Bil Antoniou

Bil Antoniou has been performing for a number of years, amassing a number of interesting experiences that resulted from his decision to say yes to everything. Among them are appearing in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia at Hart House (his favourite), singing Thenardier in Les Miserables at Honest Ed’s on their closing weekend, a few stints as Jesus and a Pharisee on a wagon and making love to pots and pans in the middle of Michigan. Along the way he decided to take his love of writing and seriously and began writing plays, which thus far have resulted in four productions that, despite having forced him to say yes to fewer other projects, have gone well, including The Best Men at Bread and Circus in 2011, Operation Impervious at the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival, and two productions in 2015 at Red Sandcastle Theatre, We Say Such Terrible Things and Heart of the Storm. Between theatre gigs, he spends his free time writing film reviews for his blog, MyOldAddiction.com, or editing one of his two podcasts, BGM: Bad Gay Movies Bitchy Gay Men and My Criterions, a journey through his film collection.

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BGM: Bad Gay Movies Bitchy Gay Men
My Criterions

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Transcript

Welcome to episode 109 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. If you want to find me directly, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at PhilRickaby, and my website is PhilRickaby.com. My guest this week is playwright, performer, and podcaster, Bill Antomiou.

You can catch up with Bill on his website, MyOldAddiction.com, or his two podcasts, Bad Gay Movies, Bitchy Gay Men, and My Criterions. Are you, you’re primarily a playwright, or? Uh, I don’t know that I’m primarily anything. Okay, all right, well, what do you, you’re, you’re, you’re a slash, you, you, uh, what are all of your slashes? I mean, I, I think of myself as a writer.

Um, I did spend most of my life with the ambition to be an actor, but writing became more prevalent, but I do lots of kinds of writing, so I write plays, but, um, I write film reviews as well, and, you know, for nine years in school, I wrote essays, and I thought I was pretty good at that. Um, so, yeah, um, so yeah, writer always suits me more comfortably, although I haven’t made a living at any of the above. Well, I, you know, that’s, I mean, Welcome to Canada.

That is, well, you know, welcome to the arts. Yeah. I mean, really, that’s, you, you, you put in your time, you do what you can.

Sure. Um, when did your theatre obsession begin? Like, when did that become a thing for you? Do you recall? I don’t think of it as, I, I don’t have one of those great stories where, like, my mom took me to West Side Story, and I woke up to this new world. Um, but I was, I did go to a lot of theatre as a kid, because it’s something my mom always loved, and always insisted on us going to, either she took us, or she’d make her best friend take us, and lots of different kinds of theatre.

So, like, you know, I remember going down to the young people’s, whatever iteration was, existed when I was a child 50,000 years ago. But I remember going to odd things like plays in people’s houses, and, and some really, like, they would take us to some pretty out of the way stuff that I, that wasn’t, like, inappropriate for children, but wasn’t quite directed at us either. Okay.

And I remember seeing a lot of things that I didn’t understand. My mom also, because she’s so ambitious, would have, would take us to, like, when, when Greek theatre troops would bring ancient Greek theatre through town. So, as a, I remember as a nine-year-old being taken to see Prometheus Bound.

Okay. And having no clue what was going on. And that’s, like, two hours of a man strapped to a rock, and I had no idea what was going on.

It’s true. You know, so I was exposed to a lot of that stuff and I just enjoyed, there’s, you know, theatre is this really, really fascinating experience where everyone gets into this dark box, basically. And we all agree to make believe.

And when you’re watching it, there’s a magical atmosphere to it. And then, you know, when you’re doing it, there’s a even more magical atmosphere to it. So, it became more of a thing for me once I started performing more often, more so than watching it.

As a kid, I just wanted to be a movie star. Well, I mean, that’s where a lot of us start from. Correct.

Because I thought Indiana Jones just showed up and did all these fun things and that was the life. If only that was true. Basically.

But once I got to be an adult and then I decided to seriously pursue acting, I started working in theatre because when you pursue acting, you just end up doing that more. Yeah. And because you don’t get paid.

And I just enjoyed it so much that it became more of my focus. Sure. Where did you grow up? I grew up here.

Well, in Scarborough. Okay. But I’m a Toronto kid, I suppose.

It certainly was, we always came into the city for theatre all the time. So, when your family was, when you were being taken to see all these shows, you were making the big trek from Scarborough downtown. Yeah.

And it was so exotic. I came downtown for doctor’s appointments or theatre. Those are the two things that, yeah.

Much more fun to come for the theatre. I don’t know. I didn’t mind the doctor’s appointments so much.

Okay. Okay. Fine.

You were saying that your mom sort of went to a lot of theatre on her own. Do you know if that’s something that she just grew up with? She didn’t do so much here because she came here as a young woman and got married and just the immigrant experience, they find themselves too busy to do fun stuff. Yeah.

So, she did that more back home. So, she’s from a small town in the north of Greece, from a very strict Protestant family. Now the whole, when the great theatre companies come to town, now that all makes sense.

So, as a young woman, she moved to the capital city to Athens to live with her aunt. And her aunt was like the cool one in the family, the one who loved to do a lot of fun stuff and loved the theatre a lot until she died. My great aunt loved going to the theatre.

So, she took my mom to everything. And those were the years that really awakened my mom. I think she probably always loved it, but really indulged that.

And so, it was important to her that we also have, she was in this new city, in this great new city with so many opportunities for so many things. And she wanted to make sure we didn’t miss out on any of them. When did you start acting yourself? Um, I remember being cast as Papa Bear in grade one.

You never had to encourage me. I loved performing and I loved attention a lot. I mean, I loved attention a lot.

And so, I’ve been performing my whole life, but I wouldn’t say that I was actually doing anything other than trying to get attention. And I think it was like when I was 24 or 25 that I actually started putting emphasis on actually acting and going to a workshop or two and learning a technique and doing more than just playing pretend so that people would laugh at my jokes. Sure.

I mean, did you do shows in high school and you feel like that’s where you- Yeah, yeah. I did all the school plays. And I wrote a play in high school, but I don’t remember what I did.

I just know that I did. Do you remember anything about it? Do you remember what it was about? It was some kind of farce set on a desert island. I don’t remember anything about it.

Yeah. So, if anyone thought it wasn’t good, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know.

Yeah. Yeah. And when you were in your early 20s and you started really starting to think about acting, did you go to theatre school? Did you- I did.

I did York University for a year after high school and dropped out after a year. And I don’t know why. I was just a really… I think maybe… I was always a good student because I always liked school.

And I think high school was a bit too easy for me and not because I was super smart. I think my mind just worked in the way that it needed to for getting through high school. And then I got to university and everything was really hard.

And being immature and not very disciplined, I balked at the idea that it should be so difficult. Were you in the theatre stream? I was in the theatre program. Yeah, it was a good program.

I can’t say anything about the program at all. And everyone was perfectly nice enough. And I actually still… I have friends still that I made in that year that I still know and hang out with.

So, I had a good time. But I remember being at school every day and it felt like I was in a place where everyone was speaking a different language from me or something. It just felt so odd.

And my instinct towards things that were difficult back then was to run away from them. So, that’s what I did. And by dropping out, I just stopped going to classes one day.

It’s funny the way that we… When we’re in our 20s, we’re still kids. Not even. I was 18.

We don’t acknowledge that when we’re that old. I’m an adult. I can do what I want.

But really, we’re kids. And so, we react in childish ways. And one of the ways is to run away.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I have really good parents who are… They were just, I guess, really worried for me or something.

Because it’s the sort of thing my mom, especially, would never let me run away from. And so, I don’t know why they did. And I don’t hold it against them for doing that.

Did you tell them that you weren’t going? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And they were very upset.

My mom called me illiterate for many years until I went back to… Getting a university education was very important to our parents. And my sister had done really, really well. She’s a high school teacher and she has like three degrees.

And she’s done very well. While in my case, I took a few years of just working jobs and reading and watching movies because movies are my main thing and hanging out with my friends. And then there was just a moment where I woke up and I was like, No, I have to actually do something.

So, that’s when I looked for an agent and I got one and I started working in theatre. And then a couple years after that, I realized I really did miss school and I really did want a university degree. So, I went back, but I did an English degree, not a theatre degree, which ended up informing my theatre writing as well as acting.

What was it like when you were going just for like a general English? For an English specialist. Yeah. I mean, it’s an undergrad, so you don’t focus on anything.

But most of my coursework was, I mean, my personal fascination was with Victorian literature. So, if I do pursue postgraduate work, that would be where I would focus my attention. What is an English specialist? It just means that I take, it has to do with how you weight the number of courses you take for your degree, like how many English courses versus, I know it sounds way better than it actually is.

Well, I mean, it’s that question of like, so you’re a specialist in English. What does that mean? It just means I spend most of my academic career on English courses and only like some of it on other pursuits. And then it was around that, it was, I don’t know, going back to school awakened this desire in me to, I guess, work really hard because I really enjoyed, I mean, I was working the entire time.

So, I did it part-time and I was working during the day and going to school at night. And then all of a sudden theatre work started happening a lot more because, you know, I’m working in either amateur or what you call semi-professional in this town, which is, you know, it’s on the level of community theatre, but it’s south of Bloor. So, you feel it’s like, it’s way more glamorous.

So, but I did, and still do a lot of community theatre as well. We call that what they used to call semi-professional, we mostly just call indie now. Sure.

Yeah. That’s what, I mean, that’s how I refer to my plays. And I found myself getting a lot of work doing those because I’m an adult male and those are hard to come by when you’re not paying, as I’ve learned from casting my plays as well.

So, and so I was doing at one point, I think I was averaging about six or seven shows a year. So, every night after work, I was either going to a rehearsal or going to class and getting very little sleep and was really happy the entire time. So, I’ve learned since then to stay busy.

When you were, when you went back to school, like, you know, how much time had passed since you left York? Uh, seven years, eight years. Was there, were you, cause you know, you’re like now in your late twenties when you’re going back to school. Yeah, I was going to say, I’m not now.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like when you were going back to school. Yeah.

Was that? Yeah. In terms of the age difference with the kids. Considering, I mean, I did it over a period of nine years and it, the age difference was felt a lot more towards the end than towards the beginning.

I mean, I don’t, I don’t remember feeling super out of place. I was so, um, excited slash nervous, you know, like I was really excited to be back in school and I was really excited about my courses. Um, at the same time, uh, I was so terrified of being back.

Cause I didn’t know, can I, can I do this? You know, I, I did so poorly the first time around U of T didn’t let me in when I first applied because I’d done so poorly the first time around, when I had to really, um, beat down their door and make sure they understood that, you know, people should not be punished for a choice they made at 18 and that people can change. So, um, I was really, I remember my very first day pacing around Robarts library for a long time before having the guts to go in to class. Uh, and my very first class was the history of Russia and, uh, just being, just being really scared.

So I, it, it didn’t really register to me that I was an adult. You know, I felt, I don’t know. I still, I still felt young at 27 that that changed after about nine years.

But I don’t know. I always know, especially, um, many of the years I was doing night courses and night courses are a really healthy blend of all different kinds of people doing classes. So it wasn’t as weird as if, if I had been doing it full time.

Yeah. Um, when did your mom stopped calling you illiterate? The minute I applied to school. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And the minute I got in and she was very happy, my mom respects effort. She doesn’t need you to prove anything. She doesn’t even like, even acting was something that she didn’t take seriously until I took it seriously and pursued it.

And so the fact that I haven’t become a movie star yet doesn’t bother her at all. When you were, I mean, initially when you were going to go to university, you, you, you would decide you were going to go and be an actor. Right.

And so you went, went off to university. Was that anything that, that your mother was concerned about? Um, only in that any parent of a child who announces they want to get into the arts because you know, your parents just want you to make a living and they want to make sure you’re going to be okay after they die. Yeah.

Um, so I’m like, well, then put money in the bank for me to take from you when you die, you know, and leave the rest to, you know, neither of my parents gave me too much grief about it other than the usual, like it’s not a very stable life pep talk and find something stable. And I don’t know. And I’ve, I’ve been working a regular job for a long time now, so it’s not, it’s not really for most of their concerns.

By the way, I love that this whole thing is about my mom. She’s going to be thrilled even though she’ll never listen to it, but you know, she’ll know, you can tell her, her friends will tell her. We mostly talked about you, mom.

That’s right. Of course. That’s how it should be.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, she doesn’t. She, she feigns modesty. She’s all, no, it shouldn’t be about me.

No. Um, but, but I mean, our parents are a huge influence on us. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. And I like my parents. So like, I’m, I like the idea of making them happy or at least making them not worry.

The thing is, I, at some point I also realized my parents worry no matter what we do, like what, what my sister or I do, like they just worry. So, you know, there’s, there’s only a certain point that I can put effort in terms of making them happier or making, I can’t make them not worry. So when you went back to school, um, to study English, to become an English specialist, um, what was your intent? Like what did you want to do with that? I didn’t know because at that point I just figured it was a good idea to go back to school and that I just missed the atmosphere because I’d spent all this time reading and I’d been reading a lot of Victorian literature especially.

And I just wanted to be in a world where other people were reading it too. And we could talk about it because at that point I had become my own expert, expert, my own specialist in film watching and film writing. And I was doing that on my own and I didn’t, I didn’t find myself needing that atmosphere as much while as, um, literature was a new ground for me.

And I mean, I probably should have thought about it practically, um, in terms of what I wanted to do with it or, you know, but I just couldn’t think that far ahead. I often find that, that, uh, you know, people will say that’s not what university’s for. Correct.

Yeah. University is not for like, what do you want to do with it? Well, that’s not what university was for back in the day, but things change their, you know, their use and their meaning over time. So, yeah.

So, but I still find that people like they’ll go to university and then when they leave university, they still don’t know. Yeah. University doesn’t prepare you to do a job.

It prepares you for right. It’s supposed to be an expansion. I mean, there’s nothing like a lot of times people talk about how there’s just something about doing post-secondary education of any kind, whether it be university or college or whatever.

There’s a confidence that it gives you. And it is very, very true because I didn’t walk into that school, a dummy of any kind. And I had a lot of experience reading and writing and expressing my opinion and tackling life.

But there’s something about the experience of being in school and of it forces you to prove yourself to yourself in a way that nothing else does. And this is any kind of post-secondary education and the confidence and knowledge base that it gave me is it’s something I’m very, very grateful for forever. Sure.

Yeah. Um, when you’re writing for theatre, are there particular themes that you’re drawn to and are those themes different from when you’re doing any other, any other kind of writing? Uh, well, in terms of fiction, I’ve never really tried any other kind of writing. So it’s either film reviews or plays so far.

Um, I tried, well, I have tried to tackle the odd short story, but they’re just absolutely terrible. Uh, so I, I haven’t really pursued that too seriously, but writing for theatre and writing us like a story, those are, to me, those are two different things. They are.

Yeah. Yeah. I just, you know, I, I try to think, well, you know, as a Crete, as a writer of fiction, I should be flexible, you know, but I have so far really enjoyed, um, there’s a, there’s a, there’s something to the structure of theatre, like creating scenes, creating the way scenes flow.

And creating the way characters interact that I haven’t really drawn to. And I particularly enjoy writing dialogue more than anything else. And that’s what theatre is great for.

My, my plots are always falter very far behind my dialogue. If I do say so myself, uh, in terms of themes, um, I, I just, um, you know, you don’t want to think about your theme too hard when you’re writing, because then you end up writing something that’s very preachy and you don’t want to say, this is a message play. Um, but you also try to stick to what you know.

And so, you know, I’m a gay man. So I write plays about gay men and I came of age in the late eighties, early nineties. So anything about gay men was often very, very serious because you’re usually dealing with the fallout of the AIDS crisis, which is correct.

Um, but to me as a youngster, it always seemed a bit drab, you know, seeing play after play of finding out just how funny and brave gay men truly are. Um, and so I always had this, like, I went into writing plays with this, like, lighten up feeling, you know, which was more important to me at the time when I started. Um, so, you know, I mean, my first play was about a group of friends and it was about friendship.

It was about the spontaneity that happens between people who have been friends for a long time, probably because I’d been watching a lot of sex in the city, but that was what mattered to me a lot at the time. It’s interesting because I know, I mean, we all have what fee, like, instead of themes, maybe the better word is like subject matter that, um, in my own writing, I have attended a tendency towards, um, fantastic realism or, um, the sometimes sometimes history, but sometimes like it’s this world, but there’s a little strange twist on it. That might be a little fantastic.

Is there like, is there something that you watched when you were young or, or even just more recently that like just made such an impression on you? Cause I find that happens too. It’s like certain, it’s not even like that. It’s my favorite movie or my favorite play, but just one particular moment of it that really blew my mind.

I don’t even, I, there isn’t a single thing that I can, I can point to that’s like the thing. I mean, I grew up on the Narnia books. Okay.

So for me like that, the Narnia books, like what the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe starts in like this drab, you know, world war two bombs are raining on London. And so the children run out or sent away to the country and everything is, is boring until the wardrobe. Right.

And then it becomes fantastical. Yeah. And this world of like complete quiet and peace, even though it’s reigned over by this terrible white witch, but it’s not the chaos of London.

Yeah. And it, and maybe that had some effect on my young psyche, that that’s kind of where my mind goes. Yeah.

Um, but I always enjoy like just bringing also, you know, I’m a nerd and I enjoy things that are nerdy and I don’t, I think that theatre has had a long period of thinking that it’s too important for that kind of thing. Oh, possibly. I mean, when I wrote my first play and it was a light comedy, I did have, I eventually produced it myself, but for a while I would submit it to whatever, you know, whatever panels you find out about or festivals or whatever.

And I would get a lot of feedback from people saying, um, this is just not what plays are supposed to be about. And I said, well, I’m not going to have everyone deal with deep, dark themes just so that you’ll find it important. And I mean, they were, the characters were talking about friendship and relationships and getting through life by holding onto each other.

So those are, you know, deep themes anyway. They’re just not being dealt with in this very, you know, I mean, I may be reading too much into the responses that I was getting, but I do, I did get that from time to time. And that was not feedback that I accepted in any way.

There are certain genres that theatre has not done. Like, you know, when we look at, at plays generally, they’re often, they lack the fantastical. They are very much like, Oh, a family comes to term with the horrors of their past or whatever, but we do it in our living room, you know, because every play is a living room scene.

Well, that might also be, I mean, Lucy Maud Montgomery always said that Canadians, we don’t have very, very dramatic lives. So we have a tendency to overdo what we put into our narratives. It’s true.

And yet, and yet, you know, I mean, how many stories it’s like, how many stories of, you know, a coming of age story of life in the prairies or life in the maritimes or whatever, and like all these things. Yeah. And in terms of, and I know that a lot of us do have dramatic lives in this country too, before anyone writes and decides to illuminate me on how hard everyone has it.

But I mean, in terms of like the, the genre stuff, like right. We theatre in general doesn’t do well with, with sci-fi doesn’t do well with, with fantasy and, and horror. Well, we’re always scrambling to try to figure out what we’ll sell.

Right. And that’s a really, really hard thing to figure out in Canadian theatre in particular. I, I know that there’s a, there’s generally a really hard time trying to figure out what it is that will work with mass audiences, which is not, I mean, that’s not something that I’m too concerned with because I produce my plays independently and I just worry about selling three weeks.

I don’t even know if our theatres are thinking about what we’ll have a broad appeal because. Well, I mean, they always want to make a profit and they rarely do. That’s the thing.

Right. And so maybe if that’s not the important thing, then, then they’re thinking about something else, but they’re also thinking about producibility. Right.

Yeah. Keeping the costs down because they know the audience is smaller. Yeah.

And then also just like, can you even just pull this play off? Like do you have the resources to pull it off? Yeah. But I fucking love ambitious because in the theatre, you’re so limited by just the constraints of the room. Like to be so ambitious as to try something huge, but know that you have to do it in a small way.

Right. So you have to be really clever because you don’t have special effects. So how do you do it? Yeah, I don’t know.

I mean, I, I’m not ambitious. I’m really lazy. I write my plays in the most simplest.

I mean, I just make sure everything takes place and I just try to think about, Oh God, I have to find this furniture. So like, how do I not have furniture on stage? Well, I mean, that, that’s the, the, one of the, the, the last plays that I produced of my own was like, I set it in like the suite of a hotel. Right.

And it was like, okay, so it’s a tiny stage. How do I create a suite in a hotel when I don’t have any money for decorating? And I certainly can’t get furniture. So it was like, just call Rosemary.

Yeah. Rosemary takes care of everything. Well, you know, I, we had to provide a few things in, in, in the red sandcastle.

You just like do your best with what you, with what you pull in. And, and, well, I mean, when I, when my last place, she was the lead in and she’s like, do you want me to do the set? And I said, yes, just do it. I’m not even gonna, you know, cause I know she’d do a great job and like, I knew that it would also be part of her performance to like be, to create the space around her.

And she did a fantastic job. And actually with my last two plays, I purposely, I don’t know about purposely. I had a, I set myself the challenge.

Like, can I create something dramatically interesting where I don’t leave one setting throughout the entire play? And my last two were both one act plays in both cases all took place in the one situation. And, um, you know, in terms of heart of the storm, my second one, Rosemary, definitely. I mean, Rosemary solved a lot of my problems in that play.

And the set was one of them. I mean, that’s always the question is like, how do you, like, what do you do with scenes? Like what do you do with like location? Well, yeah. And I feel that that’s something I think about more and more because, you know, you, you go see newer, new original plays by newer artists.

And we, all of us watch way more television and film than we watch plays. And a lot of us have a tendency to write in that way. You know, I noticed this when I go to the new ideas festival and I see a lot of things where like scenes change and turn in very quick succession.

And I have a, I have a tendency to be drawn towards that. And so it’s a challenge. I also said myself is to make sure that every scene is like a complete scene in which I work something out and that I’m not just flitting back and forth between situations.

Cause it’s. Yeah. I mean, I often see, especially with like newer playwrights who are more used to film or TV how short their scenes are.

And, you know, especially I’ll see it in like readings and things. And I’ll be like, you gotta make the scene longer. Yeah.

And there are some people who are really talented and they can make it work and they can stage it to make it work. And I’m not saying it’s, it’s wrong, no, but I feel that it is, it is certainly a trend that things are going towards. But it’s also, it’s also, it’s hard to stage.

Yeah. Like as soon as you start thinking, what are the logistics of this scene change? Yeah. But you have that mad genius director who always comes along and finds a way to like light everything and have everything take place all at once on stage.

Well, you hope you do. I’m very, I’m not nearly that imaginative, which is why I, I’m glad I tried directing my own plays, but I won’t do it again. Because other people are better at it.

I usually, I usually, I used to do that. I used to be like, Oh, some director will come along and could figure it out. And then I was like, why am I doing that? I start to be like, how can I, how can I, like, I don’t describe scenes.

Okay. You know, I’ll be like, I might be like, it’s a bedroom and this sort of thing. I’ll let somebody else worry about how that looks.

I try to be as vague as possible about the setting as much as possible because it’s not my job to design. I’m not Tennessee Williams. I don’t need to write all that exposition about what books are on the shelf.

Like I, I try to leave that to the people who, who do that and can make it work in like, if, if we have multiple scenes, like, how do we do that? But I remember after I did, like, you know, I had a play that was like a big set, you know, this, this one that was set in Sweden, the hotel, the next play I wrote was set in a theatre, mostly on the stage in the theatre. Right. I can be like, no, nothing really necessary here.

We can be in this space, you know? Yeah. I mean, I’ve been lucky. I’ve always found people that I really trust.

So my directors have done me proud. That’s good. The scripts that I’ve written and then, and then I directed to two of them and I, I enjoyed trying it out, but I, it’s not something I was really anxious to stick with.

What was it about? Like, was directing your own work, something you had wanted to do? It’s something I wanted to try. It did not, it was not born out of any dissatisfaction I felt over what people had previously done. But I just thought, I wonder if I will, if I will have a more direct route to getting what I envisioned on stage, if that’s me directing it, it also means not having to find someone because hiring people is hard and the more you can do yourself, the better in, and the first of two times I did it, I was also in the play, which it was just so hard because I wanted to watch it and I couldn’t, and it was really pissing me off.

Thankfully, I had a really, really amazing stage manager, Liz Lawine, who was basically assistant director. And so that helped a lot. Um, and then when I did heart of the storm, I wasn’t in that one.

So I got to truly direct it, you know, from the outside and I enjoyed doing it. But, um, I did, I did meet, uh, an actor who is like a total pro and Dora award winner and what have you. And, uh, I asked her advice about it and she said, you know, I’m sure you’re great, but, uh, uh, I suggest, especially when it comes to doing originals, I have someone else direct directed because there’s just, there’s a great benefit to having the added imagination and point of view of someone else.

And so, uh, I, I realized she was right. And I felt relieved. I was like, good.

Cause I don’t want to do that again. Like I, I, I like being in my plays. I like writing them, but I don’t, you know, especially because, because they’re minor indie plays.

Uh, I am also the one sending emails to actors and hiring people and sourcing furniture and it’s fine. I love doing all that. I’m not complaining, but if there’s one less thing I can do, then that’s great.

It’s a lot to do. Like if you’re producing and directing and acting in a thing, it’s a lot, it’s a lot, but it also, it’s my focus. As soon as I go into production, it becomes like my only thing other than going to my day job.

So it’s not, um, I haven’t lost sleep over this sort of thing in a very, very long time. I’ve learned to manage it to that healthy level of stress where you are anxious enough to make sure to do a good job, but not losing your mind over it. so then, you know, for my subsequent production, um, which unfortunately had to be, we had to pull the plug on, but we did go into production before we did.

Um, I had hired Liz Best as my director and I just never had that good of synergy with a director before, you know, so I hopefully I will get a chance to work with her again. And that advice ended up coming, uh, very much true. It’s, it’s interesting.

The, the, the, one of the things that I found directing my own play, um, was that people would come to me with questions that they, as the director that they probably wouldn’t come to me with if I wasn’t also the playwright. Oh, interesting. Um, because if I wasn’t a playwright, they make their own decision.

Right. But as the playwright and also the director, people would ask. I don’t remember getting a lot of questions on either plays.

The first one was a cast of five men. And, um, I don’t remember people asking me, well, maybe I guess one particular actor had questions, but they were always, um, about sometimes actors are worried about whether or not they’re interpreting the narrative correctly. You know, a lot of times your dialogue is supposed to suggest a kind of backstory or a situation that the characters are in and actors are worried about getting it wrong.

Um, uh, my, my personal opinion is that whatever you guess is probably right, but you know, so I would answer those questions. And then, but we’re, you know, working with Rosemary is great because her, her thing is that like, my job is to make this make sense. So she didn’t, she didn’t always have, I don’t remember her having a lot of questions.

No, she’ll make her own. I mean, and a lot of actors, a lot of actors will, it’s just sometimes with a new play, especially if you’re, if it’s brand new, you’re kind of workshopping it. And so, yeah, you know, if you have good actors, they’ll be like, ah, here’s the thing that we say here.

Right. Right. Is that a mistake or is there a through? Well, yeah.

I mean, in terms of logical stuff, I always have really great actors who are, and I mean, I, I always listen to that stuff because I’m a, you know, I don’t always, I do redraft my plays and I do proofread them, but sometimes you’ve read it so many times that you just can’t see the forest for the trees. And you completely miss things that make no sense, including in some cases, like writing and writing a character to exit twice without entering, you know, like crazy things like that. Yeah.

So I’ve, I’ve always had really good actors suggesting that. And that’s actually something that Rosemary is the best at, which is that she will always come to you with the things that don’t make sense. And you’re like, Oh my God, how did I not realize that? It’s what’s interesting.

Like, one of the things I, this podcast is all about Rosemary is your mom and Rosemary too. It’s like two stars in this podcast. One of the things that I, I learned relatively recently was the importance of like, all right, so now I’ve written this and I’ve gone through it and I’ve done my second pass on this.

I need to know a bunch of things about it. So I’m going to bring some actors together and we’re going to read it. Yeah.

And that’s a very common process. And when I get, you get some really good actors. They’re going to give you like really good feedback.

For sure. There’s always a table read scheduled before a final draft is written for me. And I’ve done that with all my plays have all, I mean, none of my plays have ever gone on stage exactly the way they’re written, even the final rehearsal script, but there’s always a table read because you just need to hear it.

There are some, there are some things you cannot tell that work or don’t work until you’ve actually heard it. Yeah. And so I’ve always, and I’ve always told people like, don’t keep this copy.

Don’t keep this draft because when people bring the wrong draft number into the rehearsal and what have you, but there’s always a new draft after a table read because it is extremely beneficial partly just to hear it. And then partly also to get people’s feedback and then learning how to take that feedback, which is an acquired skill. That is definitely an acquired skill because there’s, there’s the reaction to certain to feedback, which can be like, how would my play? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I’ve learned to, I mean, people sometimes, I think they think that I’ve gone into a coma or something because I forced myself to become very still and to not respond and to make no faces. And I just write quietly.

I write down everything people say, and then I take it home and then I find something else to do for like three days. And then I go back and I parse the, cause you know, uh, feedback is, um, it’s always helpful. Sometimes it’s merely a matter of realizing that people were interpreting the story incorrectly from the way you wanted it to be interpreted.

And that tells you about how you wrote it and you know, the things you need to make clear. Um, and sometimes it is just logical questions about characters, relationships or inconsistencies or what have you, but I’m always open to that stuff. But ultimately I decide what is going to be changed.

And sometimes I do make the decision to take a chance on something, even though everyone’s told me that they don’t think it’s going to work. So has that ever, has that paid off? It pays off sometimes and it doesn’t other times. Yeah.

Um, how much, but how much time do you generally leave between when you finish a draft and when you get some actors to read it or when you’re like, it’s different every time because it’s a matter of getting, getting things together and getting people together. And also all my plays have been worked on different schedules because, um, with the best man, I don’t remember what, I think we had a finished draft by the time we started that one. And then little things just got changed.

Um, but while we were, the best man was in like April of 2011 and during rehearsals, I found out that I got into fringe that summer. So I was writing the new play while rehearsing the previous one. And then I do remember having a table read and then like a week later having a new draft.

So that all happened very, very quickly because we were on a breakneck schedule and I was also like finishing school that year or I was doing a, I was doing like a year long Dickens project or something while writing two plays. And my niece was born that Christmas and like, it was just a really, I was so wonderfully busy. And that was the thinnest I ever was too.

So it was just a really happy time. And, and so that one all worked rather quickly while as with, um, with we say such terrible things, I think I had more time cause I just produced it on my own schedule. And then heart of the storm was the same.

So I don’t know, like I know that I would book the theatre, but well in advance. And so they, it’s probably, if we have a table read, you’ll probably get the next draft within a week, if not two weeks. Um, cause I usually, I usually book the theatre to make sure that I finish everything at a certain time.

Cause I’m not really good at self guiding. no deadlines are super. I wrote a play for eight years.

So I know about, I know until I finally said, well, the only way I’m going to finish this is if I like perform. Right. Yeah.

You know, there’s, it’s really can be hard to like, Oh no, it’s really hard. Yeah. For me, I find that when I’m, when I’m writing, uh, between draft and so there’s like, I first off, I need like at least four weeks between draft and second before it tackled the second draft.

Cause if I look at it too soon, I’m going to be not reading it anymore. No, but also I’m going to like, I’m too close to it and I can’t tear it apart in the way that I need to. Right.

Um, but then I need some more time before I have some actors read it just because I need to fortify myself and like understand, you know, I need to be ready for it. How many have you written though? Um, so I almost always have, so plays that are finished and plays that are in progress, whatever, whatever you consider your number. So I’ve got like, I have like maybe five plays in various stages of, okay.

I’ve written this. Okay. Um, and I’ve had like three that I’ve had people read.

I only ask because I used to feel that way about the need to like fortify yourself, but I don’t feel that way anymore. I, and I dunno, I, I feel fine about it. I don’t walk in like, fuck you guys.

I wrote a play. I just know I need distance between fortified probably the wrong, the wrong way to put it, but I need distance. Like I can’t finish it and I give it to people to read together because I’m still too close to it.

Interesting. And I need, I need some distance to be able to kill my baby. Yeah.

I wonder, I mean, I wonder if that I haven’t felt that way in a long time and maybe it’s just because I haven’t written anything that’s particularly personal to me in a while. I don’t know. Maybe it’s my problem, but I mean, everybody’s different, right? Everybody.

Yeah. I suppose. Uh, like I need to, I never think of it as finished.

Right. I find that what, usually the reason why you are worried about criticism is because then it means you have to work on it more. And the thing about writing, writing in general and writing plays in particular is like, you just want it to be done.

So if people don’t tell you it’s perfect, then that means it’s not done. And that means you have to work on it. It’s like, please tell me it’s perfect so that I can do something else.

Oh no, no, I didn’t. I didn’t see. The thing is, and that was always, it took me years to figure out why I had so much trouble with my first drafts because I wanted them to be perfect.

Oh yeah, for sure. And I hadn’t realized yet that the only purpose of the first draft is to be finished. Yeah, absolutely.

It doesn’t even have to be good. Oh, I think that’s the purpose of like the seventh draft. I don’t know.

I’ve learned to, I mean, when I first started writing with my first play, I was so stressed out about getting it right that I ended up in the hospital. Like I was so, I was so stressed out. I wasn’t sleeping for days and I was like crying day.

And night and just, you know, really, really melodramatic stuff because, because people had read my first draft and said, it’s really good. And the, because they said it was really good and that it, you know, we would need to polish it up and we would be ready for production. And that scared me more than if they’d hated it because I was like, Oh my God, I have to get this right.

Or I’m throwing everything away. I mean, I was really, I was really new to all this, you know, and I was, um, I was turning 30 at the time. I think it was, that was just, I was just very vulnerable about the decade change or something.

I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s hard.

Like the, the, the writing and getting from page to performance is a bit of a, it can be difficult for the, for the writer in terms of like getting to the point where you are ready to have it read. Yeah. Or being open to the fact that it’s always going to look different than the way you wrote it.

And also, um, I mean, I kind of miss feeling that way. I remember when we, we did a fundraiser for my first play and we, part of the fundraiser was, you know, performances in a cabaret and whatever, but it also involved a reading of like two pages from the play. And so it was the first time it was going to be performed.

Oh no. Cause we’d done a public reading as well. We’d done a workshop years before, excuse me.

And, um, I remember for that workshop. And I remember for this fundraiser, just having people read portions of it, I was practically throwing up in the bathroom beforehand. And I hadn’t had stage fright as an actor in a very, very long time.

And I kind of miss, I kind of miss being that scared. I don’t get that scared anymore. Well, you know, one thing that I found was like write something that’s really personal and then perform it yourself.

And then, Oh, I guess so. Yeah. And then you, like I wrote last summer, I performed a last summer, summer before I performed my first solo show, not autobiographical, but there were a lot of elements of myself and I was going to vomit that whole day.

Interesting. I mean, a lot of it is also just because I’ve learned to trust the people that I work with and I’ve worked with really, really great people. So usually by the time we get to opening night, we are ready.

And so I’m not that scared because we are prepared and if people don’t like it, well, I’ll just write something else, you know? Yeah. I mean, I also had a really good, I had a good experience of having to play my first two plays in the same year. And one of them was a huge success.

Right. And the second one was a huge bomb. And that’s a good, that’s a good balance.

It was a very, very good balance because you, because, you know, having a huge success didn’t make me a wealthy man and having a huge bomb didn’t make me a laughingstock in this town. So, you know, it’s kind of the benefit of the fact that Toronto theatre has a tendency to fly under the general radar. It’s like, no one really cares if you’re successful.

And so they don’t care if you fail. Also, I mean, it very few are the, are the plays that we remember as bombs or like we have short memories. Yeah.

Uh, it’s really only like the big, like only the mervishes have to worry about a huge bomb. Well, yeah, because they, I mean, well, I lost a lot of money on that play too, but, but, but, and a lot of people liked it and I had a wonderful casting crew in case they’re listening and think that I’m insulting anybody. But, um, but having nobody’s talking about that play the way they are talking about when the Mervis’s did Lord of the Rings.

Sure. Right. Right.

Right. So it’s like, it’s not like, it’s not like, um, people will remember that play that didn’t do well for years to come. Right.

But even if they did, the thing is to just get on with the next thing. And I remember calling my mom, uh, after the second play, it was called Operation Impervious at the Toronto Fringe Festival. And I said, you know, it’s, it hasn’t done well.

Like I’ve lost a lot of money. And it’s one of those things where it’s like, there are a good amount of people who really liked it, but enough of the people didn’t like it, that that was sort of the, you know, you, you can tell when you go out on stage and you’re not connecting when your show’s not working. And that’s really hard when you’re trying to be funny.

And I was actually so stressed out about it that I was actually blacking out on stage. So I wouldn’t remember my performances when I’d walk off stage at the end. And I found out later that I’d been lip syncing everyone’s lines in the play.

And I didn’t know I was doing it because I was, I was in a, like a PTSD kind of state. Um, so I said to my mom that, you know, this was happening and it wasn’t going well. And you know, now magazine said, I have no talent and uh, you know, all this stuff.

And uh, and she said, you know, and she also told me she didn’t like it. Um, but she says, you know, no one’s ever going to accuse you of being lazy. So just finish and then move on to the next thing.

Cause that’s always what you’re going to do. And I stressed out a lot less after that. Yeah.

I mean, it was, it was a tough week. Also fringe is really hard when you succeed, let alone when you fail, because it’s just this really hot week in July and you’re working constantly and you’re, you’re, you’re taping things to polls when you’re not performing a play and handing out postcards to people who don’t want another goddamn postcard. And you know, it’s just, it’s a really hard week.

And then I was, it was my birthday that week too. And it was just like, I’m telling all these sad stories on the show, but it was so, it was such a great learning experience for me. And also just learning not to take things too personally.

I put the same amount of effort into both plays. It just, sometimes it just happens that you, you hit with people and you don’t with others and you can’t, you can’t always predict it. You can’t always tell.

I had no, I mean, when we did the best man, we sold out every night for five, five for a whole week. It was like five performances at the now long gone bread and circus, which told us they’d never had a show do that well before. And it was a good show.

It was funny. And you know, I liked it, but I don’t, other than the fact that it took place at a wedding, I can’t really tell you, I know why it really worked for people, but it just had a good buzz. Yeah.

It’s funny because I mean, fringe is great if your show is doing well, but if your show is not, it’s really hard. Yeah. I have to get up and try to get those bums in the, I mean, you’re swimming upstream, whether you do well or not.

It’s just a really, and I would love to do it again just because I feel like there are a lot of things I did wrong that I learned from. And I’d be curious to see if I could improve it. But so far I have not gotten back in.

I’m curious what you think you did wrong. Well, I probably didn’t budget correctly. I budgeted the way I normally budget for an indie play and it’s a different ball game at fringe.

I didn’t take advantage of things like word of mouth tickets or all that stuff, you know, papering the house more. I don’t know. It was a big ambitious play.

You know, it was it was a, it was a farcical comedy. And I just wasn’t prepared for the amount of competition you have in that festival. And you know, cause in general we got treated well.

I mean, despite the fact that the show didn’t do well, we got a bad review, but it was the only review we got. It’s not like there were like myriad, a Mooney on theatre actually reviewed us as well, but they came to the last show. So they liked it, but it, you know, it couldn’t help at that point.

But you know, I wasn’t, people weren’t throwing tomatoes at me or anything like that. And you know, it was just, and I think also if I do it again, I would be better prepared for the physical duress of just doing that many shows in a week in that much heat. I mean, it’s the, it’s usually the worst week in summer that we do.

It’s also, you know, not just doing the shows, but like you are on, like you were go, go, go, go. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And you’re always promoting it, right? You’re always like, I would, I would always go to all the back when it was, the, the tent was still over at Honest Ed’s. I would, I was always there all the time handing postcards and I would go to all the other theatres to hand out postcards. And I’m not convinced that the fringe tent is the place to fly her though.

I haven’t been for quite some time because I feel like you’re just firing other artists. Yeah, probably there. You’re probably right.

And, but you know, the lines are the place, you know, I always watch, I, I wish I could be generals, generals. Who’s like nonstop promo machine, right? Just like hits every line. And like, just like he seems to thrive on that kind of promotion.

I’ve seen him not just in Toronto, but in like Winnipeg and I also like, I would probably also coordinate better in terms of like more than just me going out there to hand stuff out, you know, because like it wasn’t something we really prepared for properly when I did the show. So there’s just a lot of little things that I feel could add up to, yeah, to more if I did it again. One of the things that’s interesting is, is, is Mooney now tries to make, well, no, they have successfully for the past few years reviewed every show in the fringe by the end of the first week.

Yeah. They recruit people. That is mass.

Yeah. They’re lovely. I mean, I, um, sometimes I take issue with the quality of writing of some of their authors, which I know I’m going to get a lot of flack for.

Uh, but, um, they are super enthusiastic. I mean, they all obviously show up prepared to love the show. And so if they don’t, that’s on you.

You know what I mean? Like I, I, I do, I, I like them very, very much. Um, uh, I produced a play called Hazel last year that my friend, Michael Stittle wrote, uh, and, uh, Mooney came out to review that and we got a really, really great review and it wasn’t particularly favorable. She, you know, she, she had a lot of issues with the play and, um, Michael loved the review and he really appreciated it because it was, it was so thoughtful and well-written and she took the time to really consider what the play was about and what it was going for.

Um, and it, it felt like a compliment, even though it wasn’t a favorable review. So, you know, and also Mike’s, a good sport about, you know, taking criticism. Basically her review is so well-written that it was obvious that we were getting reviewed by somebody who was qualified to, you know, to talk about what you’re saying.

How you take a review is really an important. Yeah. Also a learning process for me too.

Yeah. But I mean, at fringe, it’s like fringe is the time when I’ll read the review. Yeah.

Like, because if I’m in the show, I need to know what that says. Interesting. Because if I’m in that show and I’m promoting the show, I got to know what the show says when I’m firing, I can say money.

Oh, this is where my friends come in handy. I don’t read anything until the play is over. And particularly if I’m performing in my own play, I do not read the reviews because that’s, that was also a mistake that I made on operation impervious.

Although I have to say before the review even came out, I remember going out on stage on opening night and realizing it wasn’t working. And then it was just a long week after that. But, yeah.

And the review just sort of confirmed that. But, um, I don’t want it in my head space and that’s not just a bad review. I don’t want a good review in my head space either while I’m performing.

It’s too distracting. So what I actually did when we did, um, when I did what we say such terrible things, which was, uh, it was a night of two, one act play is called brain food. And my friend Michael Siddal wrote the other show.

Um, I had my friends, I said, look at this review and tell me if there’s a good pull line from it that I can put on the poster. And I, and they would give me one and I would put that on the poster. And then I read them.

I actually read them at the closing night party and there were a lot of, you know, favorable ones and criticisms, whatever. And I was fine with them. It was not a problem for me at all, but I, I just didn’t want any of that in my head space.

And I tell my casts also, once we open, like we, we will get, someone will review us. We’ll get a blog somewhere. If not an actual publication, if you want to read them, it’s up to you, but please don’t talk about it.

Don’t share it with anybody. I personally don’t want to hear about it. And maybe other people don’t as well.

It’s interesting having, having done a fringe tour. And you know, in Montreal, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton, the learning how to take all of the reviews, whether they’re good, mediocre or bad. And just to be able to, how to deal with it while still knowing that you need this information, because you want to be able to walk up to people and say, CBC gave us like, you know, get said this, you know, that sort of thing.

And so we would like very carefully, all of us together, like, and you know, it was not a solo show. So we had a cast. It was like, I don’t know what they’re talking about.

They love Disney, Winnipeg, you know, like being able to do all that stuff and to be able to like bolster each other was really important. But, yeah, but I mean, it’s something you should definitely never take personally. I approach the, a route, the, the status of reviews from a producer’s point of view, which is that like, this is either going to help me sell it or it’s not.

So if it’s a bad review, I don’t take it to heart. It just means I can’t use it to help sell the show because there’s a good poll quote in there or not. Well, there can be.

Yeah, absolutely. But, but that’s what I mean. And in some cases, excuse me, um, a review doesn’t have a good poll quote in it and it’s a bad review and you’re panned.

And it’s just like this. There’s no point in losing sleep over it. I mean, I’ve worked with actors who really do take reviews very personally, and I just don’t know how they’ve been doing this so long.

And I don’t know, maybe it can contribute to their vulnerability on stage or something that they’re like this. I don’t want to be super critical of the way other people see things, but I remember going into performance one night of a show I was in and a guy said, uh, he was just in a really bad mood. And I said, what happened? And he goes, it’s just, it really upsets me whenever you review comes out and I’m not mentioned in it.

You know, like one of my, my work is not mentioned. And I thought, Oh my God, it never occurred to me to care. Um, and I don’t mean to be so proud of that, but like it just never occurred.

I mean, I was the lead in Hairspray, the musical, and I did not get mentioned playing Edna Turnblad. I got a passable, so it’s just having fun playing Edna Turnblad, but blah, blah, blah is great as everybody else. And like, I didn’t, I guess I noticed it, but I didn’t take it personally.

I don’t know. It just, I don’t know if you can, like the reviewer, I, especially if it’s print, then they have a finite amount of space. Yeah.

Or if it’s, if it’s Mooney on theatre, reviewing all of the shows for the fringe before the first weekend, nobody’s got time for a long review. I think it’s also just that as an actor, I enjoy it. I enjoy doing it a lot more, I think, than people enjoy watching me.

And I don’t mean that like so self effacingly, but I don’t think that I, I just don’t think that I turn heads in that way as a performer. I think I’m serviceable and skilled and what have you, but I’m not, uh, I’m not usually a showstopper. And I, I realized this also because my writing gets a different reaction from people.

That’s way different from what my acting gets. It’s interesting. Cause I know that for me, like if I’m involved in a show and somebody else is getting like the pointed out, I’m fucking so happy for that.

Absolutely. Yeah. Because I want them to be happy for me when it happens to me, because you know, we all have our day and we can’t have it every time.

And sometimes you are the focus and other times you are not. Absolutely. So, I don’t know.

Uh, yeah, I don’t, you should always be happy for people when good things happen to them because they’re going to have their crappy days too. Well, yeah. Yeah.

Bill, are you on social media at all? Are you on Twitter? I am. Yeah. You can find me on Twitter at upair 77.

Um, and you can find my blog at my old addiction.com where I review movies. And then I have a podcast called bad gay movies, bitchy gay men, which you can find on iTunes. And I also have a personal podcast that I do going through my criterion collection.

And it’s sort of my journey through movies called my criterion. So people can find me there too. Nice.

Yeah. Awesome. So yeah, I have a few.

Thank you so much. My pleasure. It was absolutely my pleasure to do this.

Thank you.