Jordi O’Dael & Andew Gaunce of Aberrant Theatre, Presenting the Ghost Light Anthology
Jordi O’Dael
Jordi is a Toronto based trans nonbinary performer, director, dramaturg, and producer. A UWinnipeg/Randolph College alum, Jordi has based their career on portraying 12 year old children, ancient evil constructs, and creating queer punk feminist impressionist pieces. In 2017, Jordi served as co-writer, dramaturg, producer, and performer for the award winning, breakout hit ‘NASTY’ at the Toronto Fringe. Their primary interests are the unexplained and unsettling, ghosts and ghouls, serial killers, destroying the gender binary, corgis, and using theatre as a vehicle for social change.
Andrew Gaunce
Born and raised in Saint John, New Brunswick, Andrew is a Toronto based performer, writer, producer, and lifelong devotee of the horror genre. Andrew honed his performance skills at Fanshawe College’s Theatre Arts program, and has spent the last few years performing with various indie theatre companies in Toronto, including Seven Siblings Theatre, the Spur-of-the-Moment Shakespeare Collective and Monkeyman Productions (where he now also holds a production role). Most recently, Andrew found himself at the Halifax Fringe for Aberrant Theatre’s award-winning inaugural production “Something Wrong” – a solo horror show that he also wrote and performed.
The Ghost Light Anthology
The Ghost Light Anthology is a curated evening of thrills, horror and the unknown: 5 short, scary plays tied together to create an immersive live horror experience.
Instagram:@AberrantTheatre
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AberrantTheatre
Tickets:https://ghost-light-anthology-2018.brownpapertickets.com/
Transcript
Welcome to episode 152 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.
I’ve been thinking about deadlines lately and how helpful they can be. When I was working on The Commandment, if you’ve listened to this podcast for a long time, you may have heard me mention that I worked on it for about eight years, and if I had not set myself a deadline for actually performing it, I probably, I know I would still be working on it today. You know, that’s not, I mean, it’s great to work on things until they’re right, but it’s also, it’s not helpful to never present something and never perform it.
There’s, I think, a certain point where good enough is good enough, and eventually I got to the point where I felt like it was good enough, and the only way to do that, to get to that point, was to set a deadline. And as I’ve been thinking about my own stagnation in terms of writing since I came back from fringing this year because I’d stopped for so long, I’ve been trying a few tricks to try to get myself writing. I’ve opened up some old drafts of things that I have left unfinished, and I’ve been editing those.
You know, they were first drafts, and so they need some polish, but time to get to work on those. And so what I’m doing is I’m going to be having some people read those, because I always find it helpful to have people sit down with me and read them out loud so that I can hear how they sound, and maybe find spots that don’t work. So I’m doing that with one of my pieces that I’ve been working on.
And all of this geared to break myself out of the non-writing rut that I’ve been struggling with. Also, I’ve decided I’m going to do NaNoWriMo, because why not? I am not really a novel writer. I’ve always felt like I wanted to write a novel, but I keep having ideas for plays, and things that work best as plays.
So I primarily find myself writing plays, but I like to stretch and do something different. And I’m kind of hoping that trying to do this to write a novel in a month, well, that it will kick-start the creativity and keep that writing muscle going for me. If you’re one of those crazy people who’ve decided that you want to try NaNoWriMo, maybe it’s your first time.
I’ve signed up to do it a bunch of times, and once I actually started writing, but I have never quote-unquote won. But if you’re thinking about doing it, or you are doing it, you can find me, you can join me on the NaNoWriMo website. I’m Phil Rickaby on there, so you can probably find me easily.
And we’ll see how that goes. If you want to tell me about something that you’re writing about, remember you can find Stageworthy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at StageworthyPod. You can find the website at stageworthypodcast.com. And 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 Andrew Gaunce and Jordi O’Dael of Aberrant Theatre, who present the Ghostlight Anthology at The Box in Toronto starting October 18th.
You guys are working, the project is Ghostlight? Yeah, the Ghostlight Anthology. Okay, tell me, tell me about that. Oh, after you.
Like, about how it started, about where the idea came from? Well, let’s start with, let’s start with, describe what it is. What’s the elevator page for the Ghostlight Anthology? The Ghostlight Anthology is a collection of five short horror plays. It is a live horror experience.
Okay. All together. And so, where did, where did, where did that come from? Where did it start? So, it came from the sort of need to create live horror experiences that are narrative driven, because traditional theatre tends to pull its punches in terms of creating this, the, the same experience you would get from, like, a really well crafted horror movie.
And, like, Halloween haunt style, attractions tend to be devoid of a narrative storytelling element. It’s, it’s more about how many people can jump out at you and, yeah, and not necessarily examining what is so cathartic about fear. A number of years ago, I was sort of thinking about, of all of the genres that theatre tends not to explore now, horror is, is, is one of the main ones that we don’t tend to touch.
Yeah. It’s starting to come back a little bit. It is.
Less so around here, though. No, it’s true. And I think, I think it may hinge a little bit on the fact that we’re so used to horror in movies.
And in movies, you could do a jump cut and you could do, like, camera tricks and stuff, which means that horror in theatre becomes a little bit more of a challenge. Yeah. Do you, what do you see as, like, how, if that is the case, how does horror work on stage? Horror in a live experience and on stage, I think, largely depends on the atmosphere you create.
There has to be a contract between what you’re doing and the audience, a level of handing over that suspension of disbelief and allowing yourself to exist in this world where maybe the things that you’re seeing and the horror that you’re seeing isn’t as satisfying as what you can see in the high definition at Cineplex, which I think relates to sort of, at least my, I don’t want to speak for Andrew, but generally with what we’ve talked about, our ethos towards theatre in general, in the sense that you can’t create theatre that aims to replicate naturalistic experiences that happen on screen, because why would anybody pay money to leave their house and sit in rooms with, like, a bunch of strangers for an experience that they can get for $7 a month on the comfort of their own house? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, 100%. This is, like, the third time I’ve had the conversation this week about, like, which is the question, how does indie theatre get people out of their house, away from Netflix, and into the theatre? And it has to be experience.
Yeah, yeah. And so as that, to make horror, you know, sort of work on stage is, it’s a lot of, like, faith and trust in your audience, that your audience is there because they want to be and because they want to feel something. You know, people inherently want to come and feel something, whether it’s joy, whether it’s shock, whether it’s fear.
And for us, it’s our job to facilitate that, to let it happen. I think about this a lot in terms of things like Cirque du Soleil or magic acts or things like that. They don’t necessarily struggle to draw people in and come see things.
Why is that? And it’s because that element of seeing it live. You can film Cirque du Soleil, but you can’t replicate the feeling of being there. Right, absolutely.
Absolutely. Yeah, because we think, I mean, a lot of people think about theatre as kind of boring. Yeah.
We don’t think about it as dynamic. We don’t think, a lot of people don’t think about it as exciting because, you know, a lot of times we walk into a theatre and on that stage is a couch and an armchair and a coffee table. And we can see that at home, you know.
So is this the first time the anthology is put together or is this? Yes. Yeah, okay. Yeah, this is the first time we’re putting it together in a big actual production for sure.
And what made you decide to do it this year? Honestly, I have been trying to do it for a couple years and it’s just never quite been the right time. Like last year around Halloween, there was another horror project that was starting to go up. So we’re like, well, let’s maybe wait until another year.
And then this year it just sort seemed stars aligned. You know, it’s just, we can’t wait anymore. 2017 was the highest grossing year for horror films in history.
So it’s just on a crass sort of market share perspective, like strike while the iron’s hot. Yeah, absolutely. What kind of, what, do you remember what the show that was playing the last time that you were thinking about it? What was it? It didn’t actually happen.
Oh, okay. That’s unfortunate. Yeah.
Maybe that’s, we can chat off the record. I don’t want to, I don’t want to like get anybody like in uncomfortable positions here because I’ve seen a couple of shows. Do you know Eldritch Theatre? Yeah.
Yeah. Like the stuff that he does is incredible. And sometimes it’s horror.
This year it’s sci-fi, but sometimes it’s horror. And it’s, it’s like, it’s really effective horror, which is totally gives the light of the whole like, oh, but horror doesn’t work on stage. But there used to be a time when we, when horror was pretty common on stage, like in France, the, I’m going to get the name wrong.
I never know how to say it out loud either. You know, there was a whole tradition, the grand guignol, guignol, whatever. Somebody is right now shouting it’s pronounced, but okay, you’re not here.
But there was a whole tradition. And in fact, the original play of Dracula was at its time, horrific. People fainted watching that show.
And yet we somehow lost that. Yeah. I’m sure, I’m sure that, you know, Macker’s was intended as like, you know, the thrilling Halloween hit of the year.
You know, those kinds of things, like half of what Shakespeare wrote is like a horror. Like the seven siblings of the horror version of Titus. And it was like, well, of course Titus Andronicus is a, is a horror play.
Absolutely. That’s like the closest to a slasher. Yeah, it is.
It’s a Shakespearean slasher play. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew, you’ve been, and I only know this because of, because of your, your show at the, at the Fringe was, you’ve been fascinated by horror for a long time. Oh, absolutely. Have you both been fascinated by horror or did you come to it later? As a child, I wasn’t allowed to watch horror movies because I was already like the most neurotic, terrified child who had like night terrors and all these kinds of things.
So it was always kind of like, my mom let me watch a lot of things that were inappropriate for me as a child. She kind of steered me away from, from horror movies. Uh, and so then as a teenager, it was just an obsession and it was dragging all of my friends to the movie gallery and whatever we could get our hands on and watch those kinds of things.
Um, and my experience, I think differs from Andrew’s experience where he was like, Ooh, monsters. I’m not scared. Like I had nightmares about nearly every horror movie that I watched.
Um, and that didn’t necessarily fade away for me until, you know, like I was 21 and there’s still horror movies nowadays that I’m like, that I’ve, you know, we’ll see in the theaters and I’ll have, I’ll have trouble for a couple of days after it. Um, but I, I love it. Um, in a piecemeal kind of way, there are images that horror directors and horror creators make that are more evocative than anything you can see in any other genre.
And I feel this way about sci-fi often too, and fantasy is that I think when you abstract it a little bit, you have these images that it, you really do feel something from it. Um, and when it’s, when it’s, uh, at its best, it’s, it’s better than any like Oscar baby thing you could see. Yeah.
But Andrew, you, you enjoyed, like you were a horror connoisseur from a very young age. For sure. Um, I, I grew up watching the like universal monster movies in the same rotation as Disney movies.
Like they were in the same VHS shelf at home. Um, I was obsessed with Dracula. My, um, imaginary friend growing up was the invisible man, not just like an invisible man, no bandages and everything.
Um, it’s just always been kind of an obsession. I don’t know where it came from necessarily, but it’s just, I think it’s the imagination of it. You know, it’s, it’s something that could exist in our reality, but probably doesn’t, but we don’t really know what’s in those shadows.
Do you remember what the first horror, do you recall what the first horror you saw was? Definitely Dracula. Oh, for sure. Yeah.
Bella Lugosi in 1931. Did you find that scary? Not at all. I found it fascinating.
Yeah. I loved it. It’s funny because it’s one of those things that I think now we don’t see it as, as frightening.
Right. Much like, much like I watched Halloween for the first time, like, uh, uh, maybe two years ago. I hadn’t seen it ever before.
And I was like, oh, this is like, I’ve seen all of this, but I’ve seen all of this post Halloween. Because of Halloween. Exactly.
Yeah. So it’s like, oh, okay. So this is where all of that came from.
Yeah. And sometimes movies don’t age that well. Not especially.
No. I mean, Halloween created all those tropes. It’s so important.
Yeah. Which is why I’m really excited about the new one. Cause it seems like they are going back to the drawing boards and it’s going to be really cool to see how they re-imagine and reinvent some of those tropes.
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
However many years later, 40 years later, something like that. I was terrified of horror movies, much like you were Jordan. Um, I, in fact, it wasn’t as horror movies.
Like Halloween was the worst time of year for me because, because like I was scared of skeletons. Oh no. I don’t remember where it started, but I do remember watching, I don’t remember what show it was and there was like some kind of dance number and it was all these people in, in, in, in skeleton costumes dancing and I had nightmares for ages.
So for me, Halloween was, was kind of terrible because everybody had skeletons on. Oh yeah. Um, and so I just mostly stayed away from, from, from horror movies in general.
Yeah. It’s as I’ve gotten older that I find that I am more interested in horror movies, but certain kind horror movies. Yeah.
Sure. Um, I like the horror movies that leave something to the imagination. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. And those ones, and those ones tend to be, uh, better crafted in general. Uh, when you can’t show everything you want to show, you’re, you’re forced to be more creative about, about how you, how you do it.
Um, uh, and also because the fear isn’t when you see the monster, like, you know, warts and all, it’s, it’s, it’s what’s behind the door. It’s that feeling of dread. I think of, you know, like Blair Witch Project or, or, or Paranormal Activity, these things that sort of like reinvented the wheel for, uh, for horror nowadays.
And a lot of that is like this sort of concept of found footage. But the other part of it is that they, they couldn’t show you anything and they relied entirely on your ability to psych yourself out. And humans are unbearably good at doing that.
Like we’re so attuned to sensing the pattern and, and seeing something wrong that all you have to do is like wave your hand suddenly and you will, you know, like unsettle five people at once. Yeah. Yeah.
We’re incredibly, and in the theatre sound is so important. And cause you know, we, there are things that we can’t do in theatre. We can’t be closeups and things like that.
But like, I’ve been involved with productions, uh, one of, uh, of, of Macker’s for, in fact, where the snapping of balsa wood was super effective and making an entire audience just lose their shit. Um, can you tell me what, what are the shows that, that, that are in the ghostlight project this year? So, uh, as I said, there’s five shows. The first piece is, uh, called fortune’s fool by Jared Michael Delaney.
Um, it is, should I describe the, I don’t really want to give up, but no spoilers. Is there anything, is there like a tease that you can give what it’s about? So fortune’s fool is, uh, what happens when you’re at a carnival and, uh, and you know, for some people, that’s all you have to say. Cause a carnival somehow in our psyches, and I’m not quite sure why this is a carnival can be a terrifying place.
Although I want to be clear, there are no clowns just because I know a lot of people are like clowns are my line in the sand. I can’t do clowns. That’s kind of like, to me, that’s hilarious.
There’s so many people who are like, I can’t do clowns. And, and yet most clowns are not what they’re thinking. I guess there’s this sort of like uncanny Valley of, of, of like clowns themselves.
I also think for, you know, the generation we are, um, you know, sort of cutting your teeth on the, um, on the Tim Curry. Yeah. I was about to say Tim Curry, Tim Curry and it sort of ruined the entire generation.
And now with the remakes, maybe, maybe we should stop doing that. Like Ryan Murphy, like clowns are just, you know, you can’t really do them the way. And also because like, this is going to get like weirdly political or whatever, but like so much of like, so much of like, uh, like clowns and the sort of stereotypical clown, uh, what, that we look at is based off of like very sort of like racist pastiches and things like that, that is designed to make you inherently uncomfortable, like to laugh at or to, you know, it’s, it’s like, Oh, that is other than, than who I am.
And it’s very much the circus clown. Yeah. Because there’s the European clown, which is not like that.
Yeah. Nobody, nobody like is like, you trained at Lecoq. No, no, no.
But of course, if you say that I studied clown at Lecoq, everybody’s suddenly people are like, Oh no. So there are no clowns in, uh, Fortune’s rule. There’s no, there’s no clowns in the ghostlight anthology.
Okay. Excellent. So if you were worried, no clowns.
Yes. Don’t come, don’t not come see the show because you’re worried about clowns. There’s a titled Swallow by Katerina Watson, um, which is a beautiful piece.
Uh, it’s sort of more grounded in real world, uh, about, about, you know, the horror of being a person attached to somebody powerful who is abusive. Um, it’s, I think the most timely of all of the pieces we have, it’s very sort of mired in, uh, the cultural canon of, of the Me Too movement and, and what’s going on in the world. And a very, um, a very well-crafted look at, at the real world horror of that.
Shines the light on some of the victims of those people that you don’t necessarily think of that aren’t the first people on your mind, I guess. Yeah. And there are three more.
There are three more. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh, so after, after, uh, Swallow, we have Lapse, which is, uh, written by Jake Martin. He’s our only local Toronto. He’s our only super, uh, super local, uh, friend.
Um, and it’s, it’s also brilliant. Uh, it’s, uh, looking at a relationship between, um, two people and memory and, uh, how we navigate our inner demons. That’s well put.
Interesting. Interesting. I, I, I love that piece.
I shouldn’t like, I do love all the pieces, but like Swallow and Lapse are like very, very close to my heart. Um, Lapse, because I was absolutely breathless reading it. Uh, I hope Jake listens to this and like gives himself a pat on the back, you know? Um, and, uh, I’m working with like these two beautiful actors.
I have Michael Sutherland and, um, Jacob Free playing, um, the, uh, these two, these two people who are, and it’s a love story. I think, um, it’s very tragic, but it’s a love story and both of them are just so on board with that. And I think that that’s so important when crafting a horror.
The reason why slasher films aren’t scary for most people is you don’t care about these victims, so to speak. They’re just kind of like, oh, you know, oh, they died. I don’t know what they died.
Um, I mean, in a slasher movie, a lot of the fun is like, who’s going to die first. How are they going to die? What’s going to happen? Yeah. You know? Um, whereas like Laps is definitely, it’s about their love story and their relationship, um, and what gets in the way of that.
And next, and next we have The Sum of Your Experience by Trace Crawford. Trace Crawford. Trace Crawford.
Yeah. Um, it’s, uh, hey, oh, uh, I’m, I want to say street vampires, um, but that confuses people. Uh, yeah, it’s, uh, it’s a great look at sort of like depersonalization, uh, and losing, losing what makes you, you.
The sort of setup is, um, a thief approaches a man and asks him to put all of his stories and experiences in the bag. Hmm. He mugs, like she mugs him for his life story.
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s just about who we are if we don’t have our stories. Wow. Okay.
Yeah. And the last one is Sit Down, Daisy. Do you remember the name of the person that wrote Sit Down, Daisy? I’m forgetting.
Uh, McDermott. Grant McDermott. Grant McDermott.
Thank you. I knew it was with a G. Sorry, Grant. Uh, I did really well on Memories and Realities.
Um, yeah, Grant McDermott wrote Sit Down, Daisy. Uh, Sit Down, Daisy was the first play that I read that I got to a point and I, like, literally I had to put the computer away and I was like, oh, no. Um, and it’s still the, it’s still the, uh, the one that like, when we’re rehearsing it, when we’re going through it, um, you know, one of the actors will say one of his lines and I’m like, uh, no, no, no, no, no.
Full body cringe. Oh, wow. Every time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah.
Uh, Sit Down, Daisy is set in a, in a coffee shop. Okay. And that’s all I’m going to give.
Yeah. All right then. Yeah.
All right then. Um, before I go, there’s usually when I’m talking to people, I, we’re going to talk about the, your, your theatre origin story. Um, but before I do that, um, I do have to say that, that, that Andrew, your, something awful was, I never thought that I could be frightened by a guy standing on a stage telling stories.
Like I did not think that when I heard just like stories and I was like, okay, so this is going to be interesting, but I don’t see how it’s going to be scary. No, it was scary. And I think, you know, I’ve, I’ve talked to you about the moment that where like three people, the two people were sitting, we all like covered our mouths at the same time.
Like I didn’t know that that was even possible. So amazing. I think, um, in terms of that particular piece, um, when you were, how long did that take you to craft? Jordy laughs for a reason.
Um, it was, it was crafted in panic mode, mostly. Okay. It didn’t take very long at all.
Um, I started writing it when we were accepted to the fringe. So early 2018. Okay.
And the rehearsal process, God bless Vince Dioulas, because a solid chunk of what was scary about that was from his direction more so than anything I did as a performer or anything that I did as a writer. Um, he, he made that show scary. Um, but we rehearsed for two weeks tops and very part-time at that.
It was maybe like, that is the busiest man in the world. Um, and we rehearsed maybe a total of 10 hours on it. Wow.
If that, um, but yeah, no, it was, it was panic mode, uh, putting it together for sure. Although a lot of it, a lot of it was sort of like solved by discussion and like, in terms of like crafting the meat of the piece itself. A lot of it was me and Andrew walking home for like 45 minutes discussing, you know, uh, what it is.
And I like, you know, like deciding because like so much of it, it was just like easy because you just had to like phrase, you know, what had happened. Exactly. Cause they’re all like, it’s all stories built out of things that actually happened.
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
And so, yeah, like for like, I’m thinking about the particular moment where three people covered their, their mouths. Uh, Andrew and I crafted that in the Lakeview. Yeah, we did.
Like 11 at 11 at night where it’s like, Ooh, Ooh. Um, you know, and as well, like Andrew crafted a lot of it, just like wandering the streets of Toronto after midnight while I was sleeping. Cause I have to work in the morning.
It’s interesting cause you know, there are, I’ve spoken to a couple of people who, um, they’re a very successful thing they wrote. And so it was quite good. Um, was written like at the last minute.
Um, uh, Sandra Shamus wrote my boyfriend’s vacuum is going to be laundry on the plane to the Edmonton fringe. Amazing. So like this happens now, me, I, I, I have never been able to write quite like that, but panic is an amazing thing that, um, like a deadlines are helpful.
Um, so did you know what you wanted to put? Like before you got into the fringe, did you know what, what kind of story you were going to tell? Not at all. No, I knew you just had a title pretty much. I had a title and because for a couple applications, you have to give them a summary.
So I put something incredibly vague that I could just work around. Um, I thought something wrong was a cool title that was vague enough that I could pretty much attach anything to. Um, I I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to do a solo horror show, but I didn’t necessarily know what that meant until I had to craft it.
Um, it was very late in the process that it became something that wasn’t explicitly fiction. Like I was dealing, I was trying to tell a story or play with this trope or become this character or whatever. And then partway through, it’s just like, I’ve got all these stories.
I might as well just be me, talk about horror movies, talk about why I like them and talk about some scary things I’ve been through. Yeah. Yeah.
Wow. Yeah. Cause the show initially was, was about the roommates.
Yes, it was. It was, uh, like that sort of like middle roommate stuff. It began with centering around, um, Will, I guess who became like a roommate who is like obsessed with, and had a very sort of almost, uh, marble Hornets feel if you know, that sort of like internet age, slender man, like trying to piece together the unreliable narrative.
And then at a certain point, it just, it’s like, what becomes more compelling to be the person you are and talk about the things that you’ve seen. So let’s get into your theatre origin stories. So like, why is it that you make theatre? What is it that, that, that, that has drawn you to it? Cool.
Um, honestly, I’m going to sound like a broken record here. And I discovered this while I was working on something wrong. Like if I go back, the reason that I like to tell stories or that I like to perform theatre or that that’s important to me comes from sitting around the campfire as a kid with my parents out camping, telling ghost stories.
Like if I try to trace back the first time I ever performed or I ever told a story to somebody, that’s where it was. It was just telling scary stories in a campground in the middle of the night. So like, that’s a huge, huge part of it for me.
And then it just kind of was the foregone conclusion from there. Just school plays into, you know, community theatre back home and children’s theatre back home and then into the theatre school. And here we are.
Where was back home? Uh, New Brunswick, St. John, New Brunswick. Okay. Yeah.
Oh yeah. You were, you’re one of the St. John people. Yeah.
Yeah. I remember. Um, and what theatre school did you decide to go to? Fanshawe College.
That’s not one that I hear very often. No, it’s not. Okay.
Um, but what, if I could just ask, what was it? So it’s one thing to be somebody who likes to tell stories. There’s one thing to do plays in high school and community theatre and things like that. We all, lots of people do that.
What was it that made you decide that this was a thing that you could do? I don’t know. I don’t know if it is a thing I can do. I don’t know if I’ve come to that conclusion.
Imposter syndrome is a thing, right? Um, I don’t know. I think I’m going to just sound like I’m real self-deprecating here, but I don’t know what else I can do. Like it was less like, Oh, I’m the best at this.
I am such a great actor. I’m such a great theatre maker. It’s like, well, no, it’s the only thing I’ve spent any time doing for, you know, all of high school.
I need to pick something to do for post-secondary. It’s probably the only thing I’ve ever dedicated myself to, right? Did you have an uncomfortable conversation with your guidance counselor? Nobody at my high school was on board with me as a human. Because I have the experience of going to the guidance counselor and saying like, uh, they’re like, so what do you want to do? And you say that I want to be an actor.
And they give you like, there’s this long silence. They just look at you like, yep. I don’t know what language you speak.
Exactly. My guidance counselor literally Googled theatre programs in Canada in front of me. Yeah.
Um, Jordi, what was, what was your. Yeah. You know, uh, I’m one of those like reprehensible people where it’s hard to like, uh, extricate the theatre from, from me.
Um, I’ve been acting since I was four years old, which is literally not an exaggeration. Um, I, you know, when I, when I was three, I was a big, uh, Barney fan. I really loved watching Barney and they had this thing at the end that was like, you know, oh, the Lions club, if you want to be on Barney, send a tape to, you know, whatever.
Um, and I used to beg and just beg my mom, like, please, please, please like, let’s send a video to, to, to Barney. Let’s like, and of course, you know, my family was like, oh, you know, so cute little, little Jordi wants to meet Barney. And I’m like, no, I, I want to perform like, you know, I want to be there.
And so, um, I grew up in the, in the UK, um, and, uh, the way I, the way I sort of started is I was in dance. I really loved dance. And so I, I was in ballet, I was in tap, I was in jazz, I was just dancing all the time.
Um, and then, uh, there was a like theatre school that ran on weekends called Utree theatre. Um, and they did like a block of like acting, a block of dancing, a block of singing. And it was my entire Saturday and Sunday, like the whole day.
And I like begged, I was like, I gotta be in this, I gotta be in this, I gotta be in this. Um, and so like literally my entire life, it’s been like, okay, I’ve been, I went to school and did the things that I wanted to do. And then I would instantly go to a dance class or, or an acting class or a singing class.
That’s all I had ever done. Um, had my first professional gig when I was seven. Um, you know, I signed to an agent, was like going to commercial castings and things like that.
Um, and then when I was 12, we moved back to Canada, we moved to Flin Flon, Manitoba. And it’s like, well, there goes all of like those classes and things like that. It was, then it was like community theatre and, um, and like dinner theatre and what was available.
So dance completely went away cause there’s no, there’s no dance classes. Um, yeah. And so when it came to like, okay, you have to go to post-secondary or whatever, literally there was no question.
Um, you know, it’s something that I have been doing since I was four years old. It was like, what am I going to do now? Like, and, and beyond that, like, I think that being in this industry, you have a lot of those imposter syndromes and things like that. And there’s definitely times where I’m like, what am I doing? I’m not good enough to be here or whatever.
But, uh, I think at the core of me, I have to know that I am brilliant at what I do. Um, I’m brilliant at theatre and creating it. Um, and so I went off to university of Winnipeg.
I trained classically with there and it was an awful experience. It was just terrible. It really beat the hell out of me.
Um, many theatre schools, a lot of theatre schools do. Yep. Um, and so after like a particularly bad, like final presentation with like, you know, psychopathic professor that was, was, uh, teaching me, I was like, okay, um, I’m going to go to school for graphic design and, you know, funnel my creativity into like a different aspect.
And that very same day, uh, I received a letter from, uh, George Brown. I got a call from Randolph Academy. And then like a week later I was wait-listed for Ryerson and it was just kind of like, Hmm, these all seem to be signs that perhaps I should not quit and become a, uh, graphic designer.
So I ended up going to Randolph, uh, and people were like, Ooh, what was the choice there? And I’m like, uh, literally Randolph’s program is two years straight through. Uh, and I was pretty sure at that time that I was fucking done with like regular theatre. I’m like, I’ll be musical theatre person.
Yeah. Took about like a term and a half at Randolph to realize that. No, no, no, no, no.
I do not want to be in music. But yeah, no, I, I graduated from that and that’s, that’s where I am. Hmm.
Hmm. Um, I was just talking to, uh, uh, uh, Rosanna Saracino. Oh, Rosanna.
I love her. I love her. From what I can tell most of her students do.
Yes. So yeah. Yeah.
And you’ve worked with her on, on, did she, was she involved with Nasty? Yep. She was the director. Um, yeah, no, Rosanna started as a, as a teacher and, and, uh, now I, we’re what like colleagues, co-creators, like we, you know, uh, we, we agree on a lot of stuff stylistically and then, uh, politically, obviously.
Um, and also sort of like Rosanna was the first person like professional in my life to look at me and be like, no, no, no, no, no, you know, you know what you need to do. So just fucking do it kind of thing. Um, yeah.
And, and so that’s a really powerful thing from somebody who’s a teacher to have them say that. Yeah. And I think that’s a rare thing in, in the theatre school.
Yeah. Cause they don’t usually say they’re usually like, be what I need you to be. Oh yeah.
Yeah, exactly. And for me, that’s, uh, that’s the, the wonderful thing about Rosanna is that she’s, she’s a hard ass for sure. She, she knows what she wants and she knows what she wants to create and she’s got incredible vision and I’m like so blessed to have had her as a mentor and to have her as a friend.
Um, because there’s so many things that we just bounce off of each other and, and create together that, that is like magical. And she’s, uh, it’s also, it’s also wonderful because another person who I really consider a mentor and a friend is Dahlia Katz. Um, and they, Dahlia and Rosanna, I would put on the opposite of like the diametric scale of like how they, how they attack things.
I would say that they’re both like kick-ass strong women that you would never want to meet in a dark alley cause they will, they will tear you to shreds. Um, but like in general of process, it’s, uh, to have those, those two people. And, uh, and also the thing that I really respect about them both is that they’re, you know, uh, strong female creators that don’t ever apologize for their opinions or the stuff that they create.
They are brilliant and they know they are brilliant. And that is so rare in theatre makers and especially rare in theatre makers that aren’t men. It’s true.
Yeah. Um, yeah. Dahlia is one of those people that I keep meaning to have on.
She’s like starting something like solar stage, lunar stage. Yeah. They just did.
They just did a number by Carol Churchill. Yeah. Yeah.
Especially when you’ve got like that space. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Um, Andrew, when did you start writing or did you just start writing for something wrong? Yeah. I don’t consider myself a writer.
I’ve always tried to be a writer and I never have the follow through. That was a big part of why I wanted to make something wrong happen. Cause I always have, you know, a first draft of something that I either didn’t finish or can’t be bothered to go back and edit.
And it’s just going to sit there forever. It was a half-baked idea, you know? So no, I’m, I’m, I’m not a writer. I just happened to write a show.
I disagree with you. Okay. I disagree with you.
Great. Although I will say, and then like this is the week for a hat for having specific conversations with people. Somebody, uh, just the other day was sitting, was sitting here and I’m saying, you know, uh, I’m almost an actor.
And I was like, hold on, hold on. Cause Neil Gaiman, um, you know, he has his, his fabulous blog and he answers questions people. And somebody said, when do I consider myself a writer? When can I call myself a writer? He was like, when you say you are.
Yeah. I said the same, it’s the same thing, but when can you say you’re an actor? When you say you are. Sure.
Um, and I know what you mean about, about, about finishing things is I was working on the commandment for eight years, eight years, eight years before I finally said, look, the only way this is going to happen is if I get into a fringe somewhere and I give myself a deadline. Right. And that was when it took, that was when it took.
So, cause I think I probably would still be writing it today. Fair. Yeah.
Um, so what kind of things were you writing before that, before something wrong? Oh, I have so many embarrassing, awful things that I’ve started writing. Um, when I was in theatre school, especially I was heavily, um, influenced by Antonin Artaud and tried to write some plays in that style. So I have a lovely folder that I hope no one ever finds of, um, you know, 20 year old Andrew trying to write theatre of cruelty, which is a whole other kind of cruelty.
Um, if you really want to make sure nobody finds that you’re going to have to, you might want to burn that. Yeah, I probably should. And yet it’s sometimes hard to, I used, I used to destroy things.
Like I would do my first draft and I’d be like, nope, that sucks. And I’d get rid of it. And I so regret that now.
Sure. Yeah. Even though many of those things would be embarrassing to me now.
It’s still like there might be something in there. Yeah. That I could salvage.
Right. Well, there was that fantastic show at the Halifax fringe. That was exactly that.
Evil was this show that, you know, she found in a box that she wrote when she was nine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Made her friends perform it now, which was so funny because it was so just really something that a nine year old wrote.
Well, that would be the thing is that there would be a certain earnestness to it that you can’t manufacture as an adult. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, is, do, is Ghostlight Anthology something you guys would like to see happening yearly? Absolutely. Yeah. How did you find the, the authors that you’re, that you’re, that you’re presenting? So we put out a huge call for submissions in, it was January, I think mid January.
Um, and we just distributed that as widely as possible. We put it up on every writer’s Facebook group we could find. We put it out to horror sites specifically.
Like we got a little spammy with it. Not going to lie. Like we put it out just to make sure everybody in the world could see this call for submissions.
Um, and we got about 350, I think was our number. Wow. Submissions.
So like we got a lot of plays. It was a great response more than we expected. And you guys didn’t read those just like just yourself.
Just the two of us. Just the two of us. Yeah.
To be fair, we didn’t read, uh, every single play ourselves. It wasn’t like I read 350, he read 350. We had a system where we would read, uh, plays and like for the first sort of like wave, it was like, if, if it was possible to do this, it wasn’t even like really necessarily focusing on quality or what we’re trying to say.
As long as it wasn’t like reprehensible or unbearably bad or completely just not what we asked for. Um, uh, we would like mark it in like green and then we would read whatever, whatever ones the other person marked as green. So that way we culled a lot of the things that just work useful to us from the beginning.
And then, and then it was a process of whittling that down. And once we whittled that down, we passed those scripts off to a few trusted people and got their opinions and then curated the final selection. I think once we had it down to about 11 or 12, we distributed them a little wider to get a second opinion on them, which was so valuable.
Oh yeah. Because at that point we’d been looking at like all of these plays for months. Like my eyes were like going square.
Yeah. Well, there’s a certain point at which you’re like, you, you lose perspective. Oh yeah.
Yeah. For sure. There’s, there’s a part around like, you know, 270 where I was like, I hate plays.
I hate theatre. I hate every single person who sent us anything. Although by that point, the cream rises, I think like it sort of turned into this like gray wash of static by the end.
Cause like we got a lot of plays that were just solidly good for the most part. Like they were fine. There wasn’t anything wrong with them.
They just weren’t necessarily stand out incredible. But then both laps and sit down. Daisy came in really late in the process and just Sean like diamonds.
It’s like, this is what we’re looking for. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s interesting because, um, as you said that I was thinking about being on the other side of the audition table as well. Right. Um, where after a day of auditions, it mostly becomes a wash and there’s lots of people who were okay.
And you remember people who were really good and you remember people who were really bad. Yeah. And that’s pretty much the only things you can keep track of at that point.
Pretty much. Um, so at that point you were giving it to other people and you got their feedback and you, you whittled it down to, to a final five. Um, is there a, uh, like, is there a particular theme that you find is, is rolling through the anthology? There really is.
It wasn’t necessarily deliberate. So at least on my end in the selection process, it wasn’t deliberate on Anderson, but yeah, I’ll let you handle that one then. I didn’t realize that we did a full read through.
Okay. Yeah. This is me Machiavellian behind the scenes.
Uh, yeah, no, they all have an aspect of like depersonalization. Okay. Right.
Um, the concept of like losing yourself and losing your identity. Um, I think that we are in a time in the world where a lot of us are being dehumanized, um, and depersonalized. And, uh, I think the overlying theme for that is, is, you know, the fates that are worse than death.
Hmm. Interesting. Um, so, um, when, what, what, what, first off where, where, where’s it being presented? The box.
Oh, right. You mentioned that before. That’s a creepy little.
Absolutely. Which was the point. Okay.
We’re planning to have some fun with that too. Yeah. We want it to be a fully immersive experience.
Like a large portion of like doing horror and doing horror theatre is that we’ve kind of like stopped ourselves from being like, Oh, come see our play. Come see our theatre. You know, like, because the general public get real turned off by the T word.
They’re like, Oh no, boring. I don’t want to. Um, and, and billing it as like a live horror experience because we want to undo the sort of like cultural contract of going to the theatre.
We’re not going to do programs. We’re not going to do like you come in and like, there’s like the music playing and you’re like looking at the set and you want it to be, we want like from the second you get to that creepy murder alley for you to be invested in the experience going through and, and getting there and, and, and that you don’t have this like wall of like, here we are. Now we’re going to tell you to turn off your phones and Oh, by the way, we stole this land.
Like, you know, I guess that, I mean the, the, it’s, it’s funny how the calling of the alive horror experience, um, just to like, which is what it is, but it’s also a theatre, um, lets you sort of like get away from what people are expecting. I’ve often wanted to do like, just to do like a sci-fi show and just put in 3d on it just because we are of course, you know, but because the things that, that are the trappings of film that seem that I think draw people in a little bit like, wait, wait, what is that? What is that? So, um, and again, we’re talking about getting people out to see stuff away from the Netflix, it’s experiences that they need to see. Um, and it opens on 18th, October 18th, October 18th.
So good Halloween timing, exactly. Closed on Halloween night. Oh, perfect.
And it’s a Wednesday. So it’s like, not like people got much to do. No, it’s true.
That’s great. Well, thank you so much. You guys have been awesome.
Thank you for having us. This has been a homebody productions production.
