Rebecca Cuneo Keenan is a writer who lives in Toronto with her husband and three children.
You aren’t able to search the Eye Weekly fringe reviews by venue. So here are the links to my reviews of the Palmerston Library kids’ venue.
From best to worst:
Chicken Licken 5 stars
As You Puppet 5 stars
Scaredy Kat 4 stars
Ancient Woods 3 stars
Kipling’s Just So Stories 3 stars
Rock Time 2009 3 stars
Derrick, Supreme Ruler of the World, and Mister Sock 2 stars
The Sleuth Sisters 1 star
DAILY SNACK
We were waiting in line for the requisite Canada Day hot dog,
When I noticed the swag table.
“Come with me, C,” and I took his hand,
Leaving Dad and L’il to keep our spots.
There was a basket full of paper flags.
You know the kind.
“Can I take three?”
One for me, one for Dad, and one for C.
Babies don’t get flags.
As far as Young C was concerned,
This was as good as it gets.
I was ten or eleven years old the first time I saw a real play. It was a university production of Our Town and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. The set was minimal — a few props moved around on a black stage — and the acting was different from anything on tv or in the movies. The characters — their words, their movements, their emotions — were projected into the audience and part of you was carried up onto that stage. I loved it.
A few years later I happened upon an extraordinary drama program in an ordinary high school. My teacher, Kathleen Gallagher, went on to earn her PhD in theatre education and is now a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University (OISIE, as we like to call it). I studied drama under her in Grades 10 through 13 and learned everything from Stanislavski to set design. Perhaps most important was the introduction to a real local theatre scene such as we have in Toronto. Every year we would see one or two productions as a class, but also had to go to see plays on our own and submit critical reviews. (That’s how I learned about Pay What You Can Sundays at the theatre. Really, check it out.) It wasn’t just about acting, as so many high school drama programs are, but about all aspects of creating, critiquing and enjoying theatre. I thrived in those classes — we all did.
DAILY SNACK
He wore shorts and a t-shirt and rain boots.
We left through the back door to get to the car.
There, as I knew there would be,
Was the widest, deepest puddle a kid could imagine.
Any bigger and we could fish in it.
“Be careful. If you jump too hard, your shorts will get wet.”
But he was off — and it was a mighty splash.
“Oh no … my shorts are soaking wet …”
Yes, dear. They are.
By the time I was old enough to start listening to Top 40 radio and to buy records (er, tapes), Michael Jackson was already becoming a punch line. “Black or White” topped the charts when I was in Grade Seven and Jacko was more of a freak show draw than music icon throughout my high school years. Then there were the child molestation charges and it looked like the King of Pop would end up irreparably tarnished. He was acquitted of those charges, though, and people started to give him the benefit of the doubt. I mean, if there is one person who was so completely divorced from the standard norms of behaviour and so completely outside our collective realm of comprehension that he might innocently share a bedroom with a young boy and be surprised at the outrage, it was Michael Jackson.
A few years ago, though, I started to hear it: the odd M.J. song. We played Billie Jean at the bar where I worked when I was pregnant with Young C and some of the first fetal movements I felt were in time with this pop classic. Many of those early songs are good. They hold up. There was a bit of a Michael Jackson resurgence going on and people wondered if he had anything more. People were talking about the music, not the bizzaro personal circumstances surrounding the man.
DAILY SNACK
It was raining pretty hard.
I started the car, hit the defrost button and turned on the wipers.
L’il I fell asleep right away.
But Young C and I enjoyed looking for songs on the radio dial,
And identifying street names,
And pointing out landmarks.
We drove right past home and right past bedtime,
Into the dusk.
The smell of rain on a cool summer evening in the car,
Took me right back to my own childhood.
Memories of where safety and security meet excitement and adventure.
They both nodded off and I pulled over and opened a novel.
Off the road, off the grid, the ultimate escape.
Welcome to the new AdSense-free Playground Confidential. Isn’t it so nice and … white? I wish I could write that I have decided to blog for the sheer joy of it and that I am no longer seeking advertising revenue to support my hobby. But that is not the case.
Google AdSense has decided that my blog “has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers.” They’ve shut me down, in other words, for violating their Terms and Agreements. I was pretty taken aback — to say the least — when I first received the email. I mean, this is a one-woman show here. I actually write my own content and rely on a growing base of loyal readers for my traffic. There’s nothing but make-money-off-Google-ads schemes every which way you look. There are scads of sites that are filled with RSS feeds and stolen or cobbled together content designed to maximize search engine optimization and confuse readers into clicking on ads. And they cut me off. Me!
DAILY SNACK
One good thing about hot summer days:
Bare baby legs.
Soft transluscent skin,
Pudgy thighs and knee rolls,
Dimples,
Calves that fold over chubby baby feet.
DAILY SNACK
We all sat in circle formation on the floor,
In the air conditioned recluse that is the Ontario Early Years Centre.
Eight moms, eight babies, and one three-year-old facing us all.
He didn’t sing along and he didn’t lead us in any actions.
He sat and stared like he couldn’t quite believe how out of place he was.
Or maybe he should have had a nap.
Circle time was finally over,
And he hightailed it straight back to the sandbox.
DAILY SNACK
The little girl picked up the big orange shovel.
She looked sheepishly C’s way, eyebrows raised.
He looked past her and ran over to a toy tractor.
Five minutes later I remind him that it’s time to go,
And that we should gather our toys.
He looks up, then panics.
“Hey! That’s my shovel! She’s playing with MY shovel!”
Sigh. “Really? You didn’t see her pick it up? You weren’t even playing with it.”
We retrieve the shovel and go home to see Grandma.
“I shared my shovel with a girl,” he boasts.