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January 2012

Tuesday January 31, 2012
In Absentia - Morris Panych - Centaur Theatre

February 2012

Thursday February 2, 2012
The Kranky Reading Series - Cathy Stonehouse, Daniel Zomparelli, Catherine Owen

Thursday February 2, 2012
Vigil - Morris Panych - Next Act Theatre

Friday February 3, 2012
PRISM is a DEAD EVENT - Project Space

Wednesday February 8, 2012
Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje and Daniel Brooks - Theatre Passe Muraille

Thursday February 9, 2012
The Long Poem Workshop - Jay MillAr

Thursday February 9, 2012
Problem Child & The End of Civilization - George F. Walker - Telus Studio Theatre

Wednesday February 15, 2012
Write Here Readers Series - North Island College

Thursday February 16, 2012
2012 Gabriola Poetry Festival

Friday February 17, 2012
House - Daniel MacIvor - The ARTS Project Theatre

Saturday February 18, 2012
HOME FRONT, a reading series - Sharon Thesen

Friday February 24, 2012
Galiano Literary Festival - 2012

Tuesday February 28, 2012
The Leisure Society - Trafalgar Studios - UK

March 2012

Thursday March 1, 2012
Fred Wah - Versefest in Ottawa

Thursday March 1, 2012
Gordon - Morris Panych - Revue Stage

Thursday March 1, 2012
Where the Blood Mixes - Kevin Loring - Remai Arts Centre

Friday March 9, 2012
Ms Thing - Vancouver Women in Film Festival - Embracing the Darkness

Saturday March 10, 2012
How To Write A Poem For The Queen: a workshop with the Parliamentary Poet Laureate

Wednesday March 21, 2012
BellaLuna's Fresco - Lucia Frangione - Shadbolt Centre and Cultch

Friday March 23, 2012
Words on the Water - Campbell River Writer's Festival 2012

April 2012

Friday April 13, 2012
Bordertown Cafe - Kelly Rebar - Toledo Repertoire Theatre

Thursday April 19, 2012
Down Dangerous Passes Road - Michel Marc Bouchard - Encore Theatre

Tuesday April 24, 2012
The Real World? - Michel Tremblay -Tarragon Theatre

Monday April 30, 2012
M.A.C. Farrant at Banff Centre in 2012

May 2012

Tuesday May 1, 2012
Carmen Aguirre's Blue Box at The Cultch

8th Fire: Drew Hayden Taylor

To further explore Aboriginal culture, CBC Books is presenting a series of video interviews with authors, playwrights and storytellers to discuss how their heritage influences and inspires their work. This week, they talked to Drew Hayden Taylor, novelist, playwright and contemporary storyteller.

Promo Video for Carmen Aguirre's Blue Box

Promotional video for Carmen Aguirre‘s Blue Box, an upcoming world premiere theatre piece produced by Nightswimming, in association with Neworld Theatre, which will appear May 1-12, 2012 at The Cultch in Vancouver.

An Interview with Fred Wah

Angela Jung (yellowrainbootz) caught up with Canada’s new Poet Laureate Fred Wah after the Hapa-palooza Festival, and they discussed what it was like for him growing up and how that influenced many of his works, including Diamond Grill.

Jillian Fargey In Absentia

(Jillian Fargey in Mark Leiren-Young’s The Green Chain)


Centaur Theatre is set to present the world premiere of In Absentia on January 31, another stirring oeuvre by Morris Panych, recipient of numerous awards including two Governor General’s Literary Awards for Drama.

The cast includes Jillian Fargey, who plays a woman whose husband has been abducted while on a business trip to Columbia. The Vancouver-based actress might be new to the Montreal stage but she has worked with Morris Panych on several occasions. Fargey is an eight time Jessie Nominee and a two-time Jessie Award winner (including Best Actress for her performance in George F. Walker’s Problem Child).

As Roy Surette, Centaur Theatre’s Artistic and Executive Director indicates, “Panych admires her talent and the passion she brings to her character. ‘The writer and director are only the beginning of the acting process; the initiators. Jillian carries the character in her heart. She is deeply connected to the piece; that’s what a great actress does.’”

In Absentia will be available from Talonbooks this Fall (2012).

Ryan Beil, Classically Trained Actor DVD Intro

Ryan Beil’s Masterclass in Acting Method DVD is created by Weekend Leisure with Ryan Beil and GIANTS Comedy.

On January 14th Ryan will stage “Self-Quest,” a play he wrote in high school, as the centerpiece of GIANTS III, which will also feature Charles Demers, Adam Pateman, the Ryan and Amy Show, Fancy Pants Improv, and a great deal more. For tickets for GIANTS III visit http://tickets.thecultch.com/show.asp.

Seriously, Ryan Beil is acclaimed for taking on the role of Billy Bishop and 17 other characters in Billy Bishop Goes To War. He totes knows what he’s doing!

Eric Peterson Nominated for ACTRA for Billy Bishop!

(Photo of Eric Peterson courtesy of Canadian Press)


Eric Peterson and Christopher Plummer, Canadian actors who move fluidly between stage and screen, have earned ACTRA Award nominations for their roles in theatre productions that were captured on film.

ACTRA Toronto, the largest branch of the union representing Canadian performers, announced nominees for its 10th Anniversary ACTRA Awards on Tuesday.

Plummer is a contender for his Tony-winning portrait of U.S. actor John Barrymore in the stage production Barrymore, which was made into a feature film after its 2011 revival in Toronto.

Peterson is a finalist for Billy Bishop Goes to War, the acclaimed Canadian stage musical about a First World War flying ace that he co-created in 1978 and has taken across the country. In recent years, he and collaborator John MacLachlan Gray revised and restaged the show.

It also became a movie, which aired on CBC-TV on Remembrance Day 2011.

Librettist and Playwright John Murrell Returns to the Stage

(Photograph by: Rachel Psutka, Calgary Herald)


The first new play in a dozen years from Canadian dramatist, translator and librettist John Murrell, Taking Shakespeare is the eccentric and compassionate story of an unlikely threesome.

Murrell himself plays Prof, who is sixty-seven years old and stuck in a job he hates at a small university. His only good friend is William Shakespeare. Murph is twenty-four years old, out of focus, lost in his life. He’s never had a really close friend. There is no logical reason why their worlds should ever collide.

William Shakespeare is four hundred and fifty years old with hundreds of millions of friends. He is the improbable agent who brings Murph and Prof together for a few tutoring sessions, shaking up their lives through comedy, tragedy and a hunger for human understanding.

Taking Shakespeare runs January 10-28, 2012 at High Performance Rodeo in Calgary.

Meg Tilly Hailed By Critics' Choice Spotlight Awards

(Photo of Meg Tilly courtesy of thestar.com)


Victoria theatre writers have singled out Meg Tilly for best performance in a professional production for the 2010-11 season.

The Critics’ Choice Spotlight Awards cited Tilly’s performance as Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which was staged last summer by Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre and took three top awards. It was voted best professional production and Brian Richmond won for best direction.

Tilly is next set to star in Tarragon Theatre’s production of “The Real World?” by Michel Tremblay, which will start in April in Toronto.

Other winners in the annual Critics’ Choice Spotlight Awards include Narda McCarroll, who achieved the best set design for The Trespassers at the Belfry Theatre, Jacob Richmond‘s Ride the Cyclone for best musical production and Daniel MacIvor‘s Inside for best new play.

The Rap Guide to Evolution! on MSNBC

Baba Brinkman discussing The Rap Guide to Evolution! on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC in 2010.

All Is Flesh! Is Here!

We are happy to report that All Is Flesh is now available!

This book collects in one volume Governor General’s Award-winner Hugh Hazelton’s English translations of Yannick Renaud’s brilliant first two books of poems, Taxidermy and The Disappearance of Ideas, first published by Éditions Les Herbes rouges in Montreal.

The release of All Is Flesh marks a milestone for Talonbooks: although we have a long history of publishing French-to-English translations of works of fiction and drama, All Is Flesh is the first translation to be included on our poetry list.

Sometimes they both hear music. Usually their eyes lock, they
stare at each other, cover their ears so as not to hear what the
other might say. Usually the music, which governs the game,
without which the game wouldn’t exist, accompanies silence.
Their only companions, sighs on both sides.

For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again Comes to Kamloops

Michel Tremblay’s For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again comes to Kamloops:

They may seem like everyday moments — and in many ways they are — but, with Lorne Cardinal and Margo Kane playing the only two characters, the play becomes “an homage to his mother,” Leyshon said.

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Anis Shivani Interviews Michael McClure

Anis Shivani interviewed Beat Poet Michael McClure On Jim Morrison, The Doors, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac for The Huffington Post on March 03, 2011:

Shivani: Is Olson the major figure in American poetry after Pound?

McClure: I do not like seeing poetry as literature rather than art and I’m not happy with the separation of Poetry and the sister arts, I prefer to see Art as Art. I perceive that a major figure after Pound would be Jackson Pollock, and instead of looking at “American” Poetry as William Carlos Williams exhorted all to do, I would look worldwide at the poetry of D.H. Lawrence, Federico Garcia Lorca, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and of course Charles Olson, and all.

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Direct Harkening: A Review of On the Material

Andrew Vaisius reviews 2011 BC Book Prize Winner On the Material:

This poetry burns straight into your thoughts with a third degree of truth. Words matter. They aren’t frilly or sentimental, hoity-toity or academic. Collis writes in a language unencumbered by tired cliché or overwrought descriptions. His is a direct harkening, devoid of affectation, expressing the gut endurance of each sparking woman/man capable of the “natural brilliance of the human spirit.”

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“Halo of anonymity, the silent hallelujah”: A Review of Floating Up To Zero

Bruce Whiteman reviews Floating Up To Zero by Ken Norris:

I take him to mean that it is the eccentric noise of personality that needs to be cleared away in order for the poet to be able to overhear the world, and that that is how poems are made. In the title poem, it is a “halo of anonymity” that he seeks. “Zero” is not a point of dissolution or disappearance, but a kind of balance-point and much to be desired.

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