The Weekly Update- 24/3/3010: T Minus 6 Weeks!

"Six weeks away people! Only six weeks away!"

The havoc that is wreaked when I shout this aloud in the office is insane. Heads are clasped in despair, forehead veins pop, knuckles turn white, and keyboards click away with the fury of 100 pecking chickens? I don’t know... maybe I took it a little far, but this phrase certainly brings some distress into the office.

The Wall!

The last week we have kept ourselves busy by welcoming the lovely Nina Lee Aquino into the office almost every day. Here she sits, head to head with Byron churning out schedule after schedule. The reason the wall looks so tidy is because Byron and Nina have put up so many schedules they practically had to tear the whole thing down and re-post everything so it looked pretty again. Now the two of them are on to casting, and the feeling is that once the actors are in the schedule it becomes concrete. Exciting!


Andrea has been designing fabulous advertisements for our 7th Annual Potluck Festival featuring: GENesis Asian-Canadian Theatre Conference, submitting them for publication in Canadian Theatre Review, as well as creating ads and inserts for Native Earth and Carlos Bulosan Theatre respectively. She’s making sure flyers get distributed and managing the behemoth task of putting the (delayed) program together. With deadlines set towards the end of this week, Andrea’s life is only getting busier.

Carin is dedicating her life to masterminding our budget and drilling it in to us that we must protect her bottom line. Somehow, between her many jobs, Carin has got us a company credit card, which we will use to buy flights as soon as it arrives at the office. Sometimes Carin senses that we are desperate for coffee.


When we run out of coffee filters, we use Bounty!

Sunday saw the core team sitting together in one room (finally!) to make sure that we are all on the same page moving forward. Coffee was drank, snacks were had, and details were mulled over. We sorted out some ticketing snafus, talked about the budget, and in the end I know that I felt really satisfied that we had all met. There’s something nice about having everyone in the same room... it brings the whole picture together. While you can see the long road we still have in front of us, we know that we will travel it quickly, with the support of each other, and hopefully with great success. I definitely left the meeting feeling that I am so lucky—I am a young professional working in my field, in the arts! Woo hoo!

Oh yeah, now that everything is sorted, the Festival and Conference passes are now on sale through Factory Theatre. See all that info here, and we’ll see you there!

Updates!

If last week was all about our massive flyer and online content launch, this week has only gotten more hectic. Last week, thanks to Byron, Andrea, Andrew Cheng (our Intern Company Dramaturg) and Donald Woo (our volunteer coordinator) we have managed to continue our flyering spree, covering the neighbourhoods of Kensington, the Annex, Little Italy, Queen West, Queen West West, Koreatown, Chinatown (new and old), and many, many more...

We went from George Brown, to York, to Ryerson, to U of T and back again, spreading our origami lotus flyers and the good fortune (2 for 1 tickets!) they bring. We stuffed Future Folk programs at Theatre Passe Muraille and only pausing to eat delicious spicy chicken teriyaki and answer e-mails.

Aside from flyering, last week we also faced some major grant application deadlines, meaning that most people in the office were functioning despite an enormous lack of sleep (compounded by the fact that David and Nina, our artistic visionaries) are currently working towards the launch of Monster Under the Bed with Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, which has only just opened.

This week, Byron and Andrea have continued flyering in all of their spare time (ha!), but have also found the time to start work on preparing conference welcome packages , and update our website (schedule is posted!!). Mostly, the office space has completely transformed due to Nina being a constant force in the office this week who is miraculously helping us work out the details of our schedule. As Andrea posted on our twitter, the office bumpin’ and our fu-GEN heart is happy!!! (Or slightly stressed...judging by the look on Nina's face)



Carin continues to super organize our office, while completing our OAC grant applications for the 15th, meaning that she has become an expert at trying to run fu-GEN covertly from the bathroom stalls in her other place of employment, and spending her evenings typing up the grant with one hand while nursing her daughter in the other.

As for me? Nothing too interesting in the life of the intern, just answering the questions from artists and academics from across the continent as they roll in, spending my days wondering how the heck I got this job working with all of the people that I spent the duration of my MA writing about. That's all for now!

The Making of fu-GEN's Origami Lotus Instructional Video

Greetings out there! So, as promised, here are some photos from the making of our Origami Lotus Instructional Video.

We spent two days working on this video, which is, granted, not that long.. but it did cause some hilarity and hysteria behind the scenes. Here you can see the face behind the folding hands, the man behind the video camera, and me (responsible for taking the partially blurry photos of the event).


This is Andrea, our Director of Marketing and Development, pre-shoot. Unbeknownst to her, the next few hours of her life will be poured into non-stop lotus folding.

Here we see Byron, our Asian-Canadian Community Developer and Festival producer getting the camera ready. All business here in the office.


And on the right you can see Andrea's magic hands in action!

Above is Byron watching (and coaching) Andrea from the sidelines.

Edit, edit, edit

That's me! All tuckered out after a hard day of taking pictures.


Told you! We are all work and no play here at the fu-GEN office...

That's all for now, folks! More to come later!

Meet the Office Staff!

Jenna Rodgers- Administrative Intern
Hey all! I am fu-GEN’s shiny new intern, here to all of the incredible people in the office put together the 7th Annual Potluck Festival featuring: GENesis Asian-Canadian Theatre Conference. I am fresh off completing an MA in International Performance Research in a joint program between the University of Amsterdam and the University of Tampere, Finland. Originally from Edmonton, Alberta, I’m trying to take Toronto by storm through the creative powers possessed by the fu-GEN collective. I’m in charge of this blog, so most of what is posted here will be written by yours truly, with the occasional post by my fantastic co-workers!

Nina Lee Aquino- Outgoing Artistic Director
We're in the middle of a transition in management at this moment, and Nina is sadly leaving the office—but not our hearts! fu-GEN is essentially Nina's brainchild, so without this incredibly brilliant and creative woman, we wouldn`t be.

David Yee- Associate Artistic Director
Taking over for Nina, David is the incoming Artistic Director. He is a well-known playwright and a talented actor who will bring a very exciting and different energy to the company. He is also my boss, which makes him awesome by default, but seriously, he's super-talented and plays a HUGE role in bringing this years` Potluck Festival into being.

Richard Lee- General Manager
A dynamic ball full of energy and spunk, Richard is our outgoing General Manager. When he is not busy handing the General Management of the company over to Carin, Richard spends his spare time sound designing, acting, fight choreographing and being a father. Needless to say, Richard is always on the go.

Carin Lowerison- Intern General Management
Taking over for Richard, Carin has her work cut out for her. She's the feisty one in the office, whipping us into shape and keeping the office organized. Without her, we would likely be working amidst piles and piles of stacked up file folders and scripts. Carin holds us together, making sure deadlines are met, e-mails are responded to, and that we get paid! She is also an amazing yoga teacher and busy mother who never ceases to entertain us with stories about her beautiful daughter.

Andrea Mapili- Director of Marketing and Development
Andrea is the beauty sitting in the corner of the office working away at all seconds of the day on designing the amazing origami lotus flyers, directing phone calls, answering all of my questions, working to create the fu-GEN brand, and occasionally breaking for a round of Monopoly Express. She is an amazing teacher and extremely hard worker, who will always be the first one sit down with you to enjoy red wine, good food, and excellent conversation.

Byron Abalos- Asian-Canadian Community Developer
Sitting directly across from Andrea, Byron spends most of his day with his back to me. That being said, I can always see what's on his computer (usually YouTube), but when he's not playing office DJ, Byron is busy making important contacts with Asians in the GTA. Oh yeah, he's also the producer of the 7th Annual Potluck Festival, meaning that it is his job to liaise with all of the artists in the Potluck and make sure that our show hits the stage running!

For now, these are the players in our little office game. I hope you enjoy reading!! To see our pictures, you can click on this link, but know that picture will be coming as this blog progresses... and in the lucrative "Making Of" post, that will follow the launch of our Origami Lotus Flyer instructional video.