READY FOR ACTION: A still from The Last Act

Articule (262 Fairmount W.) reopens their doors tomorrow night, Friday, Aug. 22 at 7 p.m., with a vernissage for Tony Romano’s The Last Act.

The Toronto-based Romano, who’s been lauded as one of that city’s top young artists by Canadian Art magazine, works in a variety of mediums including film and video, sound, photography and illustration, though the centrepiece of this exhibition is explicitly cinematic.

Shot in glorious 35mm film—an industry standard that due to its high cost has been mostly abandoned by filmmakers working in a traditional indie-film context—the project plays with some of the more conventional tropes of cinema, both narrative and stylistic.

In fact, The Last Act is a remake of sorts, a scene-by-scene reconstruction of a porn film using the original dialogue in which the sex scenes (all 60-odd minutes of them) have been omitted.

Supported by an array of written texts containing the “dialogue” from those deleted scenes, the exhibition investigates some of Romano’s ongoing thematic preoccupations such as identity and interconnectedness, the manifold notions of love and the city.

Until September 21.

by STACEY DEWOLFE

Musicals: The Festival

GREAT AMERICAN TRASH: The cast of Trailer Park

Musicals. The very word drives fear into the heart, evoking high school trauma from gone-wrong productions of The Sound of Music and the slow torment of long car rides with your Aunt going through her seemingly inexhaustible Gilbert and Sullivan collection.

Stephen Pietrantoni is trying to change all that, and his goal is no less than to put Montreal on the map as “Off-Broadway North.” The Next Wave Festival of New Musicals, taking place this week, Aug. 21–26 at the Gesù (1200 Bleury) and the McCord Museum (690 Sherbrooke W.), is the first step.

“It’s not your grandmother’s musicals,” Pietrantoni says. “We’ve got three gorgeous girls and a guy cavorting in their underwear. What more do you want?”

He’s not kidding. The festival features a full production of I See London, I See France: The Underwear Musical as well as a staged reading of The Great American Trailer Park Musical, an original bilingual work called The Naked Voice and an audition clinic for new actors.

“There’s so few musical theatre activities in Montreal,” says Naked Voice director Patrick Olafson. “If you want to work, you have to go to Toronto or New York.”

Perhaps that explains why the first year festival has attracted a cast with national and international credits, including former Mirror theatre critic Amy Barratt in Trailer Park.

Check montrealnextwave.com for details.

by MATT JONES

Spell speaker

This spring, Calgarian Moe Clark launched her first spoken word CD, Circle of She, and hit the road. She performed poetry in Montreal’s Fringe festival with the dance show Diverge, and then based herself here to work with dancer Jennifer Doan on a movement and sound performance to be launched in the fall.

SPIRITUAL & SPHERICAL: Clark

“This will be my first move into dance in about 10 years,” says Clark. ”I’ll be delving into my Metis ancestry and Native roots, looking at ritual dance and sound.”

She continues to speak her spells as well, most recently at the Full Moon Fling in Mont-Tremblant. She’ll be performing this Sunday, Aug. 24 at 9 p.m. at Words and Music at the Casa (4873 St-Laurent) with Erica Ruth Kelly, Luna Allison and more.

“I’m probably going to do some pieces in progress, as well as some new works, observations of my time so far in Montreal—the language, the spaces.” $5.

by VINCENT TINGUELY

 

Dancing with mom

Imagine touring with your mom for three years. That’s what Catalan choreographer Sònia Gómez has been doing with Rosa, her 71-year-old mother, in their dance-performance piece called Mi Madre Y Yo.

Sònia says that before creating the piece, her mother, who is “a typical Spanish woman from the countryside,” didn’t really understand her profession.

MOMMY DEAREST: Gómez & Gómez

“My mother doesn’t have any links to theatre or performance, but she’s a little eccentric,” says the younger Gómez on the phone from Barcelona.

“For me, the piece is like an interview about how our life is after 35 years of being together and it’s an excuse to talk about bigger things like relationships with parents, what it means to be an adult and exposing yourself to your family.”

The mother-daughter story that contrasts and chronicles their lives is set to an eclectic mix of music by the Beach Boys, Tina Turner and Kraftwerk.

It’s playing at Destinations: Danse (in Spanish with French translation) at l’Atelier at Agora de la Danse (840 Cherrier) nightly at 9 p.m., Aug. 27-30, $30–$25. Info: (514) 525-1500.

by MARITES CARINO

Is it art?

SHOT IN THE DARK: Beethoven might’ve been able to compose and conduct after he’d gone deaf, but he had his memory to go on. Finding a deaf composer, or a blind photographer, who was born that way is much harder. But that could soon change.

Chinese designer Chueh Lee, who works for Samsung, has invented Touch Sight, the first digital camera designed for the blind.

Using a Braille relief image on a Braille display (rather than a screen) the photographer allows the user to feel, instead of see, the photo. The camera also has a built-in recorder that captures three-seconds of sound after the photo is taken, helping the photographer to navigate through their saved pictures.

While researching, Lee spent time at the Centre for the Blind in Herzliyah, Isreal, where he learnt that the easiest way for the visually impaired to capture their subject is if the camera is held not to the eye, but to the forehead. Making the Touch Sight a sort of digital third eye.

www.gizmodo.com

Arts hole

ALMOST WEEKLY LAUGHS: Théâtre Ste-Catherine, (264 Ste-Catherine E.) presents Hey, It’s Thursday, an “almost weekly” comedy series featuring local improv troupe Uncalled For and The Bitter End, the best episodic, not-on-TV-sitcom in the city. The show premieres tonight, Thursday, Aug. 21 at 8 p.m. tickets $6. • CLOTHES FOR A CAUSE: TooLuxe Entertainment and Toxik present a fashion show and fundraiser for the Montreal Children’s Hospital. The event takes place tomorrow, Friday, Aug. 22 at 10 p.m. at Time Supper Club (997 St-Jacques) and includes a fashion show, model auction, and music by DJs Peter Parker and Aleksi Sopin. Suggested $10 donation.

Artistat

The number of Free Swing classes that have taken place this summer next to the Municipal Greenhouses of Verdun (6875 LaSalle) with the final event happening this Saturday, Aug. 23, from 12:50–2:30 p.m.: 3