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Oct 28

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The Sex Ed Curriculum, Plays in Threes & Making a Statement with a Dildo – In Conversation with Rob Kempson, Playwright/Director of SHANNON 10:40

Interview by Brittany Kay

Brittany Kay: Tell me about your title character Shannon and SHANNON 10:40?

Rob Kempson: Shannon, the character, was born out of my work as a teacher and meeting students who don’t feel like they are welcomed in the environment of school. I’ve taught in a lot of settings where they are welcomed and that is truly amazing, like if you look at an arts school, for example, and the amount of students who are queer or questioning or in some of sort in-between place with their sexual identity or gender identity, those schools tend to be leaning towards a more supportive side. What was most interesting to me were kids who are incredibly confident with their sexuality and are able to talk about it openly, and the way that other kids in school respond to that kind of confidence and power. I was not one of those kids. After creating Shannon, I started thinking about myself as a queer teacher and the challenges associated with that in this day and age. I thought putting those two people on stage together might create an interesting dynamic.

BK: What has been your inspiration for writing this show?

RK: I’m producing two plays of mine this year. SHANNON 10:40 is the first one before the holidays and the second one is called Mockingbird, which will be in the Next Stage Theatre Festival in January 2016. They are part of a series that I’m calling The Graduation Plays. I think that I tend to work in threes. I kind of get obsessed with an idea for a little while and hang out with that idea in my brain. I’ve been teaching for a long time and so I’ve obviously always thought about school settings but for SHANNON 10:40 and Mockingbird, it was just their time in my brain to come into being. I was ready for them to exist. Jokingly, 2014 was the year of Grandmas for me. I did a musical that was about a grandma (The Way Back To Thursday) and then I did a piece at Hatch that featured three grandmas (#legacy). I don’t think my grandma phase is over, perhaps, but I’d like to think that now I’m on to my school phase.

Once I get interested in a given environment or topic, I want to explore that from a lot of different places before I’m done with it and sometimes you can’t fit all of that into one play, so it becomes two plays.

BK: Is there a third one in your series?

RK: I think there’s a third play… and I think I know what it’s about. I certainly didn’t imagine I would get into Next Stage this year and also get to produce SHANNON 10:40 this year, so the fact that they are being presented so close together is very exciting. I feel really lucky.

BK: Why the title of the series – The Graduation Plays?

RK: I always thought of them as a series and then a smart publicist friend of mine told me that I needed to name it as a series if it’s going to be one. Of course, initially what came to my mind was the Education Plays and I thought, “well that sounds stupid,” and then I thought that that’s not actually what this is about. It’s about all of us as an education community but also us as a world advancing in some way. Getting to somewhere that we weren’t before. That’s what graduation is in theory and I think I imagine these plays to both showcase characters and situations that challenge what we expect and challenge what we understand to be acceptable.

I think that there are so many examples of students taking back power because they need to act out, they need to say they’re not happy, they need to stand up for themselves… there’s a lot of different reasons. The term ‘graduation’ is kind of about all of that – it’s about moving forward and understanding something new. Both plays have that sort of characteristic to them.

BK: How has teaching, being in a school environment, and around these types of students influenced your writing?

RK: I feel so lucky that I get to work as an artist educator and as an artist because those two streams for me are incredibly important in my life, in my career, and they ultimately inform one another. So things that I’m working on in my artistic practice often end up infiltrating my work as an artist educator and vice versa. Things that happen in my practice as an artist educator always make their way into my writing. There’s this real sort of back and forth between those two parts of my brain.

Hallie Seline as Shannon in SHANNON 10:40

Hallie Seline as Shannon in SHANNON 10:40

BK: Why 10:40?

RK: Oh, because that’s the time of Shannon’s guidance appointment. She’s going to a guidance appointment at 10:40. It’s not like 4.48 Psychosis or anything crafty. It’s literally the time of her guidance appointment. The timeline is all about the school day and 10:40 is midway through second period, it’s right before lunch and she’s been called out of class to come to this guidance appointment. There’s a very different kind of day for students because school starts so early in the morning and ends so early in the afternoon.

BK: This play is very timely and appropriate for what some are calling The Education Crisis that is going on.

RK: Yes. It’s not really brain surgery though… Oh, the world changes but we’ve done the exact same thing for a very long time? If we expect to be relevant and expect to connect with our students and we expect to have our education system actually do anything for the community that we live in, it needs to change with the world. The bureaucracy that prevents it from doing so is, in fact, the problem. We need to be able to respond quickly with curriculum development. We need to give teachers enough autonomy to be able to work with the curriculum in an innovative and progressive way, but we also need to be able to support them as they make those choices. The message of Shannon 10:40 is definitely political in scope in the sense that a teacher, Mr. Fisher, is dealing with this desire to be a progressive forward thinking teacher and he’s not receiving the support that he needs to in order to do that effectively. Shannon is a student who’s caught in the cross-fire, not feeling represented in her school, not feeling represented in her classes that she has to take and, therefore, feeling oppressed. She is feeling like she is the victim of oppression in her everyday life as a student and so, of course, she’s going to do something to change that, because she has to.

I think the play is about students figuring out a way to state their case, to share their message, to say what they need to say—and students don’t always do that in the most appropriate way. That’s what it’s about: a student taking back the power and fighting the oppression of that system.

BK: Tell me you’re inviting Kathleen Wynne because this is so timely around what is happening right now in the world of education.

RK: I do have dreams of doing so. I’m definitely inviting some folks who are into education pedagogy and hoping we’ll be able to have a discourse around that.

BK: I think that’s what theatre is about… that, often it needs to reflect what’s happening in our day-to-day.

RK: I agree. I also think that we don’t give students tools to talk about or react to oppression, but we then oppress them. If we’re not teaching them how to react to that in a way that’s appropriate, how can we expect anything but outbursts, outrage and acts of defiance because they need to be heard. They need to say what they feel.

I think the last great bastion to knock down in a school setting is really around sexual and gender diversity and it’s way better than it used to be. It’s not like we aren’t making progress but it’s when in that progress that we need to recognize we’re never done… We still need to work. We still need to continue and develop.

BK: What do you want audiences walking away with from SHANNON 10:40?

RK: Hopefully, a new perspective in their toolkit when they’re thinking about the way that education works in this province. And, also, that they got to see a show with a dildo in it! We haven’t even said that—Shannon brings a dildo to school.

Rapid Fire Question Period:

Favourite movie: Sister Act 2.

Play: Impossible to choose… You Are Here by Daniel MacIvor?

Musical: Elegies.

Food: Cheese.

TV Show: Please Like Me.

Book: Favourites are so hard… I don’t like the commitment… The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

Best advice you’ve ever gotten or something you live by: This is where I find myself. You have to be happy where you are.
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Who: Written and Directed by Rob Kempson
Featuring Qasim Khan and Hallie Seline
Set and Costume Design by Anna Treusch
Lighting Design by Oz Weaver
Sound Design by Daniel Maslany

When: Wed‐Sat at 8pm, Sun at 2pm

Where: Videofag, 187 Augusta Avenue, Toronto

Tickets: $20 or $15 for Artsworkers/Students. Plus a $10 Halloween ticket treat for Saturday October 31st at 8pm.
Available at shannon1040.bpt.me

Connect with us:

Rob Kempson – @rob_kempson #shannon1040

Brittany Kay – @brittanylkay

In the Greenroom – @intheGreenRoom_

 

*Disclaimer: Please note the editor’s personal involvement in the show has not affected the editing and content of this piece. The views of this interview are that of the interviewer and the subject.

Jan 16

In Conversation with Michael Ross Albert, Playwright of “For a Good Time, Call Kathy Blanchard” at the NSTF

Interview by Brittany Kay

Like a long distance pen pal, I had the pleasure of corresponding with the talented and compassionate playwright, Michael Ross Albert, whose show, For a Good Time, Call Kathy Blanchard, is playing at the Next Stage Theatre Festival. We spoke of hockey, where and what we call home, and our constant quest to find out where we belong. 

BK: Tell me a bit about yourself. Where you’re from? Your journey to where you are now? 

MRA: I’m from Toronto originally and I started writing plays when I was in high school. I was a participant in one of the first iterations of the Paprika Festival many many years ago. I also used to act, and did that a bunch in university, which hammered home the feeling that I really preferred to be on the other side of the footlights. I was accepted into an MFA Playwriting program at the Actors Studio Drama School in New York, so I moved to the city and started training alongside some wicked talented Method actors. I kept writing plays and putting them on. When I graduated, my friends and I co-founded Outside Inside and started producing under that banner in a bunch of different festivals. And then, my Visa expired and instead of hiring a lawyer, I moved back to Toronto and started re-discovering the city as an adult for the first time. Now, it’s a real joy to be able to produce a play of mine in this particular festival with a cast and creative team who I’m proud to call friends.

BK: What inspired this play? 

MRA: In the summer of 2012, I was very interested in the idea of home. I was in the process of moving back to Canada, but was putting on a show in New York at the same time. So, I was sleeping on people’s floors, either in my mom’s basement or my old roommate’s living room. I didn’t really know where I belonged; I was unclear as to where “home” was (which is something customs agent ask you a lot when you cross the border fairly regularly and don’t have a job).

One night, in Queens, I happened to run into an old friend of mine. We started nostalgically rehashing these minute details about our shared past, like the time this funny thing happened to so-and-so, this piece of graffiti that had stuck in both our minds. Those small but very clear memories had become almost like personal talismans against… something. Adulthood, maybe. There we were, so far removed from our youth, so completely unsure of what was going to happen next in our lives, so far away from this place we hardly even thought about anymore. And those small details were the ones that still, somehow, burned very brightly. As directionless as we were at the time, these very personal but, otherwise, forgettable memories were quite comforting. I thought it was sad, but I also thought it was pretty funny. And that’s how the play was born.

Also, after years of crafting “well-made plays” at school, I wanted to rip a kitchen sink out of the wall.

Geoffrey Pounsett & Daniel Pagett in For A Good Time, Call Kathy Blanchard

Geoffrey Pounsett & Daniel Pagett in For A Good Time, Call Kathy Blanchard

BK: Are there familial ties from your own life to this play? 

MRA: Not really, but there are shadows of myself in each of the characters, and aspects of my own family members and our dynamics that must have influenced the relationships in the play. But not in any glaringly autobiographical way. It’s fiction for sure.

BK: After watching the show, I assume you’re a huge hockey fan? How did hockey influence your life and this play? 

MRA: I like hockey a lot. I can’t help getting swept up in it, especially if the stakes are high, like during a playoff game. What Jim Warren’s production of this play does very well, I think, is that it sets up the characters themselves as the opposing teams in a hockey game. They’re members of a family pit against one another in this very fast-paced, high-stakes competition. But, unlike hockey, even in this combative family, there’s no clear winner. In fact, probably, everyone in this play is a bit of a loser. But that’s because they don’t want to be pitted against each other. In fact, they really really love one another.

BK: What’s your favourite team? 

MRA: The Leafs.

BK: Why do you think the NSTF is important for the Toronto arts community and Toronto as a whole?

MRA: The festival is curated and they program new works that appeal to various demographics. Their programming is diverse, which brings people who wouldn’t necessarily see theatre into that tent. Each show is completely different from the others. Tickets are inexpensive, so for the same price as a movie, audiences can see really high quality indie theatre, or dance, or comedy. And, the festival literally brings arts-minded people closer together, huddled in that very cozy beer tent. January can be a very depressing month in a cold city and, if nothing else, NSTF gives you an excuse to tear yourself away from Netflix vortexes and be part of a community.

BK: What is your favourite part about the NSTF tent? 

MRA: It’s not the beer. It’s meeting, getting to know, and commiserating with all of the other NSTF artists, whose excellent work I’ve gotten to experience in the festival. The beer is pretty good, too.

BK: What inspires your stories? Where does your inspiration come from when you write?

MRA: I think, first and foremost, I want to write characters that actors would like to play. I think that’s the constant. Apart from that, I have no idea where the inspiration comes from most of the time. Overheard dialogue on the street, stories I’ve been told, phrases, songs, memories. Anything that surprises me.

BK: Do you have a favourite place to write?

MRA: Anywhere private with a window.

BK: What do you want audiences to walk away with?

MRA: I hope they’re able to see themselves and their loved ones in these characters. And I hope they know that, even in those moments when life sucks, they’ve got worth and they mean something to someone else.

Rapid Fire Question Round:

Best show you saw in 2014: Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train at Unit 102

Favourite play: Either Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov or A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee

Favourite actor: Phillip Seymour Hoffman comes to mind

Major influence: Edward Allan Baker

Best advice you’ve ever gotten: From a writing standpoint: “Cut into the action as close to the conflict as possible.” From a producing standpoint: “If it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing in the first place.”

For a Good Time, Call Kathy Blanchard

by Michael Ross Albert, presented by Outside Inside as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival

Entire-Cast

Game Four, Stanley Cup finals. Lawrence is having a breakdown. Sky’s been kicked out of his house. Amanda’s career is going nowhere. Mary won’t leave the living room until someone wins the Stanley Cup. And they’re all preparing for a devastating loss, both on the ice and at home. But, Lawrence has a plan to fix his family for good. A tragic comedy about heartbreak, hockey, and the places we used to call home.

Tickets – $15

Connect: Outside Inside @OutsideInsideCo

Where: Factory Theatre Mainspace (125 Bathurst St.)
Length: 75 mins

Playwright Michael Ross Albert
Director Jim Warren
Featuring Jennifer Dzialoszynski, Daniel Pagett, Geoffrey Pounsett, Caroline Toal

When:

Wed Jan 7 – 8:15pm
Fri Jan 9 – 10:00pm
Sat Jan 10 – 4:45pm
Sun Jan 11 – 4:30pm – followed by a Talkback at The Hoxton
Mon Jan 12 – 9:30pm
Thurs Jan 15 – 7:30pm
Fri Jan 16 – 7:00pm
Sat Jan 17 – 2:30pm
Sun Jan 18 – 6:15pm

Jan 14

Artist Profile: Sam S. Mullins – Storyteller of Fatherly at the Next Stage Theatre Festival

Interview by Hallie Seline

HS: We hear you wear many hats (Comedy, Radio, Playwright, Performer etc). Tell us a bit about yourself and what draws you to the playwright/performer medium with stories like Weaksauce andFatherly?

SM: So many silly hats.

I spend the largest portion of my creative time writing sketch comedy for CBC’s The Irrelevant Show. This is my first year as a full time writer on that show, and it’s been a really terrific experience. Also radio-wise, I’m a regular contributor to the CBC storytelling program Definitely Not the Opera, and I was fortunate enough to get a story on NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour recently, which was always a dream of mine.

So. I work in radio, I suppose, which is really exciting for my Grandmother. She tells me that radio used to be a thing.

In the summers, I tour my one-man comedy monologues on the Canadian Fringe circuit. This will be my 4th summer doing the Fringe, and I’m currently trying to decide whether or not I’ll be touring with a version of this current show. I might want to write something new, but then of course, I’d have to go through the agonizing process of premiering a brand new show all over again – which is not for the faint of heart.

So simply, I write sketch comedy and am a storyteller.

What draws me to storytelling? Hm.

I guess I love the simplicity of it. I like the idea of taking something completely stripped of all artifice and theatricality and mounting it in a theatrical space. Of watching something that doesn’t feel like theatre as if it were theatre. I like that I can be funny or poignant or dark or light all at the same time. It doesn’t have to be heavy handed. It doesn’t have to be hilarious. It just has to be true. Theatre is very much a pursuit of truth, so what makes me love going to see a storytelling show, is that it isn’t even a pursuit of truth. It can just be the truth. That will always be captivating to me.

Also. I wasn’t a great actor. And in storytelling, I don’t have to act.

sam-final

HS: Can you speak about Fatherly and where you found the inspiration to write it.

SM: The main story around which I built the show has been my favourite “over beers” story to tell people for a few years now, and it was only a matter of time before I wrote it into a show. It’s a crazy story. Also, I’m a big fan of real-life characters, and the man who raised me is one of those real-life character with whom I knew that audiences would want to be acquainted.

HS: If you could give me 5 words to entice someone to come see Fatherly, what would they be?

SM: You must meet Bill Mullins

HS: What song should someone listen to before coming to see Fatherly?

SM: Yikes. Maybe “The Greatest” by Kenny Rogers. My mother recommended it to be my curtain call song, and thematically, it’s pretty perfect. Maybe too perfect.

HS: Where do you look to find inspiration?

SM: My heroes: Ira Glass, Marc Maron, Woody Allen, Judd Apatow, Mike Birbiglia and David Sedaris.

HS: What’s the best advice you have ever received? 

SM: I used to work in this busy restaurant in Vancouver, and our staff mantra was “Keep doing things. Keep doing things.” The theory behind it is that there’s always something to do in a restaurant. Polish cutlery. Sweep. Clear some plates. But now I’ve kind of extended that mantra into my creative life. Theoretically, if I keep doing things, everything will run more efficiently in my career. It helps me kick myself in the ass.

“Aw shit. I’m watching hockey highlights again.  I should be doing a “thing” instead.“

Also, I’m a fan of this Louis CK quote:

“Everything you do should be better than everything you’ve done before. That, to me, is a guiding principle.”

HS: What’s your favourite place in Toronto/in Canada and why?

SM: Favourite place in Toronto is the outdoor skating rink by Bathurst and Dundas.  I love playing shinny, and with the city skyline as the backdrop, it’s just stunning.

My favourite place in Canada is the lake on which I grew up – Kalamalka in the Okanagan. Google it. You’ll never see a more beautiful place.

HS: What is you favourite beer in the Next Stage Festival beer tent?

SM: When I’m at a theatre festival, I’m all about the Apricot St Ambroise.  I only drink it in the context of a theatre beer tent, so it tastes like I’m having the time of my life.

Fatherly

Sam_0152

Written and performed by Sam S. Mullins
Where: Factory Theatre Antechamber
When:
Mon Jan 13 8.30pm
Wed Jan 15 8.15pm
Thu Jan 16 6.15pm
Fri Jan 17 6.15pm
Sat Jan 18 8.15pm
Sun Jan 19 6.45pm
Tickets: $10 www.fringetoronto.com/next-stage-festival/

Follow Sam’s blog: http://samsmullins.com/

Jan 13

In Conversation with Morgan Norwich and Johnnie Walker – “Scheherazade” at the Next Stage Theatre Festival

Interview by Madryn McCabe

I sat down with Morgan Norwich and Johnnie Walker, director and writer, in a busy café to discuss their latest production, Scheherazade playing now as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival.

MM: So why don’t you tell me a little bit about Sceherazade?

MN: Sure! It’s an adaptation of 1001 Nights, with the twist that the story is more from the perspective of the character of Scheherazade, who, while she is the teller of the original 1001 Nights, we don’t get to know too much about her. So we created a world where she lives in this crazy, totalitarian society where they’re killing a young woman every morning at dawn, and with a weird anachronistic, modern spin on it with lots of sex, which is also inherent to The Nights, and lots of pop cultural references. That’s about it, wouldn’t you say?

JW: Yeah. In a way I feel like we’re just unearthing the sex and violence that were totally there all along. The Nights have really been sanitized and ‘Disneyfied’ over the years. Sometimes certain bits of the stories go by so fast that you don’t take the time to think about them. But even the whole setup for the story, that there’s this king that marries a different woman every day, sleeps with her, has her killed and marries another one the next day… It’s sex, and violence and sexual violence that are so at the core of the whole thing. But if you say it quickly enough, you sort of skip them somehow. So it’s not like we’re shoving all this new sex and violence into it. It’s already there. I think we’re giving it room to breathe and say “Look at all the stuff that was here this whole time that you missed”.

MM: So was this a story that you had always wanted to tell, or was it that you set out to find a show that was the untold story? Why this story?

JW: That’s a good question. It’s been so long…

MM: How long have you been working on it?

MN: Over two years now.

JW: Yeah that would have been about fall of 2010.

MN: So even longer than that.

JW: And that was a very short, early version of the very beginning of the play that was like a little workshop. And then we came back to it the year after that a bit more seriously.

Lindsey Clark in Scheherazade. Photo Credit: Greg Wong

Lindsey Clark in Scheherazade. Photo Credit: Greg Wong

MN: We did a workshop of it with just two actors, just focusing on the characters of Scheherazade and Dunyazade, the sisters, and out of that workshop came this idea for the world of the play being this dystopian, but also very familiar, wedding-obsessed culture, and all the ideas of consumerism layered into the existing narrative. That came out of that workshop.

JW: I’ve always been into the character of Scheherazade, even just the name I like.

MM: So what about Scheherazade is appealing to you?

JW: Just the idea that there is this totally brutal regime that she’s living in, this insane tyrant running the country, and that her plan to take him down is all through art. And it’s totally pacifist. She’s just smart. She’s smarter than everyone, a really good storyteller, and she doesn’t need to come up with some… It’s a very genre show in a lot of ways, it feels very genre-ish, where it has this dystopian, almost science fiction without the science feel to it. I’m kind of a nerdy guy in a lot of ways. I like seeing a superhero movie, or we’re both fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and things like that, and in the last couple of years I have noticed seeing a lot of this stuff that, even though those shows or movies are really smart and have a lot of sophisticated things to say, it ultimately comes down to people punching each other. And that usually is the only way to solve problems. I love how that is not what Scheherazade is about. Never in part of her plan is “Oh I’ll trick him with this story, and then I’ll shoot him in the face”. That’s not what her deal is. And in the show I think we’re trying to examine “Is it possible to have that? Is that kind of resistance possible? Where does it work and where doesn’t it work? Where can a plan like that really succeed? And where can it really fail?”

MM: So is it possible to change the world through creative, non-violent means?

JW: Exactly.

MM: Is this the kind of play you guys are always looking to do? These strong female-centred shows?

MN: For the most part. I consider Johnnie to be one of the best feminist playwrights, of the male feminist playwrights for sure.

JW: Oh that’s so nice! I like that!

MN: Well I do. I always have. So another really large show that we did a few years ago was called Eight Girls Without Boyfriends which, I don’t think Johnnie realized this when he wrote it, was sort of a witte-fem inspired, cabaret piece that was also about these empowered female characters. So I don’t know if it’s something that’s always been conscious, but it’s been the kind of thing we’ve always done just because of who we are.

JW: I think both of us are really interested in feminism and gender and also sexuality.

MN: One of the other things that Johnnie and I do when we’re not doing shows is we work with an all-male burlesque troupe called Boylesque T.O. so we’ve been in the last few years exposed to the burlesque community and the gender play on it because, with the exception of me, it’s all guys in the troupe. I feel like probably a lot of my experience with both the male burlesque troupe and other female burlesque troupes that I’ve hosted with since we started doing that has informed a lot of certainly the staging of sexuality that’s gone into the show, but also, when you’re around sex-positive people all the time you get a good attitude about that kind of thing and you want to express it onstage.

MM: After having seen the show last night, I can say there’s a lot of sex in the show, but it’s funny, a lot of it is very light.

MN: Except when it’s not! And then it’s not.

MM: Right. And for the most part, when there’s sex in other plays, you can see it coming and you feel like “oh there’s going to be sex and I’m going to be uncomfortable seeing this with all these other people” and you guys just put it out there. It’s very “it is what it is” and then you move on to the next part.

MN: And so you didn’t feel uncomfortable? Oh good!

MM: And the audience loved it. They thought it was really funny. Especially, I would say, the older members of the audience. So do you usually get a good reception from people for this kind of work?

JW: Some people have actually said that this show is a departure for us in a lot of ways. That level of sexuality is not in our previous shows.

MM: So why make such a departure?

JW: We wanted to tell this story. We both came at it from different angles, and it was important to the both of us in different ways. And in the same ways also. So I think you need it for the story. When I was writing it, I didn’t throw in any orgies that aren’t in the original plot and aren’t integral to the plot.

MM: It’s funny that you say that because going into the show I thought “Oh we all know the story of Scheherazade” but apparently we DON’T really know the story. You had said earlier that it’s really the untold story. It’s been so ‘Disneyfied’, and we really know more about the stories that she tells versus the story of her.

Lindsey Clark in Scheherazade. Photo Credit: Greg Wong

Lindsey Clark in Scheherazade. Photo Credit: Greg Wong

JW: Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad are the ones that all rise to the top. And ironically, those are the stories that are in 1001 Nights where no original has been found. They were all translated in the 1800s into French by this guy Guillaume, and those three stories, which have become the most popular, no one has found the original that he translated from. So there’s a lot of speculation that he actually wrote them himself, inspired by the tales. It’s kind of hilarious that those have become the iconic stories. When you read the tales, almost every story are as good as those, as good as Aladdin. There are so many amazing ones that we don’t know. And in the show itself we have these moments. Like, right before the first orgy scene, they come on and do this sort of tasteful sexuality.They’re sort of posed in a silly way and she says, “slaves let us bathe and let us lie together” which, in the translation that we’re working from, is directly in the text. But I thought that was so sanitized. It’s a translation of a translation of a translation. Somebody has put their 20th century, prudish, Westernized idea of what that means. But really, think about that for a minute. What does ‘let us bathe and let us lie together’ mean? It doesn’t mean ‘scrub my arm and let’s have a nap’. It’s a big orgy. That’s what that means. There are these details that came out and it’s very explicit in the story that Scheherazade’s whole plan can’t start until she and the king have sex. It has to happen to complete their marriage. And it’s specific about the fact that her younger sister is in the room while that happens. In the original, she’s actually under the bed.

MN: We didn’t go that far!

JW: We even toned it down from that! But it’s one of those things that people just glide past in the text. “Oh yeah, Dunyazade was lying under the bed, then she came out with a plate of food”. No! Wait! Give that a moment. She’s in the same room as her sister while she is sort of raped by this tyrant. It’s a huge deal. And you need to give that its time. So it was about unearthing these bits. If this happened in real life, it would be a big deal. And the narrative isn’t quite letting it be.

MN: One of the things, right off the bat in rehearsal that we talked to the actors about was checking their own assumptions about the story and the world because of all of our ‘over-Disneyfied’ childhoods. We literally got to a point where everyone got one Disney’s Aladdin reference per rehearsal and then we had to shelve it and put it away. As much as so much of the play has ended up being cartoonish, which works for the kind of satire we’re doing, it didn’t help to go back to images in our heads of the Disney movie.

JW: Would you say that we’re dealing with A Whole New World?

MN: I would, but I can only say that once today! That’s the rule.

Director - Morgan Norwich and Writer - Johnnie Walker of Scheherazade

Director – Morgan Norwich and Writer – Johnnie Walker of Scheherazade

MM: Are you able to do this show because it’s part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival?

MN: Yes. Next Stage provides a lot of resources in terms of giving us the space, the box office, the technicians, stuff that’s really difficult to afford for even a small show. But when you’re dealing with a cast of eleven, plus three designers, plus stage manager, plus producer, the cost just grows and grows. Having the context of the festival is actually what has made it possible.

JW: And the cache too.

MM: So because it’s part of THIS festival, you can put on THIS play? Would you have been able to find the support, not just financially, somewhere else? Do you think you could have done this play without being a part of this festival?

MN: I don’t think something like this, even at the Toronto Fringe, we could have pulled off in the same way. Because it’s a smaller festival, we get a little bit of extra support, in terms of media stuff in particular.

JW: We were successful in some of our grant applications, and I think that’s partly because we were part of this festival. It’s a known entity. Even though it’s not that old as a festival, I think it has a great reputation. It’s a kind of risky show in a way for the performers, so to be able to hand them the script and say “we’re doing it here” is nicer than “here’s this crazy show with orgies and stuff, and we’re going to do it in a garage”.

MN: There’s a safety net, for sure.

MM: Do you have anything else in the works? Maybe want to give us a preview?

MN: This show has been so all consuming! We’ve got burlesque stuff happening immediately after, and I’ve got something in the Rhubarb Festival. But it’s going to be very weird for this to be over.

JW: We also do our show Redheaded Stepchild, that’s coming up. We have a show that we did in Edmonton last year called Amusement that we’re hoping to do in Toronto at some point. We don’t have an exact plan for that yet, but hopefully we’ll get something together.

MM: So to wrap up, in three words, why should people go see Scheherazade?

MN: Natasha [Greenblatt] in the show sent a really good email inviting someone to come that said “There are three orgies and a knife fight” so I’m going to say Three Orgies, Knife-fight. I can hyphenate that, right?

JW: I was just going to say Butts, Butts, Butts. When we got into the costumes, I realized there are a lot of butts in this play. So there’s a butt for everyone!

Scheherazade

Presented by Nobody’s Business theatre
Written by: Johnnie Walker
Directed by: Morgan Norwich
Where: Factory Theatre
When:
Monday, January 13th, 2014 at 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, January 16th, 2014 at 5:15 p.m.
Friday, January 17th, 2014 at 9:15 p.m.
Saturday, January 18th, 2014 at 6:45 p.m.
Sunday, January 19th, 2014 at 9:15 p.m.
Tickets: $15 . For online sales, go to www.fringetoronto.com. Tickets can be purchased by phone at 416-966-1062, or in person at the venue. For more information, go to www.nobodysbusiness.ca.

Jan 8

Loss, Comedy and the Quaids: In Conversation with Amanda Barker & Daniel Krolik – Next Stage Theatre Festival’s Release the Stars: The Ballad of Randy and Evi Quaid

Interview by Shaina Silver-Baird

I had the pleasure of interviewing Daniel Krolik and Amanda Barker to discuss the upcoming run of their show “Release the Stars: The Ballad of Randy and Evi Quaid” appearing as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival. Here they talk all things Quaid; the essentials for living on the run and creative inspiration. 

SSB: How do you think the piece has changed since your first, exceptionally successful run? 

Daniel Krolik: The thing I realized in rehearsals last week was that, more so than the numerous rewrites that we’ve made, the basic energy of the piece is what’s changed the most. In 2012, we were performing in an art gallery. No set, no lights, just us and our audience. We asked them a lot of questions directly and were basically in their laps for the show. Now it’s Amanda and me on a stage with all the trappings of a theatre piece. Even though much of our text is the same, the energy is more polished, more focused, more precise. It’s still as funny and sad and dangerous as it was at Fringe… just completely different at the same time.

Amanda Barker: It has grown in so many ways. There are undercurrented characters that run throughout the piece – they were always there, but we took the time to develop them and really examine who they were and what their journey was.  We make an appearance as ourselves as well, and we examine what it was like to meet the real Randy and Evi Quaid.

SSB: What inspired you to write this piece about the Quaids? 

DK: Amanda and I had both read the Vanity Fair article about Randy and Evi in 2010. We were trying to write something together, and we started experimenting with the idea of playing the Quaids. For me, the inspiration was twofold. First, Randy is a really good actor and has worked with most of the greats from the 1970s and 1980s. He was very close to a real comeback after his work in Brokeback Mountain, which got derailed with the events we cover in our show. I became intrigued with how this man, an established talent, was deprived (or deprived himself) of an artistic renaissance, and how devastating that would be for him. Then it was the Quaid’s experience with loss. Randy and Evi had lost a number of close friends in Hollywood – like Heath Ledger, Chris Penn, and David Carradine. How do you cope when the people in your life keep dying? How do you justify or process that? Beyond the outrageousness and the crazy Hollywood life, Randy and Evi’s story is about two people trying to stay connected in the face of terrible loss.

AB: Anyone who has heard even small pieces of their journey is fascinated. For me, it was a Vanity Fair article by Nancy Jo Sales (who also wrote the original Bling Ring article) that had me hooked. I think Daniel’s was with Esquire. He actually texted me from Montreal one night asking me what I thought about a show about the Quaids and I was like – YES! Let’s do this. For me, I was always interested in Evi. She was always labled as his crazy bitch wife and I wanted to know everything I could about her. Why did everyone think she was to blame? That’s something I wanted to examine. I wanted to know who she was. She’s a strong woman and an unabashed artist.

RELEASE-THE-STARS_DANIEL-KROLIK-AND-AMANDA-BARKER_PHOTO-BY-MARCO-TIMPANO

Release the Stars: The Ballad of Randy and Evi Quaid – Daniel Krolik and Amanda Barker. Photo by Marco Timpano

SSB: What was it like having the real life Quaids in the audience for your final performance in the Fringe? Did it change the show at all for you? 

DK: It was terrifying, because we didn’t know how they would respond to the show. We worked very hard to tell their story as objectively as possible, but we had no idea how they would react. Early on that night, I delivered a line of dialogue right to Randy, and he laughed. I relaxed and knew it would be ok from then on in. Amanda and I only had each other to rely on, and it’s probably the most exhilarated and connected I’ve ever felt in a show.

AB: It was insane….magical…..electric….terrifying. Daniel and I couldn’t talk once we were individually told before the show. That moment when our eyes met on stage will always be one of the single greatest moments that I will ever feel as a performer. We communicated everything in that moment – we both knew what we knew, and we both knew we were there to support each other, no matter the outcome. There may have been slight nuances that were different but for us in that performance but the show was always about their life through a media lense and so we made a safe structure knowing that they were there – we aren’t up on stage poking fun at the “Crazy Quaids”.  We never wanted the show to be that. That would have been easy and maybe funny but ultimately uninteresting for us as creators.

SSB: What was your process for creating this particular piece? 

DK: About two years of trial and error. Between our work with Jack Grinhaus, our director, and Megan Mooney, our dramaturg, scenes were reshaped, rewritten, added, taken out, cried over, put back in, ripped apart and put back together again. It’s been an extremely complicated and infinitely rewarding process.

AB: I have an English degree in addition to Theatre and have lots of experience in TV format as well but in the last decade I have also written a fair bit of sketch comedy and I think the sketch process is an easy format to get ideas and scenes generating. Being part of that world encouraged me to take risks as a writer and it taught me to generate material and to get out of self-editing. Daniel and I originally were just trying to motivate each other creatively so we challenged each other to write personal or character essays in various coffee shops in the annex.  Once possible ideas for a show started percolating, we wrote with Randy and Evi in mind as well as a shared grief experience that really affected both Daniel and me. Then it kind of followed a sketch format for a while. After about a year, what we had were a series of personal essays and sketches. We brought it to Jack Grinhaus who said – ‘yeah, I’ll play with you, but get a dramaturg!’  So we did, Megan Mooney. Both Jack and Megan have guided this piece in ways we couldn’t possibly imagine. I have so much gratitude for both of them.

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SSB: What are the 5 things you’d have to take with you if you were on the run like the Quaids? 

DK: A good book. An ipod with my entire music library. Cheese and crackers. My favourite orange hoodie. And a damn good bourbon.

AB:

  1. paraben free lip balm

  2. My ipad Mini with Netflix on it and tons of open disk space!

  3. All of my points cards. I am religious about them.

  4. A bathtub. I can’t live without one.

  5. Several bags of Smartfood popcorn

SSB: Are you afraid the Hollywood Star Whackers might accidentally come after you instead?! 

DK: I’d be honoured and humbled if the Star Whackers made the effort to track us down at Next Stage. I’d be thrilled. Who are the indie Toronto theatre Star Whackers? Names. I want names.

AB: Shit….now I am. I’ll take a career that people would love to kill me for, thank you very much.  I’ll take some residual cheques so big people want to murder me for them. These are the problems I want. Sign me up.

SSB: What inspires you as artists? 

DK: A billion things. Mostly it’s the amazing work of others. Right now, I’m in love with the late, lamented HBO series Enlightened, David Rakoff’s gorgeous final book “Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish”, the insane and beautiful nightmare of a film Holy Motors, the food at the Whippoorwill Restaurant at Bloor and Landsdowne, and the How Was Your Week and Ronna and Beverly podcasts. And I’m giddy with anticipation at seeing all the amazing work by everyone at Next Stage.

AB: You know what inspires me? Doing shows where an interviewer asks me these kind of questions! I think I’ve done 60 interviews in the past year and most of them were about dildos (I was touring a parody of the 50 Shades of Grey Series). This is such an amazing change.

So, that said… My freedom inspires me, it always has. I love jumping into improv sets whenever I can, the freedom of it, the support of an ensemble – that is always inspiring to me. Shortly after the first Release the Stars ended, I went to Mexico City for work and had a day off. I went to Frida Kahlo’s house, the Casa Azul. I have never been so inspired as I was that day, standing in her studio. She had to create, there was no other option. It was not a question for her. Her energy still radiates from those walls and a world of colour poured from her. You feel it. I felt much the same a year ago – I was in Chicago and I came upon an exhibition of Vivan Maier. She was a nanny who took hundreds of photos her entire life. She took them because she had to, she loved to.  And they are haunting, some of the most articulate photos you’ll ever see. They were only found because she defaulted payment on her storage facility, she never did anything with them. It comes from a different place, that creative spirit that flies out of you in inspiration. Like a bird that wants to be set free and it is just up to you not to stand in its way – let it go, give it away. The female artists who fight to create inspire me, I suppose – I think that’s why I am so intrigued by Evi Quaid. I am most inspired when I am in a community of story tellers who fight to create – Next Stage is a thrill beyond thrill for me because that’s what all of us are and I can’t wait to experience the beautiful work that will surround us at the festival. It is beyond inspiring.

Release the Stars: The Ballad of Randy and Evi Quaid

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Written and Performed by: Amanda Barker & Daniel Krolik
Directed by: Jack Grinhaus

Where: Factory Studio Theatre – 60 minutes

What: Comedy/Drama

WARNINGS: Adult themes

Tickets: Click here

When:
Wed Jan 8, 9:00pm
Fri Jan 10, 5:15pm
Sat Jan 11, 7.30pm
Sun Jan 12, 9:30pm
Tue Jan 14, 9:00pm
Wed Jan 15, 6:45pm
Fri Jan 17, 7:15pm
Sat Jan 18, 2:45pm
Sun Jan 19 5:15pm

Watch their NSTF Teaser here:

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