/ We parked, my two young sons and In a modest lot below the hill, Not half-filled, and climbed the shallow lift The two columns (prayerful hands) rising Into a grey morning sky. “Ridge” conjures a cliff or crag Vimy is a hill, a feature on an alluvial plain You might see the same near… Continue reading What to feel at the Vimy Monument
Author: kennethattheatrepublic
Video Preview: 2 Sherlock Holmes Adventures
https://vimeo.com/623064554/79bcd314d2 Check out a video preview from 2 Sherlock Stories at the 2021 Edmonton Fringe, featuring Kenneth Brown and John D. Huston. Video and editing by Brendan Brown
12th Night Review: 2 Sherlock Adventures
https://12thnight.ca/2018/08/21/the-fun-of-deduction-in-the-theatre-2-sherlock-holmes-mysteries-a-guest-12thnight-fringe-review-by-alan-kellogg/ "It’s more than satisfying to simply witness a couple of seasoned pros stand on an all-but-bare stage with only two chairs and well… act, having chosen wonderful stories to tell." - Alan Kellogg, 12thNight.ca
Beer Tent Review: 2 Sherlock Holmes Adventures
https://thebeertentreviews.ca/2021/08/18/review-2-sherlock-holmes-adventures/ "Brown and Huston make something elementarily old lovingly new." - Jean-Paul Fournier, The Beer Tent Reviews
Edmonton Journal review: 2 Sherlock Adventures
https://edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/theatre/fringe-review-2-sherlock-holmes-adventures "The rather reliable charm of this year’s Fringe Holmes via hardworking vets Kenneth Brown and John Huston is that not only do they each flip back and forth between P.I. and M.D., seamlessly switching personas as easily as passing a deerstalker hat, but they handle the rest of the ensemble, too, including a bereaved… Continue reading Edmonton Journal review: 2 Sherlock Adventures
SHERLOCK at the Fringe
THEATrePUBLIC presents 2 Sherlock Holmes Adventures at the 2021 Edmonton Fringe Festival. John D. Huston and Kenneth Brown create a cluster of characters around the famous duo of Holmes and Watson, changing characters on a dime and delivering the comedy, the drama, and the beautiful language of two of Conan Doyle’s most delightful stories. It… Continue reading SHERLOCK at the Fringe
Life After Hockey (1984)
a Canadian classicEdmonton Sun Life After Hockey is a one-man show about a man and his obsession. “Rink Rat Brown” is found skating around on an outdoor rink under the stars. Discovering that he has an audience, Rink Rat begins to tell the tall tale of how it was he (and not former NHL great… Continue reading Life After Hockey (1984)
Treasure Island
Get yer ARRRGHs on! Ken and John Huston’s upcoming collaboration is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s great classic. The show was scheduled for production in the summer of 2020 at the Winnipeg and Edmonton Fringe Festivals, and never went into rehearsal for all-too-obvious reasons. Ken’s adaptation still awaits, as does the treasure chest, the… Continue reading Treasure Island
Look At The Town!
First produced by Poiema Productions/THEATrePUBLIC for the 2019 Edmonton Fringe Festival, then selected by the St. Albert's Children's Festival for 2020 (postponed) written and directed by Kenneth Brown starring Brianne Jang, Candice Fiorentino, Melissa Blackwood, and Bob Rasco “Audiences of all ages will fall under the spell of this truly enchanting piece of theatre.” Isabel… Continue reading Look At The Town!
Sharp Compassion: Scalpels Out
The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer’s art... -T.S. Eliot If there were ever a time to question the distempered part of our body politic, it is now; now, as in no other time in my living memory. In… Continue reading Sharp Compassion: Scalpels Out
Tough Guys, or Why Trump Does Dumb
If you really want to know where Trumpism came from, you might spend 15 minutes watching Twelve O:Clock High, the 1949 flying epic starring Gregory Peck as “General Savage,” a hard-tack, uncompromising USAAF (United States Army Air Force) officer who takes over a B-17 squadron so that the old USA can show the rest of… Continue reading Tough Guys, or Why Trump Does Dumb
Techne and Psyche: Midway and A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
Techne and Psyche: Midway and A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood rolls the end credits with the real Fred Rogers playing and singing one of the many songs he composed during the life of his TV show. It’s a song about sticking to tasks until they are complete, and… Continue reading Techne and Psyche: Midway and A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
Back to the Future, God Damn It
Well, Alberta has stepped backwards again. Stepping backwards politically is an act so familiar to us that when we finally stepped forward and elected a progressive government four years ago it was a seismic shock to the national political psyche. Rachel Notley’s government stepped boldly onto the stage, and led the way for a shift… Continue reading Back to the Future, God Damn It
Hacksaw Ridge: Gibson Apotheosis
After a decade or so in the wilderness, Mel Gibson may have made the movie that will bring him back to Hollywood respectability, and he couldn’t have timed it better if some clairvoyant had shown him the surprising election results of 2016 when he first conceived this project. America really needed a hyper-violent, xenophobic, feel-good… Continue reading Hacksaw Ridge: Gibson Apotheosis
Annals of Tzar Donaldovitch
The first in a series of short tales about the new Tzar at the head of the royal family now running a certain former great Republic. After months of promising to Make Amerikov Great Again, the former billionaire name-brander, education-fraudster, and steak-oil salesman known as Donald Drumfk is now the Leader-Elect of the nation until… Continue reading Annals of Tzar Donaldovitch
“Allied”: Thanks for asking
Hollywood Gets It Wrong, Again… But Thanks I went to see "Allied" the other night with my French Canadian girlfriend. This movie is set in wartime Casablanca and England. And for those of you who might ask, “which war?” I can only respond, “the big one.” Brad Pitt plays an intelligence officer who must decide… Continue reading “Allied”: Thanks for asking
Lindros and the hockey culture
Eric Lindros has been voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. I hear the sportsjocks talk about this as the correction of a horrible injustice. What none of them knows, remembers, or wants to talk about is the reason why, when he was drafted first overall by the Quebec Nordiques, Lindros refused to go. The… Continue reading Lindros and the hockey culture
What right hath these writers?
My play Anatolia Speaks was recently dismissed in a weekly arts publication on the basis that because I am male and not of the country I am writing about, the piece was somehow less valid. I was deeply amused to read Miss Culkin’s little piece about my play Anatolia Speaks in the last issue of… Continue reading What right hath these writers?
Universal Studios: Nostalgia Trip
Universal Studios May 26 When you’re in the presence of America functioning as all-out as at Universal Studios theme park, you are in the belly of the beast. This place is the machine of fantasy at its most unrelieved. The thousands of guests are funnelled from pillar to post as efficiently as one can imagine… Continue reading Universal Studios: Nostalgia Trip
God and the Gun: The Orlando Massacre
Praise the Lord, Pass The Ammo The Orlando Massacre The loathsomely self-satisfied grin on the face of Omar Mateen will haunt me not because it is the face of a demon: it will haunt me because it is the face of an arrogant frat-boy, at once contemptuous and insecure. A lonely little man taking selfies… Continue reading God and the Gun: The Orlando Massacre
Film Essay: Francofonia
Francofonia by Aleksandr Sukarov Aleksandr Sukarov uses cameras like a very smart kid playing with high-level toys. From the early scenes of the film, one of which features a great drone-shot of Paris, lifting us from street level to high above the city, the filmmaker is at play with our perceptions. The film is about… Continue reading Film Essay: Francofonia
The Kennedy Space Center(re)
Florida, May 24. The 24th of May Is the Queen’s Birthday If you don’t give us a holiday We’ll all run away I grew up with my grandmother reciting that once a year. It’s the Queen’s Birthday, up in my homeland. Not that anyone for a thousand miles around here would know or care. (Nor… Continue reading The Kennedy Space Center(re)
What I came South for
Orlando, Saturday, May 21. When I called my pal Sean when I got across the border, I told him I couldn’t wait to simply sit and talk to Americans. One of the great pleasures in being here is to get a chance to feel the pulse of these (in the real sense) republicans. Yesterday was… Continue reading What I came South for
From Florida
Orlando impressions: Good Folks First, everyone drives everywhere. Rather like suburbs anywhere on earth, the only way people can realistically get around and do their daily tasks is to drive. From my billet to the Orlando Fringe is a fifteen-minute haul down the I-4 freeway, which like every freeway in the States that I’ve been… Continue reading From Florida
ECONOMIES: a poem after visiting the Royal BC Museum
ECONOMIES (after a day at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria) We made five shillings a month Ordinary seaman, bosun did better And when we seen them natives and their canoes We thought, how’d they get the time to carve all that cedar That takes time you know and naught to eat but dried… Continue reading ECONOMIES: a poem after visiting the Royal BC Museum