Encyclopedia News; September 19

[Gaetan Charlebois]

Hello All

The Encyclopedia of Canadian Theatre on the WWW has no been online for a
year! Happy birthday!

My call for help in Vancouver/BC yielded good results and things should
improve over the next while. It also helps that Georgia Straight has vastly
improved their web site and I can get access to theatre reviews. Indeed,
more and more companies across the country are getting the picture about the
web and it may have something to do with the new Stats Can figures which say
that 11,000,000 Canadians used the Internet in 1998 (up 2,000,000 from
1997). Now if theatre companies figure  out how easy it is to get a web
presence up, we'd all be laughing. Really; if you buy the right software -
or even use share/freeware available for download at sites like
shareware.com it's a cinch. (The first version of canadiantheatre.com -
about 1000 separate pages then - was designed on freeware! and was on a
server in California which charged $25 US per month. Even the domain name -
canadiantheatre.com - costs me less than $100 CND per two years.) What is
most frustrating is the number of theatres who have e-mail and don't know
how to use it. One company in Montreal has a site that is two years out of
date and a yahoo.com e-mail address that no one answers mail on. Meanwhile,
they wait for the phone to ring.

The philosophy here is evolving from madly adding new profiles to improving
what's there already. Profiles will be added (I suspect at a rate of about
two a week) but I will try to be more judicious and less responsive to any
old e-mail that comes across the screen (ie: "You obviously know nothing
about our region" written before the e-mailer even looked at the the
site...). I'll also not throw my hands up in despair whenever a
company/person insists on inclusion and then doesn't follow up with
information. I've realized that when someone buzzes a name at me, a seed is
planted. Consciousness, in this business, is half the battle. (ie: When you
send an e-mail, like "What about Tom Walmsley!", my computer indexes the
info and when I look for it later that little e-mail appears in the search;
so even an apparently  inconsequential - or mean-spirited - e-mail serves a
purpose and builds towards a profile. It also helps that I don't throw
anything away...)

Saskatchewan/The National Theatre Calendar and Registry status report:
Nothing yet. (But we keep hoping.)

If you would like a copy of the entire list of profiles, I can send it to
you by e-mail. Also if, for teaching etc., you'd like all the Thea-Tricks
questions and answers since the beginning, that's available too.  (Both at
no charge like all services provided by the site.)

Meanwhile, don't forget Heavenly Voices for your regional news, job postings
or audition calls. (http://www.canadiantheatre.com/heavenlyvoices.html)

And announce your show!
(http://www.canadiantheatre.com/calendar/calendarguidlines.html) If you want
to see what a typical region's and month's line-up can look like go to
(http://www.canadiantheatre.com/calendar/atse99.html)

New Profiles:
Hassell, Ereca (Designer) (http://www.canadiantheatre.com/h/hasselle.html)
"Something Red" (Play, Tom Walmsley)
(http://www.canadiantheatre.com/s/somethingred.html)

Updates:
Reviews; Heavenly Voices; Thea-Tricks; Playlist; Masthead;
Calendar/productions added: 13; Moore, D.M.; Shaw Festival; Designing; Dora
Mavor Moore Award; Caravan Theatre; Western Canada Theatre Company; Just For
Laughs; Geordie Productions; du Maurier World Stage; Beaubien, J.; Beaulne,
G.; Dube, M.; Walmsley, T.; Hogan, T.; Fisk, M.; Playwrights Theatre Centre

Gaetan L. Charlebois (Editor, The Encyclopedia of Canadian Theatre on the
WWW) http://www.canadiantheatre.com or
http://cantheatre.canoe.ca
If you want to join the Encyclopedia's mailing list (and get information
before anyone else as well as the Monday Hint for the Thea-Tricks Doozey),
simply send an e-mail to blajeune at total.net with the subject heading
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