The story of The Enchanted Loom, written by Dr. Suvendrini Lena, begins in Toronto, where demonstrations against the Sri Lankan civil war have taken over the Gardiner expressway. The protests take place during the final weeks of the war and trigger memories of trauma for a Tamil family. The family had come to Canada to escape the violence in Sri Lanka. The father, Thangan, was imprisoned and tortured during the war. He struggles to cope with epilepsy brought on by scars in his head from the beatings he endured. As Thangan’s seizures worsen, his family begins to unravel. In order to have a chance to heal, Thangan must decide whether to undergo a surgery that would cut out his scars but could erase pieces of his memory. One memory in particular, a memory of his oldest son who died during the war, Thangan doesn’t know if he can bear to lose. “The surgery is a metaphor for how societies and communities can move through trauma, will it fix things or won’t it? How deeply are these traumas embedded in us and in our communities?” says Dr. Suvendrini Lena, neurologist and playwright of The Enchanted Loom, produced by Factory Theatre and Cahoots Theatre, on stage now to November 27th.
Photo by Dahlia Katz
The Enchanted Loom is the product of years of hard work that took place while Dr. Lena worked full-time as a neurologist and raised her child as a single mother. The play was first developed as a research project about epilepsy. Subsequently, the play has grown to explore the dynamics of family. “I chose epilepsy because seizures are a huge disruption of consciousness. It arrests everything and you don’t know what is going to happen next,” Dr. Lena explains. “There’s a potential of being paralyzed so you’re very vulnerable. And that is what happens in war, the kind of disruptions and the way daily life becomes unlivable.” The play focuses on the question of whether or not Thangan will chose to have a surgery that Dr. Lena describes as a unique procedure: “The patients are often awake so that when the parts of the brain are being removed the doctors can preserve everything around them, as much as possible. It is one of the penultimate scenes, this awake craniotomy, and it is very evocative – you can see consciousness right in front of you.”
Photo by Dahlia Katz
Working on her first play has helped illuminate Dr. Lena’s work at CAMH. “I have learned a huge amount from watching the actors play these characters,” Dr Lena says. “The family life [in the play] is structured by [Thangan’s] illness and every aspect is affected[…] I teach a course on theatre and medicine to medical residents and I do that because theatre allows us to inhabit alternate lives. As doctors you need to be in a patient’s position and understand what that means.”
Photo by Dahlia Katz
The play’s title is drawn from a quote written by pioneer neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington. Sherrington used ‘the enchanted loom’ as a metaphor for the mystery of the brain. “Memory, to me, is this intricate fabric that is being reworked by everything that happens. It is the key to the future but is constantly changing, being influenced by what other people remember and by the present,” Dr. Lena says. “The whole play is about the family’s memory of trauma and how it informs their future and the difficulty of remembering traumatic things but also the necessity to remember them in order to heal from them.”
Photo by Dahlia Katz
Marjorie Chan, Artistic Director of Cahoots Theatre, is the director of The Enchanted Loom. Dr. Lena expresses her gratitude and admiration for Chan’s patience and expertise: “I don’t have a playwright’s training, but she championed this play with 6 actors and poetic medical language and has woven it together in this beautiful way. I couldn’t be in better hands. It has been spectacular, like nothing else.”
Photo by Dahlia Katz
For Dr. Lena, the greatest joy of working on this play may be seeing it on stage now during its run, when the play has come together fully. “It has been so meaningful to know this is a story worth telling,” says Dr. Lena. “Epilepsy is a stigmatized illness and a difficult illness. To have people take risks to portray it and the Sri Lankan story…to remember what happened and how the future could be different… it’s quite something to see it fully realized on stage at Factory.”
Photo by Dahlia Katz
The Enchanted Loom
Who:
Written by Suvendrini Lena
Directed by Marjorie Chan
A Cahoots Theatre production in association with Factory Theatre
What:
The Sri Lankan civil war has left many scars on Thangan and his family, most noticeably the loss of his eldest son and crippling epileptic seizures brought on by his torture during the war. As the final days of the war play out; the family watches from Toronto, where a neurological procedure provides them with a chance to heal. This poetic play, part medical, part mystical is a harrowing tale of loss and hope that reminds us of the joys and pain of unconditional love for family, and freedom.
ASL Interpreted Performance, followed by a Post-Show Q&A, Sunday, November 20
Where:
Factory Theatre Studio Theatre
125 Bathurst St.
Toronto
acquiesce, directed by Nina Lee Aquino and written by David Yee, kicked off Factory Theatre’s 2016/17 season “Beyond the Great White North”. The play marks Yee and Aquino’s 15 year anniversary of collaboration. Yee wrote acquiesce 15 years ago as part of the playwrights lab at Factory. Aquino was invited to a private reading of the play with dramaturge Brian Quirt. “In our hearts of hearts we knew we would come back [to acquiesce],” Aquino says. “But other works were getting first in line. Looking back there was a good reason for that, I don’t think David could have finished it before and I don’t think I could have directed it, being the director I was then.” acquiesce was rediscovered when dramaturge Iris Turcott found a draft tucked behind a filing cabinet at Factory. Turcott called Yee, gave him two notes and told him it was time to work on the play again. “It has always been one of my favourite unfinished plays of David’s,” Aquino says.
Photo of David Yee by Dahlia Katz
acquiesce tells the story of Sin Hwang, a novelist who receives news that his father has died. As per his father’s instructions, he embarks on a journey to bury his father. “He discovers secrets about himself, about his father and family history that have been brewing underneath,” Aquino says. “He gets to confront that grief and rage and not get to forgiveness but an acceptance of knowing one can correct the cycle of violence and let go of that baggage.”
Photo of David Yee by Dahlia Katz
Aquino and Yee’s shared values have been a core element to their artistic partnership. Aquino has been director and dramaturge for all of Yee’s plays. “We’re here to fight, to say something, to give hope,” Aquino says. “We are despairing of the world at times but through theatre we feel like we’re doing something about it. The kinds of plays I tackle as a director reflect that.”
Photo of David Yee by Dahlia Katz
Aquino speaks of how individual growth as artists has brought herself and Yee to the right time and place to tackle acquiesce. “The more personal David gets with his work, the more personal I get with mine,” Aquino says. “It makes it more harrowing. Now being a mom and AD of this company is very different and I bring that experience to the table.” In 2015, Yee won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama with his play carried away on the crest of a wave (directed and dramaturged by Aquino). Aquino was the Founding Artistic Director of fu-gen theatre in 2002 (Yee is the current Artistic Director) and Artistic Director of Cahoots Theatre in 2009. In June 2012, Aquino became co-artistic director of Factory Theatre with Nigel Shawn Williams, and in the Fall of 2014, Aquino was appointed sole Artistic Director of Factory Theatre.
When asked about how working on acquiesce compares to working on Yee’s other plays, Aquino says that acquiesce has been a very personal process. “An Aquino/Yee work has a social justice to it, an activist voice in it, a revolutionary,” Aquino says. “But [with acquiesce] the social justice is subtle, the angle is different. It’s in a very personal container, which is family, where the heart of an activist is born. It is the hardest Yee work that I have tackled because it is quite personal. acquiesce comes in whispers, the complexity comes in quiet ways.”
Photo of John Ng & David Yee by Dahlia Katz
The mutual respect and admiration that Aquino and Yee share is evident, as Aquino calls Yee her “most favourite playwright in the universe.” Aquino says working with Yee always challenges her as a director to grow and discover how to bring the play to life. “I never take his work for granted,” Aquino says. “He challenges me through his work, so what world do I build around the world he has built and how will that coalesce. David writes plays that are yummy for a director, if you’re the kind of director that thrives on imagination. David is magic, so how do you put the magic on stage?”
Photo of Rosie Simon & David Yee by Dahlia Katz
Yee takes the stage in acquiesceto play the role of Sin Hwang. Yee hasn’t acted in his own work since Paper SERIES at Summerworks in 2012. “This is the first time he’s accepted to play a role in his own play,” Aquino says. “I’ve depended on him for so much as a playwright in the past. During tech he’s a second eye, so this year will be a bit lonely! On opening who is the one person who will sit beside me? I won’t be able to crush his hand, because he’ll be onstage! There are things about it that I miss, but I don’t see anyone else playing that role.”
acquiesce
by David Yee
Who:
Written by David Yee
Directed by Nina Lee Aquino
Co-produced with fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company
For full cast & creative team, visit the Factory Theatre website.
What:
Plagued by the success of his first book and haunted by his past, Sin Hwang arrives in Hong Kong with some unusual cargo and a lot of emotional baggage. Featuring a surreal cast of characters, from a foul-mouthed Paddington Bear to a wisecracking Buddhist monk, this sharply comedic and heartbreakingly poignant tale of self, familial and spiritual discovery reflects the cycles from which we must all break free as we find our way.
Where:
Factory Theatre Mainspace
125 Bathurst Street
During a fu-GEN theatre planning meeting in 2010, former general manager Carin Lowerison remarked on the lack of plays produced by the company that were written by Asian women. It was an off the cuff comment but the weight behind the statement hit home. “I really wanted to do something,” says fu-GEN artistic director David Yee. “Stats were coming out about the percentages of women directors and writers across the country, and reality is a fraction of those [directors and writers] are women of colour. Theatres were called out and they would say that they believe in women and women of colour, but they just don’t know any, or everyone’s busy, or we don’t have access. And then the initiatives by theatre companies weren’t about engaging with communities or putting a focus on the work.”
Walk the Walk is a national festival presented by fu-GEN theatre and six partner theatres from across the country. The format for the festival was inspired by a conference the company had mounted in 2010 called GENesis. The conference had staged readings, panels and paper presentations from academics in the field of Asian Canadian theatre. It was fu-GEN’s first foray into something large scale and was a week geared towards meshing art and academia. But with Walk the Walk the focus will be on new work by Asian Canadian women from across the country.
“The plan with Walk the Walk was to partner with organizations who had historically not done very well supporting women of colour, even if that was now taking an upswing,” Yee says of the new festival. “We sent out our offer to a lot of theatres. Some of them just didn’t respond, some responded that they didn’t have the time or the money, but some of them really engaged with us. Manitoba Theatre Centre really engaged with us and worked to find a candidate, and to make up the money they were missing from their budget. We found six theatre companies who would go the distance and were invested in changing the landscape.” Yee mentions 2B theatre and Theatre New Brunswick who searched tirelessly to find a candidate. fu-GEN held on for a month before they had to move on. At a national panel at GENesis in 2010, there was an empty chair to represent Atlantic Canada.
The goal of Walk the Walk is to connect artists with theatre companies that may not have had the opportunity to engage with their work. Walk the Walk seeks to create routes of access for women of colour. Mel Hague is facilitating the KXIII this year and the playwright unit is comprised of four emerging Asian Canadian women. “We’re partnering them with the more established creators in the main event for mentorship opportunities and celebrating the work that is out there,” say Yee, “ and it’s exceptional work.”
The week includes four new play readings, a panel, a cabaret and the annual Potluck Festival.
The festival opens with the funny and touching Burning Mom. Written by Mieko Ouchi from Edmonton, Burning Mom tells the true story of the author’s mother and her decision to go to Burning Man after the death of her husband. Tuesday night presents Chinoiserie by Marjorie Chan, “Marjorie engages with history in such an intersting way,” says Yee. “She deals with epic, complex human emotions and roots them in these sort of grand mysteries.” Wednesday night is a panel on the link between nostalgia and colonization, and the friction between them. The panel is facilitated by cognitive psychologist, neurologist and artist Dr Shanti Ganesh from the Netherlands.
Thursday night is Da Jia by Sophie Gee from Montreal. Da Jia is an Asian Canadian meditation on Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and is a multilingual play told in English, Mandarin and Cantonese (with surtitles.) And Friday night is Chinese Vaginies, a performance installation presented by Natalie Gan (one third of Vancouver group Hong Kong Exile). Yee doesn’t reveal the content of the piece, but shares that it is an interactive one on one, that somehow Drake’s involved and that the performance is an investigation of food, labour, racism, violence and the human body. The weekend closes the festival with a cabaret and the Potluck Festival and KXIII.
“It’s stunning, exciting work,” Yee says. “These communities have been under-served for so long and the strength of the theatre community has always been determined by its women. All of the mentors I have had in building fu-GEN were women and women of colour. So when I compare it to my personal history, I find it so strange that that isn’t the work that is celebrated or lauded nationally. They have been the ones driving artistic innovation to a greater degree than anyone.”
When: June 13th – 29th
Where: Factory Studio Theatre, 125 Bathurst Street
Whether it’s with your family, friends, lover, significant-other or you’re treatin’ yo self, we’ve listed our different date suggestions for these lusted-after February shows plus some February events we’re swooning over! These shows are On Our Radar, Toronto, and we think you should Fall in Love With Theatre all over again this February!
Did the nudie promo pictures convince you yet? If you didn’t catch Genesis & Other Stories in their sold-out run in last summer’s Fringe Festival, lucky for you they have brought it back for a February re-mount in the Red Sandcastle Theatre after a revised run in the Hamilton Fringe. If you did catch it, you know you’ll want to see it again! Laugh-out-loud funny, thought-provoking and feel-good family fun… well… It’ll get you talking!
This is our On the Laugh-track to Love date recommendation.
“After his father’s death, Christopher, a theology student, leads a misfit cast of amateur actors in a production of his late father’s play: a hyper-sexed version of Adam and Eve set in 1960’s USA. Slapstick, satire, and meta-theatre frame a surprisingly complex story about lonely people trying to fill roles that do not suit us. Christopher tries to convince everyone including himself that he is committed to his religion and its strict views on sexuality, and capable of directing and producing his father’s bizarre script. Despite everyone’s best intentions, a break up, forgotten lines, and a crisis of faith conspire to sabotage the production. The primary focus of Genesis is on laughter, but the show is only funny because of the pain and struggle of Chris and the other characters. A hilarious romp that is sure to get you thinking, whether you’re religious, theatrical, or somewhere in between.”
“Comically disastrous… very funny. Things could only go worse if the theatre collapsed.” – Jon Kaplan, NOW Magazine
Where: RED Sandcastle Theatre (922 Queen Street East) When: February 5th-15th Wednesday-Friday 8pm, Saturdays 7pm & 9pm Tickets: $15 at the Door, $10 in Advance at www.totix.ca or call (416) 845-9411 For more information, visit: www.aimforthetangent.com
Killer cast, intriguing promotional poster, “puppetry & Vaudeville charm” set in the Klondike? After being big fans of After Miss Julie, we’re excited to see what Red One Theatre brings us next and Shrew seems to be just the ticket.
This is our Rowdy Buddies at the Shakespeare Show date recommendation.
“The beautiful and gentle Bianca has no shortage of admirers, but her mother insists that she will not marry until her older sister, Katharina, is betrothed. The only problem is that Katharina is the wildest, loudest, maddest shrew in the Klondike. It’s a low-down showdown with honky-tonk, puppetry, slapstick, and Vaudeville charm, and one of these gunslingers will either go broke or strike gold.
In his directorial debut, rising Stratford Festival star and RedOne Theatre veteran Tyrone Savage gathers together Toronto’s premier emerging talents for the first time in this one-of-a-kind production.”
Where: The Storefront Theatre (955 Bloor Street West) When: February 15th – March 2nd, 2014 8pm (Sunday PWYC Matinees – 2pm) Tickets: $19.99 Advance tickets available @ www.secureaseat.com
Call your Grandma, call your mother… Hell, call EVERYONE and take them to the theatre this month. Rob Kempson has written a charming, funny and moving musical about unconditional love that will have you beaming one minute and reaching for a box of tissues the next.
This is our Reconnecting With Family date recommendation.
“Inspired by the traditional song cycle form, The Way Back to Thursday is a musical about unconditional love that crosses generations, genders and lifetimes.
Cameron and his Grandmother have a special tradition – movie nights every Thursday. Together they escape into the glamour and romance of the Golden Age of film. But as Cameron grows, so does the distance between them.”
Where: Theatre Passe Muraille (16 Ryerson) When: Now to February 8th Tickets: Pwyc-$32.50. 416-504-7529
Sharp, odd, hilarious and the tightest staging, design and performances that we’ve seen in one show in a while – The Ugly One is a must-see before it closes mid-February. We can’t and we won’t stop chatting about it. Theatre Isn’t Dead said it perfectly: “Non-theatre folks will dig it too. I can almost promise that.” –Blog Theatre Isn’t Dead.
We deem this our Theatrical Rejuvenation date aka. Win-over-that-friend-who-is-too-cool-for-theatre-with-the-cool-theatre-show date recommendation.
“You can’t sell anything with that face.” A razor sharp satire about getting ahead in the world. With mesmerizing speed, this award-winning work by one of Germany’s hottest playwrights catapults us into a narcissistic world obsessed with beauty, image and plastic surgery.”
U.N.I.T. Productions is excited to announce the remount of Of Mice and Morro and Jasp!
Morro and Jasp feel the pinch of the recent economic downturn and decide to try to make ends meet by staging John Steinbeck’s classic tale Of Mice and Men. Can the clown sisters stick to the story? Will they both make it out alive? This winter, find out for yourself!
This is our Friends Until The End date recommendation.
Where: Factory Studio Theatre When: Jan 28 to Feb 8, Tue-Sat 8PM, Thur 1PM, Sat 2PM Tickets: $25 Regular Price / $20 Student, Senior, Arts Worker PWYC Preview Jan 28 www.factorytheatre.ca 416-504-9971
Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster, Hailey Gillis, Gregory Prest & Dan Chameroy. Photo Credit: Cylla von Tiedemann
With 1920’s flair, song, dance and love amongst wartime, this is our Indulging in Delights date recommendation.
“A cast of wonderfully eccentric and international guests – countesses, arms dealers, showgirls, revolutionaries, charlatans and lovers – spend a fateful weekend in a resort hotel in the Italian Alps. While songs are sung and dances danced and loves rekindled, the dark clouds of war come rolling in.”
Read our latest Artist Profile with Paolo Santalucia & Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster “From Academy to Company in Soulpepper’s “Idiot’s Delight” here: https://inthegreenroom.ca/artist-profiles/
the dreamer examines his pillow is a surreal, intimate look at the beautiful and dark forces of love. The play explores the aftermath of love, whether it’s after an explosive affair between two lovers, or the dwindling, harsh lack of love from a widowed father to his daughter. Poetic, lyrical and rough – the dreamer examines his pillow is one of contemporary theatre’s finest looks at intimacy and need. It sounds to us like the perfect antithesis to Hallmark’s version of Valentine’s Day!
This is our Dark Surrealist Valentine’s Day date recommendation.
Where: The Box Toronto (89 Niagara Street) When: February 7th-16th Fridays & Saturdays 8pm, Sundays 2pm Tickets: dreamer.brownpapertickets.com
LABOUR
Written by Eric Welch and Ryan Welch. Based on the original short story by Ryan Welch with further realization by The Coyote Collective Company, presented by Coyote Collective
LABOUR looks at the Sisyphean life of factory day-workers, who see no choices but to go to work every day, and have resigned themselves to a life of the same. For these four characters, commodification has completely changed the way they think about life, love, and happiness.
This is ourSocially Consciousdate recommendation.
Where: Theatre Passe-Muraille Backspace When: February 5th to the 9th. 5th-7th 7:30pm, 8th 2pm & 7:30pm, 9th 2pm Tickets: $20, Student/Senior $15, PWYC: Saturday, February 8th 2:00pm, Opening and Media Night: Wednesday, February 5th
Tickets available for purchase at artsboxoffice.ca or at the door.
Events We’re Crushin’ On:
The 35th Rhubarb Festival
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre presents their 35th annual festival of new works in contemporary theatre, performance art, dance, and music. For two weeks artists transform the Buddies neighbourhood into a hotbed of experimentation, sharing new works in contemporary theatre, performance art, dance, and music with adventure-loving audiences.
New to the festival this year is a new series of Open Space Projects will animate unexpected spaces around the Buddies neighbourhood and make new artistic connections between five historic queer institutions here in Toronto.
When: February 12th-23rd Where: Buddies in Bad Times Theatre & around the neighbourhood Tickets: Open Space Projects & Artist Talks – Free Young Creators Unit – PWYC Week One Mainstage Projects – $10 Week Two Evening Passes – $20
Roar
Written & performed by Spencer Charles Smith, presented by Straight Camp
“Roar – a solo play about beefy, burly, brawny love”
SYNOPSIS – A boy’s campy quest for furry love, Spencer will explore his unapologetic desire for ‘bearish’ men, critique the problematic spectrum of identities within the Bear community (Bear, Cub, Otter, Panda, Muscle-Bear, etc.) and hopefully deconstruct notions of hegemonic masculinity.
Above all, it’s a love letter.
This is a staged-reading of Spencer’s latest draft of Roar and he is eager to hear your feedback. A talk-back will follow the presentation. And drinks. Featuring a special pre-show presentation: “Kid: A Queer Fable”, written, illustrated and performed by Katie Sly
Where: Videofag (187 Augusta Ave) When: Wednesday February 5th 8pm, Thursday February 6th 8pm Tickets: PWYC (at the door)
“Six actors, 18 theatre pieces that vary in length from 10 minutes to 10 seconds. What do you get? A hilarious, heart-wrenching, fast-paced, occasionally musical, exciting night at the theatre. Following the success of Theatre on a Theme: FAILURE, the Everybody to the Theatre Company gang will bring you Theatre on a Theme: LOVE, just in time for Valentine’s Day.”
A one-night only staged reading of the classic sci-fi epic told in the Bard’s style.
“This sublime retelling of George Lucas’s epic Star Wars in the style of the immortal Bard of Avon. The Saga of a wise (Jedi) knight and an evil (Sith) lord, of a beautiful princess held captive and a young hero coming of age, Star Wars abounds with all the valor and villainy of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.” This is the play you are looking for. Lightsaber fights included! Themed drinks/food/entertainment too – say whaaat!
Where: The Storefront Theatre (955 Bloor Street West) When: February 7th Doors at 7pm, Show at 8pm
Tickets: $10 in advance online www.secureaseat.com or $15 at the door.
The Howland Company Reading Group – February:
February 9th Charles Mee’s “Big Love”, February 23rd Jez Butterworth’s “Jerusalem”
“Bi-weekly, The Howland Company hosts an open event called The Reading Group, where artists are encouraged to gather, meet, reconnect and work with fellow members of the Toronto theatre community and ultimately read a play together.
The readings are a laid-back, social way to work with peers and continue to develop our craft. Scripts are provided and parts are assigned and exchanged on the fly. All are welcome to participate in reading or sit back and listen.”
I had tea on a frigid evening with the talented and wonderful Heather Marie Annis and Amy Lee of Morro and Jasp as they finished each others’ sentences and laughed about their upcoming show, “Of Mice and Morro and Jasp” playing now at the Factory Studio Theatre, January 28th to February 8th.
MM: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about Morro and Jasp?
HMA: Morro and Jasp are clown sisters. Jasp is older.
AL: Yes, she certainly is.
HML: And more bossy. And more particular. And they have been sisters…
AL: And Morro is younger. And more unruly. And flies by the seat of her pants. But loving and free spirited. (Indicates Annis) She plays Morro. We both said a nice thing and a not so nice thing about each others’ character.
HMA: They can’t live with each other or without each other.
AL: Absolutely. They have been growing up over the years. This is our… I can’t really keep track anymore. This is show… maybe eight, nine?
HMA: They’ve gone on a series of adventures. We started out with them performing. Morro and Jasp are the ones writing the plays and putting on the plays.
AL: We help sometimes.
HML: And they’ve grown up through the series of shows that we’ve done since we started. We had three…?
AL: Three shows for young audiences and then they went through puberty, which was awkward and exciting and then they went on different vacations, then they did a cooking show and now they’re tackling a tragedy with Of Mice and Morro and Jasp.
MM: So in doing Of Mice and Morro and Jasp, do we see their growing maturity through the progression of them growing up?
HMA: Yes. And they’re at a stage in their lives where they’re struggling financially, and they’re trying to find their place in the world with jobs and how they’re accepted by society, or not accepted by society.
AL: Figuring out how to make life work. (Looks at Annis) I guess you said that.
HMA: You said it in a different way.
MM: It sounds incredibly relatable. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t say, “What’s my place in the world? How do I figure this out? I need a job!”
AL: And similarly, just how George and Lenny are figuring out where to go and how to make their dream work. The first thing that jumped out for us was that it was such a great pairing. Their relationship is so similar to our relationship and then just figuring out their similarities. George and Lenny’s journey and Morro and Jasp’s journey and how they fit.
HMA: And also to explore the sadness in their lives. The tragic elements, beyond comedy, what else there is.
AL: There are always elements of tragedy in our shows, of course, there has to be both, but we wanted to try and adapt a full on tragedy to see what would happen.
MM: Is this because the two of you sit down and say “This is what we’re going to do”? What is your process of developing your shows? I’ve heard of some performers who say “There is me, and then there is my clown” and others who say “It’s all me”.
HMA: (laughs) That is an interesting question!
AL: We are IN our clowns, but our clowns…because we’ve been doing them for so long, they really have minds of their own. And a lot of the time, we’ll think something will be a good idea, and when we rehearse as Morro and Jasp, they will let us know. A lot of the time, we’ll try to solve the problem, and we’ll say “Let’s let Morro and Jasp solve it” and they do.
HMA: At the end of the day, your clown character is coming from you and your own individual personality, which is why clown is so specific. With some characters, you can try to replicate them and perform this other person as an actor. I find it’s a little more challenging with clown because it is so specific to your person. So, we are our clowns, but once we get into character and start exploring ideas, we have totally different ideas that will come out in different ways.
AL: It’s about impulses!
HMA: Right. We might not have those as Heather and Amy sitting at a computer coming up with ideas. Theirs will be more! Theirs will be bigger and more exciting and more extreme.
AL: We write our shows in combination with them. We do it, and then we do it in clown, and we go back and forth to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
MM: I want to hear about your cookbook. How did that come to be?
AL: We were doing a show called Morro and Jasp: Go Bake Yourself and it’s our show about cooking. Someone came to see it, and he worked in publishing and said, “Make a book, and we’ll publish it”. Those were our guidelines! We didn’t really have any!
HMA: He totally came to us with the idea. We had said, “Maybe we should make a book, that would be so much fun”. Maybe we just put it out into the universe! He gave us so much freedom. The idea was to make a cookbook combined with other things, because it came out of our cooking show.
AL: We had never planned to make a cookbook, but it was a fun match. And we both love cooking and making food, and food in general and it felt like a good fit. It was a lot of work! We had no idea how much work a cookbook would be!
HMA: The fact that he gave us so much freedom is why it worked for us. We got to discover what form and what content, and everything it would be based on our process and how we went along with it and what discoveries we made along the way. Which isn’t always what you set out to do when you make a book, because I would assume the publisher would dictate it, especially when he came to us with the idea. We didn’t know how long it was going to be either.
AL: Initially, it was supposed to be 60-80 pages, and it ended up being about 235! We just kept getting excited about all the different recipes we could put in!
MM: Are they all your own recipes?
HMA: It’s a combination of some recipes we made up, recipes that we have that we’ve used and loved, a lot of recipes from our families and friends, and some fans.
AL: Some fans wrote in and submitted recipes, which is fun.
HMA: Each of the recipes says who it’s from.
AL: It was exciting to see what we would get. And we tested everything.
HMA: Morro and Jasp tested them! (laughs)
AL: Well, we were there to guide the process.
HMA: There are also some recipes from our show, Go Bake Yourself. So it’s connected back to the show.
MM: It’s an extension of the show? A new medium?
AL: Yeah! It doesn’t run the same storyline as the show, but it’s connected.
HMA: There are similar themes about emotion and eating and those are connected. And love, and how food is a way of expressing love.
MM: Now I want to see a Morro and Jasp cooking show on TV.
HMA: So do we! That would be great!
AL: A few people have mentioned that. So we’ll see. We’d be up for it. And I think Morro and Jasp would be too. Jasp would feel like all her dreams came true.
MM: Of Mice and Morro and Jasp is a remount. Has it developed at all since the last time you performed it?
HMA: We’re developing it now! (laughs)
AL: We’re still developing it.
HMA: That’s where we just came from. It’s not that the story of it is changing, there aren’t dramatic rewrites, but we’re fine tuning it. We have more space to play now. At the Toronto Fringe you have a timeline. So now we have more room to breathe, and give the moments more detail. We can infuse a little more energy or breath into them.
AL: We’re coming back and going, “I think we can make this moment better. How can we do that?” “This monologue can be better”. So it’s really nice to be able to fix all the things that we wanted to fix and didn’t have time to. There are a few new elements as well, production elements that we can have.
MM: Like pyrotechnics?
HMA: (laughs)
AL: That would be fun!
HMA: The idea of the show is that times are tough. They’re on a strict budget and they’ve spent their last dollars on their set. No pyrotechnics, unfortunately. Not this time around anyway.
AL: But that is a good idea.
MM: Do you have anything else in the works? What’s next for Morro and Jasp?
AL: Morro and Jasp are in residence at Factory Theatre this season, developing their newest show, Morro and Jasp: 9 to 5, which is about them actually getting jobs. This show [Of Mice and Morro and Jasp] is about them not being able to, and the next show is about them figuring out how to actually make that happen.
HMA: Hold down a job.
AL: So that’s in process. We’re writing that right now. And also right after this show closes, we have a few days, and then we go to Ottawa to the GCTC for the Undercurrents Festival, and we’re performing Morro and Jasp Do Puberty there. Which is exciting because that’s the first in our series of adult shows, so it’s nice to give Ottawa audiences an introduction to us with that one.
MM: In going back to these other shows, are you finding out more and more about Morro and Jasp? Are Morro and Jasp discovering more about themselves?
AL: We always discover more. Every time we do a show, we change things about it. Because we’ve learned a lot about ourselves, we’ve learned a lot about Morro and Jasp, we learn so much more about who they are every time we do a show. That does inform us. We can add more detail and new things.
HMA: And also sometimes we have references or comments about things that are very timely. They’re happening now. So we’ll change them when we go back to a show. And always we’re interacting so much with the audience and the space that we’re in. Storytelling has to be alive and based on that audience and that thing and what they’re saying to you.
MM: Do you prefer that freedom of development of character and story versus an established play and character written by a playwright? Do you need both?
AL: It’s nice to have both.
HMA: They’re so different.
AL: It’s a totally different challenge. It’s nice to be able to practice both. Doing a play with a script written by someone else, whether it be a famous great playwright or someone new, always teaches us as artists a lot. So it’s nice to have the two inform each other constantly. How to bring what you know about making new work into a script that’s written and how to bridge that other kind of work into what we’re making.
HMA: And it’s a completely different exercise in that, with someone else’s script, you’re trying to interpret it and learn what’s already there and what’s hiding underneath and between the lines. With our stuff, it feels like such a rare opportunity to have a character that you enjoy and play with for so long. For, what? Ten years?
AL: Almost ten years, yeah.
HMA: And they’re so close to us because we created them. It’s a very special thing to be able to play with.
AL: We get to keep coming back to the same character and get to see what they will do in new circumstances, a new adventure, but keeping them, them. The nice thing is that there are no limits in terms of what we want to explore, but there are limits in terms of who those characters are and their relationship. That informs everything that happens.
MM: Are there certain things that Morro and Jasp would never do or say?
HMA: Never say never! (laughs) But there are certain things that they aren’t likely to do. They have their boundaries too. And those change and evolve just like anyone else. They’ve become these very dynamic people because they’ve existed for so long.
AL: I really hate it when actors say, “My character would never do that”. A lot of the time I think, “Just make it work”, but with this, Jasp, say, wouldn’t be happy wearing a pair of baggy pants. But it might be fun to see what happens when you put her in a pair of baggy pants.
HMA: So with those boundaries, it helps us put them into situations that they hate, which is funny. That’s what good theatre is, dynamics. So the more that we found out what they hate or love, the more we can play with the dynamic.
MM: To wrap up, in three words, why should people come to see Of Mice and Morro and Jasp?
(whispered consultation)
AL: Steinbeck meets clown. You’ve got to find out what that means!
Of Mice and Morro and Jasp
Created and performed by Heather Marie Annis and Amy Lee
Directed by Byron Laviolette
Presented by Up your Nose and In your Toes (U.N.I.T.) Productions & Factory Theatre
When: January 28th – February 8th, Tues-Sat 8pm, Thurs 1pm, Sat 2pm
![tn-500_27[1]](https://inthegreenroom.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tn-500_271.jpg?w=600&h=400)
inthegreenroom 