If, as they say, a picture paints a thousand words, and if more words are allotted the better the picture is, than granted, I won’t be writing any novels today. But darn it, the evening out that these less-than-stellar shots illustrate was so good that I’m going to post them anyway.
In fact, for the past several out-on-the-town stories I’ve written, the accompanying shots have been rather dark and grainy. I guess my being a night-owl and a blogger who writes about the things I do around the city, don’t really compliment one another. If it helps, this week I have two daytime outings planned, so hopefully will be giving you a break from looking at such dark images.
These pictures were taken on Sunday night, when my pal Meghan kindly treated me to a ticket to see a stand-up comedy show.
The show was held at a venue called The Danforth Music Hall. I wrote about this place, which opened almost a hundred years ago in 1919, after attending concerts there last summer (here and here). For those concerts the audience stood wherever they wanted to, in a huge open room, but for this show, they had installed row upon row of vintage theatre seats. I wonder where they were hiding them.
The opener was Selene Luna.
And the headliner was Margaret Cho.
The show ended with a few musicians coming out to accompany Margaret in singing a rude and ridiculous song, complete with audience participation. Based on the volume in the hall, it was clear that everyone was having a great time.
This was the closing gala of a comedy festival that was held here in Toronto over the weekend, called SheDot. The unique feature about this particular festival is that every performer, over the 4 days it ran, was female. Local women and some from all over the world were here, performing stand-up, sketch, improv and storytelling.
In describing both comedians we saw, it would not be enough to simply say they were really funny and we laughed non-stop. While that is true, their shows were also courageous, eye-opening, outrageous and inspiring. I haven’t stopped thinking about their performances since. Different bits keep popping into my head and I’ve found myself laughing out loud. Nick and I share a home office and at one point yesterday, he asked me what was so funny. I tried to explain what exactly I was remembering at the moment, but it lost a lot in translation.
It was gorgeous outside so we took a little walk after the show. The part of the city we were in is filled with all kinds of interesting old buildings. It was the first night this year that I didn’t need a jacket!
I took this picture of the theatre on our way back, which explains the emptiness, when an hour before it had been packed with people.
Margaret and Selene are on tour together, that will take them to Montreal and the United States (see the list here), so you might be able to catch them.
Thanks for dropping over,
xo lou
