Eric Petersen

Eric Petersen is a graduate of the University of Toronto and Northwestern University. He has returned to Toronto after stints in New York, Chicago and Vancouver. While in Chicago, he was a board member of Halcyon Theatre and brought Ninaz Khodaiji’s work to Chicago for its premiere performance. His shorter playlets are often performed at Sing-for-Your-Supper (at various locations around Toronto). In addition to writing plays, he occasionally turns his hand to poetry and has been published in White Wall Review, Gyst, xib, and A House Divided.

Eric’s play, Final Exam appears as part of the 2018 edition of the Toronto Fringe Festival.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 128 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.

The fringe season is upon us, and in the coming weeks I’m going to be talking to a lot of amazing fringe artists. And you’re going to want to make sure that you don’t miss anyway. And one way to make sure that you never miss an episode of Stageworthy is to subscribe to the podcast.

And subscribing is easy. All you have to do is go to Apple Podcasts or Google Music and search for Stageworthy, then click the handy subscribe button. And if you like the podcast, I would love it if you’d leave a comment or rating, because your ratings and comments help new people find the show.

If you want to drop me a line, I would love to hear from you. You can find Stageworthy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at StageworthyPod, and you can find the website at stageworthypodcast.com. And if you want to drop me a line, you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at philrickaby, and my website is philrickaby.com. My guest this week is playwright Eric Peterson. Eric’s play, Final Exam, is part of the 2018 edition of the Toronto Fringe Festival, and will be presented at the Matty Eckler Recreation Centre in Toronto’s East End.

So we’ll just, we’ll just jump in. Is it recording already? Okay. I’ll cut out anything where we’re, if we’re, if we’re saying anything terrible about people, because, you know, people suck.

Not the people coming to our show. No, of course not. Of course not.

Those people do not suck. So come to our show and you won’t suck. Why don’t we start, Eric, but so the show, full disclosure, I’m in the show, and it’s called Final Draft.

No, no, Final Exam. Final Exam. Boom.

Final, I was, goddammit. So the show is called, the show is called Final Exam. Do you want to, do you want to take a second and describe what the show is about? Sure.

So imagine a time, I don’t know, 25, 30 years in the future, and we’re in a, the audience enters, you’re in a high school setting, you’re in a classroom with the students and a teacher, and it’s unclear whether your biggest concern is taking the exam and, or the fact that aliens are coming and they’re going to swoop you up into the hive mind. Now, for most of us, this wouldn’t be a tough call, but apparently for many of our students, they’re torn between what is causing them more anxiety. That’s true.

That’s true. And, and, and the alien, the hive mind is like something that’s being forced on everybody, right? It’s like, in theory. In theory, there’s some escape hatches and the aliens aren’t taking everybody.

So everyone that’s around is seeing some benefits, and certainly their parents do. And I, I had earlier drafts where I talked about how employers were going to assume you were going to be part of it. Right.

So there were many more, I don’t know, things kind of forcing people into this decision. I cut most of that out. I just said, you know what, people have to accept the fact that everyone around here’s basically bought into it and going forward.

Yeah. Yeah. What was the, what was your, your, like, did, was there something that sparked the idea for this for you? So it’s been in my head for a while, actually.

And I think it just was kind of interesting for, the Genesis actually was kind of thinking about Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, which is a play set in England about a whole bunch of kids who managed to get accepted into Cambridge or Oxford. And I thought it was kind of interesting to sort of play with that idea of looking at the teacher-student relationship in the context. Well, what would happen if, you know, the Borg, essentially some kind of hive mind showed up and sucked everyone into it? Like, what would happen with teachers and students? And so the original one was maybe a tiny bit more elegiac.

That doesn’t quite sound right. But the, you know, the teacher thinking about his future and being excited to know all of litreature all at the same time, but, you know, knowing that he wouldn’t be as special. Yeah.

And it kind of changed from there. But that was kind of very original. I would say the last couple drafts have been much more inspired by two things.

Number one being Brexit, particularly in the context of England, where you see a big generational split and an awful lot of the younger generation are extremely bitter toward the older generation about making these decisions for them. That they, on the whole, didn’t support and are like, well, you know, you had your choice, you decided against it. But, you know, I wanted to travel to Europe, I wanted to be part of the EU.

And that’s gotten a little muted in this version. But nonetheless, there’s flashes of it. And then I guess the second, which is probably kind of dominated the last couple drafts is discussions about privacy, and particularly in context of Facebook, where you have many people knowing there’s pretty substantial and significant problems with it, and yet continuing because, you know, their employment requires them to be on Facebook, or or being pretty nonchalant about it and saying, well, privacy doesn’t really matter, who cares.

And that’s particularly sort of the younger generation of millennials, like if you cut millennials in half, like the younger group, just don’t see privacy the same way at all, as far as most of the surveys say. Yeah. That’s an interesting, that’s an interesting thought in that.

I mean, they’ve grown up in, you know, there’s this particular, we’re in a society where, you know, there’s the attitude of, well, I don’t have anything to hide. And I guess that that’s the case until there’s something that you want to hide, you know? Why does privacy matter, except that, you know, you don’t necessarily want everybody to know everything about you? Well, I think, I mean, even just from a philosophical perspective, it’s generally a good idea to reserve parts of yourself and not put them on display all the time. Yeah.

But basically, young people don’t really think through the consequences of their actions. I didn’t. I’m sure most people didn’t.

Oh shit, no, of course not. You and I just have the benefit of the fact that our teenage years are not, there are not pictures of us and all of our mistakes available for everybody on the internet. I made very few mistakes, but I certainly made some, and I wouldn’t want everyone else to know them.

A lot of my mistakes have to do with clothing or hair, and I’m just, that’s fine with me. Yeah, yeah. I do have one or two pictures, but I did not put them on the internet of me and crazy A’s of A or who knows what.

So I think mostly young people don’t realize the consequences of their actions, and they don’t realize how other people see them. And again, partly it’s because people mostly travel in small circles, and it’s not until you suddenly run up against a different group like, oh, I didn’t realize you thought that was offensive, and sure, here I am saying all this crazy stuff. Yeah.

And unfortunately, I think people now are almost looking for things to take offence to, like, you know, how dare you wear a sari or a Chinese dress or something like that, which, you know, I mean, it’s, I don’t, anyway, you know, these things have gotten magnified, and, you know, we wouldn’t have wanted all this on the internet. Actually, the 80s are almost a dark hole. It’s very hard to find stuff about the 80s.

It’s just out on the internet. Yeah, I mean, the other thing about social media is that you don’t know, like, if, you know, you’re going to have to, like, when you are going to the border of a country, and they’re like, so if you’re going to come in, your Facebook and Twitter passwords, please. And now we’re going to check out all of the things that you said.

Oh, I thought I was just saying that to my friends. Oh, no, we want to know what you’re saying. Right.

And unfortunately, this whole issue of legalizing the marijuana. So, you know, now people are like, well, maybe you shouldn’t admit it at the border, because it’ll cause these problems. But if they’re looking through your Facebook pages, that you may well have said something about getting high with your friends.

So now you’ve actually committed a felony because you’ve lied to a border agent. Exactly. What do you do then? Yeah.

And you know, if you’re even if you’re crossing the border in and you live in Toronto, like as soon as you’re at customs, that’s America. Yeah, that’s right. That’s America.

And so it’s actually America inside Pearson Airport. Exactly. Which is crazy.

And they can actually do whatever the hell they want at that point. So this is not in the play. No, but it’s like it’s interesting things to think about.

And for me, one of the interesting things to think about is how it relates to yes, it would be great to have access to all knowledge. But if everybody has access to all knowledge, then I’m not special. Right.

And a lot in a lot of cases, I think if we’re honest with ourselves, the reason why we want to have access to all knowledge is so that we’ll be special. Yeah. You know, right.

So one of the teachers actually, Mr. Miller, has this vision in his head that he will be able to help curate this. And like, because he’s had so much more knowledge than most of his students, certainly, and other teachers, he’ll be well placed to sort be a curator and one of these tastemakers. And another teacher says, Well, maybe, but there’s probably a few million people in your shoes.

So maybe this isn’t the best plan. Kind of reminds me of something a long time ago when I was in grad school, and I was doing well, but not well enough to make the cut basically. And someone said, Well, you know, you think you’re special, but maybe, maybe you just aren’t good enough.

Wow. Okay. Wow.

Yeah. So yeah, maybe a little bit of that’s coming to the surface in the play. Well, I mean, there I mean, we always draw from from our our own experience, even if it’s not explicitly about us.

There’s things we always put things from our own lives in there somewhere. Right. But yeah, so I think there’s no question if everyone has the same knowledge, then it becomes devalued.

Who cares anymore? And probably people will still mostly focus on celebrities in their news since that’s drives, you know, 80% of their newsfeed. Sure. I mean, but another interesting question is like, if that’s the case, then who’s like, what makes somebody a celebrity? Like, and besides that we are like, now I know all the things that they know.

You know, I don’t know. It’s like, there’s some interesting, there’s some really interesting questions in it. Yeah.

Eric, at what point did you start writing for theatre? So I did very short plays in university, but only one of them I was part of a group exercise that we put on a group show. Then I took a long break. And it wasn’t until I was in Chicago, I was actually on the board of a theatre company.

And got really inspired by being around the actors. And I started writing a few short pieces, then like a full length piece. And we did table reads, we didn’t actually do in a kind of a quasi stage reading.

Yeah. Then I came to Toronto. Okay, then in Vancouver, I’ve moved around a lot.

In Vancouver, I was in a screen writing class, and I finished a second full length script. But again, not much happened with that. And then in Toronto, I guess 2014, I started writing mostly for the Sing for Your Supper, the stage reading, the cold reading event.

And basically just there, I mean, mostly I tend to 10 to 20 page short playlists, but this one came about and just seemed right time to try to put it in the fringe. Yeah. And you mentioned that you were in Chicago and Vancouver, like were you where did you grow up? I grew up in Michigan.

Okay. And I spent a lot of time. Well, I spent about five years on the East Coast, mostly in New York, and then 10 or 12 years in Chicago, partly grad school and working.

Did you have a lot of exposure to theatre when you were when you were younger? I would say a reasonable amount. My parents would take me to some of the theatre in high school, they took us to the university productions. And but where I grew up was a little smaller.

So there weren’t a lot of theatre events. It really was university where I started going to basically everything. University of Michigan had a really good, I mean, sure, it still does, but a very good drama program.

And Ann Arbor Civic Players, I think had a good season as well. It’s interesting, because, you know, one of the most, I mean, almost everybody that I’ve everybody that I’ve spoken to, in two years during this podcast, they’ve been exposed, they were exposed to some theatre when they were a kid. And that affected them in some way.

And that sort of like speaks to the importance of parents, and their willingness to take people, even if it’s to the pantomime, or whatever the theatres do it at Christmas. Yeah, there has to be a first exposure somewhere. Right? Well, Chicago in particular is interesting, because theatre is so prevalent, it’s becoming something that people will just do and take friends to.

But you’re right, in general, theatre is seen as a very elite activity. And it’s hard. I mean, I think the theatre in the parks is a great thing, because a lot of people find out about it that wouldn’t go and maybe fall in love with more.

Yeah. I mean, again, nothing at all wrong with theatre in the parks, but then they want to explore more and go to, you know, indoor performances. But but yeah, it’s, it’s difficult.

You know, so you kind of do need theatre in the schools, or, again, parents taking people to young people’s theatre or things in the park. Yeah, because it is hard to, because most people, when they think about theatre, they don’t think about theatre at the storefront, or the the Red Sandcastle, or any of the independent theatres, or sometimes even Factory Pass, Mirai, or Terragon, they’re thinking like, the big expensive Mirvish, or even Soulpepper, which is pretty pricey now. Yeah.

And that’s what they’re thinking. That’s why people are often like, oh, theatre is not for me, because I can’t really afford it. Yeah.

I mean, it’s unfortunate Mooney’s doesn’t have a slightly bigger subscriber base, because I think they’re really great in terms of, you know, really focusing on what are the cheap theatre, you know, $20, $25 or below. Oh, the Mooney on theatre? Yeah. I love the blog.

I mean, obviously, from the way that it seems that theatre criticism is going, I think that internet criticism is pretty much the only one of the few ways to get stuff out there. Right. But I don’t know who’s looking, who’s reading it? Like, are we? Are we looking for our own? Like, are we looking for ourselves? Are we reading about our friends or the people who are actually going there? To find out? How do you find out about it? I don’t know.

I mean, it’s hard. It’s hard to even get in the world. And once you’re there, then there’s a lot of opportunities.

And many of these companies do have some great deals for people under 30. Yeah, I’m pretty sure Tarragon does. And certainly the other ones do.

And there’s plenty of independent theatre that you can see for, you know, 10 or 15 or $20. So it’s not, you know, that’s not nothing, but it’s certainly not at all the same as, as Mirvish. No, it was.

I mean, yeah, I mean, the there’s, there’s great stuff out there. It’s just a matter of like people finding it. And that’s one of the things that Fringe is great for.

Yeah. Like you have like, was it 12 days, ish 12 days, 10 to 12 days of, of a really affordable theatre, right? And some of it even is free. There’s, there’s piece things, I think on the Fringe pavilion that are essentially free.

There’s a, I’m pretty sure there’s some stuff that’s half price this year. They’re doing preview tickets. We’re actually going to have one preview.

The first show is a Thursday and that’ll be a preview show. So that’ll be good if people are a little more budget conscious. And, and that would be on the 4th of July.

Sounds good. 4th of July. Maybe we’ll, maybe we’ll have some fireworks.

Yeah. Some fireworks. Exactly.

And, and the Fringe is also making, making a big effort to, there’s sort of, I can’t remember the exact programs, but basically tickets are donated by the companies to children, basically, mostly high school children. I haven’t totally decided if we’re going to do that. I think ours is a relatively small productions in terms of the seating.

So it may not work as well, but, but yeah, there’s a number of opportunities out there. And there’s also the, the initiative that, that, that there were part of, which is outside of the usual Fringe core, which is the, the, the, the site-specific locations, which are not in that usual boundaries. So this is a very exciting opportunity.

And, and as the Fringe was saying, well, not everyone can come to the Fringe. So we’ll go to the neighbourhoods. And this year there are six site-specific shows, not in the downtown core, including ours, Final Exam, which is at, in East York at Matty Eckler, which is the intersection of Girard and Pape.

And there’s another one on Danforth. And then there’s at least one or two in Parkdale. So this is very exciting.

And if it goes well, then, you know, next year, the Fringe will have a few more. And so, you know, if people are interested, this is certainly something to support, you know, to, to check out the Fringe in, outside their traditional areas. Yeah.

And also in some, some really interesting locations, because this show, Final Exam is like, we’re, we’re basically creating a classroom that the audience is going to be part of. Right. Like if you’re sitting in that room, we’re, you’re basically one of the students.

That’s right. So there won’t be any major participation from the audience. Yeah, that’s that you’re not going to be required to take an exam.

Right. Exactly. But it is, I think it’ll feel a lot like a classroom.

And some of the others are in really interesting spaces as well. And I know there’s going to be one promenade show, kind of in someone’s front yard, going somewhere else. Last year, there was a very successful promenade show that was in three locations somewhere.

It went from like a little restaurant, and then it went into someone’s garage and someone’s patio. Wow. So that was fun.

That’s fun. And this one won’t be so many places, but it’ll still be outdoors. And I think those are great.

Though, of course, you do have to watch a little for the weather. Yeah, well, that is the thing. You do have to keep your eye on that.

Just to backtrack a little bit about you, Eric, you were, you know, you did your time, you know, did some time in Chicago and Vancouver. As somebody travelling around, were you travelling around because that’s where the work was? Or did you? What was what was and what brought you to Toronto? So it was a bit of a mix. I’m not a professional performer or writer.

So I have a side gig, which is a full time gig in essentially consulting. And so the good news is, we’re often able to find jobs in urban areas, consultants are. And I was attracted by this particular job in Vancouver.

And so we did pick up and move. And there was a and it was interesting, and I definitely enjoyed the job. But Vancouver wasn’t quite for us.

I might actually lived in Toronto in what for one year in the early to mid 90s, when I was at the University of Toronto. And I always thought, well, it’d be kind of great to come back. Yeah.

And I was deep enough into the process that I was well on my way to a permanent residency card. And I said, well, might as well stick with it. Why don’t go to Toronto and send it back to Chicago.

And for me, it’s been a very nice mix. Toronto has a well, has a really good cultural mix, a lot of concerts, a good art scene, a good theatre scene. I mean, it doesn’t compare to Chicago, but it is a good theatre scene.

And, and also for the kids, some great universities, and just, it’s a kind of a nice mix. It’s got a little bit of everything. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Chicago.

So about the theatre scene there. It’s quite amazing. I would say it’s probably three to four times the number of just shows to open up the reader.

And it’ll be, you know, like, four pages of openings almost every day. So you would, there would be weeks, I would go see two shows. I’m sorry, months where I’d say two shows every week.

And it’s not that you can’t do it here, but it’s a little bit harder. You have to look a little harder for it sometimes if you’re right. And, and most of it was kind of independent storefront theatre.

That’s certainly the majority of what I went to. Yeah. And I mean, we’re sort of like in a position of here of sort of trying to rebuild our storefronts.

I mean, Red Sandcastle has been there for a while. Assembly just reopened or Unit 102 just opened with the assembly and storefront is perpetually in progress. The storefront theatre, I look forward to when they.

Yeah. I talked to very briefly with the new AD and they’re putting a business plan together and they’re hopeful, but it’s going to be a challenge. And particularly they’re hoping that this time around on top of getting a new location, they can pay the actors more.

I’m like, well, good luck with that. I’m very hopeful, but it’s great for everybody. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaking of storefront, when did you find sing for your supper and, and, and how did you find sing for you and just storefront storefront theatre produced the basically a cold reading series called sing for your supper. It is not for musical theatre. I’ve had so many people say I would go, but I don’t do musical theatre.

It’s not musical theatre. It’s just cold readings of plays. That’s a really good question.

I, I remember the first time I went to a storefront, a show, and that was, that was who’s afraid of Virginia wolf, which was probably in 2014, 2015. Um, and I don’t know if they kind of advertise it there, or it just happened to be something I happened to stumble across in the, in the reviews of the, um, not the reviews, but the listings of the now magazine. But, uh, yeah, just to kind of appeal to me in this idea of, uh, throwing it up there.

And, and, um, I was very fortunate in my first, um, piece was accepted and I was like, Oh, this will be a breeze. And no, the second and third weren’t accepted. It took a while for me to kind of get my, uh, stride.

Um, and after a bit of a layoff, they’ve, they’ve kind of returned and, uh, I’ve been pretty successful writing short pieces for them the last few months. So it’s sort of a great little, like to go once a month and just sort of like be in a room with a bunch of people and, and get a chance to read something. Sometimes it’s like, like litreally hot off the typewriter, computer keyboard, whatever, but like, yeah, it can be new.

Most of it’s only a week old. So that can be like really exciting and it could be written by, by anybody. Yeah.

And then they’ve been pretty lucky recently getting a lot of new writers. So they have to balance the older writers that are not even that established, but just kind of are, are better known quantities and, uh, and then the new folks, but it is really exciting to kind of see some new folks that haven’t been there before and see what they can do. And, um, you know, as, as they say, nobody gets paid.

So you just kind of show up for the community and find out about what else is going on. I think that’s the big part of it is the, is the community and the, uh, the, just the, the, I think we have few opportunities to just be a community in this city. Um, and it’s a great chance to just sort of like hang out for a bit and read something new.

And it’s very supportive. And I would say the same thing about the Toronto cold reads, which is also a great, uh, reading series, um, uh, which is, it’s got a slightly different thing. They usually show up every Sunday for about two months at a time, and then they take a bit of hiatus and they come back for two months.

So, you know, it kind of depends. And, uh, a new thing that they’ve been doing this last couple of years is having a musical artist, which is nice to kind of, um, uh, just a different focus, a different kind of creativity. Um, and the other thing that’s a little different about, uh, Toronto cold reads is they tend to, they tend to kind of get interested in projects that, you know, it’s a slice of a bigger piece.

Whereas sing for your supper is almost always sort of standalone play. They can be very much standalone. And, and I found that one of the differences between the two is a lot of the stuff that I was seeing at Toronto cold reads was, were screenplays.

Um, whereas sing for your supper is almost exclusively, is it pretty much exclusively plays pretty much. And, and that’s fine. I will admit, uh, a couple of them, I will, I wish the person would, uh, cut half the stage directions because screenplays have a lot of stage directions.

It’s true. And it’s good to like, you know, I mean, whenever I’m writing, I’m always like, if the state, like, do I need the stage direction? I’m like, I don’t put a lot of state direction. I’m not a, I’m not a Tennessee Williams or anything like that.

Like Sarah rules is like all minimal stuff. Like what do they need? Cause I know eventually somebody is going to just ignore that anyway and do their own things, you know? But you’re right. Uh, there’s no question.

A fair number of people at the Toronto cold reads are hoping to do either, you know, TV writing or screenwriting. And I’m not sure, but I think the long timers that keep coming back to sing for your supper, not interested in the same way, they’re a little more oriented toward the fringe. There have been some previews of fringe productions.

Um, uh, you know, and you suddenly see that at Toronto reads as well. Sure. Yeah, no, I mean, and it’s, it’s good cause I have occasionally seen crossover between the, between the two people who go to, and some of the organizers from, uh, Toronto cold reads have shown up at, uh, at sink for your supper.

So it’s, it’s really good to have that sort of, that sort of crossover so that we’re not working in silos. Um, do you remember the first thing that you wrote? Not necessarily for cold reads, but do you remember what the first, the first thing that you wrote was? Yes. So this would have been university.

Um, so the very first thing was actually a series of poems that got rolled up into this. Uh, what was it called? Uh, it was something that we put on, uh, in an hour, but I don’t really count that cause I only had a few poems that were part of it. I didn’t write the linking material.

Um, the first thing was a short piece about, uh, two women in an office and a guy who was kind of bugging one of them for a date. And, uh, the women would kind of talk back and forth about their history. And, um, I think at the end, the woman gave the guy a chance.

They were going on a date, but, uh, she didn’t, she said I’m driving because the other woman had told her this weird story about how her parents had, uh, basically her father had, uh, threatened. He, he was so madly in love with her mother. He had threatened to drive off the side of the road or she wouldn’t marry him.

And, uh, the irony is this is actually a story I stole from somebody else. So I embedded this in there and then she’s like, Oh, well, okay, we’ll go out on a date, but I’m driving. So I think I’ve always been attracted to humour and irony.

Yeah. Well, there’s certainly, there’s certainly quite a bit of it in, uh, in, uh, in final exam. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of humour.

Um, although there’s some dark stuff, a little bit of dark stuff in there too, which sort of balances out that humour. Yeah. I was hoping for a pretty dark, but humourous piece.

You’ll have to come and see for yourself. Well, I think that there’s, there’s like, I think if you’re, I think a lot of people, when they’re talking about humour, they shy away from dark cause they figure like, Oh, it’s FIF. It’s funny.

It needs to be light and it needs to be, but there’s, there’s sort of, you know, that can kind of be dull after about 10 minutes, having a little something that’s heavy or a little darker can actually, um, um, give some weight to what you’re talking about. I think there’s definitely something to that. And many of the pieces that I know are never going to go longer than 10 or 15 minutes.

Yeah. I mean, they’re, they’re more or less a sketch and, uh, and it’s fine. Yeah.

But yeah, to maintain that for 40 plus minutes, I think you’re right. You need something a little deeper. Yeah.

Um, you know, people with the longer pieces expect character arcs. I wouldn’t say there’s huge character arcs in here. There’s bits of them.

Um, and so if you’re not doing that, then you have to do something else. And, um, I wouldn’t say I was directly inspired by George F Walker, but there’s no question. I find his really dark humour.

Interesting. I’ve seen many of his plays. Uh, not that I really think this was a direct inspiration.

No, but it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. Like the, I find the, the, the, the conversations that the, uh, the high school students are having pretty interesting. Um, just because, you know, you’ve got some who are, who are completely into the idea of, of joining the hive mind and others who there’s one character who may at one point have been like a star student.

And now he’s just, uh, he’s really kind of withdrawn into himself because he’s so unhappy about the situation and kind of just gotten stark sarcastic. Um, cause he, you know, it’s a little bit like one of those tiny bit, like the two serve man thing where it’s like, don’t you see this? How can I be the only one that doesn’t see what’s going on? And of course, there are more people that have rejected the, this hive mind. And you know, who knows Toronto’s population can be half of what it used to be.

But, uh, we’re going on the assumption that most people by 2050 are so used to not having any privacy. They hardly, hardly notice it. But there’s also the idea.

I mean, a lot of times, you know, people will go along with what they think is the majority opinion. Like if everybody’s doing it, if they think that everybody’s into it, and I’m sure that in this world, the news has been talking, has just been propagandizing. Yeah.

Everything’s going to be great once this happens. Yeah. The government’s for it.

So, uh, again, not a direct influence, but definitely something that I was thinking a little bit about was if you’ve seen any of, um, the Amazon production of the Man in the High Castle. So, uh, both the TV, well, series and the, and the book talk about the situation where the U S is lost, uh, world war two and the Nazis have pretty much taken over the whole East coast. Actually they’re, they go past the Mississippi and yeah, people are just on board with it.

They have, some people are totally on board with it and some people are just okay with it. Um, but there’s very few true resistors and, uh, I see that a lot of that, I mean, you sort of look at different societies that have, I don’t know, I mean, to get super political, I mean, Turkey or, uh, Ukraine or well, North Korea is a little bit different, but, but a lot of places where, you know, kind of a strong man comes into the Philippines actually is another really good example. And you’re like, how could this be? And people were just like, well, they voted for it.

They kind of wanted the top dog and they’ve got it and everything gets realigned. And, uh, um, so humans are pretty adaptable and usually will kind of go with the flow because this is too hard to always be fighting. Uh, it’s exhausting.

It’s exhausting even, yeah, it’s completely exhausting. And, uh, so, I mean, not to be completely depressing about it, but I think, you know, in the situation where the government has its own reasons for, uh, going along with this alien invasion after a certain point, you know, most, okay. Aliens are maybe a step beyond, but I mean, in general, the government kind of lays down the law and most people go along with it.

Well, that’s, that’s absolutely true is the average person, because it’s the law, they’ll go along with it or whatever the government says they’re an authority. Therefore we go along with it. Right.

And it doesn’t take that many tastemakers to kind of, uh, yeah. I mean, even if you had sort of government sponsored tastemakers and sort of set the agenda, like it wouldn’t take all that many to convince people for all kinds of crazy things. I mean, we’re seeing some completely unbelievable realignments in the, in the U S with, you know, the Republicans essentially going along with, uh, Trump on downgrading the Russia as a threat, like, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, this would be completely treasonous.

And yet now it’s, well, who would have thought that, um, people who were white supremacists would, would, would complain that, that they were being discriminated against. Well, actually it doesn’t surprise me, but no, but I mean, listen to seriously does surprise me. Well, I mean, when I think about it, it’s like, when people are saying I, when people are not, you know, if you call it used to be like, if you call somebody a Nazi, that was one of the worst things you could say.

And now if you, if you call some people a Nazi, they’re fine with it. It’s very depressing. Maybe we should move back to something else.

Um, I mean, one of the things, one of the challenges to producing in the fringe is, is, is promoting the show. Yes. And, uh, how do you get, how do you get noticed? Um, and of course we have an additional challenge with this show and that we’re not right in the, the main fringe area.

Although hopefully the fringe is like giving some support because of this new initiative. Yeah. What’s your, do you have a plan for, for how we’re, how you’re, you’re promoting the show? Well, the podcast is a good start.

Um, we do have a Twitter page. Uh, it’s final exam TO, and we’re beginning to ramp that up. Um, we’ll be doing some postcards and, and posters though.

Again, part of the issue is not being in the core makes it a little harder to, it’s not that harder to distribute. It’s just, are you getting the right audience? We’ll probably put more posters on, on Queen and Danforth. Uh, if I can, you know, make them look nice and convince some people to put them there.

The definitely what we’re going to do, I haven’t yet, but I will, uh, talk very shortly to, um, uh, counselor Fletcher’s office and Peter Tobin’s office and kind of let them know about it and try to make sure we’re in the community newspaper. In fact, I do need to double check what their publication deadlines are. I should probably check tonight, but, uh, you know, um, those would be the main things.

Um, you know, for better or worse, we don’t have a huge number of seats. So I think we’ll, um, we don’t need to try to get 50 people in the seats every day. We are trying to get 20, 25 or 30.

That would be ideal. Um, and I don’t know. I mean, I think we will do our best to sort of create a buzz.

Like this is something new. Um, some people really do like the site specifics. They are so different.

Uh, and they’re way more intimate. Uh, and you’ll, in this case, be right there with the actors and, you know, the alien and the various people be running around. And, uh, some people really enjoy that.

Yeah. So I think that’s something we have to offer that most, uh, the more traditional pieces won’t absolutely. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, we’ll be blogging about it and, uh, uh, definitely trying to get into the newspaper and the post string and I don’t have any big plans beyond that, but I’m certainly open. Erica, you, are you, are you, uh, aside from the, the, the, the final exam to Twitter, are you, are you on Twitter or are you on the web at all? I’ve got a blog. I don’t have a, uh, I don’t have a Twitter account.

Okay. So the blog is Eric’s hangout.com. Yeah. Um, so I do post there pretty regularly.

Okay. Um, and you, you have, uh, you have a name that is also recognized. Yeah.

So do you ever have to be like, cause I think when you, you emailed me, it’s like, it’s Eric Peterson, not that one. Yeah. So this has been a bit of a running joke though.

It’s not as much of a joke. It’s saying for your separate that used to be sure. So the first couple of times they thought it was Eric Peterson, the very famous, uh, actor from, uh, from corner gas and from a number of amazing, um, Billy Bishop and a number of amazing, uh, productions.

The first time I actually managed to see him, I think was in, uh, something up in, uh, North York. And, uh, we were, I didn’t, I didn’t introduce myself or anything, but I just was amused like having the universe with the two Eric Peterson’s in the same place. But I have occasionally emailed, uh, uh, theatre companies with a suggestion or a comment and they take it much more seriously until I realized that, no, no, no, I’m not that famous.

Eric Peterson. Um, not as well known, but there’s an Eric Peterson with even closer spelling that was, uh, the lead in Shrek the musical and Broadway. Okay.

So that was even more confusion, but I think his, I don’t know. I’m assuming he’s still acting, but he’s not as, uh, active as he was. And so it’s not as much of a problem, but there’s no question.

Um, sing for your supper. They would always make a joke about, uh, not being the famous Eric Peterson. And, uh, um, one time actually Tarragon almost gave me Eric Peterson’s address because we were trying to verify, uh, who I was and if I had the right, uh, right account.

So one of these days I probably will meet him, but, uh, I don’t know. I’m not going to make a big play on that. Cause I think that would be wrong.

I don’t want to trade on anyone else’s name. No, that’s true. Well, Eric, thank you.

Thank you so much for, for coming on. It’s been a lot of fun. Absolutely.

Did you want to say anything about, uh, your thoughts of the parts? Oh, geez. Um, well, I actually feel like, because I’m playing, I’m playing, uh, Mr. Miller, who’s, uh, the teacher that’s, that is on board with, uh, the hive mind. And I find, I feel like he’s, um, I mean, I think he’s looking for a way, like the reason why he was on board is he is looking for a way to remain special because he doesn’t feel like he can do the running away thing.

I don’t, I feel like he he’s, he’s trapped, but there’s also, um, he feels like he can still be special and work within the government’s whatever. Um, yeah, he’s, so he’s, I mean, obviously as is pointed out that he’s not that special. Um, he’s certainly fallen pretty far.

He’s at a not so great school. No, he’s at a, he’s at a kind of a shitty school. I wouldn’t even go that far, but it’s not a great school.

It’s not. Okay. So he’s not a great school, but it’s also, I mean, and, and, and he’s, his students are, he basically doesn’t have control of his class, whether he ever did or whether this is a result of the aliens and all that stuff is up for debate.

But I mean, he can barely keep control of his class and it’s almost, I don’t even know how much he’s trying anymore. Um, and if it’s, it’s interesting that he’s, um, so willing to go along with this until he find figures out that maybe he’s not so special, but he’s like, Oh, I won’t be special. Well, I’m out of here.

Almost. Kinda. I think it’s a, I think it’s some, some stuff that he hadn’t really processed or thought through.

And there’s like a new alternative on the horizon, perhaps some other. Yeah, no, you’re right. I think that he hasn’t, he hasn’t really processed it.

He hasn’t thought too hard about it, which I think is kind of what most people who are in the situation that haven’t done them. Well, a lot of people have not really thought it through. Well, let’s put it this way.

If something terrible was coming to Toronto, I don’t know, SARS two or something like that. And, uh, you’d be like, well, I can stay in Toronto and take my chances or I can go to white horse or some other God awful place. I don’t know.

Toronto is pretty nice. It’s like, you know, also it’s the place, you know, it’s difficult to leave the place, you know, especially if you think, no, I can make this work for me. Right.

He’s, he’s bought, I wouldn’t say he’s fully drunk in the Kool-Aid, but he’s drunk enough of it that he’s like, yeah, okay. It’s okay. I’ll be fine.

I’ll be fine. I have to admit, I was a high school teacher for a couple of years and I wasn’t very good at it. I mean, I was, I knew the material, but I didn’t have control over the students.

Now, part of that was they had intentionally given the new teachers the worst classes, but, uh, yeah. I think that it would be really hard, like even for a really good teacher to keep control of their class under these circumstances. Like these kids don’t really care.

I mean, we’re talking about like in a couple of weeks, they’re already going to know everything. Right. Like as far as I think if, if I’m sure that the students are like, look, I don’t even need to be here because in like two weeks I know everything you do anyway.

Exactly. So what’s the point? I mean, you know, not that this would ever happen, but it, it was kind of a, it’s kind of the original impetus of the whole thing. Like, so yeah.

Why would we wouldn’t have teachers? We probably won’t have libraries. Yeah. Who knows what we’ll have if everyone knew everything.

Yeah. What would we like, who knows if we even need like jobs or what does the world become? I don’t know. Yeah.

Well, I don’t know. Tune in and find out. Thanks a lot, Eric.

Thanks. This has been a Homebody Productions production.