Play it again Sam...

Thank you very much to everyone who came out to support "How to Build An Empire: A Boy Scout's Guide" at this year's Toronto Fringe Festival. Thanks to all the incredible support we finished off our run with two sold out shows. Wowee. We're going on tour...catch the show in Peterborough, Ontario in early September...more details to follow.

Here are some amazing production pics taken by photography wizard and artist extraordinaire karol orzechomsky at our tech rehearsal. Thanks karol.









Beautiful. I know.

with a nice "i respect the institutions you represent" kind of tone...

Dear Mayor David Miller and Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone,

I am deeply saddened to hear the news of the death of two men in our city. As reported by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) on July 15, 2008, "On Monday, July 7, around supper time, a young Somali man in his mid-twenties was found dead in the Salvation Army Maxwell Meighen Hostel. On Thursday morning, July 10, Denis Bowen, 42, a native man known to many of us in the community, died outside a social housing building at 200 Sherbourne Street."

As we are all aware, these deaths were entirely preventable. Though I know the City is faced with budget shortfalls and funding cutbacks, we need to as a city find solutions to the crisis of homelessness. Of course strategies require financial support but they also require political commitment from leaders such as yourselves. Moreover, they require radical re-imaginings of our purposes and potential as government officials and as citizens. In what kind of a world can we sit idly by as comrades and colleagues die on the street? There are no excuses that can explain away the lives of these two men...or the thousands of others living on the streets, in unstable or unsafe accommodations or in substandard public housing.

You are currently promoting your campaign to get guns off the streets and make Toronto safe but it appears that even when guns aren't involved our city isn't safe for the poor and homeless. I am calling on you as elected officials to make eradicating homelessness in Toronto the top priority of City Council immediately.

We don't need any more Council Sub-Committees or staff reports. We need safe, clean, affordable places to live and we need them now.

Yours,
Stacy Douglas

Teatro Mondo

A review from MONDO MAGAZINE
July 8, 2008

How to Build an Empire: A Boy Scout’s Guide
Written by Stacey Douglas
Presented by No More Time for Metaphors
Featuring Stacey Douglas and Diana Yoo
Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace

Reviewed by Matt McGeachy

Seamlessly weaving multimedia with a superbly written script, Stacey Douglas presents a funny and compelling account of Canada’s history of imperialism in How to Build an Empire: A Boy Scout’s Guide.

The show is divided into three different story lines: Sam, a young cub scout sent to camp; an earnest drama teacher; and silhouetted “historica” moments. Each storyline is separated by multimedia presentations of Canada’s unsavoury propaganda, including some real doozies from Rudyard Kipling’s visit at the turn of the century about preserving the “white race.”

As the young scout Sam, Douglas nails the character’s precociousness on the head, and does not for one moment lapse into cliché to bring the character to life. As the drama teacher who decided to present Jungle Book as the Grade 12 play, Douglas raises some of the most important points of her excellent play: that stories exist not only in and of themselves, but are also a part of the larger political fabric of their own time and our time. That is, she delicately asks the audience to take a stand on artistic merit and authorial intention while simultaneously confronting us with our history.

The show never becomes preachy or irritating thanks to fantastic writing and a hilarious performance. Music plays a large part as well, and the band’s various renditions of “O Canada” and “Take Me Home Country Roads” were not only amusing but also proved excellently weaved into the story. This show is a must-see for anyone interested in Canada’s history and good theatre.

review of the revue

in case you weren't already convinced of the merits of our show based on content and cast alone...(cue: me coyly winking)

NOW Magazine
NNN

Reviewed by: Jordan Bimm

Stacy Douglas’s insightful solo comedy explores hidden imperialist and racist tendencies in Canadian history. Presented as a series of sketch comedy scenes, Douglas gets the most laughs playing Sam, a wide-eyed boy scout on a wilderness expedition who comes across as a younger, more astute Napoleon Dynamite.

Fast Forward Revue
3.5/5

Reviewed by: E. Sempe

This one-woman show illustrates the intriguing parallels between Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and the Boy Scouts of Canada by highlighting the imperialist rhetoric that links the two. The tone of the performance is light, to counterbalance the heavy subject matter. The gravity of the play’s message is demonstrated to full effect during the scene transitions, which consist of images projected onto a screen demonstrating shockingly racist and imperialist quotes and posters from Canadian history and government.

The set is minimalistic, and actress Stacey Douglas delivers an impressive performance as she bounces from character to character: geeky boy scout, high-school drama teacher, and teenage students giving in-class Canadian history presentations. Transitions are fluid, and accompanied by live music. Only the recurring image of the Nemean Lion, presented as a dancing lion shadow-figure behind a screen, is somewhat unclear and lacks cohesiveness as a visual element in the initial stages of the play. By the end, however, the symbol of the lion loses its ambiguity, and is even rendered poignant, as it becomes the sign for all those heroes wrongly accused as villains.

Director James Burrows notes that “imperialist roots in Canada run deep and are rarely discussed critically.” How to Build an Empire certainly does address and criticize these tendencies, but manages to do so without coming across as contrived or too plaintive. It is both comical and light, but still delivers a serious message: what more could you ask for?

WE OPEN TONIGHT!

HOW TO BUILD AN EMPIRE:
A Boy Scout's Guide
__________________

CAST & CREW

James Burrows
director
James caught the theatre bug after his first communion when the minister didn't wipe the cup properly. He is also completing a questionable degree in Political Studies at Trent University.

Stacy Douglas
performer, playwright
Trained in the Werger/ Young School of artistic performance from 1995 to 2000, Stacy has also worked with Vanier Productions in various peanut-provoking performances, as well as in comedy troupes including Clang!Clang!Clang!Clang! and Ghost Robot.

Ray Godin
musician
Ray Godin is a twenty seven year old student at York University. He has been playing music for about twelve years. He to high school in Peterborough Ontario and has been living in Toronto for the past six years.

karol orzechowski
musician
karol orzechowski, one of the two members of hush money, is a musician and filmmaker currently living in Toronto. karol became a canadian citizen in 1987, and has been synchronized lock-step with the dominant culture ever since.

Kelly Thornton
stage manager
This Kelly Thornton grew up in Brampton, studied Canadian history at Carleton University in Ottawa and journalism at Centennial College in Toronto. She previously worked as a festival organizer for Rights on Reel: Toronto International Human Rights Film and Video Festival. This is her first crack at stage management.

Diana Yoo
performer
Diana Yoo is a visual artist currently working and living in Toronto.
Diana works in a wide variety of media, including photography, printmaking and sculpture. When she is not making visual art, she condescends to lend her time to the meagre projects of local thespians. This may or may not be one of those times.

Promotional Materials: Morgan Passi
Additional Photography: David Hugill
Set Design: James Burrows, Stacy Douglas, Kelly Thornton
Visual Media: James Burrows, Stacy Douglas, Ariel Sharatt
Costume Consultant: Alex Thomson
Lighting Design: James Burrows, Kelly Thornton

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Besieged by images and stories of the Canadian landscape, we are often left wondering what is left out. Feelings and images of home are often what we identify most with, as they encourage us to identify with the nation through their emboldened narratives of justice and peace. But how many of these feelings are founded upon stories of Canada that are misleading, if not entirely false? And what happens if these stories are threatened? The benevolent Canadian is a popular figure in our lives. This figure, however, often runs counter to our history as a violent colonial power, whose history is overrun with racism, and, whose house could only be set in order through the controlling and managing of 'savage' natives and non-Anglo immigrants. Imperialist roots in Canada run deep and are rarely discussed critically. This altered sense of history and place repositions our perceptions of justice, leading many of us to wonder: if racism and imperialism are removed from our stories, in order to promote the nation, then how do imperialism and racism manifest in the present? This show attempts to explore these tensions in our everyday lives in order to better understand how sanitized interpretations of history can change our understandings of justice, place, and self.

James Burrows

MUCHOS MUCHOS GRACIAS

Theatre Trent, Sheila and Wayne Douglas, Another Story Bookshop, The Community Bicycle Network, Richard Newman and the Imperial Pub, Mike Briggs, Peter Stevens, Katie Crown, Ryan V. Hays, James Hartnett, Kathleen Phillips, Kay Pettigrew, Rob Levine, Corrie Sakaluk and the Toronto Women's Bookstore, S.K. Hussan and No One is Illegal, Catherine and Ian Hugill, Gullons Printing, Heather and Richard Davies, Joyce and George Burrows, Cheryl Koller and Lolita.

Can-ah-duh? This land here is Can-ah-duh?

On this day, Canada's great national celebration of 'independence' from Britain (which actually just marks the confederation of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec in 1867), everyone heads outdoors for loud backyard BBQs and stunningly close-to-my-face backyard fireworks.

Also referred to as la fete du canada, or 'Dominion Day', Canada's national birthday was established almost 100 years before Britain conceded to let Canada have their own Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982). No violent struggles or romanticized revolutions here. No, in a mark of history that feeds right into stereotypical cliches about Canadians being ever the unassuming, humble diplomats, Canada meekly accepted their severance from Britain a good 20 years after storms of independence struggles in other British colonies.

However, this isnt to say that Canada doesn't have its own violent past...of course, our bloody beginnings as a nation state harken way back to the advent of colonialism, the battling between English and French forces, and the strategic displacement and (ongoing) state endorsed policy of genocide of First Nations folks who lived/live here. Cheersch. (We apologized, didnt we?)

What does Canada Day mean? What does celebrating Canada's birthday in a back yard with beer and friends have to do with Canada? ...Nothing? Sure, it's a holiday away from work and an extra day to hang with friends or read a book, or go to the beach...but is it in anyway connected to the ways Canadians think about themselves and their place in the world? For me, it conjures up anxieties around land, citizenship, status and history - who's land? What institutional forces allow me to sit comfortably in a backyard and enjoy the space with family and friends? How do all of these considerations play out in my desire to go out and celebrate the day?

I asked the cast of 'How to Build An Empire: A Boy Scout's Guide' what they were doing for Canada Day:

James Burrows (Director) - On Canada Day I usually wonder why I am so fucking humble. I mean, there must be something about being Canadian that makes me this amazingly humble. I also tend to sit in a place where I can surround myself with stuff I bought in other countries that aren't as great as ours. Like Sierra Leone! well, i've never been there but I hear it sucks. And if I had stuff from there I would place it next to me on a day like today to remind me of precisely how much that place blows. I mean, I'm just sayin'.

Diana Yoo (Performer) - Rehearsing

Ray Godin (Musician) - Rehearsing
Karol Orzechowski (Musician) - for canada day, i will be licking the bones of dead prime ministers.
Stacy Douglas (Performer) - Drinking cans of Lucky inside while I update the blog. Then likely to a critical mass event at Harbourfront where I will politely agree with some man sitting next to me going on at length about how lucky we are to live in Canada. I might even contribute to the conversation by encouraging a consideration of our geographical and seasonal expanse - the rocky mountains, tundra, AND boreal forest?! Simply beautiful.


Kelly Thornton (Stage Manager) - Skipping rehearsal.