Jess McAuley
Originating from Niagara, Jess McAuley is a Brock University graduate (theatre studies, honours) with a passion for devised theatre, writing, and pushing the bounds of adventure on stage.
Her recent credits with New Twist include Peter Panhandler (co-creator/producer, 2017), Guilty Pleasures (writer/director, 2016). Previously, Jess has worked with Something-Something Productions for the 2013 production of The Rocky Horror Show (Usherette/Janet), Fragmentos (Maria Chambers, Brock University, 2013), and collaborated with NeXt Theatre Company in The Arab Spring Monologues (2013).
Jess is taking the next steps with New Twist in touring the company with her first ever solo show – to premiere in the London Fringe Festival (2018). Currently untitled, the show is a true coming of age story, beginning in high school and all the way to graduation; it’s a story of finding love and closure while navigating through her depression and melancholy. Though she is a lover of fiction and adventure, Jess has morphed the show into a “confessional”, and invites the audience to peak inside her life through her old journals, letters and photos. You may laugh, you may cry, but Jess hopes that above all she inspires survivors to find courage in standing up for themselves against their own demons and vices.
Transcript
Welcome to episode 106 of Stageworthy. I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast about people in Canadian theatre, featuring conversations with actors, directors, playwrights, and more.
If you want to drop me a line, you can find Stageworthy on Facebook and Twitter at StageworthyPod and you can find the website at Stageworthypodcast.com. My guest this week is actor, producer, and playwright, and the artistic director of London’s New Twist Theatre, Jess McCauley. We recorded this conversation a little while ago using a remote connection. I was in Toronto and Jess was in London, Ontario, so we used a Skype connection and there are some issues with the audio, some lagging, and ad points talking over each other, but I thought the conversation was such that I just present it as is.
So here’s my conversation with Jess McCauley. So I guess where I want to start is actually, I really want to talk about this solo show of yours, and you were telling me before that you’ve, you know, right now you’ve applied to the CAF lottery, and so you’re hoping to do some Fringe festivals, but what’s the show that you’re wanting to take to Fringe? Oh my goodness, this has been a long time coming for me. The show is, it’s more so a discussion about, yes, depression in the arts, but there’s an interesting conversation about, to get really in there and in depth right now, about rape culture.
And quite frankly, it plagues so many women, and especially with this whole Me Too coming up, and everybody is sharing the hashtag, and it’s just, it’s overwhelming. For me, this has been, my life always felt like chapters of something, and it was like I was starting a new chapter in life, a clean slate, and every gentleman caller that has come into my life has changed the course of my life in so many different ways that I need to talk about this now. It’s been burning in me forever that I finally have just gotten the vision set.
Yeah. So, how does that, I mean, obviously, there’s a lot to unpack there. So, in terms of it being a show about depression, for one thing, is that something, are you concerned about airing your dirty laundry in that kind of way? Is it, how personal is the show? Yeah, that’s another thing I’ve been very careful on, is I don’t want to get up on stage and necessarily start saying, well, this guy wronged me this way and this way, and it’s just, that’s not the intention of the show.
In fact, nobody gets named in it. I’m not going to delve too deep into every single relationship. There’s actually a lot of things I did that I need to come forward with.
It’s more so talking about the cycle of abuse and how I’ve given abuse. So, it’s actually, the full title, it’s a long title. It’s Never Have I Ever, The Truth and Tales of Jess McCauley.
And it’s actually about all the lies I’ve told to deal with some of the stress that I was going through with depression. But quite frankly, I think there’s a conversation of honesty and stepping forward now that I want to embrace now. There’s been years where I’ve bottled things up and I haven’t talked about it.
And now is the perfect time as the conversation has come up with everybody. So, it’s reassuring in that way. But at the same time, I’m not one to do, and I like the saying, to air the dirty laundry.
I’m not one to put the blame there on people. Yeah. So, it’s a hard process.
It is a hard process. And there’s something about standing up in front of a room full of people because you’re using your name. You’re not hiding behind a character.
So, you’re performing as yourself. And I know for myself, when I perform my solo show with a character, I had a certain amount of terror. And the day that I performed the show for the first time, I really thought I was going to throw up.
So, I’m trying to imagine how you must feel thinking about standing up in front of people and talking about stuff that’s so personal. You know, it’s really good that you said that because I actually… When was it? A couple of weeks ago at Confabulation in Toronto, I… There was a storytelling night and the theme was called Clean Slates. So, I decided to use this opportunity to try exactly that out, to see what it’s like to really expose yourself and to say something that’s really shameful.
So, I tried an excerpt of a story I’ll be talking about in the show, which it was when I actually dated two guys at once. It was… Yeah, it was interesting. I think I felt the same thing.
I felt like I was going to throw up. I was sick. I was sitting with my fiance at the time and I’m looking, I’m like, I don’t think I can do this.
And he’s just like, you’ll be fine. Get up there. You scamp.
And I’m like, all right, fine. So, yeah, went up there. And by the end of it, I actually had a lot of people come up and say that they actually had been through A, something similar or B, they were in a place where I was, where they made such self-destructive decisions.
And for me, I think that was the redeeming quality of getting up and exposing myself is knowing that some people just need someone to step forward and say it first before they have to say it. Yeah. And I think that’s just the sort of comfort that I want to give in the show is that, and the show does talk about forgiveness.
It talks about closure and moving on with one’s life. At the same time, though, I was wondering if it kind of bordered on a TED Talk, but there’s some performance quality in it, which is good. Yeah.
I guess there’s always, whenever you’re talking about something that’s kind of personal, you kind of wonder if you’re getting it, is this a play or is this a TED Talk? Is this something that would be at some kind of self-help seminar or like, what is this? And there’s always, I think we all find different ways to combat that, to make sure that what we’re doing is more of a play. How have you managed to try to keep from it being like, as you said, a TED Talk? Well, for one thing, I don’t want to go, while I’ve been writing it, right now I’m working on framing the story and creating more. I have this process where I like to create a physical frame of the show and go through it and give myself conceptual ideas.
I’m actually used to being more on the dramaturgical side. So it’s interesting having to ask myself these questions now coming back at me. And that’s one thing that I did ask is, okay, where can I create the border now and cut it off? That’s great, we have a moral, but how can I draw people in? And I think for me is getting an idea, not just through the bad times, but let’s talk about the good times as well.
Let’s talk about the other components in my life that made me who I am. Is this story worthwhile to tell people? Is it going to get them out of this funk that I’m putting them in, right? Because the one thing I don’t want to do is emotionally overload my audience. And giving that moral at the end of it is great, that’s going to be awesome, but they need more than just the moral of the story to lift them up emotionally.
They need more hope and joy because that’s what my life is. My life isn’t just bad things happening, there’s wonderful things in there. And in fact, the show has a big happily ever after to it.
So yeah, I wanted to make sure that people knew I did in fact write off in the sunset, the proverbial sunset of course. Yeah. And you said that you’ve been working on this show for about two years? Yeah, it’s been a couple of years now.
I got the idea a long time ago, oh my goodness, I talked to a, oh no, I cannot remember her name, it’s just blanking on me. But I was talking to a storyteller, I used to do ghost tours actually in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and she was a fellow tour guide. And her and I started talking just about storytelling shows that she would do.
And I’d never heard of storytelling really before. I had heard of solo shows and biographical shows, I’ve never actually heard it called storytelling. So I asked her and I picked her brain on it a little bit.
And then she said, oh, I noticed you really like telling stories, so would you ever do it? I’m like, well, I don’t think I have something to say. I don’t really have big stories like you do. And she said, oh, that’s not true, and just started poking me on it.
And suddenly I think something opened in me that I just needed to talk about this now. And I again, just kept talking to her about it. And it was so nice to be able to air this out, and I felt a sense of closure from it.
And from then on, it was there, just incubating. And it just took the 2016 Fringe Festival, I saw John Bennett’s Fire in the Meth Lab. And I absolutely loved it.
I loved the idea of just sitting there and talking about something so personal and intimate with people that I knew I could do it too. I love telling stories. You said, you were mentioning that you felt like it was time after two years of working on it, that it was time.
Did anything kick you in? Was it that show at Fringe that kicked you in the ass to decide that this is it now, I have to do it? Yeah, it definitely was. I mean, his story wasn’t about the relationship with his brother, but it was seeing other Fringers and people telling, again, those close personal stories. And like I said, I emotionally bottle things.
I do not like feelings at all. I like to run from them, in fact. So it was one of those turning points.
I mean, my life has changed dramatically. It is a 180 from where it was. And theatre is also my passion in life.
It’s what I know. It’s all I know. That I think I’m doing myself a service at this point by doing it, by using that creative outlet to treat not like a therapy session for myself, but just to essentially come to terms with it.
So that’s kind of the way that I thought about it was just, you know, I find joy out of theatre, and I find joy talking to people. Let’s mold them together. Let’s do something that’s emotionally weighing on me.
Obviously, there’s something in me that needs to be said. What’s being unsaid now? Did you, you were talking about your process being like building a frame. Did you see the, was the process of writing this show really structured? Or did you, was it exploratory? And then drilling down to a structure? I actually started recording myself.
Anytime I was telling a story to my, my fiance or my roommates, I would just pick up my phone and tell them what I’m doing. And then I’d actually record myself telling the story. And that’s how I had to begin it is I needed to get an idea of what these stories look like, and what I would be including.
And eventually I have like, I have a huge file of audio of audio files, and just small stories, I’d write down to myself, and I transcribe them onto the computer. Then that’s when I said, okay, now let’s organize these thoughts and then create the frame. So in a sense of exploratory, it was more of everyday life.
How am I experiencing everyday life telling these stories now? And how can I relate it on stage? And then afterwards I can actually figure out the frame for it. Then I actually like to go into the studio and work with those stories and figure out the transitions and figure out all the, again, the structure. Then I can get the meat to the bones, really.
ISAAC ZABLOCKI Oh boy. I was young. I’m actually Irish.
I come from a very Irish family. Everybody can trace our family back to like way far back. And one big Irish tradition when you’re having big parties is to do sing-alongs.
People love singing. We love getting the guitar out, love cranking the tunes, doing some karaoke. So when I was really young, I was extremely shy, but my mother used to pull me up in front of everybody and used to make me sing.
In fact, it was always somewhere over the rainbow I’d sing. And I just, I started to grow out of it. And I started to like performing.
And I can remember as far back anytime something involved theatre, I was always, my hand always shot up being like, me, I want to do it. And I just, I grew from that and I just became addicted to it. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it was my passion anymore.
When I was in elementary school, I actually got bullied by teachers. It was awful. And they told me I’d never go anywhere with it, let it go.
You should stick to backstage, nothing else. And I didn’t even know it was really my passion until I went to Brock University and I was just exposed to this amazing world. It was just a hobby to me.
But as soon as I came, submerged myself into it, it just lit up in me. After that, it was just, I’m never going back. This is my life.
Who cares what the haters say, even if they’re teachers, right? Yeah. So, so teachers were, were, were discouraging you? Was that, I mean, cause I know when I was, you know, when I was in, in, uh, in high school and going to see guidance counselors and they’d be like, so what do you want to do? And I’d be like, I want to be an actor. And they would not know how to deal with that.
And there was a lot of, maybe you should study business as a backup. Uh, but nobody ever said don’t do it, but there was a lot of discouragement, a lot of, maybe you should do something reasonable, like learn how to. No, I got the, I got very harsh teachers.
Um, I remember I was trying out, usually choir is for everybody to join, but there was something about these two teachers, um, that did not like me. I don’t know what I did. I mean, I was only eight years old really when I first started noticing it.
And I remember going to my mom and telling her like, Hey, these guys aren’t letting me join anything. Like, and it’s all open. Everyone else is joining except for me.
And I, I never had the courage to tell anybody past my mother and my mother wanted to, and I kept begging her not to, because it was like, it was so embarrassing at the time. Right. And I really thought it was like, maybe I shouldn’t do it, but I remember approaching the teacher and saying, Oh, I’m going to sign up for choir.
And it was, Oh, you know what? No, honey, I think we should do something else. And it was like, what are you talking about? Just like, you know what? We need help. Uh, if, if you want, you can set up the chairs, uh, you can get all the music stands set up for everyone, but maybe not, you know, maybe you shouldn’t do it.
I thought I couldn’t sing for years and I never wanted to sing in front of anybody. And I, I actually do sing. I sing really well.
Um, but yeah, straight up. I was told not to. Did you ever find out what it was? Yeah.
It’s actually horrible. And I did go to somebody to tell them, uh, I did go, I found out, Oh, this is going to seem so unbelievably petty. Um, so the, there was a, these couple of girls that were in my class that were always chosen for everything.
And I found out that their parents were friends with the teachers and the kids would complain to their parents saying that they didn’t want me around. So it was a matter of them bullying to tell their parents that I shouldn’t do it. And they thought that I was bullying the kids.
So they thought I was exactly, they thought I was bullying them, but I wasn’t doing anything. I found out years later about that. And I went to those teachers and I told them what exactly they did.
I mean, like, I’ll be honest, there were years I missed out on, uh, I wasn’t able to do anything cause I was so afraid. And it was just, and they said, well, we were just trying to do what was best. And I asked them, well, why didn’t you talk to me instead of making me feel so excluded? I actually think it’s pretty incredible that you took that.
You didn’t take that as enough discouragement to make you not want to do this because at that age, so many people would like, if it had been me, I probably would have just been like, well, I guess I’m not any good. I shouldn’t try. Maybe I’ll learn how to program computers or something.
You know, I wouldn’t have, I would not have, uh, pursued it even though it was a thing that I really loved. I’m one of those people that I’ll take it to heart and I’ll think I’m not doing it. But like, for instance, I, I actually, uh, I do suffer with depression, so I do get really hard on myself.
And I just said the other day, like, you know, I, I can’t write, I can’t do this. And I wrote a status about it because I thought maybe there’s someone else out there that needs to have this acknowledged so they don’t feel so alone. And when I did it, my friend calls me and said, you know, ironically, you wrote that so beautifully.
And I don’t know, I’m like, oh man, okay, fine. I guess you’re not wrong. But I, and, and so I kind of looking back on it now that you say that, I’m thinking like, you know what? Yeah, I guess I never really did let anything hold me back on that one.
So like, how about the inner Slytherin in me? Yeah, I, I’m definitely a Slytherin true and true. Yeah. That’s excellent.
That’s excellent. Um, I, I’m also like, every time I take one of those tests, I’m a Pottermore certified Slytherin and I don’t know why. There we go.
There we go. There we go. Um, and so at what point after all of that, at what point did you decide, or did you figure out that this was a thing that you needed to do? Um, I was actually in my first year at Brock.
Uh, again, I don’t know. I think it was just me thinking, okay, I’m not good at anything else. I should probably just stick with theatre.
I love it. I’m good at it. Let’s see what comes of it.
Um, but getting to Brock and having it certified that it, yes, it was being around other people, like I said before, but, uh, I’m going to give a shout out here to my mentor, which is David Fancy that he was my prof in first year for performance. And we used to do these journals in first year. And I handed my journal and just discussing the true difference between listening and hearing on stage.
Cause you’re learning about your 360 awareness as your first year and you’re getting that sense of what it means to be on stage. So I wrote this long piece about the difference between the two. And I got this note back saying, um, that was, um, that was really good.
Have you considered grad school? And I can’t, I went up to him like, I’m sorry, what did you just say? I’m sorry. You have faith. And then he was like, you’re a really good writer.
And then, uh, him and I just bonded. He always had faith in me. And it, it really took that one big role model to put some positivity into how I view myself and my skill that I knew absolutely I can do this.
I got into this school. I’m getting, I have a good relationship with my teachers and I can do this. I know I can.
And I’ve had doubts throughout my years, but man, I just barreled through it. I just, I feel like that just, I was this train that was on fire and all this thing was happening, but I still made it to the station safe and sound is how it felt throughout school. Yeah, I made it.
Yeah. Um, what is the, this, this, this show, this solo show, is this your first solo piece? If I’ve ever written something it’s, I’ve always been on the other side of it. So that way I can make notes.
I can create a big notebook about it. I can go back on it. Like I, you know, my first big show that I really wrote and produced was done in the Fringe Festival in 2016.
Last year. Wow. It feels like forever ago.
I don’t know why I keep saying it like that, but last year and yeah, that was the first time. So looking, I was able to have it filmed and I’m able to write my notes about it and I want to do in a few years, but now that I have this, I have to have myself filmed now and look at myself doing it. And it’s, it’s very awkward.
It’s very strange for me. Did you, did you have a, a drive to do a solo show previous to this? Was there, was there ever a voice in your head that said, I want to do? No, actually it was always saying do stand up. I have not tried stand up yet.
Uh, when I did confab, I cracked a few jokes and got a laugh, which was cool, but nothing ever said solo show solo. It was always stand up, stand up. And I have not explored that yet.
So we’ll see what happens. I say ominously. Yeah.
Well, I mean, it’s, it’s like, I always, ever since I first picked up, uh, one of Daniel McIver’s plays, whenever, ever since I first picked up a wild abandoned, I was like, I want to do this, but I could never bring myself to do it. It was like, how do I make this happen? Um, cause I, you know, there’s all kinds of, you know, and I would, I just never felt like I had something important enough to say. It seems really hard, but also for me, a lot of, a lot of anytime I found a course, it was like, write your own solo show.
It was always like, based on everything about your life. I was like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. You want, you want what? And I, you know, cause I was looking at Daniel McIver’s stuff and he was always like, it’s a character piece and things like that.
And I was like, this is who, this is what, that’s who I want to be like. And then, you know, I eventually came across something and I started writing it took me eight years before I was like, you know, if I don’t enter a fringe festival and try to do this, I’m going to be writing this thing for the rest of my life. I didn’t apply for the, uh, the festival, the past one in London.
Um, I was actually working on another big show at the time and I felt like I was kicking myself, but at the same time I was like, no, you’re rushing it. Stop. I know.
Like I have to keep saying it, like speak to myself in third person. Sometimes like, Jess, relax. You’re going to get it.
If there’s, I feel like there’s a sense of urgency right now. It’s like, I need to do it. You need to go.
And I have to keep stopping myself and saying, why do I keep rushing this? It’s just, it’s not something you really like to be honest, when it comes to something personal like this, you don’t want to rush that one. No, no, that’s dangerous talk. No, you don’t.
Well, I mean, the thing is that like, um, once you get into a fringe festival and you start, you start working suddenly, you know, it’s real. And now you start to, I know I was like, Oh, I was so freaked out the whole way through rehearsal. Like, I was like, I don’t know if this is good.
I had to be like, I have to trust that my director is not going to let me go on with something that’s not good. And it was just like, but I, cause I had no, I could not be objective because it was like, this is my words. There is personal stuff in there, even though it is a character.
And you know, I’m standing up there saying words I wrote, it’s all me. And it was so terrifying the whole process. And then I did it.
And I was like, I’m like, yeah, I cannot not do this now for my life. Like, this is just great. Yeah.
For me, it was like, okay, so that’s this piece. And now what’s my next solo play going to be? And meanwhile, previously, I’d be like, I think I probably, I know I’m like thinking of all these things I can do now. I’m like, yeah, I can tell a story about this, this and this now.
And I’m like, okay, yeah. Chill out, girl. Chill out.
It’ll come. Yeah. One at a time, one at a time, one at a time.
So, I mean, you would say, Oh, that was my first one. Yeah. In the last year’s fringe.
I keep, stop saying 2016. It was last year. Yeah.
Sorry. I think you broke up a little bit when you were saying which fringe was it London or was it Toronto? London. See, I’ve never done the London fringe.
I have some friends who are always like, please bring your show to the London fringe. And I’m always like, I don’t know. What is it? Do you like how much do you love the London fringe? I like the London fringe.
And what is it that you love about it? The only thing that was strange in the atmosphere is just there, there was, I don’t know if it was just my year, or if it’s, this is just the trend because it’s been going on for a few years now, but it’s, there was always a clear line between local and touring. You’re over there. We’re over here.
There wasn’t a lot of borders being crossed, but I still really enjoyed the energy and the camaraderie that came with being at Club Fringe. It was just awesome. I do really enjoy it here.
It seems to me that there being a division between touring and local. No, it’s not. I’ve been told everybody is usually in it together, but it’s just, I noticed, again, I think it was just maybe the one-off year, but when we always, my group with New Twist, I was telling everybody, go out there, go meet people.
It’s not to network. It’s to go have fun. Just go talk to people.
And they were always welcoming. Anybody we talked to was always super sweet. I think it was just like, again, tourers always found themselves in one area.
We always found ourselves in another. I think it was just the seating plan, in all honesty. It might be.
I mean, I know it’s hard when you’re a touring show and you start to latch on to people that you know, because if you’re local, you’ve got your scene, you know the lay of the land, you probably have your friends. And when you’re a touring show, all you’ve got is the other touring artists. And so you tend to latch on and hold on for dear life.
But I usually find that by the, as the fringe goes on, there’s a little crossover. I don’t mean to sound like I’m experienced, but like, it’s just, that’s also just what I’ve heard from people giving me, like, you know, I have talked to a few touring artists who say the exact same thing. You start to open up more as you’re going along and you see them along the way, you’re all in the same circuit, right? So it’s just, that’s the beauty of it, is you do open up.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love it.
No, I’m, and I always find that even the beginning of the fringe, you’re there, the people that you know, and then as we go on, if it’s a fringe that has some good mingling, everybody sort of latches together. I actually have found that some of the fringes that actually, so Winnipeg and Edmonton have a tendency to fringe tents are not the places the artists go. The artists don’t hang out at the fringe tent, at least they hadn’t when I was there.
It was, that’s where the patrons went and it was a great place to flyer, but it’s not where the artists hung out. In Winnipeg, it was the King’s Head pub, which tended to be the place that people went. And in Edmonton, the diviest of dive bars that everybody loves, it’s called Steel Wheels and everybody ends up there.
And it is like the most, when I say a dive bar, whatever you’re thinking, it’s like more of a shack, but everybody loves it and everybody goes there. But I found that that’s where local and touring started to come together because in a place like Toronto, locals know the lay of the land and they’re at the fringe club, schmoozing, talking to people and all that stuff. And people who are touring tend not to be that way.
So we never separate the audience from the patron in the way that some of those other ones do and force the artists together. What are the fringes? I mean, if you were to get the CAF lottery, what are the fringes that you would want to go to? I’ve always wanted to go to Victoria. I did apply for Victoria.
I’ve always wanted to go and just experience it. And just to perform there would be absolutely dreamy for me. And even going to Edmonton, because Edmonton fringe is massive.
It’s pretty big. So I would love to go there. I didn’t apply only because, again, I’m very new.
I need to stay more in Southern Ontario and just figure it out. If I feel it’s something that could lift off for me, I would absolutely apply, like maybe 2019. It can be really… I mean, I’m still afraid of Edmonton.
I’ve been to Edmonton. But last year I was thinking, what fringe festivals should I apply to? And I applied to Montreal, which I’ve been to. And I applied to Toronto.
And I think I applied to Winnipeg. No, me too. And people were like, how about Edmonton? I was like, oh, God, no.
I felt like shaking in my boots. I was like, oh. Because it was like, it’s just… Oh, yeah.
It’s so big. And I was like, just trying to think like, like my little show, trying to make a splash in that place. Oh, you know, the introvert in me was suddenly like, I’m an extreme introvert too.
I do not like talking. And if it’s a massive crowd, like just outside and like coming in, like, even if it’s a small venue, I know where I am. I’m very self-aware.
And it’s just, okay, little girl in a big pond right now. Hello. I have so much trouble myself as an introvert doing the fringe promotion, like walking up to people in a line with my flyers and starting to say the words, can I tell you about my show, is my nightmare.
Like I have to sit for like a good 10 minutes with my head between my knees, just sort of like, I got to deep breathe. I got to like, so I don’t not walking up to them, sweating with my palms, sweating and shaking, just to calm down. So I can actually go up and say the words.
Can I tell you about my show? You know what? I get it a lot where people say you do not look like an introvert. Okay. Let’s cut the crap people.
Okay. I have red alert going on in my head right now. I may look, I’m very good at coming off as calm and collected, but absolutely in my mind, I’m like, okay, they don’t like you.
They don’t even want your show. They’re not even a part of the fringe. You just got someone walking their dog right now.
And that’s, that’s all I keep thinking in my head. Um, but when we were doing it in London last year, it was such a nice feeling. Even if they politely took the flyer, I really had to remember that.
Okay. At least they took the flyer and they, and they didn’t just flat out walk away from you. Um, because I’ve always been told get people before they’re going into a show, do not ever go up to them after a show.
And that’s so true. When you think about it, right. They’re just getting out of something emotional with the show, uh, whether it be funny or they’re it’s sad, they’re on their way to another show while they’re lining up as the best place to get them.
And it’s, it’s true. There, there are fringes where people don’t line up and those ones like Montreal, people just sort of waltz in as the doors open. So there’s no lineup.
Oh wow. And so your only option is when they’re coming out of the show. And that was, that was something we had to learn.
You have to be like, watch people come out and just sort of stand there holding your flyers out with them. It’s, it’s actually, uh, it was actually one of those little things that you, you, you pick up after a while you were like, we’re going to shows. We’re like, where are the lineups? And there’s no lineups.
Where are the people? And yet some fringes like Edmonton and Winnipeg, um, even though people don’t really line up because they buy their tickets in advance, it’s a finite area, the fringe area. So, um, you walk around there and you fly her there. You don’t have to wait for a lineup because everybody in that area is there for fringe.
So it’s, it’s it. And all of the theatres are sort of in that area. It makes it a lot easier to do that promotion.
Yeah. I tell you. I mean, like it’s one of those things where you want to be taking notes with every single fringe you go to.
Right. Um, but yeah, no, it’s definitely like those little details that can be easily overlooked. And I’m just so thankful that I have not like, I just have a good amount of people that have done touring fringes before that I can just ask them those things.
Right. And that’s the beautiful part about theatre is people are always willing to share their expertise and their advice. I’ve never met anybody that’s been like flat out, like, I’m not telling you that.
And it’s like, it’s just, it’s beautiful. I love that about theatre. No, it’s, it’s really true.
And I was just talking to, uh, uh, Jackie Thomas yesterday from, uh, theatre guard, Denetua. And she was like, this is the secret that I learned. And the secret that I tell everybody is everyone wants to help.
Yeah. I honestly, I have a couple of people that ask me for help and I just, I light up when they do. It’s just, it’s such a wonderful feeling.
I have a friend that’s working on a script right now and I’ve told him like anything you need, you come to me. And so he’s just been picking my brain. We’ve been talking about workshops, how to facilitate them.
Cause I do, I actually did want to go to school, like to get my master’s so I could facilitate properly and coach. And I’ve, I’m really good at doing workshops. So I’ve offered to do, to help them do workshops for their script and do all those things.
And they just, they couldn’t believe that help was being extended to them. It’s like, well, that’s what you do for each other in this field. Like it’s, it’s a hard field and it’s an instable industry as it is.
So being there for each other is such a strong community factor that I love that it’s always upheld. That is, that is definitely one of the best things about it, about, about the theatre community is the way that people are willing to, to share in a way that people don’t really, you know, I don’t want to give away my secrets because that’s my signature or this is something that is benefiting me. Right.
But, you know, the thing about theatre is because it’s such, you know, there’s a liminal experience happening at the moment. Everything is being suspended that it is truly about the community, the act of witnessing right now that you’re already all together. Those secrets are for everybody to share at that point.
That’s my poetic moment for theatre, by the way. Well, it’s, I mean, it is, it is pretty amazing because I’ve been involved in some film productions where, you know, I walked in and they were like, okay, so Phil, we know you’d like to Instagram a tweet. But you can’t do that for this because we don’t want anybody, anything to get out.
Whereas I always find in theatre, it’s like just, you know, whatever, put it out there, put it out there, put it out there because you know, we don’t have to worry about secrets because we’re always trying to invite people in. And also, so what if somebody ends up doing a show that covers a similar topic to mine? They’re not going to do it the same way as I would. I worked with one theatre company before that really did not want anything to be shared.
If anybody asked a producing question or if they asked, it was very much a, it was along the line of why are you going to steal it? And it’s like, well, yes, politely to put it. And it’s just, and I remember coming up to the producer of the show and I was saying, you really missed an opportunity to bring that person in. And it was just a, well, why would I do that? They’re with this theatre company.
I’m like, okay, it’s not a business. Stop treating theatre like a business. It is not a business.
You can’t franchise theatre. You can’t incorporate it. You stop.
So it’s just one of those things. I’ve never met anything. It’s very odd when it does happen.
And there’s something about the show’s integrity that just changes completely. Yeah. Like, it’s true.
There’s, there’s a lack of competition in theatre. I think that, that at least in, in, in my idealized world. And I do see it when people stop seeing other people as competition that we’re all stronger.
I remember the first time that I went to the Montreal fringe festival, one of the performers does a, a, a, a workshop and it’s about how to promote during fringe. And the first thing that she says is there’s audience enough for everyone. And that’s one of the things that I’ve always sort of tried to live by that we’re not competing with each other.
There is audience enough for, for everybody. And like, and this is the kind of thing that I often see at the, on the fringe circuit is somebody who, you know, okay. So I’m talking to somebody about my show.
Oh, they can’t come. They have to work, whatever. When can you see a show? Ah.
So at this time, my friend, my friend, Jess, her show is, and it’s at this theatre. You can go, you know, it’s a really good show. And I start promoting their show and this is something that happens and the fringe world.
And it’s, it’s one of the most amazing and best things about fringe. That’s the thing that gets me, you know, there, there’s a lot of things that I like to speak about. One thing being is any sort of mental illness in the arts.
And I’m going to connect this in right now. Like, I just got to say this as someone who cannot talk to other people and cannot express how I feel sometimes don’t get me wrong. I’m very blunt and I’m very honest, but when it comes to anything about how I feel it’s hard, but I really appreciate that about fringe is it’s just, I don’t have to feel that way immediately.
Everybody just comes together and unifies. And to feel that is just one of the best feelings and most satisfying feelings. And I’ve shut myself a lot out a lot.
I have that. I’m very guilty of it. But as soon as anybody invites me in, it is just one of the most loving feelings and absolutely it happens with the fringe.
And I, I love that. I absolutely adore that. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. So now I think we, we talked to what you you’re, you’re wanting to do Victoria and London.
Is Montreal in there? In your list of fringes? Yeah. And. Oh, it’s a Montreal fringe is the fringe festival that a lot of people launch their, their tours in.
It’s a, it’s a good kickoff. Cause it is a, it is quite a party. Yeah.
I’d like to stay here. Again, it’s one of those things of just, I, I need to stay close to home right now because I really do feel very inadequate. I have an inadequacy problem where I keep thinking I’m not going to do something to the caliber of my colleagues.
So, but at the same time, I have to keep reminding myself that, okay, maybe let’s not look at it that way. Maybe let’s look at it as a funding sort of proposition right now. And I’m very good with money.
I love fundraising. I can do it. No problem.
So I can definitely cover my bases in Southern Ontario. That’s just the way I try to frame it. So that way I stopped getting myself down.
So staying in Southern Ontario is a great idea. If you want to do it in 2019, take it across Canada. Let’s absolutely do it.
There will be no excuse at that point then. Well, at that point, you’ll know that the show works. Like when I did, you know, I did my show, the commandment and I did it at one fringe the first year.
And that first off, it’s the one I got into, but I didn’t want to take this show that I didn’t know if it was working to other fringe festivals. I wasn’t ready for that. Research some other festivals I could go to.
Like I’m from St. Catherine. So I know in the Soil Arts Festival happens every April. So I know I can take my show there and all of my profs are in St. Catherine.
So I know I can invite them. I can invite my close friends. I know I can get a really nice little performance workshop out of it.
So at least then I’ll have that comfort of knowing, OK, the show is going to work or it’s not going to work. How can we fix it? I’m very much it is what it is. Let’s just move on.
I don’t like to dwell. So at least I have the benefit of having that. And that way, when I do launch it in fringe, then you can really start taking it apart and think about the reception from each fringe festival and improve it further.
Right. So I have to see it as there’s no there’s no way out, nowhere else to go but up. Right.
So thinking positively for someone as cynical as me is a feat. Yeah. You know, one of the biggest challenges of a fringe festival tour is that for the most part, every time you go to a different place, you’re starting over.
And what worked like a show that is beloved in Toronto could be disliked in another city. It’s so funny you say that. And you never know.
I did a show back in. Oh, I need to stop saying that, Jess. It’s 2000.
My goodness. Last year, I when I did my show Guilty Pleasures, I got a lot of mixed reviews about it. I got so many people saying it was too over the top.
It was too loud. It was too this too that. But then I had so many people also saying that was a kick ass show.
Oh, my gosh, they felt so pumped after it. And I could tell who was speaking to and who wasn’t speaking to. And when I brought this up to somebody and I said, why is this show not working? And they told me they said, what what fringe did you do it at? And I said, London.
They said, OK, just remember, every fringe festival is going to have a different reception. And it just I felt so much better after that. I did not know that reception is different.
Yeah, no, it really does. It really does have a lot to do with the fringe that you’re at. And I remember, you know, you encounter people who are like, oh, you know, I have so I have to work so much harder in Winnipeg because one time I was there and the reviewer seems it seems they didn’t like that.
I said the word fuck a lot. And so they gave me this this this bad review. And now I have to work hard every day to get people into my audience.
And, you know, you never know what the person who’s going to come to the show is going to have to react to it. And reviews are the most important thing during a fringe. So you just have to go with whatever you get and try to make an interesting theatre community.
It’s very much a they do a lot of traditional theatre here. Like there is a lot of traditional. There’s a lot of great companies.
There’s a lot of new shows that come out. We’ve got some great indie theatre that does happen here. And when it happens, everybody just latches to it.
But I remember doing just back this summer, I did Peter Pan Handler, which was our big device production for the show. And it is it was very out there in terms of like not not experimental, but just in terms of a story. It was we asked a lot of our audience and I just we our numbers were a lot lower than I thought it would be.
Not to say people didn’t enjoy it. They loved the show. Whoever came.
But it was just it was one of those things of be careful where you put your experiments. And London was definitely one of them. So now I’ve learned, OK, for the next show, how am I going to produce this? How am I going to present it? Because you really when you produce, you really are asking.
You’re not selling. You’re asking. So how can we ask? How can I ask my audience to come to see this? Right.
Yeah, that’s that’s just my little producer thing I learned to learn along the way. Yeah. Well, I mean, I went to Brock.
They are producing on the fly. There’s arts management and producing an event. And I’ve always had an interest in how theatre is sold and how we do get butts in the seats.
How do we get them there? I’ve always been interested in that. So I’ve always I’ve I worked with this wonderful theatre company in Niagara and I just watched the producer very closely and see what she would do. And I learned from her actually and applying it to your own show.
So I got the benefit of doing the Fringe Festival where a lot of your promotion is done for you. You already have a platform. So I had a nice starter.
And then going on to my next show was amazing. I absolutely loved producing and having that background in it already and having that degree behind me was absolutely beneficial. Like I still have my notes from class that I read.
I still have my template of a promotional schedule, marketing schedule. I have a giant inventory and directory of all these media outlets and who to contact. Right.
So it’s just those little skills from school that really help. But that doesn’t mean that you need school to be a producer. Right.
There’s lots of people that have done it with just experience. There’s people that can do internships. There’s ways to do it.
Right. But I’m just very glad that I at least had it in school. And right then, as opposed to going out on my own and trying to find these producing courses like there’s one in Hamilton, the Alert program.
It’s amazing that they offer that for people to help produce the Frostbites Festival. That’s awesome to me. That’s great.
I just I know I wouldn’t have found it in time for when I needed it. Right. It’s when I was in theatre school, we didn’t talk about self-producing.
Now, of course, this was a long time ago, but in terms of producing, it was something that if you were self-producing, you had failed as an actor. Occasionally, back in those days, it was like this is like early 90s. So it was like, oh, you know, maybe you could do something in the Fringe Festival.
And it was like the Fringe was what you did if you couldn’t do something else. Now, self-producing is like this essential part of being a theatre artist. Yeah, and there’s this great wave.
I’m seeing a lot of young artists coming forward and claiming them. I don’t mean like claiming to be. I mean like actually proclaiming themselves as producers.
I love it because it is an art form in itself. I’ve always been recommending it for everybody. Learn to write a grant.
Learn how to research a grant. Talk to your jurors. Go out and find whoever is the officer for any grant fund.
Go and talk to them. I love that I have such an awesome relationship with the London Arts Council. They’re phenomenal people.
And I find so many young artists do not take advantage of that. Don’t go out. They don’t go out and make those relationships.
And when you start pushing them to go and just talk to them, open up about your project, you find this great conversation opens up. And suddenly it’s, oh, my project now has substance and there’s potential for community support behind me. That is so imperative to have.
And I’m so thankful that I live in a community with an arts council. Yeah, you don’t know that you can just email them and say, hi, my name is so-and-so and I want to do the show. Can we talk about it? And it’s sad.
Not sad in the sense of like, oh, way to go, guys. You’re not doing it. But it’s sad that we don’t make it aware to people.
And again, I’m so glad I took that course because knowing me and who I am, I wouldn’t have had enough faith in myself to just reach out, right? Absolutely. I mean, it’s like Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking. It’s yeah, I mean, it’s a book.
I mean, what she’s talking about is exactly that. You know, you don’t get it if you don’t ask. But we all, I think, come out of our theatre school or into the theatre world wondering, are we always supposed to know all of this stuff? If I ask, am I showing that I don’t? Does that work against me? What does it mean? Instead of like, just sort of having the courage to just say, I don’t know.
I really felt bad for not knowing what other people may have known. I felt awful and felt inadequate with everybody. And I noticed it sometimes outside of school.
But I think that’s, it’s something you really learn is that, okay, not everybody knows everything. I’m not afraid to say I don’t know something. And just reminding other people that it’s okay to ask.
Again, coming back to that, people will help you. I cannot do the storytelling show without those people behind me, right? And The Art of Asking, it is an art to ask people, especially for money, of course, right? I mean, yeah. See, that is, that’s the other part of the producing thing that I think people don’t, I mean, fundraising is, it’s a frightening thing.
Asking, it’s hard enough to ask for help. It’s even harder to ask people for money in a lot of cases. And people just freeze up in a way that, because again, just that we don’t talk about self-producing.
I’ll be honest, it was a giant unit in school. We had to learn all the different sort of platforms that fundraising can be and what sort of money taken in and what it’s considered as. And I remember doing the fundraiser for Peter Panhandler.
And I was scared because at the very beginning, in an hour into the fundraiser, only two people showed up. And all the rest of it was just the cast that showed up. We had a couple of my friends, my family came, but suddenly there was just this giant flood of people that came in.
And I like to go around and talk to a room. It’s not promoting my show that I thought of that way. But when I went to talk to them and say, oh, how did you hear about the fundraiser? What do you think so far? What do you think? Just getting in there and talking to them, it was very much, I got some really nice reviews of, well, you’re in the community, we need to talk and I love your show.
And I think that was what made it so easy was being able to talk about the show with people that I didn’t have to talk about the money. It wasn’t about the money. It was about why are you here? How did you hear about us? That suddenly made it easy and becoming accessible, the accessible name I call it, because I do like to put my name, it always is going to be on posters for sure for New Twist, but I always like to make myself accessible.
You can always reach me. You can always talk to me. I’m always going to talk back.
And I think that’s what people really enjoy is being accessible that it makes asking very easy and it’s making them care about your project that I’ve learned when it comes to fundraising is I’m not going to say, hey, I’m selling tickets to my fundraiser. We’re running it for this show. You should come out.
I always frame it as, hey, we’re a group of young artists. We wrote this show. We’re going to put on an amazing party.
The tickets are on sale. You can come whenever you like. And then of course you put in later, hey, we’ve got raffles.
We’ve got this. I’ll put it in that it’s a fundraiser in the title, but I’m not going to ask you straight up to come to my fundraiser. If you know what I mean, if that makes sense, it really helped.
We actually made more than we thought we were going to. So the method worked. Yeah, it worked.
It was awesome. We were able to afford all of our costumes, everything we needed. It was great.
Yeah, I know. We even got our costumes from Stratford. It was great.
Thank you. It was really cool. It was my first big successful fundraiser.
Hey, there you go. That’s amazing. Yeah.
No, actually I did crowdfunding as well for Guilty Pleasures. I needed just a little bit of extra money for, oh, just for a paper, a paper promo. I needed a little bit extra for costumes and some set pieces and props.
And again, that was successful. It’s just, it’s really about how you frame it that you make people care about the money. And then suddenly the Yeah, I have some real, I see people using crowdfunding as a, as a, I think that in theatre we use it very badly.
I see a lot of, a lot of crowdfunding campaigns that are, are set up as no, as if, you know, please donate to my thing. And that’s not why people back crowdfunding people back for a piece of it or for like people back it for the perk. If you can’t give them a perk they want, they don’t want to back it.
So a lot of these, a lot of these crowdfunding campaigns that are like for $10, we’ll tweet, uh, thank you for $20. I got very lucky because I wouldn’t do that if it was going to be a bigger show, like for, for, uh, when I did crowdfunding, I was only asking for $600. That was it.
And it was like, I knew I was, I knew who I was targeting. I knew I was going to be, I, I knew I was going to be targeting London, obviously. And my friends and family, that was it.
So when, but I’d offer things like, Oh, I’ll send you the poster with all of the cast signature on it, but wait for this. And then we do something that was more community based that would make it fun for them. Offering a huge audience, the we’ll tweet you and give a big social media.
Thank you for me. Exactly that. Okay.
But that’s the bare minimum. That’s something you should have done already. Yeah, no.
Yeah. I think that you do that anyway. You don’t make that part of the perk.
You have to give people something they want. I’ve, I only ever back stuff back something. If I want something.
Oh, I know. I will never back something just because they’re asking for money and I’m like, Hey, do I get it? Like if I pitch this much money and I’ll pitch the money for it. Right.
Yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah. And the thing is that I know that my, you know, my average for backing something is $50.
If I like the perk, like, and I don’t mind dropping that if the perk is good. And so like, if, if theatre companies were able to take that information and to be like, Oh, if we give good perks, instead of like getting a bunch of $10 donations, we could get a bunch of $50 donation donations. You know, like if you put the thought into it and you, you get a good campaign, maybe it’ll work a little better.
But again, that’s one of those, I think there’s more, there’s a little bit more to it than just that because crowdfunding is already hard as one of those nuts. I’m trying to crack in one day. Yeah.
You’ve got already gotten so many like, like thousands, like thousands upon thousands of theatre companies already on like Indiegogo and there is no way you’re going to make it to the top. I mean, like I, for me, at least it felt hopeless when I was doing crowdfunding and I’m looking through and I mean, I, I’m a shopper. I need to be able to look around, check out, you know, I’m one of those people, like when I shop for a venue, I look at box office, for instance, what percentage do they take? Okay.
Well I do that same for crowdfunding. What percentage are they going to take and how can I make that back up? So 600 was the lucky number for me. But when I was looking at all these other sites and all these other companies, it just, again, I felt hopeless.
It was like, how am I going to get these people to like it and bid for it? And I think that’s when I had to remember, remember what the show is, remember who you’re targeting. And that made it easy from there. I’m not going to make it all the way to the top here unless I’m buying backers.
And what’s the sense in buying your backers? Like I I’ve met a company that was like, Oh, well, you know, we, we pitched a hundred dollars and we were able to get, you know, a thousand people to back it. I’m like, okay, but how far are you from getting your community to back you up? Because that’s who matters is your community, yourself, then the tickets. Yeah.
Yeah, no. Yeah. And then, I mean, there’s all these companies, as soon as you get something on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, they start contacting you.
We can, if you give us some money, we can get you more backers. For me, one thing, it just kind of ruins the integrity of asking for money. Again, like we said, it’s an art form to ask for money.
You’re ruining the integrity at that point. For me, that’s just my opinion though. But in another sense, you’re not getting a clear idea of analyzing your numbers at that point.
Because if I want to make a crowdfunding, crowdfunding successful, I need to know who pitched, what, how much did they give? Is there a certain area of talent? Like that’s just my business side from things and how analytical I can be. I analyze like crazy when I do anything producing and money, because it’s got to come from somewhere. It’s got to be a clear source.
Find it then. And I just find that on crowdfunding, it’s very all over the place.
