Alexander Thomas

Married to a spouse who works for the foreign service, American born Alexander, has lived in London, Berlin and currently in Toronto. He made his Toronto stage debut in HANGMAN at Storefront Theatre. Last summer he performed at the Toronto Fringe Festival in LETTERS TO ANNEBELLE as well as the Summer Works Festival in THE NAILS and was most recently seen in the world premiere of FOR BOTH RESTING AND BREEDING for Talk Is Free Theatre in Barrie. And A GIRL LIVES ALONE another Summer Works project.

His solo play, THROW PITCHFORK, premiered off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop and ran regionally at the Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca, NY, and won a Special Honors Award at the Thespis International Monodrama Festival in Kiel, Germany.

He has worked often at the Kitchen Theatre Company appearing in OPUS, BROKE-OLOGY, AFTER ASHLEY, THE WHIPPING MAN and SUNSET BABY.

His international stage credits include ON THE WATERFRONT directed by Steven Berkoff, which played London`s West End, the Edinburgh Festival and the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

He played the role of Ross in the Actors Repertory Theatre Luxembourg’s inaugural production of Edward Albee s, THE GOAT or WHO IS SLYVIA? in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg.

His play SCHWARZ GEMACHT* was produced in spring of 2014 at the English Theatre of Berlin, in Berlin Germany and brought back for a 2nd run in 2015.

His training includes the Stella Adler Studio, and the Meisner technique with Richard Pinter.

Alexander is appearing in Theatre Mischief’s A Girl Lives Alone, starting August 11 at the 2018 Summerworks Festival.

He will also be appearing in Soulpepper’s fall production of The Royale by Marco Ramirez directed Guillermo Verdecchia.

*Now retitled CHWARZ GEMACHT (or) How Klaus Found His Blackness

Transcript

Welcome to episode 140 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.

My time heading out east to the Fundy and Halifax Fringe Festivals is coming up fast. If you’re in Toronto on August 16th, I’ll be performing my solo play The Commandment at the Red Sandcastle Theatre that night, just before I head out east, and I would love it if you would You’ll find ticket info at homebodyproductions.ca. If you have a comment about the show or just 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 guest is Alexander Thomas, who appears in Theatre Mischief’s A Girl Lives Alone, starting August 11th as part of the 2018 Summer Works Festival. Now, the play you’re rehearsing is A Girl Lives Alone, which, I mean, has a bit of a, like, even the title sort of stresses me out a little bit, but it’s described as a comedy.

Yeah, so it’s a, I guess, dark comedy. Well, I mean, I don’t know if I, I don’t know how much, I should have talked to Jessica about how much. Well, we don’t want to, I mean, obviously, we’re going to talk a little bit about it, but you know, we don’t want to get, I don’t want to, I don’t want spoilers, but I mean, with a title like A Girl Lives Alone.

Yeah, actually, I mean, it, there’s, it’s an apartment building. Right. In Harlem.

My character is the landlord of the apartment building, and a murder takes place in there. I mean, I guess I can say that because you find that out almost immediately. That’s, like, right away? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this young girl that was staying there is murdered. And it’s sort of like what this does to, you know, it’s about, it’s about loneliness, it’s about people needing each other and fearing each other. And, you know, because everyone’s on pins and needles, and who in the building can you trust? And, and, and it’s actually most of the characters in the building are women.

Okay. You know, and that might have something to do with the title. But there’s, but there’s men there, and then my character is there too.

So it’s, it’s, and there’s a lot of fun stuff she does. It’s sort of like a Hitchcock kind of feeling to it. Well, Jess is, Jess is, her writing has always been a little bit, like, she’s really, I don’t mean this is a trite way, she’s clever.

And her writing has always really reflected that. I think you’ll find that with this. It’s really funny stuff.

Okay. All right. Play a comedy that starts with a murder.

Oh, you know what? There are plenty of comedies that start with murder. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Actually, yeah. Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Just to turn to you, and we’ll come back to A Girl Lives Alone. One of the questions I always ask is like, what draws somebody to work in theatre? And so what was it that brought you to theatre? What’s your, what’s your theatre origin story? Well, I mean, I should really tell you my story, period. So.

Well, let’s do it. So I’m, I’m originally, I was born in America. I grew up in Albany, New York.

Okay. But that was a long time ago. And, and that’s my roots in theatre really started there, my interest in it.

But I, I, about 15 years ago, I got married, my second marriage, that’s another whole story. And my wife works for the German Foreign Service. So every four or five years, this typical American who didn’t even have a passport when I met her, now lives in different countries.

So the first, our first, her first posting was in London. We were there for five years, and then Brooklyn for four. And now we’ve been here in Toronto for four.

Okay. Another year here. So it’s kind of interesting.

I’m always the new kid on the block. Sure. But I’ve managed to, to keep my acting going and to work in each of these countries and cities.

Can I ask you what the biggest shock for you was? First off, when you, who had never really travelled before, found yourself, found yourself in England? Yeah. What was the biggest shock for you? Well, being, I have to say, I mean, I have travelled like within the, travelling in the States, it’s almost like Europeans going to different, but because LA is has, I met her in LA when I was living in LA, which is like the polar opposite of New York City. Of course.

Yes. But first of all, it’s just an eye opener to, I’m probably going to get in trouble for this, to seeing how freaking bonkers we are. I had no idea.

I mean, I knew- When you say we- America. America. Okay.

Okay. I knew we were like off the rails. I mean, look, I’m, I’m a black man.

Okay. So you can’t grow up black in America and not think, not have some criticism of a lot of things that happened there. So, but when I got over there and I was just like, it’s just this realization that, oh, other people don’t do this.

They’re not gun nuts everywhere. They don’t make circuses out of their politicians running for an office. It’s not like a carnival.

It was like, what? We really didn’t know that. And again, to bring up a darker side, no pun intended, people ask me what’s the difference for me. I’ll put it this way.

I haven’t lived in my home country for about 15 years now. Right. And I haven’t been pulled over or harassed by the police in 15 years.

Coincidence? I don’t know. You tell me. I don’t know.

It’s not that that stuff doesn’t happen in London. And clearly I’ve heard stories of what happens here. But the rate at which it does, it jumps out in my mind tenfold because it just hasn’t happened.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I am so geared and used to it happening that I just flow with it. Sure, yeah.

Huh. Well, I mean, I’m, you know, I mean… I know this is a different direction. This is artistic talk.

No, no, no. That’s the podcast. We go where it goes.

In terms of, like, my brother is black and he’s, you know, I think a little bit less now, but he’s frequently pulled over. So it does happen here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It does happen here. But, you know, there’s a lot that’s happening there that isn’t happening here. Right.

Which sometimes we give ourselves a little pass here. We’re like, oh, we’re so… a little pass. Yeah, yeah.

I’ve done that. I’m sure you must have noticed how often we like to pat ourselves on the back. But in terms of, like, coming from England to Canada, have you been to Canada before you came here? No.

No. What did you think? I mean, and please be frank, what did you think about Canada before you came here? And what did you learn? Yeah, well, you know, I mean, from America, it’s just like, Canada’s always sort of like the butt of these sort of… Sure. …passive-aggressive jokes.

Oh, sure, yeah. And… But I also had a kind of… I actually had a romanticism, though, about Canada because of its role in the Underground Railroad. Sure, yeah.

And that was kind of always in my mind. And I know people, and I remember, I remember back when I was very young and the Vietnam War was on, and I’m at an age where I just missed the draft… Sure. …a couple of years older, and I would have been in the draft.

Yeah. But I remember friends, my hippie friends and people who, some who left and came to Canada. And actually, I’ve met some people, some Americans here who have been here since those days, you know, since I’ve been living here.

Yeah. So that was kind of a romantic thing I had. And honestly, when I… The first day I was here, I said to my wife, oh, this is what America pretends to be.

Because it just had that feeling that all the stuff we talk about, the diversity on the streets. And I know, and I say that to people here, and I think they don’t see themselves as diverse as they are, I think, sometimes. No, no.

It’s kind of like you almost have to come in from outside to go, you guys keep fighting, keep going in that direction and keep standing up for everything. Even things like the land acknowledgement stuff at the theatre. I was like, what is this? Yeah.

It’s interesting because I think one of the reasons why Canadians often don’t see that is because the majority of our media comes from the US. And you often see yourself in the media that you’re fed. And so we miss the self-identification of what’s different between America and us because we see so much American media on our televisions.

But the land acknowledgement, I think, is great. I think the only thing that I think that we should add to it is an explanation about why we do it. And that’s because I’ve seen people who don’t know.

And when I first started seeing it, I was like, so who’s this sanctimonious white person paying lip service to what’s going on here? And I think that just to have a little bit of a, we do this because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this sort of thing, a little blurb. I want to go back to your falling in love with the theatre because you said that happened in New York. But what was it that drew you to it? I grew up in Albany, New York.

And my family actually really, we’re so far away from having anything to do with theatre, come from a big family, very inner city, African-American family. We did the projects and all that stuff. Those kind of almost typical stories.

And only it’s, they’re real. Those are real stories and that’s why they’re… And theatre was the last thing on the minds of anybody. Sure.

But I had a brother that was, they say in every sort of family like that, there’s this pole star child that sort of separates from the sort of beaten path. And that was my brother, Cleve, who was out of the blue somehow he became interested in… One thing, he got good grades in school, which wasn’t normal in my family. He was a studious.

And he started doing plays at the local high school. There was this amazing magic drama coach, this guy, John Vealy, who did like really… This is like the late 60s and early 70s. And my brother, Cleve, at a real early age, like 17, started writing and putting plays on at the local boys’ club.

He would write these plays. He would direct them. He would use kids.

And I was his younger brother and he sort of made me act. I mean, you get the brothers who are making their brother play basketball. So you better get out there.

He was like, you know, learn them damn lines. He was like really hard on me. If I was being sort of phony on stage, he would nail me and lecture me.

And I just fell in love with working, doing. And it was just theatre. It was for the sake of it.

I didn’t know that you could have like a career or anything, which is both negative and positive. I mean, in the sense that when I sort of left home to sort of be an actor, I had no idea how to build a career or anything like that. I thought you just got with people who you liked and you did stuff, you know? That’s where you came from.

And actually, oddly enough, now this is years later now here in Toronto. What I love about the theatre scene here is that it is kind of like that. That’s like what it is.

The indie scene really is kind of like that. It’s interesting because your theatre origin story, because some people’s origin story is like, my parents took me to the theatre and I saw a play and it was magic. And I knew I wanted to do that.

But your origin story is like, I was doing the plays and I fell in love with all of that stuff, which is a little bit unique. And I think that that’s an interesting, like, it’s an unusual way to come at it. But again, it’s like, instead of your initial experience being from the audience side, it was on the inside.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I hadn’t really seen a live play.

Once in a while, the school would do some really corny stuff or something that would take you to some field trip thing. And as a matter of fact, like the plays that we did with Cleve at the Boys Club, we were like sort of socially aware even then. Like I said, this is like 69 or something.

I remember we did this one play that had a scene, it was these vignettes. And one of them was about like gun control, like this father teaching his son to shoot and accidentally shoots his son. Back then.

And so for me, theatre was always about what you’re talking about socially. And then I remember the Boys Club itself, they were taking all of us boys out to the real theatre. And it was some Williamstown or someplace like that.

We were going to see theatre. And I remember it was, can you curse on this? Fuck yeah. It was fucking Oklahoma.

I was like these fucking cowboys dancing and singing and shit. I was like, what is, we were all like, what is this? It just wasn’t, no. And I know a lot of people love musicals and all that stuff and they’re cool.

But for when your idea of theatre was that, you make statements about what’s going on and you’re talking. And then in what they take you, the professional theatre. And it was like, these cowboys dancing and singing out of the blue.

I was like, what? Interesting. I mean, in 1969, I mean, Oklahoma was already like old stuff. It was pretty dated.

But I mean, it’s important in the genesis of the theatre, but it’s like, I can certainly understand being used to the theatre is where you make a statement. Well, I had to learn all that. I had to learn.

I later on learned what the American canon was. I didn’t have any knowledge of that. Even the great playwrights, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and all that stuff.

I learned sort of post Boyce Club, like, oh, this is what I’m studying. I didn’t know that. So when you left school and you decided that you were going to make your way as an actor, what was it that made you decide that that was what you were going to do? Your brother was the outlier, the first person to go in that direction.

What made you want to do that? And did you go to theatre school or did you just go out and try to make it happen? It was just, I guess it was something I could do. I felt I could do. I don’t think any actor, I don’t know what they say, does it? I mean, at some point, you’re in the mirror or whatever, and you go, damn, I’m damn good at this.

Why else would you do it? I can’t. No, it’s true. There is that moment where you’re like, I don’t know.

I think you do have those moments where you’re like, and maybe it’s not I’m damn good at this, but it’s like when I do this, I feel more full than I could behind a desk somewhere. Yeah. But I didn’t go to school, not because I didn’t want to go, mostly because, like I said, the background I was from, and this is before, or maybe at the beginning of all, like everyone complains, like I hear people complaining about affirmative action now.

It’s like, no, you don’t understand. There was no action. And it’s like, I didn’t know how to get in school, didn’t have any help getting in school.

And so, in my mind, I sort of said, well, fuck that. And I lived in New York, and I went to the studios. I took classes at Stella Adler Studios.

You wash dishes, and you pay for your class, and often you get deals from those places. If you’re really serious, and you don’t have money and stuff, you can sit in on classes. And I just sort of did that, and sort of piecemealed.

My training is very eclectic. I had this private coach here, or this studio coach there, and then tried to do plays. And where were you doing them? Were you moving around? Did you do the go to New York City thing? I was in New York City.

New York City, when I was young, it really wasn’t kind to me. They say, if you can make it here, if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. Well, I guess I can’t make it anywhere, because I had the hardest time in New York.

I think now people forget what New York was in the 70s and 80s. There was some rough shit in New York. Yes, there was the theatre, but to get there, you had to go through Times Square, which was not a particular tourist destination at the time.

I lived on 12th Street between Avenue B and C. Only if you knew New York in those days would you know to shudder at hearing that. Yes, now nobody would even blink at that, right? Oh, no. I left New York in 1987.

I had an apartment, what they call a railroad apartment, one of those with the bathtub in the kitchen. It was rent stabilized, and it had risen from $185 to $235 a month when I left. Right.

Now it’s like $2,500, $3,000 a month. Yes, yes. Where did you go from there? I ended up in L.A. for a long time, 18 years.

That’s the story of my first marriage. Were you doing theatre there? Were you doing film? I was working, trying to be a properly married man and have a legit job. This is my journey, right? Yes.

I took some accounting classes, and I worked in a bank, which was totally like my friends were like, what the hell happened to Alex? But I was trying to do this life, right? And it wasn’t like, you know, I wasn’t having this brilliant career that you’re supposed to have and know you’re going to have when you’re 17. Sure. That was the reality of it, and slowly things changed.

And out of frustration, around 95, I began writing this one-man show, this solo. Actually, I didn’t know what it was going to be. Right.

I had never written anything before. I didn’t know if I could. And a friend suggested that I do a 15-minute-a-day writing exercise, and I even had trouble doing that.

But eventually, I started collecting these pieces. I didn’t want to do this kind of… I thought it was a really indulgent thing, these guys do these autobiographical pieces, like, why are you doing autobiographical? Who are you? But all the stuff I was writing, the most interesting stuff was always when I wrote some sort of anecdote from my life or about my father or about my brother, and it came together to this solo piece I call Throw Pitchfork. And it took basically years before I finished it, before I was ready to do it, and then I started doing it in garages.

I did it for a friend in her living room, then I did it in a garage for someone. And a friend of mine, this great friend of mine who lives in New York, this writer, director named Judy Tate, worked at the EST, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and once a year, they do this Works in Progress thing. So now I was in LA, flew me to New York, and we did this Works in Progress thing.

And then the next thing I know, the New York Theatre Workshop wanted to workshop it, so they were workshopping it. And then they did… And I had an off-Broadway run with this play, like, suddenly sort of out of the blue from not doing anything, I was doing that. And that sort of began the trajectory that I have been on since then.

It’s interesting when you leave it, because I’ve done it, I left it for a number of years, and then you get, like, a little taste. You get, like, a little taste of it somehow. Like, I had a friend who was like, I’m gonna do a show I want you to do.

I was like, I don’t do that anymore. But I really want you to do this. I was like, fine, I’m fine.

And then I was in. I’m in. I’m back in.

Because it’s like a piece… Because I felt… I don’t know if you felt like this when you were working at the bank. When I was not doing theatre and I was just working my daytime job, I kind of felt like I was playing a role, but not doing it very well. Yeah, exactly.

You know? Exactly. I felt like I was going into work going, yes, fellow workplace colleagues. I am also a workplace colleague of yours.

Yeah. I felt like a robot. Yeah.

And there were people there. I mean, I remember this woman that… We’re pretty good friends. And she had been there since she was, like, 19.

We were, like, the same age. We had been there. And I remember it was really depressing, because she had been there all that much time.

She was making, I think, like, two and a half dollars more than I was an hour. And I was like, what? I would think that her salary was triple what I was making. It was really… When you were performing your solo play, was it… Like, they were workshopping it.

Were you performing it the whole time? Was it… Yeah, they had this great thing in Portland called the Ja West Festival. And that was the first place they had me come from L.A. to there. And it was, like, this great… It was, like, I think it was two weeks, which was amazing to me.

Wow. Two weeks. And I worked on this play.

And then he said he would produce it. And then a couple of times, they work at Dartmouth every summer as well, doing these workshops for a week. And I think I went there twice and worked on it two summers.

And then I had a production. They gave me an amazing run. I had, I think, three weeks of previews and a three- or four-week run.

You know? I’m still, like, three-week preview. I feel like that’s kind of luxurious. It was.

It was. And Jim Nicola, the artistic director, he said, I really want this to be in the shape that it needs to be. And so I’m going to give you that.

Wow. Yeah, it was really amazing. And for me, you know, I had never really kind of worked on that level before.

So it was like, I was just like… My mind was blown, you know? Yeah. And then since, ever since then, it’s been… You know, I got to do another run of it at this theatre in Ithaca, New York, called the Kitchen Theatre, which became sort of like a home for me over the years. I’ve worked there a lot now.

And even when I moved away, they would fly me back from London or Berlin to do a show there. Nice. And you would think that leaving the country at that time was a bad thing, but I ended up working in all these other places.

Like, who would have thought that marrying a German civil servant would be a good career move? For an actor. But I’ve worked more since then than I have when I was living in America. Have you worked in theaters in the places where you were living, or has it been like you’ve consistently been flown back to the U.S.? No, no, no.

I worked in London. Actually, in London, I had sort of… I guess I have to say the biggest gig I’ve had. It was a stage production of On the Waterfront.

It was directed by Steven Berkoff. And essentially, it kind of kept me on and off, employed over two and a half years, because there were five different stagings of it. It went to the Edinburgh Festival, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, where I would stay for like a month at these places.

And we had a West End run. Nice, wow. Did you do theatre in Berlin? Yes, I did, at the English Theatre of Berlin.

And I also wrote a play that they produced. Okay. Yeah.

So you’ve been writing more? Yeah, after Throw Pitchfork, I teamed up with this guy named Levandie Hawkins, this performance artist. And we wrote this very nastily satirical piece on being Black in America called Black Stuff. That’s sort of like the most politically incorrect but truthful thing.

And so we did that together. And we had a little run in that. That even did like the New York Fringe Festival and some other stuff.

And then I discovered the history of Black people in Germany, Black citizens, before and after the Hitler years that I didn’t know about. And it just provoked me to write this play that I call it’s called Schwarzgemacht or How Klaus Found His Blackness. And I started writing it sort of in limbo.

Actually, New York Theatre Workshop did a little bit of workshopping of it. But I just didn’t know how to develop it. But when I moved to Berlin, then I met at the English Theatre of Berlin this director there, Daniel Burnet, who he’s an American, but he’s been working there for years, running a theatre.

And the Black German character, the Afro-Deutsche, that’s what they call themselves. In my play, there was a Black German actor named Ernest Allen Haussmann. And we were doing a piece together.

And I jokingly said to him, I wrote a play about you. And he said, what do you mean? So I told him about this play. And he freaked out.

He was like, no one’s ever written anything about this, German or otherwise. So he read the play. And so then we workshopped it with him and Daniel.

And it turned into this production, which they actually did in 2014. And then they brought it back in 2015. So that was an amazing thing to have happen.

So I’ve had some really cool things happen in every country. It’s interesting that, first off, the power that history has. And sometimes when we don’t know a history, and then we start looking into it.

Because we have the mythologies of our histories. But there’s all these truths behind the mythologies. And then there’s the things that we didn’t know.

For example, like you were saying, the history of Black people in Germany before and after the Nazis. And also the power of the writing muscle. That it just sort of keeps going.

I don’t know if you find this. But when I’m writing, I always have to have another file. It’s like, here’s the idea that I’m just like, little ideas.

Jot it down, and keep going. And then jot it down, and keep going. Because writing and creativity sort of births more creativity, I find.

So you’ve been in Canada for how long now? Since August of 2014. Okay. And you’ve been doing some theatre here? Yeah, yeah.

This theatre community has embraced me. Done stuff with… First thing I did was this play called Hangman at the Storefront Theatre. Oh, yes.

I interviewed Danny and the playwright. His name escapes me right now. Right, Jason Mack.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn’t get to see that. But it got some really great notices, I remember.

Especially for prints, I think. Because prints blew me away. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, the person, the actor, I mean, just an amazing human being. I remember after the first rehearsal, when I met him, I went home. I said to him, I said, this guy’s gonna change my life.

Yeah, yeah. Did he? He kind of did. Yeah.

He’s kind of had a real… And you know, I’m not even around him that much now, but I run into him now and then. But he kind of did. Because I’ve been through some heavy health stuff.

I don’t know. I’m probably telling you too much stuff. I had a cancer when I was living in Berlin.

I had to work for that, chemotherapy. And actually, two years ago here, I had heart surgery. Right.

So it’s like, I’m like the bionic man. The fact that I’m up and doing plays and running around, it’s just like, I’m like, yes! But yeah, working with Prince, his outlook on life just has affected me. Yeah, yeah.

It’s like, dude, I’m like, you know. Yeah. And then such an amazing actor, like you look him in the eyes and it’s like you get nothing but truth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve heard that. I mean, you mentioned the indie theatre scene here feels a little bit like the way that it felt working at the Boys Club in Albany.

It’s like, sort of like a bunch of people sort of like, let’s put on a play. I’m thinking of the people that I know who do a lot of indie work and they’re all connected. Yeah.

And there’s a lot of, you know, cross-pollination. Yeah. As a matter of fact, just a while ago when I saw Danny’s play.

Prank? Yeah, yeah. And there was someone, another actor that I know, they’re talking and they didn’t know each other. And it took me a minute to realize, oh, and I had to introduce them because I was like, I almost assume everybody knows everybody, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the play, A Girl Lives Alone, part of Summer Works. Yeah. It’s getting five performances.

You’ve been rehearsing it for a little while. Has anything surprised you about this particular play? Um, yeah, you know, Jessica has such a crazy style. When you read the dialogue, you go, is this gonna work? Because she does a lot of crazy overlapping.

And I mean, it’s become a thing. A lot of writers do that now where there’s these slashes going in. And, um, but, uh, it, it, it just looked like, this looks like it’s gonna be really chaotic.

And actually, in a way, the more that you give yourself to that chaos is when it really comes alive in rehearsal. The more that we just let ourselves go, oh, no, what, what, what, you know, is it and not worry about it? Yeah. No, it’s not.

She doesn’t really write like star vehicles, you know, everybody, the whole ensemble is sort of, but that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s kind of amazing to work in when there isn’t like, you know, it’s not a one person show. It’s everybody’s show. And I guess, um, the whole, like with everybody overlapping like that, it, you can’t worry about it, you just have to trust the words and hope that everything comes across.

Yeah. And you kind of find like a rhythm that’s more, there’s, there’s your own internal rhythm. And then there’s this sort of breathing rhythm of, of everybody and feeling and becoming aware of where this person is at in this line and how you’re either under it or on top of it or over it when you can, and you just have to, the only way to do that is just rehearsing it.

Well, yeah. I mean, I guess you have to, cause everybody’s rhythm is different. So you, everybody falls into their own rhythm and you just have to be aware of what your co-actors rhythms are and you fall into wherever you fit in that, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, now, of course we talked earlier about, um, how, like it starts with a murder and it’s sort of a dark comedy. Um, has it, I mean… You know, I’m waiting for you to ask me something I can’t answer. I’m like, what’s he got to ask? I guess, I guess what I’m, what I’m sort of like thinking of is, is when you’re working with a dark comedy, um, there can be moments of like, Oh, I don’t know about this, this, like this moment here.

Is this like, does that go too far? Yeah. Is this really funny or is this like, or is this morbid? Have you had any moments like that? Not to give anything away, but have you had any moments where you were like, I don’t know about this? I somehow, I don’t, I don’t know if you’re going to feel that with this like that. Oh, this is way too much.

This is too pushing the envelope. Although, but then on the other hand, it might just be, I’m, I don’t know if I might, I might just be so fucked up that, you know, like, like I went to see this play, this amazing piece, um, called, what was it? Crave, I think it was called at the, in the French. I hope that’s the name of it.

Anyway, it was, it was this really intense piece by this, uh, British, young British writer who, um, had committed suicide or something, Sarah Kane. And, um, it was like really intense and it was about abuse and, uh, and, um, you know, violation and, and these actors would say they were intense. They’re amazing.

They were riveting. And at the end of it, the, uh, actor said to the audience, you know, we know that this play can be very triggering. And if you want a safe space, we are here to have a safe space.

And I was in, yeah, I was riveted and stuff, but I left going, am I so fucked up that like, I mean, maybe I’ve been through so much trauma, I guess that or something that it’s like, because I would, I, there was nothing about it that made me feel like, oh, I’m vulnerable, but I could see how people could. But that was making me think maybe I’m, maybe I’m not the person to ask those questions. But you know, what’s interesting about that is that you were to my, to my mind, I didn’t see the play, but the way that you describe it is you were riveted by this play and you found it exhilarating.

Just like watching all this stuff that’s happening. Yeah. You’re in a different space at that point than somebody who might be triggered by it.

Right. You as a person who is like, you’re just being carried away by what’s happening on stage and things like that. So that’s not being fucked up.

That’s just like being taken on the, on the theatre ride rather than getting caught in a moment, which somebody who gets triggered by some of it, that doesn’t make you fucked up. That just makes you like a person, like a great audience member who, who he had carried away on the theatre. Well, thanks.

We’re going to be great friends, Phil. So yeah, so A Girl Is Alone is a part of the 2018 SummerWorks Festival. It’s at the theatre centre, starting on August 11th.

That’s coming up. That’s great. Good.

And I hope that this tangent I went off on, this personal tangent, does it some good. No, this is all, this is what it’s all about. This is what the podcast is about.

It’s about you and it’s about your story. Okay. Thank you so much.

Good. Thank you. This has been a Homebody Productions production.