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Archive for May, 2010
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Monday, May 31st, 2010
Toronto Power Couple – theatre and visual arts
The Singers. Together for over 45 years, both Professors at York University – Ron Singer in theatre and fine arts, and Yvonne Singer in visual arts, this Toronto power couple has impacted the lives of hundreds of young, artistic people.
At the height of his career Ron had three full-time jobs. He was a full-time York University professor, Chair of Theatre, Associate Dean of Fine Arts and Director of the Graduate Program in theatre for 32 years (now retired) and ran the Randolph Academy for the performing arts for 17 years. He was, and continues to be, actively involved in broadcast media, doing Breakthrough film and TV. And he has recently taken up learning to play musical instruments, including ukelele.
Yvonne Singer is Professor of visual arts at York University, currently on sabbatical until this fall so that she can focus on her art career. As a respected artist in her own right, she recently exhibited a mixed media installation at Loop Gallery on Dundas Street West.
This charming couple spoke to Tempo Toronto in their four-storey Cabbagetown home, where they swear that climbing the stairs keeps them both young and healthy. We found out what makes them tick.
How would your friends describe you as a couple, and as individuals?
Yvonne: We’re both ambitious, high energy, gregarious, and very close even though we bicker. We really care for each other; we’re good friends. Ron is somewhat ADD, Ron: Yvonne is very grounded. When we first met, for Yvonne to experience me was quite a shock. She didn’t think we’d last a week, let alone 45 years. Yvonne is more careful with what she says, and chooses words more carefully. Yvonne: I am opinionated. Ron is more balanced with what he says to the children.
What aspects of life after 50 are you most passionate about?
Yvonne: We’re old enough to have a perspective, to feel like adults, yet have the energy of youth. We both continue through life with high energy, and intense interest. My personal trajectory started late: I did my Masters in Fine Arts and had my third child at 35, I got tenure when I was 50.
What is your reward for helping Generation X-ers to be all that they can be?
Ron: As teachers we influence young people in many ways. The pay-off for us is witnessing the successes such as Shawn Doyle has been in series in the US and Canada as an actor, including ‘24’, and Richard Rose who runs Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. Yvonne: Guiding students in fine arts and helping them realize their creative abilities is a sensitive and privileged relationship.
What would you describe as your biggest achievement(s)?
Yvonne: achieving a comfortable balance between career and family. Ron: Yes. It’s easy to say; a bitch to do. Staying together, raising a family, and caring about each other is a challenge, even after 45 years. We still have to work at it and we don’t take it for granted. It evolves, and things keep changing. We express ourselves, and are open with each other. I grew up in a family where the loudest person won, and Yvonne came from a family where no one argued. Yvonne: I learned to argue back!
What are your career highlights?
Yvonne: When I was 40 and had a public exhibition at the Toronto Sculpture Garden. It was the largest and most public exhibition I had done. The other was getting tenure at York. Ron: For me it’s having worked at some of the most reputable theatre institutions at home and abroad: I was Assistant Head of all Theatres at Expo 67, and was at Stratford, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, I had theatre training as actor and director at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
What is your career vision for the next decade?
Yvonne: More teaching, more art. The best thing that happened is mandatory retirement was stopped. I am 65 now, and I am just getting started. Ron: Not retiring. I’m still producing TV series, and I look at new things all the time.
Has your perspective on life changed as you’ve grown older?
Yvonne: It’s a cliché but true – youth is wasted on the young. What we do have is the benefit of years of experience and study, and at the same time we are both aware of what’s going on culturally. Ron: I see more theatre now than many people in my profession can fit in; and I continually explore new literature: I’m eager to keep up. I do this partially through students, through our children, and because of our self motivation to keep up with contemporary culture.
What are the advantages to being over 60 (over 70, in Ron’s case) in your careers?
Ron: Now I have only one full time job, I can travel more. When I go to theatre I go on my own because I can see – and enjoy – three plays in a day. When we travel together we do galleries and plays.
Tell us about your travels,
Yvonne: I don’t like traveling for the sake of it. I get disoriented. However, if I have a focus and it’s work related, I enjoy myself. For example, last October we went to Paris, Venice, Berlin and London for an art tour and part of my sabbatical research. We just came back from Australia as part of an exchange program, and we go to New York galleries. Ron: Unlike Yvonne, I love travel. I would go anywhere any time, just for the sake of it. Though I have learned to make my travel more meaningful to give focus to theatre and art.
What is the one thing you would each like to be remembered for?
Yvonne: That we made an impact and we were successful in our commitment to work and family. Ron: That we cared not only for work but for each other and our family.
Tags: Ron and Yvonne Singer, theatre, Toronto people, visual arts, York University Professors
Posted in Inspiration | 3 Comments »
In Bolivia: as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador
Monday, May 31st, 2010
Helping young Bolivians – part 1
by Dayle Haddon
It was difficult to breathe when we landed in La Paz, the highest airport in the world at 12,000 feet. It was 6AM. We hadn’t slept all night. Dizzy, off balance, there was a tightness in our heads coupled with a continual low-grade headache that hit us as soon as we landed. We staggered getting our luggage, laughing about the high altitude fog we were in and handed our endless customs papers to some very severe agents. It was as if we’d drunk too much and were standing on a boat moving at sea…with waves! It was hard to concentrate. As a team we would struggle with altitude sickness throughout the trip.
The city of La Paz was spectacularly beautiful with snowcapped mountains extending as far as the eye could see. The views flying in over the Royal Range, a section of the Andes that runs down the west coast of South America were magnificent. The sun was rising just as we crested over hundreds of snow packed peaks, one after the other, some of them cupping calm shimmering green lakes in their craggy nooks. It was truly awesome. The first rays of morning light lit up the snow. Soft, puffy clouds hung over the highest peaks. They call these particular mountains the “Illimani” or three peaks because one mountain here has three tips. We had landed in Bolivia, the heart of the Andes, and the poorest country in South America.
I had come to Bolivia with a UNICEF team of four, and joined up with others on the ground to travel into the country. Our mission was to see programs UNICEF supports, find out what were the most immediate and pressing needs and determine how we could bring attention to those needs.
After a few days traveling through Bolivia, I realized this was a different kind of poverty from the in-your-face kind I’d experienced in Africa on other UNICEF trips. There were no makeshift tents housing highly contagious cholera patients as I’d seen in war torn Angola. Flies did not cover the sad faces of children as I’d witnessed in camps in Darfur. It was not the plight of displaced children begging for food at an IDP camp outside Goma, in the Congo, where you couldn’t offer what you had for fear of causing a riot. The needs in Bolivia were desperate but struck closer to home. It seemed more like what you might encounter in the poorest places in the US. However, as the days went on and we began to scratch beneath the surface, I understood that this was one of the more emotionally challenging trips I had ever experienced.
I was moved by little Melody, a six year old we met in the ‘Little City’, one of three hundred centers for abandoned children in the city of Cochabamba, in south central Bolivia. With her thick black eyelashes, cropped dark hair and ready sweet smile, we connected right away. She didn’t know where her mommy was and told us simply, “I lost my little brother.” We didn’t understand and asked about her back-story. Her mother had abandoned Melody in the streets when she was five, along with her two brothers, age six and two and half. She and her older brother left the little one for a few minutes to find some food. When they returned, he was gone. The little boy has never been found.
In the same center I noticed tiny Marina, a deaf-mute, who was abandoned at seven in the southern region of Bolivia and after years of wandering lost in the mountains, barely existing, she made her way to the ‘Little City”. One day a social worker happened to style her hair and that was a turning point. She has become obsessed with hairdressing and now does everyone’s hair at the center. Given her limitations, Marina is only able to socialize with the small children, yet remarkably, she doesn’t suffer from low self-esteem. She is determined. She is beginning to vocalize single syllables and dreams of becoming a professional hairdresser, and one day to be able to read and write.
Dayle Haddon continues with part 2 and part 3 in June
Tags: author, Dayle Haddon, L'Oreal, supermodel, Unicef Goodwill Ambassador
Posted in Giving Back | 1 Comment »
