Caleb Yong & Vince Deiulis of Theatre Nidana’s Life Assignment
A place for everyone and everyone in their place! In order to keep the economy moving, individuals are frequently assigned different jobs, names, religions, and relationships. When a Life Commissioning Agent unexpectedly shows up one evening to re-assign a loving married couple, the couple refuses to separate regardless of punishment. The situation spins further out of control when another newly assigned couple arrives the same evening to take possession of the house and begin their lives together. Secrets, passions, and ideologies collide against a bureaucratic authority. By the end, everyone must deal with either a comfortable yet inhuman status quo or the struggle of dreaming up an alternative world from scratch.
CALEB YONG (Director)
After a long hiatus, Caleb Yong is pleased to be making theatre again. Caleb most recently co-created and performed in Suck and Blow, which later becameThe Book of Judith (Selfconscious Theatre), and assisted director Jennifer Tarver for That Time — Five Beckett Shorts (Theatre Extasis.) Caleb sits on the Board of Directors for SelfConscious Productions, and is a Professor of the Humanities at Humber College.
VINCE DEIULIS (MUHAMMAD/Producer/Media Relations)
Vince has trained with some of Canada’s brightest theatre talents including: Gil Garratt, Hume Baugh, Maja Ardal and Anna Chatterton. Recent credits include: Echoes of the War (EotW Collective), Nerve (Shining Star Theatrical Co.), Blue Remembered Hills (Good Old Neon), It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play (The LOT), Out in the Open, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (To Be Determined Theatre Co.). Vince is also a volunteer puppeteer with The Concerned Kids Charity of Toronto.
Transcript
Welcome to episode 131 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.
Again, before I get to today’s episode, I want to tell you about a little thing I’m putting together. It’s called Shakespeare Retranslated. And with Shakespeare Retranslated, I take a play by Shakespeare and run it through the internet’s most popular translation site and translate it into another language.
Then I take that version and I translate it back to English. And then, I get a group of actors to read the retranslated version. But here’s the thing.
They don’t get to see the retranslated version until right before they read it. And nobody knows what language I’ve translated it into until I announce it right beforehand. I did this last year with Romeo and Juliet and it was hilarious.
This time, the play is Macbeth and the retranslation will be read on June 24th at 6.30 at the Social Capital Theatre in Toronto. Tickets are on sale now and you can find them by going to retranslated-macbeth.brownpapertickets.com or by searching Shakespeare Retranslated Macbeth on Facebook. And this is a fundraiser for my upcoming production of my play The Commandment at the Halifax Fringe this summer, so I’d really love it if you could come out.
If you want to drop me a line, I would love to hear from you. You can find Stage Really on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at stagereallypod and you can find the website at stagereallypodcast.com. If you want to drop me a line, you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at philrickaby and my website is philrickaby.com. This week, we’re taking a short break from talking about the Toronto Fringe and instead, my guests are Caleb Yong and Vince Deiulis from Theatre Nidana’s Life Assignment, playing at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille, June 21st to 24th. Can you tell me about the show? Sure, yeah.
So we’re doing a show, it’s called Life Assignment. It’s going up at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace at the end of June. It is a show that takes place in an alternate world.
Okay. Okay, so it’s kind of an alternate world show. It’s a bit of a social satire though, ultimately.
I can talk a little bit about the world because I think that that’s an interesting part of the show. Absolutely. I guess, you know, the interesting angle for us with this play is that it’s a mixture of professional artists but then the playwright and myself, we come from the lay people.
Okay. Yeah, so we did a lot of theater when we were younger and now we’re returning to theater. Okay.
And the show actually picks up on these kind of themes, although, you know, I don’t know that anyone else would pick up on that. And what’s your role with the show? So I’m the director. You’re the director.
I’m the director. And so we’ll get into why you love theater and all that. Right.
I’m an actor. I’m an actor in the show. Yeah.
What do you guys, is there anything in particular that drew, like, you mentioned you were going to talk about the alternate universe. I’d love to hear about the alternate world. The alternate world.
Yeah. So the premise of the show is that this is a world in which every couple of years, the state, although it’s left unclear, like what power does this, goes into people’s lives and changes their identities. So everything that you, like, so your job, your name, your relationship, your religion, every aspect of your identity is shuffled up.
And so, you know, the show begins in the living room of a house and we meet a couple and they’re having this really kind of like domestic discussion about gardening and this kind of stuff. The doorbell rings and it’s the life commissioning agent who has come to tell them that they’ve been reassigned to new lives. Yeah.
And then it kind of takes off from there. Okay. Yeah.
Have you ever seen the movie Dark City? No, I have not. Okay. No.
It reminds me, also, what was that other one? There’s the Matt Damon movie, which also reminded me of Dark City, where in Dark City, every night these beings come and change everybody’s life around. Like you’ll wake up the next day and you are a different person. Interesting.
People don’t, that’s the experience in that movie, is that people don’t know that their life has been changed. They just wake up and now they are somebody else. Right.
So it’s like perpetual amnesia. Yes. Yeah.
Right. Right. Interesting.
This is very different because you’re told that it’s going to happen. That’s right. That’s right.
Which is a difficult thing to deal with. Oh, and how many years has it happened? It happens typically every three years. Okay.
Right. And so, the, what is it? The premise of the show is that this couple kind of fell out of the algorithm that finds couples. Okay.
And so they’ve been together for eight years, which in this world is never happening. Okay. It’s an extended period of time.
And to kind of make matters worse, there’s another couple that has been reassigned to their house that night. And the couple that has been reassigned, that we begin with, they don’t want to break up. No.
Right. Because there’s an issue there. There’s a reason why they want to stay.
Sure. And there’s another couple that’s coming in. And then, you know, comedy, hilarity ensues.
It’s a really interesting thought because I could see some people for whom a finite, knowing that your relationship was finite, would be an exciting thing. Like, I’m not really going to get tired of you because in three years we’re done. But other people who are like, what? I only get three years with this person? Yeah.
Which is another thought. Yeah. One of the things that we’re really trying to play with is the kind of the erotics or maybe the pornographics, you could say, of identity now in the way in which, you know, I think a lot of us spend a lot of time fantasizing about living other lives, you know, and we pursue that in all kinds of subtle ways, you know.
It’s super easy to do because everybody presents like their fake life. They’re highly instigated. It’s like, these are the things I want you to see about my amazing life.
Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly right. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I mean, it’s a great concept. That’s a great concept.
But so yeah, so that’s the show. And yeah, I’m not sure what else to say. Who do you play in the show? Who do I play, Caleb? I’m a newly, I guess, newly assigned.
Yeah, newly assigned life commissioning agent. So I come in at the tail end of the show. Just when you think things are like leveling out and making sense and I come in and start like a new shuffle because I end up giving the new life assignment to the life commissioning agent who’s been reassigning the people who are there.
Oh, yeah. So I come in. Yeah.
And the whole thing’s just stirred up even more. Yeah, there’s a bit of a kind of a false in the show. So, you know, we think things are about to get resolved.
Yeah. But then the hero of the show gets reassigned. Right.
So it’s kind of this false. And so it’s like, oh, my things are going to be resolved. And then the world interrupts it again and shuffles it.
And that introduces. That’s interesting because I think in my mind, the people who were life assignment agents, they would be not not subject to that, which is interesting. No, but everybody, everyone’s subject to that in this world.
Yeah. And so, you know, it’s a it’s just it’s a very simple premise, but it opens up all kinds of uncomfortable truths, I think, or, you know, insights into identity, how we work, how we relate to one another. You know? Yeah.
Yeah. It’s an interesting piece. Vince, what did you think when you first read this? I it’s funny because I was just brought in for a reading very early on about February of last year.
A friend of mine is in the show and she’s like, oh, we just need we just need somebody to help come in, do this reading. Do you want to just pop in? And then I went in. And then, of course, Caleb, he’s like, OK, everybody I know everybody has notes and opinions.
But Vince, since this is the first time you read it, what what are you thinking? And I like because I have I have like a film background. I went to film school, so I worked in film for a while. So I made the notes.
I was like, well, I think that visually this and this and this. But those are more production notes. It’s like, I guess the script.
But the script is it’s it’s funny because it feels like it’s going to be like a Norm Foster play. It’s like the setting is a living room. It’s a couple.
And then so it’s like it’s like that. But then layered in with all these like higher concepts, which is what I’m all about, which is what so that all those like higher concepts or what’s intriguing and then layered on something that seems like it’s the simple like like telling of a life, but it’s like a telling of a life, but a life that we’re not used to. So I find that that’s really interesting.
It’s an interesting use of the typical living room set, which, you know, we see a lot of theater. I have seen a lot of theater. I’m like, if I see another fucking exactly living room set, I’m just walking out.
And it’s it’s it’s interesting to think that this is like giving you that and then turning it on its head. It’s not a little living room drama. It’s like a complete change in what usually happens in the living room.
Yeah. And at the same time, it’s like then on the other dime, you want to go see like the high concept, like high art, like the the opposite. And then you go and then you don’t understand anything because there’s no there’s no point of relation.
Yeah. And so so that’s what I think is really clever about this show, is that you have that those high concepts, but it’s within a realm that you can still understand. Yeah.
And so it’s not like everybody comes out and we’re all in like masks and stuff and dancing and trying and trying to still seriously discuss what we’re trying to discuss. We still like we build it within a framework that people understand and then layer on top of it all these higher concepts that people will then think about afterwards. Yeah.
One of the images I’ve had for the show is that the genre twists itself. You know, we’re playing a lot with the expectation of the spectator, you know, when it opens, ideally, you know, your first thought if you’re somebody who goes to theater a lot is, oh, fuck, you know, another parlor drama. Yeah.
And then but the point is to just keep twisting it. So the moment that you think that you’re watching one form, it twists itself into kind of another form. And for me, you know, that works.
I think that’s a really interesting theme, not just like a formal technique, but it’s a theme about performance and the performance of of of our identities. You know, we assume roles. Yeah.
All throughout our lives. And every time we see one of those roles, we’re acting. Yeah.
Actors, you know, um, Vince and I were just at some, you know, I work as a college teacher, and we were just talking about, like, I’m totally underqualified for it. Yeah, I hope you can edit that part out. I don’t I don’t edit these things.
No, I think you’re perfectly qualified. That there’s a feeling of, you know, when that when you’re when you walk in front of a classroom, uh, I have always only ever played the role of teacher, you know, like, I want to, I would like to say that I’m authentic, and I’m being myself, etc, etc. But you know, when you when you walk into any context, there’s certain expectations that people have of you, or that you think that people have a view that make you play to those expectations.
And I think that, you know, that’s this idea of genre. Yeah, it’s a play twists. It’s it’s a way to point ourselves to an awareness of the plane of genre, you know, in the way that we, you know, we think we need to enact.
Yeah, it’s interesting, because, you know, I, I think, you know, I roleplayed for many years, I played Dungeons and Dragons. And one of the things that I think I’ve learned from that is how to roleplay in real life. So I feel like a lot of times that that’s what I do in my day job, I play the role of a guy who works in tech, tech support and understands how all of that works.
Which I do, but it’s like, that’s not where my natural tendency goes. And you know, I think we all take on we take on roles. The interesting thing is that when we take on one role, we’re not necessarily expected to immediately forget about the one before, which it sounds like, in this play, when you are given a new role, you’re given a new relationship, a new job, a new a new life, you are expected to just forget that the other one happened.
Is that is that right? That is right. And so I guess the, the idea of the play is that people are attracted to that, or people who want that, there’s a desire for that, okay, that, you know, it’s like, imagine, you know, I was working with my actors a couple weeks ago, and they were, it’s kind of one of the main couples, and you know, in the show, the couple doesn’t want to break up. And when they first read the show, they couldn’t understand, they’re like, well, why, like, why would we accept this? Like, why don’t we just fight back right away? And like, why don’t people take this? And I started to ask them, I said, Well, you know, imagine, just take your own lives.
And just, you know, have you never fantasized about doing something radically different? You know, like, for me, one of the things that I fantasize about, you know, I have a friend who’s a war journalist. And it’s just like, he goes off to these places, and he covers war. Yeah.
You know, and I fantasize about that. But I could never do that. Because I’m like, I’m married.
And I got these little kids that I’m concerned about. And it’s, you know, and if I were to do that, I would hurt them. Yeah.
In this play, because everybody’s being reassigned, you don’t hurt people. No. So you get so there’s a kind of like, the forgetting is, there’s something tragic about that, because you’re losing relationships.
But it also means that you are no longer ethically responsible to the relationships that you have. Yeah. Or you’re only responsible in the present.
Yes. You know, you’re not responsible, as you move from identity to identity. Yeah.
So I guess there’s a point there about, you know, like the relationship between, you know, the freedom to be somebody else. Yeah. And the freedom from your ethical obligations to others.
It’s interesting, because you can look at, there are certain things, like I had some friends, they moved into a neighborhood. They’d always lived in apartments, and then they moved, they got a house in a neighborhood. And they were, the peer pressure that existed in the neighborhood was a thing that never existed when you lived in an apartment.
In an apartment building, as long as you don’t disturb your neighbors, nobody gives a shit what you do. When you own a house, everybody gives a shit what you do. Like, your lawn isn’t cut often enough.
What do you do? Your kids, we’re gossiping about your kids. We’re all gossiping about the neighbor’s kids. Like, everybody is in each other’s business.
And it got to the point where, like, this one woman decided that her daughter was, and not that, but that her daughter was old enough to walk to school on her own. Scandal in the neighborhood, because children walking to school on their own, oh my God. And then the neighborhood enforced this behavior.
Which it sounds like, like, if you were a person who wanted to buck this system, the neighborhood would not allow it. Like, society would basically put pressure on you not to. That’s right.
That’s right. That’s right. Although, the argument of this world is, you know, you conform for the moment, but there’ll be a moment where you’ll be free from this role, and you’ll be shifted to a new role, where you’ll have to conform to that neighborhood or that situation, but you will be freed from that as well.
Yeah. I mean, every time that you’re freed, you’re immediately put into something else. So, you’re never actually free.
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah.
So, it’s interesting. Yeah. You’re never free.
And that’s, I guess, that’s one of the questions of the play is, what is freedom in this world? Yeah. And if you want to get really philosophical, the question would be, you know, are we so, you know, do we have such a deep belief in our society that freedom comes from some kind of individual choice or some kind of, you know, that the individual chooses how to act in the world? You know, that’s how we understand freedom in our society. In this society, freedom is actually the freedom to surrender to the dictates of the world, right? So, rather than, you know, pushing back against it and saying, no, I don’t believe this.
I don’t want this. The real freedom is surrendering, you know, making the choice to surrender, and then being not only free, and then what you’re really free of is you’re free from the idea that you have an individuality with an essence that needs to be expressed in a certain way, right? As if the world is saying that, you know, what you’re really a prisoner of, you’re not a prisoner of the world. You’re prisoner of the idea of a self that needs to do certain things.
Just let yourself go, man. Like, play whatever role you’re given. Yeah.
I will admit there’s a part of me that’s like, no, no, like, you know, that’s not how we are. So, I was like, myself just sort of like, inwardly, I could feel myself rebelling against that. But if I was raised in that society, then that would be a different thing.
You know, you listen. One of the things I saw, I’m an old friend of the playwright, and we’ve been talking about this play for a long time. One of the ways that I describe the show, not him, but I describe the show as a Buddhist dystopia.
You know, one of the fascinating concepts in Buddhism is the idea of the non-self, right? So, Buddhists will say that the cause of suffering is our attachments to things. The reason why you suffer, the reason why we all suffer is because we desire things, we’re attached to things, we expect the world to give us things. And so, the way to get over suffering is to let go and to not be attached, to not have desire.
And the thing that many Buddhists say we’re the most attached to is the idea of the self. You know, you walk into a room and you’re like, everyone here needs to recognize Caleb. Everyone here needs to understand who I am.
I can’t do this because that’s not me, you know? And that causes, you know, I think there’s some truth to it. You know, those kinds of expectations you have about yourself, that essentializing of yourself actually leads to a lot of pain, you know, a lot of suffering. And so, you know, we’re playing with that idea and I call it a Buddhist dystopia because that’s kind of one of the premises of the show.
You know, if you were to just totally give up on the idea of self and just surrender to conformity and let yourself be ripped today or, you know, and then somebody else another day or, whatever, I think that could actually be freedom in a strange sort of sense. Thanks. I’m curious because you said that you’re a film guy.
Yes. And your background is film. Were you always a film guy? Like, is this your first theater thing or what brings you from film to theater or vice versa? Fair.
No, I’ve always been a theater person in high school. It was funny because I didn’t want to do anything related to drama, but my mother forced me because I was a very shy child. I grew up with three older sisters.
So, I was just that annoying little brother. And so, I was just very shy except with my family. So, she’s like, oh, you should take drama so that you get out of your shell to drama.
And then everything since then is her fault. But I was very like in, you know, I grew up in a small town and everything we did was theater. There was no real like, we didn’t really understand what the movie industry was, how movies got made.
We just thought everything was made in LA and unless you moved to LA, you know, that’s the only way you’re going to be in movies. What was the small town? Timmins, Timmins, Ontario. So, yeah, so I grew up just always loving theater.
And then when it came time to go to school, I was looking at, there’s film, like you can take film acting programs, but I’d always heard that the highest acting form is the theater. So, if you want to act in film, that’s fine, but your training should still be in theater because then, you know, you’re getting the whole experience as to just like learning the techniques that go along with film acting. So, I went to theater school and then in theater school was my first opportunity to act in the student films for the film program that was at our school.
And I ended up being in, I think like six or seven, which was a lot because most of the people in my class were in one maybe. But I ended up with being in like six or seven and I started, I was like, okay, film is cool and film is fun and being on set was fun. And then that film program was only a year.
So, I took that same film program that I had acted in in theater school right after theater school and then started part of the film program is like an act or is an internship program. So, we started, we got our start in film and then through that made connections and I was like, okay, to make money, maybe I’ll work in film and then act in theater when I get the chance because everybody knows there’s not a lot of money in theater. So, I’ll get my money in film and then act in theater on the side.
And then what happened was, of course, that’s not the way it’s going to be. It’s, I just started working constantly in film production doing whatever. I was a locations PA, cleaning garbages and setting up lunch rooms to, I was an office PA.
And then I, the last job I did was a production secretary. And, but I mean, all these things eventually, I was talking, again, we were talking about this today, all these things led to this, this idea of making the art as a whole, as opposed to just seeing myself as one part of it. So, that’s the one advantage of the film program and having worked in film up until this point was knowing that there’s a whole process to making a thing, whether it’s theater, because I remember being in theater school and hating the production classes and stage management.
I was like, I just want to act. I came here to act. Why are we learning all this crap about the behind the scenes? There are people for that.
Why do I need to know what a prompt book is and what are, and I remember my stage management teacher hated me because I would just sit in the class, in the back of the class and just sigh the whole time because I didn’t think production was part of what I had to do. So then taking the film program and then working in film, I was like, nope, you definitely have to be a part of the whole to understand your piece in it. And then now, but now I’m obviously I’ve missed acting in theater that whole time.
And so I’ve started working at getting myself into more theater productions. And again, I find myself in the indie productions because that’s where I get to do more than just my part. I’m able to then take on producer type roles and help promote the show and do and use what I learned in the film program towards these independent theater productions.
It’s interesting. Your feeling in that stage management class is probably you’re not the only person who’s ever been like, we don’t need to know this. There’s people for that, which is why there’s a lot of stage managers who love what they do, but they kind of hate actors.
Yeah. I’ve definitely met them. Yeah.
And it was working in film that helped you get past that. Exactly. Yeah.
It was knowing that even though I was just like putting out garbage cans or coning off a location, it was knowing that, yeah, that seemed so mundane and minimal, but that’s how the show still got made. If everybody didn’t know where to shoot the show, the show wouldn’t get shot and then you wouldn’t know. So it’s like, even though in the moment I hated doing it, it was knowing that I was still serving the production as a whole.
It’s funny because we do insulate the actors. We do it in film too. We insulate the actors from all of that stuff.
So people who act in theater, they encounter the stage manager daily, but have you ever seen Slings and Arrows? Yes. And they keep sending the stage manager out for coffee and stuff. It’s like, they think that’s what the stage manager is there for.
And they almost never encounter the stage hand or anything unless they’re bringing something on, which is the worst. One of the things that I like about indie theater is that you do get to see more of the working parts where you don’t insulate the actors from that process in the same way that they do in a lot of bigger shows. And I mean, hopefully if you have a good team, everyone knows the pieces that need to get picked up because you don’t have a person for that.
You don’t have someone doing posters and doing that. So then somebody’s like, I’m good at graphics. Maybe I’ll do that.
And it gives people an opportunity to do other skill sets that they already have and then apply that to the production that they’re on so that they’re doing more than acting or just directing or just this or just that, which is nice. Yeah. Nice.
Caleb, I’m interested in your story as somebody who left the theater and then came back. So where did you start doing the theater? Why did you leave and what brought you back? So I guess I was like a pretty typical theater kid. Parents neglected me, realized that I could get a lot of attention if they put me into theater camps and that kind of stuff.
You know, they’re like, Mom, all these people applauded for me. That makes sense. You know, it’s like, they can do my work.
So I did a lot of theater stuff, you know, kind of pretty typical Ontario theater childhood, serious festivals, the Blight Festival, all those kinds of festival scenes, young people’s theater. And I did that pretty seriously up until my early 20s, at which point I started to do kind of, I wasn’t sure what the next move was. And I started to do a bunch of volunteer work with professional theater makers, kind of shadowing them.
And, and I don’t know, you know, I think I was kind of hard on them at the time, but I saw their struggle, you know, and I saw the amount of work that they had to do that was not the artistic creative work, you know, precisely the stuff that, you know, Vince is talking about, the putting out of the cones and the poster and the grant writing. And, you know, and it confused me, let’s just say. At the same time, I started studying philosophy in university.
And I just, I just had a moment, you know, I just had a moment. I had actually signed up to audition to go to a bunch of theater schools. And I couldn’t do it.
Something in me had shifted. From there, I became, I started to study philosophy and religion, and I went on to pursue academics. But it was always, theater was always there in the back of my mind, you know, as satisfying as academics are, is intellectually, you know, there is a kind of creativity that is lacking.
And so, you know, relative to the themes of the show, I think that’s why the play spoke to me so much. The play is actually written by a friend from high school, who used to write the plays that I used to put on, right? He himself also went another path, he became an engineer. And so, this play is a play of identity shifting, you know, the world telling you that you need to change your identity.
But there’s a kind of, there’s like a subtext, or an autobiographical subtext for us, which is that the play is also speaking to this question of, you know, do we still have that connection from when we were other people, you know, when we were young theater makers? So, yeah, that’s kind of, so yeah, so why am I drawn back to theater generally? Because theater is a unique kind of collective, creative experience, you know? I think that’s what’s so cool about it. And maybe if you’re in it, you don’t see that as much, but it’s very rare that you will work creatively, so intimately, like really intimately, with total strangers, or like relative strangers. It doesn’t happen very much.
Well, I mean, theater can be emotionally taxing, at least when you’re working on a show, because every show, you form a family. Yeah, that’s right. And that family gets very close, and everybody, there’s a lot of love in that family, usually, I mean, there’s always that, you know, there’s a lot of love in the family, and then at the end of the show, that family dissolves.
Yeah, sure. And you may never see those people again, or talk to them. Yeah.
Except when you run into them, it’s something like, oh, hey, we did a thing, yeah. It’s very difficult. And because the art form deals with human interaction.
I mean, like, that’s what the art is. The art is like, let’s interact with each other. Yeah.
And so, you know, like, you know, I’ve been in bands in this time, you know, like I played music, but music, it’s funny, because you can always kind of, I don’t want to use the word hide, but there’s always the instrument, and the technique of the instrument that mediates the relationship, you know? With theater, it’s like, you know, we’re at rehearsal today. And we’re, you know, telling people, like, I think you need to be more attracted to this person. I want you to, like, sit in your attraction for this person that you just met a couple weeks ago.
Yeah. You know, breathe into that. It’s one of those weird things that we do in theater.
It’s interesting, because theater as an art form, people are, you know, I have a friend who jokingly, because he knows it gets a rise out of me, refers to theater as a dead art form, or the bastard child of film. But because he knows it’ll get a rise out of me. But there’s nothing like sitting in a room where a bunch of actors are performing.
Because when you’re watching something on film, there’s something in between you and the actors. And when you’re watching theater, they’re right there. Yeah.
And it’s interesting, because I’ve never seen… So we see violence on film all the time. And we don’t really react to it, except maybe, ooh, look at the CGI on that. But in theater, a simple act of violence, like a slap, will never fail to get a reaction out of the audience.
And that’s because the actors are there. Sure. It also has the advantage of the fact that it’s never going to be that again.
Mm hmm. So it’s like super immediate that way, too. So yeah, you know, theater is, you know, what’s the word? It’s like the least, you know, I shouldn’t say the least, but of the art forms, you know, it’s going to have the hardest time getting on the same page with like capitalism.
Because you’re not making a product that remains, you know. And so there’s something so just like beautiful about that. You know, you can’t do it without this kind of, you know, without a love of it, you know, because there really is no point to be doing it otherwise.
Yeah. And you have to, I mean, everything you do is kind of a risk, right? Right. Because you can’t test it.
Yeah. You know, a film can be tested out the wazoo, they didn’t like this, they didn’t like that. Let’s go back.
We’ll tweak this. We’ll tweak this. That’s right.
You don’t get to do that with theater. Yes, you can have a reading of a play. But again, it’s not going to be that again.
Uh huh. Yeah, I think, you know, maybe another way to say what I was trying to say is that I think one of the reasons why I like theater so much is because it really requires a faith that something that you felt or are feeling in the experience of production is being felt by other people. You know, because you can’t, with a film, you can stop the frame and say, like, do you see what I see here? You know, let’s talk about this moment again and again and again.
Yeah. In theater, everyone is in a subjective position. They’re subjectively experiencing something.
And all you have at the end of the show is your testament to what you saw. Yeah. And I think there’s something about that that’s really frightening and fascinating and magical.
Right. Yeah. It’s a kind of religious experience.
Yeah. You know, it is. Without getting, you know, religious about it.
But there’s that certain moment of, like, I think that we all have this experience, you know, that I felt. Yeah. And when it works, it certainly is.
Like when you see a really awesome play. Yeah. And you just go with it for a while and everything is clicking.
It just sort of, like, sweeps you up and takes you along with it. Uh-huh. Yeah, definitely.
Definitely. Yeah. What is it that, so you and the playwright, and the playwright’s name is David Pallera.
You and David have been, like, you’ve been friends since high school. David used to write the plays. Yeah.
And he went and became an engineer. That’s right. And then he wrote this play.
Yeah. And when, were you always going to direct it or did he show it to you and you fought for it? Or like, how did that, how did your return to theatre as the director come about? You know what, it was, it was, there was never a question about who was going to do it. There was never a question.
We developed the show in conversation. He wrote it. It’s very much his show, but it was always developed in conversation.
So I had the first, you know, first go at it. Or, you know, I could have turned it down, I guess, but that was never really a choice for me. I loved it.
You know, I loved the premise. As soon as he told me the premise of the show, I thought it was really, really neat. So yeah.
And how did you, like, when did you know it was done? When did you know it was ready? I don’t know, was the show ever ready? At a certain point, it has to be ready enough. Because I know, I wrote a play for eight years before I was like, you know what, I think maybe the only way, I think I need to just say I’m doing this. Otherwise I can write this forever.
Yeah. I think, you know, so we started to get actors together and we just started to read it and you could start it, you know, I think the first reading we did was a couple of years ago and we knew it wasn’t ready then. But there was just something, you know, where I think by the third reading we did, it was working.
And there were moments that were still, that still needed to be developed. But there was a general feeling of, you know, there’s like a moment of excitement. We’re like, right, like, this is moving.
It fits together somehow. And I think that’s when we started to think that it’s ready. You know, although I will say when you’re not practicing theater a lot and you’re coming in from the outside a little bit, you actually kind of, you kind of don’t know when something’s ready.
It’s like, you know. Well, you wouldn’t be as precious about it, right? A, you wouldn’t be as precious about it. And B, it’s like, you know, like, I don’t know.
I remember making steak for the first time, right, on the barbecue. And it’s like, I invited all these friends over, we’re all gonna eat steak. I remember this very clearly.
It’s like this big deal for me and I put the steak on the barbecue. And then I suddenly realized, like, I don’t know when it’s ready. You know, this moment and this, you know, it’s like, geez, I don’t know.
Yeah. You know, I guess I could have just read a recipe book or something. That’s not how we barbecue.
And so there’s a way in which, you know, that’s the skill of theater practitioners. And that’s why we’re lucky that we have people like Vince and others in the show that make a lot of theater. Yeah.
So, you know, they’re much more kind of attuned to these sorts of things. Well, one of the things I’ve been doing some of the, like, marketing publicity stuff for the show is what media relations stuff for the show. And one of the things that I’ve noticed when I’ve been talking about it is that I keep saying we’re sharing this with an audience.
Like, we’re not sure if this like it could be this could be another workshop where we see the audience comes back with a bunch of questions after the show. Yeah, I didn’t get this. Why was this like this? And so it’s just but theater is that it’s sharing it with an audience.
So it’s not really in my mind. It’s not really a theater piece until you’re sharing it with an audience. You can write it to death.
But until you’re up there and sharing with an audience, good or bad, the production theater isn’t happening until it’s you and the audience. Yeah. So that’s true.
Yeah. I mean, the interesting thing is that is that anytime there’s a remount, you can rewrite it, you know, as long as you have that that kind of connection. I mean, I know I’ve heard of of published playwrights who they find there’s a production like which which which published it.
No, no, no. Yeah, I’ve updated that. Let me send you.
Let me send you the new version. Yeah, exactly. They’re like, oh, this is not what we read.
Yeah, this is great. So you can you can keep working on it as long as you can. Yeah, you can keep putting it out there.
I know any time that I’ve revisited and I’ve, you know, done some stuff that’s that’s that’s been produced at home and then toured and then produced at home. And every time you do it, you sit down and you’re like, OK, so what worked last? Exactly. Yeah.
And you have the freedom of doing that because you made it. Yeah. It’s not like you’re not like, so who do we talk to, you know, to make sure that we’re not like wrecking stuff.
But, you know, when you’re the creator, you get to have the freedom to do that, which is great. Yeah. And well, and that’s and the feedback from the audience is is what you want, really.
Their laughter, their tears, their yawns, their all of that is is what I mean, that as at least as a performer, that’s why I do it is to share that space with them. And so the more, you know, the more you can do that, the more opportunities you can get to expand the story based on your interactions with them. I think the better off the story gets.
I always find workshop workshop productions really interesting, especially when they have a talkback. Yeah. And I’ve seen successful talkbacks and unsuccessful talkback and the unsuccessful talkbacks are the ones that just go.
So what did you think? Yeah. Because when you say that to the audience, they’ll tell you how they would have done it. Of course.
That’s all you need to know. Yeah. Most of what you what you needed to know, you if you were watching the audience, you saw when they were like, yeah, looking at the ceiling or shifting or when did they go to look at the program? Yeah.
These are moments that we need to work on. Yeah. And the questions are like you need to know what your questions are.
But, you know, I’ve been at a bunch where it’s just like, what did you think? And then you end up with some somebody telling you how they would have written it. Yeah. Whatever.
Yeah. But audiences tell you what they need, you know, where they’re lost. They won’t often come out and say it.
Yeah. But they will they will tell you. Yeah.
You know, have you guys you guys have done like you guys write with a bunch of actors? Is this the first time an audience is seeing it? Or have you done like readings in front of an audience? No, this will be the first time. Yeah. Okay.
First time an audience has seen it. So we’re very excited. I mean, I’ve been sitting in this.
It’s a it’s a bit of an odd play, you know, so the premise is odd, but then the play itself gets odd, you know, strange things happen in it. And for me, it’s totally clear. Yeah.
It’s just like, yeah, of course, this guy, you know, he’s going and doing this and this and this and this. But, you know, we’ve had some people come in to sit in on the show. Some of the designers, for instance, and, you know, they kind of came in and they had read it.
But when they were listening to it, there were moments where they were confused, you know, and obviously we’ve had to kind of clean those up a little bit. But I have no idea, you know, if somebody comes in at this moment when you’re so familiar with the story, will they be able to make out what is happening? That is that’s actually, you know, I think is a common problem with making theater is because, you know, you have those moments at the beginning, and you’re like, oh, this joke is so funny, right? It’s killing everybody. And then like, two weeks in, and nobody’s laughing.
You’re like, is it actually funny? Like, do we need to change it? Is it is it is it not funny? And you just have to be like, no, remember, remember when it was funny? Remember, it was funny. It was, you know, we just have to trust. You have to trust it, that your initial reaction is the one that the audience will have.
And you’re not just not having because you’ve seen it every day for two weeks, right? Right. But it’s, you know, but it’s really hard. It’s hard to have fresh eyes.
Oh, sure. When you’re looking at something. Yeah.
And, you know, I think that that’s that is such a skill to be able to just watch something for the first time. Yeah, that you’ve already seen, or that you’ve already, you know, been immersed in for so long. That’s a really difficult one.
And I don’t actually know any directors who are really good at it. Yeah, that’s a really hard thing to do. Because, you know, you’re on the journey with the actors, you know, and everybody’s like, and I think the smart directors that I’ve worked with, when people are going, was is it still funny? They’re like, they’re the ones who are like, guys, remember, it was funny.
Yeah. Do you remember our initial reaction? It was funny. It’s gonna be funny.
Yeah. You know, you have to be able to, to trust that initial instinct and to think back over all of the things that they’ve been through. What are you, aside from whether or not people like it, what are you both excited for, in presenting it to an audience? Or worried about? Or, you know, I’m, listen, you know, I’m, I’m the most excited for it, making people think, you know, for me, theater is not just the experience of watching a play.
It’s the moment afterwards, where you’re, you know, sitting and eating with your partner or walking back to your car or whatever. And you’re somehow in a different world for a moment. Yeah.
You know, I, for me, that’s really powerful. And I think that that’s the point of this play. This play is not just to move people relative to a story, but it’s to give them just a little bit of perspective on their own life.
Yeah. You know, I don’t know, maybe that’s really pretentious of me to have knowledge about people’s lives. But, you know, but, but that’s the thing I’m the most excited about is reaching somebody.
I enjoy a show that when I leave the show, we’re talking about it, right? Like if I leave a show, and you know, there have been these shows, well, that was nice. And then we go and we never talk about it again. Because it was nice.
Yeah. Just nice. And then there are other shows where I, you see them and you’re like, I can’t get the show out of my head.
I need to keep talking about this show. This moment is whatever, I just keep talking about it. And those are plays that are, are the ones that I love watching.
Because I get to, you know, when there are people outside the theater, still talking about this show, you know that there’s something going on there. Right. And it’s rare, because usually we’re very nice.
Yeah, yeah, it’s true. It’s true. Of course.
Of course. Yeah. I mean, we’re Canadians, we’re nice.
Theater tends to be nice. Yeah. And we don’t, we don’t.
And because of that, people don’t talk about it after the show so much. But when it does, there’s like a real fire. I think with this show too, you know, because it’s an alternate world.
For me, the moment is, you know, when the audience sees themselves in it, you know, when you set up a world, that’s not the world that we’re in. The first moment, you know, the first instinct is to not identify with it. Yeah.
But the moment I’m the most excited is the moment when people are like, oh, wait a second. Well, if you set up, if you set it up as the world that we know, and then you twist it, where it’s too late, we’re invested. I don’t know what’s going on here.
But if you’re like, here’s the living, like, like, yeah, here’s a little domestic argument about gardening. And now it’s not what you thought. Yeah, that’s right.
Yeah, that’s right. Yes. What are you excited for? I was gonna, it’s along the same lines, I was gonna say, I’m most excited for to finally be able to talk to people outside of the production about the production, because, you know, you can have these exhausting conversations with Caleb about the production.
I remember that one lunch that we went to, and we’re like, can we just not talk about the production? Let’s just talk about anything else in our lives, but the production. And it’s the same with anytime you’re in a show, you have this odd talking about, I mean, it’s the same. It’s like work, right? You work, you have co workers, you always talk about work, and then you never talk about like their lives.
And so afterwards, that I’m excited for having people I know or not know, see the show, and then talk about the show. Okay, so now did you get that part? I was like, I was vaguely trying to tell you explain to you before the show. And then did you get it now? And what did you like? What did you think about this specific thing? Because even I’m kind of still confused about that.
And then they explain it to you in a way that no one on the production team had ever thought about. And you’re like, yes, okay, now that makes sense to me. Let’s go back and redo the show.
Because now I understand exactly what that point is. I love when that happens. I love when when an audience when we don’t spell out everything for the audience, and they draw their own conclusions.
And they tell you what they thought the show was about. You’re like, well, shit. Yeah, you’re right.
Yeah, I’m wrong. Yeah. Or you go with it.
And you claim it. Like that’s exactly what we were intending. That’s you.
You got it nailed it. I did a show that was a it was a play in the style of silent film. And so there’s no words except for what we show them.
And you can’t do any backstory because they never know what the backstory is. And then people would because you can’t you can’t talk about like, here’s what happened before this scene. Yeah.
So they only know what they see. And then to hear people describe what the show was about. And it was always not what we thought it was.
And we just were like, at first, we’re like, no, no, no, you got it wrong. And then after about after a couple of weeks, we’re like, no, no. Yeah.
Yeah. If that’s absolutely tell me what you saw. Yeah.
Because now it’s yours. Yeah. You know, which is kind of an exciting thing to do.
Exactly. Yeah. So the show opens on June 21st, June 21st, Thursday, 730.
Okay. That’s coming up. It’s coming up.
It’s coming up. It’s the 21st today. So it’s like, so it’s like a month away.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I hadn’t realized that. Thanks for pointing that out. I thought when you started rehearsal, you were like, guys, we have four weeks.
And I was like, oh, yeah, he is. That’s when I realized that it was that it was a month away. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Four weeks different than one month.
Yeah. Four weeks. Four weeks.
Four weeks. Sounded short. I was like, that’s it.
But then I thought about it. Yeah. It’s a month away.
It’s a month away. First today. Yeah.
And that’s at sorry, it was at the theater. That is such a little intimate space. I love it.
Like, yeah, you there’s no escaping in that space, which is kind of fun. Yeah. Yeah.
And I love the people complain about the seating. They’re like, oh, you’re not going to sit on like the bench, whatever, whatever kind of seating that is. And I was like, no, but like you’re literally on the edge of your seat the whole show, you know, because it’s such a weird seat that you’re there’s no kind of back where you go to theaters with the big cushy seats and you kind of like relax and do it like a lazy boy and not really.
But I feel like the fact that they’re they are the way they are. It makes you engage even more. You have to.
Maybe that’s just me, but that’s what I love about that. You kind of have to. I mean, there’s something there’s something to be said against the really comfortable seat.
I worked in a theater that had comfortable seats and you’d be looking out at the audience as an usher and you see the occasional. Yeah. The head forward, you like seats are too comfortable.
Yeah. Yeah. When the temperature is perfect, you know, you walk into a theater, it’s nicely air conditioned and then you walk into like a theater that has no air conditioning ever and you sweat the whole show.
You’re like, when’s the show going to be over? But at the same time, you know, I didn’t realize that you’re sweating all over everything. Oh, well, the problem is with those like if it’s too hot, I’m going to fall asleep. Oh, yeah.
Oh, it’s too hot. That’s what I’m going to be like. I’m just sort of like slowly falling asleep.
Okay. So everybody’s different. So that’s exactly right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, is there a web presence for the show? Is there Twitter? Is there? Yes. The Twitter is at T. Nidana theater. Yeah.
We didn’t talk about the theater company. Anyway, shit. I’m talking about theater company.
Nidana is the is the Twitter. We have an Instagram. I and then we also have Facebook.
You can just look up theater. We’re so connected. I mean, I’m mostly in charge of it with one of our other producers, John.
But it’s so can I kind of integrate them all. So if you find one, you’ll quickly be able to. So if you’re a Twitter guy, like go T. Nidana.
But Theater Nidana, look that look that up and you’ll be able to find us. And are you guys on the Internet yourselves? You have like the Twitters and Instagrams? Yeah, I I’m on it to to only to understand how to use it for productions. But I’m definitely so I think my stuff is just at Vince DeWitt.
It’s my first and last name. I don’t think you have any web presence at all. So I think this is my this is the show.
This podcast is my introduction. Introduction to the world of digital entertainment. I am now digitized.
Now you’re going to have to now it’s required. You’ll have to go home. It’s all up in your Twitter.
All the things. All the That’s right. This has been a lot of fun, you guys.
Thanks so much. Thank you very much. This has been a Homebody Productions production.
