WEIRD AND WIRED
LAWNYA VAWNYA 15 NEWSLETTER THURSDAY JUNE 5
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HI! IT’S ALL HAPPENING BB! ON AN UNCHARACTERISTICALLY SUNNY WEDNESDAY, PEOPLE WITH CUTE HAIRCUTS AND LITTLE RED WRISTBANDS STARTED FLOCKING TO BANNERMAN BREWING, GOWER ST UNITED CHURCH, AND THE INTERNET (ONE EVENT WAS ONLINE) TO BASK IN THE NASCENT LV SPLENDOR. READ MORE FOR REVIEWS FROM NICOLE HALDOUPIS, VIOLET DRAKE, AND ALEY WATERMAN, AND CHECK OUT LAWNYAVAWNYA(DOT)COM FOR INFO ON UPCOMING EVENTS.
EVER DEADLY REVIEW BY VIOLET DRAKE (✿)★(✿)★(✿)★(✿)★(✿)★(✿)
Beginning the Wednesday schedule of LV 15 is a special opportunity made possible in partnership with St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, a featured screening of and live Q&A interview with the creators of Ever Deadly: Tanya Tagaq and Chelsea McMullen. After over two decades of live performance and creative prowess, Tagaq finally felt comfortable enough to trust another to document and showcase stories of her life in ways never before seen on film. Ever Deadly is an act of symbiosis of both artists, bridging gaps between music, film, storytelling, and life narrative. For her, she says of McMullen, “I knew right away that Chelsea was the one I wanted to work with…it was first sight”. It was also at first sight of one of Tanya’s breathtaking performances that McMullen had a “transcendent experience” and they knew they had to reach out to Tagaq with passion for a collaborative project.
After much correspondence starting around 2014, the duo crafted a multifaceted and multidisciplinary story through their combined efforts, growing deeply as friends and artists throughout the process. For both McMullen and Tagaq, “engaging as many senses as possible” is integral to both of their practices, and it is this togetherness that is the shared language Ever Deadly emerges from. Anyone interested in multidisciplinary art should engage with this beautiful film, and be sure to check out the raw and unfiltered exclusive interview with the artists as part of the festival. It is there that we get to learn so much more about the filmmaking process, cultural and creative preservation, new personal discoveries, and most excitingly more up-and-coming projects between Tanya and Chelsea. To view this incredible interview please visit https://www.womensfilmfestival.com/everdeadly!"
SWIMMINGABSOLUTE LOSERS/BOOK CLUB AT GOWER STREET UNITED BY NICOLE HALDOUPIS
Opening night of Lawnya Vawnya at Gower Street United began with Book Club, a six-piece Newfoundland and Labrador band (Maddie Ryan, Fardin Mosharraf, Kendall Pittman, Jonte Maulawin, Chris Flynn, and Braydon Scammell). Their wall of guitars and vocal variety stun the senses with genre-bending harmonies—Maddie Ryan singing “picture me like this” stuck with me for a long time through the night. While they don’t read that much, it's clear that Book Club is in it for the fun, and their performance shows that they’re having lots of it.
Next up was Absolute Losers from Charlottetown, PEI (brothers Sam and Josh Langille alongside Daniel Hartinger), who recently had their first visit to Peter Easton Pub. This three-piece band radiates a nostalgia that is hard to place, but fellow concertgoer Justin described it as the feeling of playing an arcade game in the Gander Mall in the ’90s. I’ve never been to the Gander Mall, but this description feels accurate. These Losers don’t play hockey, but their groovy vibes got the crowd swaying and made me want to be a loser, too.
The room really started moving for local sweethearts Swimming (Liam Ryan, Jacob Cherwick, and Nick Hunt), and after all the dancing I urgently needed a slice of Venice.
MADELEINE THEIN READING AND MUSIC BY MARLAENA MOORE AT BANNERMAN BREWING, BY ALEY WATERMAN
Before the show yesterday I set a new record of losing my room key within an hour of checking in, which seems like relevant info given the best word I can come up with to summarize this lovely opening-evening event: disarming. Even the most frazzled of us could be calmed by Madeleine’s incisive prose and gentle, sure voice, or by Marlaena’s goofy endearing banter between lush and melancholic love songs, or Sharon Bala’s astute and tender questions to Thein as they sat in conversation for the last part of the event.
Variegated sunlight streamed in around the trees and through the windows as we all sat rapt, hanging on to every word as Thein read from her new novel The Book of Records, pulling us into a surreal world born, perhaps, of poetry, grief, and hope. “I was trying to find a space where the centuries could wash in like the tides,” she explained in conversation with Bala re: the world her novel takes up. Magically, there seemed to not only be dialogue between Bala and Thein, but also Thein and Moore, as both artists spoke or sang of the sea, of memory, of love as an undeniable reality.
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XO SEE U TOMORROW!