Sex T-Rex II

Following their 2015 Fringe hit SwordPlay (Winner, Just For Laughs Best Comedy Award), Sex T-Rex is raising the bar with their most ambitious show yet. Masters of genre parody, this year their sights are set on Post Apocalyptic mayhem in Wasteland. This action-packed thrill-ride makes its Toronto premiere at the Randolph Theatre from July 1 to July 9, 2016.

Also joining in: Kyle Allatt of The House of Style’s The No Bull$#!% History of Invention also playing at the Toronto Fringe.

Sex T-Rex
https://sextrexcomedy.com/
@sextrex

Kyle Allatt
http://the-house-of-style.tumblr.com/
@houseostyle
@KyleAllatt

Stageworthy:
http://www.stageworthypodcast.com
Twitter @stageworthyPod
Facebook: http://facebook.com/stageworthyPod

Transcript

Welcome to episode 28 of Stageworthy, I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. Did you get a chance to listen to my first ever Fringe Roundup posted on Saturday? If not, make sure you go back and listen to my roundtable discussion with Nisha Coleman, Laura McCallum, Scott Garland, and David Kingsmill as we talk about the first few days of Fringe. We’ll do another roundtable discussion on the last Saturday of the Toronto Fringe to catch up with the group and see how their Fringe has been going.

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. Sex T-Rex’s Connor Bradbury, Caitlin Morrow, and Joseph Edelman talk about the newest Sex T-Rex show, Wasteland, at the Toronto Fringe and are joined by Kyle Allitt of the No Bullshit History of Invention, also playing at the Toronto Fringe. You can find Stageworthy on Facebook and Twitter at stageworthyPod and you can find the 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.

Oh sure, oh sure, yeah. I don’t think Joe is here the last time you interviewed us. It was Danny who was replacing Joe during our run at the storefront.

Joe killed Danny. Well you know, that’s the only way to get rid of Danny, isn’t it? It’s one of the best ways. Among the best.

Joe, if you want to go get yourself a wine glass, you could help yourself to this rose. I have a glass full of wine. Okay, well when you finish that you can put some rose in it.

Yeah. We’re learning lines off that. We’re still learning lines.

Okay. We just did a run in Montreal and we’re learning lines now. Okay, well I mean that’s, how did Montreal go? It was really fun.

The audiences were amazing. The show went well. It was just, we didn’t know our lines and improvised most of the show.

I knew because I was talking to people after nobody knew that. I was like, oh yeah, we got rid of that line. Somebody was like, what are you talking about? I was like, oh, he didn’t know what we were saying.

No, and then so what would happen is sometimes major plot points would get, because we kept changing the script every day, so none of us bothered to learn our lines, so we were like, oh beats, we know the beats, and then sometimes we’d miss a beat and then sometimes a major plot point would be missed and then it was like, oh my god. So how did you deal with a major plot point that gets missed? Yeah, you know, you keep improvising. Later people say, hey, this didn’t make sense.

And you go, oh, right, no one mentioned it. That’s the process of a new show for us in particular, is that when it starts off, it’s, there’s so many ideas that we want to relate and until we start doing it, we don’t know how good a job we’ve done of that. Do you, even with things we thought were super clear art and things we thought weren’t clear at all, people are like, oh, you mentioned that too many times.

I’m like, oh, okay, good to know. Do you, I mean, we talked last time because the last shows we talked about, those were scripted and this one, it sounds like, oh, it’s scripted. Okay, okay.

It’s just, it’s, we were earlier in the process when we were performing it in front of real people, audience style. We were just way delayed this time getting this show on its feet. And so we actually ended up more or less workshopping it to be actually all in front of humans.

So, uh, that’ll teach you what works. Yeah, it sure did. And, and, and so the script was in flux the whole time.

And because of that, we ended up never really hammering down the lines specifically. Um, sometimes entire scenes would be cut and we’d have to make up for it on the spot, on stage. And they’re, you get there and you don’t know, like 60 minute time slot.

It was around 90 minutes. So let’s cut this scene and that scene and then hopefully that’s good. Make some good guesses about what doesn’t need to be cut.

Yeah, no. And we were three minutes over. But I think our previews are almost always about 90 minutes.

And then we generally have about a week to cut that down to an hour. It’s not as hard as you think it would be. Like when you have to cut things, you’ll find out.

You’ll find what, what, what, yeah. Um, so you were, and for this show, you were doing all of that basically in front of an audience. Uh, well, we did the first, like we cut it down to half an hour-ish just through tightening and through making.

Cutting huge scenes. Yeah. And then once you do it, you realize like, I don’t really miss it.

And sometimes you do, and then you find a way to make it back in. During the Montreal run, we had to cut a scene that we didn’t really want to, but just story-wise, it made sense to cut. Like we didn’t need it in there.

Um, and so we cut it and by the end of the run, we were able to work it back in because we saved enough time earlier. Getting better at improvising those lines, you know, way more efficient. The Montreal Fringe is the perfect audience to do a workshop, something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

And again, like when you do manage to take something out and then wedge it back in, in whatever form, like it’s usually going to be so much more refined and like, like that scene is now a quarter of the length it was when it started and just like a much more clear in what it’s trying to do, I think. Yeah. I find that just generally that the audiences in the Montreal Fringe are a little, are more willing to allow experimentation than in some other, like I know the Toronto Fringe looks for, like it’s supposed to be experimental, but it’s always like, well, that doesn’t work.

And it’s sort of like, yeah, you know, they want, they’re looking for the drowsy chaperone, they’re looking for, yeah, the Toronto, every Fringe has its advantages and, and like Toronto’s is that there are actually producers here and there’s actually a huge, huge number of people that come out to the Fringe. And so in, in some ways pressure’s on a little more. Montreal, the audiences are so enthusiastic and honest and give you great feedback.

And, um, it is a great place to workshop your show because of that, but they are generally smaller and the media consists with the exception of the Gazette and a few others, like largely of personal blogs with, you know, varying sizes of reach. Uh, uh, Toronto, there’s more media and there’s just a bit more pressure to do a better show. Um, but so that’s why it is great that Montreal’s first.

Um, and it really gets your, your liver, uh, primed and ready for the abuse of the Toronto Fringe. I remember, I remember, you know, my time at the Montreal Fringe and, and, uh, there’s, uh, I don’t, I’ve, there’s no other Fringe like it for the amount of partying that is required. Like the 13th hour thing that they do, where it’s like a, a show that starts at 1 AM and then there’s an hour long show and then a like two hour long dance party.

And it’s just ridiculous. And the best thing ever, uh, Fringecation. And then you come to Toronto and it’s like, all right, let’s get back to work.

But it is, it is fantastic because of some of the opportunities it gives you, but you’re right. Like the audiences are not necessarily as immediately loving, um, as they might be in Montreal. And, and fair enough.

They don’t, you know, owe you anything. They weren’t all just drinking with you. Well, exactly.

So this show is the Wasteland. Um, yeah. We got no time for definite articles.

This show moves so fast. Um, yeah. So is it, where did this, the inspiration for this show come from? Mad Max.

We also have Mad Max. It was the best thing I’ve ever seen. Possibly my favorite movie of all time.

This show might not have happened. I remember the one time like we had finished a rehearsal or something like that. And I was going to see Mad Max with James Gangle, a friend of ours.

I was going to meet him and Sean and Caitlin were with me and like, we’re not going to go, didn’t really want to go. We were so on the fence. We were so tired.

We just finished doing work all day. And I was like, are you guys coming or not? And Sean was like, I don’t think so. And then Caitlin pushed him off the subway and we got off and went to see it.

As the doors were closing. We may not have seen it and this show might not have happened. I was about to ask if it was Mad, if it was the new Mad Max or classic Mad Max.

New Mad Max. And then we since have gone back retroactively and watched the, the, the older, older ones, but it was, it, it, this one is so good. It just reminded me that I like action movies.

It’s one of the best action sequences I’ve ever seen. Action movie that I right away was like, oh yeah, this is awesome. Yeah.

This is great. Like everything about it I enjoy. It was my favorite action movie since The Matrix.

Yeah, last decade. Interestingly, I was about to say that the thing that always, that struck me about the recent Mad Max movie was, which is different from The Matrix is how… Realistic it might seem. It’s like, I mean, they’re very different movies, but it’s like, this stuff is happening, like not in CGI.

The CGI is super subtle. Exactly. But I mean, and, and, and The Matrix did really, really, really well with CGI.

Yeah. And it’s almost the opposite. It’s like, what can CGI do for fighting? And this was like, oh, you know, what can physics do with fighting? Yeah.

And just actual physical objects too, right? Like… That truck really flipped. That truck really drew, like flew in on its side. And those dudes were on those, those, those, those cats.

What were you called? Pole cats. The Cirque du Soleil performers. Cirque du Soleil performers were really on those poles.

It was so inspiring. We spent a fair amount of time watching the special features of Mad Max while we were building all our props for this show and just getting into the details of like, what I really like about the movie, aside from the cool action, is just like how much, even though the movie is completely focused on action and doesn’t bother explaining anything, the world is so well fleshed out. It’s true.

It’s true. Yeah. That’s, that’s something that I always liked.

It’s interesting that the movie can work without fleshing all of that out, that you’re just going to accept it. Oh, these guys are weird. And that’s just the way it is.

Apparently they also had a lot of exposition written that they started cutting, which is what I like when I think about our process too. But that’s great. Like you realize there are certain things that don’t need to be explained because you just see it.

Yeah. And you kind of write the story and you’re like, this is the story. Ah.

And then, and then it’s a process of showing and not telling and slowly weeding out the telling because, you know, I, we don’t know physically how this is going to manifest until we get in a rehearsal hall and we’re like, okay, how can we tell this physically? And then suddenly you go, Oh, we don’t need this monologue because we just, just did it on stage with car explosions. And even that’s something that’s come up, I think in the past, at least three shows anyway, or a lot of our work is like, we kind of develop this whole backstory of the world ourselves and talk about working out all these logical issues and stuff. And then usually don’t have to talk about any of it during the show.

But what’s important is that like, we know it and it’s consistent in our minds. Right. Yeah.

And then as long as the show doesn’t conflict with that, hopefully it makes sense to the audience. What’s interesting is you’re taking a genre like the Mad Max movies that really relies on large vehicles moving quickly and putting it on a stage where you can’t really have large vehicles moving quickly. That was probably the biggest challenge was getting the trucks.

With our, with our fringe budget. Of course. Yeah.

Montreal fringe is fine with that sort of thing. We always write the idea before we imagine if it’s possible or not to do. So, you know, with sword play, we were like, Oh yeah.

And then, then we had this fight where they’re swinging from chandeliers and then there’s a dragon and then there’s a fight on top of a dragon. And like in, in the stage directions, that’s basically how it’s written. And so we go, okay.

And then, and then we learn our lines, we get in the studio and we’re like, all right, we’re going to stage this shit. And you’re going to be like, how do we do this? How do we do this? And then that becomes the fun question of like, okay, clearly there’s going to be a train fight in Wildcat. How are we going to show dudes running on top of a train, smashing through windows, fighting a bunch of dudes in a train? How are we going to stage that? And so the same challenge was, okay, we have in our show a murder derby, which is basically kind of like a, kind of like a second and third, all the good parts of the second and third old Mad Max movies, you know, just, just a crazy car mash.

And, and it, it, uh, we wrote it and we knew it was going to be there. Great. The challenge was how does one stage that with, on stage with no budget? And, and, and that’s, that’s what we get excited about.

That’s what I get excited about, about like staging the impossible and finding a really stupid way to stage something that people spend millions on in movies. Well, that’s a kind of thing that you can get away with in theatre is this simple special effect that is, you know, it’s two guys holding a table and suddenly it works, whatever it is. We’re really abusing the power of everyone else’s imagination.

Yes, you have an imagination. Excellent. It helps our, helps our budget a lot.

So if we’re like, car, you get it, steering wheel. Yeah. Yeah.

We always end up with a sort of a different thing for every show that we use physically. We never plan on it going in. It just kind of happens during rehearsal.

It sort of played, ended up being fabric and sheets being the big thing. Fabric sheets and 2D pixelated objects that help tell our story. Wildcat was finger mode and a different kind of 2D object that helped tell our story.

Not to mention brooms. Broom horses. And broom horses.

Yeah. And so we had no idea what this one would be going in. And it turned out to be styrofoam tubes.

Yep. Those like insulating pipe. Okay.

You may have seen me just bring in another shipment of them. Great thing about them, they’re about 80 cents each. The fringe budget thing.

And so we worked with that and some shadow puppets. So it’s an amalgamation of those two aesthetics that we use in this one to help bring in the cool storytelling that is often exclusive to movies. Where you have CGI and you have this ability to show explosions and car chases and all kinds of mad things where we don’t have access to that.

We’ve also wanted to focus on specifically I think like light and shadow just like as a tool in one of our shows for a few years now at least. So this is sort of the opportunity that we got to play with that. Which I think works pretty well with a lot of the themes.

We did a little bit with Leviathan, our sci-fi show that has barely seen the light of day. But will again in February of this year. You know, one of two.

We played with like blacklight and a lot of the qualities that that can employ in a science fiction show. We just bought, at the time we bought really shitty blacklight. So we were like, oh this whole blacklight sequence is gonna not be visible for a while.

But yeah, so we wanted to kind of revisit that but this time with a bit of a cheaper approach. So we did we did like shadow puppetry. Yeah.

We’ve also now been joined for those of you who can’t see because this is a podcast. Another fringe artist. Kyle Allitt.

How you doing? He’s a billet at Sean and my place. I’m sleeping on the couch. By billet I mean he’s sleeping on our couch.

We met Kyle during, he was our tech in Montreal. And then he was doing a show in Halifax for the Atlantic Friends with us later that year. So we already loved him as a tech and then saw his show which is fantastic by the way.

Go see that. Well we saw. Yeah, both of them are good.

We saw the No Bullshit History of Canada. And the No Bullshit History of Invention is the one that set this. How long ago did you do the No Bullshit History of Canada? I started four years ago.

But then I took a year off from it and then the last two years I’ve been touring it. So I went to the east coast and then last year went to, I did Montreal and Edmonton. I actually sold out my run to Edmonton.

That was a surprise. Yeah. It’s a really good show.

And as Kyle always puts it, it doesn’t sound good. You know, the no. It’s a PowerPoint presentation.

It’s literally a PowerPoint. It’s about history. It sounds terrible.

With this guy standing on stage. It’s the exact opposite show. It’s a PowerPoint presentation and it’s a car chase.

And it’s actually, honestly. So Kyle teched our show, did an incredible job in the Montreal fringe in 2014. And then we, that year, later met up again with Kyle in Halifax where he was touring his show, the No Bullshit History of Canada.

And we were still doing Wildcat. And I saw the show there and was blown away by how good it was because hearing you talk about it and I’m like, Oh, boo. Yeah.

Some relatively nerdy guy standing on stage with a PowerPoint presentation talking about the history of Canada. Shut up. No, it is.

No, it is actually. I, I held my belly laughing. I hurt after I left.

It was not only educational and insightful and inspiring. It was fucking hilarious. And I couldn’t believe it.

I left going, okay, I’m sold. And so I’m really, I haven’t seen your new show yet. And I’m really excited to see it at the Toronto Fringe.

No pressure. We’re saying all these nice things and we don’t like Kyle as a person. That’s why I’m letting you stay on our couch for two weeks for, you know, for funsies.

No. And, and my favorite story of Kyle is, um, Halifax Fringe where Atlantic Fringe, I guess in Halifax, we’re, uh, trying to get ready for our show, except it’s five minutes too. And our tech still isn’t there.

Um, and, and I go upstairs and I’m like freaking out. I talking to the front of house person going where I’m sitting there in the art, like, like waiting to get in, to get in. So Kyle who checked our show saw it 11 times at the Montreal Fringe is now waiting to see our show again for the millionth time at the Halifax Fringe.

And, and then we’re freaking out. I go back downstairs. I’m like, guys, we’ve made several phone calls.

We’ve, we’ve, we’ve made contact with our tech. She’s on her way. We’re going to have to start late.

The door opens and then in pops this very familiar and lovely face of our tech from Montreal Fringe going, Hey guys, she’s almost here. 10 minutes ago. Yeah.

It was the best thing ever. So this guy’s a jerk and no one likes him. The moral of the story is yeah.

Don’t see his show. It’s, it’s very funny. I’m getting mixed messages.

We’re confused. I don’t know what we feel. It changes from minute to minute.

So how, I mean, you guys are, you were saying you’re rehearsing. Oh yeah. I’m learning my lines today.

We open on Friday. We open on Friday. Rewrites and things.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

And it’s just like, basically we, you know, remembered, you remember the lines you’re saying as a run goes on and then go back and be like, are these the lines I was supposed to be saying or not? Yes, there is that. There is that. So you settle into something and now.

Sometimes what you were saying is better anyway. And sometimes not. Sometimes you do it.

Sometimes you don’t. But yeah. It’s all part of the refining.

Did you guys find that coming out of Montreal that you were, I mean, you went back to the script and were able to say, this is not the show anymore. No, I think we thought, like when we opened, honestly, I think we thought we were going to go through so many changes. Yeah.

And then we realized most of it is just pace, tightening and like getting to know it in your body. Like that’s the big difference. I think when we were going in, we were like, we’re going to change a bunch of stuff.

And then as we did the run. We completely redid the ending. But that was like during Montreal too.

On stage in front of people. But we did that because we knew we knew going in, we wanted a different ending, but we didn’t have time to do it. We knew what it was.

We just didn’t have time to build it. So our first opening in Montreal. Oh my God.

We threw together a knife fight and it was not great. And that was it. And then the show ended.

And so. I need to reiterate, this is a very good show. And you should just say it.

Let me just say it. I was just going to say it. Let me just say it.

I feel we haven’t made that clear. But during opening. No, during opening of Montreal French, we had an idea for the ending.

We just hadn’t staged it. So we were like knife fight because we. Opening night.

I literally had a moment where I went backstage when I was watching what was happening. I was going, I wonder what comes next. Yeah.

Well, when we opened in Montreal, that was literally the third run through of the show we had ever done. And then one and two of them had been in front of an audience. So it was, it was a, it was a big moment.

So when you guys are in Montreal and you’re doing, you’re basically. Practicing. Practicing.

Are you doing that? Like during the day in a park? Well, we all Airbnb and live together the whole time. Okay. And, and we do that because we want to workshop the show and we know we’re going to do that going in.

So we’re like, all right, Airbnb, we’re all together. We know Connor won’t be late because we’re going to like knock on his door and literally drag him out of bed and put him in the rehearsal area. But I’ll be there.

And then we’re all there together and we, we can, you know, we’re always, always working on our shows. Yeah. We have definitely spent some time working on fight scenes in parks and things in Montreal, but the problem is sometimes people will just join in from the street.

Cool Capoeira guy from the mountain will come down and be like, hey buds, I’m going to jump into your cool fight scene. And we’re like, no, none of us are actually fighting for real. The foam swords, the shields and everything.

That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

We do it every Sunday afternoon on the mountain. That’s a fun joke for people who’ve been to Montreal. Capital of Canada.

Every Sunday on the mountain. And there we go. Oh, there’s some sirens are outside in Toronto guys.

Joy of outdoors in Toronto. Outdoor podcasting in Toronto. Yesterday I was in a, at a, at a bar.

Oh, this sounds serious. In Hamilton recording an episode and we started out and it was perfect. And then as I watched more and more people come in, I was like, we’re just going to have to step out onto the street because it’s quieter out there.

Now talked with, with Connor and Caitlin. Yeah. Last time.

And we talked a little bit about the theatre background. Danny had usurped your place. That’s right.

During that production. So, um, I, I don’t know much about, about, about your, your theatre background. So Joe, please tell me a little bit about.

Uh, so, uh, yeah, I had stepped out in this case, the, to, to crap out on the team and go to school, uh, again, like a butt. So I’ve been in Ottawa for the past year. Working on a master’s and yeah, anyway, we’ll see if that’s progress.

But yeah, um, I, uh, I did a bunch of theatre in undergrad. My first, uh, went to Winnipeg fringe when I was, I don’t know, in like 2003 or something, uh, when I was just a, just a wee boy. Uh, and I kind of made a little bit of a mark, uh, and I did a bunch of university shows back then, but then had a nice big gap, uh, where I taught in Japan and stuff for a while, ended up moving to Toronto and kind of reconnecting with, uh, Sean, a member of the group who’s not here today.

Um, he and I actually both went to the same high school, same university, same drama program there a couple of years apart. Long time D and D players. Yes, definitely.

And Joe, Joe, Julian and Sean and I have been playing D and D for like 11 years now. Sean’s been our dungeon master from way back. So I like sports.

Yes, yes, let’s go blue jays. Yeah. So, uh, actually when I was kind of back in Toronto and looking for some acting stuff to do and a bit at a bit of a loss because real actors live here and that was weird to me coming from Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Um, but, uh, actually Julian, uh, I just met, um, through these guys and he got me into the improv scene here and I started doing some classes and stuff. So kind of eventually that put me on a separate but parallel path with these guys and eventually kind of reconnected. Yeah.

And Joe is so fantastic and a wonderful part of our group because not only does he bring a really fun stage presence, but also, um, he, God love him, is willing to do these shows and mostly run the sound. So the way we build our shows for Montreal fringe and have done so for the last million years is that we, we create it so that Joe is able to be in the booth, mostly run our sound cause their sound is really complicated and is basically as, as an integral part of the show as all the action. And so he will be mostly running the sound in the booth and then we’ll run down on stage, do a cool fight sequence with us, play a fun, lovable character like grandpa and sword player or whatever.

Oh man, I’ve got, I’ve got one music cue to hit in this show and it stresses me out being on this show. I’m like literally, I’m just always like, what am I going to do to fuck this up? But it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s not just sitting in the booth and hitting music cues. It’s also, it’s also, um, okay, so I hit go on this music cue.

I ran down on stage. So I, and then there are three music cues that follow. So not only do we on stage have to time it out so that Joe can get back to the booth in time, but we also, he has to edit the tracks so that they, um, seamlessly blend one into the next, into the next.

And so he does a lot of, um, sound editing, sound design for our show. Like Joe and Sean together, um, build all of the sound for the shows. And it’s such an integral part of our show.

Um, I remember when I checked their show two years ago, it was funny. I had 80 lighting cues for a 60 minute show. And, and then I was like, am I going to have to run sound too? And they’re like, no, no, no, we got this taken care of.

And then it would literally be like, I’m working the thing. And then somebody runs over to the booth, presses one button, showers Kyle with sweat. The fucking broom in their hands as a horse.

Yeah. Like the seventh or eighth show in that, like, I see Joe was like, he was late. Like, and I’m like, then I know like, oh, there’s supposed to be a cue coming up about 10 seconds.

So I just kind of leaned over and was ready to do it. And he just came around the corner. Yeah.

That’s the thing, like from what Caitlin was saying, uh, like my first show, uh, I stepped into help with Callahan. Um, we had kind of like a character set up to be the hacker guy who just shows up on the radio and like literally stay in the booth the whole time and then deliver lines over the microphone. Well, not the whole time.

There were a couple fight scenes that even in the early days where Walt would, so Callahan is our Indiana Jones style show that we’re actually going to be touring in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax coming up soon with sword play in tandem. And, and, and in that show, the Walt character. Yeah.

So Indiana Jones, James Bond style, he’s the tech, uh, whiz kid who is at a remote undisclosed location because of the, you know, spy agencies around the world who want him. Um, he, he is the help and they touch their ears as if they have a thing in their ears. And that’s what you have to do nowadays in the modern world.

So when you see all those Bluetooth guys walking down the, Bluetooth zombies walking down the streets, they are for sure touching your ears because that’s, that’s what one does. Um, but yeah, so that was where the precedent was set and we’ve kind of built all of our shows in that model also because we don’t want to have to have a stage manager as well. So it’s basically our stage manager runs on stage and fights and then runs back to hit a couple of cues, runs back on fights.

But as our shows have evolved, that role has become more evolved and we show on stage more and more. We’ve just gotten more and more ambitious with what we want to do. So it’s kind of like every scene we do, it’s like, okay, how can we get the most out of this? Well, we need five people here and here, and I guess we can get away with four here.

So I can run to the booth for a couple, for one and a half minutes. So, uh, yeah, anyway, it’s, it’s become a whole intricate thing in itself. Just like the dance backstage.

Like there is going to be, there will probably come a time where we like are just like doing bigger shows and like want to like hire somebody. But right now I really like that aspect of our shows. I love the fact that they, if you look for it, you can watch us sprint away.

You can see us sweat. You can see us like have to get into place for time. Cause there’s like so little time that we give ourselves sometimes so many moments where it’s like, okay, Joe exits as a character.

And now has to put a mask on very quickly and put another mask on top of that and come out and like, this is like, and it’s like no time. And if it works, it’s great. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work.

It’ll be something different. I feel like that’s probably something that, uh, cause we do have a fair number of hardcore fans who will come out to see the show like three or four times sometimes in the same city, which is crazy. But I feel like that’s some of what they get out of it is just like seeing some of the guts, uh, for days.

And, uh, just like they get to notice the running back and forth and like how it all works. I, uh, my parents, my parents and my family is very supportive. And they come out to a lot of our shows.

And I remember them seeing one of our shows. It was one of our last shows of the storefront run we did. And afterwards they were like, they came up to me and were like, that was so sloppy.

Incredible. So sloppy and incredible. They’re like, that’s the best I’ve seen in a year.

And it was because we just like, we got this weird energy that night and decided to fuck around a lot. It wasn’t, it wasn’t the show. It wasn’t the show where it was Julian’s birthday and we were doing shots on stage twice.

No, it wasn’t. It was the show where you decided to splash everyone on the stage. Oh, that was our closing show.

And that wasn’t my decision. That was actually a note from our director, Alec Taller, who is not here right now. Um, he gives us notes and all the time cause he’s a piece of shit.

He showed me how to live my life. Yeah, fuck you out. How dare you try and improve this piece of shit.

No, Alec is amazing. And, and he gives us notes to improve the show. And so he showed up to several of our shows during storefront and would give us notes afterward.

And there was this one time he showed up and gave notes to everyone. And then I got a separate email that was called secret notes. God love Alec.

And it included one note, which was please on closing night. And so, so in sword play, I come on stage and I, I, um, play, play water and a dolphin at the same time. Joe probably doesn’t even know that.

I come on stage and I’m like, and we’re on a ship and we all build a ship and I’m the water part. And then, uh, and then at one point I go, and I’m like a dolphin. And then when the dolphin lands with my hand in the imagined water, I also behind my back have a full glass of water that I proceed to throw on, uh, first your face, Connor’s face.

And then I run around and I just stare at Sean until we play chicken for a moment. And then I throw a fucking glass of water on Sean’s face. So Alec gave me this note that for the last show, please also make a point to throw water in Danny’s face.

Who was Joe at the time, the head of the ship and then proceed to throw water on Julian’s face. Who was playing the mast of the ship at this point. And Julian was pissed.

No one knew he’s holding a sheet in front of him as the sale, as the sale. Yeah. So I didn’t, no one saw it happen to him.

But then right after we lift the sheet to talk to him, it looks so upset. It’s, it just looks at me on stage and goes, we got to do something about these fucking dolphins. And it was a note from our, our, our, our distinguished director.

Oh, I’m taller. But that’s another one that even like going back to the root of that show where we had had like, we had originally had it as just like a little spritz bottle that came out to splash us. And one show I couldn’t find it, couldn’t find it, but we had a giant bottle of water just for drinking backstage.

So she just grabbed that instead. And I still remember it. This was at like a noon matinee, a hot noon.

So we were all, wait, wait, can I, can I just like preface that with earlier in the podcast, we talked about Montreal Fringe, right? So if you’re still listening, you know, I didn’t know where so we just kept that. It was supposed to be like a gentle mist, but it ended up being like a full, full glass of water. Just in the face.

Connor’s face was the audience. It was one of those beautiful, where we on stage and the audience are simultaneously melting down. Like the best actors on earth can not.

No, you do it and you try. And that’s the thing about comedies like this is that there are moments like that, that start as improv and then you are able to do them again. Yeah.

And you still have that feeling of spontaneity. Well, cause water in the face really can’t, you can’t. Anyone who’s there that first time, but something a little bit extra, they just get a little bit, something more because you can’t fake it.

There’s no faking that shit. Connor’s surprised that a giant tsunami of water just like descends upon his face. Kyle, do you ever try to surprise your PowerPoint presentation? The one thing I have done is that I’ve allowed myself to do a lot more ad libs because originally I couldn’t do it because I’ve got 500 slides in the show and they’re all in a certain order.

So I can’t really deviate from the script too much, but I realized I was getting certain audience reactions and I just started talking to them and that was a lot of fun. Yeah, but no, not so much challenging the computer. It’s hard to improvise a PowerPoint.

Very difficult to improvise a PowerPoint. You can’t just be like, just wait guys. Wait, this is going to be great.

I got this animation. They’re like, come up here, this is so good. You said GIFs? Come back in 10 minutes, I guarantee.

This predates PowerPoint by like a decade. Are you guys about to have the GIF, Jif argument? I thought she was and I was about to leave. Okay, now I gotta back my brother up.

It’s GIF. No, I wasn’t. I just meant, yeah, no.

I love that like PowerPoint and GIF are like of different eras. But you can now have a GIF and a PowerPoint. You can indeed.

You can, guys. It’s the modern world. We’re living in the future.

The future is now, my friends. With a group like yours, there’s two ways this question could go. I’m going to stick with the way that I first thought of it and that’s about the roles that everybody has.

You’ve talked about Joe’s role where he’s building the sound, things like that. What are the other roles that people serve in sex T-Rex? Good question. Julian cooks a lot.

So when we go on tour, Julian, we often live together. Or wait, wait, we always live together. When we go on tour and Julian picks up the torch of poster hanging guy because he’s tall and he puts posters above all the other well-populated poster zones.

And he cooks for us. So sex T-Rex often buys. That is so sweet.

Julian’s become the weird, I think he’s the, isn’t the youngest member of the group? He is, right? I believe so. But he’s also like the old man who like actually gets up before 10 a.m. And makes breakfast for everybody. And it’s so brilliant.

He’s not here, but I’m going to share it because this is my favorite thing about last year during the Fringe Festival, Julian had a job where he just had to wake up every morning at like five in the morning and, and, and send out these like news reports. It was some site that he worked for. We had to like accumulate the day’s news.

And he decided to start doing this during Montreal Fringe. Or as we’ve established it, the drinking party. And so we just got to slowly watch Julian get fired.

I was like, okay, it’s 4.30. I need to be up in half an hour. I’m going to take a quick nap. Can we attach Julian’s LinkedIn profile? So, okay.

So to answer your question, Julian, kind of the wild card of the group in terms of his, his contributions, but he does many. Victoria LaBerge, who’s with us right now is our publicist. And she basically gets all of us are shit at social media.

Every time I tweet, we lose like 15 followers. Even if I’m saying like, come see our show and show a picture. It’s like, I don’t actually.

Um, but no, I like, whenever I’m like, come see our show, we lose. And Victoria’s like gifted at it. So she’s like jumped on board and has been like a godsend and, and, and tells people that we’re doing shows, which is half, more than half of the battle.

And, and Sean and I are generally our producers. Sean is our chief producer at the Fringe Festival. Generally, I’m our producer when we do off Fringe stuff.

So like when we did our storefront run, I was the chief producer for that. And I probably will be again for our Unit 102 coming up in February. But Sean, during our shows is our primary producer at the Fringe and our chief writer.

Sean writes the scripts that then we kind of deviate massively from and writes them again. How do you feel about that? Uh, mixed. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s a process, right? It’s a process.

And that is like, we mentioned the last process that kill your babies become a big theme of writing for us, because there are things that you feel. And there might be some babies that die, but that’s a separate tangent. But that is the thing like where you, you can’t end up being too precious about anything.

You can, you can believe in something and you can want it. But at the end of the day, A, it’s a collective and B, it’s like a, it’s a process. And like, there are going to be things that happen that not everyone ends up agreeing on, but they just have to go with.

So this is where Alec, Alec comes in as like a beautiful addition to the team. He’s been our outside eye and director, um, for a very long time. And what he brings to the team is, is because it is a collective creation.

It’s still valuable to have someone outside me like, just so you know, you’re standing right in front of the other person. Or this scene doesn’t make sense. Also in this scene, can you please be more of this or more of that? And it’s invaluable to have an outside eye and Alec.

Alec is so much same brained and it’s so valuable to have someone who is same brained as you when you’re working on a project because, um, you can jam. And so we jam with Alec as if he’s on stage with us. He is the outside eye, but he is, he can still play with us.

And we’re all talking about, I think this is how this scene should go. I think that is how this scene should go. And we all have our opinions because it’s a collective creation.

And then Alec is ultimately the one who goes, this is how we’re going to go. And it is so valuable to have that moderator and also that outside eye. And, um, his contributions are incredible.

Also, he’s a big dum-dum with a big dumb face. And he can, and, and he has the same dumb sense of humor as all of us and contributes the same dumb sense of humor that we try to bring to the stage. That’s literally what, when he says something, he goes, oh, that’s dumb.

That means. We use the word dumb because we do comedy as like a good thing, right? Yeah. We should also say, uh, for anyone who has seen our shows, you probably know that Caitlin is a super gifted puppeteer.

And she does a lot of the physical stuff. She makes most of the props and things, guides that process. And Connor is just a frigging hilarious.

We’re lucky if Connor shows up, you know. Connor is, is the Michelangelo slash party dude. He keeps it going until the dawn light.

So that’s an important function. So you’re the, you’re the last to crash on the Montreal scene. Uh, well, Connor, Connor and I are team party.

We often like check in with each other. Like team party, still strong. Yeah, cool.

And then everyone else goes to bed. I know I was so sick. But this Toronto fringe, if you’re there.

Look for this guy being real, real drunk and parties central. I’ll be the one alone at the fringe tent party by myself. It’s always funny because if you, if you come directly from, from Montreal straight over to Toronto, it’s very different.

Kyle, Kyle said really there. And he is a Montreal native. So he’s being sarcastic.

Also, he has done Toronto fringe seven times. He is a vet. Yeah, he’s a fringe vet.

No one knows who I am here, but that’s whatever. Kyle, that’s your own damn fault. You’re the worst promoter in the whole world.

I need somebody like Victoria. Also, your fringe shows are, I draw a PowerPoint presentation about history. How do I sell this? That’s a good question.

Yeah. And Kyle, your show is your, you know, Bullshit History of Canada is fucking hilarious. Thank you.

I haven’t had a chance to see it yet, but I’m looking forward to this. That’s good. Here’s good things about his own show.

I know because you want to hear, you want to hear good things about your own show. So good. So now that you’re, you know, you’re opening on Friday, what are you most excited about? Oh, for me, it is the, it is that the, the first run has happened.

It is, it is done. And now comes the point in our process that always does, which is the refining point, which is, which is always great. And the, it’s every stage and place gives you new opportunities and challenges.

For us, we are working on a stage nine times the size of the stage we had in Montreal. So literally there’s, we’re doing a lot of shadow work with a sheet thing, which in Montreal, we had to constantly move from scene to scene because it took up too much of the stage in Toronto. It’s just there stationary, the whole show.

What venue are you guys in? We’re in the Randall. Oh, geez. So you guys got lots of space.

Yeah, we got all this space for days. All of a sudden we have this new kind of playground and it’s like, oh my God, there’s, there are challenges now of being like, oh my God, I have to sprint across the stage now to get here for this. But there is so much opportunity.

And with all the projecting stuff too, like technical challenges too, that we’ve been kind of working on and we’ll see, we’ll have to see when we really get into space what we have to do to deal with it. But we’ve already gotten a whole bunch of new like cutouts and gels and things that we’re going to be projecting with. We have a really cool artist, Ben Steves.

Ben Steamroller. Well, that’s his social media name. Yeah, if anyone sees our poster, you’ll see how wicked awesome the art is.

And that kind of goes throughout the show, which is. He tried to do like a comic book inspired style. He’s a cool upgrade.

He’s an amazing artist. Yeah. So that was what, for me, that’s what I’m excited about is just that we, it’s our second run of it now.

And we did the first and we know what we’d like, what we loved about the show and what we thought we needed to fix. And I think we’ve taken a really good pass at that. And now we get to do it in front of an audience.

Yeah, I’m really excited to, I’m really excited to just do the Fringe. And I’m really excited to see everyone’s shows. I’m really excited.

There’s so many good shows at the Fringe this year. It’s, it’s, it’s a little like mind boggling how impressive the shows are this year. And I don’t know all of them and I’m sure some gems will emerge, but from our friends and from what I’ve heard from what major media publications have recommended, this is going to be a shit hot Fringe.

Yeah, there’s a lot of shows that I want to see. There’s a lot. You, you can because he’s, but you’re going to go do Hamilton Fringe, which is… I’m still rehearsing for my show.

So I’m like freaking out about that. But like, there’s, there’s like, there’s like Cat Sandler’s Bright Lights. And then I can’t, Peter and Chris have a new show and I can’t wait to see The Harvester.

And I can’t wait to see Songbuster, The Musical, which is like an all-star cast. Jillian English is A Bitter Shrew. Bitter Shrew is not in the program.

And, and it was a late addition to the Fringe. And it’s, I saw it in the Montreal Fringe. And it was one of those experiences where you hurt from laughing after you leave.

So Bitter Shrew by Jillian English is basically fantastic. Shrew Blue is also not in the program. That’s a new show featuring Danny Padgett.

Colin Munch. And Jocelyn Getty produces it. And it’s a great cast.

Shanda Bezic. Okay, that’s neat. Which is, it’s rare, but from everything I’ve heard, it’s fantastic.

I bartended at the place it was performed at. So I worked almost every night it ever performed. So I didn’t get to see the show.

I can’t wait to see like Dance Animal with Robin Henderson from Montreal, who’s living here now and is bringing her Montreal show to Toronto. And I can’t wait to, it’s like a fun, you know, dance. It’s a comedy dance.

And I can’t wait to see Pirate Queen of the Stars, which is brought to you by the same people that brought People Suck, which is a major musical hit last year. It’s a new musical kind of Firefly style musical show. Birthday Cake is going to be fantastic.

Birthday Cake. Yeah, it’s been recommended. It’s going to be great.

Yeah, it’s going to be fantastic. Yeah, that’s the thing I’m most excited about The Fringe this year is like, yay, we have a show. But there are so many phenomenal shows this year.

I think there’s just no bullshit history of invention. I don’t know. I hear the guy that runs it’s a real jerk though.

It’s more than just a PowerPoint presentation. Technically, it’s a keynote presentation. I think that just muddles up.

That’s really going to make things difficult. That’s like, you know, that’s not your selling point. When you’re describing your show to anyone, don’t ever say technically.

Pro tip from Connor Bradbury. How would you promote your show? How do I sell my show? I chug a beer in front of you. That’s great.

I’d see that show actually. Yeah, there’s so much. I mean, there is so much to see at The Fringe and it’s hard to fit it all in.

Have you guys had your tech yet? No, we do that on Thursday. We make it a point to do it the day before we open so we don’t freak out. That’s so important.

Yeah, because we like as less time as possible between checking and… It’s so key to make sure that you have that nervous breakdown. I can’t imagine doing a tech without a sense of panic. What happens when you just do a very calm, smooth tech? Oh no, your show is going to be shit.

You should be afraid of everything. I’m like always panicking a little bit. I mean, you’re going from a relatively small venue in Montreal to, I think, one of the biggest in Toronto.

We’ve dealt with this every year. And that’s a big thing to fill. Well, it’s also like our shows, there’s no set.

We never have a set. Whatever else we have, we’ve had more props as the years go by, but never a set. And even just having the sheet on stage is the most we will have ever had.

And so we leave it up to the imagination to fill in a lot of that space. And you can do a lot through lighting and just selecting where you light the stage and what areas you play in. And then we just want people to fill that in.

That’s always the goal is to create a world that’s interesting enough that you forget you’re looking at a large, empty space. I think every year we have had that issue of like, oh crap, we’re going from this size to this size. And people are going to be so much farther away.

And it’s going to be like this empty, dark space. But we’ve always found it, I think. The first show is always awkward.

The first show in Montreal Fringe is always weird. Or sorry, Toronto Fringe is always weird. Because we were always going from teeny tiny playing space to great big cavernous, giant theatre in Toronto Fringe.

And that transition is hard. So our first shows in Toronto Fringe every year are like, oh boy, this is an exercise in exciting. So make sure that you go early.

Yeah, for sure. Well, but as we said before, some of those interesting fucking shows are the best ones to watch. You know, there’s nothing like watching actors on stage struggling.

There is something to that, I like it. But I think there is, not every show is possible to do this. But we really enjoy the struggle.

That’s the thing. If something goes wrong, we acknowledge that that is fun. And that will be fun, not only for us, but for people watching it.

Well, there’s nothing worse than watching a show where the whole audience is in on this thing that happens. Like, oh, that curtain fell over. And then the people on stage are doing their best to pretend like it didn’t happen.

That’s the worst. So at least with our shows, we have the liberty to be able to be like, the curtain fell over. Let’s make jokes about that.

And that’s really liberating. Yeah. Well, this has been great, you guys.

Yeah, thanks so much for having us, man. That’s so fantastic.