wet my appetite then...

"Michael is a very astute guy about political issues and when you have a play that is such an intelligent contribution to the political discourse, that needs to be seen."

This sentence alone made me want to see the play for both its artistic and political merits.

Too bad there is no more room.

It would be good to see one or more of the local theatre companies pick this play up and do a full staged version in the near future.

But not only Harper and the current PMO has used its muscle and bullying to curtail dissent. This practice was alive and well under Mulroney and Chretien. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been taken from the CBC budget over the last 2 1/2 decades let alone tens of millions from arts funding.

Harper is a poster child for

Harper is a poster child for corporate malfeasance and corporate power, just sort of dismantling everything that’s good about Canada.

So he’s the kind of species that rises to political power and is utterly subservient to corporate interests at the expense of the citizenry.

Yeah, he’s a pretty venal figure.

http://www.straight.com/article-732826/vancouver/chris-hedges-harper-venal-us-politics-totally-rigged

.

oh dear

I am truly sorry, I must for once disagree with the most estimable Mr. Hedges regarding his use of "venal" to describe der Harpenfuhrer.

"Evil", I could accept, but "venal" is far too shallow and simple to describe the depths of depravity and venomous slime that the vampire Canadians invited over the threshold is native to.

It would be a most grievous error to think this is a run-of-the-mill corrupt politico we are dealing with, most grievous indeed. And it plays into its hands, or talons rather, to fail to realize this. Canada is at war. The most serious war we have ever faced. Failure to understand this fully will be our undoing.

A rare local arts sighting at the Tyee

Thankyou to Shannon Rupp and David Bloom for providing a rare Tyee article on the local theatre scene. The Tyee's arts coverage tends to be coverage of large multi-national media congolomerate produced work. Which is fine - that should be part of the mix; but it should be balanced with a focus on local performance. Imagine a Tyee that only wrote about global housing issues, global environmental issues, global transporation issues, global politics. How about no coverage of the civic elections, etc.? During last year's Tyee campaign of "Give us your money and tell us what to cover," many readers voted for arts and arts funding coverage to become a priority. The Tyee responded asking Teachers to counter that trend by voting for education - assuming, I guess, that teachers don't care about the arts or its value for engaged discourse in our society. The Tyee doesn't give a damn about the arts, it's contribution to society on a value or economic basis. The only reason this article made it in is because it's about censorship.

In praise of kerfuffles....and this article

Thank God for Michael Healey and "the kerfuffle surrounding 'Proud'"...it means this country is still breathing, however faintly.

And well said, Shannon Rupp:

"But the Proud kerfuffle hits on the real reason all democracies fund the arts at arm's length and all totalitarian states either censor them or buy them for propaganda -- the theatres are as essential to democracy's discussion forum as the schools, the courts or the news media."

We are responsible

We all need to remember that we, the voters, are responsible for having a bad government in Ottawa, and a majority one, at that. Though the Cons were elected with less than 40% of the vote last year, they got the most seats. Those 40% who voted for them forced a rotten government down the throats of the rest of us--we 60%. The first-past-the-post electoral system works just fine for them and their monied friends, but not for the rest of us. We must change the electoral system to a form of proportional representation., else Canada will become "a shadow of its former self."

Greater exposure

I'd love to see, or hear "Proud", but it's just not available here or in other parts of non-urban locations. Too long and expensive to make it to "The Big Stink", although that moniker may be best reserved for other global cities.

Travelling theatre troops, text, YouTube, how do we get it out there for larger Canadian audiences?

Can't really comment critically about the play, not the man and his cronies, without experiencing, chuckling and contemplating it.

To Owlrol

Email me:

. I may be able to help you.

Interesting

Since when did not agreeing to run a play because you felt it was over the top turn into censorship.

Why does 'tempest in a tea pot', a very small teapot at that, come to mind?

damn, missed tonight's reading, I'm sure it went well

in the meantime:

"The remaining pieces of legislation in 1933 dealt a major blow to Germany’s Jews. The first law established Chambers of culture within the Propaganda Ministry, to regulate the film, theater, music, fine arts, literature, broadcasting, and the press. The law establishing the Chambers of Culture contained no Aryan clause. None was necessary. Goebbles, Minister of Propaganda, had been granted authority to refuse admission of undesirable to any of the chambers."

the Iron Heel

Hitler visits a lunatic asylum. The patients give the Hitler salute. As he passes down the line he comes across a man who isn’t saluting.
“Why aren’t you saluting like the others?” Hitler barks.
“Mein Führer, I’m the nurse," comes the answer. "I’m not crazy!”

A Berlin munitions worker, identified only as Marianne Elise K., was convicted of undermining the war effort “through spiteful remarks” and executed in 1944 for telling this one:

Hitler and Göring are standing on top of Berlin’s radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Berlin. “Why don’t you just jump?” suggests Göring.

Today, the zionist infiltration of Canadian politics makes me wonder if we'll be sanctioned for telling Israeli jokes in the near future.
Here is one of Bill Maher's

"It's very sad. They tried everything to get these people to leave. They tried water cannons. They tried special forces. They tried wire cutters, and finally, as a last resort, they had a black family move in next door, and they just (got) right out of there." – on the Israeli pullout from Gaza