Infinithéâtre nominated for MECCA Awards… 5 TIMES!

Best Production

Blessed Are They (Infinithéâtre)

Doubt (Centaur Theatre)

Dracula (Fallen Angel Productions)

Factory Project (Studio 303 & Out Productions)

Tryst (Segal Centre for Performing Arts)

Best Actor

Andreas Apergis (Blessed Are They, Infinithéâtre)

Patrick Costello (Oooo!, SideMart Theatrical Grocery)

Barry Flatman (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Segal Centre for Performing Arts)

Dan Jeannotte (Cherry Docs, Persephone Productions)

Neil Napier (Hellavator, Hellavator Productions)

Best Actress

Stéphanie Breton (Trout Stanley, foundWave Theatre Co-operative)

Nicola Cavendish (Shirley Valentine, Centaur Theatre)

Clare Coulter (Age of Arousal, Centaur Theatre)

Leni Parker (Age of Arousal, Centaur Theatre)

Brenda Robins (Doubt, Centaur Theatre)

Best Director

Frances Balenzano (Dracula, Fallen Angel Productions)

Greg Kramer (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Segal Centre for Performing Arts)

Andrew Shaver (Oooo!, SideMart Theatrical Grocery)

Guy Sprung (Blessed Are They, Infinithéâtre)

Roy Surette and Bryden MacDonald (With Bated Breath, Centaur Theatre)

Best Text

Age of Arousal (Linda Griffiths)

With Bated Breath (Bryden MacDonald)

Blessed Are They (Bruce M. Smith)

Paradise Lost (Paul Van Dyck)

Best Ensemble

Age of Arousal (Centaur Theatre)

Dracula (Fallen Angel Productions)

Life is a Dream (Scapegoat Carnivale)

Lion in the Streets (Tableau D’Hôte Theatre)

With Bated Breath (Centaur Theatre)

Best Visiting Production

Molora (Farber Foundry)

Reverie: Simply Unspeakable (The Second City Theatricals)

Scorched (Tarragon Theatre)

This is What Happens Next (Necessary Angel)

Tshepang (adapted and directed by Lara Foot Newton, Théâtre La Chapelle)

Best Set Design

Perrine Biette (John and Béatrice, Infinithéâtre)

Michael Egan (Age of Arousal, Centaur Theatre)

James Lavoie (With Bated Breath, Centaur Theatre)

Eo Sharp (Buried Child, Segal Centre for Performing Arts/National Arts Centre)

Sarah Yaffe (Life is a Dream, Scapegoat Carnivale)

Best Costume Design

Michael Eagan (Age of Arousal, Centaur Theatre)

Astrid Janson and Sherri Catt (Tryst, Segal Centre for Performing Arts)

Amy Keith (Alice Through the Looking Glass, Geordie Productions)

Marie-Geneviève Morin (Le Code Noir, Black Theatre Workshop)

Jenna Wright (Life is a Dream, Scapegoat Carnivale)

Best Lighting

Jody Burkholder (Dracula, Fallen Angel Productions)

Jody Burkholder (Paradise Lost, Rabbit in a Hat Productions)

Jody Burkholder (Penumbra, Productions Lapin dans un Chapeau)

Spike Lyne (With Bated Breath, Centaur Theatre)

Luc Prairie (Tryst, Segal Centre for Performing Arts)

Best Sound

Jesse Ash (Oooo!, SideMart Theatrical Grocery)

Peter Cerone (With Bated Breath, Centaur Theatre)

Lucie Monsarrat (Lion in the Streets, Tableau d’Hote Theatre)

Troy Slocum (Alice Through the Looking Glass, Geordie Productions)

Kevin Tighe (Dracula, Fallen Angel Productions)

The MECCA judges include the following members of the Association of Montreal English-language critics:

Stanley Asher CINQ

Neil Boyce Montreal Mirror

Panel Discussion Provokes

Vive la Gazette libre!

NOTEBOOK -

By Marianne Ackerman 07.02.2010

http://roverarts.com/2010/02/vive-la-gazette-libre/

Alex Norris has a great idea. During a panel discussion on the future of newspapers, namely The Gazette – currently bankrupt and for sale – the former journalist turned Mile End councillor called on wealthy citizens of Quebec to pool their resources and buy the damn thing. Rescue our community newspaper from the clutches of remote money-makers who have run it into the ground.

There was considerable amount of excitement in the pool when Norris issued his challenge, not to mention money – the pool being the Bain St-Michel where Infinitheatre is currently staging The Daily Miracle, a new play about the dying days of a Montreal newspaper which strongly resembles the one we still have (at least for now). The event was a $100-a-ticket fundraiser for the theatre. Paying patrons had to work for their free wine and snacks served later in the locker room. Following a performance of the play, a panel of journalists, including Gazette managing editor Ray Brassard, took over the newsroom/stage to discuss the future of print newspapers.

A predictable number of audience members declared they no longer look at the publication. Others had suggestions on how to improve it. Devote two pages to letters-to-the-editor, said Infini board member Michael Shafter, whose day job is running Shafter Bros. steam heat business on Van Horne (which may explain why he likes the idea of blowing off over his morning coffee).

It was that kind of event, a reminder (as is the play) that not only do “words matter” but so does The Gazette. Which is why we should all channel our anger and frustration over the mess it’s in (let’s forget for a moment the mess it has created) and seriously address The Norris Plan.

Where would the money come from? Consider this: if each of the 160,000 people who buy the Gaz every day invested $100 in shares, their investment would provide $16-million equity. A pittance of the cost, but an IPO would be a good way to ensure customer and community loyalty.

Setting aside what acquiring the cripple might cost, let’s look at potential revenue. My inside sources have estimated Montreal’s only English-language newspaper could easily make $10-million a year while still being able to afford both a quality staff and a long-term survival strategy. Apparently buyers currently looking at it say they would have to make at least $50-million to make ownership worthwhile, meaning a takeover might well have no significant difference in quality, or longevity.

A glance at my morning edition (February 5) suggests somebody somewhere must be making money:

44 pages of grey, blurry newsprint, approximately 35% ads
68 pages of flashy, glossy four-colour ads, no editorial copy
24-page supplement about the Olympics, grey and blurry, mainly ads

These are but the most cursory observations, designed to tempt prospective buyers. Seriously, Alex Norris has the right idea. Mr. Brassard said the web will save the print edition. At least he expressed hope, though he didn’t seem to feel it in his bones.

Inspiration is to be found in the story of Fleury Mesplet and how he came to found The Gazette, how he went to jail for his ideas, and adapted to the times. La Gazette/The Gazette for and by Quebecers? Stranger things have happened.

Post your comments below, and if you agree with The Norris Plan, write to our freshly elected man at city hall while he’s still enthusiastic about change: alex.norris@ville.montreal.qc.ca.

P.S. Curious as to how much I’m paying for all this sylvan devastation, I phoned The Gazette circulation department at 3:26 p.m. Friday. My call was “monitored for quality assurance” but the office was closed. So was the advertising department, although the voice-activated attendant seemed mystified by the sound of my voice: “I’m not sure I understand what you said.”

Noses to the grindstone, eh? This too could change.

Comments ( 4 )

1. 

   Elise Moser on Sunday 7, 2010

   This is a great idea. It’s about time we recognized that “unprofitable” businesses are often simply not profitable enough for the gargantuan appetites of their multinational owners. They could make enough to operate while supporting their staffs and providing services to their communities. It is immoral to lay the burden of generating fortunes for distant, faceless and uncaring owners or shareholders on a business that is actually a group of people whose livelihoods are thereby put at risk.
   On the other hand, The Gazette doesn’t need any more space for letters to the editor. Half of them are written by the same four people as it is.

2. 

   Ann Diamond on Sunday 7, 2010

   Sounds like a great new Ponzi scheme, Marianne.

   What will make the “new” Gazette any different from the “old” Gazette, I have to ask? Who will run the “new, resurrected” Gazette? The same employees and die-hard freelancers who are organizing the “Save the Gazette” campaign? Who will pay? The big investors, I would guess, wealthy Quebecers such as … well… um … the Bronfmans, Molsons, Websters. The same corporate families that support McGill, Concordia, our social services, while enjoying close ties with pharmaceutical companies like Merck… the people who bring us all those nice vaccinations, anti-depressants, and the classified bio-chemical warfare projects that have turned McGill campus into a toxic waste dump, and make Quebec such a wonderful place to invest. due to the abundance of financially desperate human guinea pigs … who depend on the Gazette for information

   How will a new Gazette change any of this, pray tell?

   My advice to you all: walk away from the Gazette, with its hallowed roots in “enlightened” secret societies (let’s name it: Freemasonry) and its ties to some of the most backward and reactionary groups on the planet. Refresh your mind, do your own research, study the past, think critically, and start dreaming about a future created by citizen journalists of every persuasion — and join the thousands of Monteralers who experiences a surge of happiness and became much better informed when they stopped reading it.

   I know I’m annoying. So is the truth.

3. 

   Sujata Dey on Sunday 7, 2010

   There was actually a great symposium at Colombia University on the ownership of newspapers that I read about in Le Devoir. It suggested that governments give money to community groups so that they can run newspapers as non-profits.

   It is interesting, the model proposed by Norris because Le Devoir has the Friends of Le Devoir, which has managed to create investments for Le Devoir, and that has been one of the ways that it has maintained its independence. That and investment from the FTQ Fonds de la solidarité and other such investments.

   And I disagree with Ann Diamond on the fact that the new Gazette wouldn’t be a change. There is a lot of unused potential at the Gazette just waiting to unleash itself. And I do believe that having a decent quality newspaper in English (or even several) is essential to a healthy democracy.

4. 

   Nigel Spencer on Sunday 7, 2010

   Numerous buyouts like this have been tried in the past–including some by employees, but the “laws of the marketplace” have stifled them or made them worse than their earlier incarnations. The kind of English readership left in Montreal is certainly not more discerning than when The Montreal Star went under years ago, and The (inferior) Gazette survived, to decline still further. It would be hard to do a worse job than the kind of remote-control execized from Winnipeg by the Aspers, but I don’t see a buyout reversing the already moribund state of print journalism, whether in quality or profitability. The solution might be a strictly online alternative of the kind taken up by the locked-out Journal de Montreal journalists in La Rue Frontenac. There may be a market for English-language journalism to support something on that scale.

Review: The Daily Miracle

Arthur Holden, left, Howard Rosenstein, Jean-Guy Bouchard, Sheena Gazé-Deslandes (partially hidden), Ellen David in the newsroom.

Photograph by: Dave Sidaway, The Gazette

Good, you’re reading this. That’s a relief.

Because if you believe what you see at the theatre, a newspaper like ours should be dead already. The Daily Miracle, a bleak new satire by ex-Gazette copy editor David Sherman, makes that point as bitingly as a killer quote.

“I love hearing the presses,” says a keen new hire at a Montreal newspaper called the Star, the fictional setting of the play. “It’s like being on a big ship.”

“Yeah,” a cynical veteran replies, “the Titanic.”

Welcome to the machine, what’s left of it.

It’s the night shift, and a skeleton staff of four – supervising editor Benjamin (played by Howard Rosenstein), copy editors Marty and Carrie (Arthur Holden and Sheena Gazé-Deslandes) and reporter Elizabeth (Ellen David) – are trying to put out the paper. There’ll be a weather story (it’s snowing outside – in April), a Pet-of-the-Day photo, and the usual mix of sex, scandal and violence. In a boardroom offstage, management is holding a secret meeting that bodes ill for the future of the paper.

A fifth character – a French-Canadian janitor named Rolland (Jean-Guy Bouchard) who calls himself “the frog who cleans the commode” – used to be a unionized compositor at the paper before those jobs were eliminated. Now he’s waiting for the boom to fall again.

Directed by Guy Sprung, the Infinitheatre production rings as true and heartfelt as an obituary. There are mixed metaphors in reporters‚ raw copy (“like a snowball picking up steam”), annoying calls from readers (always about the same missing ingredient in a zucchini cake recipe), computer screens that freeze on deadline, and lots of deskers’ lingo (“hold that head for final,” “the fixes are in,” and, of course, “I’ll OK the overtime”).

It’s all very contemporary, very Canadian, ripped from the headlines. There are references to the locked-out workers of Le Journal de Montréal, media “integration” à la Quebecor, cost-cutting by the Star’s parent company, Westpress (sound familiar, Canwest-watchers?), outsourcing of headline-writing to Ontario (“the vampires in Etobicoke”) and bans on vocabulary like Palestinian “militants” (they’re “terrorists” – got a problem with that?).

Over 90 uninterrupted minutes, Sherman’s black humour gets great delivery by the cast, especially Holden as the desker who has come back medicated from burnout, but whose pill-popping can barely contain his bitterness at having to package dross day in, day out. Skinny, shaven-headed, bow-tied, he looks like human sacrifice to the corrupt gods of industry, and he gets the best lines before he goes.

When the night editor doesn’t want to run a scoop in the next day’s paper about management’s mystery meeting in the boardroom, Marty mockingly tells him he’s right: “Real news might confuse people.” Benjamin, the jaded son of the paper’s star columnist in a grander era, tells Marty to lighten up: “It’s only a job, Marty – it’s not the priesthood.” “I know,” Marty quips. “Priests get sexual favours.”

Appropriately, the play is staged in a vestige of a bygone era – the empty swimming pool of the Bain St. Michel, in Mile End, Infinitheatre’s home. With a realistic set (designed by James Lavoie, who also did the costumes) of melamine desks, computer monitors, fluorescent lights, recycling bins, page proofs, a water cooler and portraits of prize-winning hacks on the back wall, you’re left wondering what will survive of the newspaper industry: form or function?

The miracle, I suppose, is that we’re still around to ask the question – and that you can read it right here, in print. Maybe there’s hope yet.

The Daily Miracle, by David Sherman, runs through Feb. 14 at the Bain St. Michel, 5300 St. Dominique St. Tickets $20, $15 student/senior. Call 514-987-1774 or go to www.infinitheatre.com.

jheinrich@thegazette.canwest.com

THE DAILY MIRACLE CAST AND CREW

Kathryn Cleveland, Guy Sprung, Ellen David, Rivkah Sherman, David Sherman, Arthur Holden,

Howard Rosenstein, George Mougias, Nancy Rheault, Jean-Guy Bouchard, Chris Hidalgo, Sheena Gazé Deslandes,

Michael Panich…

Set by James Lavoie, not present

MORE PRESS!

The Concordian

The man behind the miracle

Former Gazette copy editor pens The Daily Miracle

By Adam Avrashi

|

Published: Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Updated: Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Courtesy of the Artist

David Sherman was barely audible when he first picked up the phone.
“Give me a second to look for a quiet spot,” he said, as the horns and cheers of a hockey game erupted in the background.
While it sounded as though Sherman was at the Bell Centre watching the Habs win, the noises were actually part of his new play, The Daily Miracle, about a desk workers and copy editors at a fictional newspaper, playing at Bain St-Michel this week.
“Sorry, I’m in a tech rehearsal, can you hear me?”
The hockey ruckus was supposed to be from a TV set in the fictional newsroom. The sounds lessen as Sherman makes his way into a corridor. “You were saying?”
Sherman is relatively new to the Montreal theatre scene. His first show, Have a Heart, a comedy about a man recovering from a heart attack set in Montreal, was produced while he was a playwright-in-residence at Centaur Theatre in 2005. Yet, the print journalism world is second nature to the former Montreal Gazette copy editor, who spent six years at the city’s only English daily.
The Daily Miracle is a fictional account of newspaper desk workers: three copy editors, a reporter and a typographer turned janitor, working between the first print and the final edition of the paper. The play happens in real time, as a newspaper is published in 90 minutes.
Sherman, who began his career at the age of 17 as a copy boy at the now-extinct Montreal Star, is quick to point out that the characters and the scenarios are not based on anyone or anything in particular.
“You know, whenever you write fictional characters,” Sherman said in a hushed tone, to avoid disrupting the rehearsal in process, “you write based on people in your life. But all the characters are amalgam of myself and my own schizophrenic personality.”
Although Sherman is certain his old coworkers will not recognize themselves in his play, a Gazette reporter has confided that there are mixed feelings at the workplace.
“Apparently some reporters from the Gazette are looking forward to the play with excitement and others with trepidation,” Sherman admitted, with a detectable smirk.
Unlike many Hollywood accounts of journalism, The Daily Miracle doesn’t focus on the big scoop or covering the big event, it’s about those who work 16-hour days behind the scenes.
“It’s a play about people who work on the desk, not reporters, so there is no big story,” Sherman said. “I think it has a lot of shades of grey. This play won’t answer any questions, but pose a lot of questions.”
Sherman hasn’t worked at a newspaper since he begun his career as a playwright, but after having written a play about the stress of publishing a daily, he quickly realized that his passion for the profession is everlasting.
“It’s like a lover,” Sherman said. “You become enchanted with it and it’s hard to let go. I still can’t leave the house without reading the newspaper.”
With subscriptions to four newspapers (including the Gazette) and a nightly routine of reading the New York Times on his iPhone before falling asleep, journalism is still much a part of his life.
In order to share his passion for the profession with his cast, Sherman took them on a tour of the Gazette one night.
“They needed to see what the news desk was really like,” said Sherman
Sherman recalls his first time at the Montreal Star as a teenager, where he saw the first photos of the first moon landing off the news wire, before they were published.
“I was one of the first people in the world seeing these photos,” Sherman said. “That experience made me love papers even more, because I was holding this treasure, before anyone else even saw it.”
Yet, newspapers have changed drastically since the first moon landing. Sherman acknowledged that most of his interviews with various Montreal media and young journalists (who “don’t read press releases and don’t have a clue what to ask”) have inquired about the future of newspapers, to which he has no certain answer.
“I think newspapers will be around for a long time,” he said. “But,” he added, “I don’t think anyone really knows.”
The voices and sounds of the tech rehearsal are audible once more. Sherman is on his way back to the newsroom, and to the fiction that was once his life.

The Daily Miracle plays today until Feb.14 at Bain St-Michel, 5300 St. Dominique. Tickets $20, $15 for students

The press loves The Daily Miracle:

Set to open this Thursday, The Daily Miracle by David Sherman is being talked about on and offline:

The Monitor (Jan. 18)

http://themonitor.ca/article-421897-A-love-song-to-the-newspaper-industry.html

The Gazette (Jan. 23)

http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/subject+close+heart/2475191/story.html

Le Quatrième (Jan. 23)

http://pub.lequatrieme.com/daily_miracle

Article on David Sherman and The Daily Miracle in Canadian Jewish News

Canwest puts papers up for sale Creditor! protection sought as sale plan announced

Canwest Global Communications Corp. announced it is seeking buyers for its newspaper publishing unit at the same time as it requested creditor protection for the division.

In a Toronto courtroom on Friday, the Canwest Limited Partnership, which holds all of Canwest’s newspaper and online operations, filed for creditor protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.

The Winnipeg-based company’s main television assets were put under court protection in October, but thus far, the publishing assets have operated outside that process.

Along with the creditor protection filing, a group of the media conglomerate’s lenders have agreed to bid for the unit’s assets, a so-called “stalking horse” bid that is aimed at setting a floor price.

National Post excluded

The lenders have also pledged to put up $25 million to carry the affected business units through the restructuring process. The National Post was a part of the Canwest LP unit but is not part of the CCAA filing, the company said Friday.

The entire proposal still requires the approval of a majority of the company’s creditors. The company has hired RBC Capital Markets “to canvass the market for superior offers for the business,” a Canwest press release said.

“We have almost half of the secured lenders that are not only supporting a consensual financial restructuring, but that same group … is also prepared to put an offering in to purchase the full integrated publishing group,” Canwest spokesman John Douglas said.

Canwest put most of its newspaper operations into creditor protection on Friday. (John Woods/Canadian Press)

Should the lenders take over the new company, “substantially all” of Canwest LP’s employees would come with it, and the company would assume all obligations related to pensions and benefits, said a statement from McMillan LLP, one of the law firms involved in the restructuring.

“What it means is that by the spring, we expect that both the publishing group as well as the broadcast group will be able to emerge from creditor protection with significantly less debt and a lot more stability and able to capitalize on the Canadian economy as it begins to improve,” Douglas said.

Indeed, the filing is not necessarily a threat to the company’s many newspapers across the country, experts say.

“I don’t think it means anything shuts down immediately,” Ross Howard, a journalism instructor at Langara College in B.C., told CBC News.

“Most of their newspapers across the country have been operating close to profitable … so I don’t think it means we lose the Vancouver Sun or the Province or the Courier or any of the weeklies in the immediate future.”

Canwest LP owns and operates a host of daily and community newspapers across the country, including the Victoria Times Colonist, the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Province, the Edmonton Journal, the Calgary Herald, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, the Regina Leader-Post, the Windsor Star, the Ottawa Citizen and The Gazette in Montreal.

As seen:

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/01/08/canwest-bankruptcy-online-newspaper.html

Special Fundraiser Performance Panel early February

Pipeline goes swimmingly last weekend at the Bain

Over 100 people joined us this weekend to experience great theatre in the making at our annual Pipeline readings series.

Here, ALexandria Haber receives her $1000 prize for her winning play, Life Here After which was read on Saturday night.