OTL Blog

Following the viral success of Lapdance for Prince Charles, the artists hoping to save Cafe Cleopatre and the lower Main from destruction have released another video, this time in both French and English. Rather than an appeal, it’s a parody

After having exhausted all other means of stopping the destruction of their performance space in the heart of Montreal’s historic Red Light district, burlesque dance troupe the Dead Dolls have turned to Prince Charles with a simple request: Save the Red Light District and Save the Main

What will you do to preserve the Main’s historic status, promote the interests of those who live and work there and protect against corporate intrusions?

We feel that this is a blatant attempt at discrimination and scapegoating. After all, these supposed aliens aren’t evil. They aren’t harming anyone. They’re just trying to get by and aren’t even a drain. They eat the food that the rest of us throw away or don’t even consider to be food in the first place as this photo suggests

Maybe they don’t want any record of what Time2Ad and Matthew Alzubi said to us to exist.

Montreal’s “Quartier des Spectacles” project is proceeding at a fast clip. The neighbourhood is currently undergoing major transformations as new parks are laid out, a state-of-the-art concert hall goes up, and select buildings are appropriated and destroyed to make way for “development”. Designed to transform Montreal’s old red light district and environs into a less-seedy [...]

Forum Theatre, Image Theatre, Invisible Theatre and Legislative Theatre along with others form a tree of theatre forms known as Theatre of the Oppressed.  All were created by Brazilian theatre theorist, writer and director Augusto Boal who passed away Saturday at the age of 78. Boal is best-known for creating theatre techniques that allowed and [...]

Today is May 1st, recognized in many places around the world as International Workers Day.  It traces its roots back to May 1st, 1886, when workers demanding an 8-hour work day walked out en-masse.  The police crackdown at the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago two days later led to the Haymarket affair in where eight [...]

It took a while, but the federal government finally seems ready to invest a bit of money in the Quebec arts scene.  In fact, the department of Canadian Heritage is giving $4,222,861 to Montreal organizations like the National Theatre School, Les Grands ballets canadiens de Montréal and The Leanor and Alvin Segal Theatre.  They are [...]

In 1971, Augusto Boal started what he called Newspaper Theatre to theatrically deal with current social issues in Brazil.  The concept soon blossomed into a tree of theatrical techniques including Forum Theatre and Image Theatre called Theatre of the Oppressed.  The concept soon spread to other countries in South America and eventually around the world. [...]