Fort McMurray’s Keyano College sends arts to tailings pond
By Frank Moher The sacking of four instructors in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Keyano College in Fort McMurray is creating an uproar well beyond the city better known for its resource extraction talents. Artists, of course, are well aware that their masters — whether they be cabinet ministers or academic administrators — [...]
How the Sun helped post the Playhouse’s closing notice
By Frank Moher The sudden news that the Vancouver Playhouse is closing after 49 seasons comes as a shock, of course. We assume these venerable civic institutions will somehow always manage to lumber along, despite economic downturns and hostile governments and digital depredations. This, after all, was the company that gave Canadian theatre its seminal [...]
Who needs a BC arts council when we have the Liberals?
By Frank Moher Jane Danzo, in her letter of resignation as Chair of the BC Arts Council and in various exit interviews that followed, has confirmed what most of us already suspected: that the Liberal government now sees itself as arbiter of all things cultural in the province. At last, we can begin to see [...]
Stephen Harper wins small
The Conservatives may have been re-elected last night, but Stephen Harper lost. He coulda been more than a contender; he could have been the leader of a majority government. But he lost it by being small-minded; his silly, captious comment about artists torpedoed the Conservatives’ momentum in Quebec, and here we are. Over on bobalicious, [...]
Has Harper blown it?
It is striking how Stephen Harper has bollixed this election campaign. In 2006, he ran a model opposition party assault, not only decrying the squalid condition of the Liberals after their long run in power, but also staying a step ahead of them by announcing nearly every day a new initiative, policy, plan. Two years [...]
Artsy-not-so-smartsy
So, having declared that “ordinary working people” don’t care about the arts, Stephen Harper now announces a new tax credit worth $150 million aimed at families who want to enroll their kids in arts programs. But who can those families possibly be, given that the “ordinary” ones are apparently too busy playing parcheezi and watching [...]
Cut this
Frank Moher We are a little late to this battle, having been on hiatus in August, so I’ll keep this brief. The Conservatives have already been pounded on mightily for their cuts to arts funding last month, but let me add that the skankiest aspect to their behaviour was the covert way in which they [...]
And all whose jazz?
By Frank Moher NEW ORLEANS — Diana Krall played the annual Jazz Festival in this most congenial of American cities on the weekend, a festival that also featured such stalwarts of the form as Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Deacon John, and the Rebirth Brass Band. Mind you, it also featured such distinctly non-jazz acts as [...]
Update
Update to story below: Calgary Herald Editor-in-Chief Lorne Motley has issued a response. He says the paper has commissioned Calgary playwright Eugene Stickland to write a piece on Rick McNair for this coming weekend.
Theatre wiz Rick McNair deserved better
Brian Brennan Rick McNair died in Winnipeg this past week. The Winnipeg newspapers did the right thing. They ran big stories saying what a wonderful contribution Rick had made to the local theatre scene as former artistic director of the Manitoba Theatre Centre, founder of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, storyteller, actor, playwright, opera librettist, and [...]
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