Momen Thinks

John McCain has in the past few weeks reneged on a campaign promise to run a respectful campaign.  He has stated that Obama would rather win an election than win a war, he ran an ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, and now he has disgustingly said that Obama is playing the race card.  I would argue, along with Bob Herbert from the New York Times, that it is McCain who is playing the race card.

John McCain has proven ill fit to be President many times.  Whether it’s his stubborn support for the war in Iraq, his lack of a plan for the economy, or simply his inability to understand basic facts on the ground.  He is still referring to the Czech Republic as Chekloslovakia.

Sadly this type of campaign will continue.  Why?  Because John McCain and the Republicans has nothing else to run on.  They don’t have the record and they don’t have the ideas.  It’s dispecable and desperate.  Obama needs to win, if anything to prove that this type of campaigning doesn’t work.  I would hope that the Americans after 8 years of the worst presidency in its history will no longer let themselves play politics on the Republican level…let us hope.

First off I wanna preface this by saying that it was rather exciting to be mentioned and linked on Chris Wilkinson’s blog on the Guardian.

I’ve wanted to comment on this little web video for a while now so I will take the time to do so.  Chris himself tackles the video, as does Kelly Nestruck at the Globe and Mail – who has become by the way officially my favourite critic, partly in the way he entices Morris Panych into discourse.  Anyway, here is my  take on this video:

One of my first professional experiences as an actor (doing a reputable gig in which I was paid a sum of money) was a production of INTERROGATION for Modern Times Stage.  To this day I consider it one of the most artistic and memorable experiences I’ve ever had as an actor.  I shared the stage with fantastic actors, and was directed by now multiple Dora winner, and proud to say mentor, Soheil Parsa.  It was performed at Theatre Passe Muraille.  We had the mainspace, and we shared the back space with another theatre company that was performing a play written by a female Canadian playwright named Hannah Moscovitch.  The play was The Russian Play and it was the hit of the festival.  I never got a chance to see the play, but when Hannah’s next play East of Berlin premiered at Factory Theatre I made sure to see it.  I will say this bluntly, East of Berlin gave me a profound sense of hope.  Hannah’s script was impeccable – wrenching, intellectual, humourous, and filled with passion.  Hannah Moscovitch is a bright light in Canadian theatre at the moment.

The other playwrights in the video while I am not fully familiar with them are from what I’ve heard wonderful as well.  I know Anita Mujumdar as a wonderful actor as she played The Boy in Modern Times’ production of Bloom. And I remember swooning after seeing her at a production of Interrogation – yes my friends she is beautiful.

I recognize wholeheartedly the talent of these women, which allows me to recognize the irony and the humour of the video.  In fact by reading the comments on the Summerworks blog itself, those who are familiar with the playwrights and their works recognize exactly what I did. I hope that this video in no way leaves the impression that the women present are not brilliant, because they are.  The mere notion that they are succesful female Canadian playwrights means the world to our country.  Let us hope that no one watches this thing and decides against going the festival.  I do not want to make judgments on the two theatre festivals that happen in Toronto in the summer time, but from my experience, Summerworks is where you will find a consistency that is not found at the Fringe.

But honestly, I pretty much agree with playwright Adam Pettle who poses the real question that needs to asked, and I paraphrase, “OK…but who’s the hottest??”