{"id":2852,"date":"2011-03-31T15:30:55","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T22:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2011\/03\/the-art-of-the-prank\/"},"modified":"2011-03-31T15:39:21","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T22:39:21","slug":"the-art-of-the-prank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/31\/the-art-of-the-prank\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of The Prank"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the National Post<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The art of\u00a0surprise<\/h1>\n

\"Does<\/p>\n

Brett Gundlock \/ National Post<\/p>\n

Does it look like they\u2019re joking? From left: Don McKellar, director Andrew Burashko and Nicholas Campbell restage Orson Welles\u2019 1938 aliens attack radio drama\/elaborate hoax, War of the Worlds.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Ben Kaplan<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0Mar 30, 2011 \u2013 6:30 PM ET<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>With April Fool\u2019s Day just around the corner, it\u2019s as good a time as any to remember that we all need a startling jolt every now and then. With that in mind, Ben Kaplan looks at the history of hoaxes.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Pranks in the entertainment world have a long and storied history, but the biggest and best was probably Orson Welles\u2019 aliens attack radio drama,\u00a0War of the Worlds<\/em>. \u201cHe was pissed off that people believed everything they heard on the radio and said, \u2018If they\u2019ll believe everything, I\u2019m going to give them something unbelievable to believe,\u2019 \u201d says Andrew Burashko, artistic director of Toronto\u2019s Art of Time Ensemble, currently resurrecting a theatrical account of Welles\u2019 1938 hoax heard around the world.<\/p>\n

According to Burashko, Welles was the entertainment world\u2019s original prank provocateur, a tradition that spans from Andy Kaufman to Joaquin Phoenix, who all follow a time-honoured method of keeping audiences on their toes.<\/p>\n

Since we\u2019re seeing so much of everyday people in the documentaries of Morgan Spurlock, memoirs by James Frey and reality-TV shows such as\u00a0American Idol<\/em>\u00a0andThe Real Housewives<\/em>\u00a0franchise, it makes sense that the art world plays with reality \u2014 all the better if it can send a message like Welles did.\u201c<\/p>\n

Performance and reality are merging \u2014 you see this a lot in modern fiction \u2014 and that\u2019s always been interesting, but I think it\u2019s real fruitful right now,\u201d adds McKellar, who is also at work on a new fall sitcom for CBC. \u201cPeople today are hyper-aware of the conventions of media, and it\u2019s fun to play with them where you can.\u201d<\/p>\n

[ click to read full article at NationalPost.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the National Post The art of\u00a0surprise Brett Gundlock \/ National Post Does it look like they\u2019re joking? From left: Don McKellar, director Andrew Burashko and Nicholas Campbell restage Orson Welles\u2019 1938 aliens attack radio drama\/elaborate hoax, War of the Worlds. Ben Kaplan\u00a0\u00a0Mar 30, 2011 \u2013 6:30 PM ET With April Fool\u2019s Day just around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversation-information","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}