[Program Note by Michael Park and Ray Hsu]

When Sun News Network aired its jaw-dropping interview, « A Lack of Compassion? », creatively reimagining the interview was the furthest thought from my mind.
I wanted to stand in my chair and yell at the screen. What I did instead was talk to friends, in person and online. « Did you see that? » we said each other.

In his rather puckish way, Ray said that the worst thing we could do to art was to elevate this piece of lovely trash as our offering to the Muses. I think he said that. What trashier a thing than to talk about arts funding, that subject that arouses such passion and ire whatever our political stripe, within a piece of art?

Is this piece a critique, you ask? If not, what is it? Good questions. Fair dealing, which we dance around, provides tight guidelines through which we use these quotations as part of our critique.

This piece asks our performers to wear multiple hats: musicians, actors, artists, pundits.

If Sun Media had made trashing arts funding into ratings and entertainment, then we wanted to turn this entertainment into a kind of art.