TJ Dawe is an award winning writer/performer/director. Current projects: Medicine, PostSecret: Unheard Voices and Never Shoot a Stampede Queen. Various credits include The Slipknot, The Power of Ignorance, Lucky 9, 52 Pick-up and Dishpig. He did a TEDx talk. He co-wrote the play Toothpaste and Cigars, which has been made into the movie The F Word, starring Daniel Radcliffe.
Twitter: @tj_dawe
http://www.tjdawe.ca/
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Transcript
Transcript auto generated.
Phil Rickaby
Welcome to Episode 11 of the Stageworthy podcast I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. On Stageworthy I interview people who make theatre actors, directors, playwrights and more and talk to them about everything from why they chose the theatre, to their work process and anything in between. Usually when Today’s guest has mentioned the words fringe God or fringe legend precede His name. TJ Dawe is a playwright, actor, dramaturg, and director and of course, a legend of Fringe Festivals across Canada and the world. You can find stage really on Facebook and Twitter at stage where the pod and you can find the website and stage where the podcast.com If you liked what you hear, I hope you’ll subscribe on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use, and consider leaving a comment or rating.
It’s interesting, because when I’m looking up, you know, if I look up TJ da, there’s a phrase or variation on a phrase that keeps coming up. And I’ve seen it on a number of different different blogs. Fringe God is one of the one of the phrases fringed legend is another. And is that is that do you find that? Like, how do you feel about those those titles? I mean, obviously, you’ve put in the work to gain those titles. But I wonder, how is that? Is that a crown that weighs heavy? Or how do you feel about that?
TJ Dawe å
I find it very flattering, it’s that kind of thing is really good for advertising. Really, you know, it doesn’t help me do the work that I need to do. But it’s really flattering to hear praise from other people and to be known as, as any given thing, or at least as this given thing, because it’s certainly a positive label. So sure, I’ll take it. But it’s, it’s a danger, you know, to pump yourself up with the praise of others, because that doesn’t help you create your next thing, if anything that can get in the way. Because it might make you think the stakes are too high. Or it might make you overestimate your own ability or underestimate the amount of work you need to put in because I can do anything I’m a fringe God was in fact, I’m on the same working job I’ve ever been, I’m still trying to discover what, how to write, you know, Charles B. kowski. One of my great inspirations once said, No, one’s a writer, everyone’s an X writer. And you have to prove yourself every time you sit down at the typewriter. And I really stand by that. So every time it’s, it’s a struggle to make myself do it. Every time I sit down to write, it’s a struggle to stay focused. And it’s, I always have to push myself to stay at the edge of my ability. And to be there, you know, and to not fake it, to not just take shortcuts or thinking good enough, but to go as far as I can.
Phil Rickaby
Do you have? Do you have people that you rely on to help push you like, because I know when I’m writing, sometimes I’m not quite sure how it sounds? Or how it how it’s working until I have read it for other people and sort of like, I know, sometimes it’s hard to, for me to push myself to a certain point, are you really good at pushing yourself,
TJ Dawe
I’m pretty good at pushing myself. But after a certain point, you definitely need or I find I need the feedback of others. Because theatre is meant to be performed. It’s not meant to be read. So even if I do send a script to some trusted friends, which I sometimes do, I get their feedback. And that can be very helpful. But you don’t really know what you have until you have an audience. So that’s something I it took me a long time to learn. Because I’m just very individualistic to the point of it being actually a huge hindrance. But after a certain point, yeah, let’s have a test audience. Let’s read this off on an iPad or off a music stand. And just see if it lands, see if the story holds people’s attention and see how things want to be rephrased. You know, like, because a lot of what I do is writing autobiographical monologues. After a certain point, I just know Okay, start saying this out loud. go for long walks. Because I can I can get it as close to my natural speech rhythms as I can while while sitting at the computer, but the only way to really make it sound like I’m just talking off the top of my head if that’s what I’m going for, and that usually is what I’m going for. Say it out loud.
Phil Rickaby
Do you do you read it? You are you recite it just walking around? Do you find that helpful to make sure that it’s sounding? Because I know that when I sit at a typewriter I overwrite. Yeah, when I sit typing on my computer, I write too much.
TJ Dawe
Yeah, I find if I want to write a play with dialogue, I often do it in collaboration with somebody else. So I’ve got a writing partner Mike Rinaldi, who now lives in Hamilton and We’ve written a number of plays together. And it’s always us in a room, doing dialogue with each other as we write it so that we’re hearing it out loud. We’re both trained as actors. Our original ambitions for both of us was acting, and we kind of stumbled into writing. But that’s been a huge help in our process. And then when I’m by myself, yeah, I just go and I talked to myself, I go for long walks, usually on a very busy street with no foot traffic, so that nobody has to listen to me talking to myself. Or there’s a bridge and a park not too far from my apartment in Vancouver. So I’ll walk the busy street that goes to the bridge, and I’ll just talk to myself as the cars rush by, and just make it sound out loud. Because, yeah, there are certain nuances in spoken speech that are very hard to capture when you’re sitting down on a computer.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. Do you? Do you remember? So you you initially intended I, as you said, to be an actor and sort of fell into writing? What was it that sort of made you fall into that?
TJ Dawe
There’s a couple of things. One is that I went from, you know, there’s probably a familiar pattern to anybody who’s been to a theatre programme or theatre school is I went from being one of the stars of my high school drama department. And I came from a very small high school without much of an arts department. So I was getting lead roles and everything, to University Theatre Department, where suddenly, everybody was that in their high school, and I suddenly wasn’t special anymore. And a very small number of people are cast and everything, and I wasn’t one of those people. So I was just left to my own devices. And acting is a bizarre art form, in that you have to wait for other people to let you work. You know, Writer can just sit down and write a painter can paint, you know, pretty much any other form of art, you can just do it. But an actor has to be given permission, somebody has to choose you to do it. And if somebody’s not choosing you to do it, then what do you do? And around that same time that I was making this difficult adjustment to the fact that oh, I’m not just one of those people blessed by God, who’s gonna get cast by directors automatically, because my talent is so bright that they can’t resist me. I started discovering the work and people who wrote and performed their own stuff. So there was George Carlin, there was Spalding grey, there was Daniel Carver. Not so much performer but Charles McCaskey wrote autobiographically. And I became enamoured with their style of writing and performing and just realising that that’s something some people can do. I didn’t really know that that existed. But I was a fan of Monty Python. And they wrote and performed their own stuff. And growing up, I was a big fan of the Marx Brothers and still am. But like, they didn’t write their own screenplays or their own stage plays, but they added their own material to them. So I was I, you know, in retrospect, I can see I always had an inclination for people who wrote their own stuff who created their own material. So those, those two things, the fact that nobody was casting me and I had nowhere for my energies to go and the fact that I liked people that created their own stuff their own way, kind of meld melded together just at the right at the right time, and encouraged me to start doing that. So I had always been an active journalist journaler. So I was just, I just write down my thoughts. And initially that was with a pen, and then eventually with a typewriter. And then eventually, I started to think what if I turn this into a one man show, I didn’t know how to do it. I had no training as a writer. Playwriting seemed like mysterious priestcraft. It was wizardry that there were all these secrets that I just had no access to. It didn’t take a course, I didn’t have a mentor. And in retrospect, I’m kind of glad I didn’t, because I didn’t. I made my discoveries on my own in my own way, without applying any theories to them. And I’ve been doing that ever since.
Phil Rickaby
So you your first play was based on journal entries,
TJ Dawe
more or less, like what I would do was I it was the mid 90s. And I was very technophobic at the time. So I wrote on a typewriter, which had been somewhat romanticised by Charles Mycoskie. And I would just purge my thoughts onto my typewriter day after day. And I would write Yeah, just my thoughts what had happened that day, or what I was reading or what I was listening to, or who I was in love with, or whatever it was, and then slowly thinking, like, could I turn some of this into a one man show and I didn’t adapt anything I’ve already written. I just continued to hone my thoughts and just take a certain nugget and expand it into a monologue and I just mashed a bunch of these monologues together in something that didn’t really have much of a structure or a story. So I can look back on that first play that I did. Now. It was like about 45 minutes long and think it was pretty flawed. But it was a good first step. And I learned from that and then I continued that process with the next show. And then the next one.
Phil Rickaby
What what what was it that made you think about doing a one man show?
TJ Dawe
Part of it was just that I was so enamoured with the one man shows I had seen like when I was 18, the movie theatre in Vancouver, the ridge which was an arthouse theatre, had a double bill of Spalding grey monologues and in their guide, the heading was for a for Captain Spaulding, and that was a Marx Brothers reference. So that jumped out of me and reading the description of who this guy was, I’d never heard of him and what he did didn’t 100% makes sense with with me, but I was intrigued. And I went inside and then so there I am at this movie theatre. 18 years old, I’ve enrolled in University I’m going to be leaving in a month, and I’m just starting to discover the world outside the limited world of my teenage yours, you know, I’m discovering independent film, I’m discovering independent music. I’m discovering foreign films, I’m discovering the notion of not being homophobic, you know, my worlds expanding in these interesting ways. And then I’m at this art house Theatre in the cool part of Vancouver. And there’s this movie called swimming to Cambodia where this guy just sits at a desk and talks and tells an elaborate story about something that happened to him. And my life was changed. Like, I didn’t know that you can do that. And he was fascinating. And he spoke rapidly, and he did the sound effects. And he did the character voices, and he looked different directions to portray different people when there was dialogue, and I just loved it. And then there was another one monster in a box, and he did more of the same and it was also amazing. And it just struck me that oh, that’s something you can do. And around that time, I was buying used records and I was buying George Carlin standup albums and he’d never rapped with the crowd. I really think his stand up albums. They work as concerts like it’s a performance and there’s a rhythm to the whole thing. And then when I was looking for audition pieces, as a theatre student I came upon some of the monologues of Daniel McIver and his stuff just jumped off the page and the way that the plays that I had to read from my theatre classes didn’t, it was a difficult thing for me to own up to is that I didn’t like reading Shakespeare, or Chekhov or Shaw or Brecht, or any of the great playwrights it just it. It wasn’t my dream to play Hamlet. It was difficult to admit that because for a while that seemed like admitting that I don’t want to be an actor. But I loved reading McIver and I love reading Spalding grey. And I love reading Charles McCaskey. And I love listening to George Carlin. He didn’t have any books at the time. And that just got me thinking maybe that’s what I’d like to do. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know where I do that. I don’t know if there’s a future doing that. But that excites me far more than playing the lead in a Chekhov play, which nobody wanted me to do anyway.
Phil Rickaby
Was that first your first McIver play? Was that wild abandoned by any chance? Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah.
TJ Dawe
Yeah. I mean, what I’ve since discovered is that some of the monologues from wild abandon are incredibly overdone, in terms of people using them for audition pieces. But I didn’t know that when I first read them in this anthology is monologues from Canadian plays for men. I just knew that this is exciting. And it’s funny, and it means something. And I know how to do this. And this guy’s out there. And he’s Canadian. And yeah, there’s clearly at least some audience for this.
Phil Rickaby
Did it was it? Was it the idea of performing solo with did you find that frightening at first as an idea?
TJ Dawe
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Because, again, it was it was a new thing to me. On the other handle, again, something I had a hard time owning up to, was that I didn’t really like being in plays with other people. I was in a few plays with other people. And I just found the rest of the cast annoying. I hated having to do a group vocal warmup I hated actor rituals, the whole theatre student culture really bothered me that, you know, it’s something I’ve never encountered in the professional world, but some of my classmates would stay in character offstage, you know, and just do annoying things like that, or always be performing. You know, and I think that’s really, you know, a young person trying to prove to the, to themselves and to the world that they are an actor, when, in fact, they’re just as insecure as anybody else. Whereas working on my own, I didn’t have to deal with that. It was just so it was intimidating. But it was also, it was appealing in the fact that I didn’t have to coordinate schedules with anybody else. I didn’t have to, in my very vulnerable state, bring my first writings to the table, have to have them critiqued by somebody else, or have somebody else say I don’t get it, or this isn’t good enough, I could just work on it on my own. And there is an appeal to that for me. And what I’ve since realised is that it is very difficult to dovetail schedules with other people, it’s hard to get people on the same page, it’s hard to get bigger plans or working with other people. So what I started doing once I was reading shows was touring the fringe. Well, it’s hard to find a good number of people who want to tour consistently and live on the starvation wages that that entails. And what I’ve also discovered is that my aversion to being in groups is a survival strategy that I adopted early in life that I don’t need to adhere to. So now I am starting to collaborate more and work with other people more and I absolutely enjoy it because I’m bringing a lot of self work and self understanding to the table that I just didn’t have when I was in my early 20s.
Phil Rickaby
Do you do you mentioned like touring, touring the fringe and and doing that? What was your first fringe?
TJ Dawe
Well, it was a really wonderful experience in that when I was a theatre student, I was infrequently cast as I mentioned, one of the first things I was casting was of all things, a touring fringe show of a Daniel McIver play. So there was a grad student who’d done a fringe to the year before and he had cast me my first thing of all, which was a play from the Edmonton fringe, it was called cut, and it was a high concept play that consists of characters cut from famous players. So a great play to do at a theatre department. There’s all kinds of theatre in jokes in it. I played a butler who had been cut from every Oscar Wilde play. In my running gag was I was always offering people cucumber sandwiches. And it went really well for the three performances that it ran. And that same director was going to tour the fringe with never swim alone by Daniel Carver. And I auditioned and I got cast, and we toured in the summer of 1994. We started, we previewed in Kitchener, we opened at the Toronto fringe and played five fringes and ended in Victoria. And it was an incredible experience. So it wasn’t my show. It was somebody else’s script of somebody directing me, but it was the kind of theatre that I loved. And I was surrounded by this culture of self creators. Most people on the tour, were doing their own work. And I was a part of it, I was accepted as appear. And that blew my mind, as well as the fact that there’s audiences interested in seeing this stuff. And I was seeing some of the best theatre ever seen in my life. And then it came back to the theatre department and began my third year in university and again, went back to not being cast. And nobody knowing that I’ve done this fringe tour and the kind of theatre that I’ve just done not being taught in my theatre history classes are not being discussed as an option of what we might do once we graduate and aspire to professional careers. But I had this in my mind, like, I know that’s out there. So that when I started writing, my own one man shows that just seemed like a natural place to do that. I can, I can be a part of this festival without any kind of during process. And I can go out there and at least conceivably, break even or even make money doing it. So that ended up being in a lot of ways. I think of it as my own grad school, I funded my post secondary education, by just throwing myself out there and doing it again and again and again, and learning by doing, I have a real tendency to stand on the sidelines. And theorise like I knew that about myself. So I knew it was a good thing for me to get in the ring, to throw myself into the deep end and just learn how to swim.
Phil Rickaby
So you were you were putting yourself in a position that you weren’t particularly comfortable with in doing a not just a fringe show, but do it like a solo show, but having to promote it in a very personal way that a fringe performer has to promote?
TJ Dawe
Yeah, that was more difficult than doing the show, having to street promotion having to having to come up to strangers and lineups and saying, Can I tell you about my show, this is what it’s about, and try and sell them on the show that had an abstract title and an abstract concept. And I had no touring history. And it was hugely intimidating. And, you know, I’m just, I’m quite often averse to socialising period, much less approaching strangers and saying, Please love me. And please give me money. That was horribly difficult.
Phil Rickaby
It’s terrible. It’s terrible as somebody who’s who’s done that, and who is not comfortable in either talking about myself, or really promoting myself very well, like just talking to strangers to tell them why they should come and see my show just absolutely terrifying.
TJ Dawe
Yeah, but I ended up finding a trick, which was to make a performance out of it. And I would turn it on. And I would make a patter out of different review quotes that I’ve been getting, you know, as the tour progressed, and I was accumulating more reviews, and I’d say something different to every single person, I would make eye contact. And then if they overheard me talking to the next person in line, they overhear me saying different things, they might keep listening. And I kind of realised that sales pitch is a sample of the show, even if I’m not doing a sample of the show. It’s that person saying, is this person interesting enough to gamble $10 In an hour of my time. I stopped doing that like as soon as I could afford to, because it was still took a lot out of me. I still hated doing it. But after a while I realised Yeah, if I, if I just approach it as a performance, that trick ended up working. And it totally jumped started the whole process and suddenly I was playing to big audiences and actually making good money.
Phil Rickaby
It’s funny you mentioned when you were in theatre school, like the whole idea of like the the fringe ethos in the fringe, self create or not being something that was really discussed, because I remember, myself when I was in theatre school in the early 90s, the same kind of, it’s not something like fringe existed, we knew it existed. It was small, but we knew it was there. But it was never an option. Nobody ever discussed what creating your own show was like, yeah, there
TJ Dawe
was certainly no course in my department on theatre creation. And I’ve come to understand that in a number of theatre programmes. Now there is and Fringe Festivals are a lot more crowded in the in the applications now than they were when I first started touring. Oh, yeah, they’re very difficult to get into now. And I think that’s a big part of why is just there’s more people out there like me, or like Daniel McIver or running Berkut or Sandra, Seamus or mumps and Smoot, or Karen Heinz, or a lot of people out there who forged careers on original creation theatre, and more young people and more theatre students are seeing this kind of thing. And it’s less stigmatised and more and more people are thinking I wouldn’t mind doing that. A lot of people are still playing the game as per normal and auditioning. But more and more of them are creating their own thing either as solos or and ensembles and creating a lot of very interesting work and I think that’s Very exciting.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, I’m seeing a lot of people just as I’m doing this podcast, a lot of people who are who are talking about the fact that they’re doing both and they’re doing, creating, they’re working on their own show, they’re creating their self creating, they’re doing this, that and the other thing, in addition to the stuff that, you know, the usual method of of pursuing an acting career that, that they take that, you know, we expect in a theatre school.
TJ Dawe
Yeah, these are, these are legitimate options. And you’re right, a person doesn’t have to only do one or the other. You can do both. Or you can focus on one if one appeals to you more than the other.
Phil Rickaby
Absolutely. Do. So, again, just to go back a little bit, we’ve talked a little bit about you making a transition from, you know, being an actor who wasn’t getting cast in things to, to writing your own stuff, but I’m curious about your first exposure to theatre. Do you know what it was that made you want to pursue a career in theatre?
TJ Dawe
Well, I always saw theatre as a stepping stone towards the movies. My first love was the movies, I was taken to see Star Wars when I was four years old in the movie theatre. And when those when those yellow words blasted off into those stars and fanfare played, my life was changed forever. And it wasn’t too long after that, that I saw Empire Strikes Back and then Raiders the Lost Ark and EA T. And I wanted to be a part of that, you know, like those movies were larger than life experiences. And I wanted to have adventures that big. So when I was a little kid, I always said I wanted to go to LA I want to do is study at UCLA and learn how to be an actor there. And that’s that was a career trajectory that I imagined at that point. My early theatre going experiences were the same as most kids do, which is like a touring the children’s theatre company comes to your school or your school is brought to see Eugene O’Neill play or Shakespeare play and you have to write essays about it saying why it’s brilliant when you didn’t even really understand it or want to see it in the first place. So most of my early theatre going experiences weren’t great. The first time I saw something on stage that blew my mind was improv, you know, vaguely heard of improv. And then, for the school play in grade 11, where I had the lead, I did a tremendous ad live on the second night to cover up for some of the other actors corpsing, when their father was in the frontline, guffawing, and everything they did, and I got a big round of applause. And the directors loved it, and hugged me. And then the cast went out to see Vancouver Theatresports that night, and it was a very good cast that night. And I was just smitten like this, oh, it can be this funny, it can be this alive, this interactive. And improv ended up not taking when I started taking courses from them, like I was just too shy, I was, you know, ill at ease in the group dynamic yet again, there was that at play. But I fell in love with just that feeling of what that was like to be there doing that. So when I went to theatre school, you know, my crass ambition at the time was, you know, just do theatre as the stepping stone to being in the movies. But I’d had that experience with theatre sports. And by then, I’d seen those movies of Spalding grey, and I was starting to be turned on to alternative theatre understanding that that exists to, to kind of theatre that nobody has to write an essay on the kind of theatre I wasn’t taught about, even, even in university much less than high school. And that completely appealed to my sensibilities as they were evolving at the time.
Phil Rickaby
So and you started to think of theatre as something that you could do. I know, for me, I sort of I can vaguely remember the first time that I saw a play, and I can remember that it was something that I was doing as a child. And then at some point along the way, I realised that it could be it was a thing that you could do, like, in the same way that some people are doctors, and some people are lawyers, I was a thing that you could, you could say, when somebody says, What do you do for a living? You could say I’m an actor, or something like that? Do? At what point? Did you realise that it was a thing?
TJ Dawe
Pretty early on from the movies. You know, just that sense of, and maybe it was because there was behind the scenes features about the making of Star Wars and things like that. But I always had the sense of like, yeah, those people have the best job in the world. That’s what I want to do. I want to be a part of that. Now. Like any kid, of course, I didn’t know what what being in a movie actually entailed. And I still don’t have never been an extra. But what I understand though, is it’s a lot of waiting around. And you have little to no creative control when you’re an actor unless you’re a big big star. But what I’ve since understood, come to understand is what appealed to me at the time. Not so much was standing in front of a camera and emoting but having an adventure of having that hero’s journey. And in a lot of ways, being a writer performer has afforded me that because you do this inner journey every time you cry. Eat something, you have to go into the unknown and find, and you go past all the monsters and all the distractions, and get the golden fleece or the Holy Grail and bring it back out into the world. And then as a touring artist, there’s an external version of that, too, is like going far away from home to someplace, nobody knows me, and proving myself and battling through my doubt in my fear, and whatever external obstacles present themselves, and then coming back changed, transformed, you know, gone through the wringer through the foundry through and come out the other side, and just being this new person was transformed person on the other side of that adventure. So in some ways, what I realised now is yeah, I didn’t want to play Luke Skywalker, I wanted to be Luke Skywalker. And in my own bizarre way, I made it happen.
Phil Rickaby
In terms of your writing process, I mean, you were talking about how initially, you were writing from journals that you were keeping, do you? When you’re writing a new piece? Do you sit down and think I’m going to write a new piece? And this is the topic? Or do you generally look at things that you’ve been writing in your journals, and sort of figure out how you can put that together?
TJ Dawe
Well, I don’t journal so much anymore. I think social media has kind of leaked the steam out of a lot of people’s journal writing, because Facebook is pretty much short form blogging. What am I doing today? What am I thinking about? What’s on my mind? What’s my comment on this thing that’s happening in the world at large, or this thing inside. But mostly what happens is, after a while, I noticed, I seem to be thinking about this certain thing a lot. And it might be this idea from out in the world, or it might be this certain part of my life. And I just find myself, like mulling that over a lot. And I start to think, I wonder if that’s my next show. So then I just sit with that and think, does this keep coming back. And if it does, then I eventually set out a time in terms of like, alright, January, I’m going to sit down and write the script for that in January. And I’ll just take whatever I’ve got, and go for it. And then I’ll pound out a first draft and it might take the entire month, or it might be less than that. Or it might be more, but I just kind of I noticed that something seems to be happening. It’s almost like harvesting a field of grass or something like that. It’s like, ah, the grass is at a certain height, it wants to be mowed. Okay, let’s, let’s, let’s mow it. And let’s see what this grass tastes like. What is the show about and I do a lot of discovering while I’m sitting there.
Phil Rickaby
So you do a lot of the discovering while you’re while you’re writing? And do you see your your your palate, your first draft? And then you? Do you take time before you read it out loud? Once you’re done that first draft? Or do you just plough through and just keep going and revising? The whole way through?
TJ Dawe
It’s different for every project? But generally, yeah, I’ll take some time away from it. Because then I can actually look at what it is with some kind of clarity and say, oh, okay, this part doesn’t actually work, or this part is redundant, or this part isn’t as interesting or funny as I thought it was, or this better than I thought it was. Like, if I can take like a month away, then I can come back to it and look at with some kind of freshness. And that really helps
Phil Rickaby
you find a month is about the length of time that that allows you to have that kind of clarity when you’re looking over it.
TJ Dawe
Yeah, yeah, I like to I like to take a month if I can, like, I don’t keep strict track of what I do. But like off the top my head, I’d say yeah, probably about that.
Phil Rickaby
I think I think yeah, it’s about the same when I’m writing about the same amount of time, I think there’s a certain point of time when I can stand to look at what I’ve written after but before being too judgmental, or, or or thinking it’s too brilliant. So it’s sort of like one of those
TJ Dawe
one of those two things, and something that a lot of my peers do is they’ll write it and memorise it at the last minute. And that’s something I have never once done. I like to start my process long before the due date. for that exact reason, because I know things need time to gestate. And I like to revise and I know that a lot of my revising happens while I’m rehearsing. So I like to have ample time to do that. Let’s let this thing flush out.
Phil Rickaby
That seems that seems more frightening to me than anything else, like revising up until the last minute.
TJ Dawe
Well, I’m always revising even after I’ve opened. But at least it’s not done with that kind of frantic sense of like, am I even going to remember it? Much less? Yeah. Is it good? Or are there gaps in it after that I’m going to have to mend once there’s paying audiences in the audience paying paying customers in the audience as well as critics who are going to be slapping their opinion out on the web for everybody to read.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, yeah. Do you do you get to do Fringe Festivals much anymore? I mean, you were saying about how it’s so hard to get into the into the Fringe Festivals. I know. Toronto fringe They’re really hard to get into. And I think that’s the same in most of the Fringe Festivals across Canada do you get to fringe much anymore,
TJ Dawe
not nowhere near as much as I used to. And there’s, that’s kind of a good thing because I don’t want to do nothing but the fringe forever. And I’m in a relationship. Now for a lot of my years of touring, I wasn’t or I’d been short term or long distance relationships, and I had no apartment to come back to now I do. So I don’t want to be on the road with fringes forever. I’m starting to work outside the fringe. So not getting into fringes, the way I used to is a good kick in the ass, to pursue contacts that I have outside the world at the fringe. And then I also have contacts within certain Fringe Festivals, like in the communities so that I can do bring your own venue. So this year, I’m going to be doing that in Orlando, in Winnipeg and in Vancouver, but if I were solely relying on the lotteries, I wouldn’t be doing any festivals this year.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. When you’re not fringing is there, do you have avenues? I mean, you say you, you have avenues, you, you you look for ways to perform, did fringe open doors to performing in non fringe locations and non fringe spaces?
TJ Dawe
Yeah, and I’d say that performing writing and performing at the fringe has, in one way or another opened every door to everything I’ve done since then. Because you never know who’s in the audience. So and it’s also where I hone my craft. So anything I’ve done outside the fringe has been something that has at least began there, or any artistic relationship I have is from somebody who probably saw me at a Fringe Festival and thought I’d like to work with that person, or I’d like to hire that person, or I’ve heard that you’re out there, and would you like to come to my theatre? So yeah, the fringe has been kind of the minor leagues of, of theatre for me, and I’ve gotten, you know, interest from scouts from the Major Leagues all over the place. And I think that’s an important thing, too, because there are arguments for not doing the fringe for exactly that reason, you know, you can get stigmatised. You can get pigeonholed. It’s kind of it’s the trailer park of theatre in some ways. But the great thing that it’s done is it’s kept me working. And I’ve done a lot of collaborating that’s come out of the fringe. And I’ve had a lot of opportunities come just because I’ve built up this body of work. And now anything that I do now, anything that I create, is standing on the shoulders of all my years of writing and performing and directing and dramaturgy, fringe shows.
Phil Rickaby
Speaking of directing, looking at the list of shows that you’ve directed, I’m noticing so you’ve got one man Star Wars, one man, Lord of the Rings, you’ve got so many shows did did people, the people that that you directed for, I assume they approached you because of your previous fringe work.
TJ Dawe
Not initially, actually, Charlie Ross, who does one and Star Wars, he and I were classmates and university. So we were theatre students together. And we just liked hanging out. And we had a very copacetic sense of humour. And we had a mutual love to the point of obsession about the Star Wars trilogy. And Charlie expresses himself through sound effects and voices and pantomime. Just brilliantly I mean, that’s just if you’re, that’s how he has even a regular conversation. So when it came time to create that show, it was just a matter of honing the chart leanness, and finding a way to put that into a repeatable format. So a lot of my collaborations are that it’s like some, some friend or associate or colleague, that I love and respect, and finding some way to take what I love and respect about them, and put it into a finite form, you know, a repeatable form. And then since then, and especially in just the last handful of years, more and more people have been approaching me more to dramaturg, sometimes to direct, but I’ve kind of become known, not even so much as the friend of God, but as the one man show guy. So that if you want to if you have a story you want to tell or you have idea, or if you’ve been performing in a certain way, but you’ve always wanted to do a solo show, maybe this is the guy that can help you. And in fact, I now teach a course on solo shows at a college in Vancouver. Nice.
Phil Rickaby
When you’re dramaturg. In a solo show, are there specific things that you’re looking for?
TJ Dawe
Well, I think it really comes down to kind of just a translation of the Charlie idea, which is who is this person? What is the story or idea they want to get across the world? And what is the essence of who they are? And how can I? How can I find a way to help them get that into their stage show in some way. So maybe they’re a person who’s really great at playing characters. Maybe they have a really great visual sense. Maybe they’re really good at just as conversational storytelling. And then there’s okay, what’s, what’s the story? Or what’s the idea and how does that story or idea want to be expressed? Is that a story or idea that’s well expressed by playing a menagerie of characters or by just sitting down at a desk and talking what works best for them, there’s no one right way to do it. But there’s just a certain energy that a person has that it’s like, okay, let’s find that. And let’s hone that. Let’s improve that. And let’s work on that. And then a lot of what I do with people is actually just sitting with them, and saying, that’s good, do more of that. A lot of people need very little. But that very little, is the thing that they need to do it in the first place. People have huge procrastination mechanisms and self sabotaging mechanisms. So a lot of my work with people is going for walks with them and getting them to tell me their story. And me saying that’s great, you should write that. And then let’s sit down, okay, now write the such and such monologue. I’ll give you 45 minutes, and I’ll be here and then reading what you got at any point, but I’ll stop you 45, I got my own clock, turn off the Wi Fi on your laptop, just write it for 45 minutes. And then they do and they’re brilliant. And I’m not sitting over their shoulder, and I’m not telling them what to write. I’ll just give them feedback when it’s time to give them feedback. But they’re doing 99% of the work. The 1% that I do is just to be there and say, yep, I’m here when you need me. And then quite often people’s natural brilliance just emerges.
Phil Rickaby
Is it Do you think it’s just that people sometimes need permission to be brilliant?
TJ Dawe
Yeah, yeah, I think people have a lot of doubt. And they contend with, you know, their own self sabotaging habits. And there’s anything, you know, like, we have a tremendous capacity to do anything other than the creative work that is going to make our soul feel alive. It’s a bizarre aspect of being a human being, but I go through it. And I think pretty much everybody goes through it. So to have one of the person there to say, here’s the validation you need. I absolutely second that that thing you’ve been thinking about is worth writing about. I would like to hear it, do it. And then also to be there with somebody else. Like if somebody’s just in their own apartment, and they got an afternoon and they say, Well, I’m going to write this afternoon. And then they end up just screwing around on social media. Whose time are they wasting their own. And they don’t seem to mind doing that. Because it’s just me. And I don’t really respect myself that much. But if they’re meeting with one other person, then there’s that sense of like, well, I don’t want to waste their time. So I’m not just gonna sit here and screw around on Facebook while he’s sitting there. So sure, yeah, I’ll write for 45 minutes. How bad could it be, and then they write for 45 minutes, and they write something amazing. They could have done that on their own. It’s just they tend not to
Phil Rickaby
when you’re telling somebody and this is one of those silly questions that just sort of occurred to me when you’re telling somebody to write for 45 minutes, I’m going to be here. Are you watching them? Right? Or you?
TJ Dawe
Generally, sometimes I’m writing something on my own sometimes I’m reading.
Phil Rickaby
But I was wondering about that, because I always find that if there’s another person writing near me, they were writing in the same room or something, I find that their their writing makes me right.
TJ Dawe
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Some friends of mine and a blog group used to do what I called shut the fuck up and right night. So it’s kind of brilliant. Yeah, we bring our computers and you can chat as much as you want until seven o’clock, and then seven o’clock comes around and say, Alright, everybody shut the fuck up. And right. And if people start chatting partway through, Ah, wait till nine. These two hours, we’re shutting the fuck up. And we’re writing. And then we do and then just creates this kind of shared space. It’s creative yoga, as one guy used to call it.
Phil Rickaby
I like that creative yoga.
TJ Dawe
Yeah, there’s just there’s this energy that comes up of like, this is what we’re here to do now.
Phil Rickaby
Mm hmm. I think I would be remiss not to not to ask you about toothpaste and cigars. Sure. Yeah. Because that’s a I mean, that’s a show that’s a play a Canadian play that got turned into a Hollywood movie.
TJ Dawe
Yeah. Well, Canadian movie.
Phil Rickaby
Hollywood. I mean, it has like Hollywood. I mean, it’s shot in Toronto. It has Hollywood people in it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so it’s like, one of those. It’s like, it’s a unicorn. Yeah. It’s, it’s a Canadian unicorn. Because it’s a Canadian play that got turned into a movie with with like, with name recognisable
TJ Dawe
actors. Yeah. Not just actors.
Phil Rickaby
Was that a trick? Well, yeah, well, no. Was that a true trip? Like was that what was that like for to see that process of having a play and get watching that happen?
TJ Dawe
No, it was pretty commonplace that that happens to me all the time. No, yeah. It was incredible. Well, it took 10 years. That’s another part of the thing is that the play was we started Mike Mike Rinaldi and I started writing that in 2001, we finished the script in 2003. It toured the fringe in 2003 with Mike in the male role. It was a two hander, and then a friend and bank Coover, at the end of that tour offered to shop it around to some film contacts. So a guy bought the option in 2004. And then it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in 2013. And got its commercial release in 2014. So a very protracted timeline full of gaps full of waiting, full of vague news about this studios interested or this star is attached or we’ve got a date, oh, wait a minute, it got cancelled, or it might be back in play. No, it’s dead. No, it’s alive. And like I’m way in the distance with no control over any of it. Like, news is filtering its way to me. It’s I have no input in casting and writing the drafts and funding and where they’re going to film anything like that. So yeah, it was it was like this, this thing that I created, it’s, I mean, creating theatre is like having a child. And after a certain point, the child grows up and runs off and has their own life. And toothpaste and cigar has just had the most bizarre and brilliant life. And it’s like I get these missives from this child. And it’s like, wow, you sound like you’re doing really well. Go Go kid go. And yeah, it went the distance. It was a huge trip. It was amazing. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Phil Rickaby
No, I guess not. I mean, how many people get to have that experience?
TJ Dawe
Not only that, became a movie that I genuinely liked. And like the, the, the anguished cry of any playwright when they see even another production of their own work is what have you done? What have you done to my script? And then of course, how many how many authors are there or playwrights who had their work turned into movies that they just lowest, and they have to bite their tongue at least until the movies finished. And then they can shut talk to the world. But I genuinely liked the movie, the toothpaste and cigars became, I was there on set. You know, I even have a small cameo in the movie. I mean, the background and a bar scene. And the director, Mike Dallas was really nice. And both leads introduced themselves to me and Mike on set, and they were all really nice. And the movie itself ended up being genuinely good. And how often does that happen? And very, very rarely, yeah, like, especially in Canadian film, you know, like underfunded, under attended Canadian film, for a movie to come out and to be able to stand behind it and be like, my god, I would like this, even if, even if I wasn’t involved.
Phil Rickaby
That’s I mean, and you said that it took like, like, 10 years to have that happen. Have they’re like, did you ever sit back and wonder, what is it about this play that caught somebody’s attention? Or did did when somebody said we think they could work as a movie? Did you say, Yeah, I can see that?
TJ Dawe
Oh, yeah, I mean, right from the start, I can see the cinematic potential of it. Because for one thing, it’s dialogue. You know, it was a two person play, and it was all dialogue, there were no model, there was no narration to the audience. So that kind of thing just seems to translate better. In terms of like, you can immediately picture the interaction between the characters. And, you know, a lot of other stuff that I’ve written is very personal, in autobiographical and as much as like I’m describing my inner life. So not necessarily easy to translate, or it’s about, it’s about my inner life. So it’s not about extraordinary things happening to me in the world, but it’s about my thoughts and feelings. So again, it’s like, would that translate to film maybe, but not in a way that’s as easy to visualise. But there’s also a big luck factor. You know, like, there were many, many instances of luck involved in in that actually becoming a movie. And this, the nature of luck is you can’t depend on it. It’s just sometimes it’s there. And that happened in this case.
Phil Rickaby
Have you considered I mean, I think I think, you know, to have the that, that fringe legend fringe God. title that that thing that people that people call you. Do you see that as as luck? Or did you I mean, obviously, you put so much work into into fringe, and he did it for so for so long. That it really I think that when people are calling you those things, are they calling you that? Do you think both be because of the performance, like how ubiquitous you became? Or you’ve become or or is it more about the writing? Or is it the whole thing do you think?
TJ Dawe
I think it’s a big combination of things. Because yeah, I’ve been very prolific. And I do a style of theatre that really thrives on the fringe. I mean, minimalist, solo shows aren’t often produced outside the fringe because people have a sense that they want to get their money’s worth. So that involves, among other things, a set or a multitrack cast. And then there’s the fact that I’ve worked with a lot of different people. And then there’s the fact that my shows have been of consistently high quality. And then there’s also the fact that my shows have never had a gimmick. And I’m not just talking, anybody who shows do have a gimmick, you know, that can be a great thing. I mean, one man Star Wars, that’s a gimmick, and I created that. It’s just that when you have a gimmick, people tend to remember the gimmick and not you. And I took the slower and harder route without that being my plan. It’s just that’s what ended up happening of the brand being meat, rather than this is a show about the history of Canada, or this is a show about this particular hot topic. So it was just longer to establish myself. But then eventually it happened. So it was more about the fact that I was there, or the you know, the the draw was was about what I was doing rather than about the subject. And that happens on fringes a lot, too. So there’s been a lot of hard work that’s built up in this to get me praising this a lot of relentless touring, I’ve toured more than practically anybody else, done more than 100 Fringe Festivals. And that’s the other thing is a lot of people don’t have an endless appetite for touring. They miss their home, they miss their cat, they want to live in one place. Whereas there’s a part of me that actually really likes being on the road. doesn’t want to be on the road, like 12 months a year. But yeah, I love going out and having an adventure and playing that game. And being a part of it.
Phil Rickaby
Generally, when you were when you’re when you’re doing the front, when you were doing the fringe tour, would you start in May or June and go straight through until September? Or would you try to go for that meant that long?
TJ Dawe
Yeah. For most of my years, I never had a break, it was five, six months without even a day off. I would start as early as I could. So for some years that was Montreal, and then after a while it was Orlando. And then the last fringe would be Vancouver, and then there’d be some pickup gigs after that, that would often take me to the end of September even into early October. So yeah, it was a solid unbroken, five to six months.
Phil Rickaby
So did you did you use a unbroken without taking time off? Are you talking about like not taking a day off during the fringe or
TJ Dawe
the thread we
Phil Rickaby
use solidly out there everyday promoting,
TJ Dawe
I wouldn’t necessarily be promoting, but when you’re around a Fringe Festival you are on. Like, you just you’re not taking a day off. So even if you’re not handing off those lineups, you’re interacting with people all day. And in my case, generally, people are saying really nice things. But still, that takes a lot of energy. You’re out there, and you’re playing the game, and you’re seeing other shows, you know, I would see as many friendships as I could, you know, get comped into everything. And I learned from everything I see. So I’m never really turning off. And the things I like to do to relax are things that also feed my artistic self. So reading a book, or going to a movie, or reading a graphic novel or something like that, all of that is still work, you know, I write off those things on my taxes and legitimately so because I’m always thinking about like, dialogue and acting and directing as to how the story comes across. So in a lot of ways, yeah, I have a very hard time turning it off.
Phil Rickaby
What I mean, I did, I guess, maybe four, four years ago, I did a shorter fringe tour, I found the promotion, exhausting as an as an introvert, going up to people. At the end of every day, I was just done. And you know, some fringes more than others Edmonton, and Winnipeg exhausted me more than any other, just because of the number of people. I get the sense that that you sort of at least starting out had that sort of struggle as well. Did you have any trade? I mean, you’ve got your pattern, but how did you combat the exhaustion that comes from being on and talking to people all day?
TJ Dawe
Well, I really burned out a lot. You know, like, if I look back to how I lived 10 years ago, I was self medicating with pot cookies, which is not the hardest drug you can take. But it’s still I look at it. Now it’s self medication. And I would sequester myself at the end of the tour, I’d go off to my family’s cabin on an island and not speak to anybody. And you know, I really burned out and then the force of that burnout would lead to me, eventually getting into personal work. And I ended up writing shows about that. So that got me into the Enneagram, the personality type system that I studied, and now teach, that got me doing an Ayahuasca retreat with Gabrielle Mata and then various other retreats that some of which involve psychotropic substances, all of which is all about examining, like, what’s going on inside and how do I get my way? And how do I sabotage myself? And realising that one of those ways is a to not ask for help, B to believe that I don’t belong when I actually do. And C to prioritise my own needs last. So those are things that I’m hyper aware of now when I’m on the road, and I actually take care of myself a lot better than I used to. And I also went to work quite as relentlessly as I used to, but I’m very aware of like, I have a habit of separating I sell from others. So what if I were to not do that, and realising that when I, when I go the other way, I actually have a better time. And it’s healthier for me mentally and emotionally? What if I were to take time off when I need it? Is that a sin? No, actually, it’s not. So, okay, I’m allowed to do that. Now there’s a siren, what if I were to ask for help? That’s not against the law, I always kind of operated with the belief that it was. So all of these things just helped me be more sane and grounded. And I’m happier on tour, and I’m more present. And I actually get a lot of feedback from people who’ve known me for a lot of years saying, You’re different now. And they mean that in a good way, or at least I hope they do.
Phil Rickaby
Since you’re not not touring quite as much how, what is it that you are? How do you fill your days now, in addition to you said, your teaching, and your writing, but how do you? How do you feel your time?
TJ Dawe
Well, there’s a lot of admin that’s involved in being an independent artist. So there’s that there’s teaching solo shows, there’s dramaturg, and people’s one man shows, there’s my own writing project. So I’ve always got a number of things that I’m working on go. There’s blogs, there’s new plays, there’s screenplays and teleplays, you know, that aren’t necessarily being produced, but I’m writing them and hoping to send them out there. I mentioned the Enneagram, the personality type system, the Enneagram, my girlfriend, and I actually teach workshops on that. And I write articles about that, and essays. And then, you know, I’m searching for work elsewhere in terms of like, what festival Can I go to? Or what contacts can I cultivate? So a lot of things like that, a lot of just nuts and bolts. And then now I’m working on a show, and I’m probably gonna have to get going pretty soon, based on the blog posts secret, so I’m directing. And I’ve co written that. And there’s a lot of business meetings are involved in that, because that’s a show that has the potential to go a long, long way. So there’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff. The stuff that nobody imagines when they grow up saying I want to be a writer.
Phil Rickaby
Of course, yeah. Yeah. Nobody thinks about everybody sees the sitting at the typewriter or the performing and may never see the the admin all of the admin work that goes
TJ Dawe
on. Yeah, they don’t see your sorting your receipts or trying to purge your clogged inbox. Yeah. Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
Well, I mean, I know that you have to get going and I want to thank you for for taking some time out of your day to talk to me today. Welcome. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been great. Thank you so much.