In a vast white room lit by hundreds of metres of bright white fluorescent lights, Alvena Poole waits. She sits at one of ten folding tables set in the middle sixth of the room, closest to the door. Empty white walls, a towering white ceiling and floors tiled in dirty white linoleum surround her. The […]
Arts + Music
Live theatre, art exhibits, comedy, literary, spoken word – The Coast guide to Halifax and Dartmouth, NS . The downtown, local arts scene – plays, writers, actors, artists and performers. Painting, sculpture, photography, stand-up, stage.
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Rob in broad daylight
Everybody should have at least one hobby. Some people enjoy bird watching—filling their fanny packs with binoculars and guide books in hopes of spotting that rare triple-horned, green-bellied finch. For those who prefer People magazine to tiny pecking beaks and hay fever, there’s another, more urban, pastime sweeping our city: celebrity watching. The relatively low […]
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Funny girl
Nico the cat judders before springing atop a cafe-style table as comedian/teacher/writer Sherry Lee Hunter, set to swear off the lung rocket habit, fires one up. She inhales, then beats a beeline for an open side window above the sink counter in her compact kitchen. Trim, she moves around the room with the easy grace […]
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Death from above the 49th Parallel
Make no mistake—Death From Above 1979 is huge. But if you’re an average Canadian, you probably don’t know that. What many people don’t know is Jesse Keeler and Sebastien Grainger are rock stars in a lot of countries. Their first single “Blood On Our Hands” hit the Top 40 on the UK charts and the […]
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Lemme at ’em
When you think about Lemmy from Motorhead—and what true rocker doesn’t?— what do you think of first? Maybe his bullet belt. The Rickenbacker bass guitar and shower-stall-style microphone. His Marlboro Reds washed down with a Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola meal plan. Killer tracks like “Killed By Death” or (for you young ones out there) “Shake […]
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Alternative CKDUniverse
This year CKDU turns 20. Two decades of FM broadcasting after a start on closed-circuit radio hooked up to Dalhousie University residences. Like most campus/community stations across Canada, CKDU lasts because of volunteers. Each September, with the flood of new students on campus, people keep making the climb to the fourth floor of Dalhousie University’s […]
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Roll credit
Shauna Hatt’s best year working in film in Nova Scotia was 2003. It was the SARS and blackout year in Toronto, a city that for years has been the biggest film production centre in North America outside Los Angeles. American producers, believing the paranoid projections of weak-kneed insurance companies and a plague-ravaged city of mask-wearers, […]
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Blues Theory
f you’ve ever seen Al Tuck play, you know whatI’m talking about. Before every other song, you get a bit of tuning and twanging, maybe half an anecdote, more tuning, at least one false start, a slug of beer and finally, he’s off. As a performer, Al’s never been known to come sharp right out […]
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Heti games
Tucked away in an alley behind Toronto’s earthy Annex neighbourhood is The Green Room, a bohemian watering hole styled with worn couches, cheap beer and unreliable washrooms. It was on The Green Room’s bookshelves that writer Sheila Heti found her muse—a neglected copy of The Life of William Hickling Prescott, written in 1863 by Harvard […]
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About a boy
Not everyone liked the kid from Enfield right away. In fact, if he had to guess, most people couldn’t stand him. Big odds are something that Classified (AKA Luke Boyd) has been facing almost all his musical life, all the way back to his first Halifax performance. It was 1995, one of the most fertile […]
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Urban legends
Two people meet up on a busy street corner, the traffic a welcome distraction from the tension between them… Decaying buildings stir emotions, making someone wonder why they ever moved back to this place… These are the kinds of everyday occurrences Samson, who lives in Winnipeg, sets against the larger cityscape in a way urban […]
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Stage duty
Martha Irving has come a long way since her directoral debut for Shipwrecked on a Haunted Island. The play, a terrifying ghost story, opened (and closed) 40-odd years ago in Irving’s friend Karen’s backyard. “I was a real tyrant,” says Irving of her 11-year-old self. “I wanted to play all the parts so I kept […]