There's No Place Like Home
by Lester Alfonso
I knew about No Place since we had recorded Tammy Foreman's Ontario Arts Council demo recording with Ian Osborn there in 1998. It had a radical art space feel to it even then. Now, four years later, we've moved into the cleaned up "residential" version of No Place with Stephanie & Raphaelle. According to them, it took 4 months to make No Place habitable: graffiti was painted over, the beer fridge was hauled out and enough "junk" was carted out of the place to fill two dumpsters. Fortunately, the radical art space feel remained. And now, No Place as a space for performances and art is on the brink of a revival.
When a group of artists moved into 393 Water St. (Third Floor, Red Door) in 1996, a high-end theatre called Showplace was just opening in Peterborough and was being tauted as a sign of a healthy arts community. Meanwhile, the Union Theater had just closed down leaving most of Peterborough's most promising young playwrights and actors without a home. Showplace was seen by them as inaccessible. The stage at Showplace required the kinds of acts that would bring in the people from the suburbs (like Beatlemania for example.) "We needed an artists' centre at the time," says artist and former No Place resident Patrick Walsh. "And we had just moved into a place with huge rooms and a wide hallway. So we decided to turn our apartment into a public space." As it happened to coincide with the opening of Showplace they dubbed their space No Place as a reactionary gesture.
The first public event at No Place was a poetry reading that got so rambunctious cops and firefighters came to bang on the door. Some radical poets had gotten so fired up that they decided to shoot fireworks off the roof. The legend status of No Place was sealed that night. Art events continued there at a steady pace for four years. A few albums where recorded there. (Like: the Bernie Martin collection.) For the 24hr. Project, playwrights took rooms at No Place and did a manic all-nighter writing stint from 8pm to 6am; delivered the finished plays to the PAU at 6am where the directors looked over the results and started casting the plays at 8am; production and rehearsals progressed for the next 12hrs. to open the show at 8pm at the Gordon Best Theatre a mere 24hrs. after the playwrights took their pens to the blank page.
Walsh fondly remembers the "crazy environment" that fostered the creation of 12 of his plays. "It wasn't unusual for me to come home and find someone setting up a drum kit in my room." Chaos births a dancing star. No Place alumni include Peterborough legends Tim Etherington, Brian Sanderson and scooter to name a few. The Silver Hearts have played there and subsequently named their album after the place. Everyone has a story about No Place. I tell people I've moved to 393 Water St. but there is no glimmer in their eye until I tell them I've moved into No Place.
No Place epitomized the unspoken promise of Peterborough as established by free thinkers who came here to go to Trent and just never left. It is a fertile ground for artists to do it themselves and preview their work for a nurturing audience before taking their work elsewhere. Fueled in part by the No Place crew, Peterborough had become a lab of sorts where even the craziest ideas were allowed to germinate. But now that the Gordon Best is closed there is a sense that the once happening arts community has been crippled. The lack of an affordable venue in Peterborough has had a devastating effect. Last summer so many things were happening. There was a lot of energy to write plays and do shows; new plays opened almost every week. This year, people are moving away or have taken full time jobs. Maybe these artists got burnt out by the very freedom that nurtured them in the first place.
Freedom can sometimes have that effect on people. We are living in an age where we can step outside our door and have a choice of beers from around the world. We now also have the freedom to redefine or re-design ourselves to our own particular liking by moving someplace new. Sometimes this kind of freedom can have a paralyzing effect. But one still can't just live anyplace as though all places are the same. Here in Peterborough, people seem to have found a comfortable Way of Being. Accused at times for being too accepting, Peterborough still shines because it is a full stop away from the cynicism of bigger towns. I have heard it uttered: in Peterborough, people still make eye contact when you pass someone on the street. This kind of philosophy has given urban living some meaning. Peterborough is a place like no other. And for a lot of people there's no place they'd rather be.
Patrick Walsh shares with me a final story about No Place. "There was a rack at that place just filled with books. Most of them weren't any good. But there was one book of poetry that I liked enough to read all the way through. To my surprise, the last poem in the book had a reference to Morrie's greasy spoon diner. And I looked out the window where I was sitting reading the book and I could see Morrie's right across the street! And then it dawned on me... That book was probably written exactly where I happened to be reading it!"
As artists we inevitably leave a trail of history for our future selves to discover. Since moving to No Place I have found a stack of old zines written and published by the previous occupants. Reading their words is an education in Peterborough culture. So much diverse work was produced in such a short time that I started to ask myself if Peterborough has already had its heyday. This was inspiration for me to investigate the history of this place further. I am sitting here now making history myself writing this at the kitchen table in No Place and wondering if someone sometime will ever read these words and wonder, as I have wondered, What Now? And: Where do we go from here?
