This Week In Art/Culture/Entertainment
By John Swartz
Mariposa Arts Theatre is opening the next play of their 2025/2026 season Thursday, February 6, in the Studio Theatre at the Opera House.
The author of WROL ( Without Rule Of Law), Michaela Jeffery, describes the play as:
“Convinced the world at large can’t be trusted to prioritize the well-being of adolescent girls in the event of a cataclysmic event (or just in general), a determined troupe of preteen “doomers” commit to preparing for survival in the post-collapse society they anticipate inheriting.”
Sounds about right.
It’s a comedy.
The ensemble cast includes Chloe Davison-Frustaci, Devon Giffen, Grayson Cooper, Stella Minges and Gemma Cox – all teenagers. MAT opened opportunities for other young people to be involved in the production. Directors Stevie Baker and Samantha Cole took on Twin Lakes student, Alida Tomasini as youth director.
The play and the author have been nominated or were finalists for several awards and its been produced by theater companies across Canada and the United States with a production happening in Australia this year.
The action involves the group investigating the kind of thing teens get wrapped up in, a mystery in the woods.
The play runs to February 15 and you can get tickets online.
Roots North
Roots North Festival organizers have announced their first act for this year’s festival (April 16 to 19), which plays out mostly at St. Paul’s Centre.
The main concert nights have shifted from a Friday/Saturday combination to Saturday/Sunday.
Meredith Moon if the first musician announced to play. Meredith has had an active year recording in Nashville (listen/buy), playing gigs in the U.S. including New Orleans and California, and making videos.
The festival will also have several other venues providing music and they are accepting applications for their traditional vendors market and for volunteers. You can find links to those and festival passes online.
The festival is notorious for dribbling out main stage acts one at a time over weeks, so expect more.
Two Roundtables
The cultural roundtable is having a rebirth of sorts. The old one used to find meeting places with a table big enough all us (I was a member) to sit around and was an autonomous, unofficial arm of the old culture department at City Hall.
The new one is a function of North Simcoe Arts and had a meeting at Creative Nomad. No knock on Creative, but two round tables had to be jammed together for those who attended the meeting last week. The new group is inward looking rather than outward looking as the old group was.
Nothing inherently bad about that, both are geared to making improvements for the artistic community. In the former the intent was to provide council with information about municipal spending and programs related to arts, while the latter seems to be more about gathering the scattered elements of the community which have been struggling for relevance since the City disbanded and shuffled off the remnants of the department in 2012.
The glue has been missing and the folks doing the heavy lifting at NSA hope to be the new glue among the various arts groups and lone wolfs.
It is going to be a tough go. In the past, one of the things that emerged from the roundtable was an association between the major organizations (the music and theatrical ones) which resulted in an effort to not step on each other’s gigs. Last year I recall one conflicted night with two events happening at the same time.
While it might seem easier to bring the major food groups together, and something I think is necessary, to have a united front; it was noticeable none of them sent a representative to the roundtable meeting.
One of the key issues discussed was marketing. The County and Lake Country sent representatives who are in marketing. The artists at the table have not been sitting idly by, but are finding it more difficult to reach an audience. This is the downfall of people working in isolation, coordination doesn’t happen, competition arises, and efforts may be too narrowly focused.
The other problem is the view of the landscape happens from only one perspective when you are working alone (as many visual artists do). what one person thinks is the answer, maybe works a bit for them, is not necessarily a remedy for a larger contingent, plus the analysis of what is taking place is at ground level when it’s often necessary to climb a few steps to see what is really going on. People become too attached to limited information/perspectives and come up with solutions that are too narrow to really be effective.
The NSA is also in need of board/executive members (aside from general membership). They have identified they could really use people with marketing and fundraising experience to help create the future.
I have said to other collectives that have come and gone, what is really needed are people with business experience who also have an affinity or hobby level (not your main gig) artistic traits to get involved and joining the board would be a good thing to do. You can find out the contact info on their website.
The old roundtable purposely invited community business leaders to participate and I think that was one of the strengths of old roundtable, and one of the reasons so much progress with City Hall was made in such a relatively short amount of time.
The arts community has lost City Hall, and I also think another thing to re-establish is at the very least communications. I highly doubt the recent switch of shutting down Orillia’s own summer theatre production arm in favour of shopping out summer theatre would not have happened had the old round table be asked to make some input. The only people advocating for a homegrown product were those directly involved and I’m sure if a broader mix of people from the arts community and the business community were involved, being told, ‘are you nuts?’ would have carried more weight.
And, I have said this before, and I’ll keep saying it, there is strength in numbers, so why aren’t you a member of NSA?
None of this is to suggest the arts community is not thriving, many parts of it are doing well. The whole though, needs some attention. I get the sense all the activity resembles a Monty Python soccer sketch more than it does a well-coordinated team.
The Shorts
- The Coldwater legion is the venue for an afternoon of blues with Edy Ferrier, Thom Adkins, North Gone South, Reverend Freddy, Vendetta and the Motor city Blues Band Feb. 7 beginning at 12:30 p.m.
- You can also get tickets online for both the upcoming Mariposa Folk Festival concerts they are producing. Lance Anderson is once again doing the annual Gospel and Blues gig at the Opera House February 21. Joining him are Garnetta Cromwell, Gavin Hope, Jesse O’Brien, Mackenzie Jordan, Steve Pelletier and Everton White. And on March 28 The Free Label with guest Evan Rotella will be in concert at St. Paul’s Centre.
- The Orillia Concert Association has season tickets on sale (still only $90) and their lineup is: Terry Lim And Friends Feb. 22, Daniel Vnukowski March 22 and The Brooks, Ronai/Teske Trio May 3. All concerts are at 2:30 p.m. You can get the season tickets online.
- OMAH has three new exhibits to see, the annual Women’s Day Art Show and Made in Orillia; and Face To Face: Portraits From the Permanent Collection you can also see Tracing Places: Advertising In Orillia and the permanent display of artefacts from Gord’s estate… Maker’s Circle has Molly Farquharson’s art featured all month; reception at 1 p.m, Feb. 7.… Peter Street Arts has Judy Flinn’s art featured all month.
- Quayle’s Brewery has Stephan Bernard playing Feb. 6; Sydney Riley Feb. 7; Kat Chabot Feb. 8 ; Jamie Drake’s open mic Feb. 12; Michael Martyn Feb. 14; Andrew Walker and Cam Galloway splitting the day Feb. 15 and Daniel Humphries Feb. 16… the Hog ‘N Penny Scott Olgard playing Feb. 6 Corey Taylor Feb. 7; Taylor Hofner Feb. 13; and an afternoon jam session every Sunday with Sean Patrick and others… The ANAF Club has their jam night Thursday, Feb. 5 at 7 p.m.; No Filter plays Feb. 7; Tina Turley plays Sunday at 2 p.m. … Jakob Pearce is at Alleycats Music Jan. 17 at 2 p.m.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia and Images Supplied) Main: The cast of Mariposa Arts Theatre’s WROL (Without Rule Of Law) in rehearsal (photo by Natalie Baker)
