Rather than going on and on about how the arts are good for us and our children, why don’t we simply make the arts more relevant? It’s a simple question with a surprisingly simple answer: Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
Two experiences this week helped make this clear:
The first was attending Tuesday’s opening of Puppet Up! the adults-only Muppets show currently being presented by Mirvish Productions at the Panasonic Theatre. The second was seeing the now-ubiquitous Rob Ford drug-house driveway photo on the front page of this morning’s Toronto Star, yet again.
Puppet Up! is, to cut to the chase, an expertly rendered comedy-improv show. The audience helps give the actors characters and plots with which to create their spur-of-the-moment sketches. On Tuesday, the audience wanted a heaping helping of Ford.
Who should be the No. 1 character chosen to be seen on stage? Mayor Rob. Who drew the loudest mirth and merriment? Mayor Rob.
It was a potent reminder of how we need to vent frustration. Placing the source of that frustration on a stage — in theatre or in song or improv comedy — helps us cope as a group with a situation that we, as individuals, feel powerless to address right now.
Weimar-era cabaret in Germany rose out of economic crisis and political deadlock. Why can’t the bullies Ford and their servile nation be similar fodder for creative lambasting?
In today’s arts world, where leaders feel compelled to reduce arguments to economic spinoff benefits and improved children’s test scores, dumbass public figures could be a way to show a wider audience that music and words and movement are not a frill but an essential form of public expression.
The Toronto audience on Tuesday night cheered when the puppeteers helped them make light of their civic misery.
When the student composers and opera singers at University of Toronto’s faculty of music joined forces two years ago to create a new opera ostensibly about Rob Ford, people who wouldn’t give any opera a second thought were clamouring for tickets. This small act demanded quick reflexes on the part of administrators and professors, and it paid off hugely.
Our established theatre and opera companies as well as music presenters like the Toronto Symphony are locked into a sort of assembly-line machine mode, where seasons are decided and cast in stone years in advance. In the art music world, commissions for new works also happen years in advance. (Even so, new works are sometimes not completed until weeks or days before their world premieres.)
The arts world would be a different place if company managers could sit down on a cold fall morning for their weekly meeting and say: Let’s forget what we’ve planned for next month and put on a cabaret night or a concert, or create an opera, or choreograph a ballet about a city snarled by a dysfunctional transit system (Red Rocket Blues, anyone?) or derelict behaviour in the mayor’s office (Ford Follies, perhaps?).
I suspect that audiences wouldn’t bother to split hairs in asking whether this is pop or jazz or art music, or whether it’s musical theatre or opera. Rather, they would be reminded of how seeing ourselves on stage in words and music, in tears and laughter, is the best way to stay sane in an insane world.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
