WELCOME TO MY WORLDS
Greetings! And welcome to the first edition of my Newsletter—Making direct contact with other Human Beings! This newsletter is part of an effort to just put myself out there and reconnect. It feels like a good response to these ridiculous times, so thanks for being here.
So, I’ve been working in Virtual Reality, experimenting with machine learning systems, and even quantum computing, exploring how these technologies can be used in the context of artistic creation and as sites for performance. I’ve done some interesting projects and all the new technology is fun to play with, but one thing that has not been fun has been working within the toxic soup of the tech-bro culture that permeates and controls every corner of the tech space.
This toxicity is, as we are seeing, pretty pervasive. It’s reached a fever pitch and the effect has been so repellent that I’ve ricocheted out of virtual space and back into the real world. I’m feeling the call of the stage and ready to get my hands dirty. I still have my safe spaces within virtual worlds (Odyssey) and will continue to use these tools as I need them, but until the technology evens out and leaves the hands of maniacs, I’m making an effort to prioritize working in the real world—resisting.
60
I turn 60 this week. WTF. I have no idea how that happened. While in some ways it’s horrifying, I have tons of gratitude for reaching this pretty major landmark age—it’s a privilege that has been denied many. As I enter this Third Act of Artist Life, I’m exploring my archives, contemplating what it looks like to go forward as a creator and, more specifically, as a performer.
Hardwired to make things, it’s like it’s impossible to stop creating, but instead of starting from scratch once again, I’m thinking about how to use older work as a starting point for new work, how to re-envision old works in new formats, how to perfect and refine good ideas for the current times.
My Keywords for 2025:
Revisit, Re-purpose, Re-frame, Rewrite, Refine
RIFFING WITH TERI SNELGROVE
So, way back in the 1990s, I had the great pleasure of meeting and working with director and dramaturge extraordinaire, Teri Snelgrove. Teri is a producer with the NFB in Vancouver these days, but has a background in performance as an actor, director, designer, and dramaturge. Together we created my very first one-person performance piece, The Alienation of Lizzie Dyke. The piece was produced by Resource Centre for the Arts Theatre Company in 1994 and the script published a couple of years later by Playwrights of Canada Press. The piece was, among other things, an early attempt at examining my queer identity and it became the first in my series of one-person shows.
Teri and I share a synergistic bond when it comes to creating, and we often remark on what a special thing it is, to retain our connection across the decades. When we collaborate, we tend towards the epic, we like to utilize every inch of the theatre space, use surround sound and special effects. We’ve transformed the stage into the surface of the moon, used paper drops to made it pour black rain, even once terra-formed the LSPU Hall stage with ten tons of sand. Our creative connection continues to this day, and recently, we began riffing, via the Internet, on a new performance artwork.
We’re still in the early phases, but the vision is to make a kind of coming of age piece for a performer turning 60; a piece about being reborn, about transformation… a new performance piece for an old hand. We’re working with our favourite elements—projection, choreographed movement, natural objects as props, and at the moment this feels like a piece for galleries and alternative spaces, maybe even for small audiences. My plan is to work with Teri to create and rehearse this performance and then just tour it forever.
Check out this ancient artifact—a press flyer from 1994 advertising the Alienation of Lizzie Dyke performance:
THE ALIENATION OF IZZY MADLY
Speaking of rewriting and reframing…
In the 1990s, the words genderfluid, non-binary, cis were not in general usage, and so talking about gender identity was challenging and fraught with issues. I wanted to revisit the Lizzie Dyke character and story through the lens of the present, and using today’s vocabulary. Looking to reinterpret and reinvent, I’m transforming the script of The Alienation of Lizzie Dyke into a new novel. It’s a ROMANCE NOVEL. A horror-romance novel. A human-alien, inter-galactic, horror-romance novel.
Using the play as a kind of template, I’m in the middle of writing it now and am seven chapters deep. The working title is The Alienation of Izzy Madly. It’ll be different from the performance piece, but transitioning the old stage character and plot into a new format has been surprisingly smooth, and also pretty fun. If you’d like to read a short excerpt from the working draft, click the button below.
TALLULAH & THE MAN
Me and Mike Kean have been collaborating as our alter-egos, Tallulah Fucque and Burt Everest, and we’ve created a new two-piece musical act—Tallulah & The Man (T&TM). We’ve got a full album written and are working towards releasing the songs one-by-one, over time, as singles. Eventually, we’ll bring the singles together as a vinyl album/full release. Superhuman is a 13-track album and the plan is to have the first song out in the next month or so. It’s called RBC is Killing Me. I hope I’m premiering it to you by the next Newsletter!
TATM LIVE SHOW!!
In the meantime – we have a gig coming up at the Bovine in Toronto on March 24 with old folk-punk friends, part of the latest Greg Rekus tour. For all my Toronto folx, here are the deets:
Folk Punk Madness Returns To The Bovine!!
GREG REKUS (Winnipeg, MB)
https://gregrekus.com/
FAST EDDIE
http://www.linktr.ee/fasteddieacoustic
TALLULAH & THE MAN
https://bbmc.ca/tatm
KEVIN MURPHY’S MURDER
http://www.kevinmurphy88.bandcamp.com
OLD MOUNTAIN LOW
https://www.instagram.com/oldmountainlow
@ BOVINE SEX CLUB
(54 Queens St W – Toronto)
Doors at 9:00pm / Music at 9:30pm
$15.00/P.W.Y.C. cover
19+ only
NATURE, HUMAN – 2nd Edition
The Second Edition of my short story collection, Nature, Human (House of Zolo, 2023), is set to be released this Spring, and I’m working with brilliant editor Erika Steeves on the final edit on the manuscript. The Second Edition is much like the first, but there are a few extra stories, and a new cover. The release of the book will coincide with the release of a series of videos based on stories from the book, as well as the release of a Nature, Human audiobook.
The upcoming audio and video releases have been made possible thanks to support from the Canada Council for the Arts, and I can’t wait to share the results. By my next newsletter, I should have release dates for the book and for some of the media pieces.
This is a still from one of the video shoots, shot, in part, in World of Warcraft.
FUN STUFF HAPPENING IN MY WORLDS THIS MONTH
POTTERY
Me and Mike are attending our first Pottery Class tonight. It’s a a wheel throwing class—there will be a little instruction and then we can just play around and experiment. We’ve wanted to try this out for a while, I even had a dream about Brendan Tang last night (IYKYK). If we make anything decent, the studio will fire it for us. Pretty exciting.
CAROLINE NIKLAS GORDON
As I’ve been developing this new piece of work with Teri, I realize that movement and gesture are going to be major elements of the piece. I’m super excited to have reconnected with my old friend, beautiful dancer, and choreographer Caroline Niklas Gordon. Can’t wait to start exploring movement, and physicality for the character. We’ll also be playing around with choreography ideas for a new movement piece, a duet for me and my guitar (something I have wanted to make for a long time). We’ve had a couple of meet-ups already and are brewing plans for our first jam session.
IN THE STUDIO
I’ll be in my studio this month playing around with projection and light, trying things on for size. Sometimes it takes some motivation to get there, but once I’m in the studio, hours pass in a flash, and really, it’s the most fun ever.
THANK YOU
As Spring approaches the city of Toronto, I’m sending big love out to everyone. To all of the artist folx out there, working against the odds, dreaming up ideas, making art despite the times, creating work in response to the times, I see you and appreciate you. We work with what we have and that is how we make an impact. I have a very long held theory that, in the history of Human Beings, the only thing that has ever advanced culture and society, the only thing that has ever brought us forward as a species, is the work of artists.
Thanks for reading down to the end!
If you have any questions, feedback, or want to talk about projects or ideas, feel free to get in touch anytime. I’m always accessible at whoisliz@hotmail.com
Until next time, Hearts!
<3 <3 <3