All the posts to date have been about sightseeing, tourist destinations, events experienced and general comments about the environment we are living in at the moment. With the exception of the Assistance Dogs conference and the Cirque du Soleil audition there hasn't been many performing arts experiences in the last nine weeks. This is made me very ancy, and I have found myself craving the opportunity to perform or at least see someone else do it! So over the last few weeks we have been able to squeeze in a few artistic adventures and this blog explains the connections of the title above.
Singing. I had always thought if ever we were unable to find jobs and were running tight on money that I could always resort to setting myself up on a corner, throwing my hat out and belting out a few tunes to scrounge up some cash. Well I thought I would give it a bash before we got to the point where we needed to do the before mentioned 'last resort'. One Saturday afternoon I felt very motivated to have a sing and thought I would incorporate it into a busking session. We went down to the local gadget store and bought a small battery operated speaker system that we could plug my iPod into and we headed down to the harbour front of Lake Ontario. I knew that at the time there was a classical Festival being held that weekend down near the shopping complex on the harbour (a centre very similar to our Southbank in Melbourne).
Now the last time I busked was with a friend, Alan Davies, when we were 14. I think we sang ' Throw your arms around me' over and over again as it was the only song we knew and we hoped that the audience would just keep moving on and not realise we were singing the same song. Now though 16 years later I have all the artillery, complete with booming voice and a much more extensive repertoire.
I set up in what I thought was a reasonable busking spot as there was a steady flow of people coming and going in and out of the harbour front centre as well as boarding on an off the ferries that were docking nearby. I sang for exactly one hour as I watched my hat fill up with coins and even notes with every song. I concentrated more on the classical songs as I knew that the festival was on and that most of the patrons that were around at the time were possibly attending it. Plus it's not every day you hear a guy on the street singing arias at the top of his voice. And okay the wheelchair and the dog I'm sure drew a few more onlookers than the normal busker, but as they say in the industry "you got a have a gimmick"!
The throat started to feel a bit tired as I was singing into the wind and felt like I needed to project more, so as the set went on I started to push a bit harder. I became tired more sooner than I expected, seeing as I'm able to sing the three hours at Rimini back in Geelong. But by the looks of the collection I had made in my hat I was pretty keen to stop and have a look at how much I had made.
Mel & I went off to get a hot chocolate and a bite to eat and count the spoils of my previous hours work. Let's just say that I had made the equivalent of working 15 hours on a minimum wage here in Canada, by performing my favourite songs out on the street to complete strangers walking by. Suffice to say that this will not be the last time I will be hitting the streets and belting out some tunes, in fact in two weeks I'm about to go and audition for a licence to be able to busk in the subways during the winter time where there'll be passabyes by the thousands. It would be great if I need to buy a bigger hat!
Saigon. There are many theatre companies here in Toronto and it seems like a very active arts scene. Fringe, comedy and busker festivals, summer theatre seasons, operas, exhibitions, galleries, you name it you can go and see it. The shows that are on here at the moment are Jersey Boys, Rock Of Ages and Miss Saigon. The only one that really interested me and the one that I thought Mel might enjoy because of the historical relevance and modern retelling of Madame Butterfly was Miss Saigon. I was able to score great tickets for the second last night where it was showing at the Four Seasons Centre of Performing Arts. It is a beautiful new concert hall but I'm not sure whether it was the right venue for this musical theatre piece. Unless you knew the words to the show (like I do back to front) you would have no idea what they were singing, which made it very difficult for Mel. The rock band and the amplified singing were too much for the polished floorboards, wooden seats and timber surrounds of the auditorium. The sets were very minimal probably because they spent the entire set budget on the helicopter scene, which was very impressive but out of place compared to the other simplified settings. The performances were on the whole very credible, but the show entertainment wise was just average. Mel and I had an hour and a half on public transport on the way home to review the show and compare notes.
Stallone. If anyone knows Mel & I well, they would know that we love going to the movies, and I think on one of our previous blogs Mel even mentioned a really quaint cinema were we went to to see Inception, which we both thought was incredible. Some other movies that we have seen while we have been here have been Ramona & Beezus (Georgie, I'm positive they based this Ramona character on you), The Karate Kid & just last night we went to see The Expendables. I was so excited about seeing this as it had every action hero I could possibly imagine in one film. The biggest shoot em up, blow em up, masculine displaying, testerone filled, chest pumping movie ever. Let's just say it lived up to the height of being all muscle and no brain. Good old Stallone he's done it again. Thanks Mel for sitting through it with me.
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