MORE CULTURE!

Yesterday Saturday I found more culture to entertain me in Toronto. I went to an exhibition of photographs and videos by a photographer. The exhibit was very interesting with two main themes. One involved photographs of people clothed and then naked and super imposing the images. It was like we had x-ray vision and could see through the subjects clothes. The others were collages of several photographs of the same subjects arranged in such a way as to suggest a kind of movement in the photographs. I wish my friend PM could see this exhibit. He is a photographer and would have liked the exhibit very much.

Last night I went to another play, Cold Meat Party by Brad Fraser. It was sort of a Big Chill for people of my age with a gay slant to the play. I enjoyed it very much. It did have some bizarre twists in it which the general public probably did not appreciate but fans of Brad Fraser surely wood. Two of the characters were involved in body mutation. A woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer and was facing the possibility of having her breast removed surgically. The other a friend of hers from university was going to castrate himself, he had found a woman on the Internet who would perform the procedure. The man had always felt his balls were alien to his body and had attempted self castration unsuccessfully as a teenager but his mother walked in and it was blamed on the inhalation of fumes from the model he was building at the time. It was quite interesting to see the reaction of the female who did not want parts of her body removed but would have to in order to live and her resentment of a man who was willing removing body parts that were doing him no harm. I think this would make an excellent movie. It was also interesting to note that the play was commissioned by two theatres one in Manchester, England and one in Toronto, but the Toronto theatre refused to produce it because of the controversial content. The play was produced in Manchester and the smaller fringe theatre in Toronto brought over the director from Manchester for it's production a year later. It was also a bit of a mind trip being taken back to memories of the 80's by means of music and the stories of the characters.

I then met a couple of friends G and M who I had been chatting to on the Internet for a couple of months. we had a glass of wine and some nice chat. It was late so I took myself home to rest my cold but we are meeting again this afternoon and I am looking forward to it.

I called PM to wish him a happy Birthday today but he was busy so I will have to wait and catch up with all his news later in the week. Well tomorrow I go back home to the land of limited culture. I will miss Toronto.