Alexandra Simpson and the Terra Incognita Collective

Alexandra Simpson is an interdisciplinary theatre artist with a background in dance, music, documentary, play writing, installation and directing. She has created and produced a number of audience-immersive and site-specific shows that focus on the role of the individual within collective society. Alexandra is interested in how artistic practice and activism converge and how degrowth environmentalism can be applied to consumer cultures. She is on the board for Common Boots Theatre (formerly Theatre Columbus and a member of their Devised Theatre Lab.

Terra Incognita = unknown or unexplored territory. We live in a world in which economic and personal growth is a prerequisite to being human. The alternative lies in what has yet to be explored. Confined by what we are told and know as the good life, we must choose, will we degrow on our own initiative or will we continue until the biosphere forces us to stop? This is a site specific performance documentary work that involves collective creation and theatre mask technique to explore our complicity within growth culture and the potential degrowth alternative. The work uses interviews from researchers at Research & Degrowth collected from prior research, the collective’s own experiences creating the piece, improvisation, documentation of pop-up performances around the city of Toronto (we have a performance coming up this Sunday at the Indie Exchange) and community partnerships with Greenpeace and Toronto350.org.

www.terraincogco.org
Twitter: @terra_incogco
Facebook: facebook.com/degrowthcollective

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http://www.stageworthypodcast.com
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Transcript

Welcome to episode 22 of Stageworthy. I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. On Stageworthy, I interview people who make theatre, actors, directors, playwrights, and more, and talk to them about everything from why they chose the theatre to their work process, and anything in between.

Alexandra Simpson is an interdisciplinary theatre artist with a background in dance, music, documentary, playwriting, installation, and directing, and the founder of the Terra Incognita Collective. She was joined by collective members Chris Widden, Kevin Wong, Elizabeth Staples, and Morgan Johnson to talk about their upcoming show, Terra Incognita, running from June 3rd to June 6th in Toronto. You can find Stageworthy on Facebook and Twitter at StageworthyPod, and you can find their website at stageworthypodcast.com. If you like what you hear, I hope you’ll subscribe on iTunes or Google Music or whatever podcast app you use, and consider leaving a comment or rating.

I’m Chris Widden. And I’m Kevin Matthew Wong. And you guys are preparing for a mask show.

Is that, like, just simplifying it, that you’re doing a mask performance. Can you tell me a little bit about the performance that you’re preparing for? Yeah. Um, I’ll start, and you guys fill in.

So the show that we’re preparing for is called Terra Incognita. That’s probably Elizabeth. Hey, come on in, girl.

I’m Elizabeth Staples. Nice to meet you, Elizabeth. I’m Phil.

Hey. This will be a little bit chaotic, but we’ll just keep it going. So the performance we’re preparing for is called Terra Incognita by the Terra Incognita Collective, and it’s a collectively created documentary mask work about degrowth environmentalism and our complicity within growth culture.

So it’s a combination of interviews that I took when I lived with the degrowth community in Vancouver, France. It’s a combination of our explorations together as a group of looking through the history of growth culture and our own personal experiences. And then we’ve also gone out and done some pop-up performances around the city of Toronto.

And so that’s also being recorded, and it kind of acts as, like, a media outlet within the piece itself, these pop-up performances. Now, when you say growth culture, can you tell me exactly what that means? It’s not a phrase that I’m familiar with. Can somebody tell me what that is? Well, I guess I’ll give my understanding of it, because a lot of these, a lot of the things we discuss and degrowth just itself is something that is not always the same for everybody.

It’s defined from their own perspective. And to me, growth culture is, it’s not like we’re in growth culture. We have this idea that everything in society, the economy and everything about us, has to always be exponentially growing, you know? When really there’s just not enough for everyone to always be at this huge peak of growth, you know? Like, our economy must always be in a surplus, and there must not be poverty.

But if that was the case, there just wouldn’t be anything left to take at a certain point. Yeah, a growth culture is a capitalist society based on GDP growth, and everything that we do is controlled by money and the power that money brings. So I’ve, of course, heard of documentary theatre before, but the idea of mixing documentary theatre with mask is something that I haven’t heard of before.

Me neither. Tell me a little bit about how these two fit together. Yeah, so there’s this great quote by Frederick Jameson, and it says, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism, something like that.

And there’s lots of articles talking about the lack of imagination that we have as a culture to imagine alternatives. So the cool thing about mask is that it expands that imaginary, and we can begin to explore alternatives, alternative personalities, alternative thoughts, even in the artists who are underneath the mask. So it’s really freeing in that way.

And then it also takes, we take inspiration from street performers, and there’s this one great street performer called Natasha Tisakos, and she says that when she’s in a mask, she has relationships with people that she doesn’t have without the mask. So when doing audience immersive theatre, it’s also a really cool tool to kind of extend the hand of immersion to your audience members, perhaps in a less intimidating way, inviting them for that hour or whatever to do something, to act in a way, to think in a way that’s not unlike themselves in the day-to-day life that we would experience in girl culture. So that’s kind of the idea.

And more practically, the way that we work documentary theatre and mask is that we would read articles, and we would have discussions about certain topics and about our experiences living in Kantekesh. And then we would put on these masks and do different mask techniques to get into character. And then not really taking like direct inspiration, but just like after having those discussions, letting that influence the characters that we build and the situations that we build, but it was all through improvisation.

On the theme of alternatives too, like we have two very alternative worlds to each other, but also very alternative from our own world. So we have sort of the worst possible scenario world to start off, which we call the growth world. And then we have the sort of best possible scenario world, which is the degrowth world, which is what some academics wish could happen or hope some anticipate will happen inevitably, and some don’t.

And I think that’s really interesting. And the way that we sort of explored as well, we started with the world that was more familiar to ours, which was actually the world that was the worst possible scenario world. And the way that we got to the best possible scenario world is actually the community that Alex visited and looking at actual interviews.

So I guess that’s another element of the documentary element. We’re looking at real people and our first masks in the first half of the show are abstractions. They’re people who exist in a fantastical alter universe.

But what’s interesting about the second part of the show is we inhabit real people and we’re listening to their actual text. And as much as possible, we’re trying to stay true to what they say, the cadence of how they speak to. And also that it’s sort of international community that Alex interacted with, which was really fascinating too.

Every one of us sort of puts out a different accent, not sort of, but we have very different accents too. And they all disagree, but agree. And it’s wonderful.

Were you all masked performers before you came to this or was this something new to you? I’m trained in devised and physical theatre. So like movement based theatre, physical theatre was something that I was very familiar with. I had never done mask work before.

So it was the first part of our process. The first like three or four months that we were together was very, very much about getting to know these masks that Alex had created and using, we kind of just did trial and error about the techniques that we used and what we found was the best way to create a character from these things. Yeah.

Yeah. I myself went to school, Alex and I both went to Ryerson and one of the faculty members there who used to be chair a bit, but is still working there taught us mask. His name is Perry Schneiderman and he’s a student of the cock.

And so he brought that technique over. And so in school, we had done, I guess, part of a semester with mask and I personally had done one performance, but other than that, this is my first venture back. For me, my experience with mask has been with like neutral mask through my training.

So it was quite different to be given the agency to do something that wasn’t neutral in mask and also to speak in a mask that was kind of odd and really freeing actually in these last few weeks, it’s been really, really great. But what brought me to the project was actually the idea of environmental issues in theatre. For the last few years, I’ve been working with some collaborators on environmental issues theatre that looks quite different from this, but taking this vantage has been quite a good experience.

So yeah, I did it in school and I loved it. And then I trained with Sonny Norris, I did like a six month character mask workshop, just loved it. And then I recently had a gig, I’ve been back two times now, I had a gig in Calgary with Swallow Bicycle Theatre, and we’re creating a mask piece that’s supposed to be produced in 2017.

So it’s kind of like we went for two weeks and then we went for three weeks. But then, yeah, for me, it’s my first time needing masks, a bunch of people in masks, it’s my first time making masks. So it’s been a lot of trial and error for myself too.

And then also trying to figure out ways to converge documentary and this really creative, liberating mask work and how to make those two connect. So it’s been a lot of experimentation, which has been quite wonderful. Did you learn or is it completely trial and error? It’s been trial and error.

What’s his name? Dave Nez is a mask maker from Illinois. And so I was just looking at websites and books and stuff. And I saw his technique and he used paper bags and wood glue to make his mask.

So I was like, oh, that’s cool. I can like use all my LCBO bags around my house for my roommates and myself and recycle the paper. So I also tried to make masks that came from recycled material, trying to stick with the theme of environmentalism within the things we create as well.

But yeah, like my some of my first masks or my first mask wasn’t so good. So I gave it a rhinoplasty and it’s now a character within the beast named Craig. So but it’s also this like kind of losing the fear of like cutting into them because I eventually I learned like, oh, even if I cut into it, I can just rebuild the nose or, you know, if I screw up that badly, I can, I can fix it.

So. Now, I’m curious, two of you mentioned Ryerson. And you mentioned that you studied device theatre.

And where? So other than Ryerson, you studied device theatre? Yeah. At Humber College. Yeah.

And because I’m always curious about what one of the things that I like to explore is where people started working in theatre and what their journey there was. It’s hard with a group, but I do I do want to talk a little bit about that. Why don’t we start with Alexandra and we’ll talk about just tell me a little bit about how you came to theatre, how you discovered theatre, and then maybe a little bit about how that relates to mask and all around.

This is good for me too. Well, I was either going to go to school for something like biology because I was always interested in the human body and also nature stuff. And or I was going to go to theatre school and I wound up getting into Ryerson, which was the school of my choice.

And so I went there. So that’s where it kind of began. But I was I was I guess I was very, very shy as a kid and had a lot of social anxiety.

So for me, theatre was a place where I could like talk to people with a purpose. And so and now I don’t have those same anxieties. So it really helped me get over that hump.

And then similarly for like I think the big turning point for me in theatre school, which is why I’ve continued to pursue kind of mask and clown stuff was when Leah Cherniak came and did a clown course with me or with our group in third year. And that was a huge turning point because I was like, Oh, this is fun. It’s not stressful.

And it’s fun to create. And I finally felt the joy of silly instead of so serious. Yeah.

So yeah, so that was it for me. And then I’m actually doing my master’s in documentary media, which is what part of this is for. And that’s been great because I graduated from theatre school and I had this certain set of skills, but I felt very limited in terms of what I could talk about.

And the issues that I felt passionately about, I didn’t feel like I was well enough informed to actually do it. So what this master’s program has done for me is given given me two years to like sit down and research and really figure out what good research is and then have the confidence to bring together this wonderful group of people and to talk about these issues within a group. So that’s been this is like my project.

That’s really cool. Now, before theatre school, what was it that introduced you to theatre? Do you remember like what brought you to that? I mean, I was in the performing arts program at O’Neill Collegiate in Oshawa and a superstar by no means. And I actually found it quite frustrating because I never like I was always like the girl who got kind of put in the bag in the So like, damn, I hate this.

And then I, you know, had no hopes of getting into theatre school, but I still wanted to do it. And I guess I danced and I play piano and stuff. So I guess arts was always in my background.

And so just kind of pushing the suction and really it was getting into Ryerson theatre school that was like, okay, maybe, maybe I should do this. So. Um, so it was all very just like instinctual for me.

I grew up in the 90s. So of course, Disney movies were like, really my, I consider my first introduction to theatre because I would, it was just instinct. I would act along.

I’d pick a character whenever I’d watch a movie and I would act along. And now I know all the words to literally all the movies still. It’s just ingrained in me.

And so it was just instinctual. So my mom saw that I was doing that naturally and she put me into ballet, but then I was mad that I couldn’t sing. So then she put me into musical theatre.

Um, and then I started doing musical theatre and I was like, I really liked dancing, but I was never a dancer per se. Like I would, I could never do a grand jeté. Like, yeah, it was never that.

And then I went to arts high school as well. And, um, I was the brown noser. I was like, I was totally teacher’s pet.

Cause like that was the only part of school that I was actually good at was the acting stuff. I don’t do other stuff. Um, I’m good at talking, not necessarily writing.

So after that, it was just the only school, the only thing that I wanted to pay money for in post-secondary to get an education was theatre. There was nothing else I would have really gone for. Um, and I got into Humber theatre school and it was the absolute perfect match for me because, um, they, yeah, they’re focused mainly on physical theatre and devised work.

Um, there is some classical training as well. Um, but I definitely clung on to Grotowski work and Lecoq’s work and, um, Clown and Buffon and things like that. Yeah.

Uh, for me, I mean, when I was young, my parents really only ever introduced me to musical theatre. That’s all they ever wanted to see. So that was like, it’s my introduction to stage.

And then come high school, we’re going downtown to see professional productions of plays. And I’m going, Oh, there’s other stuff. And, uh, and so then, and then it was like, I just felt like I just felt at home on stage, like, and theatre was my community, you know, like it was my way into finding community.

Um, and, and then Ryerson was, uh, you know, where I started to feel like I could take this seriously and professionally, um, as for mass work, uh, what, like when we were introduced to mass work with Perry, um, I saw such a huge opportunity for reaching those places inside yourself that you normally get to, uh, as an actor, like a young man could play an old woman and it could be a very real, very convincing, very heartwarming, whatever, like whatever it needs to be performance. And I would even sometimes go to mass classes that were not in my year. Um, you know, in, in our busy schedule, if I could and, and watch, because like you see these people and you see this like young girl playing this completely, like you would never suspect they had the ability to perform that way, like, or that kind of person or that aspect of themselves.

And I think it brings that out. So I loved that part of it. That really drew me to mass.

Um, yeah. Uh, what brought me to theatre? Uh, I didn’t like intend to go to theatre school initially. Um, initially I, I, my parents always put me in music and it was so regimented and I had to play an instrument and it was so, it didn’t fit and I didn’t practice and whatever.

Um, but my, my aunts would bring me to theatre shows downtown. And, um, so I guess I just started auditioning for like school shows and stuff like that when I was a kid. Um, and that was really fun.

And I think that’s, it was an excuse to leave class in the daytime. Um, it was an excuse to sing and dance and do stuff like that. Uh, but I was really convinced I was going to go to school for environmental science, super, super convinced.

Uh, and then I, I, I went to the campus at Guelph and realized Guelph wasn’t for me. So that’s how I actually ended up at U of T. Um, and so I thought the other thing that I was really interested in was international relations. Um, so I went, uh, for international relations and I think also like a lot of my history was about like disagreeing with things that were happening, uh, in Markham where I grew up.

Um, we took part in not protesting, but speaking to this project, uh, this bill that was called the food belt and it was to try to stop development of, uh, above a certain street in Markham. Um, and going to the town hall meetings about that was super eye-opening in terms of how many different perspectives there were. This was farmers livelihoods.

They couldn’t get any of the Canadian labor. They had to get all of their foreign labor from Jamaica. Uh, farmers were being offered a million dollars, sorry, a hundred million dollars for the land to make, uh, basically cookie cutter houses on the best farmland in Canada.

It was shocking. Uh, and you would see these giant piles of death in Markham. Once you pull up the top soil, the soil can’t grow anything again.

Right. Um, so that was a big part of it too. So, um, in, in first year I was in IR and I was thinking about maybe pursuing public policy, but then I also took one drama course and that led to the drama center.

And there’s a beautiful drama community at U of T. Collectively, we mount something like 25 plays a year. Uh, plus yeah, anywhere from like nine to 12 original productions at every U of T drama festival. It’s a beautiful community.

So that really brought me into it. And, um, so then eventually I got into the theatre program there and in the second year, a friend and I were like, we really don’t think that our acting training is really connecting to our sort of activist environmental beliefs. So we founded a theatre company called Broadleaf Theatre and we do environmental issues work through there.

And that’s really informed my practice going forward. And like what I’m interested in devised work has come through that. Yeah.

And producing work has come through that too. So yeah, that’s what I’m interested in. Now you guys, I think all have graduated from theatre school far more recently than I did.

I graduated in 1993. Um, and at the time that I was in theatre school, nobody talked about creating our own theatre. We were prepared for, um, go to the audition, get the job, go on to the next, go to the next audition, get the job.

And that would be our careers. And it’s only as time goes on, it has become more important for self-producing. We knew a fringe of course, but it wasn’t a big deal.

Um, and, and self-created work wasn’t a big deal. Was when you guys were in school, is it, was that more of what they were talking about? Or were they, is it something that you just had to learn to do? Yes and no. Um, and I guess it depends on the, on the, on the program.

I would say personally, like very little, we did have one, uh, class, a creative writing class that would eventually, uh, culminate in our fourth year with a week or a week and a half of plays that were created by our fourth year students. Um, and, and then you had to produce but you got tons of support is the thing. And really you put on these plays at no cost.

Right. So you didn’t get, you got some experience of like, okay, so what do we need? But things like your venue was paid for, lights paid for, all the people involved were students. So it was directed by a student, written by a student, performed by students almost always.

And, uh, and like costumes, you would just, oh, what is available that’s not being used by the school you could use. And so the budget for it would be like, you know, not a lot. Yeah.

So like you learn not as much, but, um, I, and I, I wish, I wish we had learned more because I think there’s a big shift. Uh, like the indie theatre is much more becoming much more, uh, respected community, um, and legitimate professional community because so many people are really singing for their supper, um, out there and are not as secure. So they’re putting on their, like work from their heart.

Uh, and I think that’s, I mean, I could be wrong, but the shift that’s going to be taking over eventually because, you know, how often can you see the same plays done by the same company? I think we’re seeing more interesting work being done in more spaces with, and there are more available spaces to work in that aren’t the spaces that you’re going to pay like half your budget just for the rental. Yeah. I’m seeing more storefront theatres.

Humber is a very particular program where they do mainly focus on self-produced work because it’s also a really new, like I know Ryerson and UT, they’ve been around for like a really, really long time. Humber’s only less than 20 years old almost. Um, so they have a huge, huge focus on self-produced writing and different forms of devising, which, um, I was super grateful for because I’m, I’m actually more confident creating my own piece than I am going in for a Shakespeare audition.

Um, and cause I really don’t have any interest in Shakespeare at all. I’ve spent more time in the last 10 years, uh, creating my own work than I have been auditioning for anything else. And site-specific work too.

They teach you how to, um, create around your space, using the space to influence what you’re doing. Cause I, yeah, I have a huge interest in guerrilla theatre as well. Yeah.

I think the proscenium arch is like slowly evaporating. I really wish there had been a more extensive class on grant writing. Yeah.

I think everybody can say that. It’s an embarrassing thing. Like, uh, when you’re starting out, not knowing, like, especially, you know, like, I mean, there is a huge cottage industry that surrounds like learning to write and make a lot of money teaching other people how to write, but it’s certainly a skill.

I know we were joined late by somebody. How do I bring you in? I don’t know if this is like, no, no, your name is Morgan. Morgan.

Yeah. And what are you, what are you doing in, in, with, with the production? Um, I’m an actor creator performer. And what’s, I mean, I’ve jumped in with a bunch of people about what their background is and where they, how they came to theatre.

Um, let’s throw that, that question to you. Sure. Um, so how far back should I go? What was your first, like, how did you know, how did you first get, like, what was your first exposure to theatre and how did you know that it was going to be a thing for you? Um, well I was extraordinarily shy as a child, like would not speak to anyone, um, if they weren’t my mom and, and then, but my sister was pretty outgoing and we were homeschooled.

So we were, or unschooled, like we didn’t have curriculum. We were just pretty much like playing and discovering ourselves outside and stuff. Um, so we played a lot of, uh, storytelling and make-believe games and that was like my entry into theatre.

So we would make movies and, and make up stories and that pretty much do that all day long. And then I was in drama classes and theatre programs. And then I went to an arts high school and then I went to theatre school.

And, and then after theatre school, I was trying to try and figure out how to fuse like politics and things like that into theatre. Like if I’m trained to be able to like communicate these stories really well, what am I communicating? And if I don’t know what that is, then I’m pretty much a puppet. Yeah.

So, um, I started kind of trying to create my own work, um, around environmental issues. Um, and then now I’m now doing my master’s in environmental studies at York. Um, and it’s a very interdisciplinary program there.

Sorry, I just was biking. Um, it’s a really interdisciplinary program. So, um, there’s a lot of encouragement for like using theatre and the arts, um, kind of like any different form of art.

So there’s like musicians and painters and, um, to, to incorporate, um, different studies that you might be interested in with the arts or doing arts-based forms of research. So I’m looking at like, um, how human whale and human ocean relationships can speak to larger issues of environmental justice and how those can be communicated and discussed through theatre. Have you done math before? Yes.

Um, so my high school actually had a pretty strong focus on math work because, um, one of the main drum teachers was a math performer. And then in theatre school also, there was, there was a lot of advances on that. Now I know that we only have, uh, uh, a half hour of progress because you guys are cutting into your rehearsal time.

We’re so close. Just quickly talk about, uh, you know, the performance is coming up soon. When is it, where can people see it? Um, yeah.

So I, it, the performance is Terran Cognita. It’s at, um, the Warehouse, which is 10 Busy Street. It’s at, uh, just at Queen and Logan.

Um, if you see a Starbucks and a penguin, uh, sandwich shop, you’re in the right place. Um, and it’s June 3rd to the 6th at 8 PM. And we have an additional matinee at 2.30. And the performance is about an hour long.

Um, you’ll be walking and sitting, so wear comfortable shoes. Um, and then it’s followed by, um, a discussion with the local activists or artists, um, and with some food sharing. So there’s, um, three of the nights, we ask that people bring some kind of food item.

And we have a volunteer chef who, while, um, you’re watching the show is in here, uh, preparing some food for us to share together and talk about stuff. And then, uh, the other two nights are sponsored by Chocosoul, um, which is a fair trade chocolate place. Um, so they will be here for two nights and help, uh, they lead a discussion one night on ecological businesses.

And, um, they’re just here to serve chocolate the other night. Sounds good. Well, thank you guys so much for taking some time to talk to me today.

Really appreciate it.