Announcement: Mall Ratting, an Ottawa (de)tours podplay

Together my husband and I have created a podplay called Mall Ratting, available through Ottawa (de)tours. (Side note: creating an audio play together about consumerism, local economy and young idealism gone wrong = true love).

Podplays are plays in podcast format that can be enjoyed simply as an audio play, or, more frequently, as an audio play that leads you through a specific physical experience or geographical area. Ours is the latter, leading participants through the Rideau Centre in downtown Ottawa.

What I love about our podplay is that is creates a dialogue with participants about the history of shopping centres, our personal experiences with malls, and the question of malls in our contemporary society. And it does it in a way that is way more interesting than that last sentence. For both tourists and locals it offers an experience unlike anything else in Ottawa, and encourages critical thinking and discussion. This is important as the phenomenon of the shopping centre in Canada is poorly documented and rarely discussed, despite the fact that it has a huge impact on our local economy and all of us have been in a mall at least once.

Podplays offer a personal experience and a chance to see the world with new eyes. As a podplay newbie I am really curious about the possibilities of this form and I have a lot of questions that remain about what exactly a podplay is and how important narrative is within it. Thoughts for another day. In the meantime, check out our play! We would love to share it with you. Description below, and tickets available here.

Mall Ratting: A Podplay

Concept and editing by Dan Monafu

Written and narrated by Megan Piercey Monafu

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Rideau Centre, Ottawa’s largest and most famous downtown mall! Let us equip you with headphones, a podplayer, and a story, so that you can experience shopping like never before. Part local history, part history of our globalizing world, part behavioural psychology, part experiment, and part tragicomedy, our theatrical podcast-play-tour will allow you to observe your fellow humans as an outsider, and be audio-guided through one of the most popular and least documented phenomena of the 20th century: the indoor, climate-controlled, super-shiny shopping mall.

Following your podplay, we welcome you into Rideau Centre’s redesigned food court, the “Dining Hall”, for a lively group discussion with your (de)tours facilitator.

Putting my foot in it: community arts & inter-sector collaboration

As I do frequently when looking for guidance on community development, I called S. Part of the beauty of inter-sector work is that it allows an emerging theatre artist and community idealist like myself to get solid mentoring from a fabulous community developer with years of experience in collaboration.

“Hey, stupid question: can I put posters up on the light poles?” I’m sitting in my car, pile of posters and packing tape in hand. Around me is a very pedestrian area in the heart of the target community with pristine light poles everywhere, a beautiful sight to my indie-theatre-producer eyes. Until I’m reminded that a big partner on the project is the City of Ottawa. Right. It’s a good thing S is so patient with me.

Obviously this is only a small example of possible conflict when it comes to collaboration, and easily solved: don’t put unwanted posters on someone else’s turf. Pretty simple. More often, learning to collaborate with multiple agencies and community groups is a test of patience, and sometimes painful. Everyone is accustomed to their organizational structure, whether they work for a not-for-profit or a business corporation, an ad-hoc committee or an association, low-budget or okay-budget (let’s be real, there are no big budgets in this work!). On my current community arts project, we are 11 people from different organizational cultures, with different positions on community development and different opinions on the value of art. We work in a semi-consensus decision-making model with yours truly at the helm. It is, to put it lightly, a challenge.

Speaking of yours truly, things get extra shaken-up when you throw an artist into the mix. The organizational structure of freelance theatre is probably as far from not-for-profit social service organizations as you can get. Theatre relies on enormous amounts of mutual good will, and a lot of wheeling and dealing to get things done; it is not a bureaucracy. Without knowing it, I was many times the fly in the ointment of “how things are done around here.” But, I am a fresh set of eyes. I ask the questions that other people have forgotten how to ask. I bring the DIY ingenuity. I don’t think I’m special; that’s just what artists do in communities. The artist has the power to be an empowerer, if they so choose, by the very nature of the work they do. In return they will be (and deserve to be) questioned and challenged by the community they work in –as I am in this project.

It’s messy. It calls for hours of detailed discussion. It calls for organizations to stretch their mandates. It calls for revisiting the budget (the horror!). It calls for grace to allow others to save face when they forget to do their share, or when they lose their temper. It necessitates working with the person who is rude and impossible to understand, because whether we like it or not, they are a part of the community. It reminds us that we are only as strong as our weakest link, and so we must look out for each other.

And this doesn’t even begin to address the systems difficulties we face. As funding for both the social services and the arts continues to wane, we must collaborate just for survival. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish for another day.

What collaboration does at its absolute best, though, is focus the attention on the work. We have to think about the why of community development work, and we have to find what we have in common in order to tackle the how. Everyone is stretched to come to new understandings of community, of our roles in it, and of the role of art, and through this process the work itself is made better. Ultimately, that’s what keeps me sitting at the table.

Sitting at the table where I’ve just inadvertently poked the hornet’s nest again with a question and caused a stir. As people start murmuring in surprise and disagreement, I look over at S, who gives me a gleeful grin. Thank God she’s here, and has been around the block a few times, too. And so we all dive into the conversation, to figure it out as best we can and make good work happen.

Stamina Creates Freedom: Running & Artistic Discipline

In a little under 2 weeks I’ll be running the Ottawa Marathon. When I tell people this, the response is often a quick, surprised once-over. I know, I don’t look like a marathon runner, okay. I don’t look like someone who’s regular weekend workout easily burns 1500 calories. I’m a curvy lady, and to my initial disappointment and eventual acceptance, marathon training hasn’t changed that.

My Dad, who is a long-time marathon runner, once said, “Some people run like deer. And that’s great. But we are not of that stock. We run like plough horses.” Not super flattering, but true. One foot in front of the other, no speed, all endurance. When I barely ploughed through the Winterman 5k two years ago I didn’t think I would go much farther than that. But sure enough, I put one foot in front of the other so persistently that I’m going to plough through 42k this year.

This training has turned into a meditation on artistic discipline. In that too, I am not a sprinter. I don’t get struck by sudden and overwhelming bouts of inspired binge-writing. Sometimes I doubt whether I’m really a writer, just like I doubt if I’m really a runner. I get sucked into the mythology of the writer as a crazed romantic who spews polished work on the regular.

I recently picked up the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work edited and with text by Mason Currey, at Drawn & Quarterly. It’s filled with the daily rituals of famous artists of all stripes, from Ingmar Bergman to Toni Morrison to Carl Jung. It’s fascinating (and comforting) to read how the majority of these artists live a life that is simple and habitual, with many of them sticking almost obsessively to their routines. A theme that comes up over and over is how the body and mind must be trained to create. As Chuck Close says, “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”

This echoes Anna Deavere Smith, a theatrical hero of mine, in her book Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-Up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts. Deavere Smith has made a habit of swimming laps every single morning, as well as practicing her art every day. She says, “Most important is the health and strength of your imagination, which must thrive. Clear away all obstacles and doubts… Remember my swimming metaphor: Just get in and swim your laps. Build your stamina. You will need it.”

Running for me is about just getting out and hitting the pavement, and I’m learning to do the same with my writing: just sitting down and writing, putting in time. If I’m sitting around chewing over whether I’m a real writer or a real runner, I’m not either of these things. I’m a runner if I’m running. I’m a writer if I’m writing. Just run. Just write. The question of whether I’m a good writer is a moot point until the work has been done, and it has no place in the creation process.

What I didn’t know until running is the paradox that stamina creates freedom. The time spent pounding one foot in front of the other for 20 painful kilometres has created a body that can go out on a beautiful spring evening and fly along, feeling the animal joy of running. The time spent making sure I write through hours of anxious doldrums creates space for those moments when an inspired idea hits, and gives me the skill to joyfully take the idea for a ride, riffing on the possibilities.

And in between those moments, it’s one foot in front of the other. No speed, all endurance, playing the long game, sheer persistence.