Optative Theatrical Laboratories is going to the Buffalo Infringement Festival, easily Western New York’s largest and most popular arts festival, and arguably the world’s most independent and authentic one! With absolutely no corporate interference, artists can breathe freely and get important work done within a supportive community. It’s an artistic paradise that doesn’t normally exist under the […]
The second day of the World Fringe Congress, Friday August 17, had a jam-packed schedule of panel discussions, break-out sessions, and a reception chez the Lord Provost (Edinburgh’s mayor), leaving absolutely no time to attend any shows at the Fringe, Forest Fringe or Free Fringes. The themes I narrowed in on were seemingly contradictory. Fringe […]
The 8th annual Buffalo infringement festival runs from July 26 – August 5, 2012, and this year Optative Theatrical Laboratories (OTL) will be in attendance for the entire duration! The Buffalo infringement festival is a both world leader in grassroots arts management and the largest arts festival in Western New York. This year, OTL will be presenting three […]
This month marks the 10th anniversary of OTL’s infamous CAR STORIES show getting ejected from the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival, and already the media are taking note of this disturbing milestone. The story is one of the most recounted in Montreal’s anglophone theatre community – it is the story of unethical corporate interests steamrolling artists at what […]
We feel that this is a blatant attempt at discrimination and scapegoating. After all, these supposed aliens aren’t evil. They aren’t harming anyone. They’re just trying to get by and aren’t even a drain. They eat the food that the rest of us throw away or don’t even consider to be food in the first place as this photo suggests
Of all the projects OTL has created, Car Stories is most certainly the longest-running, at times has been the most controversial and if it wasn’t for the infringement Festival, a true viral phenomenon, it would undoubtedly be the best known. In a nutshell, Car Stories is a play containing several shorter plays, a piece of […]
It’s New Year’s Eve, so what better time to look back on the past year and the year ahead. 2008 was a busy one for OTL on several fronts: Sinking Neptune II: We adapted our verbatim theatre critique of Canada’s “first play” Lescarbot’s Theatre of Neptune in New France and those remounting it, racism against […]
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 […]
