Caroline Azar


Caroline Azar is a director and playwright. She was the lead singer, keyboardist and co-lyricist/composer of the band Fifth Column.

Career

The experimental all-women punk band Fifth Column began in the mid-1980s in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The band self-released two albums, To Sir With Hate and All-Time Queen Of The World. They also released several cassettes, and their recordings appeared in several compilations. They recorded three singles, the best known being "All Women Are Bitches, Repeat!", released on the independent record label K Records. Despite the controversy surrounding the song, it was reviewed by Everett True and named 'Single of the Week' in the UK music magazine Melody Maker. The song was also included on the band's last full-length recording, 36-C. The band's last release was the song "Imbecile", which appeared on the Fields and Streams compilation in 2002 on the Kill Rock Stars label.
Fifth Column have been nominated for a Polaris Music Prize in the Heritage section for the 2016 Polaris Music Prize and 2017 Polaris Music Prize. as well as 2018 Polaris Music Prize
Azar and Fifth Column raised close to $50,000 for women's shelters and varied abortion clinics throughout North America over a 17-year span. Azar organized two International Women's Day Events in the late 1990s at The McGill Women's Club in Toronto in support of the Native Women's Shelter and 'Andayyan', which featured the work of Aboriginal, Metis and non-native women artists. This curative aspect was created with Artist Rebecca Baird. The coordination of the event with Azar was with filmmaker Cassandra Nicolau.
Caroline has also recorded, playing organ for several other bands including Kickstand from New York City, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, Greek Buck, and The Hidden Cameras from Toronto.
Along with G.B. Jones, Jena von Brucker, Johnny Noxzema, Rex, and others, Azar edited Double Bill, a zine that was sometimes referred to as an "anti-zine" and provoked much commentary, including articles in The Village Voice, from its inception in 1991 until 2001, when it ceased publication. The editors of Double Bill also contributed collectively to the Riot Grrrl fanzine, Girl Germs.
Azar has appeared in a number of films, as well as on television. She played a lead role in the films The Troublemakers and The Yo-Yo Gang by G.B. Jones, and appeared in films, videos and performances on television by Fifth Column. She has also played characters in films for directors Jeremy Podeswa, Midi Onodera and Bruce LaBruce. She has done extensive voiceover work, including the narration for the feature documentary about the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, Colour Me Free.
Azar has acted in a number of stage productions, including Cut by Kevin Killian, The Molly Murders by Anthony Furey, for which she was selected "Outstanding Performer" by Now Magazine, and Phae by Julian Doucet.
Azar directed music videos for Sylvia Tyson's Quartette and for Bob Wiseman's song "Airplane on the Highway". She has directed about 20 plays; most recently, the 2010 production of The Getaway by Bruce Hunter, at the Toronto Fringe Festival.
She worked as directorial assistant for the Judith Thompson productions of Perfect Pie, Habitat, Capture Me and Body and Soul, story editor, and dramaturg for other writers, Azar has also written several plays, including Satan's Mistress, The Surreal Detective vs John Nothing and Man-O-Rexic. Man-O-Rexic featured songs written by Azar and recorded with Fifth Column alumni G. B. Jones and Beverly Breckenridge along with Joel Gibb of The Hidden Cameras. She also designed and taught classes of an acting method which she named "archival technique".
In 2012, a documentary film by Kevin Hegge, called She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column was released featuring interviews with band members Caroline Azar, G.B. Jones, and Beverly Breckenrige, with commentary on the influence of Fifth Column by Kathleen Hanna and Bruce LaBruce. Soon after Azar and Jones launched a musical performance installation for The Theatre Centre Pop-Up called 'The Bruised Garden'. In 2014, the installation was incorporated into the stage set for Jones and Minus Smile's group 'Opera Arcana', for which Azar wrote a script named 'Opera Arcana in The Bruised Spirits of Southern Ontario'. This played for two nights at Videofag performance space in Kensington Market.
Azar launched her live workshop production of 'Dink' at The Next Stage Theatre Festival in downtown Toronto at The Factory Theatre in January, 2015, starring the broadway stage star David Keeley. The show received mixed reviews. Later that year Azar combined Wilfred Owen's anti-war poem 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' with original music for Peter Hinton's play The End at Theatre 20. In 2018 and 2019, Caroline focused on her character creation of Parking Enforcement Officer Rita Mae Nelson in two parts. St Peon Of The People and St Peon of Parkdale to outstanding and favourable notices.

Films