Special Events

Another thing DaPoPo does well is share fun times with friends old and new.  Join us for these exciting special and social events!

September 30, 7pm

Opening Night Celebration: Prologue

Come enjoy a cabaret of performances, personal anecdotes and readings that foreshadow the Live-In 2012 story. A taste of the Live-In, with workshop facilitators, special guests, playwrights, actors plus refreshments and socializing.


October 3, 8:00 pm

Flight School  presented by Steph Berntson

Reservations recommended. Email dapopolivein@gmail.com

HEY! I'm interested in YOU. Get out your pens. Face the paper. Let's collect your ideas. You have six minutes. Don't let your hand stop. We will co-create this show by writing in a series of short, timed bursts, based on common themes. In vivo and altogether, we augment, extend, and revel in those stories you've been harbouring. Then, we read. Let's see what magic INTERSECTS, OK? We'll learn to fly by leaping. Flight School is, at once, a creative approach to performance theorising and a critical approach to creativity – both a show, and a show-and-tell. You need only share material if you feel so inclined ...or so inspired.

*Attendees are asked to bring a picture of themselves in elementary school, a favourite song or nursery rhyme, and/or a personal credo or motto.

Steph Berntson makes noise. As a writer/creator, she has penned for FLASHQUIZ (www.flashquiz.ca), the CBC, DaPoPo, SurfCamp (www.surfcampcity.org) and Nightwood Theatre. Steph has sung in eight productions for the Canadian Opera Company as a member of the children's chorus, recorded the theme song for the 1988 Calgary Olympics, and warbled Bizet on camera in the film Life with Mikey (Phoebe Productions). She has built words for original commissioned plays to Berlin in 2004 and 2006 for the FEZ Wuhlheide's "Just Say It" conference and a Festival of Canadian Art (DaPoPo Theatre/Canada Council). Steph has slammed poetry for the CBC, NCRA and the National Wordlympics (CFSW). She has concocted soundscapes for The Proust Project (Festival of Ideas and Creation), Show and Tell Alexander Bell (Drama Centre), Arm's Length (Summerworks), and On the Rocks (Edie Inc). Recently, she created/performed in the interactive, site-specific The School PROJECT (FLASHQUIZ/Ontario Arts Council) and the site- specific music-theatre workshops, PlayMachinePlay (PSi18); We Beats (Drama Centre) and MusicBox (PSi/SurfCamp). In the works: three large-scale mobile performance projects as StephBot -- How Playwrights Die, Maracle, and Sipping the Zeitgeist. She is halfway through her doctorate, researching unusual vocal and verbal performance in public space. Recent academic gigs: five research months in Singapore digging on drag queens and Singlish; a public sound project in Japan funded by the Canadian Association for Theatre Research; a research trip to the soundart collective at Fylkingen, Stockholm and in the streets of Copenhagen; and performances with Performance Studies International (PSi) in Utrecht, Holland and (forthcoming) PSi 18 in Leeds, UK.

October 7, 5:00 pm
Thanksgiving Potluck

Thanksgiving Potluck 2011

Bring food and stories to share as we gather around a big table to be grateful for friends, food and art.

October 9, 7:00 pm
Blowhard! From Suck to Suck-cess: 
How to tell a Story, the Blowhard Way

With storytelling instruction and advice from your favourite Blowhards...Andrea Dorfman, Tara Doyle, Jackie Torrens and Stephanie Domet.

Reservations recommended. Email dapopolivein@gmail.com

For those of you who have a story that you'd love to tell at a Blowhard, but are afraid it might suck, this storytelling workshop is for you! We’ll go over How To Know If You Have A Story, How To Structure That Sucker and How To Get Up In Front Of A Group Of People And Tell It!

Admission: $5 suggested donation

Andrea Dorfman is an artist and filmmaker who has made numerous experimental and dramatic short films, music videos and animations as well as two feature fims - Parsley Days (2000) and Love That Boy (2003), and the documentary, Sluts (2005).

Tara Doyle is an Associate Producer on The Smithsonian Channel's series Forensic Firsts, dedicated to the history of criminal forensic science. This year, she very much enjoyed attending Hallowe'en parties in her Astral Life Coach costume.

Stephanie Domet is a writer-broadcaster who lives in Halifax. She likes nothing more than a good story well told.

Jackie Torrens is a writer, actor, host and documentarian. She works in TV, theatre, radio, film - frankly, anywhere that will take her.

October 21, 8:00 pm

Panel Discussion: Whose Story Is It Anyway?

Moderator: Clare Waque

Considering that theatre is a mode of representing identities other than our own, how do the choices we make in terms of what we create and present say about our culture? What responsibility do we have to embody others when creating theatre? A discussion with Guillermo Verdecchia, Mary-Colin Chisholm, Ken Schwartz, Lee-Anne Poole and others (tba).

October 28, 1:00 - 5:00 pm
The "It's All Fun and Games" Challenge
Devised by Zach Faye, with Garry Williams

The gloves are coming off, the flip flops are going on. Run, skip, leap, trip, twist, laugh and jive at DaPoPo's finest games challenge (and we aren't talking board games). If "unhealthily competitive" SHOULD be on your resume, you should not miss this.

October 31, approx. 9:30pm

Epilogue: Closing Night Party

Immediately following the reading of "Shadows on Oak Island", we'll close offt he month with a last hurray party, giving the Live-In story a very happy ending.   Costumes optional, good times guaranteed.