The Georgia Straight - Data Wizard - April 11, 2019

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Volume 53 | Number 2673

SPRING BOOKS

Food, sex, Vietnam, and Zuckerberg

DANCE ILLUSIONS MOMIX conjures magic

CATFISH CONFESSION Dan Savage responds

Data Wizard Cambridge Analytica whistle blower Christopher Wylie makes the case that tech giants like Facebook and Amazon are no different than Big Oil and Big Pharma—and need to be regulated

ITALIAN WINES || CHOR LEONI || THE MURLOCS || DOXA FEST

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CONTENTS

April 11 - 18 / 2019

COVER

5

Whistle blower Christopher Wylie says the public should be far more wary of corporate digital behemoths.

By Kate Wilson Cover photo by Antonio Olmos

T H I S M O N T H AT 5

BOOKS

Zucked author Roger McNamee says we should ask more questions about the Internet platforms we use.

By John Lucas

11

FOOD

There’s more to Butter Bakery & Cafe’s Rosie Daykin than her sweet side in her new cookbook, Let Me Feed You.

3 RD FLOOR

By Gail Johnson

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13 ARTS

Legendary MOMIX choreographer Moses Pendleton conjures artful and acrobatic tricks of the eye.

By Janet Smith

23 MUSIC

Clearly of the opinion that the devil finds work for idle hands, the Murlocs make a point of keeping busy.

By Mike Usinger

DUELING PIANOS APRIL 12, 18, 19 & 26 EVERY SATURDAY APRIL 13, 20 & 27

ONE AND A HALF

e Start Here e Online TOP 5 Here’s what people are 21 DOXA FESTIVAL reading this week on 12 HOROSCOPES Straight.com.

19 HOT TICKET 20 MOVIE REVIEWS 23 MUSIC PREVIEWS 27 SAVAGE LOVE 5 TECHNOLOGY 16 THEATRE 18 VISUAL ARTS Often-photographed Vancouver grocery e Listings store put up for sale.

19 ARTS Former Smallville star 24 MUSIC Allison Mack pleads e Services 25 CLASSIFIEDS

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4 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019

guilty to racketeering.

HIGH TECH

Data wizard decries online segregation

by Kate Wilson

W

hen whistle blower Christopher Wylie was asked earlier this year to sum up the story of Cambridge Analytica in a minute, he simply responded, “No.” The impact that the Steve Bannon– founded, Robert Mercer–funded company had on global politics and big tech is maddeningly complex. Gathering user information from platforms like Facebook—the bulk of which was obtained without the subjects’ authorization—Cambridge Analytica used data, including people’s fashion choices or music tastes, to create a hyperspecific personality profile. Under Wylie’s management—he was the company’s director of research—that knowledge could be used to microtarget voters and influence their election decisions with specific political ads.

As well as allegedly working with parties in India, Kenya, and Malta, Cambridge Analytica played a role in two highly controversial campaigns: 2016’s Brexit vote and the Donald Trump election. But while both outcomes have faced national scrutiny, the only organization to have suffered any immediate consequences for its role in the scandal is Facebook.

The social-media giant was publicly hauled in front of the U.S. Congress to explain why the data of some 87 million users could have been harvested

by Cambridge Analytica without their explicit consent. In addition, the tech giant was hit with a symbolic fine of £500,000 ($873,000) by the U.K.—the maximum allowed—for failing to protect its citizens’ personal information.

The greatest damage, however, was to the company’s bottom line. From the moment that the Guardian and the New York Times broke Wylie’s story, Facebook shares fell more than 11 percent, wiping roughly US$50 billion from its value in two days—a number nearly twice the total value of Airbnb.

One year on, Wylie is still trying to wrap his head around the impact of going public.

“It has been quite a year; I’m not going to lie,” he tells the Georgia Straight on the line from London, England, where he now works as the research director for multinational clothing business H & M. “So many things have happened for me, personally. But then I also think more

The former research director at Cambridge Analytica, Christopher Wylie, insists that technology giants behave just like Big Oil and Big Pharma. Photo by Antonio Olmos

broadly in terms of conversation about the new era that we’re entering, where data and technology and AI is actually becoming quite influential in our lives. I’m heartened that at least we’re now having a conversation about the intersection of technology in our society.”

After a vehement initial backlash against Facebook and social-media companies, though, few things have changed. The tech giant currently faces no criminal charges for allowing Cambridge Analytica to access people’s data without permission.

The billions of dollars lost from its valuation were restored within two months of the scandal. Facebook’s fundamental architecture remains the same, full of addiction-inducing ludic loops and the time-sucking infinite scroll, and—most damning of all—its platform still permits microtargeting. The effects of that, Wylie warns, could have a serious impact on communities.

“When we have information being separated out and target different groups of people…that segmentation risks actually segregating society,” he says of the danger of personalized advertising. “We’ve come out of several

decades—particularly in the United States—of desegregating society. If you think about what segregation is, it’s often things that are really simple: where you can sit on a bus, what water fountain you can use, what door you can use to enter a school or a movie theatre. But the power of that segregation is that you create two Americas. You create two worlds—and two perspectives on the world. We’ve now reached a point where we’ve realized that segregation is wrong, but this is happening online now. A kind of cognitive segregation is happening.

“When you look at the United States right now, I think it’s a classic example,” he continues. “Or the rise of the altright in Europe. There are people who just have a completely different understanding of reality, and they act out based on that understanding—or misunderstanding. And it causes a huge amount of social tension.”

Facebook’s unwillingness to change its core structure—and Wylie’s insight into the resulting impact—is one of the reasons that the 29-year-old remains in high demand by the media and at speaking events. Another is his readiness to challenge the public image of big-tech businesses. In

Wylie’s view, Facebook’s reaction to the scandal contradicts an oft-repeated narrative: that developments in technology equate to progress for humanity, and that the goal of tech companies is to improve lives. Millions of aspiring entrepreneurs revere Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos as visionaries and herald their role in shuttering industries like retail or journalism as disruption rather than cannibalism. Wylie calls them “false prophets”.

“One of the things I think the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed is that technology companies are just like other companies,” he says.

“The technology sector is just like Big Pharma. It is just like the oil industry.

It is just like any other industry that is looking to employ resources—in this case, people—for profit.

“The thing I find so frustrating about Facebook is the way it treats society. The functioning democracy of the United States and, more broadly, the western world is what allows it to make money and profit…it’s what allows them to have people who can innovate and make technology and make money. There is an obligation to respect that.…And they have really not clocked that, in a way that feels very similar to how an oil company doesn’t really care about polluting the oilsands, for example. Someone else can clean up the mess, as long as they make money.”

The impacts of Wylie’s statements have been wide-reaching. Political figures in the United States are considering stepping in to regulate the way that big tech operates, something that would have been unthinkable in previous years. Democrat Elizabeth Warren, for instance, will run for president in 2020 on a platform that includes breaking up tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon: a move that’s been, for the most part, warmly received. Warren is suggesting a policy of personal accountability—including jail time— for executives who break the trust of their customers with data breaches.

Wylie’s own proposal isn’t far off.

He argues that because data architects and engineers are building the infrastructure of the Internet, they should be held to the same standards as those building the physical world—the people who design and

construct houses, for instance.

Issuing professional licences or requiring adherence to a set of safety principles, he believes, could be one way to ensure tech companies behave ethically online.

But while enthusiasm for regulation has been slowly growing, it has so far been hindered by those hung up on the practicalities. Skeptics highlight how lawmakers are ill-equipped to understand new developments and that tech companies innovate much faster than the time it takes to pass legislation.

Wylie begs to differ.

“It’s a hard problem, because the Internet is so innately international and tech platforms are so big,” he says.

“But the thing that I would say is that we are able to take highly complicated things—like nuclear power or airplane safety or cancer drugs—and we are able to regulate these. But the way that we regulate medication safety or airspace safety, we don’t create the literal legislation in Parliament or in Congress. You do not have two members of Congress debating whether this molecular isomer is safer than another one for a cancer drug. They create a regulator, which hires scientists—who know what they’re doing—to go and create rules. One of the problems with the way that a lot of people talk about technology and the regulation of technology is that they say that the law can never keep up. Parliament and Congress can’t keep up with technology, but regulators can, and they do.”

Wylie is quick to point out that if bigtech companies continue unchecked, the damage to our societies could become irreversible. Spotlighting Russian interference in the U.S. election, the online propaganda that led to virulent ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, and the hate messaging in Sri Lanka that has been linked to the death of local Muslims, he believes that the case for regulating social media is a matter of life or death.

“If we allow AI to perfectly segment our countries and our societies, we will no longer live in the same place,” he says. “We will live beside each other, but not with each other.

And that, I think, is dangerous.” g Christopher Wylie speaks on a panel titled Confronting the Disinformation Age as part of SFU Public Square at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Tuesday (April 16).

Zucked author lays bare threats of tech

M

by John Lucas

ark Zuckerberg has never been known for taking a particularly restrained approach to business. The Facebook founder and chief executive has instead lived by the company’s notorious motto, “Move fast and break things”—making decisions that can affect the lives of the platform’s 2.32 billion users and either apologizing or deflecting blame when those decisions have negative consequences.

On March 30, the Washington Post published an opinion piece written by Zuckerberg that seemed to suggest he had adopted a more circumspect mindset. In the article, Zuckerberg called for government regulation of Internet platforms. “By updating the rules for the Internet,” he wrote, “we can preserve what’s best about it—the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things—while also protecting society from broader harms.” Zuckerberg identified four areas of concern for regulators: harmful content, election integrity, privacy, and data portability.

The Post article prompted an April 2 rebuttal in the Guardian by Roger McNamee, who called Zuckerberg’s piece “a monument to insincerity and misdirection”. McNamee knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the threat posed by Internet platforms—in fact, he wrote the book on it. An early investor in Facebook and a former mentor to both Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, McNamee is also the author of the book Zucked,

which makes a case that the social network has caused real damage in a number of areas, from public health to global geopolitics.

Zuckerberg voiced his support for regulation in the immediate wake of the February publication of Zucked.

McNamee isn’t convinced there’s a causal relationship between the two.

“I assume it’s a coincidence,” he told the Georgia Straight in a recent telephone interview. “But how do I know? They won’t speak to me, so I don’t get any direct feedback. The thing is, I applaud Mark for at least trying to be part of the discussion now, because until just a few months ago, they were pretending like there was nothing to see—in the face of mounting evidence that there was not only something to see, but that it’s really horrible, and it’s not coincidental that it’s the result of a business model, algorithms, and a culture that made catastrophe inevitable.”

As McNamee outlines in Zucked, there have actually been countless catastrophes. One is an entire generation becoming hooked on the dopamine hits provided by spending more and more time online. Another is the decimation of innovative startup culture by the monopolistic tendencies of companies including

Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Another is the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which— whether there was collusion by the Donald Trump campaign or not—was subject to interference by bad actors employing trolls and bots to spread disinformation. Still another, more tragic, example is the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, where allies of the ruling party used Facebook to promote violence against the Rohingya minority.

And none of that even touches on the impact that Facebook and other platforms have on our privacy as individuals. McNamee thinks we should be asking more questions about that.

“Why is it legitimate—why is it legal—for a service provider like Google or Microsoft to scan your private emails or your private business documents for data that’s economically valuable to them?” he says. “Why are they not treated like the post office, where they have to just move the mail without looking at it?

Why is it that third parties are allowed to buy and sell and trade your most personal data? So this is your financial data, your location data, your health data. I mean, the health data, they can only trade the stuff off of health and wellness apps, but that’s really powerful stuff. Why

is it legal for companies to track you as you move around the Internet? Why is it legal to gather data about minors who aren’t old enough to even give consent? I believe that that thirdparty commerce in our most intimate data is extremely harmful, because it essentially allows Google and Facebook, and now Amazon and Microsoft, to create a data avatar for every consumer—even the ones who are not on their platforms—and with those data avatars, they’re able to manipulate people’s behaviour.”

By now, you’re probably wondering what, if anything, you can do about all this. McNamee has a few suggestions; in fact, he devoted the last two chapters of his book (titled “The Future of Society” and “The Future of You”) to them.

“There are two things that everybody can absolutely do today,” the author tells the Straight.

“First, make sure you protect children. We need a lot less technology in children’s lives, and we need it to come much, much later than we thought. The other thing is, people need to talk to their elected representatives wherever they live. I mean, it would be amazing if Canada would ban the sale of third-party data, right? If any state in the United States did, it would be amazing. It would be amazing if people basically litigated these people for theft of our digital identities.”

McNamee has identified a number of key actions that individuals can take to protect kids, safeguard privacy, promote innovation, and restore democracy. Find them at www. zuckedbook.com/. g APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 5

SPRING BOOKS

Thanh looks for tolerance in Mistakes

Y

by Brian Lynch

asuko Thanh’s new memoir Mistakes to Run With lands with jarring force. The Victoria-based author made her name with the much-praised 2012 short-story collection Floating Like the Dead and the award-winning 2016 novel Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains. Now she channels her powers into the events of her own past, following the spiral from her childhood as an evangelically religious honour student to her adolescent years engulfed by drug use and street-level sex work, where the threat of violence and death was always as close as the next stranger in the room. The book’s honesty is relentless, and its spirit of survival defies platitudes. Below, Thanh responds to three questions from the Straight.

Q. What convinced you that now was the time to tell this story? How did you know?

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A. When I started writing this memoir, I was still in therapy after a stay in the psych ward. The intimate tone of a memoir made it the ideal genre to negotiate intensely personal material and convey psychological truths in a way that political analysis could not. Finally, I’d reached a point in my career where releasing a book about my past would not have me labelled as a writer of “street fiction” or pigeonhole me. I could release it with less worry of being stigmatized than if I’d released it before the novel and short story collection. Which is sad, because it points exactly to the prejudice the book is trying to fight.

Q. The act of writing has often been a source of solace for you. Has writing this book helped to settle your relationship with the parts of your life described in it?

6 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019

Victoria’s Yasuko Thanh confronts stereotypes about street life. Photo by Don Denton

A. I have wanted to joke with the writing class I teach to never submit a story about “coming to terms” with anything. “What’s your trauma?” doesn’t make for good fiction. The past is alive, a constantly shifting panther that defines us even as we’re trying to pin its contours against the jungle of our lives. We are what has happened to us; we are what we are surrounded by. But we’re more than that. Which is why I hope Mistakes to Run With inspires people to look beyond their first impressions and see individuals beneath the stereotypes. My version of the past will continue to change as I change.

In other words, no time will come where the relationship between former parts of my life and who I am today are settled.

Q. Are your hopes for this book different from those for the fiction you’ve written?

A. My ultimate goal with everything I write is to contribute in some small way to the struggle for tolerance and open-mindedness. If I’ve made even one person feel less screwed-up in the world, I’ve succeeded. My added hope with this book was to begin a dialogue about the continued criminalization of street-embedded youth. A new model for understanding is needed, because their criminalization—as shown by researchers—entrenches them further in street life without addressing the social issues that put them there in the first place. I’d love for this book to spur a dialogue between legislators and the people for whom the skills and attitudes of the streets are logical means of survival. g

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SPRING BOOKS

Past is always present in Purple City

D

by David Chau

uring a stint in Toronto, a little over a decade ago, Philip Huynh resumed writing fiction. This sustained literary effort, his first after becoming an attorney, featured a struggling actor recalling his father’s dashed dreams in Vancouver, where Huynh himself was born.

The subsequent success of that story, “The Investment on Dumfries Street”, winner of the 2011 Open Season Award from the Malahat Review, bolstered him. The concept for an entire volume occurred later, after Philip Huynh’s new story collection looks to defy expectations about Vietnam. the publication of “Gulliver’s Wife”, which earned Huynh, who’d wanted immersion in a Vietnamese gang As Huynh writes, “Stealing pearls to write since age 7, a nomination for and the illicit marijuana trade in and stereos from unsuspecting civilthe 2013 Journey Prize. the Lower Mainland. ians was easy. An enemy’s grow op, A collection, he remarks now, was a chance to explore different voices, experiences, and backdrops. “The throughline, certainly, of all my stories is the fact that I’m of Vietnamese heritage,” Huynh says to the Straight at an East Van café. “Vietnam is the prism through which I see the world. But at the same time, I started thinking about just putting together the complexity and diversity of this community writ large.”

The Forbidden Purple City, his debut book, includes the aforementioned stories and demonstrates superb range and craftsmanship.

Huynh reveals the inner cargo of whole lives in these nine works, writing as absorbingly about drug trafficking and abalone diving as he does about dislocation and love.

Portraying Vietnam, he notes, can carry expectations about conflict and escape. “Strictly speaking, my stories aren’t about the war, at least not directly head-on. But certainly the psychic consequences of that impinge on the day-to-day lives of my characters,” Huynh says. “The past for me isn’t just about the war or about loss, or about loss of country, but it’s also in the things that are cultural.”

The idea that the past is always present prevails. Named after imperial ruins in Hue, the title story, longlisted for the 2018 Journey Prize, reflects on erasure and legacy as old friends organize a concert for Vancouver’s Vietnamese community. In “Toad Poem”, a retiree faces the disconnect between memory and reality upon returning to the Vietnamese city of Hoi An, after years abroad, to compose a verse honouring his parents.

Scars from 21st-century history inform these pages as well. The stellar “Turkey Day” follows a Vancouver-raised lawyer in New York, amid personal and professional strife, and his search for a turkey to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving in the wake of 9/11. (Huynh, then employed as an attorney and settled in Lower Manhattan, was evacuated from his apartment when the World Trade Center towers fell.)

Of the narratives, Huynh divulges “a certain sentimental attachment” to “The Tale of Jude”. Inspired by the author feeling like an outsider at a private school he attended in Winnipeg, the plot unfolds the surprising relationship between a scholarship student and a wealthy female classmate.

Huynh acknowledges affinities between some stories and his own life. But despite having lived in or visited all the locales depicted, Huynh, who currently resides in Richmond, isn’t drawn to autobiography. Fiction allows for entry into “the actual lives and selves and the sensibilities of the characters,” he says. “I’m just much more interested in exploring different people.”

He submitted the manuscript of the book to the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop in 2015 and was a cowinner of its emerging-writer award. At that point, however, the collection lacked “Mayfly”, one of the published version’s strongest offerings. Riffing on a piece Huynh wrote years earlier, this iteration details a Caucasian youth’s

though, was a different game, one you weren’t yet allowed to play. You heard about their fortifications from the homies who made it back from a grow-rip, sometimes with their blood trailing on the carpet. There were pit bulls to be wary of, both animal and human.”

Creative undertakings, according to Huynh, operate with individual logics. Weeks or months can be spent developing characters before he starts a project. Material comes to him from their respective motives and dynamics. The immigrants and their descendants here have “a unique way of orienting themselves with the past. Some of them just want to forget about the

past and move on with their lives,” Huynh says. “For others the past is this huge mystery that they want to have uncovered.”

Home remains a place and a state of mind. The Forbidden Purple City itself, the 19th-century royal complex once central to Vietnamese culture and today part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, serves as a potent metaphor. No one knows “what it really did truly look like, particularly the grand interiors of the emperor’s home,” Huynh continues. “I think that’s an interesting symbol of what home is, and the efforts to which my characters try to re-create this sense of home.” g

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SPRING BOOKS

Daykin cooks up the comfort of home

S

THE 22NDAnnual 18

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Celebrating

2019

50 years!

by Gail Johnson

ince Rosie Daykin launched Butter Bakery and Cafe in Dunbar in 2007, she has become known for delicious sweets like whoopie pies, sandwich cookies, buttercream cupcakes, peach-raspberry pies, and Dream Bars.

Then there are her house-made marshmallows. The fluffy square pillows, which come in several flavours, like strawberry, lemon, and matcha, can now be found in hundreds of stores throughout North America and Japan.

Given the former interior designer’s knack for all things sweet, it’s no surprise that Daykin’s cookbooks Butter Baked Goods: Nostalgic Recipes From a Little Neighborhood Bakery and Butter Celebrates: A Year of Sweet Recipes to Share With Family and Friends went on to rank as bestsellers. But a person cannot live on sugar alone. And Daykin’s third cookbook is a departure.

Let Me Feed You: Everyday Recipes Offering the Comfort of Home focuses on breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes. The hardcover book features more than 100 recipes, from Butter’s Granola and Mushroom Pancetta Soup to Roasted Vegetable Lasagna and Iron Skillet Halibut.

While Daykin includes dessert recipes for good measure (Pink Grapefruit Cupcakes and Chocolate Cherry Cookies among them), this time out she prioritizes the kinds of food that keep her and her family fuelled.

“This book really seemed like a natural evolution,” Daykin explains in a phone interview. “Book 1 and Book 2 were written under the umbrella of Butter Baked Goods. But there’s more to me than Butter. I first thought, ‘Oh no, everyone is going to find out I don’t live in a pink and pistachio house!’

“Butter is very much a part of my life, but it’s not my life,” she says.

“Before I had Butter, I was cooking and baking every day. It made sense to me as a logical next step to share that side of things with people. My love for baking and my love for cooking just stem from my love for food.”

As a working mom, Daykin developed a knack for simple dishes, meals that require little in the way of technique or time, factors that are just as vital for professionals and entrepreneurs. Consider her Damn Good Meatloaf, for example, or Tomato Casserole. (Her grown daughter now runs her own business kitty-corner from Butter.)

“I am not a complicated person by any stretch of the imagination,” Daykin says. “I’m not inspired by a recipe that has 100 steps. Life is so busy. I like to streamline things right across the board.

“I look at life in general that way: why would I choose to complicate something I don’t need to complicate?” she adds. “A lot of people shy away from cooking and entertaining and baking; I think through the power of the cooking channel, it can be intimidating. I’ve heard it a million times: ‘I don’t cook; I don’t know how to bake.’

I just don’t believe that of anybody.”

In fact, one of her recipes is for croissants, which are something a lot of people would turn the page on out of self-doubt. Daykin has read those folks’ minds; underneath the title, in brackets, she writes “Trust me, you can do it,” also noting, “Oh yes you can!…The only thing really challenging about making croissants is setting aside the time to do so.”

To help conquer the mighty croissant, the book has multiple photos of the process (by Janis Nicolay); Daykin has also made the pastries from scratch in one of her Instagram stories, breaking things down step by step, for beginners to refer to for guidance.

Daykin includes a handful of personal stories in Let Me Feed You, giving readers the chance to get to know her a little bit better, which lends the book some warmth. She likes putting weird objects like hand-carved

Naam Restaurant

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wooden toy tops on her coffee table, for instance, and has an excessive amount of vintage porcelain and fine china.

And you will never, ever see her make mushroom lasagna. She sprinkles the book with puns, wisecracks, hacks, and tips, making it lighthearted and practical. As with her other books, Daykin says her greatest wish for Let Me Feed You is that it will encourage

people to cook one of her cherished recipes and maybe even adopt it into their mealtime repertoire.

“I’ve been making my spaghetti sauce, which I learned from my mom, forever,” Daykin says. “The idea that somebody might go make my spaghetti sauce and that they’ll keep making it forever… I love that.

That’s a cool legacy.” g

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www.apolloniagreekrestaurant.com C L O S E D M O N D AY S L U N C H • W E D N E S D AY to F R I D AY 11:30A M ͳ 2:30 P M D I N N E R • T U E S D AY to S U N D AY 4:30 ͳ 9:30 P M APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 11

Experience VCC offers taste of success HOROSCOPE

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by Rose Marcus

(This story is sponsored by Vancouver Community College.)

A

s exciting as it can be to have the world at your feet, it can sometimes feel overwhelming. But if you’re unsure of which direction you’d like to take your career, finding out your options can be a really good place to start. Many schools host open-house events where you can learn more about the different programs on offer.

On Wednesday (April 24), from 3 to 6 p.m., Vancouver Community College (VCC) is opening the doors of its Downtown campus (250 West Pender Street) to help prospective students understand the possibilities available to them should they choose to pursue further education.

Whether you’re just starting out on your career path or seeking a change, the event, called Experience VCC, is open to the public and free to attend. More than 120 of the school’s programs will be represented, giving visitors a unique opportunity to meet faculty from university transfer, health sciences, trades, arts, and more in one go. Better still, attendees will have the chance to win $500 toward tuition, and anyone who applies to a program at the event doesn’t pay the $35 application fee (limited to one per person).

Monique Paassen, VCC’s department head of hospitality management, is a big advocate for talking to prospective students and their parents. She advises anyone who is interested in the programs to come to the open house to really get a sense of school life and speak to the teachers, students, and alumni, who will also be in attendance.

“We show people around and that’s the nice thing,” Paassen says. “It’s not just giving them another pamphlet.

We really want to engage them and chat with them. It’s a wealth of information that we share.”

More than 120 programs will be represented, including hospitality management.

All four of the industry-recognized hospitality programs—comprising of hospitality management, culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and Asian culinary arts—will be highlighted at the open house. And since the school’s vision is to be the first choice for innovative, experiential learning for life, Experience VCC will give visitors the chance to try some fun and interactive activities at the “Passport to Hospitality” action stations.

In fact, VCC is so committed to helping students plan their studies that there are a range of additional support services and information sessions available so you can learn more. And that’s an ethos that Paassen is willing to take a step further.

“I tell people that if Experience VCC is not enough to convince you, or you need more information, or you’re still not sure, come sit in a class,” she says.

Paassen also stresses the importance of knowing which jobs a

program might lead to and there are many for a hospitality management graduate. And one thing that really puts VCC on the map is the relationship and support it has from the industry, which is always seeking skilled employees.

“The diploma is a two-year program full-time and it consists of 20 courses,” she explains. “We really train our students and we set them up for success with the goal of becoming a manager within the industry. And it’s not just through theory, it’s hands-on. We have our own kitchen and restaurant that the students have to run and operate like a usual restaurant.” g Learn more about your options at Experience VCC taking place on Wednesday (April 24) from 3 to 6 p.m. at VCC’s Downtown campus (250 West Pender Street). For more information or to RSVP, visit the website at vcc.ca/experience/.

TOURS DEMOS PRIZES NO APPLICATION FEE HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES WIN $500 TUITION

EXPERIENCE VCC

E xplore 120 programs at our open house.

APRIL 24 3 - 6 PM VCC DOWNTOWN CAMPUS Corner of Dunsmuir St. and Hamilton St.

RSVP AT VCC.CA/EXPERIENCE 12 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019

hifting the trends, attention, message, course, and aim, both Ceres and Jupiter in Sagittarius have just begun retrograde cycles. Extending through the middle of August, it can take this long for the Liberals and the rest of us to regroup/redirect, to see our way clear.

Jupiter retrograde puts the future into question. One size or one answer does not fit all. More diversification and variety are warranted.

An addition, secondary track, or secondary source of income can be wise. An alternate choice or route could be the better way to go.

On Thursday, Mercury finally moves beyond Jupiter’s sphere of inf luence. On a search for the ultimate, the elusive, for truth/for more, the duo have staged a wrestling match since their first meetup on February 22. Demonstrated via politics, trade, and commerce, Mercury unleashed in Pisces can take on an open-game/free-for-all or up-for-grabs quality. The inspired, imaginative, courageous, and opportunistic can gain. Potentials continue to stay well-stirred; uncertainty does too.

The Aries sun is on a power-play surge with Pluto through Saturday.

Eris, a troublemaker inf luence, fans the fire or adds more bite to the fight. Eris doesn’t back down, won’t leave well enough alone.

Often it is for a good cause. What she really wants is equality, respect, and inclusion.

By Palm Sunday, the sun has (mostly) surpassed the tension triggers. The sun/Jupiter trine is built for pleasure, play, indulgence, and celebration. Monday, Venus/Jupiter puts the money on the move.

Tuesday is productive. Wednesday, Mercury lights a fresh fire in Aries.

A full moon ends the week. Stay tuned!

E

LEO

F

VIRGO

G

LIBRA

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SCORPIO

APRIL 11 TO 17, 2019 July 22–August 23

Thursday/Friday, don’t push what isn’t coming naturally, but do make sure to make the most of opportunity when it shows up. Watch for something unexpected, previously overlooked, or hidden from view to make its presence known.

Saturday, you’re on the upswing.

Sunday is your best reward day.

Monday/Tuesday, there’s work to do or extra to get at; stay on top of it!

August 23–September 23

The stars have been on a big shift this week. No doubt you have felt it. Win some, lose some; let go, move on. It is time to point yourself in a forward-thinking direction. Thursday to Saturday keeps it/you going strong. Sunday delivers the best of the weekend. Monday/Tuesday, the Virgo moon keeps you freshly refuelled and hitting it right.

September 23–October 23

Thursday could be a writeoff regarding productivity or sticking to the plan. Then again, a creative project or solution can arise. Although stress is still in the mix, Friday moves you onto a better work-it-out track.

The weekend is what you make of it. Treat yourself right and get your pleasure fill, especially Sunday. Monday/Tuesday, it’s time to get something more off the ground.

October 23–November 22

Will your investment net a payoff? Should you invest more?

There is no certainty regarding where the future may lead, but that’s no reason for you to hesitate on the bet. The best you can do is to get onboard and come along for the ride.

ARIES Thursday/Friday provides ample inMarch 20–April 20 centive. Saturday/Sunday, pump up What a difference a day or on the good stuff. few can make. Thursday, it’s bigger; SAGITTARIUS there’s more than you imagined.

November 22–December 21 Mercury/Jupiter can unleash a A barrier or ceiling has f lood of emotion, expose something of major worth, or trigger been broken; a floodgate has been significant potential. A big push, opened. Once it is out of the bottle or race, or battle is on through Satur- the starting gate, there is no turning day. Use anger as a catalyst, not a back. You could be surprised at how weapon. Sunday to Tuesday, make much pours out of you, how fast it grows, or how charged up you feel/it the most of it; the getting is good. is. Sunday, your game is good. A busy TAURUS week lies ahead.

A B

I

April 20–May 21

Whether you choose to, or the stars do it for you, now is the time to let go and get it cleared out of the way. Thursday’s Mercury/ Jupiter can dish up a surprise opportunity, expose a secret, or clue you in to something you hadn’t noticed previously. Friday/Saturday keeps the fire well-stoked. Sunday through Tuesday, do/put in more; get more out of it.

C

GEMINI

May 21–June 21

Have you lost sight, track, or interest? Have expectations hit a letdown in your life? Delivered the message, but so far no response? As of Thursday, Mercury gains better ground with Jupiter. Through Saturday, the sun in Aries is working up to it with Pluto. Sunday, sun/Jupiter delivers. It’s an excellent transit for pleasure-seeking, visits with friends or loved ones, and filling up on the good stuff.

D

CANCER

June 21–July 22

To Saturday, emotions run the show. No matter how it is set in motion or what’s still in the way, Mercury is on an opportunity trend. The sun in Aries wants to burn rubber and is not backing down one bit! By Sunday, you should feel you have surpassed the biggest hurdle or hardest part.

Sun/Jupiter sets you up for a welldeserved reward.

J

CAPRICORN

K

AQUARIUS

L

PISCES

December 21–January 20

What’s lost or gone simply paves the way for something more worthy and opportune. Thursday, ditch your preconceived opinion; spill it, come clean, see where it goes.

Through Saturday, you are a force to be reckoned with. It’s all about the show. Sunday, it’s as good as it gets.

Indulge, enjoy. Monday/Tuesday, your timing is good; get at it quick.

January 20–February 18

Thursday opens it up and/ or clues you in to more, perhaps unexpectedly. Once the air is cleared, or the fire is stoked, it’s likely to have a strong life force. The weekend puts you on an upswing, especially Sunday. A full-to-the-brim week lies ahead. Make the most of it, seize advantage, especially Monday/Tuesday.

February 18–March 20

Mercury is on its final few days of Pisces, but rather than losing steam, it’s picking up a strong momentum, especially Thursday.

Keeping you and the action on the upswing, the sun in Aries lights a fuse through Friday, cuts loose on Saturday, and makes the most of it on Sunday. Monday/Tuesday, get at it and gain. g

Book a reading or sign up for Rose’s free monthly newsletter at rosemarcus.com/.

arts

MOMIX fuses forms to creates illusions

by Janet Smith

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Through the simple magic of fabric, props, light, sound, and more, Viva MOMIX choreographer Moses Pendleton conjures artful and acrobatic tricks of the eye. Left photo by Charles Paul Azzopardi; right by Giulio Lapone

hen the Straight reaches legendary MOMIX artistic director Moses Pendleton, he is ensconced in his 22-room Victorian home in rural Connecticut, during an unusually late-season snow flurry.

“We have the candles lit and the fireplace is going, so it’s nice and cozy,” he relates over the phone.

This faded white mansion—with its atmospherically peeling wallpaper, its turret and bay windows, and, Pendleton says, its ghosts—is where MOMIX’s artfully imaginative works form. In an old barn nearby, Pendleton’s troupe of performers meets to create his unique meld of dance, acrobatics, and moving sculpture.

But where his creations first begin to take shape in his mind is out on the surrounding land, in the gigantic sunflower field, in the cabbage patch, or on the shores of his frostencrusted lake. He constantly totes his camera out on the acreage to take pictures—when he isn’t touring his shows around the world.

“I click and clack throughout the day; I’m really not happy unless I do that. It’s a chance to be creative, and to be by myself and discover the mysteriousness of nature in my own back yard,” says Pendleton, who reveals he’s preparing for a large photography show

in Italy, which has adopted MOMIX as one of its favourite acts since the 1980s.

“You try to train the mind and body to be creative and curious. Where do you find energy? Einstein asked that. And for me, it’s the natural world, how the human relates to the nonhuman.

“A lot of times you go out and find ideas, some kind of vision or a theme in a chunk of rock or ice and see if you could reconstruct it and transform it into some kind of theatrical form,” the affable artist, who just turned 70, explains. “Living here, you get up and you can swim for an hour in the lake and have your coffee in the morning in the sun, and the ideas flow, like a trout’s dream.”

Nature has often been at the root of the gorgeous kinetic illusions he’s created on-stage for the last 38 years, which he’ll survey in the carefully fused program that is coming to Vancouver, Viva MOMIX. In his intricately crafted vignettes, dancers in layered orange tutus spin and raise the fabric to become marigolds; or their black-lit arms and shoulders become the flapping wings of snow geese.

Pendleton says that the dancers who come to his verdant outpost also channel inspiration from the nature there. “I invite the dancers to weed to find their soul in the soil,” he says with a laugh.

THE DANCE VETERAN’S love of the outdoors came in part from growing up in the countryside, on a dairy farm in Vermont. An avid skier, he made his way to Dartmouth College for an English degree, but he also became hooked on dance, cofounding the groundbreaking, acrobatic Pilobolus Dance Theater in 1971.

Pendleton formed his own company, MOMIX, in 1981 and has also staged work for films, ballets, operas, and special events around the globe, such as the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Based on high-calibre dance technique, his work melds lighting, sound, props, and costumes to create fantasies and ever-shifting trompe l’oeils.

“It’s right there in the company name: the word mix,” he says. “It’s not any one thing. It takes on an alchemical process, using bodies to create a sort of surreal, vaudeville-like show.”

Pendleton portrays his studio explorations as a kind of play school, where they bring in props or costume pieces to experiment. “I call it ‘poor theatre’: we go down to the hardware

Arts TIP SHEET

d MARIZA (April 17 at the Chan Centre for Performing Arts) Okay, so a trip to Lisbon and its atmospheric tavernas might not be in the cards this year. You can still lose yourself in the soulful mystique of fado with the return of glamorous Portuguese sensation Mariza—who seems to have as fervent a following here as she does in her homeland. Expect to travel the full gamut of emotions as the platinum-cropped, Mozambique-born, Mourariaraised fadista showcases new songs from her recently released eponymous album.

d KING RICHARD AND HIS WOMEN (April 11 to 19 at Tyrant Studios) In this new adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic by Vancouver based playwright Camyar Chai, Richard III is really called to account. Wounded in battle and hovering between life and death, the title character (Daniel Deorksen) is confronted by the women he has loved, hated, and destroyed. It all takes place in Seven Tyrants Theatre’s intimate new space in the historic Penthouse Nightclub. g

store and use some kind of PVC tubing,” he says. Though he’s not averse to new sound systems and cuttingedge lighting techniques, he conjures worlds that still hold a kind of humanscale, low-tech beauty. “You use technology to serve the poetry. You don’t want to get too lost in high tech.”

Some of Pendleton’s greatest visual feats are the least complicated: a woman eerily moving and fusing with her own ref lection on the f loor; dancers wearing a giant swath of paper, turning it into an undulating sculpture.

Throughout the diverse vignettes paraded out in Viva MOMIX— drawn from eight of the company’s shows—a sense of humour is also a common factor, channelled, as ever, from their upbeat creator. “It’s energetic and surprising and poetic, but that lightness of being is important,” Pendleton observes before getting back to the fire roaring in his Victorian hearth. “I’ve been influenced by Chaplin and Keaton and Laurel and Hardy as much as Balanchine. And if people do walk out with an extra lightness in their step, I’ll be happy.” g DanceHouse presents Viva MOMIX at the Vancouver Playhouse on Friday and Saturday (April 12 and 13).

Chor Leoni and Cantus fete past and future

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by Alexander Varty

or Erick Lichte, Chor Leoni’s upcoming concert with its Minneapolis-based counterpart Cantus is a chance to look back 25 years—and then jump two centuries into the future.

The nostalgic aspect of the program is that, at the very start of his professional career, the American-born singer and conductor played a key role in getting Cantus up and running, in the process learning many of the skills that are serving him well today at the helm of Vancouver’s popular men’s choir.

“I was one of the original four singers, and served as Cantus’s artistic director for many, many years,” he explains from his car, as he runs errands around the Lower Mainland. “I was with that group for over 13 years of my life, and got it to being a professional choir. So for me, personally, this concert has got sort of autobiographical connections. For one, Cantus is singing the Steven Sametz We Two pieces, which are a work that I actually commissioned and recorded with the group, back in the mid-aughts.

“They’re extraordinary pieces,” Lichte adds of Sametz’s Walt Whitman settings, “so it’s always a joy to see something that you’re a part

Chor Leoni artistic director Erick Lichte helped get MInneapolis’s Cantus ensemble up and running.

of continue to grow and to f lourish and to continue in new ways that you never expected.”

Commissioning new works remains a large part of Lichte’s responsibilities with Chor Leoni, and for the futuristic part of the choir’s upcoming

show, he’s turned to its resident composer, Zachary Wadsworth. Wadsworth’s response has been to write a set of Future Folk Songs, which postulate what might be sung around the campfire in the year 2219—if, that is, there’s enough oxygen on Mars to support a blaze.

“He’s talking about things like global warming, trying to disconnect from your devices, automation and robots, space exploration…

Things that are not your normal folk fare,” Lichte reveals. “I think the heartbreaker is the first piece that he wrote, which is called ‘The Mountain Song’. It’s about people fleeing to the higher ground because of the seas rising and global warming—which, god, could happen! And it’s a love song as well. I think he just really nailed the tone of these pieces. They’re not preachy, but they make you think, and they’re really beautiful.”

Beauty and melancholy also mix in Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds’s Wandering Hearts, another Chor Leoni commission, based on the words of Leonard Cohen. It’ll provide a chance for the two choirs to sing together in a concert rounded out by selections from Cantus’s touring program Alone Together, a suite of songs from disparate composers linked by themes of

technologically enhanced alienation.

A condition, the American group’s Paul Scholtz adds, that’s the exact opposite of people singing together in a room.

“I was just working with another ensemble and we were talking about ‘Why do we sing?’ ” the tenor reports, in a separate telephone interview from Minneapolis. “I think it’s because there’s a sense of community. And I also think that this choral art form has a way of breaking down barriers. You can deliver messages and texts through song, and they’ll be better received than maybe they would be in a different setting.

“You still have that text, that message, but now you’re adding something visceral to it,” he continues. “You know, our instrument is our body, and so when you’re adding tone and line and dynamics to the text, humans can viscerally relate to that. They may not understand the technical ins and outs, but it’s kind of like a heightened form of our human communication.” g Cantus and Chor Leoni perform at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Friday (April 12), as part of the 2019 VanMan Male Choral Summit.

APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 13

ARTS True sudden healing spurred Act of Faith

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by Janet Smith

hat happens to the people around a person who has lived with paraplegia for 13 years, and suddenly regains her ability to walk?

Realwheels Theatre artistic director Rena Cohen had the chance to see it firsthand, when someone involved with her mixed-ability troupe—a performer and choreographer—suddenly experienced a miraculousseeming healing. Cohen, who has long worked with the disability community to create artistic work, describes it as “shocking”.

“Over a six- to eight-week period, she went from a person using a wheelchair to someone who was running and jumping and eventually realizing her lifelong dream to volunteer at an orphanage in Uganda,” recalls Cohen over the phone, choosing to keep the woman anonymous.

“I became fascinated with how the different worlds this individual was associated with were handling it.”

That fascination has led, over four years, to Act of Faith, a multidisciplinary new work by Victoria playwright Janet Munsil that explores how friends and people from the disability, medical, and religious communities grapple with evidence of an inexplicable cure.

Integrating a cast of mixed abilities, the show is brought to life with wheelchair dancing, choreographed by Carolina Bergonzoni.

In the real-life case, Cohen witnessed the transformation spark everything from elation to outrage and skepticism. She and Munsil traced those reactions with research and interviews in the early part of the creative process.

“There was the medical-science community, which felt surprisingly dismissive of the story, sort of ‘Maybe it was misdiagnosed,’ or ‘Maybe she was faking it,’ ” she relates. “Although I will say an emergency physician close to the person said, ‘Well, I see miracles every day in the emergency room.’

“Then there was the disability community. It had the spectrum of reactions. Some people were happy for her. And some people seemed angry that she had co-opted an identity that wasn’t really hers. That was a minority, but it was certainly felt.”

The woman herself was a member of a religious community that celebrated the healing as proof of the power of prayer. “But then there were people in the religious community who also have a disability saying, ‘Why didn’t God heal me? Am I not praying enough?’ ” Cohen recalls.

The director stresses that Act of Faith is no longer specifically about the story that spurred the work.

Munsil focuses on two close female friends—Jess (Emily Brook) and Faith (Danielle Klaudt)—roommates who both live with paraplegia until one of them undergoes a sudden transformation. From there, using her signature peppering of humour, Munsil looks at the ripple effects, and the mystery and controversy of faith healing—pushing audiences to pose the rather complex question “If you don’t believe something, does it mean it isn’t true?”

Not surprisingly, staging the play has led to rich debate, with the cast and crew forced to confront their own preconceptions—a sign of how audiences might engage with Act of Faith too.

“On our very first table readthrough I asked the actors to debate the proposition ‘Does God exist?’ ” Cohen says. “Amid the cast of seven there was a diverse representation on the topic of religion—with a strong atheist, some practising Christians, and I’m Jewish and would probably describe myself as agnostic.

“But most of our work is the script,” Cohen adds with emphasis.

“That’s really our Bible. We look at the script for clues.” g Realwheels Theatre presents Act of Faith at the Cultch Historic Theatre from Thursday to next Saturday (April 11 to 20).

EMV finds the majesty in Coronation Anthems

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by Alexander Varty

o members of the British royal family are passing through Vancouver this month, or if they are they have failed to send us a visiting card.

And with Queen Elizabeth II looking astonishingly fit at 92, the possibility of a coronation in the near future depends largely on whether Brexit proves fraught enough to wreck her robust health. So why is Early Music Vancouver presenting a concert of George Frederick Handel’s Coronation Anthems this weekend?

Simply because EMV artistic director Matthew White and Pacific Baroque Orchestra bandleader Alexander Weimann like them quite a lot.

“We both have the weakness, if you want, of just loving the high-baroque oratorio repertoire,” Weimann tells the Straight in a telephone interview from his Ladner home. “So the Anthems have been on our list for a while.”

Listeners will get a bonus at this Sunday’s concert: since the four Anthems collectively clock in at well under an hour in length, Weimann, the PBO, and the Vancouver Cantata Singers will add Handel’s earlier Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne.

“For a while I was thinking of the Utrecht Te Deum of Handel’s, which is often paired with the Anthems,” Weimann allows. “And while it would be okay, it didn’t feel really right for once, because the Anthems are fantastic music, but it’s all on the majestic, glorious, lots-of-trumpets forte spectrum, and I was looking for something that could match that, but not just repeat it.”

14 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019

Some research reminded the keyboardist and conductor that while the Anthems were written for the coronation of King George II, it was actually that monarch’s predecessor, Queen Anne, who was Handel’s initial patron after he moved to London in 1712. “And that reminded me of the birthday ode, which I love for many reasons, but especially for its unbelievable beginning,” he says.

“So there we had the program.”

Weimann points out that, following their debut in 1727, Handel’s Anthems have been performed at the coronation of every subsequent British monarch. But it’s their musical rather than their historical worth that he finds compelling.

Their sound, we agree, strikes a perfect balance between majesty and warmth; while certainly fit for a king (or a queen), the music seems more an invocation of the ruler’s better nature than his terrible power.

“I’m really not a royalist,” Weimann says, laughing. “I couldn’t be less interested. But the music is still very captivating, whatever your personal projection might be. It does the ritual, and the bella figura, if you want, but it does something beyond that.…And I don’t know what it is, in Handel’s case, but I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s just a fantastic manipulator. He really knows how to get us into a mood.” g Early Music Vancouver presents Handel’s Coronation Anthems at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at 3 p.m. on Sunday (April 14).

8pm Friday, April 19, 2019 The Orpheum

Program 3 May 9 10 11

Vancouver Chamber Choir & Orchestra Pacifica Singers Vancouver Youth Choir Jon Washburn, conductor

Choreography

Jon Washburn draws all his soloists, choirs, alumni and orchestra together for a wonderful evening of music to celebrate the passage of his 48 years as leader of the Vancouver Chamber Choir. The music is resplendent J.S. Bach’s marvellous Missa brevis in G minor, Tarik O'Regan’s mystic and evocative Solitude Trilogy, a premiere performance of Jon Washburn’s Two Canadian Folksongs and a celebratory massed performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ glorious Five Mystical Songs.

Ohad Naharin Minus 16

Sharon Eyal & Gai Behar Bedroom Folk Serge Bennathan New Work

Queen Elizabeth Theatre Tickets at balletbc.com PLATINUM SEASON SPONSOR

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SUPPORT FOR BALLET BC HAS BEEN GENEROUSLY PROVIDED BY

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MEDIA SPONSORS DANCER PETER SMIDA. PHOTO MICHAEL SLOBODIAN.

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Following sold out performances in London and Tel Aviv

THROUGH JUNE 9

Mowry Baden, Prone Gyres, 2000, steel, plastic, Courtesy of the Artist, Photo: Michael Honer

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW VANARTGALLERY.BC.CA APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 15

ARTS

Glory’s hockey history scores big for feminism

Glory traces the true story of the Preston Rivulettes. Photo by Barbara Zimonick

THEATRE GLORY

By Tracey Power. Directed by James MacDonald. A Western Canadian Theatre and Alberta Theatre Projects production. At Gateway Theatre on Friday, April 5. Continues until April 13

PRESENTS

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APRIL 12 & 13, 8PM VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE TICKETS FROM

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PRODUCTION PAR TNER

SE ASON PAR TNERS

d TRACEY POWER’S charming new play, Glory, takes place in the 1930s and is inspired by the true story of the Preston Rivulettes, an all-female hockey team in Ontario.

The players face not only sexism and economic hardship, but a rise in anti-Semitism and fascism, movements that ultimately resulted in the Second World War. Flash forward to just last week, when the Canadian Women’s Hockey League announced its dissolution and the Associated Press had to issue an instruction to call things racist when they’re racist. It’s 2019 and thanks to sexism and racism, women are still fighting for space in this country’s “national pastime” and the media needs to be told language matters and to stop normalizing prejudice.

All of this is to say Glory’s timeliness is chilling in a way that I did not expect in a play that also contains no fewer than six intricately choreographed dance-but-make-it-hockey scenes, and is largely a feel-good story about women being awesome.

Not only were the Preston Rivulettes a pioneering women’s hockey team, they were also one of the most successful hockey teams ever, male or female. Between 1931 and 1940, the Rivulettes won four Dominion championships, a massive achievement for a team started by two pairs of sisters who also played softball together and wanted to keep playing team sports in the winter.

The actors who play Hilda and Nellie Ranscombe and Marm and Helen Schwartz (their real last name was actually Schmuck) have wonderful chemistry, and are instantly believable as long-time friends, teammates, and athletes. Katie Ryerson, Morgan Yamada, Advah Soudack, and Kate Dion-Richard handle their physically demanding roles with impressive ease. Their characters’ banter is as divine as their increasingly feminist rage at the inequity they face, even as they prove over and over again that they are genuine masters of the sport.

Power acknowledges in the program that while aspects of Glory are based on real things that happened, other elements are more loosely inspired or creatively interpreted. But the play also feels like it’s overburdened. In the space of two hours (not including intermission), Glory tackles sexism, anti-Semitism, equality and equity, secret lesbian yearnings, poverty, war, internment, injustice, and sisterhood, and spends a lot of time on the actual hockey games.

Power’s script is ambitious, her choreography is killer, and the cast is wonderful, but to borrow a sporting reference, Glory tries to cover too much ice and sacrifices some of its momentum as a result.

by Andrea Warner

16 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019

THE ORCHARD (AFTER CHEKHOV)

By Sarena Parmar. Directed by Jovanni Sy. An Arts Club Theatre Company production. At the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage on Wednesday, March 27. Continues until April 21

d AS THE CHERRY blossoms bloom around Vancouver, The Orchard (After Chekhov) turns its eyes eastward to the Okanagan, where blossoms herald either prosperity or catastrophe for fruit farmers. An adaptation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Sarena Parmar’s play replaces laissez-faire Russian aristocrats with South Asian farmers in that verdant valley before it became a favoured destination for wine-lovers.

Loveleen (Laara Sadiq), the family matriarch, has just returned from six years away in Mumbai, to which she fled after the tragic death of her son.

She’s been retrieved out of a depressive funk by her daughter Annie (Risha Nanda). They need all hands on deck, because the family farm is threatened with bankruptcy. With the help of her brother, father, and sundry hangerson, Loveleen struggles to balance the demands of the farm, her family, and her own haunted head.

Chekhov famously wrote The Cherry Orchard as a comedy with farcical elements. Yet, when legendary Russian director Konstantin Stanislavsky premiered the play in 1904, he rendered it as a tragedy. Since then, directors have had to wrestle with the work’s tonal challenges.

This tension seemed reflected in the range of performance styles on opening night. Adele Noronha stood out with her sad, small, smart rendering of Loveleen’s niece, Barminder.

Meanwhile, Andrew Cownden played local tycoon Michael with a Chris Farley–esque broadness. I found this stylistic gap jarring at times.

Instead of confronting the end of the Russian elite, Parmar’s characters wrestle with Pierre Trudeau’s vision of multiculturalism. Peter (Nadeem Phillip), a student, dreams of returning to an ascendant India. In Canada, he explains, “our stories are not in the classroom. Our medicine is not in the hospitals.”

They face racism, both subtle— small barbs from their neighbour (Tom McBeath)—and overt, as when Loveleen’s brother (Munish Sharma) gets denied a job interview because he wears a turban. And they’re negotiating how and how much to integrate.

Barminder attends the local Presbyterian church, though she’s deeply conflicted about doing so.

Despite this fresh life that Parmar has breathed into Chekhov, she sticks closely to the original script’s structure. The scenes, and dialogue within scenes, follow the play’s original form.

As such, the plot is a little baffling from a 2019 perspective. Despite the dire threat to the family’s home, we don’t see them taking much action to save it. This makes a lot of sense for Chekhov’s hapless aristocrats, but less so for this family.

Likewise, the production is two hours and 45 minutes, which demands endurance from the audience. A see next page

looser adaptation might have enabled director Jovanni Sy to run less traffic control over the comings and goings of the 12-person cast and to delve deeper into this adaptation’s themes.

Still, I applaud the number of debuts among the cast and crew of The Orchard (After Chekhov). In particular, Sophie Tang’s admirable lighting design was a welcome change from the very few and familiar names I usually see in that position.

It’s a bold undertaking to adapt The Cherry Orchard. But reconstructing a classic to make way for more voices and experiences is inspired and thoroughly modern.

by Darren Barefoot

THE TASHME PROJECT: THE LIVING ARCHIVES

Created by Julie Tamiko Manning and Matt Miwa. Directed by Mike Payette. A Tashme Productions presentation. At the Firehall Arts Centre on Thursday, April 4.

Continues until April 13

d THE TASHME Project: The Living Archives takes its name from the Tashme internment camp, near Hope, which Japanese-Canadians were forcibly relocated to during the Second World War. Creators and stars Julie Tamiko Manning and Matt Miwa interviewed Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Canadians) for this verbatim theatre piece, and it’s a powerful experience to hear these deeply personal stories from people who were interned, many of whom were just children when the B.C. government bowed to public pressure and racist fearmongering.

Manning and Miwa craft a narrative weaving memories from Nisei from across the country, all of whom were interned at Tashme. The two artists establish the background for their fieldwork early on: both are JapaneseCanadian and neither has any real information about what actually happened to family members in Tashme.

The play and these interviews are a chance to change that, and they take turns bringing their subjects to life— with varying degrees of success and

authenticity—while also taking time to reflect on their own relationship to intergenerational trauma, culture, and family. The pair also chat briefly, in character as themselves, about the ethics of doing this work, conjuring up painful memories and then leaving their subjects alone with their feelings.

The actors obviously care deeply about their subjects, and the best moments are when they get out of the way and let the stories resonate. Occasionally, the performances are just too broad, and the actors let their characters slip into caricature. Exaggerated facial gestures and body movements, shouting to convey emotion, and other jarring acting choices are unnecessary distractions. Director Mike Payette should have periodically reminded Manning and Miwa to trust the stories.

For example, it’s chilling to be sitting in the Firehall for this western Canadian premiere, minutes from the PNE grounds where many JapaneseCanadians were first held during internment. As if taking people from their homes, separating families, and forcing men into labour camps wasn’t horrifying enough, we also find out from one character that it was business as usual at the PNE. Vancouverites continued to go to the racetrack and attend the amusement park while interned Japanese-Canadians watched the frivolity through barbed-wire pens.

These details make The Tashme Project an important piece of art, and a vital archival work as well. I have so much gratitude for the Nisei who trusted Miwa and Manning, and for the writer-actors themselves for wanting to help their families and communities talk about the reality of internment and how it’s continued to shape their lives. The Tashme Project reminds us that it’s imperative we listen to the lived experiences of the Nisei because their stories matter. It’s also crucial that Canadians, particularly white Canadians, continue to witness the ongoing human cost of racism and fearmongering, and not just resist but commit to engaging in antiracism work.

by Andrea Warner

“Sophisticated music making, joyously conveyed and received in kind, a rare and memorable evening.” — The Whole Note

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by Petal...

There's more to experience, than just their beauty.

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#vancherryblossomfest APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 17

ARTS

Cohen and Breukelman capture eerie settings

by Robin Laurence

SAT APR 27 2019 / 8PM

Anoushka Shankar Prodigious sitar player returns to Vancouver with new album Reflections

C H A N C E N T R E AT U B C Tickets and info at chancentre.com

Photos of deserted interiors like Lynne Cohen’s Laboratory suggest manipulation, experimentation, and control, in the exhibit These Walls at the Burnaby Art Gallery.

VISUAL ARTS

LYNNE COHEN: THESE WALLS

At the Burnaby Art Gallery as part of the Capture Photography Festival until April 21

JIM BREUKELMAN: ALTERED STATES

At the West Vancouver Art Museum as part of the Capture Photography Festival until May 11

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Attention illustrators!

Have you ever wanted to design a Georgia Straight cover?

Now’s your chance!

Visit the Arts Section at ➤ straight.com for info and to submit your design.

The winner will get their design on an upcoming issue.

18 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019

d SOME INTRIGUING likenesses exist between the careers of Jim Breukelman and the late Lynne Cohen. Both photographic artists grew up in the United States and completed art studies there. Both landed in Canada decades ago to take up academic appointments and both stayed, Breukelman in Vancouver and Cohen in Ottawa and then Montreal.

While working as esteemed and influential educators, both established creative reputations with their highly detailed images of human-made settings, rendered eerily symbolic by the complete absence of people. Rather than construct sets or fictionalize situations Vancouver School–style, both Cohen and Breukelman have shot their subjects as found.

Cohen’s acclaimed images of deserted interiors range from health spas to lawn-ornament warehouses, and from dance halls to military training centres. On view at the Burnaby Art Gallery in conjunction with the Capture Photography Festival, Lynne Cohen: These Walls spans the years 1970 to 2005. Her works transition from small gelatin silver prints to large-scale dye coupler prints, and from images whose titles fully describe what they depict—Elks Club after Bingo, Battle Creek, Michigan or Lobby in a Textile Factory, Toronto—to shots of more institutional spaces identified generically as, say, Laboratory or Hall. The titles of the later works are intentionally unrevealing as Cohen sought out interiors inaccessible to most of us and, at the same time, charged with a kind of ominous authoritarianism. They suggest activities of manipulation, experimentation, and control, and the artist’s intense research in locating and gaining access to these sites is an important subtext here.

Early on, what binds Cohen’s images together is their sense of banal artifice and their stage-set-like compositions, amplified by the wide, empty floors in the foreground and middle ground. Similar compositional strategies often shape the later works, although the mood evoked by the unexplained maps, charts, pipes, screens, wires, and training pods now suggests the sets of low-budget sci-fi films. In a couple of images, half-mannequins stand in for people, yet what takes place in many of these

settings remains a mystery. As other writers have suggested, what is seen in Cohen’s remarkable photographs is given scary narrative weight by what is unseen.

Four bodies of work, from old to new, are represented in Jim Breukelman: Altered States, the West Vancouver Art Museum’s engaging contribution to the Capture festival.

There are large-scale photographs of interiors here too, including those of a taxidermy shop, a conservatory, and an aging biosphere or “mesocosm”, built to study ways in which humans might survive on other planets. Like Cohen’s labs and classrooms, each of Breukelman’s chosen settings carries an ominous symbolic charge. That charge, which is subtle and grows out of the artist’s curiosity rather than condemnation, relates to the human manipulation of the natural world: the weird assortment of unnervingly live-looking dead animals in the taxidermy shop and the various mixes of plants and ecosystems staged in the biosphere and the conservatory. Given that the biosphere, located in Oracle, Arizona, is now being used to study the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions, the sense prevails of our massively destructive impact on the natural world.

As in Cohen’s photos, human beings are absent in three of the four series on view in Altered States, yet human presence is intensely felt.

The big surprise here, however, is in “Sanson’s Diner”, the earliest series in the show and also the featured works in this minisurvey. Shot in 1966 in an old-fashioned, blue-collar diner in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, while Breukelman was an art student, these engaging black-andwhite images focus on patrons and staff. An underlying current is what must have been opposing views held by the counterculture of the artist’s generation and the older factory workers, truckers, and travellers who patronized the place.

As Breukelman writes in the slender but illuminating exhibition catalogue, the mid-1960s were a time of immense social change and political protest, and conversations in the diner could escalate into angry arguments. Breukelman’s attachment to the place, it seems, had more to do with its staff than its patrons and their role in “moderating” heated exchanges. Moderating or perhaps reprimanding, as seen in the severe expression on the face of a waitress in The Telling-Off. Remaining behind the camera, Breukelman doesn’t let us know if he had long hair and wore a bandanna.

One suspects he did, but what is evident here, as in all his work, is his enduring compassion and humanity, and his ability to let his scenes— populated or not—reflect on themes far beyond their physical walls. g

ARTS LISTINGS ONGOING

THURSDAY, APRIL 11

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17

GLORY In 1933, four friends set out to prove to Canada that hockey isn’t just a sport for men.

To Apr 13, Gateway Theatre. $20/29/55.

BED & BREAKFAST The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Mark Crawford’s comedy about being out and finding home. To May 4, Granville Island Stage. Tix from $29.

ALMOST, MAINE A midwinter night’s dream

by John Cariani. To Apr 20, 8-10:30 pm, Theatre at Hendry Hall . $20/18.

THE TASHME PROJECT: THE LIVING ARCHIVES Verbatim theatre play that traces the history and common experience of the Nisei (second-generation Japanese Canadians). To Apr 13, Firehall Arts Centre.

From $25.

CHERRY DOCS A Jewish lawyer is assigned to defend a skinhead. To Apr 28, 8-10:15 pm, Pacific Theatre. $20-36.50.

SALMON GIRL Raven Spirit Dance Production follows the journey of a young girl into a magical adventure. To Apr 14, Waterfront Theatre. $18-$35.

NEVER THE LAST Story follows the relationship between composer Sophie Carmen EckhardtGramatté and painter Walter Gramatté. To Apr 20, 8-10 pm, Orpheum Annex. From $10.

PRESENT LAUGHTER Noel Coward comedy about a self-obsessed actor in the midst of a midlife crisis. To Apr 20, Coast Capital Playhouse. $10/19/22.

THE ORCHARD (AFTER CHEKHOV) The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Sarena Parmar’s timeless family drama set in the Okanagan Valley. To Apr 21, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. Tix from $29.

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN Royal City Musical Theatre presents the classic musical comedy.

To Apr 20, Massey Theatre. $19-49.

SENIOR FOLLIES Billy St. John’s light-hearted comedy, directed by Val Mason. To Apr 13, 8-10 pm, Deep Cove Stage Society.

PERSUASION Jane Austen’s work depicts a young woman’s struggles with love, friendship, and family. To Apr 20, 7:55 pm, Metro Theatre. $25/22.

MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UBC aIN A DIFFERENT LIGHT: REFLECTING ON NORTHWEST COAST ART to summer 2020 aSHAKEUP: PRESERVING WHAT WE VALUE to Sep 1 MUSEUM OF VANCOUVER aWILD THINGS: THE POWER OF NATURE IN OUR LIVES to Sep 30 aHAIDA NOW: A VISUAL FEAST OF INNOVATION AND TRADITION to Dec 1, 2019 aTHERE IS TRUTH HERE to Dec 31 VANCOUVER ART GALLERY aFRENCH MODERNS: MONET TO MATISSE, 1850–1950 to May 20 aAFFINITIES: CANADIAN ARTISTS AND FRANCE to May 20 aDISPLACEMENT to Jun 9 aMOWRY BADEN to Jun 9 THE POLYGON aA HANDFUL OF DUST to Apr 28 aCHESTER FIELDS 2019 to Apr 21 aSK _WX _WÚ7MESH NATION BASKETBALL: PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALANA PATERSON Apr 13–May 12 SFU GALLERY aANN BEAM AND CARL BEAM: SPACES FOR READING to Apr 18 TECK GALLERY aEYE EYE to Apr 27 CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY aDEANNA BOWEN | A HARLEM NOCTURNE to Jun 16

GIGGLES & GAGS Comedy show with proceeds to Backpack Buddies, which feeds Metro Vancouver children living in poverty.

Apr 11-13, PAL Theatre. $25.

DEAD PEOPLE’S THINGS Zee Zee Theatre’s darkly comedic play about a millennial who inherits a house and all of its contents after her estranged hoarder aunt commits suicide.

Apr 17–May 5, Studio 16. From $28.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10 STORY STORY LIE: THE HANGOVER Outrageous stories told by Paul Anthony, Graeme Duffy, Emma Cooper, Ally Baharoon, Jessica Pigeau, and Lydia Rickards. Apr 10, 7-8:30 pm, Rio Theatre. $10/12.

NEW ORFORD STRING QUARTET Junowinning chamber-music group. Apr 10, 7:30 pm, Pyatt Hall. $10-50.

THE GOOD BRIDE One-woman comedy about a Quiverfull Christian girl. Apr 10-13, 8-9:30 pm, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. $15-36.

KING RICHARD AND HIS WOMEN Seven Tyrants Theatre presents a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Apr 11-19, Tyrant Studios. $29.

CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL— COLLAGE IN THE CITY: MEET THE ARTISTS Meet artists Barbara Strigel and Mark Mizgala.

Apr 11, 6-8 pm, The Listel Hotel. Free.

CRISTINA PATO QUARTET Galician bagpipe master and classical pianist. Apr 11, 8 pm, Chan Shun Concert Hall.

ACT OF FAITH New play explores the mystery of faith-based healing and the consequences of life-changing transformation. Apr 11-20, 8-9:30 pm, Cultch Historic Theatre. Tix $10-51.

FRIDAY, APRIL 12 TITANIC THE MUSICAL Lindbjerg Performing Arts Academy presents a docudrama put to music. Apr 12-14, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

CRIES Musica intima performs works by Arvo Pärt and Knut Nystedt. Apr 12, 7:30 pm, St. James Community Square. $30/25/15.

Arts HOT TICKET

own life. Settling the estate forces the main character to get to know her relative through the mountain of objects the aunt left behind.

Standouts Eileen Barrett and Meaghan Chenosky star.

MONDAY, APRIL 29 I AM A VOICE FOR EPILEPSY AWARENESS EXPO & AGM Join BC Epilepsy Society’s 60th anniversary celebration at the I Am a Voice for Epilepsy Awareness Expo & AGM for a day of knowledge exchange, education, and health promotion. In attendance will be people living with epilepsy, civic leaders, health care professionals, and individuals with a personal and/or professional interest in epilepsy. Apr 29, 9 am–4 pm, Italian Cultural Centre. $15 ($5 16-and-under).

ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit events online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

GARY GULMAN (April 12 and

DEAD PEOPLE’S THINGS (April 17 to May 5 at Studio 16) Local playwright Dave Deveau has based this promising new work on a personal experience. It’s the story of a millennial woman who inherits a house and its contents after her estranged hoarder aunt takes her

13 at Yuk Yuk’s) The long-time American standup comic is huge these days, thanks to quality specials, memorable appearances on TV hits like The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, razor-sharp writing, and a series of popular tips to comics on Twitter. The fact that he has the balls to tell jokes about living with depression, something he’s only recently started to do, is just an added bonus. g

CANTUS & CHOR LEONI Two male choirs together in concert. Apr 12, 7:30 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. $30-45.

SOUNDS GLOBAL IN CONCERT The Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra presents new music by Canadian composers. Apr 12, 8-10:30 pm, St. Andrew’s United Church. $25/15.

MOMIX DanceHouse presents company of dancer-illusionists in Canadian premiere of Viva MOMIX. Apr 12-13, 8 pm, Vancouver Playhouse. From $35.

SATURDAY, APRIL 13 LIVE FLAMENCO Karen Flamenco Dance Company presents live traditional flamenco music, dance, storylines, puppetry, and magic every Sat. at 3 & 5 pm. Apr 13-27, The Improv Centre. $12.

SAKURA DAYS JAPAN FAIR Annual two-day family-friendly cultural event during the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, featuring Japanese festival foods, kids’ crafts and activities, performances, exhibitors and vendors, and cultural handson experiences including a sake salon, tea ceremony, yukata, taiko drumming & more!

Join the SDJF Ondo parade Saturday at 5:30.

Apr 13-14, 10 am–5 pm, VanDusen Botanical Garden. $5-14.

THE COMIC STRIP Standup comedy by Harris Anderson, Gavin Clarkson, and headliner Yumi Nagashima. Apr 13, 9 pm, Tyrant Studios. $18.

SUNDAY, APRIL 14 CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL— SIGNALS IN THE SEA: GUIDED TOUR Guided tour of public-art billboards for Capture Photography Festival. Apr 14, 12-12:30 pm, 6th and Fir Park. Free.

EMV: HANDEL CORONATION ANTHEMS Alexander Weimann leads the Pacific Baroque Orchestra and Vancouver Cantata Singers in two Handel masterpieces. Apr 14, 3 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. From $18.

FIRST WIVES FIGHT CLUB Two classic ‘90s films mashed up into one wildly over-the-top drag narrative. Apr 14, 7-11 pm, Vogue Theatre. $31.50-105.

TUESDAY, APRIL 16 TESLA QUARTET New York-based quartet comprised of Ross Snyder (violin), Michelle Lie (violin), Edwin Kaplan (viola), and Serafim Smigelskiy (cello). Apr 16, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret.

Tix $29/10.

APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 19

MOVIE REVIEWS

Bella Ciao! evokes the surreal Drive BELLA CIAO!

Starring Carmen Aguirre. Rating unavailable

d LIVING AROUND THE Drive has an undeniably surreal quality, something Vancouver director Carolyn Combs captures with poetic panache in Bella Ciao!.

The Carnival Band passing through an alley, playing a resistance song while aging Italian guys reminisce on a restaurant patio. Gamelan music echoing hauntingly up through a park. A murder of crows turning the dawn sky black as it flies east. A sculptor hanging upside down

and blindfolded in an industrial lot as part of an art project. Yes, these are the random things that happen in Grandview, and shot hazily through cinematographer Andrew Forbes’s lens, they appear dreamlike and almost magical here.

That delirious feel mixes with an overriding compassion in this patient, pensive, and leisurely wander through the various cultures that mingle on and around Commercial Drive.

With screenwriters Michael Springate and Jeremy Waller, Combs Taran Kootenhayoo plays a street kid seeking his missing sister in Bella Ciao!. paints a colourful array of lost characters—Indigenous, Chilean, and come together to support each other.

Italian, and the marginalized—who The central figure is Carmen

TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

Aguirre’s Constanza, who shares Aguirre’s own background of fleeing violence in Chile. Dying of cancer, she’s haunted by images of the uprising in her past. She’s having a hard time connecting with her anxious caregiver-daughter Soledad (Alexandra Lainfiesta), who in turn struggles to live up to her mother’s strength.

The pair hand in intense yet suitably offbeat performances, with other standouts including Tony Nardi as the grounded owner of a Drive restaurant (old-school Italian institution Arriva), and playwright-actor Marie Clements as Hester, a no-bullshit activist who refuses to worry about the physically weakening Constanza. The

film interweaves an assortment of hustlers, thieves, and addicts trying to get by—giving things a grittiness that also comes with life on Commercial.

Bella Ciao! drifts along on serendipity (see Billy Marchenski’s upsidedown artist). But while the setting and most of the characters are compelling, the relationships are sometimes too impressionistic; the main story lines about Constanza getting “lost” and a street kid (Taran Kootenhayoo) looking for his missing sister are thin.

Still, the denouement returns to that haunting atmosphere again. A sunset reunion of Constanza and Soledad is ghostly and moving. And a tango night at a local café sends music swirling out into the twilight, while a tweaking addict finds momentary calm pulsing to the groove on the sidewalk. You know, one of those things that you could only see on the Drive.

by Janet Smith

ACQUAINTED

Starring Giacomo Gianniotti.

Rated PG

OPENING WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS

Because We Are Girls

Push

A family must come to terms with a devastating secret: three sisters were sexually abused by an older relative. Because We Are Girls celebrates the strength of sisterhood in the face of profound pain and trauma.

As cities across the globe struggle with housing affordability, experts and citizens explore how housing has become a commodity for the wealthy rather than a necessity for all.

I Had A Dream

Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind

FRI MAY 3 | 7 PM | PLAYHOUSE TUE MAY 7 | 6:30 PM | VANCITY

THU MAY 2 | 8:30 PM | CINEMATHEQUE SAT MAY 4 | 2 PM | CINEMATHEQUE

Claudia Tosi’s award-winning documentary explores how the democratic crisis unfolds in Italy through the battles of two remarkable women, both members of the country’s Democratic Party.

City Dreamers

SUN MAY 5 | 5:30 PM | SFU SAT MAY 11 | 12 PM | CINEMATHEQUE

City Dreamers offers a glimpse into the careers of four trailblazing urban architects of the 20th century, including Vancouver legend Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.

SAT MAY 4 | 12 PM | VANCITY FRI MAY 10 | 6 PM | SFU

SAT MAY 4 | 9:15 PM | SFU SUN MAY 12 | 7 PM | VANCITY

Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind provides an illuminating and emotional glimpse into the personality and behindthe-scenes life of a Canadian legend.

Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth SUN MAY 5 | 6 PM | VANCITY MON MAY 6 | 2:15 PM | VANCITY

Freddy, a 30-year-old gay transgender man, has made the decision to carry his own baby after years of soul searching.

d BELYING THE bland title, Acquainted is more about restlessness than it is about love, or even lust—although carnal attraction is the customary motivator that gets our young participants spinning away from otherwise stable situations. It’s a romantic comedy that gradually sheds both the romance and the laughs, in exchange for something more serious.

The Toronto-shot effort features a lively cast of attractive 20-somethings—in fact, they are far more model-perfect than the story calls for. Still, the actors—mostly immigrants to Canada or the U.S.—have surprisingly long credit lists and all end up delivering something of substance before the slight tale is done.

Rome-born Giacomo Gianniotti (currently Dr. DeLuca on Grey’s Anatomy) plays Drew, a somewhat indolent TOer who says he wants to be a writer. He and long-time partner Claire (Rachel Skarsten), busy with the restaurant biz, have just bought a house in a leafy part of town, and they’re already squabbling over what to do to it. So he’s ready for distraction when he encounters a highschool friend at a bar one night.

Actually, he’s more of an acquaintance to Emma (Brazilian-Canadian Laysla De Oliveira), who runs a flower shop. But some kind of spark remains from their student days, apparently.

Emma lives with her squeeze, Alex (Degrassi grad Raymond Ablack), in equally swell digs. (As in most romcoms, it’s not explained why these people live so well and have so much free time, based on the work they do.) This second feature from writerdirector Natty Zavits doesn’t really illuminate what’s missing from these established relationships, but both Drew and Emma start getting snappy with their mates and looking for excuses to spend time with the other parties.

The movie is very plainly shot, although this doesn’t detract from its nonshiny message about young people being selfish while finding themselves, and not necessarily through others. Supporting players include New York–born Jonathan Keltz (also a producer here) as Drew’s head-shaking pal, and Emma gets varying degrees of support and dismay from Mouna Traoré, Parveen Kaur, and Australia’s Adelaide Kane (who, as the lead in Reign, worked with Keltz, Skarsten, and Gianniotti).

They all provide more oomph than the script asks of them, and it certainly could have gone further. When Drew finally gets around to writing a short story, it’s called “Long Walks With Pretty Girls”, and that title may be a tip-off as to why his writing career hasn’t taken off. Acquainted is similarly lacking in depth, and yet it has qualities that are worth getting to know.

by Ken Eisner

20 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019

MOVIES

DOXA will bring justice and Lightfoot

by Adrian Mack

T

he golden age of the documentary continues apace, and DOXA is here to fill your cup once again.

Vancouver’s documentary film festival announced its 18th annual lineup on April 8, starting with a gala opening-night screening of Baljit Sangra’s Because We Are Girls on May 3. Produced by the NFB, Sangra’s film looks at the impact of sexual abuse on an Indo-Canadian family in Williams Lake.

A second gala screening on May 8 brings nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up to Vancouver, fresh from its celebrated debut at Hot Docs. Tasha Hubbard’s searing film examines the 2016 shooting death of Colten Boushie on Gerald Stanley’s Saskatchewan farm, and the subsequent trial.

Both titles mark the 10th anniversary of DOXA’s incomparable Justice Forum—which this year includes films focused on China’s one-child policy (One Child Nation), the global housing crisis (Push), and South Africa’s militant

Colten Boushie’s killing is examined in nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up.

student movement (Everything Must Fall), as well as a screening of Nettie Wild’s 1998 film A Place Called Chiapas commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising.

Wild’s film, notably, is followed by a discussion on efforts to repatriate footage from the documentary to Mexico.

It’s not included in the Justice Forum, but closing night’s Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen pays tribute to Merata Mita, whose 1988 film Mauri was the first narrative feature written and directed by a Maori woman.

The sprawling program of 82 films is sectioned into a variety of themes: Communities of Care puts the spotlight on service dogs (Buddy), infant swim lessons (DIVE: Rituals in Water), and the demands brought on by illness and death (Instructions on Parting, América, Mom Calling).

Politics of Place takes us to southern Slovenia (Greetings From Free Forests), Turkey (Xalko), and Vietnam (Pomelo) for formally audacious consideration of landscape and people, while probable audience favourite Los Reyes provides an affecting dog’s-eye view of a skate park in Santiago, Chile.

In Rated Y for Youth, we see topics ranging from the cosmetics industry

tinct, our lives intertwine!"

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APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 21

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(Toxic Beauty) to workplace exploitation (Call Me Intern), to the prejudice experienced by LGBTQ+ athletes in Canada (Standing on the Line).

Expanding on the last four years of its French French program, this year DOXA gives us Italia Italia.

Once again curated by Thierry Garrel, the series highlights the work of Mosco Levi Boucault, whose careerlong interest in politics and crime Italian-style is represented by the Vancouver premiere of titles like Berlusconi: The Mondadori Affair, They Were the Red Brigades, and the epic Corleone.

The festival also continues to expand its canvas with special features like Longing and Belonging, a collaboration with Rungh magazine that looks back at South Asian–themed film and video art from the ’90s “loosely structured�, in the words of guest programmer Zool Suleman, “around themes of diaspora, desire, and identity�.

Also drawing outside the lines: on May 4, filmmaker Kelly O’Brien combines live performance with eight years of photo essays posted on Facebook to create Postings From Home.

As always, music lovers are wellserved by DOXA, with films covering certain Canadian heroes (Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind), problem-

atic geniuses (Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool), surprisingly political hit records (Who Let the Dogs Out?), and cult folkies from the ’60s named “Dalton�

(A Bright Light: Karen and the Process).

Elsewhere, we see transgender

Music lovers will be well-served

by DOXA, with films about Gordon Lightfoot and Miles Davis.

parenting (Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth), feminist porn (Candice), and the daily lives of mortuary workers in Spain (City of the Dead)—and we’re still not close to covering everything. g The DOXA Documentary Film Festival takes place at various venues from May 2 to 12. Visit www.doxafestival.ca/ for more information.

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The Murlocs branch out on fourth LP The Australian band moves beyond side-project status with Manic Candid Episode

D

by Mike Usinger

owntime is not something that Ambrose Kenny-Smith gets a lot of, which, weirdly, is exactly why he can’t wait to get on the road and embrace all the insanity it brings with the Murlocs.

“Being on tour is always a whirlwind, and then when you get home it’s nonstop as well,” the singer-guitarist says, on the line from his home in Melbourne, Australia. “The workload keeps getting increasingly bigger for sure, which is why I’m looking forward to hitting the road. That’s sort of the only me time that I kind of get, which is funny considering I’m always around a bunch of other dudes. With both bands that I play for, there are lots of people around all the time, but you can usually get some peace and quiet when everyone’s sleeping. That’s when I get to gather my thoughts again.”

Kenny-Smith is indeed beyond busy, partly because of his main gig—handling keyboard duties for psychedelic-flavoured cult fave King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, which has released a whopping 14 albums and a couple of EPs since forming in 2010. Famously, the band put out five full-lengths in 2017 alone, somehow managing to tour relentlessly when not hunkered down in the studio.

Evidently of the opinion that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, Kenny-Smith has filled his non-Lizard-Wizard-related days by gigging and recording with his side project the Murlocs, who have just released their fourth full-length, Manic Candid Episode. The quintet—which includes King Gizzard lead guitarist Cook Craig, as well as bassist Andrew Crossley, drummer Matt Blach, and guitarist/ multi-instrumentalist Tim Karmouche—dates back to 2010, and its initial albums and EPs trafficked in an unapologetically grimy DIY mix of vintage garage and greasy soul.

With Manic Candid Episode Kenny-Smith and his bandmates made a concerted effort to move the needle on multiple fronts. As much as you can have fun shotgunning a f lat of PBR to the turbo-blues rager “What If?”, the singer isn’t afraid to push himself. As the band’s lyricist he tackles everything from

On the fourth full-length Murlocs album, Manic Candide Episode, the Aussie quintet dives into everything from period-perfect paisley pop to tightly wound acid rock and Death Valley country.

the spinoff damage of systemic poverty and drug addiction in “Spun Gun” to the horrors of mass shootings in “Comfort Zone”.

“I feel like I’m not super aware of my surroundings at all times,” Kenny-Smith says.

“When you become pretty self-absorbed in your art, it’s hard to keep on top of things.

The subjects and issues that I ref lect on on the album are things that are easy to remain oblivious to. Sometimes you’ll see them on the street, sometimes on the news. I think I came at the songs as more of a wake-up call to me—a message that I have to open my eyes a bit more. That’s important, because the world’s a pretty crazy place.”

The Murlocs were nonetheless more grounded and focused than usual for Manic Candid Episode.

“Sonically, this is the first time we recorded in a proper studio,” Kenny-Smith notes. “We had lots of sick equipment, and it was great having good mikes and lots of good people around. We were also a bit more prepared as well.”

A big part of being ready was having a clear vision for moving the group beyond side-project status.

“In my head, I wanted the record to sound like the Strokes if Phil Spector had produced them,” Kenny-Smith says with a laugh. “We

were after really tight performances playing with that Wall of Sound feel. It didn’t totally come out like that, but it definitely came out more what we were after than previous albums. It’s probably the most grown-up– sounding record that we’ve done.”

It’s also the most varied. Musically, the Murlocs dive into everything from periodperfect paisley pop (“Withstand”) to tightly wound acid rock (“Buffoon”) to Death Valley country (“Samsara Maya”). Part of the reason that such diversions sound so effortless is that the Murlocs were determined to do a more professional job than they had in the past.

“I’m stoked that it sounds like we’re pretty versatile, because it definitely felt like that when it was coming together—especially compared to previous albums,” Kenny-Smith offers proudly. “I think we’ve slowly, gradually been able to incorporate other sounds. We’re definitely a band that’s always stuck to our guns, because we’ve always felt like we’re better live than in the studio. But I’m glad we’ve been able to branch out into other areas.”

As for how the Murlocs were able to break new ground, that’s easy. The key to doing anything of value, Kenny-Smith suggests, is to make sure that you and your friends keep so busy that there’s nothing you dream of more than getting a few minutes of downtime.

“Even though I write all the lyrics, you never know what you’re going to get with the Murlocs,” he says. “It’s fairly basic stuff if it’s coming from me, because I like to keep things simplistic. What’s been important is that we all have other projects as well, beyond the Murlocs circle. This record was definitely a ref lection of other people’s songwriting capabilities. Tracks like ‘What If?’, for example, came from our drummer.

“I’ve always loved music,” Kenny-Smith continues. “When I was in high school, it was better than having to do general math or something. At that, I wasn’t convinced that I could be a musician. I’m still not convinced, but I’m busy enough that I am now, I guess.” g The Murlocs play the Fox Cabaret on Saturday (April 13).

Okazaki prefers a collective approach d MILES OKAZAKI came to the attention of the wider world last year, when he released Work, a 70-track, almost five-hour-long collection of Thelonious Monk’s music, arranged for solo guitar. (An undeniable tour de force— and an invaluable library of sonic ideas for guitar players, jazz or otherwise— the collection was initially an onlineonly effort, but will be released on CD later this year.) The fact is, though, that Okazaki has been a respected part of the New York underground for two decades, making several records with pioneering saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman, and four more with his own quartet, Trickster.

Which, as it happens, is the group he’s bringing to Vancouver this weekend, although it’s not exactly the band you’ll hear on record. Filling in for the remarkable pianist Craig Taborn is the equally astonishing Matt Mitchell, Okazaki’s neighbour in Brooklyn and a very suitable replacement.

“When you think, ‘Who can I call to do this music?’ you have certain people that work in a similar area that you know will have the skill set,” the guitarist explains. “Matt and Craig have a similar background, musically; they both have a huge amount of knowledge about piano repertoire—classical piano, rock, heavy metal, whatever.

“And for this music, it’s not just about playing parts,” he adds. “A lot of it is about how you interact with the group.”

Fair enough. A key part of Trickster’s music is its conversational qual-

ity; even when the four players seem to be creating parallel planes of sound, those strata interact in unpredictable ways. Trying to define Okazaki’s tunes in terms of conflict between “the intellectual and the abstract versus the conversational and the soulful” is a nonstarter, however.

“Basically, we have a rhythmic feel which, given what Tidd and Sean [bassist Anthony Tidd and drummer Sean Rickman] do, is going to be funky, most likely,” the bandleader explains. “And then there’s other things happening. But even when I play standards and stuff like that, I’m not so much into the ‘one person in front and everybody else accompanying’ type of sound. I like the sound of everyone playing, everyone listening, everyone collectively involved.”

That approach, he adds, can give rise to unexpected connections between players—which, borrowing a phrase from jazz critic Whitney Balliett, he calls “the sound of surprise”.

“There’s a lot of that happening in Monk—the feeling of getting turned around, trying to keep your place, and trying to keep your balance,” he says, clarifying the link between Work’s inspiration and his own Trickster tunes. “I don’t know why, but I’ve always been interested in that feeling of just being surprised, where you think it’s going to be this and then it’s that, like a magic trick.”

So will Trickster work its magic on some Monk during its local debut?

“We might sneak some in,” Okazaki

allows, laughing. “We probably won’t be playing anything that straight, ’cause that’s not what this band does so much, but I definitely sneak stuff in here and there. It’s certainly possible— so keep that in mind, Vancouver!”

by Alexander Varty

Miles Okazaki’s Trickster plays Frankie’s Jazz Club on Sunday (April 14).

EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS SHAPE HEALTH’S SONGS d THE ALBUM’S DESIGN features an orange-toned image on a black background, along with white typography that reads “Vol4”. That’s a description of the cover of Vol4 :: Slaves of Fear, the most recent album by Los Angeles–based noise-rock band HEALTH, but keen-eyed music fans— especially those of a certain vintage— are bound to recognize that it also describes the sleeve of Black Sabbath’s fourth LP, released in 1972.

When the Straight reaches him at home in L.A., HEALTH singer-guitarist Jake Duzsik says the resemblance was more than a happy accident. “It would be a pretty big coincidence if it wasn’t intentional,” Duzsik notes. “You know, a lot of people don’t notice that.

You can really kind of tell the pedigree of people’s musical tastes, because you either know immediately or you don’t.

“We had joked for a long time— maybe around the first record, even— we were like, ‘Maybe when we get to the fourth record we should call it Vol4, as

a little nod to Sabbath,’” he continues.

“It’s my favourite Sabbath record, by far. You know, Sabbath, when you hear our band, you’re not immediately thinking, like, ‘Oh, that must be an influence.’ But it is an influence, and was a huge band for all of us formatively.”

Duzsik is right; Black Sabbath isn’t an immediately obvious touchstone for HEALTH’s music, but the band’s balance of industrial-grade rhythms, white-noise squalls, and delicately wrought melodies is gaining it a toehold in the heavy-metal sphere.

HEALTH’s sound arguably has more in common with the likes of Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails than it does with anything that fits the conventional definition of metal, but Duzsik’s lyrical themes, as heard especially on Slaves of Fear and 2015’s Death Magic, are as dark as those of any black-metal act, albeit far more reflective. Through his songs, Duzsik comes to terms with the inevitability of his own demise and struggles to find ways of coping with times that sometimes seem hopeless, whether personally or politically.

“I guess I would consider myself primarily preoccupied with existential issues in terms of trying to find some semblance of happiness or meaning in the face of meaningless and unreckonable, unavoidable death—which is something that I can’t seem to get out of,” he says. “I’m not trying to compare myself to some existential writers, but it’s like the through-line of Camus’s body of work, or Sartre’s— it’s kind of reexamining the same

ideas through different lenses.”

For Duzsik, the contemplation of mortality took on a deeply personal dimension while he and his bandmates— bassist John Famiglietti and drummer Benjamin Jared Miller—were making Slaves of Fear. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, and in the process of trying not to think about it, I’ve also done a lot of drugs, done a lot of drinking,” the singer admits. “This isn’t something that I included in the press materials, but it would be, I think, disingenuous not to include the fact that, in the process of making and finishing the record, my mom passed away.

When that kind of thing happens, it’s pretty fucking hard not to think about, especially if you’re someone who’s constantly thinking about it anyway.”

Duzsik’s uncompromising explorations of dark topics might strike some as morbid, but for HEALTH fans navigating tough roads of their own, the singer’s unflaggingly sincere words can be a godsend.

“We actually do get quite a few people—and we’re very thankful for it—who express a gratitude about the records or the lyrics helping them work through a difficult time, whether it’s personal or familial or substance abuse or depression, that kind of thing,” he says. “It’s not cynical; the lyrics are purposely trying to confront those things that a lot of us deal with on a personal level in our own lives.”

by John Lucas

HEALTH plays Venue on Saturday (April 13).

APRIL 11 – 18 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 23

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DEE DANIELS The Fort Langley Jazz & Arts Festival presents Vancouver jazz vocalist.

Apr 19, 7:30-10 pm, Bez Art Hub. $35.

FRIDAY JAZZ The David Sikula Trio performs progressive jazz with guest Brad Turner.

Apr 19, 9 pm, Tyrant Studios. $15.

RUSSIAN TIM AND THE PAVEL BURES Local band plays an album release, with guests You Big Idiot, the Corps, the Greatest Sons, Aanthems, and Dead End Drive In. Apr 20, 6-11:30 pm, WISE Hall. $10/15.

WANDA JACKSON NIGHT Monthly show celebrating the Queen of Rockabilly. Apr 23, 8 pm, WISE Hall. $10.

CAMARO 67 Local band plays a dance party with Missy D and guest Ndidi Cascade. Apr 26, WISE Hall. $15.

DIAMOND FOREVER—A CELEBRATION OF NEIL DIAMOND Jason Scott’s tribute to Neil Diamond. Apr 28, 7-9 pm, Two Lions Public House. $20/25.

ORA COGAN Victoria musician blends elements of shoegaze, folk, dark-wave, and experimental. Apr 28, 10 pm, The Lido. Free.

SPRING FEVER 2019 Fundraising evening of pop, rock, blues, and comedy. Apr 29, 8 pm, The Improv Centre. $30/40/180.

HORNBY BLUES Performances by Cécile Doo-Kingué, Tim Williams, Paul Pigat, and Michael Jerome-Browne. May 3, 8-10:30 pm, St. James Hall. $28/24.

GLITTER BALL Music festival fronted exclusively by women and those who identify with other marginalized genders. May 4, 5 pm; May 5, 6 pm; May 5, The Pace. $20-40.

PACIFIQUE EN CHANSON Francophone showcase features Autoheart, Brigitte Desjardins, Françoise Thibault, and the Stranger Brew Band. May 4, 8-10 pm, Waterfront Theatre. $15.

CARMEN IN NEW YORK All 12 movements of Bizet’s orchestral suite reimagined for modern jazz orchestra. May 9, 8 pm, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. $20/17.

VANCOUVER LOW FREQUENCY FESTIVAL Experimental electronic instrument performances. May 10-12, Red Gate Main. $10-20.

COVER YOUR FRIENDS Musical friends cover each other’s songs. May 10, 8:30 am, WISE Hall. $20/25.

JOE CHARRON, THE EISENHAUERS Singersongwriters from Vancouver and Kaslo. May 10, 8 pm, St. James Hall. $24/20.

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PETUNIA AND THE VIPERS Roots-based modern rocking and balladeering musicians.

May 11, 2-4 pm, North Vancouver Fire Hall 1. Free.

PEOPLE GET READY Brian Tate and the City Soul Choir present their spring concert. May 11, 7:30-9:30 pm, Canadian Memorial United Church. $30/25.

NEIL YOUNG Canadian rock legend performs a solo show, with guest Elvis Costello. May 15, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. $75.

NAV Canadian rapper, with guest Killy.

May 26, 8 pm, PNE Forum.

T. NILE B.C. singer-songwriter performs a CD-release concert. May 30, 8 pm, St. James Hall. $20/16.

THE SUFFERS Eight-piece R&B/funk band, with guest Lydia Hol. Jun 24, Imperial. $28.

MAKAYA McCRAVEN Jazz and electronica artist, with guest Eli Davidovici’s Shapes. Jun 26, 9 pm, Imperial Vancouver. $28.

JACOB COLLIER Grammy-winning Londoner combines elements of jazz, funk, folk, classical, Brazilian music, gospel, and soul. Jun 30, 9 pm, Imperial Vancouver. $42.

THE ARISTOCRATS Instrumental rockfusion trio, with guests the Travis Larson Band.

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Double down this Monday (April 15) when Vancouver poet and musician CR Avery returns to the West Coast after two years of travelling the globe. Backed by his Storm Collective the multidiscipline artist is throwing what he’s dubbed an “all bets are off hell raising” concert at the Fox Theatre. Proceeds will go to help out with post-production costs for Victory on East Hastings, Avery’s first feature film. For those who like to know what they’re signing on for, the project is described as follows: “a love letter to the neighbourhood and the art scene of East Vancouver.

The film follows a day in the life of Victory and Bernadette, two renegade bohos who are all gangster and no guns.” Tickets for the event are $23 in advance and $30 at the door. g SONREAL Local alternative hip-hop artist.

Jul 11, 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Apr 4, 10 am, $25.

THE RACONTEURS American rockers featuring Jack White of the White Stripes fame.

Jul 19, 8 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tix on sale Apr 12, 10 am, $89.50/85/70/55.

DAVID GOGO BAND Blues-rock guitaristvocalist from Nanaimo, with local guest Matt Hoyles. Aug 3, 7:30-10:30 pm, The ANZA Club. $42-47.

SYML Indie-pop artist from Seattle. Aug 16, 8:30 pm, Imperial Vancouver. Tix on sale Apr 12, 10 am, $25.

FONTAINES D.C. Punk band from Dublin, with guests Pottery. Sep 20, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret. Tix on sale Apr 12, 10 am, $18.

TINARIWEN Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali. Oct 8, 8:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $39.50.

LAST DINOSAURS Indie-rock quartet from Australia, with guests Born Ruffians. Oct 24, Imperial Vancouver.

NOAH KAHAN American folk-pop singersongwriter. Oct 26, 7 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Apr 12, 10 am, $25.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10 LENNON STELLA Canadian singer-songwriter and actress performs two shows. Apr 10-11, Vogue Theatre.

ALICE IN CHAINS Grunge rockers from Seattle, featuring guitarist Jerry Cantrell.

Apr 10, 8 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

THURSDAY, APRIL 11 HANK PINE Genre-hopping local musician performs a monthly residency. Apr 11, 8-11 pm, WISE Hall. $10.

GRATEFUL SHRED L.A.-based Grateful Dead tribute band. Apr 11, 8:30 pm, Fox Cabaret. $18.

SATANIC SURFERS AND BELVEDERE Swedish and Canadian punk bands play a coheadlining show. Apr 11, 9 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $22.50.

STEEL PANTHER Eighties-style hair-metal band from the States plays three nights. Apr 1113, 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix $42.50.

FRIDAY, APRIL 12 STRATHCONA Local modern-rock band, with guests Bong Chow, Tokyo Bleu, and the Stephen Ford Group. Apr 12, 7 pm, Bourbon. $10/13.

MICHAEL BUBLÉ Pop superstar from Burnaby showcases tunes from new album love.

Apr 12, 8 pm, Rogers Arena. $189/99/69.

see next page

SATURDAY, APRIL 13 GIRLPOOL Indie rock band from L.A., with guests Hatchie. Apr 13, Biltmore Cabaret. $14.99.

SFU PIPE BAND Six-time world champion pipe band. Apr 13, 7 pm, Vogue Theatre. $28.50-38.50.

SWITCHFOOT Alt-rock band from San Diego, with guests Colony House and Tyson Motsenbocker. Apr 13, 7:15 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. $75/59.50/39.50/29.50.

MURLOCS Rock band from Australia. Apr 13, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret.

VÄSEN Swedish acoustic trio. Apr 13, 8 pm, St. James Hall. $33/29.

SASAMI L.A.-based singer-songwriter. Apr 13, 9 pm, WISE Hall. Tix $15.

fundraising concert, with proceeds to his first feature film. Apr 15, 7 pm, Fox Cabaret. $23/30.

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JIM BYRNES Vancouver blues legend. Apr 14, 2-4 pm, Fire Hall 18. Free.

MILES OKAZAKI’S TRICKSTER Guitarist Okazaki leads his jazz band. Apr 14, 8 pm, Frankie’s Jazz Club. $25.

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50. “She just needs to find someone who realizes that partnered sex does not have to mean PIV.” Your best bet for finding a man these days? Dating apps and websites, including dating apps for seniors. And don’t be shy about taking PIV off the menu, NFI, at least at the start.

“As we age, many of us find nonpenetrative sex with hands, mouth, and vibrator more comfortable, sexier, and an easier path to orgasm,” said Price.

“And that includes men with erectile difficulties or decreased sensation. In her discussions with a potential new partner, NFI should explain that she’d like to get sexual in stages—and then explore and delight each other sexually, including orgasms, without PIV as the goal.

But if she might enjoy PIV in the future, she should keep her vagina active with solo sex including a dildo or penetrative vibrator. Don’t wait until the right penis comes along.”

Joan Price’s new book, Sex After Grief: Navigating Your Sexuality After the Loss of Your Beloved, will be released soon.

Follow her on Twitter @Joan Price. g

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SAVAGE LOVE

The time to come clean is right now

by Dan Savage

b I’M A HETEROFLEXIBLE married cis woman in my 40s. I’m also a POS cheater and a catfish. I really fucked up. One year ago, I met an older man in an online fetish forum. He sent me an unsolicited PM, and we have talked for hours every day since then. My husband, whom I’ve been married to for more than 20 years, does not know that I am having an emotional affair. I have no intention of telling my husband what I’ve done. I have been honest with my online boyfriend about everything except my name, my age, and the fact that I have a husband. (I know those are all really big things to lie about.) My boyfriend lied to me early on about his name, age, and relationship status but came clean out of guilt. So I had the opportunity to say that I lied too, but I didn’t take it. I know what I’m doing is wrong.

My husband would be very hurt if he knew. And my boyfriend, who wants to make a life together, would be very hurt as well. I’m in love with both men, but I’m not leaving my husband. I know the only right thing to do is break things off with my boyfriend. I’ve tried multiple times: I’ve told him that he is better off without me, that I’m a bad person, and that he shouldn’t trust me. Each time, he convinces me to stay. We have not been physical. We have never even been in the same room, much to his

dismay. I have thought about telling him the truth, but I am worried about my safety, and I do not want to hurt him any worse than I already have. Plus, I’m a fucking coward. I am in treatment for PTSD. My therapist believes that my actions are a coping mechanism, i.e., it is easier to pretend to be someone else than it is to be me. I don’t think she’s wrong, but I also don’t think it excuses what I’ve done. How do I end this relationship without doing any more damage to my two partners?

- Conning And Tricking For Intensely Selfi sh Haven Far be it

from me to question your therapist’s assessment—she’s spoken with you on multiple occasions, and her insights are doubtless more informed—but I think her framing falls short.

She describes your actions as a coping mechanism: you told a stranger lies and abused your husband’s trust to escape your miserable life. If you weren’t so fucking miserable—if other people and/or circumstances hadn’t conspired to make you so fucking miserable—you wouldn’t have done this. You wouldn’t be doing this still. But despite your therapist’s efforts to help you down off that hook, CATFISH, you seem determined to hang there. She’s offering you absolution, in whole or in part,

while you stand around flagellating yourself (“POS cheater”, “fucking coward”, “bad person”, et cetera).

Personally, I think you’re entitled to your feelings. Go ahead and feel terrible. You did a bad thing. It’s not the worst thing someone’s ever done online, and most people know not to take what a stranger tells them on the Internet at face value. But if feeling terrible doesn’t motivate you to make changes…well, it’s not for me to question your sincerity. But some people think it’s okay to do terrible things so long as they have the decency to feel terrible about having done them. If you’re not one of those people—if you actually feel bad—doing something about it and learning something from it will alleviate your misery.

Here’s what you need to do: end things with your boyfriend. Write him an email, tell him the truth about your age, marital status, and unavailability. Don’t share your real name with him; you’re under no obligation to do so, and if he turns out to be the vindictive type, CATFISH, you don’t want him to have your real identity. Apologize for not coming clean when he did—he lied to you, too, at the start—and thank him for the pleasure of his virtual company and the joy he brought to your life. Then block him.

Here’s what you need to learn: you

didn’t do this because you’re miserable—or you didn’t do it just because you’re miserable. You did this because it was fun. We call it “play” when children pretend to be someone or something they’re not; child’s play is also, yes, a coping mechanism. Vulnerable children pretend to be big and powerful superheroes and/or monsters to cope with and momentarily escape their relative powerlessness. And nothing makes a child’s playful fantasy feel more real than a good friend who plays along.

Most adults don’t make time for play—most of us aren’t LARPers or kinksters—but even adults need play, and some adults need play more than others. You found a space where you could play (that online fetish forum), and you found a playmate who helped make your fantasies feel real (a guy you’ve never actually met and who could still be lying to you about all sorts of things). It got out of hand when arousal, orgasms, oxytocin, and promises you couldn’t keep got stirred into the mix. The play made you feel better at first, but the dishonesty and stress of deceiving two people eventually wiped out the benefits you were getting.

You need to find a way to build some play into your life, sexual and/ or nonsexual, that doesn’t require you to lie or hide. It would be great if you could do that with your husband,

CATFISH, but if he’s not willing or able to play with you, get his okay to play on your own. b I AM A 70-year-old straight woman, and I haven’t been in an intimate relationship for seven years. I feel deprived of physical contact, but I also have some obstacles to pursuing intimacy at this point in my life. My vagina is seriously out of shape. In fact, it was a challenge to have sex with my last partner, because he was rather well-endowed. I had to work up to it, but it finally worked. My libido is on the low side, but it still flares up now and then. I also have herpes, plus I’m taking an antidepressant that makes it hard for me to orgasm. But even with all that, I’ve enjoyed sex in the past. Would it make sense for me to look for a man who may also have some sexual issues and/or be willing to work with/around mine? Someone who enjoys all the other aspects of sexual intimacy besides penis in vagina? How would I find such a man?

I’m not necessarily just looking for sex—a compatible companion would be great.

- Need Fresh Input “NFI can have

it all—sex, companionship, orgasms,” said Joan Price, author of Naked at Our Age and The Ultimate Guide to Sex After see page 26

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