All the World’s a Stage: Celebrating International Theater Day

theater

International Theater Day was established on March 27th, 1961 by the UNESCO International Theatre Institute (ITI). On this day, various national and international theatre events take place, including a circulation of the World Theatre Day International Message. At the invitation of the ITI, a notable figure will share their reflections on ‘the theme of Theatre and a Culture of Peace’, which is then translated into more than 20 languages.

This year’s author of the message is Jon Fosse, a Norwegian writer and playwright, who you can read about here. Of his works, we have his Septology in our catalogue, ready for you to borrow and delve into.

My theater experience is limited to a production of Anastasia at the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre a few years back (it was delightful and magical!) and constantly foiled attempts to see Matilda the Musical (the tickets sold out so fast).

Every year I tell myself I’ll manage to go to the Stratford festival and see a play…and every year I never do, due to various reasons. But maybe 2024 will be my year; I very much hope to watch Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet and/or Wendy and Peter Pan!

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Get Spring Ready with The Seed Library!

Seed Library

With food prices remaining stubbornly high and a greater focus on healthy, organic and sustainable living, growing your food from scratch has never been more tempting. We’re proud to partner with York Region Food Network to help make this dream a reality by giving you the seeds and know-how to get started. This year, we will host a series of gardening-related programs, which will provide step-by-step instructions on growing plants and getting the best out of your edible garden.

The current program lineup is as follows:

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Start Your (Game) Engines!

The cover of Elements of Game Design by Robert Zubek

It’s March, and VPL’s first GameJam is well underway. Tommy already made a post explaining what it’s all about. Still, I thought I’d do a bit of advertising for it here and encourage people who maybe aren’t ready to make a game from scratch to get in on some game creation. Fair warning: these won’t be accepted as GameJam entries, so this post is entirely for fun from that perspective. This is likely a moot point, though, as I’m guessing my audience is likely too old to be entering the game jam anyway, but shout-outs to any grade 2-8 students reading my posts. I’ll be focusing on a suite of games that allow players to make games within them in addition to playing user-created levels.

The box art of Super Mario Maker

I’ll start with something that’s been popping up in my newsfeed lately: the original Super Mario Maker for the WiiU. If you want to borrow this one and play other people’s levels, jump on it quickly. WiiU servers are getting shut down in April, taking all of the user-created levels with them. You’ll still be able to build and play through your own levels, but that’s about it. Borrow it soon, though, and you can help Team 0% ensure that every level ever uploaded gets beaten by someone other than the original creator before that inevitable shutdown. At the time of writing this (March 18th, 2024), there’s only a single level left: Trimming the Herbs. This clear video is from the creator, who had to beat it to upload it to the servers, so don’t go thinking someone’s pulled it off just yet. Though… if even seasoned Mario veterans are having trouble with this one, then maybe getting that final clear is a little out of reach for most people.

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