I'm very excited to announce that a project I've been working on will premiere in Dublin, Ireland, January 14-17, 2016, as part of the First Fortnight Festival. The work is a solo performance written and performed by my colleague and friend, Jenny Macdonald, a Canadian by birth who's lived and worked in Ireland for the last several years as an artist and arts facilitator.
These actions by Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Open-hearted.
Fearless.
Brave.
Humane.
Leadership.
Now I find it difficult to fall asleep at night. My mind wanders through the news and experiences of the day, and I imagine disastrous outcomes. Or I think of things I could say. Should say. Or actions I could take that might somehow change what's happening in the world. Then the defeated feeling sets in.
Last night I was watching the news before going to bed, and I saw an excerpt of a new ISIS propaganda video that apparently has several versions produced in different languages, including English. There was a section of the video that flashed through the last three or four American presidents, calling them awful names, then landed on a graphic that featured the letters "LGBT" and the word "sodomites" with a voiceover saying something about America being a land of sodomites. In the moment I dismissed it as gibberish, but the images and language kept coming back to me as I tried to fall asleep.
