Marcel Stewart is joined by Lisa Karen Cox, Tianna Edwards and Shayna Jones as they share their thoughts on life, cultural erasure, creating art, what blackness can look like in rural and urban spaces, black maternal thinking, micro rituals in the body, alignment, and MORE! 

*What you won't get to experience as the listener is the amount of teeth being shown during this conversation. There was a lot of off mic laughter, smiling and love in the Zoom room.  

For a transpcript of the episode, go to spiderwebshow.ca/if-you-dont-tap-in

Marcel Stewart is joined by Sébastien Heins to discuss the glorious ephemerality of theatre, his work with Outside the March, the process of developing immersive experiences, his solo play ‘No Save Points’, the future of performing arts, AI in theatre, Max Tegmark, theatre as an olympic event, our love for Mazin Elsadig, Michael Healey's podcast 'Just One More' and MORE!

For a transcript of this episode, visit https://spiderwebshow.ca/its-a-sebaissance/ ‎

Marcel Stewart is joined by SGS and Owais Lightwala to discuss why being an artist matters, the Massey Commission, capitalism and neo-liberalism, artists as activists, innovation vs conservation, and their Manifesto for NOW. They both raise thought-provoking questions like: are money markets really at fault for artists not being able to make art? What does it mean to produce art today and how are we thinking about that as a sector? We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as Marcel did.

For a transcript of the episode, visit spiderwebshow.ca/if-youre-a-dancer-dance

Marcel Stewart is joined by Dr. Pratim Sengupta to discuss thinking with our bodies, Mind Matter and Media Lab, the colonialism behind the 1980's arcade game ‘Lunar Lander’, pushing back against symbolic violence, dignity bombs, human beings as pain catastrophizers, anti-racist reimaging of the immigration experience and landing experience, technocentricsm, moving through the world with love, the Festival of Live Digital Art and MORE! 

For a transcript of the episode, visit spiderwebshow.ca/code-has-to-be-about-love. 

*There is slight background noise throughout by way of microphone feedback and an infant doing what infants do. 

**Adrienne Wong and Xianzhi Jason Li facilitated the workshop ‘Artificial Intelligence in Live Performance’ that Dr. Sengupta references.

New releases every Tuesday from November 14 to December 5, 2023. Join b current Artistic Director and FOLDA Co-Curator,  Marcel Stewart, as he talks theatre, creation, and community with some of Canada's top theatre artists and thinkers.

The 2023 cohort of Thought Residents includes Sébastien Heins (creator/performer of No Save Points); Shayna Jones (Black + Rural Project); Lisa Karen Cox (director and educator); Tianna Edwards (Keeping Up With Kingston); Dr. Pratim Sengupta (FOLDA 2023 Thinker-In-Residence); Owais Lightwala (Assistant Professor in the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University, co-creator of Manifesto for Now); and Thought Residency founder Sarah Garton Stanley (VP of Programming at Arts Commons, co-creator of Manifesto for Now). 

Hi, I am Tsholo Khalema,  this is my first thought.

Black Lipstick on a sunday morning

Sipping on balck cherry mimosa topped with mint. 

She looked beautiful. Her milinated, being sun kissed by my eyes.

You're catching me on a good day, a scab goes blacker as the healing process is maturing, regenerating perhaps. So I feel extra extra black today.

I grabbed my first thought from the ether of blackness, where black matter holds the universe. I was thinking about blackness and how significant it is to our galaxy. Our entire world floats in blackspace

... Black matter matters and blackness make me happy. Black licorice is delicious 

Bought my black beautiful cat Shaka Zulu 7 years ago, She’s charcoal, now I see a few grays shimmering against her fur.

Blackness!  Makes!  Light ! Visible! 

invisible to visible as the world rests on a black canvas. 

// Music ( Garage band) & Photo (Canada 2018) credit: Tsholovisions

This is DM, and we’re at number twelve.

I used to work at a nursing home, at the reception desk.  As a result, I was often the first point of contact for families visiting residents.  This one guy would visit his mother about three times a week.  He was nice enough, but never chatty.  One night he comes in, heads my way, leans over my desk with urgency in his eyes, and says, “I can help.”  I ask him, “Help with what?”  He says, “Your problem.  With your hair.”  I say nothing, he goes on.  “What you need is margarine.  That’ll weigh it down.  Fix your problem.”  I said thank you. 

Maybe this had nothing to do with the new afro pick I bought the next day.  Maybe.  Nowadays, I often have a good intention checked by hearing Yvette Nolan’s voice in my head, echoing from our days together at Native Earth, “Donna, don’t help.”

(photo by Isidra Cruz)

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my eleventh thought.  

I recently got into a thing with a collaborator about whether Han shot first.  Not really about if he did or not, but about whether it matters if he did or not, and whether that is a thing worth saying.  It matters, I assure you.  If you’re a nerd, ten times more.  But if you’re outside the culture, you might not see why.  And if I try to explain it to you I inevitably bring more niche terms into the conversation that move you further from understanding and closer to confirming your theory that no one will know what I’m talking about.  If you are not receptive to understanding, ten times more.  More importantly, things matter even if they don’t to you, even if they don’t to most, even if you don’t understand why they do.  Han shot first.  Because the past is what happened, not what you wish did.  He shot first, that’s a fact.  I’m passionate about it.  And no amount of CGI muzzle flashes will convince me Greedo did anything more than walk into the Mos Eisley cantina.  Holler at me, nerds.

(image from Rigzsoft.co.uk)

My name is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard and this is my tenth thought.  

I have these red boots.  I love them.  As soon as I saw them I knew my life would change if I could only have them.  Then I got those boots.  I love them.  And I almost never wear them.  They are those things that are so special, too special, no occasion is ever special enough for me to unsheathe their majesty.  They’re not gonna get muddy or wet or worn shiny on that one toe I like to rub against the back of my calf.  You can barely tell they have anything to do with me.  They just sit there, pristine and neglected.  Like the phone numbers of all my most cherished friends.

And since this isn’t new behaviour, I can predict that by the time I finally decide to put those boots on, they will no longer fit, and I will have wasted a very good boot.  My boots deserve better than that.

#14 NEVER NOT TRYING

This is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard with my fourteenth and final thought.

I am trying my best.  I have grown so much and changed not at all.  There is a small part of me that is untouched by injustice and cynicism.  A part of me still open to criticism.  There is still a portion not smudged with distortion.  A part undiscouraged by not-yet-but-nearly.  That prays just in case God hears me.  There is still some unreasonable faith that people of purpose can drive out the snakes.  That people can be their best selves if they choose it.  That there is healing in music. 

That the world is sick

That loneliness afflicts.

That we’re in the same ship.

And it’s a all-of-us fix

That it’s not on me.  

That what I do matters but it’s not all on me.  It never was.  

We are many.  We are ready.  We are strong. 

I am a part of something I could not do alone.

And my whole entire job is the same as it always was: to try my best. 

So I am trying my best. Bear with me.