Let’s go to the library
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 many other libraries, membership is free! Here’s what you can currently find:
Optative Theatre: A Critical Theory for Challenging Oppression and Spectacle by Donovan King (268-page PDF with one-page html intro) A thesis that outlines the theory that OTL was founded on and still operates with today. It speaks of historical predecessors, contemporaries and the basis of some of our projects.
Rachel’s Words Montreal: The Words About the Words (15-page PDF) A verbatim theatre piece dealing with the controversy that erupted when the New York Theatre Workshop cancelled its production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie for political reasons. The script is compiled from news reports, interviews and message board postings on the subject from both sides of the censorship debate. We performed this preceding a reading of Rachel Corrie’s e-mails from Palestine as part of the international viral theatre reaction to the censorship called Rachel’s Words.
Sinking Neptune November 2006 Play Script (15-page PDF) A radical dramaturgy that combines Canada’s incredibly racist “first play” (Lescarbot’s Theatre of Neptune in New France) with verbatim source material taken from news interviews with the group that was attempting to remount it and contrasts this with native voices speaking out against the impact of this play and cultural genocide in general. This is the script used in the first phase of the project that voyaged all the way to Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.
We’re adding new material soon, including the play text for Sinking Neptune II which mixes in discussions surrounding another colonialist celebration, the 400th anniversary of Quebec City, so check back and for now enjoy what’s already available in the Optative Library.
