Shane Adamczak

Shane Adamczak graduated from WAAPA in 2003 and has since gone on to become a stalwart of the West Australian Theatre and Improv scene; a Fringe Festival veteran of over 50 festivals worldwide and “One of Perth’s most successful independent theatre creators” (The Sunday Times) as a founding member and current Artistic Director of Independent Theatre Company Weeping Spoon Productions. He best known for his roles in FRANKIES, Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, Vicious Circles, Trampoline and This Is Not A Love Song. His most recent work is a play about a man who lives in another man’s beard called The Ballad Of Frank Allen, which won the coveted JUST FOR LAUGHS award (Best Comedy) at The Montreal Fringe. He was also the face of STAN’s national “Hungry Eyes” campaign.

He is the host of the Good Morning Mrs. Strawberry podcast and recently launched his own independent toy company CUBE BOY COLLECTABLES.

Twitter: @shaneadamczak
Instagram: @shaneadamczak

Transcript

Welcome to episode 288 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.

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Your support helps me continue to bring you great conversations in Canadian theatre. My guest this week is Shane Adamczak. Shane is a theatre maker from Australia and the host of the podcast Good Morning Mrs. Strawberry.

Shane is also a mainstay of the Canadian Fringe Festival circuit. One of the reasons I wanted to have Shane on the podcast is that as we in Canada are starting to open up, I thought it might be helpful to hear from a place where things are largely open once again. And so here’s my conversation with Shane Adamczak.

How is Good Morning Mrs. Strawberry going anyway? It’s going pretty good. I took a little bit of a break with it just to get a few in the tank before I started putting them out again. So I want to record maybe another three and then I’ll start releasing them just so I’ve got a few in the bank so I don’t have to make sure I’m doing them every week.

That’s how I keep myself sane doing this show. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so probably if I get my ass into gear, I’m about to start rehearsing a show so I’ll have a little bit more time to do some stuff on the weekend.

So I’ll record a few more and then start putting them out. Rehearsing a show, that’s something interesting that is one of the reasons I wanted to have you on. I don’t know if you know this, things up here are not looking so awesome right now.

We’ve been in quote unquote a lockdown since December 26th and we don’t see any signs of that lifting. And I think a lot of people, especially in the theatre world, are getting a little bit discouraged by that. So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was that you’re in Australia and largely, as I understand, things are pretty much wide open there.

Is that true? Yeah, especially here in Western Australia. We’ve been extraordinarily lucky in that very early on in the pandemic, we completely shut down our borders. We were really strict on lockdown and stuff.

So we were kind of out of the thick of it quite quickly, within I think two months or something. So yeah, it’s been really strange as things here definitely sort of start to go back to normal. And even I think as of next week, all venues are at 100% capacity allowed again.

Really? Yeah. And then having friends from Toronto messaged me the other day saying that they were jealous that I got to go out to shop for jeans. And you really start to take things for granted when you’re like, oh man, I’m sorry that I was rubbing that in your face that I could go out and buy new pants.

No, but I mean, one of the things that’s kind of good about the connected world is that we can see that shopping for pants is possible. Yeah, we can get that there. There should be a time in the future when once again, we will be able to schlep around a mall and purchase pants.

Yeah. But it’s been very strange, especially since I’ve been podcasting as well and doing a lot of these sort of over the internet calls with my friends in Canada, just seeing the way that the stages of dealing with this pandemic have sort of walked away from each other as here got very, quote unquote, back to normal quite quickly. Whereas you guys are still where we were like a year ago almost, which is like insane.

And it’s scary because I want to get back there at some point, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s a huge difference. And of course, a lot of this is hearsay because of course, we’re on the opposite sides of the world.

But the actions that Australia took early on were really rigid and really serious. Yeah. And I understand that there was some flack about how, quote unquote, draconian the steps were.

Yeah, there were some people that were really butting heads with it and up against it. I feel like I was at a little bit advantage because I work in my day gig at a hospital. So I’m pretty aware of isolation protocols and hand hygiene and all that stuff that’s very real and very scientific.

But there was a lot of people that were just really, really against it, which is, it’s understandable if you don’t understand the very basic science of germs, I guess. But yeah, they were very strict. And a lot of people went up against us.

But you know what? It worked. It’s a process that worked. People stayed inside as much as they could.

Only people that really needed to be at work were working for those first couple of weeks, couple of months. And it paid off. We closed our borders so that people couldn’t travel into state unless it was super necessary.

And that really paid off. And now we’re at a point where we’re just living our lives again. And we’re still obviously keeping out like during February this year, there was one outbreak in Perth.

There was one case. And that litreally shut down Perth for five days, which, again, it was extreme. But a lot of people went out and they all got tested and there was no more cases.

And then we went back to our lives again. And even those five days, as I’ll probably talk about a little bit later, had a big impact, but it was effective and it worked. Well, I mean, this is sort of illustrates the need for serious steps and not half measures.

Here, I feel like we’re like, well, everything is closed down except for these things where people are really spreading it. We’re not closing down residential construction. We’re not shutting down factories and warehouses, which have been shown to be these huge spreader locations, not millennials having parties, as some people have said.

And so we’re not quite willing to take the steps that could actually save our butts here. And they’re just hoping that we can vaccinate our out of it. Yeah.

So yeah, we’re at the point as well where the vaccines are starting to roll out here, which is exciting, but still painstakingly slow, it feels. But yeah, it’s been so strange to see around the world, especially in places like the States, where it seems that in a lot of places, they just kind of got sick of it and went, we’re not doing this anymore. I guess COVID’s over.

And you’re like, no, that’s not how it works, friend. It’s going to make it so much worse. And it is making it so much worse.

Yeah. No, absolutely. We’re definitely seeing that here.

Now, I do want to talk a little bit about what was the process for opening theatres? Were there like 50% capacity and then growing from there? What did the return of theatre look like where you are? Yeah. It was definitely a slow process. This is something that took a little bit longer than a lot in the arts community wanted to do.

The arts industry was really hurting because when we went into lockdown and everything was shut down and people were working from home that could, similar to what Canada had, we had a thing called JobKeeperStart, which was basically, the government was giving people money to either work from home or to keep working from where they could work. But no arts workers were covered by that. So, no arts workers who suddenly couldn’t work, weren’t getting any income from the government.

And that was sort of like a real thing where we were like, hello, please help us. And then obviously the theatres were closed and we couldn’t tour. So, there’s just nothing essentially you could do other than, I don’t know, start a YouTube channel or whatever.

But then slowly things started to happen. Of course, sports took precedent as you would expect here in Australia. God forbid we don’t have football.

Not just an Australian thing. I think that’s many places the sports will come back before anything else. It was very frustrating to see stadiums half full of people with thousands and thousands of people.

And then we still aren’t allowed to open our little 100 seater comedy venue. But slowly things started to reopen and we were able to have Fringe this year. We were in January, February this year, which was very interesting because obviously it was a much pared back, scaled back version of what is I think the third biggest Fringe in the world.

No international acts, very few interstate acts because at the time even some borders were still closed. So, only people like from Adelaide could come, but people from Queensland or Melbourne couldn’t be here. So, it was a bit of a mixed bag.

It was mostly locals, which personally I liked. It brought us back to the early days of that festival, which has been around for I think 10, almost 10 years. And in the early days, it was a lot smaller, a lot more contained and big enough for the city without outgrowing it, which I think it has a little now.

So, this year was an interesting thing where we actually had venues at, I think it was 50% capacity at that point. So, we’ve got a comedy venue waiting to go back to 100% because it seats 50 people. So, only being able to have 20 people in there isn’t worth the money we’ll make on the night.

So, there are some venues that are still struggling and still kind of waiting for, okay, we’re back at 100%, we can make a go at this again. But they’ve also been closed for a year at this point. So, it’s hard to get that momentum moving again.

So, a lot of people are still struggling, but we’re getting there. Now, has there been support for the in Australia? Has the government been offering support? I know, because one of the problems that we have here is in Toronto, we have all of these indie venues that are basically, they don’t get grants to operate. They just use the money that people give them to rent the place to fund their operations.

And so, it’s like, will those places still be here when it’s all over if we don’t get some infusion of help from various levels of government? Has there been any support from the levels of government there? I mean, not really, not really from an indie point of view. We had an amazing comedy venue that had been running for 15 years and we lost it due to the pandemic, essentially. And we’ve sort of regrouped in a new space now and slowly building it up again.

But yeah, there’s been lots of little indie venues that just, you know, because they’re living from show to show, you know, they need to have that income coming in to keep the space. So, with no shows, there’s no income, there’s no space anymore. And some of those spaces just aren’t going to be there when everything opens again.

We’ve lost lots of really great local pubs and local businesses. And as it is everywhere, it’s a real shame to see it going and the government just not really, really caring. It’s just a lot of like, well, you should have got a job in IT.

And I’m like, well, yeah, you’re maybe not wrong, but still, we’re still here. I mean, I think that sometimes a lot of governments will forget and sort of conveniently ignore the fact that the arts bring business in. People spend money at the theatre, they spend money for dinner before the theatre.

There’s all these things that theatres bring in, especially like if you have a festival, people come and they spend money. There’s more than just these elite artists and we don’t have to worry about them because who cares? They are part of the economy. Yeah, I mean, we’d run this little comedy room upstairs in a pub and it may not have been sold out every single show, but we were bringing in 50 to 100 people a night into that pub who were buying two to three drinks each and then coming back week after week.

And then suddenly, we’re not there anymore and that affects obviously our venue and then suddenly the pub’s down 500 sales a week as well. So it has a big ripple on effect, it really does. There is a huge ripple effect, I think, as soon as we’re not doing that.

And as much as people keep trying to do virtual theatre and Zoom theatre, I feel a little exhausted by that. Yeah, it’s just not the same as being in a room with people and having that immediacy of reaction and, you know, laughs and tears and just being in a space with actual humans. Like I embraced as best I could sort of the virtuality of things as I could and did- I did a bunch of stuff online in the first couple of weeks, but it just gets to a point where you’re like, I don’t want to be doing this forever.

This is not what I signed up for, you know? Yeah. I also feel like we’re asking a lot of our potential audience who are spending more time than ever in virtual meetings. Yeah.

And then we ask them to come to our entertainment and sit in another virtual meeting. And people are kind of over screens, I think. Yeah.

And look, I’m the first to admit that if, you know, during Melbourne Fringe, which was for the most part online this year, last year, rather, I’ll sit down and I’ll watch a couple of people’s shows on, you know, projected up on my wall or whatever. But it gets to a point where watching a pre-recorded live theatre show with no audience reaction sounds, you know, if I have the choice between that and watching a really nice well-produced thing on Netflix, you know, nine times out of ten, I’m going to watch the beautifully well-produced, well-shot, you know, made-for-a-screen movie. I mean, that’s just the truth of it.

It just doesn’t translate as well. No, because we don’t, I mean, we don’t have a technology that lends itself to an audience feel. I’ve seen a couple of options that might allow you to hear the rest of the audience, but, you know, they’re missing this feature or that feature or the main stage image is too small to be worth your while, all these little things.

And I, frankly, as much as I would like to say, well, maybe one day somebody will come up with something. I don’t want that because I don’t, like, I don’t think we’re going to replace the in-person interaction. We go to see movies in the theatre because we want to experience that with a large group of people.

That’s one of the essential parts of theatre is that experience. And I don’t think any kind of video or virtual room is going to be able to change that. Yeah.

And like coming at it from a performer as well, like, it’s just something just so unsatisfying about it. Like the reason that I mainly work in theatre rather than do film is just, is because I love the liveness, the fear, you know, of being in that room and, you know, it’s happening then and there and the immediacy of the reactions of the audience and just recording something, you know, it’s just insane. No, it’s never going to be the same.

There’s that, you know, having gone on the fringe circuit and, you know, you’ve travelled around Australia and Canada to fringe festivals, you know that, like, you litreally don’t know in different cities, like, is this city going to like this? Are they going to like this show? They liked it in the last place, but I don’t know what this place likes. You can have the hit show of the summer and then, you know, you hit Saskatoon and it’s just not their flavour and you’re like, all right, this has been a humbling experience and thank you. Every time you go to a new place, you’re flipping a coin.

Is this going to be, is this going to be a rocky fringe or is this going to be a really great fringe? Yeah, I mean, the same thing. I’ve had shows, you know, that have been like doing fine but not where I wanted them to be and then you hit the last two cities of the tour and then suddenly, you know, BC are like, oh, BC is our audience. You’re like, boom, all right, ended on a high.

Yeah. Yeah, it really is a flip of a coin. Yeah.

And so worth it every time. Well, I mean, this is the thing is, we, if you do a fringe festival tour, you’re kind of chasing that, you’re chasing that experience. You’re chasing that high from, you know, having a hit show or like having a show that people are really liking and there’s so many ups and downs, even within the same fringe or the same day, you know, there’s so many moments of like elation and complete devastation.

It really is so much more than just taking a show on the road. Like there’s the camaraderie of the people that you meet from city to city, the different audiences, the different towns, experiencing new places, seeing so many other amazing shows which inspire you. Like it really is like, you know, it’s like a travelling circus.

It’s like summer camp for adults. It’s so much of like what my life has become. And so suddenly not having it and potentially not having it for another year or two, three years, God knows, like it’s very frustrating because this is the longest I’ve been in Western Australia for about 10 years.

And it’s bizarre, you know, because I haven’t even been like been able to travel interstate yet. Like I am later this year, but that’s like the first time. And I’m going to the Northern Territory for three days and then I’m coming back.

That’s, I mean, I really feel like hearing the idea that like it might be another three years before we can travel like that and tour like that is a little bit depressing. But it’s also, I guess, you know, this is the process. This is where we are, where we have to accept that things are going to come back little by little.

Yeah, because yeah, I’m absolutely like not, not taking for granted how incredibly fortunate we’ve been here, like, especially in Western Australia. But as you know, like as someone who primarily makes his, you know, living as being a touring artist, it’s, it’s very frustrating that, you know, a lot of the borders are still closed and I can go to a few places in Australia, but that’s, that’s kind of it at this point. You know, we only have so many Fringe Festivals and plus I miss you guys.

Well, you know, we, we, we, we miss you too. You know, one of the, actually this is, this is a, this is sort of like a line of questioning that I’ve been really curious about because, you know, thinking about, about, you know, we get a few, you know, there are people who travel internationally. There’s a few people who do like the Fringe circuit and a couple that come from England and a couple, you know, we have a small contingency from Australia.

How did you start in like the Australian fringe and what made you first want to bring a show on the Canadian fringe circuit? I first got started with fringes. Why did I, well, I think my university when I was studying at WAPA, part of, part of third year is that you do a show as part of the fringe. I think is what it was.

I think that’s when I did my first one. Sorry. I’m just going to adjust my microphone.

It’s falling down. Yeah. So part of that, I actually went as part of the cast of the year above me, did a show in the Adelaide fringe back in 2002, I think it would have been.

And that was sort of my first out of state experience. And that fringe, you know, obviously it’s the second biggest in the world to Edinburgh and it blew my tiny little, you know, 20 year old mind. And it’s a very addictive thing to go on tour and be like, wow, you can just go.

And once you do your show, you can go watch a whole bunch of other shows. And then everybody goes and drinks a bunch of drinks and you dance and you watch bands and it’s just so much fun. And yeah, it was, I just knew I love it from, from then.

And so after I graduated, my friend Thomas Ford, who’s also like a well-travelled fringer, we did a two man show together and then it kind of grew from there. My company Weeping Spoon in 2007, I think, got a grant to take one of our shows to Canada because one of us had been living over there for a little bit doing the, you know, the working visa thing. And she was like, oh, we should come do a Ottawa and Toronto, I think from memory.

And yeah, even those three cities, I was like, oh, I’m doing this. And then came back a couple of years later, solo with the Zack Adams thing. I think I did six cities that first time solo, which was like huge for me.

And it was just like, yeah, it’s, it’s a drug. It’s a beautiful, beautiful drug. It is.

And I mean, you, you had sort of like, you’d come to Canada with that, that, you know, the three city tour and you weren’t alone. But what, what is it like coming to a completely other country alone and producing a show and taking it across the country? What’s it like the first time? It is, it was nerve wracking and terrifying. Like at that point, I’d toured solo a little bit throughout Australia, but nothing like at this scale where I was like, you know, going to a bunch of cities that I’d never been before, you know, flying everywhere, you know, just meeting random people along the way, but you become friends, you make friends and you become fast friends, you know, on this tour.

Cause you know, you, you may be in one town, you start in Montreal and those people within the, you know, two and a half weeks span become very close. And you’re like, okay, these are my friends. And then some of them go on with each other in the next city.

Some of them you won’t see again. Some of them you’ll see later down the track. And yeah, like I said, it becomes this like this travelling circus and people are giving each other lifts and helping each other out and taking each other’s shows.

And it just becomes this big family. I just felt like instantly just so incredibly welcomed into that scene. And it’s, it was just such a, like a beautiful, beautiful thing to be part of.

And then knowing that, you know, as new people and even like over the years, I brought other Australians with me to do various shows or I’ve encouraged them to come over and like getting to be part of that family and welcoming new people into it and sort of, you know, show them the ropes and be like, oh, this is how this city works. This is how this city is different from this city. This is Jim Rawls.

He’ll help you out. You know, it’s just a, it’s just a great thing. And it’s just become such, just such a big part of my life now.

It’s like, and just keeping in touch with everyone overseas, like, thank God for Facebook for all its faults, you know? Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s really, for me, that’s the, that’s the one good thing about Facebook. You can argue with your uncle about whatever, but like the fact that I can talk to, I can see what’s happening with my friends’ lives, but also like see how different places in the world are right now.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s, without it, like I would, I would be much worse at keeping in contact with people. And, you know, I’m so happy to have that if the price is that, you know, I have friends over and we’re talking about hamburgers and the next day my computer’s like, hey, you should buy some hamburgers.

I’m like, okay, all right. That’s the, that’s the price we pay. Yeah.

Now you did a year-long residency at the, at the Mainline Theatre in Montreal. I did, yes. When you came to Canada for your tour that year, did you know that was coming or was that something that developed while you were here? That is a good question.

And going back a few years. So that, that was when I, when I moved over for two years. And so, yeah, I think, I think that was sort of pre-planned because I let them know that after the tour, I was going to come back to Montreal and, you know, live there for a while.

So they wanted me and I, you know, I was like obviously in contact because I was like, I’m going to, I’m going to be here. I want to be doing things. I want to be putting on shows.

So they offered me this, this residency, which was great because it helped me develop one of my, one of my sort of biggest, biggest shows. And I got to do a run of all my solo shows and they helped me develop a bunch of stuff. And we developed Captain Spaceship, which is one of my improv shows that is still going to this day there.

So it was, yeah, it was an amazing experience. And, and while I was there, like I did so many shows at Mainline, that place really became like my, my second home when I was living in Montreal. Do you still think of it as like, as, as a second home? Like I, I know, like I don’t, I didn’t perform there, but you know, Mainline is so integrated with the fringe there that I still have these very warm feelings towards Mainline theatre, even though I was only there for like two weeks.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, it became such a big part of my life. Like if I wasn’t performing something there, I was, you know, there watching someone else’s show or helping out with someone else’s show or taking someone else’s show.

And I was just, just hanging around like a bad smell, you know, using the internet during the day if I needed it. Again, it’s just part of that, that fringe family thing. And sort of, it just became part of the furniture.

So when I, when I go back to Montreal, it always feels familiar and it always feels like home no matter how long it’s been. Like to the point that there’s places I went last time I was there was 2019 was my last tour. And I stayed there for an extra month cause I was writing a play and you know, I just wanted to be there to write what I was working on.

And I would go to places I used to visit five years earlier and they would still know, like I’d walk in, they’d go, Oh, the regular. And I’m like, how do you remember me? What do you mean the regular? Like don’t live here anymore. And like, just that, that’s how amazing that place became to me.

Like if it were places I wouldn’t go that often, you know, it was bizarre. Nice. Yeah.

Nice. Now, one of the things that I’m always curious about when I talk to people on, on, on, on this show is about their theatre origin story. So we talked about your fringe or what drew you to, to French.

So sort of your fringe origin story, but yeah. But why, why theatre? What, what is it that, how did you first get into theatre? What drew you to theatre? What, what made you want to create your own shows? All right. Well, going, I mean, going way, way back to like primary school era.

I mean, I feel like I have a similar origin story to a lot of theatre kids and that I was a very, very shy kid. And I just had that one sort of special teacher that recognized that and found a way to get me to come out of my shell. And that was theatre.

And it would have been, I want to say grade four and Miss Wilson had me audition for the lead role in the crazy reworked production of Cinderella through the television. You know, that classic tale where Cinderella, the princess goes through the television into a parallel world and becomes a weird little boy, you know, that classic tale. Yeah.

And so I auditioned and you know, in grade four style and I got the role and, and, you know, got laughs on stage for the first time. I was like, Ooh, Ooh, I liked that. So still, I mean, even to this day, I’m a pretty reserved sort of shy person, but you know, when I’m on the stage, that’s where I feel the most comfortable which for a lot of people is, you know, a terrifying thought, but for me, it’s, it’s home.

And, you know, still to this day, like I do a lot of improv to keep that sort of like that fear, you know, on stage. So yeah, from primary school just kind of got addicted to what did like a bunch of school plays. And then in high school, I was really lucky that the, my high school had a really incredible drama program and did really big, you know, productions every year.

And I did like West Side Story and I was in Midsummer Night’s Dream. And we did, I think we did the first production of the musical Big anywhere in Australia. Yeah.

So, you know, I don’t want to brag, but I played Tom Hanks’ character’s dad in that. Oh, Tom Hanks’ dad? No, no. Yeah.

Tom Hanks’ character’s dad. Pretty good. Yeah.

And so that was fun. And then after that, I went straight into Performing Arts Academy in Western Australia and then got the, got the fringe bug. And then two, two really amazing things happened is very early on.

I went to the Melbourne Fringe and I saw my first ever solo show. And that experience blew my mind. I was like, you can do a show by yourself.

Cause I was doing a two-man show at the time and we were having a great time that, you know, everyone knows that once you tour with someone for a bunch of time, you live in each other’s pockets, you can get on each other’s nerves. And that particular day was the day we were kind of like, you know what, I’m going to do my own thing today. You do your own thing and we’ll meet up tomorrow for the show.

And we, we watched this show and I was just like, you got to just do a show by yourself. This is great. I’ll have no one to blame but myself and I’ll get to take all the credit, you know? And that, that’s when I started touring solo and, you know, you do get a little bit lonely after a while and sort of came back to doing ensemble stuff after that.

But yeah, it’s fun, fun, fun. So you, I mean, you, you, you experienced your first solo show, like, like seeing it at a fringe and not any other way. I saw it at a fringe.

Yeah. And the next thing that happened that really blew my mind is I saw another solo show. I think the year later, and it was still to this day, one of the best shows that I’ve ever seen.

It was called around the world on 80 quid, I believe. And it was this Irish guy named Andreas, just telling this, this partially true tale and playing the fiddle. And it was like stripped back, you know, it was in a really crappy little venue.

It’s like two lights, no microphone. And I was just like, this is one of the best things I’ve ever seen. And this guy has a budget of like negative $50.

And I was like, so you can do a show by yourself and you can do a show with nothing and it still be good. And like, that’s what I’ve been striving for, like my entire career. Like with, with some exceptions, I really do believe that a really good show should be able to, you know, exist completely stripped back and be performed under Fleurie lights at a pinch.

Yeah. And obviously it’s kind of amazing when you get to see something like that, when you get to see something that’s, that’s so simple and yet so riveting. Yeah.

And that show like impacted me. Like I still talk about it to this day, obviously. And I like, it was such a, like a simple format.

It was just a really good storytelling show, just a dude and a fiddle. And I was just like, and it, you know, I walked out of that, you know, emotional. I was like, Oh my God, what a story.

And like, just, I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love a big budget show with all the bells and whistles, but just something as simple as that, that just can change your life just as much as, you know, watching the Lion King or whatever is, is such an important part of, of why I love theatre and why I still do it and why I sort of love sort of the, the part, the punk, you know, ideologies of, of fringe theatre. Yeah.

When, when you’re creating a show, whether it’s for fringe or, or otherwise, are you like, what’s your creation process? Do you sit down and write it or do you stand? Do you, do you, do you try to improvise scenes and write them down? How do you create a show? Like for example, let’s say your first Zach Adams show. The process has been a little bit different for all of them, to be honest. The first Zach Adams show was obviously like my first big show.

So your brain is just sort of like filled with a million ideas. So that I know when I find it hard to get to sleep until I write a bunch of stuff down that the show is, is going to be something good, hopefully. And that’s how that show came about, is that I was like on tour.

I was just so inspired by all these plays that I was getting to see and seeing solo shows for the first time, seeing all these little shoestring budget shows, just going, holy crap. I just, I love fringe and just being so inspired to create, going, I want to have something like this. I want to, I liked what happened in this show.

I liked what happened in this show. I want to sort of incorporate these things that I loved into what I’m making. And so I think the first show was very influenced by like my ideals of being a theatre artist and being a solo theatre artist and what I wanted to see on stage.

Later down the track, like my play Trampoline, which was a three-hander, was kind of based on something that I had already written. It was based on a fake blog that I’d been writing just as sort of an experiment while I was living in Montreal. And I sort of fell in love with the character that I was writing from the perspective from, and I was like, this, this story could be a play.

And I turned it into something a bit more cohesive and serious. Whereas my two-man show, The Ballad of Frank Allen, that started as a short story series that I was writing for a website. And again, I was like, this, this would make a really fun show.

And that was like another translation from something else I had written. And the idea just came. Do you know the Kevin Smith film Tusk? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So he talked in the making of that, how it came about. Cause basically he was like, he had this bizarre idea during his podcast for this movie about a guy that, you know, gets kidnapped and turned into a walrus. And he said like, no one else is ever going to make that movie unless I make that movie.

And that’s how I feel about, you know, some of the shows that I make, like, this is the thing I would love to see on stage as a play about a tiny man that gets shrunk and ends up living in another man’s beard for two years. I’m like, no one else is going to make that show. So I’m going to make that show.

Cause I want to see it. I want to see if it works. And so a lot of my ideas have come from things that I wish existed, but didn’t yet.

Now with the show, like the Ballad of Frank Allen, which is about a man who gets shrunk and lives in another man’s beard, is that something when you’re coming up with that, are you like, this is never going to work? Or you’re like, I think this is insane enough that it’s just going to work. A little bit of both. Originally, I was just like, I’m just going to write this show and we’re going to figure out how we’re going to do it later.

Like, I’m just going to write it how I want to write it. Forget about the limitations of theatre. Like, I’m just going to write the show as I dream it.

And then we’ll figure it out later. And then from that, you know, process of obviously like, this is a little bit too cinematic. This is too informatic.

We’re not going to recreate this on stage too. This is a little bit too, you know, cinematic, but we’re going to figure out how to do it and translate it to stage. And luckily, Sinjin Koucher, who I developed the show with, he’s an incredibly talented performer in his own right.

He writes a bunch of great stuff and he’s a really good physical performer. And he is just so willing to trust me and for me to trust him that we could just like throw ideas out there and go, let’s just try this and see if it works. It might be stupid.

And even if it is, we might keep it in. Yeah. So we just had a really good, a really good working relationship and a really good trust that like, we’ll just try stuff.

We’ll throw everything on the wall. We’ll see what sticks. There’s something about like trying not to think about staging while you’re writing and just trusting that you can, you can find a way to do it later on.

When I was talking to Sext T-Rex years ago, they were like, yeah, we just write it and we write it cinematic. We don’t worry about how we’re going to do it until we’re trying to rehearse it. And then we’ll figure out how do we do this car chase.

And then we’ll figure out a way to do it. And something about like, sometimes as theatre artists, we can get a little bit too hung up on, oh, these are the rule, the quote unquote rules of what you can do in a theatre. And that can be a little hampering, I think.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can just really restrict yourself, but giving yourself those challenges to have to problem solve, it keeps it, you know, it keeps it exciting. It keeps it interesting.

And like when it works, like, I mean, Sext T-Rex is such a perfect example of the physicality of the stuff they bring on stage. It’s just incredible. Like, I’ve been in awe of them many times.

Those guys and some of the stuff that Peter and Chris have done as well, really influenced some of the work we did on Ballad of Frank Allen for sure, like in terms of the physical work. Because I was like, oh, I want to see if I can do what Sext T-Rex does with two people. Yeah.

I mean, years ago, one of the first Keystone Theatre shows featured a, like a chase on top of a train. And we were just like, we’ll figure that out. All we did was like, we had a light on the stage that represented the top of the train.

And every so often somebody would run by with a branch. And it was so simple, and yet it worked so well, that it just sort of you don’t necessarily need a huge budget to do something spectacular. The simplest thing can be something that the audience will just get carried away with and just go with.

And so satisfying to see as an audience as well, just going, that’s how they did that. Oh, that is so simple, yet so genius. And I love it.

Yeah, absolutely. I remember seeing Sext T-Rex do some kind of like a chase, like a dog fight with planes or spaceships, and they used hangers. And somehow, it was one of the most exciting things I’ve seen.

Yeah. I just, yeah, it’s just seeing like other people’s, like the way that people’s minds work as well, going, you know, I bet they were just sitting in a room with a bunch of coat hangers. They’re like, what about this? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Just sort of, I’m curious about when you went off to, before you went off to performing arts school, was there ever a point in high school where somebody was like, this theatre thing, maybe you should not pursue that? Or was the school and your family and everybody else really supportive of it? No, I think I’ve been really lucky that my folks, especially, have always been very sort of supportive of my career. There was the day at the end of high school where I applied for performing arts school and also graphic design. And I was just like, I got into both.

But then it came to that day where I had to send one of the letters back, you know, I had to make the choice. And I often think about that parallel universe, Shane, who’s possibly a very successful, wealthy graphic designer now. But is he as happy as me? Probably not.

You know, I don’t know. I don’t know. I sometimes think about him.

Had you done graphic design before that? Or were you just like, this sounds like a cool thing? I did. I did a bunch of, like, I’d studied fine arts and stuff when I was at high school. So that was kind of the path I went into.

And, you know, inevitably, being an independent producer, you end up doing a lot of graphic design anyway. So you’re like, you know, I design all my show publicity posters and all that kind of stuff anyway. So, you know, I got kind of the best of both worlds, just, you know, not as well trained in one.

But yeah, my family have always been super supportive. And whenever I’m in Australia and, you know, my family will always come out to see my show. So it’s always good for my cast because there’s always at least one night that’s guaranteed to sell out because I’ve got a pretty big family.

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Just as we start to a couple of things that I want to, I want to come back to the state of theatre in Australia, in West Australia right now. And you said that, are you at 100% or you’re about to go to 100%? I think as of this week, I think things are back to 100% as far as I know. Yeah.

But of course, the Fringe season is over there. The Fringe season is over. Adelaide Fringe has come and gone.

The Melbourne Comedy Festival just finished. So we’re kind of in the little bit of the mid-year slump for festivals. There’s Darwin Fringe coming up later in the year.

Melbourne and Sydney have their Fringes in like August, September, I think. So still a few smaller Fringes to go, but all the big ones are pretty much done. Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne are sort of the three biggies for the year.

Hmm. And so how does a Fringe artist who’s out of Fringe festivals and can’t tour, how do you keep yourself busy in those off weeks? Well, I’m very fortunate that I’ve got a gig with a professional company here coming up next week. For the next nine weeks, I’ll be on rehearsing and then doing a regional tour of a production of The Little Prince.

So yeah, I’m very lucky that I have that gig. But I mean, other than that, a lot of artists, last year I had a massive pivot in what I was doing. I started my own independent toy company.

So I’m a huge retro vintage toy collector and I’ve always wanted to sort of make my own lines of weird little characters. And so I had the time last year and I had the funds. So I started that last year, a little company called Cube Boy Collectibles and that’s still going and people seem to really like it.

And so that’s the thing that I’m going to, I really want to keep going. And in the second half of this year, when I don’t have as much theatre stuff going, I’m going to really focus on that and churning out a bunch of cool, new, weird little figurines and toys and weird bootlegs and paintings and visual art things. And yeah, so that’s keeping my creative mind busy while I can’t leave the country.

Yeah. What do you think is the first thing you will do when you can’t travel? Ooh, probably go to Mainline Theatre and say hi to everybody. Yeah.

I mean, like within Australia is fine, but I don’t really do that many of the Australian fringes anymore. Just because it’s just, you know, the rewards just not as much as I would like it to be. Whereas I’ve come and do Canada for, you know, three months.

It’s a lot of work and a lot of money to get there, but you know, potentially I’ll make quite a bit of that back and I’ll get to see all, you know, my Canadian fringe fan, which I only get to see once a year. So yeah, I would love to do another big Canadian tour. Like who knows when that’s going to happen, but when it does happen, boy, is it going to be fun? Because I feel like everyone’s, you know, going to be really like raring to go and really like jump back into that lifestyle.

I feel like the fringe circuit that is going to be a pretty wild year of fringing. Yeah. And all I hope is there’s not 50,000 shows about COVID.

Yeah. I don’t want to see any shows about COVID. Yeah.

We were there. We were just there. We were there.

I don’t want to see another, I don’t want to see a bunch of solo shows about this. I spent a year alone in my apartment. Yeah.

We all did. We all did. We lived that show.

We’re okay. Maybe, maybe it could be a nice history piece in 20 years, but like, no, no, we don’t, we don’t need those. I just want a bunch of musicals about zombies, a bunch of shows about the apocalypse or something.

Just how there’s always, you know, there’s always that weird theme that emerges each year during the tour. I love it. I don’t know why it happens, but it’s great.

I just think there aren’t enough musicals about zombies. There should be more. There should always be at least one in every city, please.

Like, please, will somebody please create, write a musical about like a zombie apocalypse musical? I just need it. I’m ready. Yeah.

Now, last thing that I want, thing that I’ve been asking everybody since this, this, the pandemic started is, is about joy. What has been giving you joy through this time? One amazing thing that I’ve really taken away from this is that I’ve been able to spend so much more time with my family, my two nephews specifically, like my youngest nephew, Otis just turned one last week. So he was born, he was born during the very early stages of the pandemic.

And because I work at a hospital during my day gig and I had to be super cautious about isolation and that stuff. I didn’t actually get to meet him until he was like three weeks old, which was really hard for me because I really love, I really love my nephews and I really, really wanted to meet him. So yeah, I ended up writing a song about the experience of, you know, not getting to meet him and him being born into this weird situation.

So yeah, spending time with my family has been, been really good. And just seeing, catching up with my friends that I probably should spend more time with here in Western Australia anyway. So that’s sort of been a good thing and just really appreciating what I have here when I’m in Western Australia so that I miss it more when I still leave.

Shane, thank you. Thank you so much for this conversation. I really wanted to talk to you about the state of theatre there and hear your story because first off, it’s a great excuse to talk to you.

But also because I really feel like here we can really use the hope that the theatres are coming back. So thank you for that. It’s my pleasure.

And I can’t wait till you guys get to start doing awesome stuff again. And hopefully I can come and see it.