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Who's Got Clout? Daily Arts Alert ... by Cathleen Bond Thursday, Feb. 22 After a controversial run in Ottawa, David Young's Clout opens tonight in Toronto, offering critics a second chance to take a run at its challenging themes and issues.
And yet many in tonight's audience will be reading between the lines to see if Young based either of his characters on any well-known Canadians. The plot has a powerful newspaper magnate, Lionel K. Biggar, thrown into an unlikely relationship with a dying journalist who is ghostwriting Biggar's autobiography. People who saw a reading of the play at last spring's DuMaurier World Stage festival said the plot was quite intriguing, with a lot of humour and s suspense ending. Bringing the show to life this winter is actor R.H. Thomson, a regular in Young's plays, and Eric Peterson.
Me Barbie…You Ken: I always thought that girls collected Barbies, and boys went for G.I. Joes, but what do I know?
According to the artist, the dolls first came on the market in 1964 at a New York Toy Fair - prior to that a 'doll for boys' was viewed with mixed feelings. Weideman claims her work chronicles "a fascinating study of the representation of race, ethnicity, nationality and masculinity in popular culture." You can check out the work online or in Vancouver:
To March 10, 2001 233 Carrall Street Vancouver (604) 688-0051
Fine Tuning: Tonight, Opening Night presents the late Rudolf Nureyev in Don Quixote: The Impossible Dream. Directed and choreographed by Nureyev in 1973, it was filmed in an airport hangar in Australia. Despite rave reviews, the film disappeared, and remained a buried treasure for 25 years. Now, the newly restored film is winning rave reviews once more. That's on Opening Night, at 8 pm on CBC Television.
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 Updated each weekday by Cathleen Bond ... bookmark this page and come back for the latest news, reviews and gossip on the Canadian arts scene. RECENT FEATURES: More from our year-end review: >> Public Art >> Film >> Digital >> Visual Art >> Literature >> Dance >> Architecture >> Music and Opera >> TV or not TV
>> Bruce Mau: Big designs in LifeStyle >> Robert Service: Musical tribute to a Canadian hero >> Circle of Trees: Art and nature come full circle >> Atwood: The critics and The Blind Assassin >> Public Art: Who decides what art will fill our civic spaces and expand our imagination? >> Digital Art: Clickable Cancon, a quick tour of the latest in digital art. >>
Cancon Quiz >> Iron Road: The Arts & Culture forum follows the creation of a new Canadian opera >> Interview: Carole McDowell tells us how she and artist Helen Lucas made the transition from gallery walls to the www gallery. >> Public Library in Peril How should libraries be transformed to meet future needs of Canadians? >> Culture
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David Young's Clout, a co-production of the National
Arts Centre, the Necessary Angel Theatre Company and the Factory Theatre
(both of Toronto). It's described as: "A satire about men, sex and power ... and a woman who wins."
Young most recently wrote an historic play about Sir Robert Scott's
ill-fated 1912 expedition to the South Pole and a jazzy new work on the
life of Glenn Gould. With Clout, Young's turning to fiction. This provocative
play explores the relationship between democracy and a free press.
Using the Vietnam War as a cultural springboard, Vancouver artist Lorraine Weideman is challenging these assumptions in a show called the "Joes I Know." "Using the devices of commemorative portraits, Weideman photographs the dolls in the collection as individuals, with an atmosphere of poignancy and loss -- the toys resemble tragic heroes of mythic proportions. The Joes are bear identical facial scars, yet their eye colour and shape and skin colour varies, as does their fetishized accessories - dog tags, plumed helmets, weapons - these heroes are highly decorated."
Twenty clicks through Canadian culture: Test your memory, from Anne
of Green Gables to Shift.