Occupy Wall Street has put theatre activism into the spotlight like never before. Conceptualized by Vancouver-based Adbusters Magazine, the Occupy Movement kicked off on September 17 by taking over New York City’s Zuccotti Park, near Wall Street in Manhattan. The initial encampment consisted of a small tent-city, including everything from kitchens to libraries to performances spaces [...]
Last Sunday, St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival security prevented local artists associated with the Infringement Festival from entering a public park, which was temporarily privatized, on the grounds that they didn’t pay to be there. Security chief Ace Lopes also denied entry to anyone in the vicinity who seemed remotely associated with Donovan King, regardless of [...]
Optative Theatrical Laboratories is proud to announce seven unique theatrical projects for the 2011 Montreal infringement festival. Traditional favourites like Car Stories will appear alongside Red Light District and Greening Montreal walking tours (including an ecological picnic), a birthday party to celebrate Cultural Resistance, a screening of our new film “Global Invisible Theatre”, plus a new theatre experiment [...]
The infringement season is upon us, and it is looking to be a red letter year for the global network of festivals! With four unique infringement festivals on offer in both Canada and the USA, it is going to be a great summer for both infringers, new and old, and audiences seeking daring and authentic arts! The [...]
This month marks the 10th anniversary of OTL’s infamous CAR STORIES show getting ejected from the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival, and already the media are taking note of this disturbing milestone. The story is one of the most recounted in Montreal’s anglophone theatre community – it is the story of unethical corporate interests steamrolling artists at what [...]
Today is the beginning of “MainFest”, a 3 day “street fair” on St. Laurent Boulevard, or “The Main” Historic site. The boulevard will be completely closed to traffic and is expected to receive an estimated 300 000 visitors. According to The Société de développement du boulevard Saint-Laurent (SDBSL), organizers of “MainFest” and other “street fairs”: [...]
The Left has always been a fractured and fragmented place rife with disagreement and conflict about how best to challenge oppression and change the world. Can the days of disagreement between neo-Marxist-Leninist Communists and Third wave post-Anarcho-feminist radicals finally be over? Yes, according to Judy Rebick, who descended on Montreal recently with to promote her new book Transforming [...]
The first-ever Roman Fee Theatre Award was handed out on Thursday, March 19, 2009, in the Grand Salon of Montreal’s Hyatt Regency Hotel. The Donor and Student Excellence Recognition Ceremony was presided over by Concordia University President Judith Woodsworth, who handed out various awards and bursaries to graduate and undergraduate students across all faculties and [...]
So what’s the Montreal infringement festival going to be like this year? Good question! While the infringement may have been mentioned several times on this blog already and anyone who knows OTL has heard of the festival, we have never really discussed it in any detail in this space. The sixth consecutive edition of the [...]
On Monday night over 50 masked protesters descended on City Hall for a Masquerade Ball protest – the Bal Masqué. Organized by an ad hoc collective known as Le Gros Bon Sens, the masked demonstration aimed to challenge the anti-mask bylaw the City of Montreal is attempting to pass as part of its larger “Public [...]
