Thought Residencies

Many aspects of a personality combine to create a single self. I've been contemplating this in relation to basketball-playing Mike, who is loud, often aggressive and mm, rehearsal director Mike who is a listener, collaborative and not ever yelling at anyone that I can recall. Ah and they both feel like me, and I like both those people, but which one is the real me? I think the both are.

This is Michael Wheeler and this is Thought #3.  My students at Queen's University are beginning a process of creating scenes through CdnStudio. They have the benefit of actually rehearsing those scenes in person with each other first, before they start creating across distance. I'm curious to see how this changes the creative process in comparison to something like our production of The Revolutio...

This Michael Wheeler and this is Thought #2. I've been thinking today about Progress Lab in Vancouver and how it is home to both Marcus Youssef, who is the most recent winner of the Siminovitch Prize and also The Electric Company and Kim Collier, also a winner of The Siminovitch Prize. And how that space was created by a bunch of artists who came together and figured out how to pool their resource...

This is Michael Wheeler and this is Thought #1. I've been thinking a lot about branded content lately, and how newspapers and magazines now offer theatres the opportunity to purchase the coverage they used to receive for free from journalists and their publications. And that the model, the business model that supports the media, is suffering is so much that now you buy what used to be, omm, news....

Starting the Revolutions by SpiderWebShow

Since number one I have thought about the ending. Fleetingly, but it was in there.  I thought about quoting someone. I had about 6 jokes. I had an earnest observation. I had a story I'd been saving. I re-examined themes of literacy, energy, love, empathy and vulnerability. I had a list. There was a line about going from A to B. I thought it was very clever. I thought I should talk about my family,...

I'm nearing the end of my east coast vacation and I find myself thinking about dictums of yore. They say everything in moderation. I say, sounds controlled and boring. I think excess gets a bad rep. Case in point, tonight over an open fire, I helped myself to 6 double marshmallow, double chocolate, perfectly roasted S'mores. I could have stopped at 2, or 3, or 4, or 5. But why would I do that? To...

We have a duty to hold our friends, neighbours and ourselves accountable for offending. Currently, I'm revisiting an old play of mine from the early 2000's.  As memory serves, it had a great central character, a strong narrative and audiences loved the play. But, reading it in 2017, the show is not good. Some jokes don't land, and some jokes are blatantly Islamophobic.  My intentions at the time w...

Currently, I am at the top of Cape Breton Island. I have no cell service and the closest Wi-Fi spot is 10kms away.   Welcome back to 1995.  I love it. I have no longing to connect. I don't care what anyone has done or said or blown up or threatened. It's been a quick adjustment.  Removing myself from my life (out of the city, no kids, just my wife and I and nature) I once again think the following...

Three days ago I did an 18 km mud challenge/obstacle course/ski hill climb and descent which ended in running through live wires. I got electrocuted twice, it really hurt, I thought I was crazy, but laughed so hard for having completed an 18 km mud challenge/obstacle course/ski hill climb and descent.  I did it! Holy catfish! I did it! And of course I did. Being an artist, this feeling is familiar...

There's a passage in Adam Gopnik's  From Paris to the Moon  where he talks about chicken.  When I lived in Paris, I recreated his experience of - In the morning, selecting and ordering a chicken.  Mid-day, checking in on that chicken as it started to roast. Late afternoon picking it up and brining it home to dine.  This delayed gratification was easy in France. At home, not so easy.  So  tomorrow...

I remember pennies being thrown at me.   Pick 'em up Jew boy.  I remember a teacher telling us, in shame, that her grandfather prided himself on his ashtray made of Jew bones. I remember weeping at Yad Vashem – every time I've been.  I remember feeling at home as a socialist in Israel – every time I've been.  When I was five, I rememer I was at school playing in the sandbox and this boy told me he...

In early November 2016, I went to a psychic healer. I remember ranting about time and my lack of it. The healer challenged me to split time in half:  As many times as I wanted. Stretch it out. If you want, a day can be an eternity. Remember when you could do that as a child? Mid-August 2017, here I am at the just-past-halfway point in my thought residency, and I'm thinking about time again. Trying...

Today, I'm a worried husband, father, friend, Jew, artist, human, and I'm thinking about the monster. My monster is filled with hate and vengeance. He's mean. He's not obviously violent. Doesn't throw punches or light fires. Instead, my monster is devious and finds subversively violent ways to ruin lives, destroy families, and end friendships. My monster works to make people feel bad. Make them su...

Today my Uber driver did up my window and put on the air conditioning without asking. I felt like my kids must feel. In school, my acrobatics teacher would give us a rest and then say: 'and every good moment ends'. From early childhood I've been conditioned to accept fun and joy being given, and then taken away with little to no warning. "Shut off the TV now. Bath time's over. Play time's over. Fi...

Today I don't want to work but I'm going to.   Today my body is asking for a break. I'm sweaty. I'm drowsy. My eyes are burning. My mind wants a break. I want to shower, putz around my house and then maybe take a bath. I want to feel bad for myself.  I was told that it's probably the weather. Today I feel bad for feeling bad for myself. I'm lazy. I should suck it up, take a pill, go for a walk, ge...

Examination can be the great killer of experience. But I will try.  I don't know why I make or say or do at least 15% of my life. This part of myself doesn't ask why. Doesn't analyse - my instincts, actions, emotions, desires, or how I can be bull-headed, grumpy, and flippant. It is this 15% of myself that is in constant chaos, that keeps me curious and questioning everything.  It is my friend who...

J'adore la langue française, et je ne parle pas très bien le français parce que mon grammer est terrible, mais je comprends plus. My French is terrible but I pretend that I'm very good at speaking it. When I'm in a French speaking place, I try to watch and listen. I talk to myself, out loud, a lot. I plan a few key phrases and then I engage as though I understand and when I don't I ask: Qu'est-ce...

At 27, some friends and I took a trip and drove the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island. A number of times I got stuck behind cars moving way too slowly, and every time, it stressed me out. Only me. Then at some point my friend Vlad – a circus artist from Los Angeles – set me right when he said: 'Hey now. Where are you going?' I am quick to impatience, I bore easily and I can be unforgiving while I'...

I'm thinking a lot about literacy lately:  One - I read the final 300 pages of Hanya Yanigahara's  A Little Life , through a steady stream of tears and thought: at this rate, I will die having read only 100 books in my adult life.  That is tragic and unacceptable. Two - I turned 40, and started training for a 15-mile obstacle course race. This kind of work is very new to me and very difficult. But...

We are generation gaps filling in what wasn't passed down: "This Time will be better." And with each "no more" and "this way now," our communion of sound morphs into action. We send our defiance out into tiny circles that make up our world through the work of loving, forgiving, and art-making—all without knowing if or how it may land. In the gap of our isolation, we seek its antithesis: connection...

I'm on the road heading East. It's bittersweet; I love the West but I'm also seeing people with bone structures and shades of skin that look more and more like me; it's a homecoming. It's another way of Knowing to move over land where ancestors made love, birthed, and died. Knowing is a migration, an arrival, a Mystery. It's also a shedding… of the skin of the interloper and of the lie that Home d...

A White-presenting man recently asked me if I knew who I was after he heard that I'm of mixed ancestry. This settler then told me who I was as an Indigenous woman (which is one of my favourite things, by the way). He was reassured that I already know who I am and more: he seemed to feel... affirmed. It's one thing to (re)claim something that's been taken away by Another; it's a completely differen...

We're quite small inside our potential. It's humbling to be human, to be awake with no guarantees, armed only with stories we tell ourselves. Some of us dare to tell new stories. These few who speak what was once unfathomable, scootch closer to the latest version of the True(th). New stories defy what was; they inspirit Promise. To enact unfamiliar truths rings a bell; it harkens a new day.