The Wildrose Alliance and being new
It seems strange to me to congratulate someone who is effectively spewing venom. But I feel proud of Rob Anderson for switching allegiance from the Alberta PCs to the Wildrose Alliance. No sooner had he made the announcement and he began immediately exposing the dark corners of the Government he had supported and loved so dearly not so long ago.
To do this takes gumption and honesty. It could not have been an easy decision, but assuming he is telling the truth, it is clearly one based on morality and I applaud him for this. We need more politicians who are willing to be open and honest with the public and who are willing to stake their career on correcting their mistakes.
Yet, that is where my applause for his and Heather Forsyth’s defection ends.
If you don’t read many Alberta political blogs then you probably haven’t seen an interesting phenomenon happening coming out of the Reboot Alberta conference. Average citizens who attended – and many who didn’t – have been taking the time to put into writing what they believe the definition of “progressive” is. “Progressive” being what Rebooters have branded themselves as. (My own thoughts on the subject will come in the near future in the form of a series of posts.)
In my mind, I find myself amazed at the number of Albertan’s taking the time, through this difficult exercise, to try and spell out what they want their province to look like – and how Alberta might get from where it is now, to that point.
I’m not seeing this kind of open idealogical and policy development happening with the Wildrose Alliance and that concerns me. Hardly anyone is talking about what it means to be a Wildrose supporter. Especially before choosing to become one.
Up until this point the majority of what the general public has seen is a party which is defining itself via negative statements: i.e. “We are not the Tories.” This was perhaps most clearly stated during the Calgary-Glenmore by-election when the slogan the Wildrose Alliance staked their claim with was “Send Ed a Message”. There was nothing in there about how their position would be any different, but that’s okay because it tapped into a societal urge to do just that: send Ed a message. (Remember the Liberals did come in second in the race, also beating out the PC candidate. Meaning many voters chose to send a message too, just via a different channel.)
The problem with defining yourself in such a way is you’ve left the power to define you in the hands of your opposition. It would be very easy for Ed Stelmach to simply illustrate ‘the message was received’ and suddenly you’re brand has dried up. To be truly effective, the Wildrose Alliance are going to have to illustrate what they are and just what they are not.
So who is the Wildrose Alliance? What do they stand for?
From the policy documents on their website and what their leader Danielle Smith has said in the media, I think they can be summed up as offering ‘change’ or ‘something different’. While this doesn’t help solve my previous point it’s not a bad horse to hitch your wagon to. After all, it worked for Barack Obama.
But the point with Obama was, he really did represent a different way of doing things. (Arguments can be made that his results so far have been the same, but his methods have been near polar opposites of his predecessor.) I’m not convinced yet that the Wildrose Alliance really does offer a different way of doing things.
Case in point the addition of Anderson and Forsyth. If you’ve staked your entire brand on the fact you are different than the PC Party, how can you accept two of their MLAs as your own? This appears to be a quick – albeit short-term helpful – abandonment of the central pillar of the brand.
Yet, I think it goes deeper than just this. From what I’ve been told, the Wildrose Alliance party was founded by former PC supporters who feel the party has lost its way over the past however many years. Anderson and Forsyth and the framing of the by-election victory illustrate this disillusion as well.
Here’s my point: if voters are looking for something new – how does the Wildrose Alliance represent anything other than simply the PC Party of the past? That’s not new, that’s simply slapping a new coat of paint on the same thing we’ve already had before. Change for the sake of change, if you will.
I’m not deluded however. This alone may be enough to hand them a majority in the next election. The Liberals – despite David Swann’s best efforts – are looking to do nothing more than change their logo, while the Alberta NDP plod along contemplating no change of any kind. When these are the options you are up against, the Wildrose’s fresh face with the same tired out plan might be more than enough.
I may be wrong, but it strikes me the public don’t just want new people doing the same thing we’ve done before. If given the option, they want Alberta politics to be done in completely different – and better – way.
So far as I can see right now, those bloggers typing out their thoughts on what the province could be are the only ones offering anything “new”. And that’s too bad they’re the only ones.
"To tweet or not to tweet?" More like The Tempest!
At Lunchbox Theatre I floated an idea that was more than a little out there. I didn’t expect it to gain much traction (in marketing you get used to that happening when you propose things “outside of the box”). But it did gain traction. And after getting the approval of the AD, GM, Literary Manager and playwrights – albeit with BIG questions unanswered – we took a deep breath and moved forward.
The result is an experiment that is generating some controversy. I wanted to share one string of that controversy here because the conversation is a good one. And an important one.
The project we decided to undertake was to allow live tweeting/blogging at two selected performances of Lunchbox Theatre’s Petro-Canada Stage One Festival.
Here’s the media release that went out and was posted on the Lunchbox blog.
We won’t ask you to turn off your phoneBloggers and twitterers invited to live blog/tweet Petro-Canada Stage OneCalgary, AB – The Petro-Canada Stage One Festival takes six new Canadian one act plays and gives the opportunity for each playwright to workshop their script and collect feedback from audiences following two public readings. As an avid user of “social media” Lunchbox Theatre will be undertaking a pilot project this year suggesting audience members turn ON their cell phones at the beginning of the performance.
In order to expand the methods and tools for collecting feedback from audience members, Lunchbox Theatre has created a unique event for the bloggers and twitterers of Calgary. For the Saturday, May 9 reading of Emily and Roy by Paul Kaufmann and the Saturday, May 16 reading of The Boiler Room by Allana Harkin, bloggers and twitters are invited to bring their laptops or smart-phones with them to the theatre and live blog/tweet during the reading. All blogs and tweets from these patrons will then be made available via the Lunchbox Theatre Blog (www.lunchboxtheatre.com/blog) for the public to view.
“We have been using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and our blog to broadcast information about Lunchbox for some time now; however this event provides an opportunity for users of these tools to interact with our work on a whole different level,” says D.J. Kelly, Marketing and Communications for Lunchbox Theatre.
“Petro-Canada Stage One readings are all about collecting patron feedback to help improve the scripts as they move on to the next phase in their development process,” adds Caroline Russell-King, Literary Manager for Petro-Canada Stage One. “It is in our best interest to gather as much feedback as possible and in as many different ways as possible. The honest comments generated through this will be used to make the plays better.”
Bloggers or Twitter users from Calgary are invited to contact Lunchbox Theatre Box Office with their blog address or Twitter username to purchase a ticket for $8 at 403 265 4292 x 0 or boxoffice@lunchboxtheatre.com. Tickets may also be purchased online from tickets.lunchboxtheatre.com.
The world’s longest running lunchtime theatre, Lunchbox Theatre is a professional company that caters to downtown office workers over the noon-hour by producing at least six plays per year as well as the Petro-Canada Stage One new play festival and the BD&P Emerging Director Program. After 33 years, Lunchbox Theatre has recently relocated to the base of the Calgary Tower.
- # # # -
As you can imagine this generated some nearly immediate feedback from members of the arts community. Perhaps the most notable was/is local actor Hal Kerbes who has worked at Lunchbox Theatre many times before. Here is the text of his note he published on Facebook:
You may or may not have seen this post this morning. And it might be better for me to just shut up … but there are some things that simply cross a line.Those of us who work onstage have had to learn to contend with the occasional errant audience member whose phone goes off during a performance. Then came newer communication technologies where people could be connected to everything, any time, anywhere.
I had the personal challenge, at one performance, of completing an intense & demanding scene culminating in my death while tied to a chair, where I remained for the final 20 minutes of the play. During this entire time, approximately 10 feet from me, a young woman was busy texting away, her little “tikka-tikka” sounds making me want to commit potentially justifiable homicide.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of new technologies. But there is a time and a place, and I personally do not think, either as a performer or as an audience member, that this (from this morning’s CPAA bulletin) is it: [see the release above]
His note, understandably has already generated 23 comments – a fair number for a Facebook note I’d say! Of course the majority of the comments focused on what Hal was specifically talking about: the distraction of texting to the actor. This of course is a MAJOR concern during a regular performance. That is also why we chose to not run this experiment on a regular performance. Here was my explanation in the comments to Hal’s note:
We carefully considered the options and decided to try it as an experiment. The idea of Stage One is to solicit audience feedback – we do this in feedback forms and post-show q&a sessions already – and give this to the playwright to do with it as they will.I’m certainly not advocating for this to be a standard practise at a performance. The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra tried that about a month ago and it had all the negative and positive impacts you can imagine and that others have pointed out here.
But doing it during a reading where audience feedback is already requested is another thing entirely. The public readings are about feedback for the playwright at their heart. That is what this is meant to give.
Why not try it out before dismissing it? New technology does not necessarily need to be feared in this context. It may provide some amazing opportunities to the playwright never available before.
On the distraction comment side: We are doing these on the 2nd public reading of the play so the creative team has one traditional reading under their belt free of online influence. We want to make sure the playwright gets the same benefit as the playwrights working on non-live blogged/tweeted shows. In addition we selected a performance that had sold zero tickets up until that point.
I’d also like to note this is Lunchbox Theatre. We allow people to bring their lunch into the theatre. The rattling of that can be far more distracting than someone in the back row typing on their BlackBerry. Actors here operate in an environment expecting a certain level of distraction during their work.
So there it is. Will the “experiment” work? How do we gauge success? The important thing, to me at least, is that we are looking at something new that may help the play development process. Something that may even open up Lunchbox to potential new audiences.
None-the-less it is important to not dismiss points such as Hal’s and those in his comments. They are very real concerns. (Among others that we at Lunchbox have that haven’t been discussed.) And to that end here is the text of a Facebook message I sent to Hal for sharing his opinion:
I wanted to thank you for posting your thoughts on what Lunchbox is attempting. I especially appreciate it because your comments are EXACTLY what ours were when we first started talking about the possiblity of doing something using social media to better interact with our audiences.I get really excited when projects like this get this kind of attention. And it certainly does deserve this kind of attention and the discussion it’s creating. You’re points are important and it is good to constantly remind ourselves of what is important.
I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how the two readings play out. Will it be useful for the playwright? Will it be unacceptably distracting for the actors or the audience? What are the possible outcomes of having these comments available online? Will anyone even bother to show up to twitter or live blog?! No one knows the answers yet.
But we will know moving forward because of this experiment.
Again, thanks for taking the bold step of making your opinion heard. I hope more do the same on issues as artistically important as this.
-dj
Stay tuned for more and to see what the outcome of these two readings is on this front. And of course if you want to attend either of the performances – to live blog/tweet or just to watch – contact the Lunchbox Theatre at 403 265 4292 x 0 or buy online.
As a postscript, if you’re not reading this too late, you can listen to playwright Allana Harkin and Stage One Literary Manager Caroline Russell-King on CBC Radio One Calgary’s The Eyeopener Thursday, May 6 at 7:40 am. (1010 AM or 99.1 FM)
Not done yet
Probably only those of you that read the djkelly.ca Blog through RSS or receive it through email are going to read this, but I wanted to let you know that despite my recent lack of blogging activity AND despite the fact that my domain registrar is doing their best to ensure “djkelly.ca” sites are no longer visible, I am still here and I have plenty to say. More on why I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like to be in a future post.
So, I wanted to say thank you for being a loyal reader and I will be back with actual content soon! (Tell your friends I’m not done yet!)
Times, they are a-changing
How long do you have to blog for before you can/will consider yourself a blogger? I’m not sure, but over the holidays I put on my marketing cap, got a little bit introspective on myself, did a bit of thinking about what this blog is really about.
As you can see from the description over there on the right hand bar (for viewers reading this at blog.djkelly.ca and not in a reader) when I started blogging a couple months back I knew what I was interested in but not necessarily what I was going to write about. Well it looks like politics is in the lead if it were a race – that probably won’t change but I’ll certainly try to beef up the other areas in the next couple months. But the real question I pondered was: what does everything I’ve written about have in common?
I think it is the last line in that blurb about “It’s all from my point of view in Calgary though. That much I know.” I think it has been and know it will continue to be.
So I’ve decided to renew that commitment by flexing my creative muscle (which like the ones in my arms need a trip to the gym badly) and add an image to the banner at the top of this blog. What’d you think? If you’re viewing this in a reader you’ll have to come to blog.djkelly.ca to see it. Obviously.
The image comes from the Calgary Urban Initiative and is a rendering of what the Calgary downtown will look like from Crescent Heights in 2011. Although with project delays and construction cost increases the image will probably be more truthful in about 2013 or so…
The original image came from the Calgary Downtown Association and was altered by Devin Henry. You can find the CUI blog post with this image here, and another version from Stampede Park in this post here.
I like the image because it reminds me Calgary is changing and everyone had best hold on for the ride over the next few years.
But if the new banner up there or the City’s newly released 10 year plan don’t convince you of that, perhaps the recent news that every classroom in Calgary is now wireless will. That is real change that you will be able to see; change that will clearly benefit Calgary’s future.
Blogging about blogging (such introspection!)
In case you haven’t heard yet: the Canadian Blog Awards finally have a new home and will be presented this year after all.
I’m not suggesting you should vote for me – far from it. I’m not even sure what category this blog would be nominatable in. Best New Blog? Best Non-Partisan Blog? Maybe, Best Local Blog? Best made up word for the term “nominatable”? Either way, my goal is to provide even more/better quality on this blog and to be more like past recipients in the Best Religious Blog category.
I did want to draw your attention to a friend’s blog that I nominated: Mike’s Bloggity Blog Blob – who today informs us the People’s Choice Awards have been cancelled because of the Writers’ Guild strike. (Who knew we, the people, couldn’t be forced to choose when there were no writers in Hollywood? And what’s left, when we no longer have the power to choose? Chaos. And possibly the Blockbuster Awards. Although I think those were cancelled in 2002. They probably weren’t cancelled because of a writers strike; its more likely they were cancelled because of suckiness. Or pointlessness.) I nominated Mike’s blog in the Best Entertainment Blog and Best Humour Blog categories. If he makes the long list be sure to go vote for him!
Subscribe
-
Like Minded
