Karen Ancheta

Karen is a Hamilton-born Filipina- Canadian multidisciplinary artist She’s an original member of the Hamilton 7 and just finished a project with Kwentong Bayan Collective lcpcomicbook.com for myseumoftoronto.com as a storytelling facilitator and Decolonise Your Ears Festival with redbettytheatre.org directing/outreach.
She is co-founder of Porch Light Theatre dedicated to the development of youth emerging and professional theatre/storytelling artists. Through Porch Light Theatre, Karen has been working with an incredible team on a site-specific audio story show called Tin Can Telephone at the Hamilton Fringe. She is currently working on The Garden Project 2021 in partnership with Industry and urging people to
DONATE OR APPLY here: https://www.industrypresents.com/garden-project
Currently, Karen is working with openheartartstheatre.com with Conversations Around The Table, Fertility Monologues with Light Echo Theatre. Karen is a recent recipient of a City of Hamilton Arts Award 2021.

Porch Light Theatre on Instagram: @porchlighttheatrehamilton

Transcript available at: https://stageworthypodcast.com/294-karen-ancheta/

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Transcript

Welcome to episode 294 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.

You know, for more than five years, Stageworthy has been a labour of love for me. I don’t make any money from this podcast, and the only time I ever have ads in the podcast are through reciprocal agreements. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please consider supporting it.

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All of your purchases and tip jar donations go towards Stageworthy and help me continue to bring you great conversations in Canadian theatre. And if you can’t donate or buy from the store, please consider rating and reviewing the show. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, you can leave a review right in the podcast app.

If you don’t listen on Apple Podcasts, you can still review the show by going to podchaser.com, searching for Stageworthy, and rating the podcast there. Thanks for listening, and thank you for your support. You can find Stageworthy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at StageworthyPod, and you can find the website with the archive of all 294 episodes at stageworthypodcast.com. And if you want to drop me a line, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at philrickaby, and my website is philrickaby.com. My guest this week is multidisciplinary artist and recent Hamilton Arts Awards winner, Karen Ancheta.

If I was to ask you, Karen, how you describe your artistic practice, or to put it another way, if you had an elevator pitch to describe to somebody yourself as an artist, what would you say? Okay. So I would say that me as an artist, I’m like the ultimate collage. I am the sum total of everything that I’ve experienced.

Everything up until this point, it all funnels down. Everything from my cultural theatre, working with youth, working with community groups, new play development, my customer service skills come in handy, being a mom, everything. I am amazed.

There are some things that I take on, and I think, oh my god, I could not do this if I didn’t have that piece. It’s really interesting how sometimes things that we don’t expect to come into our artistic practice will suddenly… For example, customer service. I’ve worked in customer service for over 20 years, and one never knows when those particular skills are just going to be needed.

Oh my gosh. I feel like customer service, it’s like… When I’m doing customer service, I used to work at this place called Poke in the farmer’s market, and I would see sometimes 200 people a day, and it’s the same script over and over and over again. You’ve got a short-term objective and a long-term objective, and you’re just playing the same scene over and over again every three minutes for eight hours.

It’s like, yeah, I’m trying to make it fresh, trying to make it fresh. Everything overlaps for me. It’s interesting about that is I think that the lessons that one learns as an actor, for example, come in really handy in customer service because somebody who didn’t know how to repeatedly play the same scene and make it feel like it’s the first time they’re playing that scene, in a customer service situation, it would sound like they were just doing it for the thousandth time.

For an actor or performer, you can make it so that it sounds like it’s the first time. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes on those long days when it’s hot and sticky, that’s the thing.

It’s like, okay, reset. Hi, how are you? And that genuine curiosity and really trying to connect with someone in three seconds, I think is that a customer service skill or is that an acting skill? Do you know what I mean? It goes hand in hand. In a lot of ways, I think it does.

But then I think there’s a lot of people who work in customer service who can’t do that. Are you able to do that because you’re an actor or are you able to do it because of your years of experience in customer service, or is it a combination of the two? Oh, my God. Huh.

I think it is because I’m an actor. I have to say, I think that ability to reset and to make it fresh and to connect for the first time and to find something to love and to connect with a person, I think that’s the actor in me. Yeah, that’s definitely fully engaged.

So speaking of the actor in you, what is your theatre origin story? If you were to describe what drew you to the theatre that made you start down the path to be the person, the performer you are now, what was that? Oh, my gosh. I think it was in grade five. Grade five in my orange fuzzy house coat and my kerchief.

And it was the night before Christmas. And I think I came out and did a yawn. And I think CHCH TV was there.

And I think that was it. I was like, yeah, this is it. And then from there, I mean, like my sister and I, my sister is a musician, Mary Ancheta.

And we always sang. We were Filipino. We grew up on music.

We did karaoke. And the music from there expanded into musicals. I was obsessed with musicals.

And then in theatre, sorry, a theatre class at my high school, a lovely, lovely teacher named Bill Cook, he exposed us to theatre. And we went to England, where all we did was watch two shows a day. Wow.

And for 10 days, and then we kind of snuck into the pub at night. It was amazing. And then from there, I saw Miss Saigon.

I saw the original cast, except for Lea Salonga. And that was it. I was I need to be in Miss Saigon.

That’s what I want to do. It didn’t happen. And I thought I was going to go into musical theatre.

But then I ended up being an actor and taking classical theatre at Ryerson. So I guess that’s a bit of my origin story. Yeah.

I always found as a child, I think that my first exposure to theatre was through original cast recordings. Before I saw a play, I heard the music. And then I started to realize, oh, these things all tell a story when you put them together.

Once I could read, I would read the synopsis on the back and try to figure out all the nuances, how these things fit together. And that was really my start into theatre, though this is a play, this is what it’s like. Of course, at the time, I thought that all theatre was musicals because that’s all I knew.

But I very quickly learned that there was more to it than just that. And I think sometimes musical theatre can be like a gateway drug to other theatre. I think so.

It’s just so pumped up. Oh, actually, we used to do, we used to do this thing in high school called showstoppers. And we were like a little cabaret group.

And we used to wear these glittery butterfly tops from the 80s. And we used to go out as a troupe. And we used to do Broadway tunes.

Oh, my gosh, I think that was like, yeah, I think that’s where it kind of bit also for me. That I think also, like just going to school shows, I just have this like strong memory of like sitting there in the house. And my favourite part is always when the lights go down.

Because you just know that you’re going to go for a ride. Like it’s just the beginning. Here we go.

I think really clever shows and sometimes you see it in the big budget musicals, but really clever show somehow sets the stage for that moment. You know, you know, they have like either they have their, their, their drop in the front with like a logo or something, they play some lights on it or something. A really smart show has that moment.

In Hamilton, they don’t really put the lights down, but they’ve amped the anticipation because there’s no curtain. You know, you sort of see it and you’re like, oh, there’s things I could see the set, I could see the things. And then all of a sudden it starts.

You’re so right. I feel like it’s been so long since I’ve been in a theatre. But yeah, yes, that’s totally true.

There are a lot of places here that don’t have a curtain. Yeah, but I think that there’s, there’s definitely something about that, like the promise of something interesting happening. Oh yes.

Something definitely is going to happen, right? It’s like, we’re going on a ride for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And that’s, that’s certainly like a great, that really sort of amps up that, that anticipation as people come in, you know? Oh yeah. I miss that.

Don’t you? Oh my God, I do. You know, it’s funny because I mentioned Hamilton, but you know, it’s, I, you know, I watched, I’d seen Hamilton live and I watched it in the, when it came out on Disney plus last year. And all it really did was really fun to see it, but it really made me miss being in a theatre.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. Now have you, have you in all of this time, this, this, this time where we haven’t been able to be in theatres, have you, have you dipped into digital performance at all? Have you been involved in any, any like zoom plays or anything like that? Oh my God.

I feel like I’m just like chained to my computer. I, I, I don’t know if, I didn’t realize that this would happen, but I’ve just been involved in so many different things because of digital, digital magic in all different capacities. Like, I mean, in the past, I’m in love in Hamilton.

So if I want to go to Toronto to see theatre, see my colleagues, see some amazing work, I, it’s a day trip. You know, like I have to, okay. Okay.

Okay. And I, I felt really bad that I couldn’t come out all the time. You know, I’ve got kids and I remember the first time that I turned on the computer and got my digital ticket.

And then I was like, okay, I’m just going to put dinner on really quickly here. And then I could go back to watching. And I was like, oh my gosh, I think I like this.

Like I didn’t have to drive all the way in. And I can, I know it’s not the same. It’s not the same, but it’s, it’s, I’ve seen more than I have in a long time.

And I’ve participated. People will say, hey, can you, can you come online? You know, there’s a, there’s a, what do you call a new play development thing that’s happening. I’d love you to sit in.

And that’s like, okay, sure. And I didn’t have to go anywhere. It was like, all right.

And here you go. I’ll send you my notes. Like that was, that was pretty cool.

Yeah. I right now I’m, my head is spinning. There’s a lot of things happening digitally in my world right now.

Everything from let’s see, community engaged art with different, different groups, some in Toronto, some spread out. I’ve got storytelling things that are happening, happening here in Hamilton. I was doing vocal coaching for Humber college.

I’m going to be adjudicating for the NTS Drama Fest. I am, what else am I doing? It’s just, Oh, I’m working for just all these things that I’ve been able to engage with just by sitting in my little corner and my computer. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Like I wasn’t this busy before. I think that there’s as much as we all miss being in theatres, there’s something about this doing things digitally that has in many ways opened up the world as far as participation goes. For example, being you being in Hamilton and being able to participate in shows that are in, or just to watch shows in Toronto or wherever else they might be.

I really feel like if we don’t keep that going somehow, we’re missing out. We’re missing an opportunity to both open up theatre for both the rest of the country and the world so that we’re no longer siloed in our little cities, but also we’re opening up theatre to people who can’t necessarily get there. We’re taking the ableism out of theatre attendance, for example.

I agree. I totally think you’re right. I think it just opens it up.

It makes it super accessible. I know it’s like an extra department that has to happen, but I hope it does. I like how the Hamilton Fringe, for example, has something.

They had the Frostbites Festival in the winter. Usually it’s site-specific. For this year, you’d buy your ticket, you’d log on, and you had a virtual option, or you could have a walking tour option.

I thought that was really cool. And I like that there’s that option. I’m doing an audio play right now, and I’m thinking, they could experience it online, but what do we need to do to get them to get out of their house? We’ll have to work harder to get them into the theatre in some ways.

I have to jump in. I was just having this conversation just the other week with somebody about how I think we think that, that we’d have to work harder to get people to come out. But how many times do we go to see our favourite musician to play our favourite songs? There are plenty of podcasts that have live events, and people will go to hear their favourite bits.

Even comedians will perform, and if you do everybody’s favourite bit from your last album, they’ll go crazy. They want to hear it. I feel like the story that we’ve told ourselves in the theatre is that if we give it to them online, they’ll never come and see it live.

But I think that the fact that people go see a musician play exactly the same songs that they could hear on the album live gives us the opportunity to break out of that story that we tell ourselves and to give it to them live, but then offer them something like, sure, you heard this, but here’s what it look like, to expand beyond just the audio and to give them some kind of spectacle and whatever it is, to bring it to life out of their minds and on the stage. Not only that, I think that we’re so starved now for the mingling of energy in a room. At least I am.

I thought I was a bit of a hermit, actually, but I’ve been so starved for that mingling of energy in a room. That is part of the reason why I would go. I remember seeing Prairie Nurse at the Blyth Festival by Marie Beath Badian.

There’s two Filipina nurses on stage, and then there’s a Scottish doctor, and the Filipinas are going, I don’t understand what he’s saying. Can you understand what he’s saying? Sometimes it’s in Tagalog, and sometimes it’s in English. Where I was sitting, I could see the whole audience, and I could see the Filipino patrons laughing.

Then the doctors also, they couldn’t tell them apart. Then you could see the other patrons that were resonating with the Scottish doctor on stage. That was part of it, being in the audience and watching that.

I wouldn’t get that if I was sitting here watching it on screen. No. I think that a lot of us, if you spend a lot of days, like I do in video meetings, it’s hard to take that same video format and treat it like theatre.

But I feel like once we’re back in the theatre, if we were to just set up a couple of cameras in the theatre, we can have a live presentation. People can watch it at home if they can’t come to the theatre, but they may also, having seen it and had that taste of what the live experience is like, then they maybe want to come and see it live. I totally agree.

I saw Bug here at home on my computer, and there’s this beautiful shot from above where the main character’s lying on the ground. It’s so beautiful. I kept thinking, oh, I never would have saw this from this vantage point if I didn’t see it online.

The camera work was so good. Jessica Lea Fleming, her camera work was so great. I really enjoyed it.

Yes, one day when it comes back into the theatre, I will definitely go again to see it from that vantage point. Maybe it’s about seeing it twice. I don’t know.

I’m not going to name any names because they shouldn’t do this, but they’ll watch musicals on YouTube. They’re all terrible, pirated versions of whatever is a hit on Broadway. But if they have the opportunity to get a ticket, even though they’ve seen it, they’ll go because it’s not the same.

It’s not the same. No. I think that deep down, we kind of know that.

We know, even though we can hear the audience, that the experience is completely different for the people who were there. That’s so true. I’m thinking about the Fringe Festival show that I’m doing with Porchlight Theatre, which is a theatre that I founded with Aaron Jan.

We’re working on this project called the House Key Project. We’re hoping to a yearly thing. This summer, we had planned to do a full out in-person, in-studio thing with four youth from Hamilton.

But obviously, we can’t gather, so we’ve postponed it. The in-studio thing, it’s just not the same. We want to have that experience.

We were lucky enough to get funding from Theatre Aquarius Theatre School. We decided, all right, let’s do an audio thing. We’ve been working with them.

I’ve got four brilliant high school and first year art college participants, storytellers, Bruce Wuscheler-Suell, Matia Arkunda, and Sunny Duan. We’re doing a show. It’s an audio show, and we’re going to put it in different areas of Hamilton.

I was telling them about the full program next year, and they were all stoked. They were like, ooh, that’s so cool. I was thinking, wouldn’t that be interesting if we took these audio plays, but then did them next year? What if we did them again, but did a stage version of it? Sure.

I did last year at Christmas. I presented a six-part audio drama that I’d created. It’s always been in my mind that I would perform that live in person at some point.

Hearing it is one thing, but the experience of having that story told in person is different enough that to me, yeah, you can go and listen to that now, but it’s going to be different. It will be more of a spectacle. There’ll be something different about seeing it performed in person.

I think that you approach it differently too, right? When you create it for audio, you’re thinking about it as an audio. Then you take that same script, and then you’re like, okay, so now we’re in the world. What’s changed? How do we present this? It’s completely different, and yet adds so much.

Well, that would be a great experience, actually, for these youth thinking that we should do it. What do you think? Should we do it? I think absolutely. In fact, you think about taking it, and now they’ve had one experience of doing it.

Now they think, oh, yeah, I know that. That’s easy. Now we’re going to give them the same material and have them perform it in front of people.

That’s completely new. It’ll bring new life into it for people who maybe thought, oh, I’ve done that, but no, you haven’t. I wonder too, if the same audience were to experience the audio version, would they come out to see the physical version? I’ll be curious to hear what that experience would be like to see both, actually.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that people do, for the same reason that I think that people go to see their favourite band. If that band didn’t play their favourite song that they could listen to in their car on the way home, they’d be pissed.

Yeah, that’s true. We have that desire to, even if we’re familiar with it, we want to experience it again in a new way. That’s so true because, yeah, I could listen to it online, but then when I’m in a crowd and everybody’s singing their heart out, everybody feels the same.

There’s something magical. There’s something so validating. There’s something that, yeah, it’s totally different.

That’s cool. Yeah, and the audience experience is very different because when they listen to it in the audio format, they probably listen to it alone. Yes.

And maybe a little absently, maybe they were doing something else, maybe they weren’t. But now when they’re listening to it in a group, then that group dynamic that comes in, that thing that we want when we’re gathered in the room, comes into play and they’ll experience it in a new, fresher way. It’s actually the missing part.

I’m finding with my storytelling groups, whether I’m working with the Caregivers Association through Kent Quentin Bayan, where we work with Filipino caregivers, or whether it’s the youth from Porchlight Theatre or the South Asian Women’s groups, I work with them one-on-one, online. And then we tell the story that can be so intimate, a little slice of a remembrance, a little slice of themselves. And then I remember we went from that and into the theatre.

This was a couple of years ago. And then all of a sudden, they were confronted with standing in front with a microphone, with 100 people that will be coming. And it was like this, and I remember feeling it too, like, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize how intimate it was working at a distance like that.

And then having to share it. But the results are always amazing. And even when we do a share, if I work with them individually, and then we just share in a bigger Zoom thing, it’s the missing part.

You just need that. You need to have it received by someone in real time. And it changes.

It changes the energy. You can see it. I love watching them.

Especially a lot of the storytellers in the community, they’re first-time tellers. So it’s quite beautiful. Yeah.

Especially that first-time teller, it’s always so raw. If it’s the first time as a storyteller, it’s such a new experience. Everything is on the surface when they’re telling that story.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. It’s almost like I could see them, especially if they’ve been working in this little tube, and then all of a sudden they’ve got this share, and they’ve got this microphone.

And then the realization of, oh my God, what have I been creating? I didn’t realize I was going to be exposing myself like this. And then seeing them, there’s this adrenaline that kicks in, and it almost overflows. And then they have to experience that and get over that hump, and then be able to rein it in and to tell.

And I tell you, the most beautiful part, and I always tell them that if what you say rings true, then right after, you’re going to have people coming up to you and start to tell you their story. And it always happens. And I’m always so happy to watch my students or my mentees in the lobby, and I can see them holding courts, and people are standing there telling them their grandma’s story.

And I know that feeling too, so I quite enjoy it. I think that is such an important experience for people to have, is to have told a story that’s so personal and see how it hits people. Because I think that sometimes as artists, we get caught up in trying to tell a story that will appeal to everyone.

And then when you do that, it appeals to nobody. Because you have to tell a story that’s so true and so yours, that then that’s when people relate to it. They relate to the emotion, they relate to something.

And they’ll share that by telling their story as well, like you said. It resonates. That’s when you know.

That’s one of the reasons I think I really love storytelling. I draw a lot. I’m one of those storytellers that draw a lot on memory.

I’m like a memory keeper in my family. I like to remember all the details and who’s who. And I always thought if I could be, you know, that level of truth and attention to detail and trying to get the clarity of what actually happened, if I can achieve that with a storytelling, when I go to write something that’s imagined, you know, for theatre, it still has to hit that bar.

It has to ring at the same level. That is my bar. Yeah.

When did you start storytelling, by the way? Oh, I guess formally with the Hamilton Seven. This lovely, lovely, one of my dearest friends, Lisa Pijuan-Nemura, who is a multidisciplinary artist here at Hamilton. She started this group called the Hamilton Seven.

And so amazing. It was like Josh Taylor, who’s a hip hop dancer. We’ve got Tor Lukasik-Foss, who is a visual artist.

He’s made so many things. Sculptor Hitoko Okada, who’s like a fabric artist. There’s Sheldon and Darla.

They’ve come from acting. They’re through and through, like actors. Who have I missed? Dave Brennan, comedian.

And I guess me and Lisa, I cover theatre and she’s also a flamenco dancer. So we would meet and then we would kind of like dramaturge our stories on the spot and share. And we did a storytelling night once a month for like, I think, two years.

And I guess that’s where it started, at the Staircase Theatre is where we would do it. And it was just so amazing. Like everybody had their own flavour.

Everybody had their own style. And there was always like, actually, there was nine of us. Corin Raymond also was their singer, storyteller.

But there was at least seven of us on stage at any show. But I guess that’s where I started doing that on a regular basis. And then it kind of like, my process kind of like came out of that and then combined with a bunch of other stuff, like theatre wise.

And then I keep getting called to do storytelling facilitation for all different groups. And I’m really loving it. And can you tell me about the first time you told a story on stage? What was that like? Oh, I think it was, I’m thinking about the Hamilton Seven.

Good. It was good. It was a small crowd.

All the people in our group are so loving and supportive and generous. And everyone, everybody was so just really supportive. And yeah, I think it just kept me going.

It was a really great experience. Nice. You mentioned a couple of times, you’ve mentioned Porchlight.

Can you tell me a little bit about the founding of that company, of that group? Oh, yeah, I’d love to. So Porchlight Theatre was started with myself and Aaron Jan. I had tried to convince him to come to Hamilton years prior, when he first graduated from theatre school.

And he kind of said, I can’t come there. I can’t come back home. Because I guess he had been, he’d finished at York.

He said, I can’t come back home. There’s fine. And then I was at the Factory Theatre, doing Through the Bamboo with a week collective.

And he was in the courtyard and said, Hey, Karen, I know how to get funding now. Let’s talk. So we sat down, and then we kind of made a list of all the things that we had wished existed.

And so we did that. So we’re a Hamilton based collective dedicated to the development and support of youth, both emerging and professional theatre artists and storytellers. And we hope to exist to build a space that amplifies the voices of marginalized theatre artists from the greater Hamilton area.

So we’re talking about stories, playwriting, explorations, and hoping to take it to the next level, which also means getting paid. That is always the challenge. Although Aaron has been doing a lot about helping people get their funding, which is really great.

Yes, the money goblin is going to kill me. Money goblin. I haven’t heard anybody call him.

Go ahead. He won’t mind. He knows it’s true.

So yeah, that’s been really amazing. And then last summer, we did the garden project with our wonderful partners at industry. And because of some things that happened in Hamilton, we decided to take action, and this was our call to action.

So there’s like seven of us who are the founders, Rose Hopkins, Rick Banville, Anna Chatterton, Matt McFadgen, Laura Welch, Aaron and I, and we are the founders of the garden project. So together, we had set out to raise seed money for Black Indigenousness and people of colour artists in Hamilton. We tried to raise $2,000.

We’re like, okay, we’ll do that. We’ll support one artist and then we’ll do mentorship. We’ll pair them up with a mentor and we’ll pay them also.

Well, word got out. And then we had a second artist. Oh, that’s cool.

And then we had a third. And then we’re able to support four artists in total. We raised almost $18,000 during the pandemic.

Yeah. So we’re hoping to happen. We’re hoping to make it happen again this year because last year’s pairings and the artists that came through, oh my gosh, it was so, so lovely and definitely worth it.

Ellie Farnango, Kitoko Mai, Rana Menon, and a group called Unsettled Scores. They were just fantastic. So we’re hoping to do it again this year.

And we’re going to be doing that, I believe, I guess, the end of June. We’ll be calling for submissions for that. And we want to make it a tradition.

That’s the goal. That’s great. That’s great.

You mentioned being a mother. And as far as being a theatre artist, how hard is it to juggle being a theatre artist with being a mother for you? It’s harder at different times. I remember when my son was two weeks old and I went in to visit the Carlos Bulosan Theatre and they were doing some collective creation.

And it was so nice because within the Filipino community, children are just embraced and accepted in workspaces. So it was so nice to bring the baby in and then at break time, have people fight over the baby. It’s so nice.

He has so many titos and titas in that space. I did a project with Sulong Theatre with Catherine Hernandez and Aura Coqueva called Future Folk. And he was a little older.

So I had to leave him with my parents here and I had to drive in for that 10 o’clock rehearsal and then drive back and then pick him up and then do it all over again. It was intense. Oh my goodness.

So in that sense, and my husband travels a lot. So a lot of that fell onto me to try to juggle him, like put him somewhere. So I don’t know, in that sense, it’s just a lot on the go.

It’s not about you. You may want to concentrate on your script, but somebody needs, kids always need something. So it’s always a split focus kind of thing.

I always feel a bit split focused, like all the time, not as much as before, but in a different way. But then again, you know what? I’m a better artist. I’m a better artist because I’m a mom.

Okay. Tell me about that. Why do you think you’re a better artist because you’re a mom? I think I’m a better artist because I’m a mom, because all my caregiving instincts come into play, especially right now with the climate of taking care.

I feel like people are more aware and are really trying to make safe spaces in rehearsal. And being a mom, it’s just a natural, it’s just an extension of that, caring for someone, checking on someone. Are you okay? I’m sensing a little bit.

Come on, let me take care of you kind of thing. And then having someone do that. Look, you haven’t eaten.

You know what? Come with me. There’s just something about people, and people recognize it. They go, oh, your mom instincts are kicking in.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way. So that in terms of care, and just, oh my goodness. I think about myself in my 20s, trying to play a mom.

And then I think about Through the Bamboo, where I had to play a mom to a 12-year-old. And I didn’t have to do very much, because I already knew, like I knew it in my bones, in my blood, in my flesh, what that felt like. I was amazed.

Yeah, there was no imagination required. I just had to be. Is there, now one of the things, you know, there are plenty of theatre artists who are mothers.

I think that, like you mentioned, there’s a challenge to balancing being a mother, especially with a very young child, and being a performer. If a theatre company was to come to you and say, what would you need as a mother to succeed as a performer? What could we give to you? Care. Care.

Care. Care and consideration. I know that in a Filipino, okay, so in a Filipino theatre space, I’m not worried.

I know that if I get stuck, and I have to bring my boy, and I can say, okay, you’re going to sit in the corner, here’s some snacks, here’s your thing, okay? And everybody, not only is it, you know, it’s more than okay. He’ll come out of that rehearsal with more uncles and aunties, titos and titos, than when he started. And it’s such a family environment.

I know that in some theatre companies, that would be not cool. And that would not be very professional. You know, even though it is my reality.

And I wish that, that, yeah, like, I don’t have to apologize. I don’t have to apologize in, in most spaces that are, I don’t know, I guess, like cultural theatre, like that. I’d say for Sulong Theatre, with Catherine Hernandez and Erica Cueva, we were like, I was, there was two of the shows that we did.

And we were both pregnant in the show. And then after they came out, you know, like, we all had one kid. And I remember us saying, okay, so if this goes further, we need to put childcare in the grant.

Like, this just has to be a part of it. That’s like, yeah, of course. That makes sense.

And it was just nice to have like women kind of going, okay, yeah, we need this. Of course, yeah, it’s a no brainer, you know, but maybe someone who doesn’t have kids, or, you know, it just wouldn’t dawn on them. No.

Oh, I have to say one more thing. Yeah, there was this one time. So last year, I had a contract.

And I was trying to make it work. And I messaged my director, the most talented Jasmine Chen. And I said, listen, I is the first kid is getting on the school bus.

And I’m trying to figure out how to get them on the school bus. And then right after that, I have to zoom on the highway to get you to Toronto. And I’m going to do a dress rehearsal tomorrow to see if it will work.

But I just want you to know this is what I’m dealing with. And she wrote me and said, would it make your life easier if we started rehearsal at 1030? And I, I couldn’t believe it. I almost cried.

I was just like, yes, like, because I was like, I may get there at 1020. I’m so sorry, because we were supposed to start at 10. And that kind of tiny consideration.

I felt heard, I felt seen. It made the world of difference to me. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I think there’s, there’s something that, that, that, that we do with theatre school and I don’t in the, in the theatre. And I think we learned it in theatre school.

At least I didn’t. I wonder if it’s the same for you where it’s all about not rocking the boat. Don’t rock the boat.

Don’t cause any trouble. Don’t ask for too much. Don’t, don’t cause any trouble.

And so in a situation like that, of course, you approach that like you would in other spaces. So here’s my thing. You’re apologizing.

And I think that in some ways, like it should just be a no brainer. If the, if your cast members have children, you have to accommodate that instead of treating it like an, like an annoyance. And we have to accommodate for the fact that maybe not everybody can afford childcare.

Maybe they are the single caregiver. And so if they’re going to be in the show, that care has to be in the budget. We have to be able to look at, you know, all of our cast members and we need to make our spaces that we rehearse in as welcoming and as safe and as loving as possible because some of the work we do on stage is not.

That’s so true. I totally agree. And I love what you’re saying.

I’m just like, yes, inside I’m cheering. I’m cheering you on because to me it’s like, yeah, like all those things, like that sounds like utopia, but why, like what, but if you don’t have, if you’re at the top and you don’t have children. Yeah.

If I didn’t have children, maybe I wouldn’t think this way. Do you know? Yeah, I do. I do.

But I think that it comes down to, and I think part of the problem is we talk about people who are at the top, you know, artistic directors and things like that as though they are disconnected in some places they are, but it’s their job to know they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re the people that they’re working with. It’s their job to know their directors, designers. It’s their job to know their actors.

It’s their job to know what their actors need in order to succeed. And if you really want the best actor for the role, then you may have accommodations for if they need childcare, if they have to come in a little later, like you have to do that. It’s as far as I’m concerned, that’s the, one of the jobs of the artistic director stop acting as though you are at the top and everybody caters to, you know, you have to cater to everybody else.

Otherwise you’re creating a toxic space. Wow. Yeah.

I haven’t, I haven’t that. Yeah, I totally agree. I think what you said too about the, the mom thing, like, I feel like things are really shifting.

I feel like people are always like, like for me as a mom, I’m always like, okay, what do you need? Like in any of my sessions, I’m asking my creators, what do you need? What, what can I do to help you, you know, to get the best out of this moment for you? And is that customer service? Is that the mom in me? Do you know what I mean? But it just, it just benefits. It makes sense, right? Cause you can see it in the artist and sometimes even just the simple asking of going, okay, before we go on, I just want to ask, do you have enough support like during this time right now? Like, how are you doing? What’s the situation? And some of them, you know, some of my students I remember connecting, especially with my students at Humber, just that simple question is so lovely how it was received. Sometimes it was like, oh, oh, thank you for asking.

You know, like, I think that that’s just, that’s just human nature. I think that should be, we should always be doing that. How are we going to get the best out of each other? Well, that’s, I mean, that’s sort of the opposite of, of, of, you know, that toxic rehearsal hall where the director rules with an iron fist and all that stuff.

A few weeks back, I was talking with Siobhan Richardson, who’s an intimacy director. And I was talking with Nicole Winchester, who’s a live action role-play facilitator. So, you know, role-playing games, but in person.

But one of the things that I brought in Nicole for was to talk about emotional bleed and how that can affect both the life in the rehearsal room and outside of it. And Siobhan talks about that as well. But one of the things that we talked about was, was how we sort of came to this idea that on the first day, part of the first day of rehearsal should be everybody being able to say what they need.

Oh, yes. What do you need in the rehearsal hall? If we’re working on a particularly difficult play, what do you need to get through it? Or just generally, what do you need to succeed in this room? And how can we, as this temporary family that’s come together to produce this play, how can we support you? Like a collective agreement? Yeah. Yeah.

I’ve done that a couple times now. And sometimes it looks like gathering, like on the floor with cue cards. And that question, what is it that you need, you know, from everyone? And in this rehearsal space to get through this, and then so you make your list, and then it gets shared.

And then it gets posted so that we can be mindful. And it’s, it’s just, it’s a beautiful way to work. It kind of levels everything right off the top.

And it makes people more mindful of each other in the space. Yeah, I love that practice. Yeah, I think I think that’s really, that’s really what you’re doing is something that I think is super important.

And that is like, literally, just like, we’re going to be working in this room. And we are basically going to be taking our emotional clothes off for however long this rehearsal process last. So we need to support each other.

Oh, yeah. I know. There’s no other work like it, is there? No, not at all.

Yeah, the relationships that you’re going to, I think it and it all feeds in, it all feeds into the work on stage. And yeah, yeah. So Karen, just as we start to draw to a close, one of the questions that I’ve been asking pretty much every episode that of everybody is, is a question about joy.

You know, for this entire pandemic time, we’ve all had our ups and downs. And sometimes as as the theatre stay closed, and we’re doom scrolling on our phones, or whatever it is that we’re doing, we forget to think about the things that give us joy. So my question to you is, what’s been giving you joy that you’d like to share with us? What’s been giving me joy? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is, is family.

You know, I’ve bubbled with my parents, who are in their 80s. And, and also, and, and so we’ve been able to spend time with them. And, and also, just teaching the boys to, to brief reframe.

I mean, I think that’s my survival technique, whether I’m working in a restaurant or bussing tables or whatever, you just have to reframe and look at all the good stuff. And honestly, it could be a lot worse. I mean, we have that we are very privileged to be able to bubble and to keep ourselves safe, we have a lovely home, we can work from home, we’re so privileged.

And, and I think the joy of creating the joy within our little bubble, and just like cocooning with our family and enjoying the small things, like having dinner by the water, finding some water somewhere to eat in front of is really lovely. We have a tree house now. So we go there, and just kind of like decompress that gives us joy.

There’s so it’s all the small things, all the small daily things and that. And trying to find that within all this crazy chaos outside of this bubble. Yeah.

But I think that that, you know, what you’re mentioning, this is those small things. And those they may seem like tiny things, but they’re moments of calm. And they’re moments of really quiet intimacy among a family.

And those little moments are like, the world can be chaotic, but you find this, this really calm and beautiful centre right in the middle. And with that, you can find your centre, eat in front of water. And then you can, it’s a little bit easier to face the world.

Oh, yeah, I think you’re right. That’s so true. Like we’ve been very, we’ve done everything that we can to not raise our cortisol levels.

That has been my goal. Like I’m homeschooling the kids, like I just like whatever, I just try to take the stress out of it. You know, like having if the kids went to school, they would be have the daily exposure.

And then I would have to worry about my parents. Okay, you know what, if everyone’s going to go to school that way, we’re going this way, we’re going to go in a different direction, which also teaches the kids, you know what, we can make a decision for our family and go in a different direction. And it’s worked so far.

So we’ll just keep keep ourselves safe and calm and just find the joy and also really make an effort. I mean, really, again, you know, like within my storytelling groups, it’s been like this little extension. And like, to other people’s little bubbles over the internet, and to see how they’re doing also.

And you realize that those are the little moments, you know, that you can you can spread some joy. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen, thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Oh, my pleasure.

Thanks so much for contacting me. This has been great.