Eric Benson, Chanakya Mukherjee & Kate Werneburg from Dauntless City Theatre’s Much Ado About Nothing
Dauntless City Theatre presents Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
In this fast-paced queer contemporary staging, the hijinks and heartbreak of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing come to life as you’ve never seen them before. You’ll follow the story around the park on foot, getting up close and personal with all the adventure, romance, and deception of this timeless tale.
This event is welcoming to humans and dogs of all ages, and is wheelchair-accessible. Berczy Park, Toronto. Admission is by PWYC donation.
Dauntless City Theatre produces classical theatre where you least expect it.
Transcript
Welcome to episode 139 of Stageworthy, I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast about people in Canadian theatre, featuring conversations with actors, directors, playwrights, and more. If you like the podcast, I hope that you will leave a comment or rating on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Your ratings and comments do help new people find the show. Or you know what? Even better, if you know somebody that you think will like the show, please tell them about it. Some of my favourite podcasts became my favourite because somebody told me about them.
If you want to drop me a line, you can find Stageworthy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at stageworthyPod, and you can find the website at stageworthyPodcast.com. If you want to drop me a line, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at PhilRickaby, and my website is PhilRickaby.com. My guests are Eric Benson, Chanakya Mukherjee, and Kate Werneberg from Dauntless City Theatre’s production of Much Ado About Nothing at Berksey Park in Toronto from August 3rd to 26th. So, and you know, maybe people don’t know that Dauntless Theatre usually performs outdoors in recent years at Berksey Park, which has got to be an unusual place to perform in, it being a public park. And a busy one.
Yes. Nobody wants to go and see the dog fountain, so. They certainly do.
And to their chagrin, we have to turn the dog fountain off, or else nobody can hear the actors. Well, at least, you know, they’re willing to turn it off, you know. What is the biggest challenge about, aside from the dog fountain and possibly probably dogs, what are you finding, like, what is the challenge of performing in a space like this, or directing a play in a space like this? Sure.
Well, I’ll go a bit first, although I’ll ask Kate to talk to it as well, because she’s performed with Dauntless before. Okay. I find that preparation for it is a little bit tricky, because there’s people all over the place.
Audiences will come and go, you know, dogs will come and go. And, like, say trying to set something, one of the scenes, they’ve got these kind of lovely little cafe-type tables in a certain area of the park, which is where we’re going to start, but there’s no guarantee that those tables won’t be filled with people in the park sitting, eating their lunch. So, we can try to stage the play as much as possible, but we have to leave in a certain amount of necessary flexibility, just in case things don’t work in the same way, or if the audiences aren’t standing where we expect them to be standing, or things like that.
So there’s, yeah, a certain flexibility that has to be woven in. Sure. And some of the actors, of course, have done outdoor theatre before like this, so they kind of get that and adapt very easily, whereas actors who haven’t had that experience, trying to layer that into rehearsal in a way that’s not going to throw them when they actually get there on the day, saying, uh-oh, I don’t know which way to face, you know.
Things like that, basic stuff like that. It’s also, I mean, there’s also the fact that when you’re performing outside like that, in a space that’s not built as a theatre, it can be hard on your voice, can’t it? Like, the voice doesn’t carry outside in the same way that it does inside. Okay, you’ve performed in that space before.
Was that difficult? I actually haven’t performed in Birsey Park, but the last time I was working with Dauntless, we performed in St. James Park. Yeah, for sure, sound is something you have to think about. For example, there’s a square in St. James Park, and that’s where we did the big court scene for The Winter’s Tale.
I was playing Hermione, and I knew I could bounce my voice off the hard tile, and there was the gazebo behind me, which also gave me a bit of feedback. If you’re performing on a hillside facing the street with the streetcar going by and the ambulances, kind of like, well, we’ll just be as loud as we possibly can and trust that the people who are here to see it are going to pay attention. But yeah, that’s something I’m working on in rehearsal right now, is remembering to be louder than I think I need to be at all times, just so it’s not such a huge adjustment when we get into the park.
Well, the audience also, either they’re there to see the show or they accidentally showed up. And so you never know if they’re there to see the show or they’re just there for now. Well, some people, it’s pretty clear, came to see the show.
Obviously, they’re the ones who were probably there before the show started. Your audience will sort of ebb and flow, right? Yes, yeah. And sometimes they’ll show up halfway through, and we’ll catch the latter part or disappear for a part, and then be back first thing next day.
And they’ll grab a flyer and say, what time are your other shows? And they’ll make sure that in the next couple of days they’re there and they see it from the beginning. Nice, nice. Yeah, it’s a nice way for people to randomly experience theatre and say, what’s going on? Oh, this is really interesting.
It’s nice that we can be a part of this. And it’s interesting when it happens in a space that you don’t normally expect to see theatre. One of the things that Dauntless has been doing in recent years is playing with gender a lot more.
For example, Kate, you’re playing Benedict. I am. And you’re playing Beatrice.
And I would imagine that sort of puts things on, did you ever think you would be playing Benedict or Beatrice? No, we’ve had this discussion. It was quite a surprise when the role was offered. Did they make a spelling mistake? Was this email not supposed to be addressed to me? No, I love Beatrice.
I love the character. But I did not think that I would be up for consideration for that particular role. But I think that’s what’s exciting about what Dauntless is doing.
That offering these wonderful characters. And every bit of Shakespeare is fascinating. Even the quote-unquote bit parts have their moments on stage.
And then to open it up in an egalitarian process. Let’s tell a story so that actors who have faculties to assume other people’s point of view still have an opportunity to do characters, roles that they wouldn’t necessarily be seen in. That’s what’s politically, I guess not just politically, but more in a life sort of essence.
It opens up people to see themselves in different ways. One of the interesting questions. Years ago, I remember seeing a production of Richard III, which was performed by all women.
But it seemed like no decision had been made as to what gender. Some women seemed to be playing as though everybody was a woman. And some people were playing that everybody was a man.
It was kind of confusing because it felt like no decision had been made. When you’re playing Benedick or Beatrice, are you playing as a man or as a woman? And how does that affect the language that’s used in the play? I think that’s a great question. I’m definitely playing Benedick as a woman.
And Eric has gone through and made certain adjustments. I think maybe on a deeper level, what changes about the language is how it’s heard. For example, when Benedick says, no, the world must be peopled.
I’ve heard some men deliver that line in a way that almost made me cringe. You’re like, oh my God, what’s he going to do to her? That’s kind of aggressive. But I hope that when I say it, you hear it in a different way.
It’s something expanding in Benedick as opposed to maybe something more aggressive. I think that’s an interesting way the language changes. What do you think? I agree.
That’s the fascinating bit about, again, anyone playing these roles. Because Beatrice says some very mean things to Benedick. Which up until, just being an audience, was funny.
This woman is just standing up to kind of a dickish person. And owning the space and really giving him a tough fight. So much so that he almost always tends to limp away from these fights.
But when the thing is flipped and now I have to say those words to a lady, I inwardly cringe. I’m making jokes about this person’s eating habit or their financial situation. That’s one of my fears.
How can Beatrice still do that but not come across as a dick? What are you figuring out so far? How do you do that without being a dick? I don’t know. That’s part of rehearsing. That’s part of rehearsing.
And part of it is, again, the freedom of being a dick. Beatrice sort of rises up to occasions. He is not just, in our production, he is not just a dick.
But even dicks, they can afford to be loved and be accepted for who they are. Sometimes, you know, your wit is a bit too much and you’re just going at it. What Benedict does in this particular context, it seems like, okay, you have to be the smart one.
I’ll let you be that. And I can be the more embracing one in this particular relationship. That’s one of the things this particular gender flip has done for me, is to realize how perhaps Benedict is not necessarily less smart, but is more embracing of the situation of, okay, I’ll let you be.
What I always sort of found interesting about the couple, the Beatrice and Benedict characters, is that traditional, like, Benedict is not a nice guy. And so when Beatrice is usually mean to him in the traditional setting, you feel like he’s got it coming. Like, usually when he gives and she gives even harder, you’re like, that’s right, he’s got that coming.
I’ve always felt that way watching it. But how do you balance that? Because we’re not used to seeing, and it’s very much like what you were saying, we’re not used to seeing a man go after a woman in that way. So how do you balance that? Do you see the whole, like, Benedict often has it coming? I think it goes back to maybe what’s been said before about the basis of why we’re choosing to do the play this way.
Which is humanity. Women can be aggressive and rude and mean and inappropriate and get called on that. That’s something that can happen.
And I’m really enjoying in this process how much we’ve been able to explore these roles, maybe even archetypes that these two people inhabit, and rethink a little bit about what kind of a gender box that is. So I really hope that I am offensive in some moments, right? I don’t think any of us here have an interest in playing into those stereotypes, just on different sides of the argument. It’s about the essential humanity of who these people are and how they relate to each other.
Interesting. These are not the only roles that are gender-flipped in this show. We have 13 characters, nobody’s doubled.
And three of them are being played by the genders they were written for. Which was partly deliberate. Partly by design, partly by accident.
When the casting call went out, we gender-neutralized the entire thing and included a note saying we are not interested in necessarily specific stories about gender. There’s a few that I was really gravitating towards. I really wanted Claudio and Hero, the kind of main romantic couple to both be men, for specific reasons.
But yeah, we included a note saying, look, whatever characters you’re interested in, whatever genders they are, whatever you’ve always thought you might play but never would, this is an opportunity to do that. Whatever you want to do, let us know. And so we had a lot of women reading for men’s parts and men reading for women’s parts.
It was across the board. It was really, really lovely. What were you hoping for? Was there any particular hope that you had in mind when you were putting this together? And was that realized? In which way? In terms of casting and throwing it open to anybody.
Was there anything in particular you were hoping for? Aside from the main romantic couple being men. No, I don’t think so. I think that was really it.
I also wanted Leonardo and Inogen. We’ve also reintroduced Leonardo’s wife, who really appears only in stage directions. And we’ve combined her with a couple of other roles so that she’s an entirely fleshed out character.
I wanted the two of them to be a regular heterosexual couple, as you would expect. And that was it. Aside from that, everything else was just wide open.
How much adjusting to the language do you have to do for this? By your reaction, by your physical reaction, it seems like that’s a lot that you have to do. Yeah. I mean, just pronoun changes.
It took hours and hours. And we’re still finding some of them as we’re going through the rehearsal. It’s like, but wait, my lord.
Nope, nope, my lady. Oh, that doesn’t scan. Okay, what do we? My liege, my liege will do.
So yeah, there’s quite a lot. There’s quite a lot that had to change. And in fact, in our read-through, I made a point of telling all of the assembled actors, I said, if you’re unhappy with any of the pronouns, feel free to tell me.
We will change them back. We will change them to whatever you’re comfortable with. And in fact, one of the characters, the actor and I both kind of brained at the same time, was like, I think this character needs gender-neutral pronouns.
And the actor was like, yes, I was thinking the exact same thing. But those were the only pronouns that we then changed afterwards, was to neutralize one of the characters. In addition to changing the pronouns, are there other adjustments that have to be made to the text at all? Oh, definitely.
Especially with Much Ado, because so much of the original text is about a war between genders, about the difference between men and women. Sorry, I should say specifically men and women as opposed to genders. And we tried to, I mean, of course, by altering it, some of those politics have changed and some of that we’ve embraced deliberately.
But at the same time, we’ve tried to strip out a lot of the other politics, to try to get really, really into the emotional heart of the story and of the people that are involved, the characters that are involved. So that was another challenge in kind of the opposite direction. Say, okay, what do we eliminate? Like, what do we take out of this to try to make this as open a play as possible, as open a script as possible? Yeah, I’m trying to think of a particular example.
Nothing’s coming to mind. That’s okay. One of the things that I like to do on this show is to veer off from the show at hand and talk a little bit more generally about theatre.
And one of the things I love to hear about is everybody’s theatre origin story. And what brings you to theatre and what is it that drove you to this? One way of putting it. So whoever wants to start with their theatre origin story, please jump in.
I don’t know if it’s an origin story, but I remember the moment I decided to become an actor. I was 12. And both sets of my grandparents lived in the Niagara Peninsula.
And my maternal grandparents live right in the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. And after I was confirmed, because the place I grew up in, I grew up Roman Catholic, here we go. I was confirmed at 12.
I went back to Niagara with my grandmother just for the first time away from your whole family, which is incredibly glamorous and amazing. And she was thinking of what she was going to do with me all week. And she thought, oh, let’s go see the production of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan.
It was sold out, so we couldn’t go. She said, oh, well, I got some tickets to Major Barbara. It’ll be so dense and wordy.
Oh, difficult. But we went, and Kelly Fox was Major Barbara. And I was enamoured.
I thought, yes, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And so I worked towards that goal from that moment on. And I saw Kelly in a bar a couple of years ago and told her the story of having seen her on stage.
And I said, here we are. And she looked at me and said, here we are. LAUGHTER It’s interesting that for you it was Shaw.
Yeah. Which, to be honest, I’ve never really been in love with Shaw. Fair.
When I was in theatre school and I went to the Shaw Festival three years in a row, I fell asleep. This was before they changed the chairs, but they used to have these really, really comfortable seats, high-backed and things. And apparently those made me fall asleep.
And so I never really fell in love with Shaw. But apparently at 12 years old there was something there that grabbed you. Do you know what it was that grabbed you? Was it Kelly? Was it something else? I clearly remember her.
And, I mean, that character is a high idealist who is trying to make a very difficult decision within a religious context. And I think I identified a great deal with that. And so where did you go from there, having decided that this was what you were going to do? What was the next step? I started auditioning for all the community theatre I could.
And it took me two years to get a part in my first part on stage. I was 14. I was Bette in Oliver.
I was the teenage prostitute in Oprah. Yeah. It sometimes shocks me that we’re still doing that play.
But, you know, I understand. I understand. Did you go to theatre school? What was your trajectory? And when did you know that it was a thing that you could do for a living? Or was it when you saw Kelly that you knew that it was a thing that you could do? When I saw Major Barbara I was like, yep, that’s what we’re going to do.
I was lucky enough to go to Arts High School in Ottawa. Canterbury High School. And then I went to Ryerson here in Toronto.
I’ve encountered so many people who’ve gone to Canterbury. I’ve worked with a number of them. In fact, I think about 75% of Keystone Theatre that I’ve worked with several times are Canterbury people.
So it’s interesting how that school has output so many people. Once you finished theatre school, what was your biggest surprise in the theatre world? My biggest surprise? Well, I guess this might sound odd, but to get cast in parts you were suitable for. I spent a lot of time playing old women and playing the mature characters because I have a January birthday and I’m tall.
But to get out there and be like, right, I can play my age. I have a broad range. That was a delightful surprise.
I remember there’s lots of people, and I knew a few of them, I was one, that in theatre school you get cast as the older person. And then when you’re out in the real world you’re like, oh, yes, no, I’m me. There are a few people who have been told, you might not work for the first 20 years, but once you grow into your face, which is like a dagger to your heart, it’s like, oh, okay.
To be fair, absolutely. Oh, absolutely, it’s true, but it’s not what you want to hear at 23 when you graduate. What was your theatre origin story? It’s a part two kind of a story.
The first time I was doing a drama class, like an acting class, but that was just an elective at my university. I was sad. Nothing else was working.
I wasn’t a theatre student at that point. I just had that particular class that I would go to, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but didn’t know what to make of it. And then I saw a production of King Lear.
It was like a university production. And my professor had directed it, and he was like, yeah, go check it out. And I remember it was Edmund’s first speech, Thou Nature of My Goddess, and he spoke to the audience, and I was mesmerized, and I wanted him to win.
I hadn’t read King Lear at that point. I hadn’t read any of Shakespeare at that point. I knew just the way it was structured.
Like, you’re going to die. But I so hope you don’t. I so, so hope you win this.
And he’s doing terrible stuff, but just that speech made me come on board with him. And there are other reasons why it resonated with him as a brown person, as an immigrant. There were other aspects of the bastard that I could resonate with.
But more importantly, that I could be on board of a villain. That fascinated me. That amount of empathy is something that I wanted to affect and infect people with.
That made me grow as a person, both realizing what I hungered for, but also the dangers of that hunger. That was the first time I was like, yeah, I’d like to be an actor. But the moment I knew I had to be an actor was in class.
We were running the scene over and over again. It was supposed to be a monologue, and my character was supposed to be alone on stage. But he’s talking about the love of his life.
And again, my coach just threw a girl in front of me. And as I was describing this person that I loved, and I was directing right at her, she started blushing. And just to see that visceral reaction in the other person, I’m like, yep, this is what I’m going to do.
And that’s my, I guess, origin story. And then I finished whatever I was pursuing at that point, and I signed up for another three years of university. Can I ask what your major was before that? I have three majors.
Okay. Well. Right.
At that point, I was finishing a major in economics and communication studies, and then tagged on to that majors, well, proper majors in drama. Hmm. So economics wasn’t for you? It was pretty easy.
Had you been exposed to theatre at all before that? No. No, that was also my first live show. Wow.
The way my mom says it, like, I always needed to be an actor. Like, how did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How did you? And why didn’t you just encourage me to go do stuff then? And like, no, the way you looked at movies, but I never actively pursued anything.
Maybe like a high school thing, but just for fun that I did with classmates, but never actively did anything theatrical or was trained for it up until that point. And, yeah, it was just accidentally stumbling onto something that, like, I had an elective. What do I do? Well, there’s this drama course.
I’ll just sign up for this. Did your family have any difficulty with you wanting to become an actor? Well, clearly my mother knew. Now, is that something she says now? And how did she react when you first told her you were going to do it? Okay, her reaction, and another, like, dear friend of mine, their reaction, like, yep.
I think, how do you know before I knew? But, and in fact, that’s why my mom was like, yeah, I was insisting on you to get some kind of, like, education you can fall back on if this doesn’t work out for you. But my mom was absolutely okay with it as long as I was happy doing it. My dad was okay with it.
That sounds a little, that sounds a little, I just have a tendency of going high-pitched. Was he eventually okay with it? No, I didn’t receive any kind of resistance from him. Yeah, let’s just put it at that.
Okay, okay. Oh, an origin story. Yes.
Well, believe it or not, I knew that I was going to work in theatre when I was five because I was taken to my elementary school to see my sister, who’s four and a half years older than I am, in the Mikado. I mean, she was 10, right? Maybe I was six and she was 11, but I mean, it doesn’t change anything. And I kind of idolized my sister.
Kind of. I idolized my sister. And I started doing this thing on stage.
And my sister’s actually a very talented actor. And I was like, I, that looks, I want to do that. And that was that.
I never, I never backed away from that. And I grew up in a small city in northern Saskatchewan where there is no professional theatre. So it was a little bit tricky.
But I also did a bunch of stuff in high school and some community theatre and things like that and just kind of took everything that I could do and ran with it. What is it that, how did you know that it was a thing that could be a career? And not just something that people did in the evenings after school or after work? I mean, I think I just knew that there were professional actors. I mean, there was film.
I knew that professional theatre existed. So I knew that that was a career choice. And that was just always kind of what I had planned.
I had a stint where I was going to work in animal biology, I guess. But I think I always had in the back of my head, it’s like, no, acting is a real profession. That’s what I’ll do.
And then much later, of course, I got into directing. And where did you, what was your, like, where did you go from the small town in Saskatchewan? Did you go to theatre school? Did you? Yes, more or less. I went to the National Theatre School in Montreal for acting.
And then left after a few months. Is that now, because it’s a conservatory and because I know the nature of conservatories, was that a voluntary leaving or was that a… Oh, yeah. It was just very clearly at that time not a good fit.
Okay. It was the kind of program that really requires you body and soul. And at the time, that wasn’t something that I could dedicate on that level.
And so, in fact, I was taken into the artistic director’s office and he said, you know, the faculty feels that this isn’t working out. And so, you know, we’ll give you until Christmas, but if you don’t turn around, we’re not going to keep you here. And I responded with, can I leave now? So, yeah, it was just, it was very obvious that that was not the right time for me to pursue that sort of thing.
Did you do any other theatre school after that or were you down with it? No, I mean, because the problem was, was that I then proceeded to work. You know, like… That’s always the difficulty with continuing education. Yeah.
It’s the working part. Yeah. Well, and so I just did a lot of theatre.
And then when I went back to university to study other things… No one wants to say what they were studying that wasn’t theatre. Well, it’s a little obscure. To study the history and philosophy of science and technology and German language literature and drama.
All right, that is obscure. Yeah, it is. And, yeah, and people at the school that I was at, after first year, they said, oh, we assume that you’re going to be studying theatre at the attached university.
And I was like, no, I’m not. I don’t know what I would do. You know, like I couldn’t imagine going through, say, the first year program of theatre when I’ve kind of been working in it for a number of years.
It was like, I’m not going to play Zabzok for six months. Like, that’s useless. What do I mean? I could teach that course.
I couldn’t, actually, because I don’t play Zabzok, so I wouldn’t know what to do. But you know what I mean. I understand, yeah.
Yeah, so then I did, like, I just worked. I joined an independent company in Halifax, was whom I worked for like six or seven years. And then when I started to get into directing, I got to do the mentorship program at Stratford for directing.
So that’s, I guess, my training is a lot of mentorship and a lot of just kind of working in the field. I think we don’t have enough mentorship going on. Mentorship is so important.
It’s such a valuable thing. Because theatre school is one thing, but there are problems with how we approach that, this whole idea of having to break down and build you back up. Because a lot of times we break you down, and then bye-bye.
But mentorship, to be taught by somebody who’s been there, and to have sort of a peer in that way. And to find the right fit for them. Yes.
When that connection works, and that’s what most mentorship, I think, is or strives to be, is to find a person who can work with you in such a way that the connection is strong. And that they can build you up in the right ways. And that you can ask the right questions and things like that.
It’s so valuable. Because I remember being in theatre school and being terrified to be wrong. Like make the wrong choice in a scene, or ask the wrong question.
Theatre school at the… I went to George Brown Theatre School in the 90s, and it was like the whole feeling of fear. Like, if I do the wrong thing, they will kick me out. And you can’t really be creative when you’re afraid.
No, no, no. No, it needs to be safe. As they say, fear is the mind killer.
Yes, exactly that, exactly that. And that’s something, in fact, if I may, that’s something that I’ve said a few times in rehearsal, is be wrong in the scene. We’re working through the scene, please make wrong choices.
Because they will inform you. You will learn from them. And it gives you the freedom to try things you might not otherwise try.
And if you go for something that you think is wrong and it’s right, I mean, hello. Yeah. That kind of experimentation is where creativity lies.
And if we don’t get a chance to do it because we’re afraid to be wrong, then we’re not actually creative. Definitely. And sometimes you are wrong.
Like, you went through the process without, unfortunately, being pointed out that you had, that was a choice that wasn’t going to work. And then, lo and behold, you actually put it in front of an audience, it doesn’t work. And at that point, as an actor, you have to have the bravery to sort of own up to it.
Yeah. Because you’re not going to be wrong if you don’t try anything new. If it’s been established, people like it, then that’s quote, unquote, right.
But if you’re trying something new, there is a possibility, and that’s the fun of it, that this could be wrong, guys. Sure. But then the payoff is the new discovery.
Sure. And what if, maybe it’s not the way that everybody has accepted that the role should be, but what if? Yeah. What if it works? And again, you never really know until the audience sees it.
Yeah. So, yeah. What, when did you guys each, I mean, obviously, your exposure to King Lear was, you know, that was like formative for you, but when did you guys start, you were Shaw, when did you start, when did you, what was your first Shakespeare? What was your first exposure to Shakespeare? I, at theatre school, our Shakespeare unit was with Ian Watson, who does some work at the Stratford Festival, and he cast me.
So we were all, you know, we were doing exercises for a couple of weeks, and I was sitting in the hallway, eating something out of a tub, and he came out of the door and said, if you had your druthers, would you rather be a man or a woman? And I thought, take your chance. I was like, a man, please? He said, okay. We went back in.
Later that week, the cast list goes up, and he’d given me like the choice bit of King Lear, the middle from the first mad, the storm scene to the last mad scene. So that was my first foot into Shakespeare, was being 20 and doing King Lear. And it was incredible.
I fell in love. And that experience has stayed with me always. We were rehearsing the bit where Lear suddenly begins to make these realizations that he has run his kingdom all wrong, and that has made some very bad decisions about how he relates to his people.
And Ian said to me, all right, okay, now this bit, there is no acting required. You just think about all the people who are sleeping outside Tim Hortons on Yonge Street on the subway grate, and what did you do about that today? And that hit me in the middle. And I never acted that part.
I always just literally did what he said. And I’ve carried that my whole life from that moment forward. I work, one of my joe jobs is at Church of the Holy Trinity, which is the seat of the Toronto Homeless Memorial, which happens once a month.
And this idea had been ruminating in my head. I was thinking, I can bring my theatre skills to bear for more awareness around this event. There was a huge crisis in the winter.
The shelters were at maximum capacity, and people were at risk of dying outside. I was like, let’s do King Lear in the depth of winter outside, because the memorial always takes place outside. And so we set it up.
Walter Borden came and basically did that snippet of Lear. Peyton LeBar and Michael Bennett-LeRoux came in for Kent and Fool. Because I also do some of the press outreach at Holy Trinity.
We had a phalanx of press. I opened the door, and I was like, wow, there’s like 25 cameras all set up on the square. Okay, here we go.
That’s the point. So I was able to bring that kind of full circle. Nice.
Now, that was your first time acting Shakespeare. What was the first Shakespeare that you saw? Come back to me, I don’t know. Really? Okay.
Oh, no. I just said this to Janneke in rehearsal. The 1993 Much Ado About Nothing, the film.
Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. Yeah, I remember that clearly. With Keanu Reeves.
The thing about that particular production is I can remember sitting in a theatre when that came out, watching that film, and when he said, I am of few words, somebody said, thank God. And the entire place erupted. And I don’t think we paid attention to the rest of the movie so much.
But anyway. What was your first… Obviously, it was Lear. What was your first acting of Shakespeare? Part of my training was linked later work.
So we had a lot of Shakespeare, and then chunks from this and that. But a proper performance of Shakespeare, I got to play Pompey, or Pompey, for Measure for Measure, which was a role I wasn’t expecting. Because I took myself too seriously.
I still take myself too seriously sometimes. I was really gunning for Angelo. And then my director, who was auditioning for… I forget the constable’s name in that play.
Just to help him out, she had me read the part of Pompey. And she was like, yeah, just read it. For him to have a part and read off of it.
And just from that, you’re like, you know, would you like to do this role? I was like, I’ll say yes to anything. Because I love acting. But that was also a wonderful sort of thing to go at.
Because all of Shakespeare’s clowns have the most difficult job of making sense of the language. Because other people can relate to things, but the clowns have very specific references of what had happened or was happening in the society at that point. And Pompey has a lot of stuff and almost every other word is an innuendo and can work in a completely different direction depending on how you played it.
And my mind was in scrambles by the end of it. And I’m like, I guess I have to sell this joke. And there was a lot of gesticulating just so that I knew that the audience knew what I was thinking.
That is one of those challenges of Shakespeare’s clowns because they are, you know, the audience at that time was like, I love language. All of the wordplay. And we’re not that quite so much anymore.
And there were specific references. There’s Pompey talks about oysters, which was supposed to be a thing about a remedy for venereal diseases. And this constable’s wife walks into a whorehouse for oysters.
But oysters also have other connotations. And he’s always straddling that line when he’s giving a statement to the governor about what he had done to his wife. Like, she came in for oysters.
And this guy was having oysters. And I was like, maybe you guys want to have oysters together. But that specific reference that the oyster bit was a remedy that she may have good reasons to walk into a whorehouse for made sense to the public back then.
Right. And so it’s very specific. And how do you sell that to the audience? Yes.
It’s the same thing with the clown in our show. Dogberry and Burgess. Dogberry has a lot of malapropisms.
Although Andrea Lyons, who plays Dogberry, insisted that since the name malapropism comes from something that’s a couple hundred years later, they should, in fact, be called dogberryisms. She is absolutely correct. She is absolutely correct.
And that’s where the richness of the language comes in. Because what she actually means, and she’s still using very obscure words, is lost if you don’t appreciate language or if that’s not something that your joy lies in. And because Dogberry is sincere, it could still be just read as being sincere.
And you’re like, why is this supposed to be funny? It can be lost. Yeah. It was certainly lost, I found, in the 1993 film.
Because Michael Keaton was just doing Beetlejuice. Yeah, it was very strange. It was a very strange choice.
But do you want to touch on that? Yes, please. Because, you know, I have told a lie. Oh, oh.
It wasn’t my first full-length Shakespeare, but my mom will be mad if I don’t say this. Which is, my mom has two degrees in English and decided to stay home with, I’m her first child after I was born, and she was done with reading me children’s literature. This is facile.
She was done. And so she decided to teach me poetry instead for her own mental sanity and for my edification. So she taught me a few of Puck’s little speeches and Tennyson and that kind of thing.
But yeah, so credit to mom there. Yes, indeed. Indeed.
Your Shakespeare exposure. I really don’t remember at all. And I know that’s terrible.
That’s terrible. What I can tell you is, you know, in high school and such, the teachers I had teach in English, teaching us Shakespeare, were buffoons. And it was just a terrible experience.
And so I kind of poo-pooed Shakespeare. And in a little bit of that, I guess, rebellious way, I thought, oh, no, I mean, it’s just people are making a big fuss about, like, whatever, I don’t really care. It’s, like, archaic.
No, no, no, no, no. And then I had to do my first classical monologue for an audition. I think, actually, for theatre school.
And I’m learning the thing. I’m like, this is really good. This is, like, there’s a lot of stuff in this very short piece of text.
This is really interesting. And then I flipped it. I was like, great.
Okay, this is good stuff. This is good stuff. I like this.
It’s interesting because, I mean, it’s one of those, like, for a long time, I’ve been of the mind that we shouldn’t be teaching Shakespeare in school the way that we do. Shouldn’t be teaching it like literature because most of the teachers who are teaching it don’t… It’s theatre. It’s not… It’s meant to be spoken out loud.
Yes, yes. Like, you miss a lot of the stuff if you can’t hear the words. Yes.
And also, if you just have your students read it who don’t know what the words mean, then nobody gets anything out of it. And I think that we, like, we do teach it wrong. And that’s why a lot of people leave theatre school or leave high school and they’re like, I hate Shakespeare.
And it’s just because they were taught it poorly. Much like you were, much like I was. I had a teacher who insisted that Shakespeare’s language was perfect and Shakespeare’s plays were perfect.
There were no errors. There were no contradictions. There was nothing wrong with Shakespeare at all.
Which quarto was she referring to? I don’t… Yeah, well, this is the thing, right? This is the thing. And, of course, I was too young and stupid to question. And, of course, the high school teachers don’t particularly enjoy when they’re questioned.
So it’s probably best that I didn’t. But I’m glad that you survived that exposure to Shakespeare. In terms of Much Ado About Nothing, and we’ve talked about the gender flipping and the language and things like that.
And we’ve also talked about the challenges in the performance space. So there’s a lot of challenges we talked about. What are the joys of it for all of you? What are your favourite things so far? I love the accessibility of it.
I like that people can come from wherever and enjoy themselves. You know, to go back to the homelessness issue, we’re in a crisis in the moment in the city. And some people, about 500 people a night, are sleeping outside.
And some of them are sleeping in city parks. And I like that we’re performing an art form that is accessible to people who may have no other entertainment, or who are limited to a cell phone. So I like that it’s a blended crowd, it’s an accessible crowd.
And then all the joys of that, the dogs running through the scenes, the children eating yogurt. What about people who are like, obviously because it’s a park, there are people who didn’t come to see a play, and maybe don’t care that there’s a play. And so you have to deal with children eating yogurt, playing with whatever.
So there’s non-audience to contend with as well. Yeah, my experience is, because I was a performer in Dauntless’ show last year, and did Front of House for both Winter’s Tale and Twelfth Night, and almost hands down, everybody was totally respectful of it. If there was a play going on, and they weren’t interested in it, that’s okay, they sat down.
They stayed out of the actor’s way. They appreciated the fact that other people wanted to watch this. Oh, that’s good.
Yeah, it was very, very rare that people would walk through a scene, or would raise a fuss of any sort. Although I have an experience, this one time I was doing a production of Tempest, and again, because it’s in the park, the stage is open, a dog literally runs onto the stage, quote-unquote stage, in the middle of the scene, runs around and just walks away, and then how do you survive from that? Well, that is the question. You cannot compete with a dog.
No, the most authentic thing on that stage. Shakespeare and the Ruff, who also is an outdoor Shakespeare group who performs in Withrow, I saw Midsummer that they did, and I was talking about it actually with one of their people today, and the night that I was there, I think it was Lysander, had, in one of the scenes, was going to be starting a fight with somebody, and so he went off, because he’s supposed to leave the stage, to prep for the fight, and instead he just went back a fair ways from the playing area, and you could see him in the background jogging in place and doing push-ups, and this giant dog comes bounding up and jumps on him, and he’s wrestling him off, and he’s like, no, no, I’m doing stuff, dog’s like, great fun, and it turns out that the dog is a regular in the park, so when they were rehearsing in that park, I think, like, AJ said that, oh yeah, the dog’s name is, I forget, Shelby or Stan. Sergeant, I think.
Sergeant, yes. And so the dog had actually hung out sometimes in rehearsals, so for him this was a friend. Yes.
The dog has no idea there’s a play going on. Exactly. I remember nothing that happened in that scene.
Of course not. Of course not. The dog was being honest.
What are the other joys for you guys? You answer first. That the audience has the freedom to walk away. Because that’s the other awesome thing.
Pardon me. I mean, theatre is fun because we have captive audience. We’ve got you now, you’ve paid your money, now you’re stuck with us for the rest of the bit.
But here you’ve waltzed in, you saw something, you connected with, and you stay for as long as you feel that connection. And then you walk to whatever is more important for you. And it’ll be wonderful and of course there’ll be people who are there to see the show.
And then the few people who sort of discover it. But to get that idea, one of the other things that I get to do this summer is do a little bit of Shakespeare, guerrilla performances of it in Farmer’s Market. It’s always fun as someone’s buying blueberries or just walking away with a stroller, they hear some beautiful language coming at them, and they sort of are there present with you till it’s done.
And then move on to something else. Even if they haven’t captured entirely their performance, you have done a little bit of rippling in their life. Now that’s going to affect the rest of their day and through them other people.
So yeah, the freedom of coming in and going out I find is joyful. And challenging. It’s always bad to see someone just walk away like, no, love me.
But then in a way that’s your responsibility now. As they come, you have to hold them. Yeah.
I also find there’s a, we have a great honour to tell these stories in the heart of the city, literally in the public square. And because of the way that Dauntless casts its shows and the mentality of the people who create them, we have the chance to tell stories differently that are highly, I think, relatable and relevant to the world that we’re living in. So I’m really excited in this show to get to be a soldier, a brash, opinionated, loud woman who’s going to meet an intelligent, sensitive man who’s never going to let her get away with being too rude.
And that we get to, we get to be that representation. We get to say to everyone who comes, this is a possibility. Yeah.
Imagine this. I guess, I guess if we’re talking specifically about being in a park, in some ways I think it’s a bit magical, you know, that, because a lot of storytelling in a lot of theatre is suspension of disbelief. Right? And in a park, in a public place that you maybe see all the time, to be able to walk in, it’s not like the lights don’t all go out and you prep yourself and then you’re focusing on this particular thing.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I love working in real theatres as well. But, you know, like to have somebody just kind of stroll in and be like, oh, what’s… And their world changes for a little while.
You know? And it’s a little bit of magic. It’s a little bit of constructed reality for them in this little pocket of, pocket of something different in a space that they maybe know well, you know, and that they can follow around, that they can, they can indulge in, they can consume, as it were. Yeah.
And in a way, if they go to that park regularly, that park will never quite be the same because they saw something they never saw before. Yeah, they’ll sit down beside the dog, the St. Bernard at the fountain and be like, oh, right, this is where Claudio wept. Yes.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that’s as good a place as any, but thank you guys so much for talking to me today. Thank you very much.
My pleasure. This has been a Homebody Productions production.
