Author: Howard Dai

Reflections on 2025 Siminovitch

| Howard Dai

It was 2011. I was 14 years old. It was my second year in Canada and I had just discovered theatre. One of the first things I did was join The Cultch IGNITE youth panel, and through it I got to take a three-day PodPlay workshop hosted by then-Artistic-Producer of Neworld Theatre, none other than Adrienne Wong. We learned a bit about the project and form, and got a chance to make our own lil PodPlay around the block at Victoria Drive and Venables. I loved it. It blew my mind.

Nearly five years later. In grade 12, as part of my high school drama class’s final project (an unit called “What is Theatre” which I believe Ms. Monte still does till this day), I made a semi-autobiographical audio-play. The listener gets a toonie and a mp3 player to start, and gets to enter the mind of a high school kid; walking through the overpass, opening a locker and discovering its content, and getting a snack of their choice at the vending machine with the toonie. I sent an email to Adrienne with the PodPlay I made, which even though she had already moved to Ottawa and left Neworld at that point, still graciously listened to and gave me encouraging feedback. It meant so much to me as someone who was still deciding whether he really wanted to study theatre after high school. This was also the time when Tiger and I had just started Two Gents of New West , and our next project was making an audio-play commissioned by Massey Theatre ‘s Jessica Schneider for the 65th anniversary of the theatre. We researched the history of the building and got some actors to record it, but also needed someone to help us with hosting a PodPlay-making workshop , and as well as sourcing some MP3 players for the presentation of the piece. Adrienne generously helped with both, while being afar in Ottawa. When it came time to return the MP3 players, I had somehow misplaced one of the micro-usb data cables for the devices. There were more so Neworld was generous in telling me not to worry about it but I continued to look for it….

Five years later, it was 2020. The world shut down but I was lucky to get to take advantage of the various digital opportunities available. After the Massey Theatre project, Tiger had started writing The Rex Project, about a robot who is learning human thoughts and emotions by living through episodes of “simulations” and sending the report to the audience member who gets to vet these reports. (The first draft of this script also got a dramaturgical reading by the late Kathleen Flaherty who offered us feedback for free. ❤️) By 2020 though, I had picked up the script and developed it further to become an immersive, AR experience that took over two weeks where you interact with the project through navigating websites, answering and writing emails to characters, and more. The project was chosen by Impulse Theatre ‘s Peek Fest Digital Residency , and the mentor they had was, you guessed it, Adrienne! I remember remarking how incredible it was that ten years later I got to work with her again on the art form that she first introduced me to. It felt like a full circle moment.

Five years after that, in 2025, I have been feeling untethered and lost and going through a bit of a quarter life crisis. I have been so lucky to be working on back to back projects that fueled and nourished me since theatre school and am now finding myself in the default of underemployment. While working a joe job, I got a phone call from Adrienne, choosing me to be her Emerging Artist for the Siminovitch Prize; her phone call felt like winning the lottery. In fact, every time our paths crossed felt like winning the lottery.

I’m just one person. I’m sure everyone that has worked with Adrienne has a story. When I think of “groundbreaking”, I think of someone whose work can blow open the expectation/understanding of an art form, someone who actively works to advance the form, and someone who has the gift to empower others to innovate alongside her. Adrienne does all of this, while keeping the community, accessibility, and play at its core. She continues to be so generous and truly helps out whenever she can. There is an expanding network of us who have been lifted up by her.

Thank you Adrienne for your recognition – I also share this with the community of resilient makers and artists in Vancouver indie community who are all working through the grind and pumping out good work despite the obstacles. I am inspired daily by my colleagues and friends making it work while juggling a million things to keep afloat, and feel held and fostered by this supportive community.

Thank you to Aimee and the Siminovitch Prize for Theatre for the event this past week. They organized a lunch between the four emerging artists and I feel so lucky to get to meet Kat, Mary-Lee, and Miriam and hear about their incredible journeys and body of work. Huge congrats to Ravi and Miriam for winning the prize & protege! It was a beautiful evening of celebration and community.

Last week, I got to open the Time Capsule I made for myself in 2020 (during the month of my digital residency with Adrienne). One of the objects, to my surprise, was the micro USB cable I had misplaced back in 2015; which I had apparently found a few months later but never remembered to return it to Neworld. So I added it to the capsule, part of the Remember November by Neworld, thinking I’ll finally be able to return it (go to pic #12 To read what I wrote about it when I added it into the capsule). Instead, I brought it with me to Toronto and gave it to Adrienne. I don’t think Neworld nor Adrienne will have any use for it anymore (what device still uses micro USB these days?!), but it did feel symbolic to mark another one of these incredible five year cycles. Marking my calendar for 2030 for something surely amazing to come 🙂

Photo #1 – #3 by Tanja-Tiziana

Summing expense from filename

| Howard Dai

As a freelance artist, tax season has really become quite a headache. I’ve gotten into the practice of scanning every receipt onto Google Drive as soon as I get them, and naming the file with something like “May 15 24.10.pdf” or “$33.66 London Drugs.pdf”. But when it comes time to actually add those numbers together, I am overcome with dread just looking at hundreds of files in each folder.

This is a handy little Python script I wrote (instead of actually filing the tax returns, I know I know…) that once you feed the folder path and the file naming system in that folder, it would spit out the total sum of the expenses it finds in the filenames (and also note for you if anything file doesn’t seem to match the system you specified).

click here to see the code on Github Gist


#   As a freelancer, I saved many receipts a day onto a cloud folder with a loose naming system
#   consisting of generally dollar amount + dates or some description of the expense.
#   As each folder has a slightly different system, here's a program where I could choose which
#   naming system I'm using in each folder before it spits out the sum of amount.

import re, os, decimal

#because float() is an approximation and gives weird decimal points
from decimal import Decimal

# file path for the folder which this program will iterate through filenames
path = input('paste path here: ')

os.chdir(path)

totalSum = 0
counter = 0

def resetNumber():
#   need to declare global, or will get UnboundLocalError
    global totalSum, counter
    totalSum = 0
    counter = 0

def expenseRun(regexToUse):
#   passing global variables to function
    global totalSum, counter
    resetNumber()
    if regexToUse == 'apple':
        appleExpense(totalSum, counter)
    elif regexToUse == 'banana':
        bananaExpense(totalSum, counter)
    elif regexToUse == 'cow':
        cowExpense(totalSum, counter)
    else:
        print('error! try again!')


def appleExpense(totalSum, counter):
    for filename in os.listdir():
        if apple.search(filename) == None:
            print('error! file name is '+filename)
        else:
            result = apple.search(filename)
            totalSum += Decimal(result.group(1))
            counter += 1
            print('receipt #' + str(counter) + '- ' +str(result.group(1))+' from '+str(result.group(2))+'. Now totaling at '+ str(totalSum) )
    print('\nTOTAL SUM IS: '+str(totalSum))

def bananaExpense(totalSum, counter):
    for filename in os.listdir():
        if banana.search(filename) == None:
            print('error! file name is '+filename)
        else:
            result = banana.search(filename)
            totalSum += Decimal(result.group(2))
            counter += 1
            print('receipt #' + str(counter) + '- ' +str(result.group(2))+' from '+str(result.group(1))+'. Now totaling at '+ str(totalSum) )
    print('\nTOTAL SUM IS: '+str(totalSum))

def cowExpense(totalSum, counter):
    for filename in os.listdir():
        if cow.search(filename) == None:
            print('error! file name is '+filename)
        else:
            result = cow.search(filename)
            totalSum += Decimal(result.group(1))
            counter += 1
            print('receipt #' + str(counter) + '- ' +str(result.group(1))+'. Now totaling at '+ str(totalSum) )
    print('\nTOTAL SUM IS: '+str(totalSum))

#re.compile(r'expression')

# group1 = another number of digits separated by a period (ex. "12.34")
# group2 = anything that comes after the digits and a space, and before ".pdf" file extension
apple = re.compile(r'(\d+\.\d+)\s+(.*)(\.pdf$)')

# group1 = any number of text + space + possible number (ex. "Mar 15")
# group2 = another number of digits separated by a period(ex. "12.34")
banana = re.compile(r'(.*)\s+(\d+\.\d+)')

# group1 = any number of text + space + possible number (ex. "Mar 15")
cow = re.compile(r'(\d+\.\d+)')

print('\nREGEX EXPRESSIONS! type out the one that applies---')
print('apple = $ first')
print('banana = $ later')
print('cow = $ only')

regexToUse = input('\nwhich regex? ')

expenseRun(regexToUse)

input("\nPress enter to exit;")