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May 25

“Parenting, Marriage, Punctuation and Onions” In Conversation with Actor Jennifer Villaverde on MUSIC MUSIC LIFE DEATH MUSIC

Interview by Bailey Green.

We spoke with Jennifer Villaverde after she spent the morning in the wandelprobe for MUSIC MUSIC LIFE DEATH MUSIC: An Absurdical, written, directed and composed by Adam Seelig and produced by One Little Goat Theatre Company. Hearing the band for the first time is an exciting part of the process, and Villaverde noted the flourishes of each instrument and how percussion can so skillfully create a mood or feeling. MUSIC MUSIC LIFE DEATH MUSIC is about three generations of a family and their attempts to communicate and connect. Villaverde plays DD, who is both a mother and daughter within the show. We spoke about parenting, marriage, punctuation and onions.

Bailey Green: This is your first production with One Little Goat and Adam Seelig, can you tell me more about working with this company?

Jennifer Villaverde: The first week or so I spent a lot of time getting to know Adam as a director and his approach to the piece. And it’s also very personal, I had to be sensitive because it’s different when you’re working with someone who wrote the piece, you don’t want to screw up the line. Adam has been so patient with us. He’s a very different writer, he’s really a poet, and it’s reflected in how he structures the text on the page. Visually, it’s very different. His style of writing has no punctuation, he likes to leave it open to be interpreted on the page. So for me, to see a sentence without structure and fractured, it was a bit of a learning curve. I discovered that I rely so much on punctuation so for it to be so open was a bit jarring. Where is my next thought emotionally? It was a lot of discovering on our feet, but he [Adam] writes very musically, looking at the words on the page as not quite notes, but with rhythm.

Jennifer Villaverde

BG: Who is DD? Where is she in her life when we meet her?

JV: My character DD is like a lot of women who is married with a teenage child and everything is changing. Her child is no longer a baby, but she wants her child to be a baby because there’s a certain dependence in that. The easy love is slipping away and it’s a bit scary for her so she’s hanging on to what was, even though she can’t because aging happens, time happens… She has a great relationship with her husband. She’s very lucky, it’s a true partnership and they rely on reach other and look to each other for support. They’re a tag team. And DD is also every woman who has that tension with her mother. ‘I’m a grown up Mom, I make my own decisions Mom’ because she [DD] wants her child to be a baby forever but she feels the opposite with her mom [B is played by Theresa Tova].

BG: This is a show about a family. How do their dynamics relate to your own family and how do they differ?

JV: I love my mother very, very, very, much but you know, I remember growing up and telling her ‘I’m not 15 anymore’ and growing older and having to repeat that ‘I’m not 15 anymore, I’m 20, I’m 30, I have my own child,’ I have to remind her that I am an adult and it’s okay for her to relinquish that motherly control that she has developed. It helps that she doesn’t live in the city, but I will always be her firstborn child, her baby and we both have to be okay with that. And it’s okay if she wants to baby me and I can just let her sometimes.

As for how we differ… I don’t have a teenage son, I have a five-year old daughter. She’s five going on fifteen. Maybe I’m a bit scared of when that time is going to come. We were just talking about it the other day, my husband and I, [about] mourning the loss of a child to their teens and going to high school and knowing how mean people can be. And we have no idea how we’ll negotiate that as a family. We have a 5-year-old and we know how to do that. But we have no idea what the world is going to be like ten years from now, for her. Now, we have social media and it drives all our lives. So what is that social media going to be in 10 years?

BG: What has been the most challenging part of this process?

JV: Absorbing and memorizing has been really hard. There is a lot of repetition of words or actions. I can’t forget these repeated words, it’s very important that it is repeated a certain number of times. Mom and mom and mom after these lines. I put a lot of pressure on myself, so it’s purely technical and saying it out loud to get it. I can memorize much easier when I am standing and moving around, it’s in my body. I don’t know why, other than the stakes felt really high to have it perfect. But Adam was really really patient with us, and I wasn’t the only one having trouble, so we are all in this together, and it’s almost there!

BG: Can I ask about the onions in the production photo, or would that be giving away something special and secret in the show?

JV: The onions in our show… it’s not so much of a secret… it symbolizes family tradition and honouring family tradition. It’s not like something most people celebrate, like Halloween for example. This tradition is specific to this one family and they honour that. It’s the feeling when families have this weird little thing and then you realize other people don’t do that. We’re not allowed to forget where we came from.

BG: Do you have any shows or artists you would like to shout out?

JV: I just saw Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and it was just spectacular. It was so moving and such an important show to produce and to see on a stage and to see as a person of colour and to see other people of colour up on stage. To see a new story and not the same old story. I just saw Fun Home and I loved it so much. I’m excited to see La Bête, really great people in that, people I love so much. Frame by Frame by Lepage and Côté, I’m so excited by that collaboration.

(Interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Music Music Life Death Music: An Absurdical

Who:
Presented by One Little Goat
WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND COMPOSED BY
Adam Seelig

STARRING
Richard Harte (One Little Goat’s Antigone: Insurgency, Talking Masks, Ubu Mayor)
Theresa Tova (NOW Magazine Top Theatre Artist of 2017, Tough Jews, The Jazz Singer)
Jennifer Villaverde (Soulpepper’s Animal Farm, Dora Nominee for YPT’s Hana’s Suitcase)

AND INTRODUCING
Sierra Holder (Sheridan College, Class of 2018)

FEATURING LIVE MUSIC BY
Joshua Skye Engel (guitar)
Tyler Emond (bass)
Lynette Gillis (drums)
Adam Seelig (piano)

music director Tyler Emond
set & costume designer Jackie Chau
lighting designer Laird Macdonald
stage manager Laura Baxter
publicist Ashley Belmer
assistant producer Annie MacKay
executive producer Derrick Chua

What:
“Toronto’s enterprising One Little Goat” (New York Times) presents the world premiere of MUSIC MUSIC LIFE DEATH MUSIC an “absurdical” with live music exploring the unexpected dynamics between three generations of family: a grandmother, her daughter, son-in-law and teenage grandson.

Featuring a cast and artistic team of multi-Dora Award nominees/winners. From the company that brought you the acclaimed Ubu Mayor and The Charge of the Expormidable Moose.

Where:
Tarragon Theatre Extraspace
30 Bridgman Ave, Toronto

When:
May 25 – June 10, 2018
Tue-Sat 8pm | Sun 2:30pm

Tickets:
Adults $35 | Seniors $30 | Arts Workers $25 | Students $20
Sundays all tickets $20

To purchase, phone the Tarragon box office at 416-531-1827 (no service charge) or online at tickets.tarragontheatre.com

 

May 8

In Conversation with Emerging Directors Ty Sloane, Bryn Kennedy & Kevin McLachlan on the 2018 Paprika Festival Directors’ Lab

Interview by Bailey Green.

This month, the Paprika Festival heads into its 17th year as the Paprika Directors’ Lab enters its 3rd year. The Directors’ Lab provides the opportunity for emerging directors to work with an experienced mentor and this year, the three directors had multidisciplinary artist Clare Preuss as their mentor. We sat down with emerging directors Ty Sloane, Bryn Kennedy & Kevin McLachlan to learn more about their experience participating in the Lab. We spoke about finding your voice, discovering your process and drawing inspiration from your peers.

Bailey Green: What drew you to Paprika?

Bryn Kennedy: As a young artist there’s not a lot of opportunities to take on a leadership position and put on a full production, while still having the support of mentorship. This is a festival that is helping you though the stages… it’s a unique opportunity. Mentorship and leadership, so there’s support and a challenge in that.

Kevin McLachlan: Direction is something I have always loved doing, even informally. Even as a kid, I was always the one organizing our mock battles against invisible armies. I’m currently in my final year of Musical Theatre at Sheridan College, and a teacher reached out to tell us about the festival and, being at the peak of the age range, I thought that it wasn’t an opportunity to miss. The more I read about it, the more we’ve participated in the program, the more awareness I’m getting and the more I can plant roots in such a rich theatre community. People are genuinely interested in your success and well-being. It has been a really amazing experience.

Ty Sloane: It’s a really rich opportunity in that you’re with other young emerging artists, you’re with folks who are still learning and struggling. Directing terrifies me. A lot of mentors have been like ‘you should direct’ and I’m like ‘no no no’. But I’ve tried to approach this year as an artist to challenge myself and seek what may not feel comfortable, and [for me] that was directing. I love it.

Photo of Ty Sloane by Neil Silcox

BG: Can you tell us a bit about working with your mentor Clare Preuss?

KM: We got paired with Clare, and she kind of got one of the hardest jobs in the world. Not in helping us, but how do you help someone make art? There’s no easy recipe on how to create something. But she has shared her patience and understanding of the industry and her own process with such a clear passion for the work and has extended all sorts of tools she has.

TS: She calls them games. What’s the game we’re playing? What’s the game of the show? How do you adjust the game? And I love that because games sounds a lot easier and a lot more open and she’s really done a great job of providing ways for the three of us to learn from each other and from her, and to adapt whether it’s a game or an approach.

BK: She comes from a performance background and so do all three of us, and so a lot of her process that she has been reminding us about is making a rehearsal hall that feels comfortable and safe to do work in and how do you keep that going. It’s about setting the rules for the game, not in a way that limits anyone, but in a way for all of us to feel safe. She’s been really good about meeting us all where we are at.

Photo of Bryn Kennedy by Neil Silcox

BG: What kind of theatre do you want to create?

TS: I am obsessed with Theatre of the Absurd, and breaking the conventions of what it means to put on a production. For the work I want to do, I like to talk about the really intimate stuff. I myself am a queer, mixed-race, mixed-gendered person and I want to talk about those things and explore them and unpack them.

BK: I am really interested in work that lives in the emotional reality of the characters as opposed to the physical or literal world around them. How do we bring the inner experience to the outer world? I started directing because I wasn’t seeing the kinds of stories on stage that I wanted to see or wasn’t feeling like there were characters who represented the person that I am as a young woman and the friends that I have.

KM: I’m completing my fourth year at Sheridan Musical Theatre so for myself Musical Theatre was an accidental gateway. I was not the kid that knew every show and sang the score to them and I’m still often exposed for my lack of knowledge in the music theatre world. Like the Gene Kelly quote, ‘if all it takes for someone to laugh and smile is to sing and smile and do a dance, then I’m happy to be a song and dance man’. That’s a simple way and a somewhat privileged way to look at it but I have always loved to make people laugh. I’m also struck by the kinds of questions that don’t have answers.

Photo of Kevin McLachlan by Neil Silcox

BG: Tell us a bit about the pieces you have chosen to direct.

TS: My piece is called Witness of Obsession and Desire and asks what stops you as a lover from leaving a relationship. It’s told from the perspective of Quinn telling the lover, which is the audience, about their experience falling in love with two people at the same time and learning about their own sexuality and polyamory. [It’s about] what it means when you think that the stories about the people who you’re in love with is actually about you and your journey into loving yourself.

BK: I’m directing Vitals by Rosamund Small. As a paramedic Anna meets people on the worst day of their lives, every call she receives is an emergency, but when professional trauma starts to slide into personal tragedy, she finds herself fighting for her own life. It’s an exploration of mental health in the medical community and we have a kick-ass all female team.

KM: My piece is based on the questions of playing God and how can you make a ‘right choice’ in a decision where there isn’t one… My mother is a retired hospice worker. She was a hospice worker for 20 years and I was inspired by her experience with grief in a work setting and in her own personal life,  and how she had to make that decision with people about to continue or discontinue someone’s end of life care. I’ve written an original piece called Fragments that looks at, in such a situation, how can you decide whether or not someone should continue or discontinue living and what are the moments that we define ourselves?

BG: What have you learned from working with each other?

BK: From Ty and Kevin I have learned to live longer in the process part. I tend to jump straight to product, ‘let’s block this!’ And for me it’s checking boxes instead of sitting in this world and exploring it. When we did our training days and got to direct in front of each other, I was just so in awe of how they (Kevin and Ty) trust the process. I was able to see how the end result will be richer by having patience with yourself and the performers as you move through creating something together

KM: I feel I’ve learned applicable hands-on things but I’ve been so inspired by seeing Ty and Bryn take on work that is so deeply personal to them. To see anyone step up to something that challenges them is inspiring. They have both been so open with the place they’d like to arrive but they can turn to me and ask if I’m freaking out like they are. These are people I would happily work for or alongside in the future in any capacity but also these are people I would just hang out on the weekend with.

TS: In the last year, I have met a lot of directors and artistic directors but having worked with Koovy [Kevin] and Bryn, they bring a genuine honesty and it moves me and inspires me and makes me feel that I can be as honest with my collaborators. They bring such magic to the work that they do, they hold space for people for learning and for them to learn to in the process. Greatest directors group I have ever been a part of.

The Paprika Festival

What:
Paprika Festival is a youth-led professional performing arts organization. We run year round professional training and mentorship programs that culminate in a performing arts festival of new work by young artists.

—We generate opportunities for young artists to lead their own creative process with the support of their peers and professional mentors.

—We set the stage for young artists to have their voices heard in a setting that is supportive and also dependent on critical response.

—We ensure that young artists are well equipped to find employment in diverse cultural industries and to become our successors.

Where:
Native Earth’s Aki Studio, located in the Daniels Spectrum at 585 Dundas Street East, on the south side of Dundas, just east of Parliament Street.

When:
May 14 – 20
Full Schedule here.

Tickets:
paprikafestival.com/festival-2018/tickets/

May 5

“Being a Teenager, Accepting Our Past & Self-Producing” In Conversation with Thalia Kane and Tamara Almeida on THE ’94 CLUB

Interview by Megan Robinson.

We sat down with playwright/actor Thalia Gonzalez Kane and actor Tamara Almeida to discuss their current production of The ’94 Club, playing now until May 12th at the Tarragon Extraspace. Inspired by real events, this exciting new play takes a look into the lives of four teenage girls, as they face the realities of growing up in a small-town and struggle to come to terms with their sexuality.

The ’94 Club may focus on female stories (it passes the Bechdel test) and have an all-female cast and crew, but at the end of the day, the themes are inherently universal.

“It’s about friendship and love and heart and compassion,” Kane explains.

“And self-discovery,” Almeida adds.

Not only is this Kane’s playwriting debut, it’s also what she considers her coming out play, which gives us even more to love about this self-reflective story. Doing our best to avoid any spoilers, we discuss what it was like to be teenagers, how to accept our past, and the triumphs of self-producing.

Megan Robinson: In your press release, you talk about self-reflection and telling stories from our past to make for a better future. First off, can you tell me a challenge that you may have faced in portraying teenagers and getting into that mindset again?

Tamara Almeida: It sounds silly but I love Lana Del Ray, and there’s this one line that she says about innocence lost. I keep going back to that. That I don’t know better yet. The part of me that knows how to protect myself now would never do some of these things. So a big part of playing a teen is going back to a time when you live on impulse and have fewer boundaries because you don’t know better.

Thalia Gonzalez Kane: We know better now, but it’s hard going back to a time when you threw caution to the wind and, also, to not judge yourself for that. It’s a struggle that came with the writing as well; some scenes were too self-aware. The fact is, it’s very easy to blame young people for things they do wrong or to accuse them of being a slut or to accuse them of being promiscuous but you can’t because they are too young to understand what that means and what that is. They need to learn over time. I think getting over the judgment of our characters was a challenge.

TA: I think it’s interesting in the same way that when I’m 50, I’m going to look back at something I did in my twenties and be like, I would never do that thing now, you know?

MR: Or even last week… I know better.

TA: Yeah! Like I know now not to drink that much tequila. But you don’t know that before you know that. I think that is cool to explore – before we knew, what did we do? That’s what I keep trying to go back to.

TGK: And just avoiding playing too young.

TA: And they’re smarter than we give them credit for. At fifteen-years-old, you’re already cunning and sophisticated and manipulative.

Photo Credit: Angela Besharah

MR: Can we talk about the differences between relationships as teenagers versus as adults, and what you wanted to explore about these relationships in your writing?

TGK: The relationship between the girls in the show is so sweet and beautiful. I found in writing that female friendship at that age is so pure and I think we lose a lot of that as we grow older. It starts to become about what do you do and what do I do and how do we help each other? And you do have those friends, and I have them, where you love each other, and that’s all you have, and you don’t need anything else. But, as teens, the love is so strong. You would do anything for one of your best friends, and you don’t question it. I mean part of the reason the club really gets going is because they don’t want to let anyone down and not be part of something that one of the girls has suggested. The scene where the club gets created is so sweet. “We are going to do something new together!” And they’re going to do it together. And that’s the point.

TA: I think the love is so pure at that age and that it really just comes from impulses a bit more. Whereas my friendships today are because I really want them, you know they mean something. We are a little more cautious about who we keep in our lives.

TGK: You have to make time now. In high school, you have lunch time and classes, and there are so fewer responsibilities.

TA: I wonder if we didn’t have to pay bills and have these responsibilities if it would be the same. I don’t know.

Photo Credit: Angela Besharah

MR: You’re self-producing the show. Can you tell me why you decided to do it this way?

TGK: A lot of people suggested SummerWorks and Fringe, and I didn’t love the idea of that much of a loss of control – not being able to choose the venue or choose my time slot. I don’t know how to say it… I didn’t want to just be a part of something. It felt too important to me. Also, doing indie theatre, I’ve worked on so many shows for free and I did it gladly but I think that it is becoming a problem because it’s just so expected. So with this show, one of the things I really wanted to make sure of was that every artist was paid a weekly salary. I thought in order to do that, I could self-produce and control it.

I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of experiences working with other theatres and learning from brilliant people so I was able to slowly figure out what works and what doesn’t and how to hire people and how to set up scheduling and stuff. It felt important as my first one to do it properly and suffer perhaps at times financially or mentally. But it feels very worth it.

MR: You said you’ve been lucky enough to do this because of all your experiences. Could you give three pieces of advice to someone out there who wants to put on a show that doesn’t have the same resources or experiences you’ve had?

TGK:
1. Ask.
People are so much more willing to talk than you realize. I’ve been able to foster relationships and valued friendships with people who I’ve just asked to have a coffee with and to pick their brain. Or just to ask them about themselves and their lives. From that I’ve been able to get so much experience. And with people reaching out to help. The amount of people who have offered to help me with this has been a bit surreal.

2. Commit yourself to fully doing it.
It’s terrifying but I wouldn’t have it any other way, because if this falls flat on its face and it’s a complete disaster, at least I’ll have put everything into it and I can feel really good and really proud of that.

3. Appreciate how lucky you are to do it.
We are so lucky to be in a city that supports indie theatre, and supports live theatre, and supports artists and young artists. It’s not out of the ordinary for someone to write a play and put it on.

MR: Tamara, when did you first read the script?

TA: Another cast member had conflicts and Thalia and I had met in a class so she sent it my way after it was complete and once the cast was set. I read it that night and messaged her back at 4 AM and was like “YES! I love it”. At first, it made me really uncomfortable.

MR: Can you unpack that for me?

TA: Yeah, high school is an interesting time. Some people love looking back… I didn’t. This just kind of struck a chord with the parts that I hadn’t uncovered again since leaving, the parts that are a little bit darker. Like who I was and the role I played in some of my friendships at that time, that maybe I haven’t wanted to be fully honest with even myself about. And it was interesting because the first time I read the script I thought it was a bit darker than what I was expecting. Then I read it again and I had a lot of compassion.

The biggest thing for me once I read it was asking: can I put myself aside and my ego aside and tell the truth about that girl? Because that girl exists.

MR: And that was hard because the girl reminded you of yourself?

TA: Yeah. I think… yeah. I mean all the girls do. The universality of Thalia’s writing is that all the girls are relatable. The reading was also kind of healing for me. To be able to go back and think about it and realize I’m not that person at all anymore. So let’s just open it up and really tell the truth and really go there. Let’s make sure these people feel uncomfortable.

Photo Credit: Angela Besharah

MR: Thalia, in writing it and now performing it, are you hoping for the audience to feel uncomfortable?

TGK: Yeah. I think it will cause people to reflect on themselves. One of my main goals is that I hope it will make people take a moment to look at how we treat others. And reconsider the next time they see a sixteen-year-old girl with a short skirt on and call her a slut, or say she’s asking for it. Because there is so much more to these people. In the play there are things you learn about the girls, and there are reasons that they act in certain ways and these are human reasons that we’ve all faced. There’s a big love story and that’s a universal love story. People can identify with those feelings of being so in love with someone who you have no idea what else to do about it except for proclaiming it.

But yes, people are going to feel uncomfortable when they see the show but it’s also healing in certain ways.

MR: And what is it exactly that will make them so uncomfortable?

TA: I think just looking at sexuality at such a young age. I think we don’t talk about it, other than sexualizing young women, we don’t talk about what that’s doing to them. The discovery of sexuality…

TGK: … and how misguided that is. No one tells them.

MR: Except your friends?

TA: Yeah, and then you rely on your experienced friend because you’re like, please tell me why that felt so good, what was that? And then, what happens if you have the wrong person leading the train, and that can derail…

TGK: In the show, each girl has their own thing that they have to confront. And it’s hard and what’s hard is that it’s the reality of a lot of people’s circumstances. There isn’t really an answer in the end, it’s just presenting the realities of our world that we don’t really look at.

TA: With this situation, you have some young girls who found themselves in trouble, which maybe could have been avoided if they were guided a little bit differently. And that’s accountability. Maybe we’re all complicit in what’s happening.

TGK: If the adults in their lives weren’t too scared to talk to them about what the realities of growing up are at that time, or when they’re curious, to talk to them and not just to sweep it under the rug.

THE ’94 CLUB

Who:
Written by: Thalia Gonzalez Kane
Cast: Tamara Almeida, Jeanie Calleja, Shaina Silver-Baird, Thalia Kane, Lily Scriven
Directed by: Monica Dottor

What:
After starting a dangerous game that rapidly spirals out of control, a group of teenage girls quickly begin to learn about the struggles that come with womanhood as they strive to come to terms with their own sexuality.

Based on true events, THE ’94 CLUB explores gender politics, sexuality, coming of age, queerness and the harsh realities of growing up in a small town. As our society grows into one of openness and understanding, it is important we hear these stories of oppression and pain. It is important we acknowledge our past and work to amend the future. Without self-reflection, we will not be able to better ourselves and our world.

“It’s just a game. I’ll tell you the rules and then we can play…”

When:
May 1st-May 12th
Tue – Sat 8pm, Sun 2:30pm

Where:
Tarragon Theatre Extraspace, 30 Bridgman Ave

Tickets:
$15 Previews, $22 Artsworker/Student, $30 Regular
tarragontheatre.com