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Ideas

At Nightswimming, we accomplish our goals primarily through the creation of new works, and through our unique Pure Research program. We believe in promoting intelligent, rigorous debate about theatre and this Ideas section is a home for just that: ideas, articles, reports and other valuable documents about our work and the work of others we believe are furthering theatre in Canada and worldwide. Please feel free to contact us with any articles or information; if we think it contributes to the conversation, we will add it to this page.


“Hot Tamale” and Carmen Aguirre’s BLUE BOX

edited by Adrienne Wong, Neworld Theatre

Toronto’s Nightswimming commissioned and developed Blue Box and produced a national tour in association with Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre to undercurrents (GCTC, Ottawa), The Cultch (Vancouver), Panamerican Routes Festival (Aluna Theatre, Toronto), UNO Festival of Solo Performance (Intrepid Theatre, Victoria), and Magnetic North (Calgary).
The following was included in July 2012 in an online issue of imPACT! the newsletter of PACT, the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres
…
Shortly after the run of Blue Box in Vancouver, The Cultch forwarded an email from a patron unhappy with the use of the term “hot tamale”

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Journey to China

by Brian Quirt…

I’m flying to Beijing. Thoughts on internationalism occupy me while on a flight that not only leaves my home city on a perfect fall day but one that unexpectedly flies over the lake north of Toronto on which our cottage is built. One of North America’s many Eagle Lakes, its wings are formed by two large bays, one of them where my grandfather logged the land in the teens and 1920s; at the “head” of the lake his father built a chapel for a village now long dispersed. Where I was married. From 20,000-plus feet, the beach on “our” land is clearly visible, as is the rocky island in the bay — unsurprisingly, called Rocky Island — which we’ve looked upon, several generations

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7 Reasons Why Theatre Makes Our Lives Better

delivered by Howard Shalwitz, Artistic Director at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company…

As someone who came from a family of doctors, started out pre-med in college, detoured to philosophy, then teaching, and finally to theatre — not only did my career choices slide steadily downhill from my mother’s perspective, but I was left with a moral conundrum: does my chosen profession, theatre, make a valuable contribution to the world when compared with the other professions I left behind? I guess this conundrum has stuck with me, because as recently as this past winter I made a list of seven reasons why theatre matters and I’d like to share them with you briefly tonight.
First,

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