Girls with Glasses: nerding it up every Wednesday this September

So the Girls with Glasses, my little myopic musical collective (me, Karyn Ellis and Eve Goldberg, this year sans Allison Brown) are back, presenting a weekly show this September every Wednesday at the Tranzac Club. Come check it out …gonna be fun fun fun, wacky and full of good times, music, comedy, spoken word and dancing.

Workin Summer

Hillside Festival and Home County were both wonderful weekends full of fun workshop collaborations with great musicians, and hearing lots of good music…sharing stages with The Brothers Creegan, The Acorn, Rae Spoon, James Gordon, Jenny Whiteley, Oh Suzanna, Catherine McClelland, Melissa McClelland, Coco Love Alcorn, Brian McMillan…and getting to play with my whole band at Hillside, what a treat.

This week, on Augst 7, the SummerWorks Festival opens in Toronto — a festival of independent theatre and music which i have been involved in over the years (it’s where Clean Irene & Dirty Maxine premiered, and won the jury prize — so of course i have sweet associations..). This year, i am taking part in the festival with three different things, all of which i am pretty stoked about:

Number one! The festival is doing a music series this year for the first time, so on August 15th, I am playing (with band) as the opening act for Rock Plaza Central.

Number two! I am directing a show by my friend Morgan Jones Phillips, called The Emergency Monologues. It is all about his experience working as a paramedic in Toronto for the last 5 years — and his stories are AMAZING. you will pee your pants laughing, and be horrified and amused and amazed.

Number three! I am acting in The Pastor Phelps Project: a fundamentalist cabaret. Speaking of horrified, amused and amazed….I play Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Pastor Fred Phelps, and a leader of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas: the hate-mongering, homophobic church who picket AIDS funerals and dead soldiers funerals…who will apparently be in attendance at the opening of the show this Thursday, picketing at our production (!) en route to Alberta where they’ll be picketing at a production of the Laramie Project. See their press release: 20080801_pastor-phelps-project-toronto

Check out the media frenzy that has happened since we discovered the Westboro Baptist’s intention to picket the show:  The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, CityTV, Global TV all covered it…and then they didn’t show (The Toronto Sun reports).

Come check out the live action: the show takes place in the back room of The Cameron House, August 7-17 www.summerworks.ca

Report from the left coast…

I’ve returned from such an amazing tour out west. Without a doubt, the highlight being the trip to the Yukon, and the very special and beautiful Atlin Festival.…back in Ontario now, i’m missing those long long days that never seem to end…walking home at 3 am wondering if it’s finally getting dark, or if it’s actually getting lighter….

Also a treat to be return to Edmonton, Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and Whidbey Island WA; plus first visits (but not the last!) to the Sunshine Coast BC and Canmore AB. Incredible physical beauty was a recurrent theme of the landscapes we drove and flew and sailed through…as well as delicious, wonderful and generous hospitality from so many old friends and new friends along the way.

When i have a few minutes, i will be posting some more writing and stories about the trip…for now, I am coming down from the west, followed by a lovely weekend at London’s Home County Festival, and getting ready for the big Hillside weekend.

Lots of nice press along the road, too: if you’re interested, check out the articles in the Georgia Straight and The Edmonton Journal

Happy Pride!

Pride Week officially begins in Toronto ..happy queer christmas, to one and all Let the rainbow-flaggin’ and the booty-shakin’ and street partying begin!

Begin? Where to begin? Well …for starters, check out the fun little video story that Xtra Magazine has up on their site, about me and my thing, promo-ing my upcoming western tour…

While still in Toronto for the big weekend, I’ll be performing at Cheap Queers at Buddies on Thursday the 26, and on the Proud Voices stage on Sunday the 29th at 5 pm, at the James Canning Gardens… though I’ll tell you, i feel I’ve been living and breathing the Pride spirit for weeks now,because of PrideCab, the big year-end youth cabaret show at Buddies- which, incidentally, sold out around the block last Wednesday! I’ve never seen such a long line up at Buddies, even on club nights. More than 100 people turned away! What a smash success — another great show by a great gang of youth: this marks year four that I have directing the project, and also my final year. Next year i take a step back from the youth programme, to concentrate more on my own work, and wear a new hat at Buddies: that of “Associate Artist”. I’ll be directing the Young Creators Unit again, directing Mark Shyzer’s new show “Fishbowl: a concise, expansive theory of everything” as part of the 30th Anniversay season, and…working on my own writing and other projects…actually i’m going to be writing a play for Buddies for 2009/10. So it’s exciting times for me. Sad to be letting go of the apron strings of my beloved youth programme…but the time is right. Chy Ryan Spain takes over, and that’s all good.

After we’re all done with being proud…next week I head out west for a two week music tour with the marvellous David Celia; he’ll be my one-man back-up band, and we’ll do a series of double bills together:  can’t wait.   Then back for more festivals back in Ontario. I am SERIOUSLY excited about the line up for my Hillside band: we had a jumpin’ show at the neighbourhood joint Not My Dog on Friday night, and it made me really really excited…there is a new sound developing, with David Celia on electric guitar, and the addition of upright bass (ahhh…the lovely Trevor Mills is back in the band!) and Beth Washburn on her little mini-tuba as well as the cornet…and of course Brad Hart playing drums. Adam Warner will actually be playing drums at Hillside, since Brad is on tour with Claire Jenkins Avec Band for a month…so Brad will be missed but Adam will be a great addition. With the new instrumental elements, and several new songs, i think things are really coming together in a slightly new and definitely exciting direction…and you know how i love new and exciting….

Dora Nominations for Breakfast! (and website probs)

The Independent Aunties are thrilled to announce that BREAFAST has been honoured with three Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations: For Outstanding Performance by a Female (Karin Randoja), Outstanding Sound Design (Richard Windeyer) and Outstanding Lighting Design (Laird MacDonald). The winners will be announced on June 30th….

And, in other news, apologies if you’ve been trying to navigate this site and finding strange pages in place of what you were looking for….we’ve been having a rather massive problem on our server — hopefully all will be fixed real soon. If there is something you can’t find that you need, please email evalyn at evalynparry dot com. Also if you’ve emailed evalyn and haven’t heard back, please try again.

Breakfast is served

Breakfast, the new Independent Aunties show, opened officially last Wednesday, May 21, after a week of previewing. We Aunties are feeling so proud and happy. The audience response has been exhilarating: it seems we have made something that is CONNECTING to people in exactly the ways that we hoped it would. A wonderful review in  Xtra Magazine:

“…a highly strung and expertly crafted script…Breakfast is a prime example of text and tech blending seamlessly into an hour of funny, painful and often gripping drama.” Xtra Magazine

and EYE Magazine:

” Moment by moment, this 70-minute creation is utterly compelling, even if Breakfast’s dark, absurdist progression eventually defies description….adventurers who surrender to this play about transformation will be rewarded by visceral theatre. Like an orgasm, it’s hard to describe but you know when you’ve had one” EYE Magazine

People are calling the show creepy, sexy, dark, fascinating, complex, gripping, suspenseful and moving…. It delves into the female psyche, explores ideas about self help, about transformation, intimacy, celebrity and voyeurism…and lots of other things, too. Through many, many ideas, creative collaborators, crazy physical explorations, fundraising, rewrites and hours and months later, we have created a one-hour show that we are all incredibly proud of. Even several friends that claim to generally dislike theatre have told us they loved it. We hope you, too, can come experience Breakfast with us before it closes on JUNE 1st.

Here are a coupla links to what is being said, both critically and in cyber-conversation:

Xtra Review of BREAKFAST by David Bateman

EYE Review of BREAKFAST by Gord McLaughlin

The Aunties in conversation with Chris Dupuis

Theatre Umbrella Blog

The new Independent Auntie production

It’s almost here.  The Aunties are in the thick of rehearsals for BREAKFAST, the show we’ve been developing through the Theatre Centre for the past couple of years.

We invite you over to Breakfast with us, while we ask the question:

“What do you need to do to truly tranform your life?”

Rehearsals are exciting.   We have a super fantastical production team.   We’re in the space now, with not only the usual suspects (Karin Randoja, Anna Chatterton, Brendan Healy and myself) but now also Julie Fox (set and costume design…yow!), Richard Windyer (sound design…ooooo it’s gonna be cool), Jim Ruxton (special effects….)  and more……the creative juices are cooking.  Opens May 14th (for the first week of “workshop”) and then we invite the press in on May 21, and it runs until June 1.   Book your tickets now…space is very limited.   www.theatrecentre.ca

yo facebook

i finally broke down, and got me a facebook group.  it’s kinda fun.  you can join if you like…click here!

Spring is here in Toronto.  How much do we love it? We LOVE IT.

Girls with Glasses 2008!

Catch the last of the GWG 2008 tour Feb 8 in London! Feb 9th is sold out! Karyn Ellis, Eve Goldberg, Allison Brown and I have had good times and great shows in Peterborough, Creemore, Toronto, Kingston, Montreal and Ottawa… we’ve got ourselves a nifty Facebook group, if you’re the Facebook kind, you can join, and see photos and things…

and sometimes…y

My very fun show at the Tranzac last week was followed immediately by getting struck down by a merciless flu, which had me bedridden for several days.  Got up from my sickbed to go into CBC to play a fun game of “Just a Minute” (fans of BBC Radio may know this game…check out the rules here) between me, Tom Howell (the word nerd) Jane Farrow (host of And Sometimes Y) and Russell Smith (past host of the show.  The game (which i did rather badly at… but did get a chance to wax eloquent about “clogs”) will be broadcast on CBC Radio One in on December 31, as part of the final episode of the very delightful “And Sometimes Y“.

In other news…it’s christmas and I have to go do my final shopping…as i write this, I hear the radio saying “on this, the busiest day of the shopping season”.  Wish me luck…and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!