I’m going to procrastinate packing for my trip by giving some late mentions to some cool stuff I’ve done since August started:
- On a whim, I decided to invite a bunch of my friends to go see a the Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre company’s production of Cowboys and Samurais. The play is kind of a crossover between Cyrano De Bergerac with a Yellow Fever-esque cast of characters set in (yes, you are reading right) Wyoming. The Firehall Arts Theatre has a gorgeous patio and is not so bad on the inside either – I’ll have to pay more attention to what plays there. The play itself skirts the line between ridiculousness and hilarity fairly well, mostly through playing the contrast between Chester, the nutty Asian-of-indefinite-origin who ever more over-the-top ways to express his “Azn pride”, and Travis, the unapologetic English teacher who moved to the town from LA looking for a quiet country life. When Veronica drops into town to become the third Asian with city limits, the usual Cyrano hijink ensues, with a nice twist at the end. I found the first half well-paced, the second a little draggy, the Travis character very well played with attention to nuance, and Veronica occasionally a little off with the dramatic timing. And Chester was hilarious.
- Richard and I were caught up in the chaos at Granville 7 that was Helvetica – there was some bad communication that meant that people were lining up outside the theatre on the top floor until people had no room to get off the escalator! Richard and I felt bad for taking up his friend’s offer of letting us cut into line – bad us! Karma got us back though, because they couldn’t find Richard’s name for our ticket reservations. I wasn’t there for the resolution on that… The wannabe graphic designer in me thought it was great, and it was also timely since I’m working on a website for someone now and it’s nice to remember how putting on a design eye feels like. The panel with Douglas Coupland, the director Gary Hustwit, and typographer/lithographer/2007 GDC fellowship honoree Jim Rimmer, who was actually working in the field when Helvetica came on the scene 50 years ago. A great timely thing to see, especially in light of the Communication Student Union choosing to adopt a new logo. (I’m biased, I own two t-shirts with the old one and I still rather like Gill Sans.)
- Through one of my weak-ties on my Livejournal friends list, I heard about Boca Del Lupo’s outdoor performance of the Quasimodo story under the Burrard Street Bridge. Since I’m leaving tomorrow, the 13th, we reserved our spots for this performance a long time ago for what turned out to be their opening night this past Friday (performances run until August 25th). Richard and I quite enjoyed being part of a roving audience, moving from set to set and being able to see different audience members (and their attentive, well-behaved, thoroughly captivated littler ones) as we all craned our heads for a good view of the speakers and singers, who held their own fairly consistently against the noise of the bridge and the sound absorption of a hundred dispersed audience members (it helped that a lot of the time they were in the audience as well). There were some nice local touches in the dialogue that gave us a good laugh, and the acrobatics were impressive. One word of advice for those going in future performances: bring as little as you possibly can, because you are standing up for 90 minutes.
And that’s all for me ’till the 28th of August! I’m looking forward to being a good bridesmaid, exploring a new place, hanging out with my friends and being inspired again. And not getting sick, of course.
