Dear friends and participants,
This is a reminder that tomorrow night's Convergence culminates in a performance evening with engaging work by Heather Ács, Silas Howard, Laura Boo MacDonald and Damien Luxe. Entrance is $10, but we have 10 half price spots available for those who contact us in advance!
There will be a Q&A after the performances (around 10:30pm) hosted by Jordan Arseneault.
9pm:
Heather Ács’ piece “what the brain forgets and the heart denies, the body remembers…” explores illness, death, grieving and loss refracted through working class Appalachian and Mexican cultural imagery, creating a nonlinear world layered with movement, gesture, storytelling, soundscape, video, and installation. In this multi-media solo performance piece, time and testimonies loop, break apart, burrow, reemerge, and cross over. Breath taking, glass breaking, gifts are bestowed. Sparrows descend, tortillas and tears sizzle on the comal, a river flows with dirt and glitter. Lesley Gore croons cotton candy lyrics laced with razor blades while dust gathers in an empty house. Stitch it all together with string theory and skeleton keys, stuff into a mason jar, shake until your heart might break, check your pulse, make a wish, and see what rises to the surface.
Silas Howard's “Thank you for Being Urgent” is a textured tale of a transman coming up in the queer punk world of San Francisco and spilling into the crappy and exalted glitter of Hollywood. Silas Howard searches for true tales of fierce outsiders and re-imagines the mainstream, never loosening his grip on the underground. Our hero begs sanity from mystery man Mr. Hollywood through playful and plaintive letters, ruminating on desire, shame, and the infinite loopholes in the American Dream. Traversing serendipitous heights and punishing ironies, Thank you for Being Urgent chronicles burlesque dancers with dementia, tranny jazzmen and film executives, using archival photos, monologues and charm.
Intermission (9:45-10)
Laura Boo MacDonald (aka Douche La Douche)'s "Throw Myself" is a full body memory of a childhood spent taking vicious tantrums. Tantrums (and the children who take them) are seen as shaming themselves and their parents with their ill behaviour that does not conform to socially accepted norms for emotional expression. As an adult who has learned that one is expected to deal with stress, trauma, loss, anger, sadness, panic and grief while remaining outwardly composed and unaffected, memories of childhood tantrums become a dream of release and relief. This performance raises questions about self-care practices, mental health and the tragedy of adulthood while simultaneously testing the boundaries between public and private.
Damien Luxe is presenting the Hot Pink Mass, a performative church service for freaks, perverts, weirdos and magical creatures. Drawing from five different religious traditions, the piece combines humor, acknowledgement of desire and a vision of social justice to inspire. Honoring feminine hero/ines and instigating our individual and collective power to manifest change, the Mass asks participants: what do you deserve, and how can you make it happen?
10:30pm: Q&A
Stick around for a round table Q&A with all four artists. Hosted by Jordan Arseneault (aka Peaches Lepage, Tooloose Letrick, Aïda Cökenbalz)
Friday, January 7, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
How to Build a Fire Queer Sans Fin Convergence
How to Build a Fire Queer Sans Fin Convergence
When: Saturday Jan 8, 2011 -- Workshops [Free] 12noon-6pm, Performance [$10] 9-11p
Where: Mise au Jeu, 90 de la Gauchetière Est. Montrèal
Who: Damien Luxe and Heather Ács [New York], Silas Howard [Los Angeles], Jordan Arseneault and Laura Boo [Montréal]
12noon: Heather Ács: Creative Strategies for Resistance:
Exploring Educational Theatre Techniques
Educational Theatre practitioners use theatre as a tool to explore issues, incite dialogue, and practice strategies in classrooms and communities of all kinds. In this workshop, participants will get on their feet as the facilitator guides them through a series of exercises that include movement, improvisation, writing, image theatre, and performance composition. Educators, community organizers, artists, and students interested in leadership will all find relevant material in this workshop and walk away with a practical set of tools and techniques they can use in a variety of educational and creative settings.
2-4pm: Silas Howard: Reality in Flight: A DIY story workshop focusing on using personal stories and metaphor to tell stories.
This workshop/practicum examines the relationships between voice, style and language along with issues of memory and identity. Through hands-on scene study, writing activities, and examining model films, participants will come away with story telling strategies for approaching the different phases of film and other narrative forms. In particular, the workshop will explore the representation of outsider stories, new voices, and transgressive narratives in stories and film. Participants of all levels are encouraged to attend, but no previous experience is necessary.
2-4pm: Laura Boo: DIY event technical skillshare:
When tiny budgets and unconventional performance spaces combine with a great desire to get on stage and do something amazing, something has got to give. Often, it is personal ingenuity and craftiness that can make the difference between a show that takes place without sound and in the dark and a great event where the tech is smooth enough to be invisible. This workshop / skillshare will be an opportunity for those involved in performance and various types of event production to learn some of the basic skills required tech your own shows. From the basics of understanding what each piece of equipment does and how it interacts with other equipment to troubleshooting tech nightmares, this session will de-mystify the technical side of event production. We'll be talking about amps, mixers, mics, speakers, subs, lights, cables, computers, video projectors and all the ways to get them to work together.
4-6pm: Damien Luxe: Building the Gay Bomb: Open Source media skillshare for performance.
The goal of this presentation is to up the multimedia skills of live performers; we'll do this by providing performers with an overview some of the open-source software currently available for audio and web production, and to relay vital, “how-to” media and tech strategies for people with medium/moderate computer and internet experience and zero to moderate capital. We will focus on utilizing shareware and freeware to ensure that access to programs is as economically obstacle-free as possible. All participants will leave the presentation with a knowledge bank and insight of how to utilize free software to add to the multimedia of their performances
4-6pm: Jordan Arseneault: Fear Drag: Wear other participants' fears in a role-play workshop to discover what yours are, and open your performance heart. Workshop participants will write down the obstacles, ideas, and worries that make them afraid in real life. We switch and act them out. In the second part, we write down our performance-related fears, switch, and act them out as well. See your peers enact your fears, help ourselves move beyond them. Beginners very welcome.
The How to Build a Fire Queer Sans Fin Convergence is a full-day Performance Art extravaganza in which 5 artists from activist, literary, video, theatre and multimedia backgrounds will present free, empowering, knowledge-sharing workshops on their practices with the Montreal community, followed by an evening of queer performance-based art work.
How To Build A Fire is a performance and teaching artist group from the US who travel queer landscapes to create legacies while telling tales of desire and survival. Through freak church services for magical creatures, fragmented memory, movement and costuming, and unraveling narratives, these escape artists trespass loopholes in the American dream. Queer Sans Fin is the moniker for Laura Boo MacDonald's Cabaret Faux Pas, who along with Jordan Arseneault will represent Montreal's queer underbelly spectacular in free workshops. Silas Howard, Heather Àcs, and Damien Luxe are the visiting artists presenting workshops and performances.
The Convergence brings together queer artists from across Canada and the US; from across gender lines and languages; from across performance disciplines and backgrounds, responding to the growing need for community building approaches to the performance art medium so often relegated to brief exposures in bars, cabarets, and professionalized art spaces.
We invite you to join the convergence, the conversation, and the events with us on January 8, 2011.
Co-Sponsors: Concordia's Fine Art Student Association, The Chair in Human Sexuality at Concordia, The Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, Queer Concordia, The Boxcutter Collective, The Teaching Artist Tour, The Duty Myth and Le Coeur est une Pompe.
Site: www.teachingartisttour.com
Facebook: "How to Build a Fire Queer Sans Fin Convergence"
When: Saturday Jan 8, 2011 -- Workshops [Free] 12noon-6pm, Performance [$10] 9-11p
Where: Mise au Jeu, 90 de la Gauchetière Est. Montrèal
Who: Damien Luxe and Heather Ács [New York], Silas Howard [Los Angeles], Jordan Arseneault and Laura Boo [Montréal]
12noon: Heather Ács: Creative Strategies for Resistance:
Exploring Educational Theatre Techniques
Educational Theatre practitioners use theatre as a tool to explore issues, incite dialogue, and practice strategies in classrooms and communities of all kinds. In this workshop, participants will get on their feet as the facilitator guides them through a series of exercises that include movement, improvisation, writing, image theatre, and performance composition. Educators, community organizers, artists, and students interested in leadership will all find relevant material in this workshop and walk away with a practical set of tools and techniques they can use in a variety of educational and creative settings.
2-4pm: Silas Howard: Reality in Flight: A DIY story workshop focusing on using personal stories and metaphor to tell stories.
This workshop/practicum examines the relationships between voice, style and language along with issues of memory and identity. Through hands-on scene study, writing activities, and examining model films, participants will come away with story telling strategies for approaching the different phases of film and other narrative forms. In particular, the workshop will explore the representation of outsider stories, new voices, and transgressive narratives in stories and film. Participants of all levels are encouraged to attend, but no previous experience is necessary.
2-4pm: Laura Boo: DIY event technical skillshare:
When tiny budgets and unconventional performance spaces combine with a great desire to get on stage and do something amazing, something has got to give. Often, it is personal ingenuity and craftiness that can make the difference between a show that takes place without sound and in the dark and a great event where the tech is smooth enough to be invisible. This workshop / skillshare will be an opportunity for those involved in performance and various types of event production to learn some of the basic skills required tech your own shows. From the basics of understanding what each piece of equipment does and how it interacts with other equipment to troubleshooting tech nightmares, this session will de-mystify the technical side of event production. We'll be talking about amps, mixers, mics, speakers, subs, lights, cables, computers, video projectors and all the ways to get them to work together.
4-6pm: Damien Luxe: Building the Gay Bomb: Open Source media skillshare for performance.
The goal of this presentation is to up the multimedia skills of live performers; we'll do this by providing performers with an overview some of the open-source software currently available for audio and web production, and to relay vital, “how-to” media and tech strategies for people with medium/moderate computer and internet experience and zero to moderate capital. We will focus on utilizing shareware and freeware to ensure that access to programs is as economically obstacle-free as possible. All participants will leave the presentation with a knowledge bank and insight of how to utilize free software to add to the multimedia of their performances
4-6pm: Jordan Arseneault: Fear Drag: Wear other participants' fears in a role-play workshop to discover what yours are, and open your performance heart. Workshop participants will write down the obstacles, ideas, and worries that make them afraid in real life. We switch and act them out. In the second part, we write down our performance-related fears, switch, and act them out as well. See your peers enact your fears, help ourselves move beyond them. Beginners very welcome.
The How to Build a Fire Queer Sans Fin Convergence is a full-day Performance Art extravaganza in which 5 artists from activist, literary, video, theatre and multimedia backgrounds will present free, empowering, knowledge-sharing workshops on their practices with the Montreal community, followed by an evening of queer performance-based art work.
How To Build A Fire is a performance and teaching artist group from the US who travel queer landscapes to create legacies while telling tales of desire and survival. Through freak church services for magical creatures, fragmented memory, movement and costuming, and unraveling narratives, these escape artists trespass loopholes in the American dream. Queer Sans Fin is the moniker for Laura Boo MacDonald's Cabaret Faux Pas, who along with Jordan Arseneault will represent Montreal's queer underbelly spectacular in free workshops. Silas Howard, Heather Àcs, and Damien Luxe are the visiting artists presenting workshops and performances.
The Convergence brings together queer artists from across Canada and the US; from across gender lines and languages; from across performance disciplines and backgrounds, responding to the growing need for community building approaches to the performance art medium so often relegated to brief exposures in bars, cabarets, and professionalized art spaces.
We invite you to join the convergence, the conversation, and the events with us on January 8, 2011.
Co-Sponsors: Concordia's Fine Art Student Association, The Chair in Human Sexuality at Concordia, The Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, Queer Concordia, The Boxcutter Collective, The Teaching Artist Tour, The Duty Myth and Le Coeur est une Pompe.
Site: www.teachingartisttour.com
Facebook: "How to Build a Fire Queer Sans Fin Convergence"
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