deadline. The film had to be completed in time for Cannes.   Which would include needing to make a 35mm blow up of the 16mm print, and the production didn't have the money. Rozema and Raffé asked Telefilm Canada if they could have $40k for the print, but they were turned down.   Twice.   Someone suggested they speak with the foreign sales agent who acquired the rights to sell the film at Cannes. The sales agent not only agreed to the fund the cost from sales of the film to various territories that would be returned to the the various arts councils, but he would also create a press kit, translate the English-language script into French, make sure the print showing at Cannes would have French subtitles, and create the key art for the posters and other ads. Rozema would actually help to create the key art, a picture of Sheila McCarthy's head floating over a body of water, an image that approximately 80% of all buyers would use for their own posters and ads around the world.   By the time the film premiered in Cannes on May 10th, 1987, Rozema had changed the title once again, to I've Heard the Mermaids Singing. The title would be taken from a line in the T.S. Eliot poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which she felt best represented the film.   But whatever it was titled, the two thousand people inside the theatre were mesmerized, and gave the film a six minute standing ovation. The festival quickly added four more screenings of the film, all of which sold out.   While a number of territories around the world had purchased the film before the premiere, the filmmakers bet big on themselves by waiting until after the world premiere to entertain offers from American distributors. Following the premiere, a number of companies made offers for the film. Miramax would be the highest, at $100,000, but the filmmakers said “no.” They kept the bidding going, until they got Miramax up to $350k, the full budget for the film. By the time the festival was done, the sales agent had booked more than $1.1m worth of sales. The film had earned back more than triple its cost before it ever opened on a single commercial screen.   Oh, and it also won Rozema the Prix de la Jeunesse (Pree do la Jza-naise), the Prize of the Youth, from the Directors Fortnight judges.   Miramax would schedule I've Heard the Mermaids Singing to open at the 68th Street Playhouse in New York City on September 11th, after screening at the Toronto Film Festival, then called The Festival of Festivals, the night before, and at the Telluride Film Festival the previous week. Miramax was so keen on the potential success of the film that they would buy their first ever full page newspaper, in the Sunday, September 6th New York Times Arts and Leisure section, which cost them $25k.   The critical and audience reactions in Toronto and Telluride matched the enthusiasm on the Croisette, which would translate to big box office its opening weekend. $40k, the best single screen gross in all Manhattan. While it would lose that crown to My Life as a Dog the following week, its $32k second weekend gross was still one of the best in the city. After three weekends in New York City, the film would have already grossed $100k. That weekend, the film would open at the Samuel Goldwyn West Pavilion Cinemas, where a $9,500 opening weekend gross was considered nice. Good word of mouth kept the grosses respectable for months, and after eight months in theatres, never playing in more than 27 theatres in any given week, the film would gross $1.4m in American theatres.   Ironically, the film did not go over as well in Rozema's home country, where it grossed a little less than half a million Canadian dollars, and didn't even play in the director's hometown due to a lack of theatres that were willing to play a “queer” movie, but once all was said and done, I've Heard the Mermaids Singing would end up with a worldwide gross of more than CAD$10m, a nearly 2500% return on the initial investment. Not only would part of those profits go back to the arts councils that helped fund the film, those profits would help fund the next group of independent Canadian filmmakers. And the film would become one of a growing number of films with LGBTQ lead characters whose success would break down the barriers some exhibitors had about playing non-straight movies.   The impact of this film on queer cinema and on Canadian cinema cannot be understated. In 1993, author Michael Posner spent the first twenty pages of his 250 plus page book Canadian Dreams discussing the history of the film, under the subtitle “The Little Film That Did.” And in 2014, author Julia Mendenhall wrote a 160 page book about the movie, with the subtitle “A Queer Film Classic.” You can find copies of both books on a popular web archive website, if you want to learn more.   Amazingly, for a company that would regularly take up to fourteen months between releases, Miramax would end 1987 with not one, not two, but three new titles in just the last six weeks of the year. Well, one that I can definitely place in theatres.   And here is where you just can't always trust the IMDb or Wikipedia by themselves.   The first alleged release of the three according to both sources, Riders on the Storm, was a wacky comedy featuring Dennis Hopper and Michael J. Polland, and supposedly opened in theatres on November 13th. Except it didn't. It did open in new York City on May 7th, 1988, in Los Angeles the following Friday. But we'll talk more about that movie on our next episode.   The second film of the alleged trifecta was Crazy Moon, a romantic comedy/drama from Canada that featured Keifer Sutherland as Brooks, a young man who finds love with Anne, a deaf girl working at a clothing store where Brooks and his brother are trying to steal a mannequin. Like I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, Crazy Moon would benefit from the support of several Canadian arts foundations including Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board of Canada.   In an unusual move, Miramax would release Crazy Moon on 18 screens in Los Angeles on December 11th, as part of an Oscar qualifying run. I say “unusual” because although in the 1980s, a movie that wanted to qualify for awards consideration had to play in at least one commercial movie theatre in Los Angeles for seven consecutive days before the end of the year, most distributors did just that: one movie theatre. They normally didn't do 18 screens including cities like Long Beach, Irvine and Upland.   It would, however, definitely be a one week run.   Despite a number of decent reviews, Los Angeles audiences were too busy doing plenty of other things to see Crazy Moon. Miramax, once again, didn't report grosses, but six of the eighteen theatres playing the film were being tracked by Variety, and the combined gross for those six theatres was $2,500.   It would not get any award nominations, and it would never open at another movie theatre.   The third film allegedly released by Miramax during the 1987 holiday season, The Magic Snowman, has a reported theatrical release date of December 22, 1987, according to the IMDb, which is also the date listed on the Wikipedia page for the list of movies Miramax released in the 1980s. I suspect this is a direct to video release for several reasons, the two most important ones being that December 22nd was a Tuesday, and back in the 1980s, most home video titles came out on Tuesdays, and that I cannot find a single playdate anywhere in the country around this date, even in the Weinstein's home town of Buffalo. In fact, the only mention of the words “magic snowman” together I can find for all of 1987 is a live performance of a show called The Magic Snowman in Peterborough, England in November 1987.   So now we are eight years into the history of Miramax, and they are starting to pick up some steam. Granted, Working Girls and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing wasn't going to get the company a major line of credit to start making films of their own, but it would help them with visibility amongst the independent and global film communities. These guys can open your films in America.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again next week, when we continue with story of Miramax Films, from 1988.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

This week, we continue out look back at the films released by Miramax in the 1980s, focusing on 1987. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California. The Entertainment Capital of the World. It's the 80s Movie Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we are continuing our miniseries on the movies released by Miramax Films in the 1980s, concentrating on their releases from 1987, the year Miramax would begin its climb towards the top of the independent distribution mountain.   The first film Miramax would release in 1987 was Lizzie Borden's Working Girls.   And yes, Lizzie Borden is her birth name. Sort of. Her name was originally Linda Elizabeth Borden, and at the age of eleven, when she learned about the infamous accused double murderer, she told her parents she wanted to only be addressed as Lizzie. At the age of 18, after graduating high school and heading off to the private women's liberal arts college Wellesley, she would legally change her name to Lizzie Borden.   After graduating with a fine arts degree, Borden would move to New York City, where she held a variety of jobs, including being both a painter and an art critic for the influential Artforum magazine, until she attended a retrospective of Jean-Luc Godard movies, when she was inspired to become a filmmaker herself.   Her first film, shot in 1974, was a documentary, Regrouping, about four female artists who were part of a collective that incorporated avant-garde techniques borrowed from performance art, as the collective slowly breaks apart. One of the four artists was a twenty-three year old painter who would later make film history herself as the first female director to win the Academy Award for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow.    But Regrouping didn't get much attention when it was released in 1976, and it would take Borden five years to make her first dramatic narrative, Born in Flames, another movie which would also feature Ms. Bigelow in a supporting role. Borden would not only write, produce and direct this film about two different groups of feminists who operate pirate radio stations in New York City which ends with the bombing of the broadcast antenna atop the World Trade Center, she would also edit the film and act as one of the cinematographers. The film would become one of the first instances of Afrofuturism in film, and would become a cultural touchstone in 2016 when a restored print of the film screened around the world to great critical acclaim, and would tie for 243rd place in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of The Greatest Films Ever Made. Other films that tied with include Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, Woody Allen's Annie Hall, David Cronenberg's Videodrome, and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. A   Yes, it's that good, and it would cost only $30k to produce.   But while Born in Flames wasn't recognized as revolutionary in 1983, it would help her raise $300k for her next movie, about the lives of sex workers in New York City. The idea would come to her while working on Born in Flames, as she became intrigued about prostitution after meeting some well-educated women on the film who worked a few shifts a week at a brothel to earn extra money or to pay for their education. Like many, her perception of prostitution were women who worked the streets, when in truth streetwalkers only accounted for about 15% of the business. During the writing of the script, she began visiting brothels in New York City and learned about the rituals involved in the business of selling sex, especially intrigued how many of the sex workers looked out for each other mentally, physically and hygienically.   Along with Sandra Kay, who would play one of the ladies of the night in the film, Borden worked up a script that didn't glamorize or grossly exaggerate the sex industry, avoiding such storytelling tropes as the hooker with a heart of gold or girls forced into prostitution due to extraordinary circumstances. Most of the ladies playing prostitutes were played by unknown actresses working off-Broadway, while the johns were non-actors recruited through word of mouth between Borden's friends and the occasional ad in one of the city's sex magazines.   Production on Working Girls would begin in March 1985, with many of the sets being built in Borden's loft in Manhattan, with moveable walls to accommodate whatever needed to be shot on any given day. While $300k would be ten times what she had on Born in Flames, Borden would stretch her budget to the max by still shooting in 16mm, in the hopes that the footage would look good enough should the finished film be purchased by a distributor and blown up to 35mm for theatrical exhibition.   After a month of shooting, which involved copious amounts of both male and female nudity, Borden would spend six months editing her film. By early 1986, she had a 91 minute cut ready to go, and she and her producer would submit the film to play at that year's Cannes Film Festival. While the film would not be selected to compete for the coveted Palme D'Or, it would be selected for the Directors' Fortnight, a parallel program that would also include Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It, Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy, Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire, and Chantel Akerman's Golden Eighties.   The film would get into some trouble when it was invited to screen at the Toronto Film Festival a few months later. The movie would have to be approved by the Ontario Film and Video Review Board before being allowed to show at the festival. However, the board would not approve the film without two cuts, including one scene which depicted the quote unquote graphic manipulation of a man's genitalia by a woman. The festival, which had a long standing policy of not showing any movie that had been cut for censorship, would appeal the decision on behalf of the filmmakers. The Review Board denied the appeal, and the festival left the decision of whether to cut the two offending scenes to Borden. Of all the things I've researched about the film, one of the few things I could not find was whether or not Borden made the trims, but the film would play at the festival as scheduled.   After Toronto, Borden would field some offers from some of the smaller art house distributors, but none of the bigger independents or studio-affiliated “classics” divisions. For many, it was too sexual to be a straight art house film, while it wasn't graphic enough to be porn. The one person who did seem to best understand what Borden was going for was, no surprise in hindsight, Harvey Weinstein. Miramax would pick the film up for distribution in late 1986, and planned a February 1987 release.   What might be surprising to most who know about Harvey Weinstein, who would pick up the derisive nickname Harvey Scissorhands in a few years for his constant meddling in already completed films, actually suggested Borden add back in a few minutes of footage to balance out the sex with some lighter non-sex scenes. She would, along with making some last minute dialogue changes, before the film opened on February 5th, not in New York City or Los Angeles, the traditional launching pads for art house films, but at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco, where the film would do a decent $8k in its first three days.   Three weeks after opening at the Opera Plaza, Miramax would open the film at the 57th Street Playhouse in midtown Manhattan. Buoyed by some amazing reviews from the likes of Siskel and Ebert, Vincent Canby of the New York Times, and J. Hoberman of The Village Voice, Working Girls would gross an astounding $42k during its opening weekend. Two weeks later, it would open at the Samuel Goldwyn Westside Pavilion Cinemas, where it would bring in $17k its first weekend. It would continue to perform well in its major market exclusive runs. An ad in the April 8th, 1987 issue of Variety shows a new house record of $13,492 in its first week at the Ellis Cinema in Atlanta. $140k after five weeks in New York. $40k after three weeks at the Nickelodeon in Boston. $30k after three weeks at the Fine Arts in Chicago. $10k in its first week at the Guild in San Diego. $11k in just three days at the TLA in Philly.   Now, there's different numbers floating around about how much Working Girls made during its total theatrical run. Box Office Mojo says $1.77m, which is really good for a low budget independent film with no stars and featuring a subject still taboo to many in American today, let alone 37 years ago, but a late June 1987 issue of Billboard Magazine about some of the early film successes of the year, puts the gross for Working Girls at $3m.   If you want to check out Working Girls, the Criterion Collection put out an exceptional DVD and Blu-ray release in 2021, which includes a brand new 4K transfer of the film, and a commentary track featuring Borden, cinematographer Judy Irola, and actress Amanda Goodwin, amongst many bonus features. Highly recommended.   I've already spoken some about their next film, Ghost Fever, on our episode last year about the fake movie director Alan Smithee and all of his bad movies. For those who haven't listened to that episode yet and are unaware of who Alan Smithee wasn't, Alan Smithee was a pseudonym created by the Directors Guild in the late 1960s who could be assigned the directing credit of a movie whose real director felt the final cut of the film did not represent his or her vision. By the time Ghost Fever came around in 1987, it would be the 12th movie to be credited to Alan Smithee.   If you have listened to the Alan Smithee episode, you can go ahead and skip forward a couple minutes, but be forewarned, I am going to be offering up a different elaboration on the film than I did on that episode.   And away we go…   Those of us born in the 1960s and before remember a show called All in the Family, and we remember Archie Bunker's neighbors, George and Louise Jefferson, who were eventually spun off onto their own hit show, The Jeffersons. Sherman Hemsley played George Jefferson on All in the Family and The Jeffersons for 12 years, but despite the show being a hit for a number of years, placing as high as #3 during the 1981-1982 television season, roles for Hemsley and his co-star Isabel Sanford outside the show were few and far between. During the eleven seasons The Jeffersons ran on television, from 1975 to 1985, Sherman Hemsley would only make one movie, 1979's Love at First Bite, where he played a small role as a reverend. He appeared on the poster, but his name was not listed amongst the other actors on the poster.   So when the producers of the then-titled Benny and Beaufor approached Hemsley in the spring of 1984 to play one of the title roles, he was more than happy to accept. The Jeffersons was about to start its summer hiatus, and here was the chance to not only make a movie but to be the number one listed actor on the call sheet. He might not ever get that chance again.   The film, by now titled Benny and Buford Meet the Bigoted Ghost, would shoot in Mexico City at Estudios America in the summer of 1984, before Hemsley was due back in Los Angeles to shoot the eleventh and what would be the final season of his show. But it would not be a normal shoot. In fact, there would be two different versions of the movie shot back to back. One, in English, would be directed by Lee Madden, which would hinge its comedy on the bumbling antics of its Black police officer, Buford, and his Hispanic partner, Benny. The other version would be shot in Spanish by Mexican director Miguel Rico, where the comedy would satirize class and social differences rather than racial differences. Hemsley would speak his lines in English, and would be dubbed by a Spanish-speaking actor in post production. Luis Ávalos, best known as Doctor Doolots on the PBS children's show The Electric Company, would play Benny. The only other name in the cast was boxing legend Smokin' Joe Frazier, who was making his proper acting debut on the film as, not too surprisingly, a boxer.   The film would have a four week shooting schedule, and Hemsley was back to work on The Jeffersons on time. Madden would get the film edited together rather quick, and the producers would have a screening for potential distributors in early October.   The screening did not go well.   Madden would be fired from the production, the script rewritten, and a new director named Herbert Strock would be hired to shoot more footage once Hemsley was done with his commitments to The Jeffersons in the spring of 1985. This is when Madden contacted the Directors Guild to request the Smithee pseudonym. But since the film was still in production, the DGA could not issue a judgment until the producers provided the Guild with a completed copy of the film.   That would happen in the late fall of 1985, and Madden was able to successfully show that he had directly a majority of the completed film but it did not represent his vision.   The film was not good, but Miramax still needed product to fill their distribution pipeline. They announced in mid-March of 1987 that they had acquired the film for distribution, and that the film would be opening in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville, St. Louis, and Tampa-St. Petersburg FL the following week.    Miramax did not release how many theatres the film was playing in in those markets, and the only market Variety did track of those that week was St. Louis, where the film did $7k from the four theatres they were tracking that week. Best as I can tell from limited newspaper archives of the day, Ghost Fever played on nine screens in Atlanta, 4 in Dallas/Fort Worth, 25 screens in Miami, and 12 in Tampa-St. Pete on top of the four I can find in St. Louis. By the following week, every theatre that was playing Ghost Fever had dropped it.   The film would not open in any other markets until it opened on 16 screens in the greater Los Angeles metro region on September 11th. No theatres in Hollywood. No theatres in Westwood. No theatres in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica or any major theatre around, outside of the Palace Theatre downtown, a once stately theatre that had fallen into disrepair over the previous three decades. Once again, Miramax didn't release grosses for the run, none of the theatres playing the film were tracked by Variety that week, and all the playdates were gone after one week.   Today, you can find two slightly different copies of the film on a very popular video sharing website, one the theatrical cut, the other the home video cut. The home video cut is preceded by a quick history of the film, including a tidbit that Hemsley bankrolled $3m of the production himself, and that the film's failure almost made him bankrupt. I could not find any source to verify this, but there is possibly specious evidence to back up this claim. The producers of the film were able to make back the budget selling the film to home video company and cable movie channels around the world, and Hemsley would sue them in December 1987 for $3m claiming he was owed this amount from the profits and interest. It would take nine years to work its way through the court system, but a jury in March 1996 would award Hemsley $2.8m. The producers appealed, and an appellate court would uphold the verdict in April 1998.   One of the biggest indie film success stories of 1987 was Patricia Rozema's I've Heard the Mermaids Singing.   In the early 1980s, Rozema was working as an assistant producer on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation current affairs television show called The Journal. Although she enjoyed her work, she, like many of us, wanted to be a filmmaker. While working on The Journal, she started to write screenplays while taking a classes at a Toronto Polytechnic Institute on 16mm film production.   Now, one of the nicer things about the Canadian film industry is that there are a number of government-funded arts councils that help young independent Canadian filmmakers get their low budget films financed. But Rozema was having trouble getting her earliest ideas funded. Finally, in 1984, she was able to secure funding for Passion, a short film she had written about a documentary filmmaker who writes an extremely intimate letter to an unknown lover. Linda Griffiths, the star of John Sayles' 1983 film Lianna, plays the filmmaker, and Passion would go on to be nominated for Gold Hugo for Best Short Film at the 1985 Chicago Film Festival.   However, a negative review of the short film in The Globe and Mail, often called Canada's Newspaper of Record, would anger Rozema, and she would use that anger to write a new script, Polly, which would be a polemic against the Toronto elitist high art milieu and its merciless negative judgements towards newer artists. Polly, the lead character and narrator of the film, lives alone, has no friends, rides her bike around Toronto to take photographs of whatever strikes her fancy, and regularly indulges herself in whimsical fantasies. An employee for a temporary secretarial agency, Polly gets placed in a private art gallery. The gallery owner is having an off-again, on-again relationship with one her clients, a painter who has misgivings she is too young for the gallery owner and the owner too old for her.    Inspired by the young painter, Polly anonymously submits some of her photographs to the gallery, in the hopes of getting featured, but becomes depressed when the gallery owner, who does not know who took the photos, dismisses them in front of Polly, calling them “simple minded.” Polly quits the gallery and retreats to her apartment. When the painter sees the photographs, she presents herself as the photographer of them, and the pair start to pass them off as the younger artist's work, even after the gallery owner learns they are not of the painter's work. When Polly finds out about the fraud, she confronts the gallery owner, eventually throwing a cup of tea at the owner.   Soon thereafter, the gallery owner and the painter go to check up on Polly at her flat, where they discover more photos undeniable beauty, and the story ends with the three women in one of Polly's fantasies.   Rozema would work on the screenplay for Polly while she was working as a third assistant director on David Cronenberg's The Fly. During the writing process, which took about a year, Rozema would change the title from Polly to Polly's Progress to Polly's Interior Mind. When she would submit the script in June 1986 to the various Canadian arts foundations for funding, it would sent out with yet another new title, Oh, The Things I've Seen.   The first agency to come aboard the film was the Ontario Film Development Corporation, and soon thereafter, the National Film Board of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council would also join the funding operation, but the one council they desperately needed to fund the gap was Telefilm Canada, the Canadian government's principal instrument for supporting Canada's audiovisual industry. Telefilm Canada, at the time, had a reputation for being philosophically averse to low-budget, auteur-driven films, a point driven home directly by the administrator of the group at the time, who reportedly stomped out of a meeting concerning the making of this very film, purportedly declaring that Telefilm should not be financing these kind of minimalist, student films. Telefilm would reverse course when Rozema and her producer, Alexandra Raffé, agreed to bring on Don Haig, called “The Godfather of Canadian Cinema,” as an executive producer.   Side note: several months after the film completed shooting, Haig would win an Academy Award for producing a documentary about musician Artie Shaw.   Once they had their $350k budget, Rozema and Raffé got to work on pre-production. Money was tight on such an ambitious first feature. They had only $500 to help their casting agent identify potential actors for the film, although most of the cast would come from Rozema's friendships with them. They would cast thirty-year-old Sheila McCarthy, a first time film actress with only one television credit to her name, as Polly.   Shooting would begin in Toronto on September 24th, 1986 and go for four weeks, shooting completely in 16mm because they could not afford to shoot on 35mm. Once filming was completed, the National Film Board of Canada allowed Rozema use of their editing studio for free. When Rozema struggled with editing the film, the Film Board offered to pay for the consulting services of Ron Sanders, who had edited five of David Cronenberg's movies, including Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly, which Rozema gladly accepted.   After New Years 1987, Rozema has a rough cut of the film ready to show the various funding agencies. That edit of the film was only 65 minutes long, but went over very well with the viewers. So much so that the President of Cinephile Films, the Canadian movie distributor who also helped to fund the film, suggested that Rozema not only add another 15mins or so to the film wherever she could, but submit the film to the be entered in the Directors' Fortnight program at the Cannes Film Festival. Rozema still needed to add that requested footage in, and finish the sound mix, but she agreed as long as she was able to complete the film by the time the Cannes programmers met in mid-March. She wouldn't quite make her self-imposed deadline, but the film would get selected for Cannes anyway. This time, she had an absolute deadline. The film had to be completed in time for Cannes.   Which would include needing to make a 35mm blow up of the 16mm print, and the production didn't have the money. Rozema and Raffé asked Telefilm Canada if they could have $40k for the print, but they were turned down.   Twice.   Someone suggested they speak with the foreign sales agent who acquired the rights to sell the film at Cannes. The sales agent not only agreed to the fund the cost from sales of the film to various territories that would be returned to the the various arts councils, but he would also create a press kit, translate the English-language script into French, make sure the print showing at Cannes would have French subtitles, and create the key art for the posters and other ads. Rozema would actually help to create the key art, a picture of Sheila McCarthy's head floating over a body of water, an image that approximately 80% of all buyers would use for their own posters and ads around the world.   By the time the film premiered in Cannes on May 10th, 1987, Rozema had changed the title once again, to I've Heard the Mermaids Singing. The title would be taken from a line in the T.S. Eliot poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which she felt best represented the film.   But whatever it was titled, the two thousand people inside the theatre were mesmerized, and gave the film a six minute standing ovation. The festival quickly added four more screenings of the film, all of which sold out.   While a number of territories around the world had purchased the film before the premiere, the filmmakers bet big on themselves by waiting until after the world premiere to entertain offers from American distributors. Following the premiere, a number of companies made offers for the film. Miramax would be the highest, at $100,000, but the filmmakers said “no.” They kept the bidding going, until they got Miramax up to $350k, the full budget for the film. By the time the festival was done, the sales agent had booked more than $1.1m worth of sales. The film had earned back more than triple its cost before it ever opened on a single commercial screen.   Oh, and it also won Rozema the Prix de la Jeunesse (Pree do la Jza-naise), the Prize of the Youth, from the Directors Fortnight judges.   Miramax would schedule I've Heard the Mermaids Singing to open at the 68th Street Playhouse in New York City on September 11th, after screening at the Toronto Film Festival, then called The Festival of Festivals, the night before, and at the Telluride Film Festival the previous week. Miramax was so keen on the potential success of the film that they would buy their first ever full page newspaper, in the Sunday, September 6th New York Times Arts and Leisure section, which cost them $25k.   The critical and audience reactions in Toronto and Telluride matched the enthusiasm on the Croisette, which would translate to big box office its opening weekend. $40k, the best single screen gross in all Manhattan. While it would lose that crown to My Life as a Dog the following week, its $32k second weekend gross was still one of the best in the city. After three weekends in New York City, the film would have already grossed $100k. That weekend, the film would open at the Samuel Goldwyn West Pavilion Cinemas, where a $9,500 opening weekend gross was considered nice. Good word of mouth kept the grosses respectable for months, and after eight months in theatres, never playing in more than 27 theatres in any given week, the film would gross $1.4m in American theatres.   Ironically, the film did not go over as well in Rozema's home country, where it grossed a little less than half a million Canadian dollars, and didn't even play in the director's hometown due to a lack of theatres that were willing to play a “queer” movie, but once all was said and done, I've Heard the Mermaids Singing would end up with a worldwide gross of more than CAD$10m, a nearly 2500% return on the initial investment. Not only would part of those profits go back to the arts councils that helped fund the film, those profits would help fund the next group of independent Canadian filmmakers. And the film would become one of a growing number of films with LGBTQ lead characters whose success would break down the barriers some exhibitors had about playing non-straight movies.   The impact of this film on queer cinema and on Canadian cinema cannot be understated. In 1993, author Michael Posner spent the first twenty pages of his 250 plus page book Canadian Dreams discussing the history of the film, under the subtitle “The Little Film That Did.” And in 2014, author Julia Mendenhall wrote a 160 page book about the movie, with the subtitle “A Queer Film Classic.” You can find copies of both books on a popular web archive website, if you want to learn more.   Amazingly, for a company that would regularly take up to fourteen months between releases, Miramax would end 1987 with not one, not two, but three new titles in just the last six weeks of the year. Well, one that I can definitely place in theatres.   And here is where you just can't always trust the IMDb or Wikipedia by themselves.   The first alleged release of the three according to both sources, Riders on the Storm, was a wacky comedy featuring Dennis Hopper and Michael J. Polland, and supposedly opened in theatres on November 13th. Except it didn't. It did open in new York City on May 7th, 1988, in Los Angeles the following Friday. But we'll talk more about that movie on our next episode.   The second film of the alleged trifecta was Crazy Moon, a romantic comedy/drama from Canada that featured Keifer Sutherland as Brooks, a young man who finds love with Anne, a deaf girl working at a clothing store where Brooks and his brother are trying to steal a mannequin. Like I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, Crazy Moon would benefit from the support of several Canadian arts foundations including Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board of Canada.   In an unusual move, Miramax would release Crazy Moon on 18 screens in Los Angeles on December 11th, as part of an Oscar qualifying run. I say “unusual” because although in the 1980s, a movie that wanted to qualify for awards consideration had to play in at least one commercial movie theatre in Los Angeles for seven consecutive days before the end of the year, most distributors did just that: one movie theatre. They normally didn't do 18 screens including cities like Long Beach, Irvine and Upland.   It would, however, definitely be a one week run.   Despite a number of decent reviews, Los Angeles audiences were too busy doing plenty of other things to see Crazy Moon. Miramax, once again, didn't report grosses, but six of the eighteen theatres playing the film were being tracked by Variety, and the combined gross for those six theatres was $2,500.   It would not get any award nominations, and it would never open at another movie theatre.   The third film allegedly released by Miramax during the 1987 holiday season, The Magic Snowman, has a reported theatrical release date of December 22, 1987, according to the IMDb, which is also the date listed on the Wikipedia page for the list of movies Miramax released in the 1980s. I suspect this is a direct to video release for several reasons, the two most important ones being that December 22nd was a Tuesday, and back in the 1980s, most home video titles came out on Tuesdays, and that I cannot find a single playdate anywhere in the country around this date, even in the Weinstein's home town of Buffalo. In fact, the only mention of the words “magic snowman” together I can find for all of 1987 is a live performance of a show called The Magic Snowman in Peterborough, England in November 1987.   So now we are eight years into the history of Miramax, and they are starting to pick up some steam. Granted, Working Girls and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing wasn't going to get the company a major line of credit to start making films of their own, but it would help them with visibility amongst the independent and global film communities. These guys can open your films in America.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again next week, when we continue with story of Miramax Films, from 1988.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

A father takes his eleven-year-old son on a road trip to protest decades of environmental racism in their rural Black Nova Scotian community. They shift between playful and serious as they discuss ways of bringing about meaningful change, in the wake of the Africville apology.In The Dumps was written by Shauntay Grant. Find the transcript here. Climate Change and Other Small Talk is  a worldwide tour for your ears - minus the carbon footprint and lost luggage. Audio dramas from 9 creative teams around the globe will entertain as well as explore our climate crisis. And maybe even what could get us out. --- FOLLOW US---Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus content including discussion guides and a listening party hosting guide: https://www.sunnydrake.com/climatechangeandothersmalltalkFollow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- CREDITS ---Written by SHAUNTAY GRANTDirected by MIKE PAYETTE * Starring:JACOB SAMPSON as Dad *NY LANGDON as Nate withLILIONA QUARMYNE as MomBEN STONE as the Security Guard * Sound design, music and audio mixing by JACKSON FAIRFAX-PERRY Dramaturgy by JACOB SAMPSON and MYEKAH PAYNE Episode Produced by ZUPPA and with support from SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONSEpisode Producer & Production Manager BEN STONE Recording engineers:Nate, Dad and The Security Guard were recorded at VILLAGE SOUND, by Sound Engineer BEN CREELMANRadio Announcer and Mom were recorded at JACKSON FAIRFAX-PERRY's home studioLUKE BATIOT* Jacob Sampson and Ben Stone are members of ACTRA Maritimes and were engaged under Music Code 2011* Mike Payette is a member of The Canadian Actors' Equity Association and was engaged under the D.O.T. Agreement Special thanks to Arts Nova Scotia, Halifax Culture and Events, ACTRA Maritimes, and the Canadian Actors' Equity Association In the Dumps was produced in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), Mi'kma'ki (Nova Scotia), the territory of the Mi'kmaq. --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast.

Though Win and his Grams are growing weary of life in a temporary camp, they never tire of each others' jokes. In a world of floods and fires, they are family, and Win will get his Grams to her lucky spot at bingo through hell and highwater.Ride Or Die was written by Tara Beagan. Find the transcript here. Climate Change and Other Small Talk is  a worldwide tour for your ears - minus the carbon footprint and lost luggage. Audio dramas from 9 creative teams around the globe will entertain as well as explore our climate crisis. And maybe even what could get us out. --- FOLLOW US---Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus content including discussion guides and a listening party hosting guide: https://www.sunnydrake.com/climatechangeandothersmalltalkFollow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- CREDITS ---Written by TARA BEAGANDirected by PATRICK BEAGANStarring:DUSTIN FRANK as WinTRACEY NEPINAK as MumsMICHELLE THRUSH as Michelle Sound design and music composition by MADDIE BAUTISTAEpisode Produced by DOWNSTAGE THEATRE with support from SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONSRecording engineer and Dialogue Editor BRIAN BERGUM Artistic Director for Downstage CLARE PREUSSManaging Director for Downstage and Episode Producer DANIELLE WHYTEAssociate Producer for Downstage BIANCA MIRANDACommunity Programs Director for Downstage ELSHA YEYESUSWORKProduction Manager and Technical Director for Downstage ADAM KOSTIUKSpecial thanks to Lacey Hill for the use of her song “Love Wins,” and to Downstage's funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development and the Rozsa Foundation.In the spirit of reconciliation, the Downstage team acknowledges that they live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Piikani and Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut'ina, and the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations including the Bearspaw, Chiniki and Wesley Nations. This is also home to the Métis Nation (Region number 3), and all people who make their homes in Moh'kinsstis and the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta. --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast.

At 90 years old, some of my grandmother Marnie Sproule's memories were starting to fade. I recorded conversations with her to preserve some of her stories before it was too late. Throughout the process, I realised that memories are precarious, and can't be trusted. Science fiction approaches to memory can offer explanations; of how the Mandela effect and time travel create glitches in our perceptions of reality. But then, how do we hold onto precious memories, before they're gone? Even though they're gone? Why are they gone? Are they gone? Are… they… gone, gone, gone? Link to transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zqbfLmph9qpUtHp3bNsLn4mKQ5PZm_7C/view?usp=sharing A podcast by Erin MacIndoe Sproule Composition and Sound Design by Curtis Walker aka blunderspublik Story Support by Dawn Matheson Illustration by Gillian Wilson Reference to Some Memories About Memory by Devon Kerslake This project is supported by the Ontario Arts Council. This is an Anthroscope Media production.

A day in the lives of Mayor Toad, big boss Peahen and a hard-working assistant Ant. They launch a clean energy project designed to better lives. But when Tortoise asks some difficult questions about who gets the benefits and who feels the impacts, sparks are sure to fly.To Best The Beast was written by Krishnee Bhotooa. Find the transcript here. --- FOLLOW US---Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus content including discussion guides and a listening party hosting guide: https://www.sunnydrake.com/climatechangeandothersmalltalkFollow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- CREDITS ---Written by KRISHNEE BHOTOOADirected by ASHISH BEESOONDIALStarring: YAKSHINEE PURHOOA as TortoiseSONIA MAISSIN as Mrs PeahenASHISH BEESOONDIAL as AntESTELLE LASÉMILLANTE as Mayor ToadSound design, audio mixing and recording engineer KOOSHAL DWARKA Additional audio mixing RICHARD FERENEpisode produced by CAUDAN ARTS CENTRE with support from SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast.

Esperanza Soto welcomes new recruits to a U.S. drone centre. Run entirely on wind energy, the centre is part of the U.S. Army's Green Military Movement. One of the drone operators is a climate refugee from Vancouver. What choices will she make when climate refugees attempt to cross the border from Mexico?A heads up that this episode contains military violence, so keep that in mind when deciding when and where to listen.Rolling Hills, Green Pastures was written by Carmen Aguirre. Find the transcript here.Climate Change and Other Small Talk is  a worldwide tour for your ears - minus the carbon footprint and lost luggage. Audio dramas from 9 creative teams around the globe will entertain as well as explore our climate crisis. And maybe even what could get us out. --- FOLLOW US---Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus content including discussion guides and a listening party hosting guide: https://www.sunnydrake.com/climatechangeandothersmalltalkFollow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- CREDITS ---Written and directed by CARMEN AGUIRREStarring: MONTSERRAT VIDELA SAMPER as Esperanza SotoLILI ROBINSON as The Drone Operator CHARLIE DEMERS as The Floor Supervisor and Friend Sound design and music by JOELYSA PANKANEA Episode Produced by ELECTRIC COMPANY THEATRE with support from SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONSEpisode Producers CARLA RITCHIE and NATALIE LEFEBVRE GNAMEpisode Production Manager CARLA RITCHIEAudio mixing by HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENRecording engineer MONARCH STUDIOS Special thanks to BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver Cultural Services, Canada Council for the Arts, Monarch Studios, and Progress LabElectric Company Theatre acknowledge the unceded, ancestral and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) people. As artists who live, work and create on these lands, Electric Company strives to be allies with, to learn from and to acknowledge the rights of Indigenous Peoples. --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast.

A real estate agent manages to sell a coastal mansion, even though waves will eventually lap into the bedroom - "It's a soundtrack to sleep by”. What lengths will the realtor go to after she's fired for selling it way below price? And who was the mysterious buyer? Sympathy for Miss Waters was written by Bruce Gibbons-Fell. Find the transcript here.Climate Change and Other Small Talk is  a worldwide tour for your ears - minus the carbon footprint and lost luggage. Audio dramas from 9 creative teams around the globe will entertain as well as explore our climate crisis. And maybe even what could get us out. --- CREDITS ---Written and Directed by BRUCE GIBBONS FELLStarring: CAMILA LE-BERT as Marina MarinoSound design, music, audio mixing and recording engineer  BENJAMIN MCCARTHY Episode Produced by COCODRILO TRISTE with support from SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONSEpisode Producer and Production Manager BRUCE GIBBONS FELL Special thanks to CARLOS BRIONES --- FOLLOW US---Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus content including discussion guides and a listening party hosting guide: https://www.sunnydrake.com/climatechangeandothersmalltalkFollow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast.

Nan and Pop are horrified to learn about climate change from their granddaughter. Should they get their hearing aids adjusted or did she just talk about cows farting? How Nanna and Pop Learnt About Climate Change (The Hard Way) was written by Marie Munkara. Find the transcript here.Climate Change and Other Small Talk is  a worldwide tour for your ears - minus the carbon footprint and lost luggage. Audio dramas from 9 creative teams around the globe will entertain as well as explore our climate crisis. And maybe even what could get us out. --- FOLLOW US---Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus content including discussion guides and a listening party hosting guide: https://www.sunnydrake.com/climatechangeandothersmalltalkFollow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- CREDITS ---Written by MARIE MUNKARADirected by RACHAEL CHISHOLMStarring: MARIE MUNKARA as NannaPETE HAYES as PopRACHAEL CHISHOLM as DaughterNYASHA OGDEN as Granddaughter Sound design, music, audio mixing and recording engineer MATTHEW CUNLIFFE Episode Produced by DARWIN COMMUNITY ARTS with support from SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONSEpisode Producers ANNA WEEKES and TANIA LIEMAN --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast.

A showdown between an environmental activist and a local community leader overseeing the felling of a 500 year old tree. Who will have the last word?Does the Sky Fall on Everyone was written by Pyemwa Deshi. Find the transcript here.Climate Change and Other Small Talk is  a worldwide tour for your ears - minus the carbon footprint and lost luggage. Audio dramas from 9 creative teams around the globe will entertain as well as explore our climate crisis. And maybe even what could get us out. --- FOLLOW US---Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus content including discussion guides and a listening party hosting guide: https://www.sunnydrake.com/climatechangeandothersmalltalkFollow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- CREDITS ---Written by PYEMWA DESHI Directed by  OMOYE UZAMEREStarring: TAIWO AJAI-LYCETT as the olive treeDEYEMI OKANLAWON as Nanpet OMOYE UZAMERE as Delphine With additional voices by CHIOMA B.B.B. OKPALA, OSAYI UZAMERE, AITUARI OGIAMIEN, VICTORIA WYA, TONI THOMAS, CHUBB OKOBAH & PYEMWA DESHI Sound Design, music and recording engineer CHUBB OKOBAH Episode Produced by THESPIAN MUSE PRODUCTION COMPANY with support from SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONSEpisode Producer OMOYE UZAMERE Episode Production Manager ADAOHA NJEMANZEEpisode Production Assistant GIFT OKPA FRANCIS Special thanks to NOVVA MEDIA, NUUGAME ENTERTAINMENT, HOMEGROWN OZONE, OREDO ENTERTAINMENT. --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast.

Jade Wallace's poetry, fiction, and essays have been published or are forthcoming in literary journals across Canada, the USA, England, Ireland, Sweden, New Zealand, and India, including This Magazine, Canadian Literature, and Hermine. They are the author of several chapbooks, most recently the collaborative A Trip to the ZZOO (Collusion Books) and A Barely Concealed Design (Puddles of Sky Press), and the solo Rituals of Parsing (Anstruther Press). Their debut full-length poetry collection, Love Is A Place But You Cannot Live There is forthcoming from Guernica Editions in 2023. Their writing has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the City of Windsor, has won the Muriel's Journey Poetry Prize, Coastal Shelf‘s ‘Funny & Poignant' Poetry Contest, and the Anita and Alistair MacLeod Prize, has been a finalist for the Wergle Flomp Humour Poetry Contest and the Writers of the Future Contest, and has been nominated for The Journey Prize. They are currently the Reviews Editor for CAROUSEL, an organizing member of Draft Reading Series, a member of The Writers' Union of Canada and The League of Canadian Poets, and the co-founder of MA|DE, a collaborative writing entity.

Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, a nuclear submarine carries out a deterrence patrol. Bizarre new orders arrive and two sonar operators must face existential threats. Will they rise to the challenge, or are they in over their heads?Nothing Happens was written by Ram Ganesh Kamatham. Find the transcript here.Climate Change and Other Small Talk is  a worldwide tour for your ears - minus the carbon footprint and lost luggage. Audio dramas from 9 creative teams around the globe will entertain as well as explore our climate crisis. And maybe even what could get us out. --- FOLLOW US---Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus content including discussion guides and a listening party hosting guide: https://www.sunnydrake.com/climatechangeandothersmalltalkFollow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- CREDITS ---Written by RAM GANESH KAMATHAMDirected by PUJA SARUPStarring (in order of appearance):ALISTAR BENNIS as Petty Officer Joseph "Josh" JoshiDILNAZ IRANI as Lieutenant Commander Pooja "Angry Panda" PandaNAKUL BHALLA as Rear Admiral Amar "Ackbar" AnthonySound design, music and audio mixing by VARRUNN BANGERAEpisode Produced by QTP ENTERTAINMENT PRIVATE LIMITED (India) with support from SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONSEpisode Producer and Production Manager TORAL SHAH Recording Studio OCTAVIUS (Mumbai/Bombay) --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast. 

We had the best time chatting with debut author and friend of the show, Maya Ameyaw. ⁠@mayaameyaw⁠ We can't wait for you to hear all the amazing things she had to say. Maya's debut novel WHEN IT ALL SYNCS UP will be available June 6, 2023. So you still have time to preorder! But first, here's a bit more about Maya Ameyaw: Maya Ameyaw was born and raised in Toronto by family of voracious readers in a cozy little house bursting with books. A former bookseller, she currently works as a community arts writing group facilitator. In her free time she interviews writers about their journeys toward publication for her blog and YouTube channel .Maya has edited several mental health themed anthologies for youth and adults with funding from the Toronto Arts Council. A deleted excerpt of her upcoming novel is featured in the anthology Brilliance Is The Clothing I Wear (Dundurn Press.) Her contemporary YA debut When It All Syncs Up has been awarded grants by the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is represented by Lesley Sabga and Julie Gwinn of The Seymour Agency. ⁠https://mayaameyaw.com⁠ Preorder WHEN IT ALL SYNCS UP here: ⁠https://msha.ke/mayaameyaw⁠ Add WHEN IT ALL SYNCS UP to Goodreads here: ⁠https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59689787-when-it-all-synchs-up⁠ You can find Maya here: Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/MayaAmeyaw⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/mayaameyaw/⁠ #WhenItAllSyncsUp⁠ ⁠#WIASU⁠ ⁠#CanadianBooks⁠ ⁠#CanadianPublishing⁠ ⁠#CanadianBookstagram⁠ ⁠#YaBook⁠ ⁠#YABookstagram⁠ ⁠#BalletBooks⁠ ⁠#YaLit⁠ ⁠#2023Debuts ⁠⁠#WeNeedDiverseBooks⁠

A couple leave outraged reviews about products delivered by Amazon, while climate chaos swishes into their home. Their responses to their escalating crisis become increasingly absurd, topped only by the absurdity of Amazon's tactics to thwart them.Absolutely Nothing Of Any Meaning was written by Sunny Drake. Find the transcript here.Climate Change and Other Small Talk is  a worldwide tour for your ears - minus the carbon footprint and lost luggage. Audio dramas from 9 creative teams around the globe will entertain as well as explore our climate crisis. And maybe even what could get us out. --- FOLLOW US---Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus content including discussion guides and a listening party hosting guide: https://www.sunnydrake.com/climatechangeandothersmalltalkFollow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- CREDITS ---Absolutely Nothing of Any MeaningWritten by SUNNY DRAKEDirected by WEYNI MENGESHA Starring:ANAND RAJARAMLIISA REPO-MARTELLand BAHAREH YARAGHI as Amazon Sound design and music by RICHARD FEREN and OLIVIA SHORTTDramaturgy by KATHLEEN FLAHERTY, WEYNI MENGESHA and DONNA-MICHELLE ST. BERNARD Episode produced by WHY NOT THEATRE and SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS with the generous support of SOULPEPPER THEATREEpisode Producer: MICHELLE YAGIEpisode Production Manager: CRYSTAL LEEAudio mixing by HEATHER BROWNRecording engineer MATT RIDEOUTSpecial thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council, The Arctic Circle Residency Program and fellow residents, Climate Change Theatre Action, ACTRA Toronto, Canadian Actors' Equity Association, Volcano Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Chantal Bilodeau, Chanelle Gallant, Alex Kelly and Isaac Lev Szmonko.This episode was recorded in Tkaronto, Toronto, which is Dish With One Spoon territory, the territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast.

This weekend on Earth Day, April 22nd - we're dropping the first-ever episode of Climate Change & Other Small Talk! Sunny talks about the 9 stories created by our fantastic international teams. Expect serious themes wrapped in enjoyable stories to ease us into them. In fact, the series is way more fun than dying in the apocalypse. Promise.--- FOLLOW US---Sign up for our newsletter to get bonus content including discussion guides and a listening party hosting guide: https://www.sunnydrake.com/climatechangeandothersmalltalkFollow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast. 

Climate Change. Wait, don't curl up into a ball of stress! Sunny Drake's Climate Change and Other Small Talk is a theatrical podcast that is here to hold your hand through the scary stuff and entertain you at the same time.Made by 9 creative teams around the world, these podcast episodes have got it all: from the witty to the wacky, and the serious to the silly. It's guaranteed to be fun and ignite your inner climate warrior all while offering global perspectives on the climate crisis.There will be weird sound effects. An angry panda running a submarine. And a 500-year-old tree that… well we can't give it all away, but listen to this sneak peek to get an idea! Subscribe now to get the first episode when we launch on Earth Day, April 22nd!Sign up for the Sunny Drake Productions newsletter to get tips for hosting your very own listening party, insights from behind the scenes, a discussion guide and ideas to support climate equity in your community.  Learning about how to survive the apocalypse has never been so fun.   --- FOLLOW US---Follow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast.

A resonating Blind Shovel, this one with multi-faceted musician Mingjia Chen. We discuss the relationship between drawing and music, true rest, mark-making as musical inspiration, and much more.Mingja is a Beijing-born and LA-based musician who has lectured at the University of Toronto, and taught private lessons at the Humber College of Music, from where she holds a Bachelor of Music. She is an alumnus of the Banff Centre's International Workshop in jazz and contemporary music, and a recipient of Ontario Arts Council grants, Toronto Arts Council grants, and the 2018 Oscar Peterson Prize. Whe is currently pursuing her masters in composition at the University of Southern California. Mingjia's links:www.mingjiamusic.comHeader image: Meg Moon, "Mingjia Chen", 2022

Meet our lead creative, Sunny Drake, and find out how he got the idea to start a theatrical podcast about climate change. Climate Change And Other Small Talk launches on Earth Day - April 22nd. Subscribe to our newsletter at ClimateChangeAndOtherSmallTalk.com or wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss an episode. --- FOLLOW US---Follow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast. 

Climate Change And Other Small Talk is a worldwide tour for your ears - minus the jetlag, carbon footprint and screaming kids. Stories from 9 creative teams around the globe will entertain as well as uncover what has gotten us into this climate crisis. And maybe even what could get us out.Subscribe now to get the first episode when we launch on Earth Day, April 22nd!Sign up for the Sunny Drake Productions newsletter to get tips for hosting your very own listening party, insights from behind the scenes, a discussion guide and ideas to support climate equity in your community.  --- FOLLOW US---Follow Sunny, the series creator, on Instagram: instagram.com/sunny_drakeFollow Sunny Drake Productions on Facebook: facebook.com/sunnydrake.creationsTwitter: twitter.com/sunny_drake --- SERIES CREDITS for CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER SMALL TALK ---Created by SUNNY DRAKEProduced by SUNNY DRAKE PRODUCTIONS in association with WHY NOT THEATRELead Producers: FANNY MARTIN and NAJLA NUBYANLUVConcept Dramaturg: KEVIN MATTHEW WONGImpact Producer & Climate Dramaturg: CHAPRECE HENRY Communications Producer: DANIELA GERSTMANN Central Audio Producers: HEATHER BROWN and RICHARD FERENSeries funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts CouncilSee our website for full credits - it truly does take a village to raise a podcast.  

Welcome to a live session presented by BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor 2022 featuring Luke Hathaway, David Ly and Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang. Moderated by Windsor poet Dorothy Mahoney. Sarah Jarvis, wearing two hats as podcaster and president of Literary Arts Windsor, the charitable organization that runs BookFest, introduces the sessions.This was recorded live at Fionn MacCool's, Windsor, so there are background noises and the occasional dropping spoon.  Occasional mature content.  Luke Hathaway is a trans poet who teaches English and Creative Writing at Saint Mary's University in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. He has been before now at some time boy and girl, bush, bird, and a mute fish in the sea. His book Years, Months, and Days was named a best book of 2018 in The New York Times. He mentors new librettists as a faculty member in the Amadeus Choir's Choral Composition Lab, and makes music with Daniel Cabena as part of the metamorphosing ensemble ANIMA. His latest book is The Affirmations (Biblioasis, 2022.) http://biblioasis.com/brand/hathaway-luke/ David Ly is a writer and editor whose debut poetry collection, Mythical Man (Palimpsest Press, 2020), was shortlisted for the 2021 Relit Poetry Award.  David is the poetry editor at THIS Magazine, part of the Anstruther Press editorial collective, and a poetry manuscript consultant with The Writers' Studio at SFU. Dream of Me as Water is his second poetry collection. https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/dream-of-me-as-water/ Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang is the author of Grappling Hook (2022) with Palimpsest Press, Status Update (2013), which was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award, and the Gerald Lampert award winning Sweet Devilry (2011). Her work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry (2013, 2021, 2023,) and Best of the Best Canadian Poetry. She has been both longlisted and shortlisted for the CBC poetry prize as well as shortlisted for the UK's Forward Award. She is the editor of the poetry collection, Desperately Seeking Susans (2013), the Poetry Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine, the Creative Director at Poetry in Voice, and teaches in both the UBC optional residency MFA program and the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. She is also the author of eight children's books.  https://sarahtsiang.com/Literary Arts Windsor would like to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage CAPF Fund, and the Canada Council for the Arts for funding our festival. 

Recorded at the BookFest Windsor/Festival du livre Books and Brunch presentation, this live recording features a thought-provoking conversation between author Rinaldo Walcott and University of Windsor professor Natalie Delia Deckard about Walcott's much-discussed book, On Property: Policing, Prisons and the Call for Abolition. The book has been nominated for the Heritage Toronto Book Award, longlisted for the Toronto Book Awards, and selected as both a Globe and Mail Book of the Year and one of CBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2021.The opening remarks for the session are provided by Irene Moore Davis. While we apologize for the unexpected venue-sharing that caused some background noise, the conversation rises above the challenges to inspire new conversations about social justice and the way forward.ABOUT THE AUTHORRinaldo Walcott is the author of Black Like Who: Writing Black Canada and Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora and Black Studies. In 2021, Walcott published The Long Emancipation: Moving Towards Freedom and On Property: Policing, Prisons and the Call for Abolition. Walcott is a Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. His research is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, gender and sexuality. Literary Arts Windsor would like to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage CAPF Fund, and the Canada Council for the Arts for funding our festival.  

The ugly duckling teenage daughter of a fashion icon finds herself ostracized in a beauty-obsessed world. Desperate for love, Barbara makes a heart-wrenching bargain with water-dwelling spirits. But the deal comes at a dreadful cost and Barbara must find the strength to forge a new destiny.  A haunting tale from folklore, fiction, and poetry writer C.S. MacCath. It was inspired by a Bavarian folktale collected by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth. Creative Team for The Belt and the Necklace:  Writer: C.S. MacCath Director and Co-Dramaturge: Laurie Steven Co-dramaturge: Janet Irwin Music Supervisor and Editor: Craig McConnell Supervising Sound Designer: Damian Kearns Cast:                                                     Chandel Gambles  (Imelda Blackthorne, Mermaid, Old Woman, Celebrity Watch Host,  Esmée Peregrine) Mark Huisman (Gilen Peregrine) Neta J. Rose (Beyla Bee, Constable Brandywine) Nicole Wilson  (Barbara Blackthorn)                                                         This episode contains disturbing events including an attempted suicide, domestic abuse, and violent events. Themes pertaining to beauty and body image. Listener discretion is advised. To find out more about The Belt and The Other Path podcast, please visit our website at www.theotherpath.ca. Join us on social media and please help spread the word by recommending us to your friends and family: Facebook: @theotherpathpodcast Instagram: @theotherpathpodcast Twitter: @theotherpathpod If you like what you hear and want to help us create new episodes, we hope you will support our work by becoming a member.  Members get access to special features, such as in-depth interviews with each writer, a chance to meet the artists and more. Please donate now at Buy Me A Coffee (theotherpathpod). About the seriesWhat do witches, ogres and shape-shifters have in common with dive bars, fashion shows and neighborhood parks? They are all on The Other Path!  Classic folk tales meet modern life in this fantasy audio drama series filled with magic, mystery, and danger.  Follow people so desperate to fulfill their dreams, they choose a path that leads them to wrangle with magical forces and creatures straight out of folklore. They will lure you with promises of good fortune but be warned, they'll lead you into danger. Whatever fate has in store, the other path reveals the unexpected. Our five dramas by award-winning Canadian writers are inspired by fantastical tales from the past, but set in today's modern world.  From haunting dramas to macabre comedies, these original tales come alive with the voices of professional actors and artfully crafted music and sound.  To find out more about The Other Path, the artists and upcoming special events, visit our website www.theotherpath.ca.   About Odyssey TheaterThe Other Path was created and directed by Laurie Steven, Artistic Director of Odyssey Theatre, a professional non-profit theatre in Ottawa, Canada.  Our imaginative award-winning productions range from satires to epic dramas, to enchanted myths re-envisioned for adult audiences.  Odyssey Theatre operates on the traditional, unceded Territory of the Algonquin, Anishnaabe peoples.  Odyssey Theatre is grateful to the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, City of Ottawa, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ottawa Community Foundation and our wonderful donors for their support. 

After a strange vision, Lucy heads back to her dead-end hometown to hunt for a missing friend. A troublesome discovery leads her into a forbidden territory, home to ancient grudges, baffling curses and a most memorable monster. A whimsical, mysterious adventure about bridging old and new and getting unstuck. The play was written by folklorist and writer Daniel Peretti and inspired by the Italian tale of the same name by Italo Calvino.  The Feathered Ogre is sponsored by The Embassy of Italy in Canada. Creative Team for The Feathered Ogre:  Writer: Daniel Peretti Director: Laurie Steven Director and Co-Dramaturge: Laurie Steven Co-dramaturge: Janet Irwin Music Supervisor and Editor: Craig McConnell Supervising Sound Designer: Damian Kearns Cast:                                                     William Beddoe (Anoon)                                              Anurag Choudhury (Paul) Erin Eldershaw (Kigva) Alix Sideris (Rhiannon) Bruce Spinney (Mannie and Series Host) Advisory:  This episode contains coarse language, potentially disturbing magic, excessive alcohol consumption, and animal cruelty. Listener discretion is advised. You can find out more about The Belt and the Necklace and the series on our website www.theotherpath.ca.   Please consider supporting our work and help us create new episodes by becoming a member at Buy Me A Coffee. Members gain access to special features, such as writer interviews, a chance to meet the artists and more.  Recommend us to your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy The Belt and the Necklace! About the seriesWhat do witches, ogres and shape-shifters have in common with dive bars, fashion shows and neighborhood parks? They are all on The Other Path!  Classic folk tales meet modern life in this fantasy audio drama series filled with magic, mystery, and danger.  Follow people so desperate to fulfill their dreams, they choose a path that leads them to wrangle with magical forces and creatures straight out of folklore. They will lure you with promises of good fortune but be warned, they'll lead you into danger. Whatever fate has in store, the other path reveals the unexpected. Our five dramas by award-winning Canadian writers are inspired by fantastical tales from the past, but set in today's modern world.  From haunting dramas to macabre comedies, these original tales come alive with the voices of professional actors and artfully crafted music and sound.  To find out more about The Other Path, the artists and upcoming special events, visit our website www.theotherpath.ca.   About Odyssey TheaterThe Other Path was created and directed by Laurie Steven, Artistic Director of Odyssey Theatre, a professional non-profit theatre in Ottawa, Canada.  Our imaginative award-winning productions range from satires to epic dramas, to enchanted myths re-envisioned for adult audiences.  Odyssey Theatre operates on the traditional, unceded Territory of the Algonquin, Anishnaabe peoples.  Odyssey Theatre is grateful to the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, City of Ottawa, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ottawa Community Foundation and our wonderful donors for their support. 

"... being able to showcase such a diverse group of artists, and diverse ways to create - there is no one way to create, there is not one way to make theatre, there is not one way to interact with audiences. The beauty of the podcast was to talk to these artists and discover new ways that I can create as an artist and that our audiences can enjoy [theatre]."  - Lu Linares "to take a moment and turn to our community and be like, 'hey I need help,' is also a way to be tender to yourself" - Mónica Garrido  That's a wrap on Season 8 of Radio Aluna Theatre! In this mini-episode, Mónica and Lu, the co-producers of the podcast, reflect on the conversations they had this season and what is on their wishlist for the future.   Thank you so much for joining us! All Radio Aluna Theatre episodes are in Spanglish, English, or Spanish. New episodes are released on Wednesdays. Follow and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Radio Aluna Teatro is produced by Aluna Theatre with support from the Toronto Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and TD Bank.   Aluna Theatre is Beatriz Pizano & Trevor Schwellnus; Radio Aluna Theatre is produced by Monica Garrido and Lucia Linares. For more about Aluna Theatre, visit us at alunatheatre.ca, follow @alunatheatre on twitter or instagram, or ‘like' us on facebook. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "[Durante el podcast] nosotros pudimos mostrar un grupo diverso de artistas y diversas formas de crear. No hay una sola forma de crear, no hay una sola forma de hacer teatro, no hay una sola forma de interactuar con el público. La belleza del podcast fue hablar con estos artistas y descubrir nuevas formas en las que yo puedo crear y que la audiencia puede disfrutar." - Lu Linares "A veces tomarte un momento y decirle a tu comunidad, necesito ayuda, también es una forma de ser bondadoso contigo mismo "- Mónica Garrido Llegamos al final de la temporada número 8 de Radio Aluna Teatro, en este mini episodio, Mónica y Lu, les co-productores del podcast, reflexionan sobre las conversaciones que tuvieron esta temporada y lo que sigue para el podcast. !Muchísimas gracias por escucharnos! Todos los episodios de Radio Aluna Teatro son en Inglés, Español y Spanglish. Nuevos episodios de Radio Aluna Teatro cada Miércoles. Síguenos y suscríbete a este podcast en iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, y donde sea que escuches tus podcasts. Radio Aluna Teatro es una producción de Aluna Theatre con el apoyo de  Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Department of Canadian Heritage, y TD Bank.   Aluna Theatre es Beatriz Pizano & Trevor Schwellnus. Radio Aluna Theatre es producido por Lucía Linares y Mónica Garrido. Para más información sobre Aluna Theatre, visita nuestra página alunatheatre.ca, síguenos en twitter @alunatheatre o en instagram, o haz click en “me gusta” en facebook.

“I love creating. I love telling stories and supporting others to tell their own stories. This is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. I love every part of it, the challenges and the joy that is to create with others and to share the work with community” - Ale Higuera “At first, I was like “it's naïve to base your work on joy and tenderness” and then I realized it's something that we need, especially in a world where you're working and you don't have time to rest.” - Fer Sandoval Pezoa Meet ana and Ale Higuera and Fer Sandoval Pezoa! Ale Higuera is a multidisciplinary, visual storyteller working in video, animation, projection and illustration. ana maria higuera is a self-taught digital photographer and video maker. This talented sibling duo was in charge of the videography and archival documentation during the 2022 Rutas Festival.  Fer Sandoval Pezoa is a Latin Queer interdisciplinary artist who bases their work on radical tenderness, community healing and JOY as an act of resistance. They aim to create conversations and encourage self-reflection, as well as collective action. Fer was the 2022 Rutas Festival's Production Assistant and the Stage Manager for “Aliens, Immigrants and other Evildoers” and “Danzantes del Alba”.  All Radio Aluna Theatre episodes are in Spanglish, English, or Spanish. New episodes are released on Wednesdays. Follow and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Radio Aluna Teatro is produced by Aluna Theatre with support from the Toronto Arts Council, The Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and TD Bank.   Aluna Theatre is Beatriz Pizano & Trevor Schwellnus; Radio Aluna Theatre is produced by Monica Garrido and Lucia Linares. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “Me encanta crear. Me encanta contar historias y apoyar a otros a contar sus propias historias. Siento que esto es lo que tengo que hacer. Amo cada parte de esto, los desafíos y la alegría que es crear con otros y compartir mi trabajo con la comunidad” - Ale Higuera “Al principio, pensaba que era ingenuo basar tu trabajo en la alegría y la ternura. Luego me di cuenta que es algo necesario. Especialmente en un mundo en el que estás trabajando y no tienes tiempo para descansar". - Fer Sandoval Pezoa ¡Conoce a ana maria y Ale Higuera y Fer Sandoval Pezoa!  Ale Higuera es una artista multidisciplinar que trabaja en vídeo, animación, proyección e ilustración. ana maria  higuera es une fotógrafe digital y videomaker autodidacte. Este talentoso dúo de hermanes estuvo a cargo de la videografía durante el Festival Rutas 2022. Fer Sandoval Pezoa es une artiste Latin Queer interdisciplinarie que basa su trabajo en la ternura radical, la sanación comunitaria y la ALEGRÍA como actos de resistencia. Su objetivo es crear conversaciones y fomentar la autorreflexión, así como la acción colectiva. Fer fue Asistente de Producción en el Rutas Festival y Stage Manager de “Aliens, Immigrants and other Evildoers” y “Danzantes del Alba”. Todos los episodios de Radio Aluna Teatro son en Inglés, Español y Spanglish. Nuevos episodios de Radio Aluna Teatro cada Miércoles. Síguenos y suscríbete a este podcast en iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, y donde sea que escuches tus podcasts. Radio Aluna Teatro es una producción de Aluna Theatre con el apoyo de  Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Department of Canadian Heritage, y TD Bank.   Aluna Theatre es Beatriz Pizano & Trevor Schwellnus. Radio Aluna Theatre es producido por Lucía Linares y Mónica Garrido. Para más información sobre Aluna Theatre, visita nuestra página alunatheatre.ca, síguenos en twitter @alunatheatre o en instagram, o haz click en “me gusta” en facebook.

Katie studied Film and English at Carleton University, TV Broadcasting at Algonquin College and filmmaking at the prestigious Summer Institute of Film and Television and Women in the Director's Chair. In the two decades that followed, Katie enjoyed an award-winning career as a screenwriter and director, collaborating on projects in animation, television and motion pictures. Supported by the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, her films screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Sudbury Cinefest, Local Heroes International Film Festival and the NSI Film Exchange.In 2013, Katie's first-ever manuscript, Gone Monday, won top prize in the international Mslexia Women's Novel Writing Competition. Buoyed by this unexpected success, and with her trusty golden retriever, Levi, by her side, Katie began writing another novel that was to become her publishing debut. The thriller Dark August is set in the Wellington West neighbourhood where she lives with her husband, Andy. The novel became an international bestseller and inspired a sequel. The follow-up to Dark August brings back her feisty protagonist for another cold case in the novel, Poison Lilies. Katie's beloved Levi lives on in both novels.https://katietallo.com/Today's episode is brought to you by John's full series of crime thrillers available right now. You can get them through Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/John-A.-Hoda/e/B00BGPXBMM%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share  You can also sign up for the newsletter at http://www.JohnHoda.com to get a free copy of John's new novella Liberty City Nights.Thank you for listening. If you have a moment to spare please leave a rating or comment on Apple Podcasts as that will help us expand the circle around our campfire. If you have any questions please feel to reach out to me via my website http://www.johnhoda.com

Four people head up into the Hollow Hills for an evening of storytelling. Only three return. The trio is unwittingly drawn into a game with the Tiglath, an ancient race of shape-shifters who were driven inside the hills long ago. At stake is the land itself.  An eerie, poetic fantasy from acclaimed novelist and poet, Jo Walton, about the heartfelt, complicated meanings of home. The play was inspired by The Tale of Manawydan, son of Llyr from the Welsh legend cycle: The Third Branch of the Mabinogion.  Creative Team for Heart's Home:  Writer: Jo Walton Director and Co-Dramaturge: Laurie Steven Co-dramaturge: Janet Irwin Music Supervisor and Editor: Venessa Lachance Supervising Sound Designer: Damian Kearns Cast:                                                     William Beddoe (Anoon) Anurag Choudhury (Paul) Erin Eldershaw (Kigva) Alix Sideris (Rhiannon) Bruce Spinney (Mannie and Series Host) Advisory: This episode contains course language, potentially disturbing magic, and themes that may raise painful memories for those harmed by the impacts of colonialism. Listener discretion is advised. You can find out more about Heart's Home and the series on our website www.theotherpath.ca.   Please consider supporting our work and help us create new episodes by becoming a member at Buy Me A Coffee. Members gain access to special features, such as writer interviews, a chance to meet the artists and more.  Recommend us to your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy Heart's Home! About the seriesWhat do witches, ogres and shape-shifters have in common with dive bars, fashion shows and neighborhood parks? They are all on The Other Path!  Classic folk tales meet modern life in this fantasy audio drama series filled with magic, mystery, and danger.  Follow people so desperate to fulfill their dreams, they choose a path that leads them to wrangle with magical forces and creatures straight out of folklore. They will lure you with promises of good fortune but be warned, they'll lead you into danger. Whatever fate has in store, the other path reveals the unexpected. Our five dramas by award-winning Canadian writers are inspired by fantastical tales from the past, but set in today's modern world.  From haunting dramas to macabre comedies, these original tales come alive with the voices of professional actors and artfully crafted music and sound.  To find out more about The Other Path, the artists and upcoming special events, visit our website www.theotherpath.ca.   About Odyssey TheaterThe Other Path was created and directed by Laurie Steven, Artistic Director of Odyssey Theatre, a professional non-profit theatre in Ottawa, Canada.  Our imaginative award-winning productions range from satires to epic dramas, to enchanted myths re-envisioned for adult audiences.  Odyssey Theatre operates on the traditional, unceded Territory of the Algonquin, Anishnaabe peoples.  Odyssey Theatre is grateful to the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, City of Ottawa, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ottawa Community Foundation and our wonderful donors for their support. 

Liam and Jessie, a young couple fleeing bills and chasing cash in a trashed economy, decide to change their fate by stealing a mysterious artifact. But as the magical object toys with their desires, the pair get caught in an otherworldly spiral with cats, cops, and corpses.  A macabre comedy of greed and black magic from playwright, author, and screenwriter, Marty Chan. It was inspired by the Chinese folktale, The Magic Cask.  Creative Team for Double Trouble:  Writer: Marty Chan Director and Co-Dramaturge: Laurie Steven Co-dramaturge: Janet Irwin Music Supervisor and Editor: Jeremy Hutton Supervising Sound Designer: Damian Kearns Cast:                                                     Paul Amato (Dimitri and Cop) Jesse Buck (Liam) Maryse Fernandes (Jessie) Jeremy Hutton (Narrator and Harold) Advisory: This episode contains course language and morbid events. Listener discretion is advised. To find out more about Double Trouble and The Other Path podcast series, please visit our website at www.theotherpath.ca. Please consider supporting our work and help us create new episodes by becoming a member at Buy Me A Coffee. Members gain access to special features, such as writer interviews, a chance to meet the artists and more.  Recommend us to your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy Double Trouble!  About the seriesWhat do witches, ogres and shape-shifters have in common with dive bars, fashion shows and neighborhood parks? They are all on The Other Path!  Classic folk tales meet modern life in this fantasy audio drama series filled with magic, mystery, and danger.  Follow people so desperate to fulfill their dreams, they choose a path that leads them to wrangle with magical forces and creatures straight out of folklore. They will lure you with promises of good fortune but be warned, they'll lead you into danger. Whatever fate has in store, the other path reveals the unexpected. Our five dramas by award-winning Canadian writers are inspired by fantastical tales from the past, but set in today's modern world.  From haunting dramas to macabre comedies, these original tales come alive with the voices of professional actors and artfully crafted music and sound.  To find out more about The Other Path, the artists and upcoming special events, visit our website www.theotherpath.ca.   About Odyssey TheaterThe Other Path was created and directed by Laurie Steven, Artistic Director of Odyssey Theatre, a professional non-profit theatre in Ottawa, Canada.  Our imaginative award-winning productions range from satires to epic dramas, to enchanted myths re-envisioned for adult audiences.  Odyssey Theatre operates on the traditional, unceded Territory of the Algonquin, Anishnaabe peoples.  Odyssey Theatre is grateful to the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, City of Ottawa, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ottawa Community Foundation and our wonderful donors for their support. 

Bony Legs, the infamous witch in the woods, can grant any wish imaginable… at a price. When Lisa, a daring teen, is blackmailed, she tracks down the witch for help, only to find herself facing grueling tasks in a fight for her life.  A spirited and chilling tale of empowerment from novelist, poet and biographer, Emily Pohl-Weary. Inspired by a Russian folktale featuring Baba Yaga: Vassalisa the Brave. Creative Team for The Witch's Circle: Writer: Emily Pohl-Weary Director and Co-Dramaturge: Laurie Steven Co-dramaturge: Janet Irwin Music Supervisor and Editor: Craig McConnell Supervising Sound Designer: Damian Kearns Cast:                                                    Anna Burkholder  (Anna) Anurag Choudhury (Dean) Maryse Fernandes  (Lisa) Soo Garay  (Narrator and Baba Yaga) Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy The Witch's Circle!Advisory: This episode contains coarse language, sexual aggression, and violent events. Listener discretion is advised. To find out more about The Witch's Circle and The Other Path podcast series, please visit our website at www.theotherpath.ca. Recommend us to your friends and family: Facebook: @theotherpathpodcast Instagram: @theotherpathpodcast Twitter: @theotherpathpod Please consider supporting our work and help us create new episodes by becoming a member at Buy Me A Coffee. Members gain access to special features, such as writer interviews, a chance to meet the artists and more. About the seriesWhat do witches, ogres and shape-shifters have in common with dive bars, fashion shows and neighborhood parks? They are all on The Other Path!  Classic folk tales meet modern life in this fantasy audio drama series filled with magic, mystery, and danger.  Follow people so desperate to fulfill their dreams, they choose a path that leads them to wrangle with magical forces and creatures straight out of folklore. They will lure you with promises of good fortune but be warned, they'll lead you into danger. Whatever fate has in store, the other path reveals the unexpected. Our five dramas by award-winning Canadian writers are inspired by fantastical tales from the past, but set in today's modern world.  From haunting dramas to macabre comedies, these original tales come alive with the voices of professional actors and artfully crafted music and sound.  To find out more about The Other Path, the artists and upcoming special events, visit our website www.theotherpath.ca.   About Odyssey TheaterThe Other Path was created and directed by Laurie Steven, Artistic Director of Odyssey Theatre, a professional non-profit theatre in Ottawa, Canada.  Our imaginative award-winning productions range from satires to epic dramas, to enchanted myths re-envisioned for adult audiences.  Odyssey Theatre operates on the traditional, unceded Territory of the Algonquin, Anishnaabe peoples.  Odyssey Theatre is grateful to the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, City of Ottawa, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ottawa Community Foundation and our wonderful donors for their support. 

What do witches, ogres and shape-shifters have in common with dive bars, fashion shows and neighbourhood parks? They are all on The Other Path!  Classic folk tales meet modern life in this fantasy audio drama series filled with magic, mystery, and danger.  Follow people so desperate to fulfill their dreams, they choose a path that leads them to wrangle with magical forces and creatures straight out of folklore. They will lure you with promises of good fortune but be warned, they'll lead you into danger. Whatever fate has in store, the other path reveals the unexpected. Our five dramas by award-winning Canadian writers are inspired by fantastical tales from the past, but set in today's modern world.  From haunting dramas to macabre comedies, these original tales come alive with the voices of professional actors and artfully crafted music and sound.  To find out more, visit our website www.theotherpath.ca.   Please consider supporting our work and help us create new episodes by becoming a member at Buy Me A Coffee. Members gain access to special features, such as writer interviews, a chance to meet the artists and more.  Recommend us to your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.About Odyssey TheaterThe Other Path was created and directed by Laurie Steven, Artistic Director of Odyssey Theatre, a professional non-profit theatre in Ottawa, Canada.  Our imaginative award-winning productions range from satires to epic dramas, to enchanted myths re-envisioned for adult audiences.  Odyssey Theatre operates on the traditional, unceded Territory of the Algonquin, Anishnaabe peoples.  Odyssey Theatre is grateful to the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, City of Ottawa, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ottawa Community Foundation and our wonderful donors for their support. 

Sandra Tarantino received a Bachelor of Fine Arts through the Ontario College of Art and Design in Drawing and Painting, a BA at York University in Psychology and a Bachelor of Education at Western University. She has actively participated in the artistic community as Co-Founder and Director of C1 art space from 2004-2011, AWOL Gallery and Studios from 1996-2012 as well as being part of the AWOL Collective to present day. She has recently opened a new gallery and ceramic studio, ArtQuarters Gallery, in Toronto where she creates, exhibits, teaches and showcases other Canadian artists with her life partner, artist Ross Bonfanti and father Marcello Tarantino. Sandra''s personal art practice incorporates elements of both painting and sculpture through ceramic sculptures, shaped canvases, and other mixed media work; her pieces are held in private and corporate collections across Canada, U.S.A and Europe. She exhibits her works at art fairs including the Artist Project and TOAE as well as with Art Interiors and Blue Crow Gallery.  A large portion of her life also revolves around teaching students of all ages in a variety of media (including mural creation, mixed media painting and ceramic sculpture); this fuels her personal creation practice and explorations.  Sandra teaches at ArtQuarters Gallery, Avenue Road Arts School and throughout GTA communities and schools with arts organizations including VIBE Arts and Arts Access Fund. She is a past recipient of the Ontario Arts Council's Visual Artist Grant, Exhibition Assistance Grant and Artist in Education Grant.On today's episode Sandra talks about her experience in the Florence Program at OCADU, working with artists in various galleries and collectives as well as how her work has evolved from painting to ceramics. Interested in seeing some of Sandra's work. Go to her website at www.sandratarantino.comFind Sandra on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/sandratarantino/ Find me on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/artconversationswithlisajayne/ or at my website at www.lisajayneirvine.com

On this biweekly episode, my guest is Emma Rush, an award-winning artist and was a prizewinner at the Columbus International Guitar Competition and the Great Lakes Guitar Competition. She has received three City of Hamilton Arts Awards. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Hamilton City Enrichment Fund, and FACTOR. She is also a member of Azuline Duo with Sara Traficante. She regularly tours rural, remote, and other communities where live music experiences are rare. Her concerts are intimate and engaging and feature rarely heard historical works, little-known gems of the Latin American guitar repertoire, folkloric music from around the world, and, always, music by female composers. You can follow Emma Rush on her Instagram account at: Website: https://emma-rush.com/ and www.azulineduo.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/emmarushguitar Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guitaremma/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emmarushguitar Copyright © 2022 Music in 2Flavors/Música en 2Sabores®. All rights reserved. The songs included in this podcast: Appalachian Colours Red and Variazioni sopra un tema del Mo Mercadante, its protected under US Copyright Act and its ownership/proprietorship belongs to Emma Rush who gave us permission to play it at the beginning and end of this episode. Any unauthorized used will be subject to prosecution as per 17 USC §1101 et seq. The content of this episode is protected under US Copyright Act and under International Copyright, and Trademark Law. These statutes protect the audio, video, still image, logos, designs, graphics and any other mean where this podcast is broadcasted. Any reproduction, either digital, streaming, analog recording, video recording, tape recording or on any form of reproduction created in the future, of this episode and/or music, either partially or fully, it is forbidden without the previous authorization of their owners/proprietors/authors/creators/producers. IT IS FORBIDDEN AND PROHIBITED THE REPRODUCITON OF ALL OR PARTS OF THIS AUDIO ON ANY FORMAT. Violators will be prosecuted under USA Law. Music in 2Flavors/Música en 2Sabores® logo is a registered trademark. All use, replica, reproduction or use of the words and/or logo, in any form, format, is forbidden without proprietor’s authorization. Any misuse, use of similar brands that could create confusion or dilution is considered trademark infringement. These causes of action are not exclusionary of other causes of action that could arise from State or any other Federal Law such as: passing off; contributory passing off; reverse passing off; misappropriation; as well as any other cause of action, such as torts, that originates from violator’s action. Furthermore, make sure to leave your comments at any of your favorite platforms or on my website, and let me know what you think of this episode. Also, if you happen to use iTunes or Apple Podcast, please leave a review and as many stars as you like. The more stars and reviews I get, there could be a likelihood that more people get interested in my content This music podcast is made out of pure love and in appreciation to all of those people that care and are huge supporters of our music scene. Please remember to follow me on my different platforms. Twiter : M2fM2s Instagram : Music2Flavors Website : www.musicin2flavors.com You are more than welcome to do a one time or more than one-month donation to keep this music project on-going and possible. If you cannot afford a financial support, please share it in your favorite social media and tagged me. I would appreciate it and in return give you a shout-out on all my platforms and on the next episode. Telegram : If you want to be part of this social platform and my group, you are more than welcome. Just shoot me an email at jaime.riera@musicin2flavors.com

Lois Schklar's work has been shown in exhibitions throughout Canada and the United States. Her sculptures are in the Racine Art Museum, the Bronfman Collection, Claridge Investments, Idea Exchange Art Gallery and The Key Corporation. Lois has received grants from the Toronto Arts Council, Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council. Most recently, she received Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Grants for I am Here, a 2021 exhibition at Red Head Gallery and Prototypes (Loop 2019), an exploration of sound, narrative, light and audience participation. The latter exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Canada Council's Explore and Create Grant (2018).Schklar's art practice consists of an ongoing series of drawing installations utilizing found and bought urban objects as “mark making” tools. She manipulates these diverse and often disparate materials, aware of the aesthetic relationship they have with one another and by implication, the physical and psychological space they occupy. Each drawing installation builds on the ideas of preceding installations and are site specific. Lois is a member of The Red Head Gallery (Toronto).On today's episode Lois talks about her creative process, installation work and how her Scottish residency inspired her workInterested in learning more about Lois's work? Check out her website at www.loisschklar@me.comFind Lois on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/loisschklar/ Find me on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/artconversationswithlisajayne/ or at my website at www.lisajayneirvine.com

'Yes, we agree that anti-racism is important. Yes we agree that anti oppression is important. Yes, we agree that equity is important. Yes, we agree that sovereignty is important for indigenous peoples in particular and that decolonization is really important but to us, these are tools to get toward a new society, to transform the world in which we live. If I can refer to the panel that we had the other day that led off this conference, to get out of the social historical economic trap that we're currently in, that forces us to compete with each other, that forces us, as Peru ?? was saying, to ignore the land and what the land is trying to say to us, that forces us to treat certain arts as better than others, without truly understanding the artistic standards that some arts products are created to turn. To turn over the Massey Commission and say, you know what, that is the trap that we're also in. These historical institutions that have come out since the 1950s that basically are struggling with relevance this day and age.' (Charles C. Smith)'We hear conversations around this idea of back to normal and I beg to question: was it ever normal before? What's the better? Was it best before? We wanted to have a conversation around the state of how artists and arts organizations emerging out of a pandemic and also what it means in a time of planetary renewal, given also the racial reckoning about renewal that was going on, we felt it that there were assumptions being made about how we would begin again and so we wanted to make sure that we had our different panels and focus around this idea of starting back, but also addressing what was happening to artists and to organizations prior to the pandemic that led to some of the further marginalization of IBPOC artists and the further under sourcing of IBPOC artists so how do we begin to address that so that can be shifted or changed emerging out of the pandemic.' (Kevin A. Ormsby)My conversation with Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) Executive Director Charles C. Smith and Program Manager Kevin A. Ormsby on Dec 10, 2021 about the Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Fall 2021 | Art in the Time of Healing: The Importance of IBPOC Arts in Planetary Renewal. 1 of 6 episodes recorded at this event.  I was honoured when Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) Program Manager Kevin A. Ormsby asked me to moderate a panel on National Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change at the Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Fall 2021 | Art in the Time of Healing: The Importance of IBPOC Arts in Planetary Renewal in Toronto on December 10, 2021. Later on that day, I caught up with CPAMO Executive Director Charles C. Smith and Kevin to talk about their aspirations for the gathering and the state of IBPOC arts communities. This episode also includes excerpts from their keynote presentation earlier that day about the Living in the Skin I am In: Experiential Learnings, Approaches and Considerations Towards Anti-Black Racism in the Arts publication. Program Manager of Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO), Kevin A. Ormsby is also the Artistic Director of KasheDance, movement coach and Arts Marketing Consultant. The Ontario Arts Council's Chalmers Fellowship recipient (2017), KM Hunter Dance Award Nominee (2016), Toronto Arts Council's Cultural Leaders Lab Fellow (2015) and The Canada Council for the Arts' Victor Martyn Lynch – Staunton Award 2014 recipient for outstanding achievement by a mid-career artist, he has many interests in the creative practice and administration in dance. He has honed his passion for dance, advocacy, writing and education while performing with various companies and projects in Canada, the Caribbean and the United States.charles c. smith is a poet, playwright and essayist who has written and edited twelve books. He studied poetry and drama with William Packard, editor of the New York Quarterly Magazine, at New York University and Herbert Berghof Studios. He also studied drama at the Frank Silvera's Writers' Workshop in Harlem. He won second prize for his play Last Days for the Desperate from Black Theatre Canada, has edited three collections of poetry (including the works of Dionne Brand, Marlene Nourbese Phillips, Claire Harris, Cyril Dabydeen, Lillian Allen, George Elliot Clarke, Clifton Joseph), has four published books of poetry and his poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Poetry Canada Review, the Quille and Quire, Descant, Dandelion, Fiddlehead, Anti-Racism in Education: Missing in Action (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), the Amethyst Review, Bywords, Canadian Ethnic Studies and others.This is one of 6 episodes recorded during the Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Fall 2021 | Art in the Time of Healing: The Importance of IBPOC Arts in Planetary Renewalevent from December 8 to 10, 2021 in Toronto.The others are:episode 90, my conversation with dance artist, choreographer, director and embodiment facilitator Shannon Litzenberger and reading her State of Emergence: Why We Need Artists Right Now essayepisode 91, my conversation with Keith Barker, artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts, including a reading of his new 5 minute Climate Change Theatre Action play, Apology, My at the end of this episodeepisode 92, a presentation (including audience questions) by Santee Smith, artistic director of Kaha:wi Dance Theatre from the National Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change panelepisode 93, a presentation (including audience questions) by Anthony Garoufalis-Auger from the National Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change panelepisode 94, a presentation (including audience questions) by Devon Hardy from the National Cultural Policy and arts in Response to Climate Change panelCharles C. Smith and Kevin A. Orsmby, December 10, 2021, Aki Studio, Toronto *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

Kim-Lee Kho is a Brampton-based multidisciplinary artist, and longtime designer, exploring personal experience as a gateway to broader human concerns. The bi-ethnic daughter of a scientist and an artist, Kim's process and interests combine both influences, in sometimes unexpected ways.A member of The Red Head Gallery collective since 2018, she presented her second solo show of 2019 there, called Heartspace, a multimedia installation exploring the human heart as anatomical structure, emotional repository and vehicle for metaphor. Kim has participated nationally in exhibitions, residencies, and mentorships; and won awards including grants from the Ontario Arts Council.A popular and experienced art educator, speaker, and juror, who, since the first COVID lockdown, has offered free bi-weekly Virtual Studio Parties on YouTube, she teaches: online; at the Haliburton School of Art + Design; and at the invitation of groups around southern Ontario.On today's episode Kim talks about her residency with Harold Klunder, her creative process, and how life-drawing and the human form inform her practice as an artist.Interested in learning more about Kim-Lee's work? Check out her website at www.kimleekho.caFind Kim-Lee on Instagram at  https://www.instagram.com/kimleekho/ or join Kim-Lee for one of her Art Parties on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9Rx4KeSJi7gsAhF26-D3w Find me on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/artconversationswithlisajayne/ or at my website at www.lisajayneirvine.com

Haui      "Haui's voice is layered: as male, as queer, as mixed-race, as black, as curious. His scope is vast: as director, as actor, as visual artist, as interpreter....His questions are endless. We need his art, his artistry and his voice." Kimberley Rampersad, Associate Artistic Director of Shaw Festival HAUI is a mixed media artist & activist who eschews categorization. His work explores themes of race, gender and orientation while blurring the lines between theatrical and cinematic mediums. He has worked in a number of roles from directing, video/projection design, visual arts and performance for some of Canada's leading arts organizations including CBC, Canadian Opera Company, National Arts Centre, Stratford Festival and the Shaw Festival. He recently released his feature-length film debut entitled Mixed↑ produced with Jack Fox and in association with OUTtv. Career highlights include: Assistant producer and stills photographer for Métis/Dene filmmaker Marie Clements' feature film Red Snow available now on CBC Gem; directing his award winning short film C'est Moi which has screened at some of the leading African diaspora film festivals worldwide. Upcoming he is writing his first full-length operatic work Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canadian Opera Company; designing at the prestigious Luminato Festival in 2021; teaching and acting in theatre and film all while developing a new television series. He is currently an artist-in-residence with Wildseed Black Arts Fellowship (Black Lives Matter Toronto) bridging arts and activism. For more information head to haui.ca “Haui Davis – Howard, or “Haui”, as he positions himself, is a highly intelligent, witty and talented young man with a huge repertoire of skills...this is an exceptionally professional young man who will make his name, and soon, with a vengeance. His talents are wide-ranging– and unique.” Martha Henry; Order of Canada, Order of ON; Hon LLD, PhD, DHum, DFA.  ***Head on over to Creatrix Compass and explore our many offerings from free inspiration to get your creative juices flowing to creativity classes to creativity coaching and life coaching for creatives.  It can all be found at: https://www.creatrixcompass.com Your donation helps us continue to spread creativity throughout the land.  Thank you! https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=2PM3V82XDS7GA  Music: Good Friends Inc by Jonathan Boyle 

This week on Yes But Why Podcast, listen in as I interview Stephanie Herrera, actor, writer, and entertainment insurance broker. Stephanie Herrera is an Entertainment Specialist based out of Durham, Ontario, Canada. She is a Stage/Screen Actor, a Comedian, a Singer, a Writer, a Producer, an Acting Coach, a Director, a Key Note Speaker, a Corporate Trainer, a TV Host, and a Voice Actor. She has been the host and community producer on three shows at Rogers TV (Oshawa), produced, written, and directed dozens of interactive productions, comedy shows, and plays. She writes for film and television and has been Associate Producer and Casting Director for several productions in Toronto and Durham Region. Stephanie is the founder and Artistic Director of Durham Improv Collective Inc, a not-for-profit which provides free/subsidized community programs with a focus on people with special needs and families at local abuse shelters. She has been fortunate to be a recipient of multiple grants through the Ontario Arts Council which has allowed her to teach thousands of students through Community Living. Stephanie is also an insurance broker with McCAM Insurance Brokers Limited. In the entertainment insurance industry, her success is based on years of knowledge and experience in the Arts. Understanding the ins and outs of the entertainment industry, both in the for-profit and not-for-profit realms, Stephanie brings a passion and expertise that gives her an edge in the insurance field. In our conversation, we talk about idolizing Carol Burnett, making musical improv with Jamie Lamb, and multi-level marketing for improv. Stephanie gushes about how much she loves performing, from singing onstage to acting on screen. She has an amazing drive to build her own entertainment business. Stephanie shares the story of how she first got into corporate improv. We discuss the ways in which we are connecting with our artistic communities. Stephanie tells me how she puts her personal touch on her improv classes. Stephanie is constantly hustling because she loves working in the entertainment industry. From organizing events to teaching improv workshops to being on the board of the local theater, Stephanie gets involved and she is constantly looking for the next best way to help you! Which brings me to this wild EXTRA part of Stephanie's coolness – she's an entertainment insurance broker. If you're like me, you hadn't even really thought about entertainment insurance before, but Stephanie helps me to understand. She is a total badass. Support Stephanie Herrera by hiring her to teach you a workshop or act in your next film! Check out her improv school, Durham Improv Collective and donate to the cause! And, of course, if listening to this makes you realize you might need entertainment insurance, contact Stephanie and she can point you in the right direction! Yes But Why Podcast is a proud member of the HC Universal Network family of podcasts. Visit us at HCUniversalNetwork.com to join in on the fun. #YesButWhy #Podcast #HCUniversalNetwork This episode of Yes But Why podcast is sponsored by audible - get your FREE audiobook download and your 30 day free trial at http://www.audibletrial.com/YESBUTWHY. Treat Yourself. Get Audible. This episode of Yes But Why is also sponsored by PodcastCadet.com. Go to PodcastCadet.com to connect with us so we can help you with your podcast! Save money by putting in offer code YBY20 to get 20% off the first service or workshop you buy! This episode of Yes But Why is also sponsored by True Hemp Science! True Hemp Science is our Austin-based resource for vegan friendly, whole plant extract CBD oil. Go to TrueHempScience.com to peruse all the therapeutic CBD product options! Use code YesButWhy7 to get 7% off your order of $50 or more and get a free packet of 2 CBD edibles!

We interview Tonya Liburd, author of “The Drunken Tree”, episode 403. Tonya Liburd shares a birthday with Ray Bradbury and Simeon Daniel, which may tell you a little something about her; and while she has an enviable collection of vintage dust bunnies to her credit, her passions are music (someday!) and of course, words. One day she hopes, when introducing herself as a writer, she won't feel all weird about it. Her poetry has been nominated for the 2017 & 2018 Rhysling Awards, and longlisted in the 2015 Carter V. Cooper(Vanderbilt)/Exile Short Fiction Competition. Her work is used in Nisi Shawl's workshops and Tananarive due's UCLA Horror course (the latter of which was crashed by Jordan Peele of Get Out Fame) as examples of code switching. Her fiction has been praised by Publisher's Weekly and at Barnes & Noble's SFF blog. She is the recipient of an Ontario Arts Council writer's grant in 2020. She is also the Senior Editor of Abyss & Apex Magazine. You can find her blogging at https://www.spiderlilly.com or on Twitter at @somesillywowzer. Links to items discussed: The Night Sun by Zin E Rocklyn Ace of Knives - Apex Magazine 10 Steps to a Whole New You - Fantasy Magazine Let's Play White by Chesya Burke Black Horror Anthology Announcement Black Panther: Sins of the King on Serial Box www.spiderlilly.com Twitter: @somesillywowzer Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TonyaLiburd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode Notes Links to website/social media :- https://www.facebook.com/tanveeralamdance/about/ https://www.tanveerdance.com/ https://www.instagram.com/tanveer_dance/ tanveer.alam.dance@gmail.com Bio Tanveer Alam started his dance training in kathak, an Indian classical dance form, under Sudeshna Maulik. He continues to develop his craft under guru Sandhya Desai. Alam also trains in Taal Vidya — the knowledge of Hindustani classical music, with guru Pandit Divyang Vakil. He has also attended various workshops, and explored the different facets of kathak with masters such as Kumudini Lakhia, Pandit Birju Maharaj, and Nahid Siddiqui. Alam is also a 2019 graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre's Professional Training Program, Alam has performed in the works of Susie Burpee, Jennifer Dallas, Jasmyn Fyffe, Danny Grossman, Christopher House, Allen Kaeja, Ryan Lee, Sharon B. Moore, Julia Sasso, Ofilio Sinbadinho, and Darryl Tracy.  Alam has performed across North America as well as India, and has had the opportunity to dance in the works of various choreographers including Janak Khendry, Pandit Birju Maharaj, Rina Singha, Brandy Leary, Noémie Lafrance, and Sanjukta Sinha. An emerging choreographer, he has presented his own works at the Dance Ontario DanceWeekend 2019, New Blue Emerging Dance Festival, London Dance Festival, and MAI – Montréal, arts interculturels, to name a few. In 2019, Alam premiered _Éclosion, _a new solo, as a part of Tangente's contemporary dance season in Montreal as well as _The Nine Brains of the Human Mind _at SummerWorks Festival 2019.  Alam is a recipient of the Lindy Green and Sam Chaiton Bursary, as well as the Winchester Prize Award. He has been supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, The Ontario Arts Council, as well as the Toronto Arts Council. Timestamps 0:01:00 Being a diasporic artist 0:01:32 Example of different access to Knowledge 0:02:57 The importance of going back to India 0:03:37 Mentorship with Sanjukta Sinha 0:04:16 Experiences with SSDC 0:04:59 Performances with SSDC 0:05:44 Mariginalization of Kathak 0:06:32 Being the "Only One" 0:07:37 Legacy of Kathak in Canada 0:09:22 Talking about Kathak 0:11:30 Acknowledging the differences 0:13:48 Degree in contemporary dance 0:15:35 Practicing two dance forms 0:16:34 Doing Kathak during the degree 0:18:44 Factors to accept performance opportunities 0:19:48 Showcasing the community in truthful ways 0:21:42 Choreographic Investigation 0:23:00 How Tanveer Got Into Kathak 0:24:48 Sudeshna Maulik 0:25:19 Sandhya Desai 0:26:20 Internalized Practice 0:28:49 FOMO 0:30:27 Smt Kumidini Lakhia 0:31:08 Kumiben 0:32:30 Performing in front of Birju Maharaj 0:36:21 Ustad Nahid Siddiqui 0:37:16 Taal Vidya with Pandit Divyang Vakil 0:38:25 Behind the Scenes 0:40:06 When should you start Taal Vidya 0:40:49 Choreographies 0:42:23 Collaborating with other Dancers 0:42:59 Style of Kathak 0:43:47 Teaching practice 0:45:13 Future Projects 0:46:35 Concluding Remarks