Archive for March, 2011

Are you a performer in Vancouver that’s interested in learning more about improvisational theatre and comedy? Why not apply for one of the Instant Shop’s FREE introductory workshops? More information and the application is available HERE, or you can join them at their OPEN HOUSE, Thursday, March 31, 7-10pm at 650 E. Broadway.

And just what is Instant Shop, you ask? To borrow some words from Kaitlin Fontana…

“It’s unassuming, at least at first—a little storefront on a quieter strip of Vancouver’s East Broadway, painted white inside. Cruising past the cluster of businesses around it, which include a convenience store, cake shop and Ethiopian restaurant, you might not even notice the shop at first. Closer up, it’s a little harder to ignore. In 650A E. Broadway there is, for example, the cool, handmade wooden front counter/bar area. Then there are the rows of t-shirt hangers on one wall. On the opposite wall, the beginnings of a cool, marshland-themed mural by local artist extraordinaire Ehren Salazar. And there’s a foosball table, too. Every once in awhile someone presses their face to the glass, craning for a better look. This is the Instant Shop, and its proprietor Alistair Cook nods at anyone curious enough to peek in.

Cook has been hustling for the last few months to spruce up the place, which he discovered on a walk through the neighbourhood (he lives just around the corner). With nearly twenty years of improv experience under his belt, and a lot of renovation chops built up from remodeling his own home, he saw the storefront as a potential home base for Instant Theatre, the local alternative improv company he’s helmed since 1994.

Vancouver is notoriously short on venues. It’s hard, especially for theatre companies, to find an affordable, sustainable home in the city. Ingenuity and flexibility are key, and that’s where the Instant Shop steps in. “I’d been using a lot of different spaces,” Cook says of Instant Theatre’s last few years. “I’d been operating out of what is now called Little Mountain. I wanted to find a way to create the perfect environment, a hive of improvisational activity. To teach workshops, and to really start to recreate the excitement and community that I had done with Instant Theatre a few years ago.” Having given up Little Mountain a few years back, he was constantly on the lookout for a similar space to call home.

“When any inventor goes into his lab, cool results come out of it.”

Many Vancouver theatre companies like Instant choose to float, booking spaces to rehearse or perform whenever they need to. Having a home base for improv operations, however, is important to Cook, who strongly feels that community is not just about people, but also about place. “What I have found is that when this company goes to different theatre spaces, there are different energies—if I’m going to get all hippie—that can create a constant state of change versus a centralized place for the ideas to be created and for the alchemy to be done.” Put another way, having a single roof over their heads means that diverse people have the freedom to come together. “With the different styles of improvisation and tastes in comedy, there are disparate factions within improv,” Cook says. “I feel that Instant Theatre Company’s successes have been found in trying to honour all of those different styles but making them all part of one singular collage.”

Lest all this sharing and caring sound too sunshine and rainbows, Cook assures that there is more than just warm feelings to be had from a community-minded endeavour like the Shop. “The greatest evolution that I’ve seen in improvisation happens when people come together with different ideas and collaborate.” Good work, great shows and an advancement of the art form are therefore natural consequences of having a centralized place to gather and play. Clearly the community agrees: Instant will soon begin a new round of its five-month conservatory program with three separate ensembles. Newer improvisers will also be given the chance to explore Instant’s Phases program in the months ahead (more information at instanttheatre.com). Cook is not sure what kind of work is going to come out of the space just yet, but he’s excited. “That’s the beauty of improvisation, that I don’t know the what just yet. But I know that when B.A. Baracus gets his welding kit, or when Doc from Back to the Future heads under the Delorean—basically, when any inventor goes into his lab, cool results come out of it.”

As he putters around the Instant Shop, preparing it for a mid-February grand opening (complete with party; stay tuned) Cook seems at home and comfortable. This level of comfort in his new digs means Instant’s A.D. is ready to instruct and deploy a whole new generation of Vancouver improvisers. “I can now improvise as an instructor, because I have this space and I have everything at hand to create,” he says. The Shop is a chance for a fresh start for his company. “There’s a lot of history in Instant Theatre, and I’m very proud of that history. But it’s time for new people, and new history to be made.” Asked to sum up Instant Shop for any visitors seeking information about classes, he recommends that anyone who’s interested can go to the website or stop by 650A E. Broadway. He smiles. “This space is open. We have t-shirts for sale; they’re in the front.” “

What better way to start off our week than receiving a letter of support from Bing Thom? Wow! Thanks, Bing!

Check out these two videos below of Bing and Chris Wootten talking with Fanny Kiefer recently about the proposed Vancouver Concert Hall Complex that they’re proposing to be built underneath the current Vancouver Art Gallery Site, should the VAG end up vacating it. It’s a super interesting concept that we’ll hopefully be hearing more about in the coming months and years. They’re onto something really amazing here…

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!).

Well, I guess I inadvertently put the call out for Earth Hour photos on Saturday when I remarked that I couldn’t find one from previous years in the flickr pool. I guess the Earth Hour movement is still fairly young – it was only 5 years ago that it was first done in Sydney, Australia; and only 4 years since other cities worldwide began to follow Sydney’s lead. And I’m fairly confident that the city of Vancouver’s participation is greater than has been reflected in the pool.

Since I wrote that post on Saturday, there have been two such photos submitted to the pool, so I’m going to stray from the typical form of this feature and share both of them with you today. Think of it like that nice large free-range organic brown egg that you crack into your frying pan only to find a yourself a double-yoker.

The first photo is from Lisa Parker who hosted a dinner party with friends and burned an epic cactus candle during Earth Hour. The kind of candle you might save for a special occasion, perhaps?

The second photo is courtesy of Vanessa Griffiths, who found an arrangement of candles whose sum of its parts achieved epicness. From UBC, here is Earth Hour 2011.

Thanks for submitting these photos ladies.

Gary

SCENE AND HEARD showcases the independent music scene here in Vancouver. With 25,000+ artists, boasting 112,500+ tracks, the CBC Radio 3 web site is the absolute ultimate authority, and the home, of independent music in Canada. With that massive library along with tools for members (free to join!), we’re taking advantage of what they’ve set up by bringing you a fresh batch of music every week featuring local groups who have tracks (entire albums, even!) on the R3 site.

The Rural Alberta Advantage, from Toronto, are rolling into Vancouver next week. Confused? Don’t be! The 3-piece, sing indie-rock folk songs about growing up in small town Alberta and YOU can see them at Venue on Thursday April 7th! BUT! In the meantime, they’ve chosen some of their favourite Vancouver artists and put a playlist together for you. Click the photos below to take a listen…

RAA photo by the talented Vanessa Heins

Nicholson Road is part of an ongoing photo project aimed at sharing and celebrating the different communities in Metro Vancouver. Each week Vancouver Is Awesome will be featuring one of the latest, most engaging photos from the project in order to draw your attention a little bit outside of the hyper-focus that we usually have on the city of Vancouver. Metro Vancouver Is Awesome, and you should get out and explore it!

For kids of the suburbs, there are certain times of the year when life momentarily gets awesome. These are, in no particular order:

1. When the sky dumps a huge load of snow on the ground, and every hill (park, street, or other) becomes a toboggan run,
2. When summer finally arrives and you’re able to bike through the woods, to the distant anthem of the ice cream tuck, and
3. When the freakin’ CARNIVAL comes to town!

I mean sure, the PNE/Playland is great and all, but when The Zipper pops up at the end of your street, life could not be any more grand. This was the situation out in Willowbrook last week. Except it was even better, because the schools have been out on Spring Break!

Man… to be a kid [again]…

More from Nicholson Road can be found HERE.

I started this project called A Stranger A Day to overcome my shyness and talk to people. The challenge: talk to a stranger a day for a year of my life and try to convince them to let me take a picture and share a story. Since most tattoos have a story behind them, this will be my conversation starter and a common thread that links them all. Every week I will be sharing one of my favourite findings here on Vancouver Is Awesome.

Join me in this Stranger a Day adventure and let me know what you think!

Stranger #175

Location: Blenz yaletown – Richards & Davie

Still around the downtown lands of Vancouver. I came around the shop solely for strangering purposes, it must have been around 10pm when I got there. After a couple of people that said no (one of them was “too high to share”), this guy agreed to take some time on his way out to share his tattoo story:

“I’ll tell you about this one, because it is the easiest to show. I used to do martial arts and I kicked with the left, so when I was younger I thought it was cool to have a dragon there to symbolize that every kick would be like a dragon tail-kick. It was the first one as well  from when I was younger. But there is also a story behind the dragon itself:

You know how we have salmon in here, and how they go up the river to hatch and then they go back. Well, in China they have carps, and you know how while they are swimming against the current they can get trapped in whirlpools or caught by fishermen or animals. They believed that this journey mirrored the path of our human lives, sometimes we get trapped in emotional whirlpools and we can’t move on, sometimes we die in the way. So it is traditionally believed that when carps that are not meant to follow the normal path reach a waterfall, they try to swim to the top. Those that make it become a dragon. So that’s the story.”

WOW! I did not know this. It was a beautiful story.

He went on his way and I sat down to sip a decaf coffee and scribble this down. I’m always amazed by the cool things I find.

Thank you stranger!

To check out the daily strangers, click here:  astrangeraday.com

Gerald Rattlehead is best known for hosting Powerchord on Citr with Metal Ron from 1985.   He’s seen over a thousand shows and is Vancouver’s biggest rock and roll fan, period.  Over the years, venues have closed, scenes change, but Gerald’s always been there.  And he’s doing it all for the love of it, which is why Vancouver’s lucky to have him. Gerald was gracious enough to share a few of his most prized pieces of memorabilia with me, so I could share them with you over the next few months.

You’ve actually got a pretty broad range of music tastes, it’s not just metal right?

Of course.

What was your first record?

Beatles Revolver, I think I was 11, back then it was hard to distinguish one type of music to another, you just listened to whatever.  That, and Guess Who American Woman, and the first Partridge Family album.

What about first concert?

Crosby Stills Nash and Young, which still to this day was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen.

Cool, O.K. what do you we have here?  This is a Queen record yeah?

Yeah, this one’s a really weird story, they are one of my all time favourite bands too.  This album was released on CD, but I got the limitied edition picture vinyl which is an entirely different mix of the album.  This was a promo thing only so they only pressed a few of them, it’s very rare.   So in 2006…once again, I figured out where they were staying, when they were in town.  I hung around until they were about to go to soundcheck.  I see Brian May, but he’s up on this hill, like this rock wall thing and the only way I’m going to see him is if I climb up.  I had no choice but to climb up the thing carrying this record.  So I get up there and motion him to roll down the window.  I’m sure he was wondering how I got up there, I came out of nowhere but, he rolled down the window signed it.  I said ‘thank you very much Brian’ and I climbed back down.  But that wasn’t it, I went and then waited from the drummer, he was literally just going to jump into a vehicle and I said, ‘Hey Roger, when’s the last time you’ve seen one of these?’  and he stopped, looks at it and says, ‘is that what I think it is?’  He starts walking towards me and says, ‘you have one of those?’, he signed it and a few things for my friends too.  Then he jumped into the car and he was gone.  Sometimes, what you have makes a difference.

Previous Heavy Metal Artifacts:

Metallica, Slayer, Dio, Maiden

I recently TOLD you that Ligia Oancea, the former teen pop star from Romania who sings the viral hit, “Vancouver”, will be singing at Talent Time on Vancouver’s 125th birthday.

Gearing up for her appearance, Ligia has released a new video and in it is none other than actor and now-vocalist, Blu Mankuma! Below are some screen grabs of his range of expressions that he expresses in the video, and below it is the video itself.

Make sure to come out and watch Ligia at Talent Time at the Biltmore on April 6th. Highlights also include:

- First Nation’s Fancy Dance from CURTIS JOE!!
- Comedy sketch from EMMETT HALL!
- Cam Macleod as the Jet Ski King KYLES McKAY!
- One-man house band: DEVON LOUGHEED!