Thea Fitz-James & Wes Babcock of Dark Day Monday

Dark Day Monday is a curated monthly performance series featuring artists who defy expectations and break boundaries. We seek out acts that explore, play, and fuck with performance forms or genres.

www.darkdaymonday.com
Instagram: darkdaymonday
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/darkdaymonday

Thea Fitz-James

Thea Fitz-James is part academic, part journalist, and part theatre practitioner. She is a theatre maker and performance artist, having created work with FADO in Toronto, Secret Theatre in Halifax and the School of Making/Thinking in New York. Her shows NAKED LADIES and Drunk Girl have been nominated for awards, and have toured the fringe circuit internationally.

Thea is also a theatre producer, festival curator, and arts residency facilitator with the Cucalorus Festival in Wilmington, NC. Her most recent work explores contemporary depictions of women and feminism, integrating performance art and theatre to ask difficult questions around cultural norms.

Thea is currently a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at York University, looking at knitting and
textiles in activism and performance.

www.theafitzjames.com

Wes Babcock

Wes Babcock is a Toronto-based writer, performer, and theatre designer. Recent design credits include I Cannot Lose My Mind (2018, Watah Theatre – Lights), Bone Cage (2017, Matchstick, Halifax – Set). He was selected as lighting design apprentice to Kimberly Purtell as part of Crows Theatre’s Artist Cross Training Program in 2017.

His most recent written work, Your Princess is in Another Castle, a play for two actors co-created with Nancy Kenny, is currently in its second stage of development following a successful Fringe tour in 2017.

You can find him on Instagram @wildrnesswes, or online at www.wesbabcock.com.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 149 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.

So, I’ve been back from the fringe adventure that I was on out east for, oh well, a couple of weeks now, and I have to admit that I’m feeling a little blocked. While I was on tour, I was very much concentrating on the performance aspect, and I did not touch the writing at all. And now that I’m back, and I feel like I should be writing, in fact, there’s projects I want to be working on, I’m finding myself struggling with that.

Because as I’ve, I don’t know if I’ve said it here, but I’ve said before, writing is a muscle, and the more you use it, the better you get. But if you don’t use it, like any muscle, it will weaken and atrophy. So, I’ve actually spent much of this summer, because I was working on presenting the commandment and rehearsing and everything, not writing.

And I feel like I am now facing a struggle, in fact, I am facing a struggle to keep writing, or to at least get started. I keep feeling like that I’m blocked, that there’s something that I’m having difficulty with the writing. And I think it’s because I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself, I know I am.

I’m expecting myself to just be able to write the way that I was before I took a break from it. And that’s just not the way that the creative brain works. Have you ever had that? I mean, I’m wondering, if you are a writer or creator, and you’ve taken some time away, or forced yourself to take some time away, what are the tricks that you’ve used to bring yourself back to the practice that you had before? If you feel like telling me or dropping me a line, remember that you can find Stage Ruling on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at stageworthyPod.

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. Let me know what your tricks are. Let’s get to the show. My guests this week are Thea Fitz-James and Wes Babcock.

Both are performers and creators. And also the curators and hosts of Dark Day Monday, which is a monthly performance series featuring artists who defy expectations and break boundaries. The next Dark Day Monday, as of this recording, is October 8th.

Watch the Dark Day Monday website and socials for updates. You’ll find those in the show notes. And make sure that you follow them even further than just for the upcoming show, because it’s a monthly show.

So make sure that you check out their offerings and see what’s happening. It’s a great monthly way to see new performers trying new things, and also to socialize, which is something we don’t get to do very often. So I highly recommend it.

So you guys, Thea and Wesley, did I get the right? Just Wes. Just Wes? Okay. You know, it’s like when people use their middle name on Facebook.

Oh, same. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, Wes.

So you guys are curators of Dark Day Monday. That’s true. What is Dark Day Monday? Give me the capsule.

Do you want to take this? Sure. Okay. So basically, we are a monthly performance series that tries to curate or offer a stage for things that aren’t typically seen on stage.

So that can either be something that falls in between disciplines, you know, it’s not quite comedy, it’s not quite theatre, or it’s not quite dance, and it’s not quite storytelling, it’s somewhere kind of in between. Or it can be kind of more politically challenging works. Or a lot of kind of emerging writers find us as well.

Emerging artists tend to sort of kind of want to make a mess on whatever the stage is that we’re doing. Yeah, so that’s, yeah, that’s what we’re doing. I described it to someone today, who I met for the first time, who I was like, sort of pitching the show to, I was like, do you know that thing that you made that you’re like, where am I ever going to do this? You’re going to do it for us.

Okay. Yeah. What is it that inspired you to start putting this together? And how long has it been going on for? We’re doing, we’re going on number eight.

So eight months. October. Yeah.

So we’ve done every month since March. Yeah. And we sort of conceived of the idea on New Year’s Eve, we were eating cheese at my apartment.

And we just sort of thought to ourselves, you know what this city doesn’t really have enough of? A curated cabaret sort of series that features like, artistically challenging work. And I think we were really inspired. Like we met on the fringe circuit.

We’re fringe friends. And I think we were really inspired by the sort of like, one night cabarets that happen on the fringe that kind of bring different artists together to do things they would never normally do. Or, and I think we were inspired to sort of bring that kind of show to Toronto.

Yeah. And something else that we sort of notice is missing is like a hub for fringe artists to like make work and gather together throughout the year. And then also something that’s curated, but looking at the emerging artists.

Yeah. And like trying to provide a platform for them to get like seen by a broader community throughout the year. Yeah.

So we wanted to do that. Yeah. Which is great, because it’s hard to get into the Toronto fringe, you know, there’s that.

So what kind of stuff has been on? Can you describe anything that’s been before? Well, we’ve had about 40 artists perform for us so far. So we won’t get into all 40 of them. Some of my favourites are clown bubble poetry.

Oh, yeah, that was really good. And we did. I think one of our first feature artists, Ingrid Hansen, made puppets out of her clothes, just like all her clothes became puppets.

And we sort of watched her for sort of 15 minutes, just make different puppets out of all of her clothes. That was kind of, yeah, puppetry, but also found found object puppetry. So we’ve had a few different clowns do some weird things.

We’ve had political jugglers, we’ve had drag queens, political jugglers. Yeah, it was. It was juggling with hats with bowler hats.

And it was sort of like framed in the sort of York strike that happened this year. Basically, yeah, it was juggling with sort of like anti-capitalist juggling. It’s maybe the best way to describe it.

I think so. Yeah, it was great. We’ve had a bunch of like really excellent movement pieces, like movement fused with poetry and like songs and just spoken word stuff.

And it’s like really beautiful things that happen. Is there a particular length that these things tend to be? Is it? So we have two different slots that people can apply for. And we sort of switch back and forth between which which format we go with.

So we always have at least four, seven to 10 minute spots. And then every other time it has been so far that we’d like to have it more frequently, we have a 40 minute feature slot. And so that just gives somebody a little bit more time to like really dig into something that they’re experimenting on.

Yeah. And that’s usually been like readings of longer plays or like a first time that someone wants to get a piece up on their feet and try it out in front of an audience has been typically where our feature like just a little longer to kind of get into the meat of a piece. Yeah, those are really rewarding.

And obviously we want to do more of them, but it’s a lot to ask an artist to sort of like… There’s a lot to ask. Are people coming to you with 40 minutes or are you going to people saying like, do you want to do 40 minutes? We’ve had both. Yeah, sure.

I think mostly people have come to us and been like, all right. You know, especially before the summer, leading up to Fringe, people are like, OK, I’ve written my show. I just need to try it out before I go into rehearsal like to read it out.

So we had a lot of Fringe shows and solo shows kind of for our feature spots. But we’ve definitely reached out to people as well in the early days when we were still trying to get get the word out. Yeah.

Yeah. How early on was Ingrid’s Puppet Madness? Oh, she was on our first show. She was our first feature artist.

Yeah. She was our first feature artist. Yeah.

We reached out to Ingrid. Yeah. She’s kind of a mad genius.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah.

She’s a part of the Fringe family. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Love her. Yeah.

Because you described the one night cabarets when people get together. Didn’t the Merkin sisters basically come out of that? It did. Yeah.

Yeah. Doing this massive thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Ingrid and Stephanie were just like, oh, I’m gonna I’m gonna put this sweater on and then the sweater becomes a puppet.

That is my vagina. It is a baby that is like and I think that was their very first piece together was the sweater. Yeah.

They did it maybe in Montreal. Yeah. A couple years ago.

I don’t know. I can’t keep track. But yeah.

And it became a thing like a massive thing. Yeah. They sold out Edmonton last year.

I don’t know. They sold out. They’ve just been everywhere.

It’s been crazy. I think they sold out the factory this summer. Yeah.

Yeah. They’ve been doing really well. It’s an amazing show.

Yeah. It’s incredible. Although not for everybody.

No. No. Because I don’t think people go in and they don’t know what they’re getting.

There were these two old ladies who they went from a half like maybe 15 minutes. This is stupid. This is just stupid to like by the end, they were like, yeah, don’t quite know where the change happened, but it definitely happened.

So what you’re saying is it is for everybody. People think it’s not for them in the beginning and then it becomes for them. Exactly.

That’s right. So I amend my earlier statement. It’s actually for everyone.

What you guys what is your I like one of the things I like to find out is like why did you choose theatre or why did theatre choose you? What’s your theatre origin story? Do you want to go first? Sure. I went to university to study English literature because I wanted to be a poet. And I, during my first year, I took a theatre elective because I loved theatre in high school.

I was like, I’m going to take a theatre elective just for fun. And then I went out to the bar with the people I was working with on this like project that we were building and met the whole like theatre student executive and it was like, oh, these people are way more fun than all the people in the English department. I should study theatre.

And so I did. I took theatre as a minor and that’s how I like studied theatre. And then I took like quite a while off, like pursuing the poetry thing.

And I returned to making theatre like three years ago now. And it’s, I do like all kinds of different things. So I’m a writer, I’m a producer, I’m a designer, I’m a technician.

So I basically try to get as dirty as possible in the world of theatre. Before you went to university, you said you did some theatre in high school, but what would like, do you remember what your earliest theatre experience was, whether it was in the audience or participating? I think my earliest, like the earliest thing that I remember of theatre is like my childhood best friend was one of the orphans in a production of Oliver. And I was incredibly jealous.

I was like, I want to be in this thing. And so since then I’ve like, just gotten more and more into it because it’s like, just something about it grabbed me. I was an orphan in the production of Oliver.

But I was like too old to be like one of the cute orphans. So I was like, you know, like the, the like older orphan, I was like, you know, I was a teenager. So I was cast both in the adult course and the child course.

It was a thing. Yeah. Yeah.

I did, I did theatre, like all through growing up and, uh, and also went to university planning to do something, planning to do art history and, you know, theatre just like, I just found overnight, like after a year of trying to do art history courses found I was taking way more theatre courses and just had already basically done my degree. So, um, yeah. And I, I keep like drifting away from theatre and then going back and now finishing up my PhD in theatre.

Like it’s just all I, I think when I was dating, I was, uh, when people would be like, okay, so like you write about theatre and you write shows and you perform shows, like, what do you do for fun? I’m like, oh no, this is, this is fun. Oh, I see plays, I guess when I’m not writing. Yeah.

This is fun. Yeah. This is so fun.

It’s kind of one of those things that people who aren’t in theatre don’t quite get. Yeah. Yeah.

What else do you do? There’s other things that you should be doing, you know? Yeah. This is all I do. But you’ve done, you’ve done, uh, solo shows and stuff for a while.

Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been fringing for a couple of years.

I’m still kind of green when you like, you know, you, you realize like, you’re like, oh, I didn’t know how to fringe. And then you realize how the more you get into it, how little, you know? Um, but you know, I’ve been fringing for like four years now. Um, and I have two solo shows that I’ve been touring.

Uh, yeah. And so I think part of like why we wanted to do this as well as like, we are both practitioners who like, we’re hoping, and we’ve like never performed our own stuff on the stage, but I think like wanting to have a space, like if we ever wanted to workshop one of our shows to like, to share that with, with someone we’ve never had to because we haven’t had applications coming in. We prefer not to, you know, because like it’s not really for us.

Yeah. Yeah. But eventually we’ll probably, one of us will be like, can I feature on the next one? Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, I, I’m also a performer. I think I skipped that part in my list of things that I do.

Maybe. Um, but yeah, I, I toured the fringe last summer and then, um, I, I wrote a show with Nancy Kenny and, uh, it’s called, it was called your princesses in another castle. Okay.

And it’s now called princess free world democracy live. And we are developing it into a 70 minute immersive like video projection monstrosity. Cause I’ve heard of your princess in other castle, but I hadn’t heard of the new title.

So that’s because it’s a secret. Oh my God. News has broken now.

Flash news flash. Um, yeah, it’s interesting what you were saying about, um, you know, you think you know how to fringe and then the more you fringe, the less you, you realize, you know, and I think if you fringe locally, you can kind of master your local fringe, but as soon as you go to a different place, every fringe is so different. Yeah.

Can almost never master all of the fringes. Yeah. I think, I think a few have tried.

Um, and I think like John Bennett would be one of the people, um, that I would name as a fringe master or like Jillian English or obviously generals. Um, do I even need to say his name? Uh, he’s always, he’s always in that list. Yeah.

Um, I don’t like Mark Dockery and all those beautiful people, but, um, but it’s interesting cause I think like what, I’m a big advocate for like leaving your home fringe. I think, um, the thing I hate about Toronto fringe is how cliquey it is and how, how, uh, you know, they, they’re, everyone comes out for the Toronto fringe, but then we don’t come out as much during the year, you know? And, and then when you do the Toronto fringe, people are shocked to find out that like Toronto isn’t the biggest fringe in Canada. Like the arrogance.

I’ve had that conversation with people. Oh yeah. Edmonton, those are the biggest fringes.

They’re like, fuck off. What? Yeah. No, actually.

Or like, they’ll be like this year we have 150 shows. And when you’ve done like the big fringes that have like thousands of shows, you’re kind of like, Oh, that’s so cute. Not to be mean to Toronto, obviously.

I love it. To be honest with you, like when we did, we did the fringe roundup during Toronto where I got a bunch of people together and we have a conversation. And during the last one, so we did two on the last Saturday, we were brutally honest about, about fringe and some of the things that needs to change.

And, uh, they haven’t reached out, but you know, but I mean, I think that, I think it’s a conversation that you have in your heart and because you want it to be good and you kind of demand that it needs to be good. And when it’s not, when you see a problem, you should speak out. Yeah.

Well, the only way things like can improve is if we can first identify the areas where it can be improved. Absolutely. Absolutely.

You know, if we pretend that everything is perfect, like everything will only get worse. No, absolutely. And you know, there are people who are like, no, I don’t actually want to talk about how bad I’m like, it’s a lottery.

What do you think? You’re not gonna let you win? Yeah. Well, I mean, you don’t have to, I’m good friends with a lot of people on the exec team, but I mean, you know, we won’t get into it, but later on another podcast, I’m so happy to talk about it. But when you guys are like, you’re, you’re sort of like trying to build like a, a community that exists outside of that fringe community.

It sounds like. Absolutely. I think one of the most important parts for me is the like atmosphere and like community feel of the space and the show, like just the energy in the room is so important to me.

And it’s always been really, really excellent. Yeah. Like welcoming, very warm.

I think it is a space where you can try anything. Yeah. We like, we prioritize featuring queer performers and artists of colour and we like really make it abundantly clear that it’s a space where discrimination is not cool.

Yeah. So we make fun of ourselves a lot. I don’t know.

I find it’s like, I think my favourite moment of our, in all the shows we’ve done is a moment where I almost got booed off my own stage. Cause it was the theme of the show is lies and deceit. And so me and Wes told a bunch of like lies to each other, like that are lies that we typically tell and explained why we tell them.

And one of the lies that I tell a lot is I loved your show. Like after, and the audience vibe like was so against me, but it was so funny. Like it was, we were all like, like, it was like beautiful how they were against me.

They’re like, be honest, like, just be honest. If you don’t like someone’s show, like you can’t be honest in this town. Like, and it was this like beautiful energy of like, of me kind of digging my heels and people being like boo.

It was so much fun. It was a very loving boo. I’m sure it was a very loving boo.

It’s interesting because, you know, you can’t say to somebody that they didn’t like, you didn’t like, like after the show, you can’t be like, I didn’t like that. Yeah. Maybe a couple of weeks when the show’s closed, but not during, you can’t, you can’t really.

No, you can’t. I think, well, I think there’s a way I’m not very honest with my friends when I don’t like their shows, but I think there’s a way to do it. See, see, and then, and then they’d all be booing.

Yeah, right. I tend to opt for silence if I don’t like the show. People were telling me that night to say, thank you for your work to say that, which just, I think is a cop out.

It is a cop out. Yeah, I mean, I hear you, but like they must have, like it must have, they must have turned on you pretty quickly. It was very hard.

Was that the hardest truth that you guys told? Was that the one that got the most, the most reaction? That was the one that got the most reaction in terms of like how relatable it was and how funny it was. Like it’s a really, it’s like a white lie that in our community is very relatable. The, the lie that was the worst was probably one of yours.

No. Oh, probably. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Wes once, can I say, say yeah, sure. Yeah.

Go ahead. Wes once told someone he loved them when he didn’t love them. So one of his lies was I love you too.

And I was like, oh yeah, that sucks. But everyone’s done that. It’s true.

That’s true. Let’s be honest. Yeah.

Um, what are you guys, is there something in particular that you guys, like, what would you like to see this become in the long run? Like it’s been eight months. Yeah. If you do this for two years, what would you like to see it be? Oh man.

Well, we had big plans in the pipe coming down the pipeline. So we are having, this is like, there’s some, might be some big announcements soon for us. So we’ll just like leave that as a little teaser.

Um, I think we’re also talking about, um, as we, as we continue to grow and as our community grows to become a producing body. So to actually produce full length shows, um, under our, our name and under our banner. Um, and I think we definitely want to keep being, I mean, there’s a world in which we start doing a weekly and then we kill each other.

No, that sounds, that sounds lovely. Uh, and terrifying at the same time. I really love the monthly model.

Yeah. Like in two years it would be like stupendous if we had like, you know, 80 people who showed up every month and like enough submissions that we could be like, Oh, I like, I’m not really into that one. I really am into these five.

Like, let’s do that. And like, just like more engagement, you know, like more of the same is all I can say. Like that’s, we’re just trying to take what we have right now and just like, sort of like grow it or really organically and slowly and like taking care to make sure that the community that we develop like feeds back into itself.

Yeah. We’re paying our artists. We, we offer feedback if it’s, if it’s invited or obviously not, if it’s not about it.

Um, but we, we really do, we are playing the long game in terms of building a community and building a name for ourselves and building ourselves as a, as a platform, um, for people to come and try new stuff. Um, you know, people, we’ve never called ourselves a new works, um, platform, but people are coming to us being like, Oh, it’s a show for new works. Right.

And we’re like, yeah, it’s over old works as well, but like, yeah, come try your new stuff. Um, and so I think that’s been really nice to feel like people are, have already identified us as a place where they can kind of cut their teeth on an idea. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and we’re like really looking to like embrace that because some of the most exciting stuff that we’ve had on our stage has been like really new and really raw and really exciting. Yeah.

So how do people like, how do people apply? Oh, well you just go to darkdaymonday.com slash apply. Yeah. All right.

On our Facebook page. Yeah. There’s a little Google form.

Uh, it’s not that complicated. Um, but also it’s pretty important that you fill it out with like some thoughtfulness. Yeah.

Um, but I think it takes probably about 15 minutes to fill out with like, with like, you know, you know, your bio, your pitch, like sort of what you want to do. We’ve definitely have not taken people because they’ve just sort of phoned it in and been like, Oh, well if you’re going to phone in this form, what, what says that you won’t phone in your performance, you know? And we’ve also curated people we don’t know and have never met based on the quality of their applications. Most of the people that we’ve put on the stage, we’ve never seen.

So it’s based purely on the thing that they send us. Yeah. Which is, which is exciting.

Yeah. When you guys, when you guys add this, is it just performance? Is there socializing? Is there like what happens in the course of the night? Yeah. So there’s like, you know, the doors open half an hour before people socialize, there’s an intermission that’s like usually sort of brief.

And then we often hang out afterwards a bit as well. Yeah. And we’re looking to expand on the afterward hangout to like really sort of make it into more of a lingering community space sort of thing.

Because we do have very few of those outside of whatever passes for a fringe club each year. There aren’t a whole lot of times when when the theatre community, for want of a better word, comes together and has the opportunity to come together. Which I think is, you know, to be able to expand that would be really great.

Yeah. Well, so for example, our next show, we’re trying out a new venue for our October show. So I announced it as a surprise in September.

And I thought we would reveal the surprise today. Which is that we’re going to be at the Array Space, which is like a music performance venue, sorted down by strawn and between Queen and King. Just across from Trinity Bellwoods, no? Yeah, just near Trinity Bellwoods.

And so we have access to that space for a little more time than we normally have access to our performance space. And so we’re gonna hang out for a while afterwards. We’re gonna be giving away beers, just giving them away.

Wow. Yeah, just giving beer, free beer. There will be free beer at our event.

So yeah, we are trying to sort of look at, we’ve been at Burdock and we love Burdock. It’s an incredible space, the music hall there. But we’re just sort of like seeing what we are outside of that space.

And then in the new year, we might have some other announcements. Okay, awesome. Yeah.

Just to talk a little bit more about your creative lives outside of Dark Day Monday. Now Thea, I know that you’ve performed some solo shows. You have two solo shows that you’ve taken to fringes.

Wes, when you’re writing, do you write solo? What kind of things are you drawn to in terms of your writing? So Nancy and I are still developing Princess Free World Democracy Live. So that’s a duo show with voiceovers, poetry, projections, all sorts of multimedia experience. And I’m also writing a more poetic solo show that’s gonna feature movement-based text interpretation and projection design.

Oh, wow, okay. So sort of bringing in the poetic background that I developed my craft as a writer for quite a while, not doing my school assignments and then subsequently, and writing a solo show as well. Do you find that you’re particularly interested in adding multimedia to what you’re doing? Because these are two things that you’ve described to me that involve some media, like video and things like that.

Yeah, well, the job that makes me money is that I’m a theatre technician and a lighting designer and a set designer. So integrating the technical elements of stagecraft into my creative process, I think it’s how I create. So I’m not actually a projection designer, but I can imagine a really cool thing happening with projections.

And the imagining of it helps me create the text of it. And then when I’m going to contract a projection designer to reinterpret the text that came from my imaginings of their projection design. I have a real fascination with the idea of live projection mapping and things like that.

This kind of stuff that you can do to transform a space just with the technology that we have now that can really change things. Yeah. Not the PowerPoint presentation sort of projections, but like the, oh my God, it’s all changing.

We’re under, where are we? What’s happening? Oh my God, it’s beautiful. Yeah. Which just sounds really fascinating and awesome.

Have you managed to play with that much before or is this kind of new for you? This will be a new venture. I always like tackling something brand new like that. I don’t know how this is going to work, but let’s find out if it does.

I have this instinct that this is the right thing for this project. Yeah. Nice.

Thea, your two solo shows, first off, where were they based on? Where did they come from? Yeah. So I have two shows that I’ve written about. One’s called Naked Ladies.

The other one is called Drunk Girl. And they are both very much inspired. One of them is literally me on stage.

Naked Ladies is literally me on stage naked telling the history of Naked Ladies in performance. So it’s a lecture. It is not a burlesque show.

It is not like a sex show, but it is a lecture that I tell naked while analyzing the sort of history of objectification of a female body. I talk about porn. I talk about body shaming.

I talk about, oh God, performance art. You know, all those terrifying, wonderful things. Sexual assault, yada, yada, yada.

You know, sexual assault, you know? Okay. Sorry. That’s not a funny joke.

But yeah, very like, so it’s a serious show. It’s been, it’s done very well. And so that’s just me.

And I talk about my life and talk about silly stories of being naked as a kid, but then more serious stories around sexual assault. My second show is more like inspired by my life. So Drunk Girl is about the drunk girl, the character of the drunk girl and how she is, how can we reclaim her to be a sort of radical feminist? Can we take this image of the drunk girl that we see walking down King Street, sort of clip clopping in, you know, January and like short shorts.

And we’re like, who would do that? Can I actually find out who she is? Can I bring her to life? Can I make us fall in love with her? Can I have her rip our hearts out and eat it? And then we still kind of love her at the end of the day. Like I’m sort of, I was a drunk girl and I’m fascinated with the demonizing of that character. And so I wrote a play around her, around that period of my life, around my mom’s alcoholism, around why women drink and kind of brought it into the show about women and drinking and sexual assault.

Yeah. Because it always makes, my shows are often about sexual assault. Yeah.

It’s important. Yeah. And where have you guys, what fringes have you guys travelled to before with, with your shows? Well, I’ve been to Tampa Fringe and Orlando Fringe in Florida.

And then I’ve also been to Halifax, Ottawa, London, Winnipeg, Vancouver. Hmm. I’ve done, okay.

East to West. I’ve never done Halifax. I really want to do it because I have family there, but I’ve done Montreal, Ottawa.

I’ve never done Toronto, but I’ve reviewed and hung out a whole lot. Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver, Perth, Australia, which is called the World Fringe, Adelaide, Australia. And I think that’s it.

I got into the Wellington ones, but I didn’t, I skipped it. I didn’t go, didn’t go, got into New Zealand, but I didn’t go to New Zealand. Yeah.

Yeah. What did you find? Is there, I mean, as we said, everything is different. Are there particular differences that you’ve noticed aside from Toronto’s thing with itself? Yeah.

Outside of, outside of Toronto and travelling, like even outside of Canada, are there particular things that you’ve noticed? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean the, the fringes, I mean, I think the Canadian model is so, so beautiful because it is a lottery, right? Oh, I’ve also done Singapore fringe, but that’s, sorry, that’s a whole other story.

That just made me think of it because it’s a lottery here in Canada, but it’s not outside. They’re, they’re what are called open access festivals. Like, so the Edinburgh fringe and the Australian fringes and most of the, most other fringes, even a lot of the fringes in the States are open access.

So anyone with a venue can put on a show, but what ends up happening is the venues kind of have a monopoly on what shows run. And so everyone’s trying to get into the sort of hubs and they take a huge amount of the artist sales. And it’s really like, even just this past year in Perth, Australia, one of the major hubs of the of that fringe went under and literally to this day, artists from, who were performing in Perth have not been paid.

So they did their show for like a month and never got paid and are out. Some artists are say they’re out $70,000. Like we’re talking like big money.

So it’s really interesting that that model, the financial model is completely different. And I think it makes it a very different fringe because you’re hustling. Like I’ve never hustled.

Like I’ve hustled in Adelaide. Like it makes Edmonton seem like just this most, you know, people go to Edmonton. They’re like, Oh, it’s really hard.

And I’m like, Oh, compared to Adelaide where I’m literally like giving away tickets for free. Cause Tom Green is playing next to me and there’s no, would you rather see my feminist solo show? Or would you rather see Tom Green? You know, like it’s a different kind of vibe. And they’re huge.

There’s huge, huge festivals, but they’re so much fun. They’re crazy. You really start to, you really got to love your craft to flyer in Adelaide with the people.

I mean, I’ve heard a lot of people talk about, you know, like the Edinburgh thing and then how hard that is 2000 shows and everybody scrambling to get eyes on their show. They had 4,000 last year. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah.

It’s just like crazy. People like, I have people who like no fringe. They’re like, so I know you did a couple of this year.

Are you ready for Edinburgh? I’m like, fuck no. Yeah, I know. Every year I’m like, maybe this is the year I’ll do Edinburgh.

I can make money in Edmonton or I could lose just so much money in Edinburgh. So do you, I mean, having done both of those, do you have a, do you, do you prefer the Canadian model or do you find that the outside of Canada model where you have to hustle so much and you’ve got so much money on the line pushes you further? I, I, I feel like I really like you cannot do a show you hate in those fringes because you will hate everyone in your life. You know, like everything about that model is very challenging.

And because of those challenges, you’ve got to love what you do. So it is this kind of wonderful thing where, you know, if you’ve just convinced strangers, like after arguing with them to come see your show and they see your show and you’re doing your show and you’re like, Oh, my show isn’t good. That is like a reality check.

So I, it really makes you be on your game as an artist and it makes you really believe in what you’re selling. Um, and, and I, I’ve had that, I have seen like a lot of shows in Edmonton even, or in Toronto where people are selling them super hard. And I’m like, this isn’t like a good show, you know, you would, you would, you know, like you really have to believe what you’re doing.

Um, and that for me was what the, the, the international fringes did for me. It was really made me really sure about the work I’m doing. Um, and really sure about the product I was selling and really kind of savvy about the fact that I am selling a product.

Um, um, yeah. And it makes all the other fringes feel really fun and easy. It makes Canada feel safe comparatively.

Yeah. It is good. I mean, it kind of, the reason people come internationally to do the Canadian fringes is because they’re awesome fringes.

Like audiences come out, like it’s not oversaturated. There are only 150 shows, which sounds ridiculous to say, but you know, there’s, you can see almost in Ottawa, you can see them all. There’s only 50 shows in Ottawa.

That’s amazing. Like that’s like a, just a really cool opportunity that you don’t get outside of Canada. No, that’s true.

That’s true. Uh, you don’t, you certainly don’t have as much on the line if you’re coming from away. Yeah.

Um, so back to Dark Day Monday, what’s your theme coming up for this? You’re in a new venue. Do you guys set a theme every month? Every month has a theme. Okay.

And do you guys decide on this theme and like put it out to people and they pitch it, or do you decide on the theme from what you’ve chosen? Uh, we, we decide on the themes ahead of time and suggest them to people to apply based on. Uh, so the theme for October is nevertheless, she persisted. Okay.

Which is an Elizabeth Warren, uh, line earlier this year. Um, she said it, um, or it was said about her, um, when she was, uh, participating in a filibuster. So, uh, a sort of invitation for feminist works, for political works, for theatre, for social change, uh, works about women overcoming things.

Yeah. Yeah. For persistence.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah.

And I think we, we offer our themes and suggestions, um, as sort of writing prompts. Like if, if, if we get an incredible thing that doesn’t fit our theme, we’ll still program it. Um, but, but, or if we get an incredible thing and we’re like, Hey, this actually fits the theme we’re doing in two months.

Uh, would you mind waiting until then? Yeah. Yeah. You know? And if they’re like, no, I’m really only available this time.

We’ll probably be like, okay, cool. Let’s do it now then. Yeah.

Awesome. Um, is there, sorry, I lost my train of thought. It’s like I caught up in that.

Um, I should really edit this, that my silence is out, but I don’t, I like when people see that I’m stupid. Um, what are, uh, like we’ve talked about what you guys, you know, wait, the possibly, you know, possibly like down the road doing this weekly, which you would have to be sure that the audience is not saturated for this, this kind of thing. But, um, what, what’s your, have you seen a consistent audience coming out for this? Have you seen, um, the same people coming out? We have a few regulars, but there’s actually quite a lot of new faces every time.

Um, I think it has to do with the artists that we’re picking. So the artists often bring a large or like a certain percentage of the audience to see each artist. Um, it would be really like some audience members have come like quite regularly.

Um, you know, my parents have been to like four of them. And also like, I think a lot of artists who have done it in the past come to see the next one or as audience members, which is the kind of vibe we’re trying to encourage. I’d like to be curious about that if a lot of the artists are coming back.

I’ve seen quite a few. Yeah. I’d see them say the majority or, or if they don’t, if they don’t have something to do that month or if they don’t want to pitch it, they’ll just come and watch.

Um, and we definitely are hoping that happens. We’re hoping that crossover happens. Yeah.

Well, it’s kind of like that sort of builds that community sort of thing. Exactly. And we’re definitely open to like reprogramming an artist a few months later after they’ve already done something for us to do something else.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So it’s, it’s not necessarily just for new works. It’s for, for work that maybe doesn’t have a, a particular venue right now or a particular audience. It’s challenging work.

It’s yeah. I think like, for instance, like we’ve had a comedy, uh, we had a show, um, about motherhood. That was the theme for mother’s day.

We had a motherhood show and someone did a comedy on getting an abortion. And so, you know, like that is, it was a straight up comedy set. It was straight stand up.

Um, and yet would it always find a home, you know, a comedy bar, maybe not, you know, like because of the, because of the tone and because of the energy and it was a hilarious, like hilarious bit. Um, but you know, we, we are more interested in programming that kind of stuff. Or like, uh, we had one artist who was like, uh, is it too much? If I like throw a lemon into the audience and I’m like, throw that lemon, do it.

Can I make a mess? I’m like, make a mess. You know, I think we want, we’re really, we want to encourage, uh, people who are like, Ooh, I’m not normally allowed to do this in plays. Can I do this? Um, and we want to say, yes, yes, you can.

Uh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s, I think we are often at like thinking about, do we have permission to do a particular thing? Can I break the, this, this fourth wall? Can I, can I go out here? Can I throw a lemon in the well, like as artists, you know, wondering like, do I have permission is like sort of stunting to the creativity of the thing, to the art, you know, like we want to give people permission to do the thing that they want to do.

Like, sure. Check in with us if you like, want to know, do I have permission? But like, like I want, I want to encourage people to be like, I think, I think artistically my piece needs me to do this thing that I’ve never done before and never seen happen on a stage. Yeah.

I don’t want to be like cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, we do, we do in, in, in the theatre world, we are given permission so often that it’s sometimes hard to think that we don’t need it. You know, there’s somebody, even if it’s like the fringe lottery, we are waiting for something to, to be the, our gatekeeper to put us on the stage or to give us a space to perform.

So it’s good to have a spot where you can say, yes, I will do this. I will throw this lemon. I will, whatever it is you’re going to do.

Well, and, and also that’s interesting because there’s this idea that, that the Toronto fringe is the strictest, most rule-based fringe in all of the Canadian fringes. Which I’ve heard many times. Yes.

Yeah. I have, I’ve heard and experienced. And I think there is, and that, that rings true in Toronto as well.

I think that comes from the Toronto theatre community, which is, has a lot of union rules, has a lot of, you know, like only certain people up on certain ladders, which are all good rules. And I think we are sort of trying to, within that culture of rules, trying to break some rules. Only the good ones are only the bad ones.

I don’t know. Only the ones that, that hold us back. Obviously not the ones that keep us safe and keep us honest.

But yeah. Yeah. Um, and the date of the next, uh, Dark Day Monday is the 8th of October.

October 8th. That is Thanksgiving Monday. Yeah.

So once you get back, once you, once you get back from the, whatever-able-ness of having dinner with your family. Yeah. Adopted or biological, come to Dark Day Monday.

Yeah. Shake off that turkey coma and, uh. Drink some free beer.

Exactly. Thank you so much for coming on. I really like this.

Thank you. We had a great time. This has been a Homebody Productions production.