Every activist knows that even the most anti-corporate jam can be co-opted by commercial interests. Usually this involves some sort of subversion or re-appropriation of the techniques used but every now and then, the co-option is nothing more than sticking a corporate identity where it doesn’t belong. A few years ago OTL culture-jammed PartyPoker.net who […]
Even though we’re known for guerilla-style culture jams and highly improvised performances like Car Stories, OTL also has also produced a significant amount of text over the years, some of it theoretical material and some of it scripts for theatre. We’ve started collecting some of this in what we’re calling the Optative Library. Just like […]
Well before Time2Ad‘s giant billboard reared its obtrusive head on St-Laurent Boulevard, OTL’s Reclaim the Main campaign had been challenging corporate and monoculture intrusions our heritage site through culture jamming. Every summer during the street fairs we were greeted with a new corporate sponsor monopolizing a celebration that’s supposed to be for the people as […]
On the occasion of today’s Quebec election and in honour of the difficulties Stephen Harper is presently facing in Ottawa, we present a mock press conference we performed with UTIL (l’Unité Théâtral d’Interventions Loufoques) on the back of a flatbed truck before an anti-war march in the freezing cold, March 2006. First, the guest of […]
On Friday, OTL continued its Buy Nothing Day tradition of jamming the corporate monoculture and our consumer culture by going to the bank and the mall. In our scene, Mr. Monopoly (monocle, moustache, top hat and all) had just lost a bunch of money on the stock market and went looking for a handout with […]
Last year, it was a clever, creative warning of what was to come if we didn’t curb our over-consumptive ways. This year, it seems like the prophecy of the Shopocaypse is coming true, if you follow international business news, anyways What Would Jesus Buy is a film that chronicles NYC theatre activist Reverend Billy and […]
Buy Nothing Day is an international challenge to our oversaturated, unsustainable consumer culture. For the past five years, Optative Theatrical Laboratories has challenged this glut with guerilla theatre culture jams at places like McDonald’s, Starbucks and more recently Chartwells. Mass consumption wouldn’t be possible without the banks and this year, the greed of those institutions […]
With this year’s Buy Nothing Day only four days away, here’s a look back at The Chartwells Tour, a theatrical jam performed by OTL and Uberculture Concordia last BND to challenge the monopolizing University food service provider controlled by Compass Group Canada. Chartwells not only runs all the cafeterias at Concordia and McGill Universities, as […]
Welcome to the official blog of Optative Theatrical Laboratories. OTL was founded at the University of Calgary in 1999 and soon moved to Montreal where it has been performing guerilla theatre culture-jams and activist plays ever since. In this space, you will hear about our latest projects, reports from previous theatrical interventions such as our […]
