Toronto art, theater romp pays off in fun memories
Several years ago Carla and I spent a week in Toronto at an Elderhostel specifically on theater. Toronto is considered third only to London and New York in the number of theaters and the number of actors living there.
We found it easy to get around because of Toronto’s subway and trolley systems. Consequently, we were able to see a fair amount of this beautiful city.
Besides the more usual aspects that I will cover in other columns, two activities were of special interest.
Some unusual art in Toronto
The Fringe
Toronto has an annual theater festival, called the Toronto Fringe Festival. The year we were there it was July 6-17 and consisted of 134 plays performed in 25 different venues for 1,000-plus performances, with all tickets being $10. Which shows were produced was decided by a drawing, not by a committee with some training, and the shows take place in a variety of settings, some of which are rather deplorable.
The show we caught, "Talking Heads" based on a BBC program, was in a hot room in the second floor of a bar.
The seats were hard and the view past other people’s heads was terrible, but the show was excellent. Three people took turns telling us about their lives, the gimmick being that they didn’t realize how much they were really telling us about themselves - the kind of show that makes the audience feel superior.
A few Elderhostelers in our group who had gone to "Yes, We Have No Bananas!" were not so lucky. They said the show made no sense whatsoever, and the room was even more uncomfortable.
The people who saw "Piaf: Love Conquers All" enjoyed her life in song. Others had found some highly unusual programs that were worth taking a risk to see. The best way to explain is with a few of the titles from the program listing: "Diary of a Bra," "Rich White Bitch," "Tim’s Penis," "Sex and Our City … Toronto!" and "Grummelot."
Toronto’s Fringe Festival does experimental plays similar to those offered at the Corner Playhouse at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Corner Playhouse at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Stephens College’s Warehouse Theater. To check on what it's doing now go to www.fringetoronto.com/.
Art Gallery of Ontario
Have you ever felt that you have been taken advantage of but that the scam was so clever that you were amused? That was my response to the "The Shape of Color," a special exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
At $18 a ticket and without a guide, it would have been a great disappointment because the gallery seems to be mostly empty space. With a guide who gives the rational for the "art," it takes on the air of a comedy act.
The tour started well with some strips of light that could be interpreted as being the Trade Towers before Sept. 11, 2001.
It got weird at the next display, which was a bare white wall with some reflected light on it. The wall at right angles to it had four long florescent light bulbs placed on it. This was also considered a creative work of art.
Then we came to a painting composed of splotches of paint thinned with turpentine and dropped on an untreated canvas so that the turpentine bled away from the oil, giving the colors a gray outline.
I suppose the weirdest paintings were two white walls framed by cords of yarn with nothing between except empty space.
There were also two black canvases, one with a small yellow strip down the side. This went on for seven rooms.
A quote from the brochure gives a hint of what we were up against in terms of art logic: "Broken by relatively few incidents of drawing or design, their surfaces exhale color with an enveloping effect that is enhanced by size itself. One reacts to an environment as much as to a picture hung on a wall."
Anyway, the guide tried to make it all seem a reasonable development in the art world.
I feel anything you could copy at home with minimum training doesn’t count as high art.
The saving grace was that in this case the guide did not point to any one canvas and claim it was the greatest piece of 20th century art as one guide had done to a similar piece at the Tate Modern in London.
To see what is on now go to www.ago.net/.
We concluded that Toronto is a friendly city with good restaurants, a cross-cultural population and a multitude of activities for a visitor.
Art I can appreciate
