Megan Legesse & Gwyneth McFall-Gorman

Megan Legesse will be playing the role of Katrina in the production of Black Deer in Blizzard. Some of her credits include Lion Womxn (Summerworks 2018), The Breath Between (Summerworks 2019) as well as numerous acting work within the York University’s Acting Conservatory. She comes from a family much obsessed with the world of news and storytelling, which is one of the many reasons she is especially excited to dive into the plot of Black Deer in Blizzard. With all the time the pandemic has given her, she has been dusting up on her poetry skills, rewatching every Pixar film, and exploring the lovely world of face masks.

Instagram: @megsventures

Gwyneth McFall-Gorman is an American-Canadian actor, vocalist, and playwright. She was born in Connecticut in 1997 and is currently working as a theatre professional in the Toronto area. Gwyneth has been building her career as a stage actor and playwright since 2017, and she’s found early success in the film industry – above and below the line. She has a particular passion for re-imagining classics, and she believes strongly in the efficacy of the Performing Arts and its Creatives in their ability to create an accessible and equitable world by amplifying diverse human experience.

www.gwynethmcg.com
Instagram: @gwengorman.eh

Black Deer in Blizzard
Set in a crumbling news station in a small town, Black Deer in Blizzard (BDIB) is about Beverley Campbell, a young, future Anderson Cooper wannabe, who has the interview of a lifetime mere minutes away. It’s exactly what she needs to escape her small-town position and reach Big City success. But when Beverley discovers the famous artist she booked is an imposter, she must decide if her ambition is worth compromising her friends, town, profession, and the truth. Premiering in the 2021 Hamilton Fringe, BDIB explores the biases shaping news media and the destructive consequences of blind ambition.

blackdeerinblizzard.squarespace.com
Instagram: @blackdeerinblizzard
Tickets: https://boxoffice.hamiltonfringe.ca/event/866:25/

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Transcript

Welcome to episode 295 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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You can find Stageworthy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at stageworthypod, and you can find the website with the archive of all 295 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 guests this week are Megan LeGuesse and Gwyneth McFaul-Gorman. Megan and Gwyneth join me to talk about Black Deer and Blizzard, which appears as part of the Hamilton Fringe, starting July 14th. Just as a question for each of you, I guess I’ll go with Megan first.

If you were to describe yourself as a performer or an artist, if you had to give an elevator pitch, how would you describe your artistic practice? Oh, that’s a great question. I would say I’m a storyteller who focuses a lot on movement in my artistry. That’s fascinating.

And movement, just sort of like in a dance fashion? Or tell me a little bit more about that. Sure, yeah. When I trained in theatre in school, I learned a lot about how to use movement in my body.

And sometimes that’s through dance, sometimes that’s just through how I feel, like how my body moves. I don’t even know. And I love movement theatre.

Theatre Gargantua, so much movement theatre I see in Fringe and SummerWorks, I love it so much. And that’s a lot of what I do creation-based as an artist. That’s a lot of what I create.

And that’s something I really like to continue to get better at, especially in this digital age. Yeah, because the digital platforms are so conducive to movement. Mm-hmm.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We will absolutely get back to that.

Gwyneth, same question to you. How would you describe your artistic practice? Well, unfortunately, I’m not nearly as good of a dancer as Megan is. And unfortunately, I have like three left feet.

So I find my characters in their voices. And Megan would know this because she’s heard me try many variations of Beverly’s voice, my character in the play. But I was a musician before I was an actor.

And to me, a character’s voice, it is both determinant and indicative of their physicality, right? Their posture, the way that they move, the way that they hold their head, the way that they hold their neck. So once I’ve grounded myself in a character’s voice, that’s where I find their communication styles and their movements and their physicality. But it has to start with me for the sound of them, if that makes sense.

Sure, sure. Because how a character speaks tells you so much about their body, about all of them, right? Yeah, about where they’re from, who they grew up with, what kind of music they listen to. All that stuff, that’s what I really enjoy.

One day, anyway, I hope to be a very good character actor. So that’s really where I find the most intrigue. For me, it’s like a puzzle.

Now, would one of you like to give me the elevator pitch for Black Deer and Blizzard? Megan? Oh, Kukwuen, you had to go. I love how you’re both like, not me. Kukwuen is a star, so Kukwuen will rock it.

Black Deer and Blizzard is an incredible new play about our contemporary relationship with media and media personality. That is what I would say. We’ve had such a tumultuous couple years, I think we can all agree, with people redefining what news is and who newscasters are.

And as our producer, Joseph, often tells us, there’s no such thing as a speech without a personal bias. So our play really explores the personalities behind what you see on your television, and the often unseen drama and trauma that can happen before they’re on the camera. So that’s what we’re really playing with, is the idea of what’s happened versus what you’re seeing.

How was that, Megan? Spot on. One of the things that I find interesting about media these days is, just in general, pretty much anybody who has the technical know-how can create something that looks like a professional news story, and put that online, and claim that it is news. And because, in many ways, we are trained to see that as, because, oh, it looks like news, it must be news.

In many cases, sometimes people don’t dig deeper to find out, what is the source of this? They just sort of think, ah, it is news, it is said with authority, and it’s well-produced, therefore it must be news. Yeah. There’s a conviction that comes with everybody’s ability nowadays to be the broadcaster, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. So come see the play, everybody. Yeah, that’s, I mean, no, you’re producing it digitally, because that’s what we got now.

Yeah. What does, let’s start with this, what surprised you about performing in a digital production? Lots of things for both of us, I’m sure. Yeah, I’m trying to, like, surprised is an interesting, I mean, I guess it’s, like, I mean, it’s nice that I can, like, still feel things online, if that makes sense.

Like, I really miss just being in a studio and, like, feeling other people. Like, even when you don’t talk, like, you can just feel other people’s energy and, and, like, life. I just miss feeling life.

And it’s been, it’s been interesting, like, I can, I still feel like there’s a piece of that we can still find while working digitally, especially like me and Gwen have a scene where we’re just, like, we have so much oomph in it and so much energy in it, we really, like, have to look at each other and feel each other. And it’s amazing that we still kind of do that. I never really thought that could happen.

I mean, it’s not the same, but it’s so nice that there’s like a piece there still. Yeah, 100%. It’s been this game of where in a theatre space, we’d be playing tennis.

Now we’re playing more like a battle pong, right? It’s the volleying, exactly what Megan talked about. We have some really emotionally heightened scenes in this play. It’s only going to run about 40, 45 minutes as a runtime.

But the peaks and the valleys are pretty intense. Three characters, three very different relationships. And a lot happens in a short amount of time.

And in our rehearsals, it’s been, I have found it almost in a way reassuring. I didn’t realize how dependent I was as a stage actor on being able to move in a space and being able to move with my lines and learn my lines as I learn my blocking. Right, Meg? You feel that, right? Yeah.

I think also our characters, they carry their energy very different. So it’s been strange not being able to do that. Because we’re so different, Katrina and Bev.

Very different people. Yeah. It is certainly difficult because I know for me, one of the things that always helps me learn my lines is the blocking.

Yeah. If I’m on my feet, moving around, we do that often enough, I’ll just find those words in my body. Yeah, exactly.

And you’ll find the moments when the words mean the most. And when the person opposite you is giving you something small in their body language that just excites you so much because it’s opened up this whole new door. And we can only really give each other that in looks, glances, maybe changing our shoulders.

And I’m not even going to lie, the amount of times that I end up looking at myself on Zoom to be like, am I doing this right? You know what I mean? That is literally for me, the biggest frustration of Zoom in general. Of course. I wish I could turn off my ability to see myself.

You can. I don’t know what you… It’s hide self view. I’ve never seen myself in the past year.

Really? I can’t do it. I tried doing it once and I literally got nervous. I went, but what if I’m not broadcasting the emotion that I think I’m… Oh no.

It turned into a film thing in my head and it really messed with me. I’ve been shutting it off when we’re doing our full runs, but it bugs me, man. Just generally, I always find that the problem with Zoom is that because I’m there, and this is the same with all of the media platforms, is that I’m there.

And especially if I’m in meetings, I’m always like, is my face doing what I think it’s doing? Oh, I’ve got… I look angry. Okay. Do something with your face that’s not looking angry or whatever it is.

It’s so distracting. It’s been a wild ride. Yeah.

One of the things that for me has been missing from digital production is the ability to feel not just your other actors, but the audience, to really sense the audience as a presence. And I feel like as much as the digital theatre, Zoom theatre, however it is, however much we may, it’s what’s keeping us afloat right now. I don’t think anybody is really thinking, I really prefer this over being in a theatre.

I think that we need the audience to feel each other and we need to feel them. Absolutely. It’s been kind of heartbreaking in a way.

I know Megan’s been working on her own phenomenal show with a fringe festival. And you’ve got to go through it from the directing side, from a writing and producing kind of side. Several months ago now, I guess in February and March, I did a small Zoom series with some theatres in Toronto.

I did a play with Nightswimming and a play with Tarragon over Zoom. And they were like staged readings and stuff, or staged Zoom readings. And we had like audiences, we had like 50 or 60 people there.

And in one of the plays, we had a cast of like 15, which was unreal. We did a whole day of rehearsing Zoom exits and entrances. And it was one of those things you sit there, it is so surreal.

And you’re watching it and you’ve got your screen off, you’ve got a scene off or something and you’re watching the play and you’re going, God, I hope the audience is enjoying this. I hope they’re understanding what I’m trying to do. I hope they’re getting what I’m putting down.

And at the end, people are still saying, oh, this was great. I had a great time. I really needed this.

But you’re so right, Phil, it’s like, it’s maybe a B minus as to what we’re all wanting, what we’re all urging for, to be in a space together, experiencing something together. Yeah, it’s so hard. There’s also this, a certain amount of chaos as far as something like Zoom goes, because oh yeah, nothing is in actual real time.

You hear me. I mean, the natural lag for a Zoom meeting is 0.05 milliseconds, which is nothing until I’m trying to do a scene with you. And there’s always that beat before you hear what I’ve said, and then you speak and we don’t know what’s happening, or is this a dramatic pause? Did you hear, am I muted? What happened? It’s just, there’s so much potential chaos.

The amount of beats that we’ve had rehearsing the show, where Megan and I are holding eye contact, and then she’ll be like, did you say your line? And I’ll be like, no, did you? Did you freeze? That’s the other thing, is you kind of have to, because it’s one thing when somebody drops a pen in a scene in a theatre, or somebody misses their entrance. We can handle that. But if somebody freezes or is disconnected, what do we do? Yeah, it takes your right out of it.

Yeah. Megan, what is the show that you’re directing? Please tell me about that. Yeah, sure.

I’m getting nervous. I’m going to mess it up for everyone on my team. So I’m directing an audio drama for Toronto Fringe Festival.

It’s called Swallow the Skin. And I created it in my final year in theatre school with a bunch of BIPOC women, queer women. And it’s kind of a collection of stories, monologues, poems, memories, all set in a nightclub in downtown Toronto.

Yeah. And it was like, we originally, we wrote it to be staged. Like I said, I love movement, and I really wanted to incorporate movement.

That’s why we wanted it set in a club. But it’s cool, because turning it into an audio play has taught me a lot, and how to play with, like what Glenn said, voice and sound, and what that means in theatre. So it’s been fun.

It’s been fun. Yeah. Audio drama is such a fascinating thing to try to work with, to build a scene so that people are hearing it, but just to put in just enough so that they can kind of see it, too.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s been a lot of learning, especially because it’s not like the show is a truly devised show.

It’s not like a standard play. All the actors, it’s written by about 20 people and with 20 stories all stapled and glued together within all these different voices. So it’s been hard trying to find, okay, how does this scene shift? How can we show the audience we’re in a different room because they can’t see? Or I see a stage direction that says, light switch, and I’m like, we don’t have lights.

How do we tell them we’re in a different room? So stuff like that has been something. But yeah, it’s been a lot of learning. Yeah.

There’s a lot of learning. I did an audio drama for Christmas last year, sort of like turned a solo piece into an audio drama, and it was a thing. So much to do, so much to learn.

Yeah. Speaking about theatre school, I think this is a great opportunity, a great moment to talk about, for each of you, your theatre origin stories. What is it that made you want to become a performer, a theatre artist? What is it? Was your gateway drug? What was it that brought you into the world of theatre and made you want to do it? Spicy question, Phil.

Spicy question. Meg, do you want to go first? You have a cooler story. I do.

I don’t know what story that is. I’m trying to… For me, I mean, I always loved stories in any capacity, like poems, books, theatre. Yeah.

I don’t even know how… I mean, I was the most annoying theatre kid in high school, probably. And I think we did that standard English class thing where you go see a Shakespeare play. And I was like, oh, what is this? I like this.

Obviously, I had no idea what was happening because I was in 10th grade and didn’t know Shakespeare very well. But it was the first time theatre. And then I was lucky enough to participate in a lot of the youth training that Soulpepper offered when I was in high school.

And I actually trained with them for a summer. And I was like, I really like this. I really, really like this.

And I really needed to do it. And I learned that in my year between high school and then actually going to uni for theatre, I really needed to do it. And I really knew that my voice needed to be heard through this medium.

Yeah. And it’s been a fun ride since. Do you recall your first exposure to theatre? There must have been some moment when you realized it was a thing.

When I saw For Coloured Girls at Soulpepper, it was probably then. I didn’t know theatre could be for me like that until I saw that play. I didn’t know that that was for me.

Theatre was for me. And not just me, my identity. No, but me, Megan.

And then I saw that play and I was like, oh, this is for me. This was written for me. This was directed for me.

This is mine. And I was like, oh, this is for me. So I can keep doing that.

I can keep doing this. So in essence, just to come out and say it, a lot of the theatre that you had maybe seen before that was white people. I mean, I think it’s a lot more complicated than that.

Sure. Yes. I mean, that’s most of Shakespeare, which was my first kind of knowledge of theatre in school.

But yeah, once I started hearing, not just Black theatre, but Black women theatre, For Coloured Girls, Harlem Duet, I changed my life. I read it, Harlem Duet. Yeah.

When I heard really specific stories, to me, that was, I think, it. Hmm. And you went to, did you end up going to, you went to York? Yes.

I went, I just, I’m about to finish, ha ha, York. I’m about to finish my BFA in acting in like two weeks. Oh, well, congratulations.

Thank you. It was, when, in terms of like choosing the school, did you, did you aim for York or were you casting a wide net? That was, no, I actually only applied to York, one theatre school, and that was York. Because it’s hard to go into the arts.

I mean, I’m a first generation Canadian. I had to push and be like, this is what I want to do. And I applied to a bunch of other different schools for psych or English or the traditional route.

And then I was like, if I get in, and if I get into the acting program, which is, you have to audition again, which can only take about 16 folks. I was like, this is for me. And so that was kind of like the bet I had with my family.

So that’s how it went. Did you feel any pull to those other programs at all? Not for the right reasons. Not for, not for me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Hmm. What if you’d gotten into like the, the, the theatre program and one of the other ones? I did.

I got into every school I applied to with scholarships to all of them. Like, all the scholarships. I’m telling you though, she’s a genius.

No, like, I think I got like a full ride to one school and, or, you know, a full ride. Well, they can’t promise all four years, but like maintain. And my family was like, have you lost your mind? To be poor at theatre school? And I was like, no, I promise I’ll figure it out.

They’re super, super supportive. But I mean, like, I totally get it. Like, that’s crazy.

Um, so it was, yeah, there was definitely some pull, but I, I’m, I mean, so far I stand by my decision and I hope I stand by it forever. I’m sure. I mean, there’s, I mean, I think with most families, there’s going to be some kind of push around that thing.

Um, I think also it’s a little bit harder for, for, for kids who are, uh, first generation Canadians. There are other things tied up in that. I mean, like, yeah, it’s just, it’s like, there’s so much privilege to be an artist.

Like, like so much, like I’m endlessly humbled that I’m able to do like, even to study, like I’m so humbled, especially like, like I’m so humbled. Um, and so like, it’s, it’s like just teaching, like my family to learn that and, and be excited about it. It’s great.

It’s been fun watching, like teaching each other the art and stuff. Now, were you doing devised theatre while you were at York or is that something that you were sort of doing on the side? Yeah, no, I was, so I’m like, uh, like trained in acting. I was in the acting conservatory.

Well, I’m still, I’m almost done in the acting conservatory. And, um, yeah, like what happened was like, as I was training as an actor, a lot of the texts we were given, um, I, I, I was like, I, I need something more, something more, something me. I couldn’t find my voice enough.

And, um, I, that’s how I kind of like bothered the other theatre students who weren’t in acting. And it was like, tell me about what you’re, you’re doing. And then I learned about what devised theatre was.

And then within my training at York through acting, like I learned about movement. I did movement work with Erica Batdorf was phenomenal. Um, and that opened me a lot to movement work.

And then I started creating shows and directing shows like outside my degree for York, um, which has been great. Like I would have never found like creation or movement or directing, um, without like, without going to a wide theatre school rather than just the specific conservatory. Yeah, no, absolutely.

Absolutely. That’s great. Gwyneth, would you like to share your, uh, uh, theatre origin story with us? Oh, goodness.

Uh, yes, yes I can. Um, see, I told you Megan is just super interesting and super smart and she could do anything she wanted to. Why are you doing this? I adore you.

I had a, I had a very non-linear path to theatre, um, in the way that I made the mistake that Megan was smart enough not to make. And I went to school, I went to university for a different program, um, and for the wrong reasons. Um, I grew up, uh, just outside of New York city, actually, um, in Connecticut and my mom was Canadian and my dad was American.

And we kind of spent our whole life, you know, going up to visit Canadian relatives and going back down to Connecticut and that’s where I went to school and everything. Um, and I really can’t pinpoint a moment. I think as soon as I was young enough to know what an actor was, I wanted to be one.

And I had this, I loved making people laugh. I loved making people feel things. I loved writing funny jokes and, um, testing them out to the great annoyance on my parents.

And, uh, they were always so supportive and they said, do whatever you want as long as it makes you happy. And, you know, you grow up and your priorities change. Um, and I thought, you know, this is something I’m supposed to do.

So I actually was in pre-engineering in high school, um, doing theatre, doing drama club, but doing it because it was something I loved to do. Um, I didn’t think I was going to have a career in it. I didn’t think I’d ever be that talented or be that lucky.

And, uh, so I ended up going to Queens in Kingston, Ontario for engineering. Um, and I was there for about two and a half years. Um, and I got back from an internship, uh, out in Alberta, uh, working as a, as an engineering intern.

And I just kind of sat there and I’ll never forget the day. It was a Tuesday in second week of first semester of my third year of engineering. And I’m sitting in class, listening to my professor tell us that our final exam was going to be 80% of our final grade.

Um, and I just remember sitting there and looking at this going, and it was like a light bulb clicked and it went, oh my God, it doesn’t have to be like this. Like my, my soul was drained. I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

I knew who I wanted to be in the, in the things that I wanted to accomplish and the stories I wanted to tell and the lifetimes that I wanted to experience all in my own. Um, and I realized that if I died tomorrow, I asked myself this question, if I died tomorrow, would I be proud of the life I had lived thus far? And the answer was no, there was really no way around it. There was no like lying to myself about it.

Um, and I just got up from that class on that Tuesday and I walked to the registrar’s office and I said, I’m switching into drama. And that was it. And I told my parents two months later, they, you know, they handled it pretty well.

I got to give them credit where they pleased. No, but, um, they, they handled it pretty okay. And they said, all right, if that’s what you’re going to do, do it.

And we’re here for you if, and when it fails. Oh, okay. Um, but yeah, so I, I, I jumped right into drama and I finished my, my bachelor’s at Queens and drama, um, in about two and a half years and, um, popped right out and just, and exactly touching on what Megan was talking about.

I, I went in because I was obsessed with people and, and different stories and living different lives and being different things. Um, and once I got there, I realized just how many stories there are. And I know that sounds funny or naive, but, um, some of my favourite classes, uh, actually I will give props to this class.

One of my favourite classes in my fourth year was indigenous playwrights at Queens. Um, and I read some of the most incredible pieces of theatre that I have ever read to this point. Um, and it just constantly as a craft, it’s constantly making me fall back in love with it.

Even when I’m frustrated with it, even when I’m angry, you know, um, I’m constantly falling back in love with it because there’s always something new. There’s always something, even if it’s a small something. Um, and yeah, that’s, that’s kind of been my path.

And now, you know, I live in Toronto. I’m a full-time, I work in film and theatre and just got my actor card. Like we’re just, we’re, we’re going, um, yeah.

All right. So question for you, why engineering? Oh God. Don’t I ask myself that every day? Actually, it’s, I’m going to pop in and say, cause sometimes people are like, I wasted so much time.

No, you were, you, you, you, you try, you were out and you, you lived among, and this is something that I think sometimes I think a lot of actors need to do. We need to live among regular people. You need to see the other side.

Yeah. I did the math and science thing. It was terrible.

It was, ah, God, it was like a room full of people who were so smart and didn’t know how to talk to each other and didn’t know how to write things. And it was so sterile. The environment was just so sterile.

And the truth is, is that I was a huge, and I still am a massive nerd and I’m so proud of it. I built robots in high school. I was one of those kids.

I was on a robotics team. Um, I was like, uh, you know, girl captain of the, of the, of the women engineering club. I was, I was all gung ho and forward because I, it was, it interests me and it still interests me.

I really do like math and science, but, uh, at the end of the day, um, it was not what I wanted to devote my life to. And I really did feel like I was wasting it. Um, but you know, I, it sounds silly as well, but when I’m acting, there are certain things that having a bit of a math mind helps me with.

Um, there’s certain scenes, certain characters, certain tempos of works that being able to dissect it and almost look at it like a formula can be really helpful. Um, and, and sometimes just sitting there and thinking about it from an artistic lens and then taking a breath, stepping back and going, okay, let’s look at this from an objective lens, right. Or, or as much objectivity as I can render.

Um, it, it has given me a perspective. I feel like that that is a little, a little unique, a little of my own. Um, so I have absolutely no regrets about any of the time that I spent.

I don’t, I don’t consider it time wasted at all. I feel like, you know, I got good at something that I’m not going to use every day in my career, but I can, I’m really proud of it. And it’s, it’s, it’s taught me some really important lessons as well as, Oh, and also a big engineering thing is business and finances and statistics.

And I cannot stress enough the value of that as an independent artist. Yeah. Yeah.

There’s something that they didn’t teach us in theatre school. Now I have, I have two questions for you. One is sort of not a serious question.

And one of them is actually a serious question. So I’m going to go with the bullshit question first. The bullshit question is of all of the robots that you built, which one was your favourite? Easy.

My favourite robot was named Oscar the Grouch. It was 2015. The first robotics game was Recycle Rush.

I was a world champion level, a human player and a computer aided design leader of the team. I put the whole robot into CAD. It was water jetted.

I was very proud of him. He did so good. He was a beautiful purple steel alloy.

Thank you for asking. Perfect. Perfect.

And I say perfect because that is the most I’m so satisfied with how nerdy that answer was. It’s beautiful. Thank you.

I used Autodesk inventor pro 2013 suite in case you’re wondering. Thank you so much. That’s so awesome.

So the serious question is at what point, even before, if before you left the class, at what point in engineering school where you’re like, this might’ve been a mistake. Oh God. Do you want the sad answer? Yes.

I want the honest answer. The day that I accepted my offer to Queens. Oh my God.

And I was applying for universities. I spent weeks looking at theatre programs and I didn’t even know where to start because it was so out of my wheelhouse at that point. I had friends and like it not that Toronto isn’t this incredible theatre scene because it is, but growing up in the tri-state area, 90 minutes from New York city, your competition is weeded out amongst you by the age of like 10.

Sure. Right. Like I have friends who I went to school with all the way up to like grade eight and then they dipped and they went to the best performing arts high schools for grade nine through 12.

You know what I mean? Like they went to Hartford, they went to New York. A lot of them went to New York for university, for theatre. And like, I never thought that I would ever, ever, ever be comparable to that, that I would ever be able to candle to that.

I had not, to me, it felt like the Olympics. It was like, well, I didn’t start training when I was a kid. So, you know, that chapter has closed.

I didn’t realize how wrong I was, of course, but I didn’t know where to start. So yeah, when I was applying to universities for engineering programs and getting, you know, getting accepted places and it was really, it was kind of heartbreaking in a way and I just swallowed it. It was a, it was not great.

It was very, very bad. You kind of just broke my heart a little by admitting that the day you accept that you got the offer, you were like, no, I’m like, oh my God, just like pull that heart out and throw it on the ground. It was a really sad couple of years.

I’m not, it was very difficult. It changed me as a person. Yeah.

As far as changing you as a person, did you find who you were before that? Or did you come out of, did you finish that, that when you left, were you 100% a different person? When I left what, engineering or Queens? Engineering. When I left engineering, I don’t think my confidence had ever been lower in my life. I really didn’t like myself as, this is getting deep, but I really didn’t like myself as a person.

I had no self-confidence because I felt so lost and I was so afraid. And there were a lot of things at that time that I was like kind of figuring out about myself. I was, I was raised in a, in a, in a small Catholic immigrant town in New England, you know, people were pretty conservative and pretty staunch.

I found out that I was queer, you know, like all these kinds of things that started kind of rolling in waves that didn’t seem to stop. And then, you know, on top of it all, I’m like, well, I guess I’ll just uproot my life direction and go into the arts, you know, and there’s also this very toxic culture in STEM in general. It kind of makes fun of arts degrees.

Right. I mean, we’ve all heard it. But it was really, it made it harder to pursue what I wanted to because everyone around me, my friends, right.

My colleagues, my professors would, would absolutely just dump all over arts degrees. It’s, what’s, what is kind of ridiculous about that to me is, is, you know, there’s been all of this focus on, on STEM and, and, you know, no, forget the humanities, forget the arts, just, you know, all of that stuff. And it’s ridiculous.

And then when you get into the business world, a few years later, since we started pursuing like STEM as the be-all and end-all of the education system, we find business leaders who are like, art students really are able to think out of the box in a way that our current people are not. So we’re really looking for people who have a background in the arts and you’re like, what world is this? Yep. It’s so true.

And I mean, not to, not to bring up Dead Poets Society, right. But that line, like those are noble pursuits, but what makes life worth living? Look at this pandemic. It’s artists that have kept us alive.

It’s the filmmakers and the theatre makers that have kept us safely in our homes and distracted. You know what I mean? Yeah. Listen, if it wasn’t for, if it wasn’t for WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and now, and soon Loki, I don’t know what I would do with myself.

Right. Like, and hopefully, I mean, maybe it’s naive and I don’t know what you think, Megan, because it’s, it’s one of those things, but hopefully when we come out of this pandemic, there will be a bit of a reframing around the way that we view those industries who have been kept open like film. Like I’m, you know, I’m technically an essential worker.

Um, even though I’m basically just working a warehouse and work on sets, but we haven’t stopped. Yeah. We’re busier than ever.

You know, I’m pulling 12, 14 hour days on the regular. Yeah. And it’s, it’s something to think about, especially here in Toronto.

Yeah. It’s such a huge industry. Yeah.

No, absolutely. Absolutely. Megan, just to come back to you, um, you, you mentioned the, you know, working on, on this audio drama that you were, that you were creating and that you’re doing at the Toronto Fringe, um, as far as creating a sh a play goes, was this something that you had considered doing before this? Or were you like driven to by, by searching for your voice while at the program? Oh, wow.

That’s a really good question. I love that question. I’m like smiling so hard.

Um, well, I, well, I think I started to find my voice, like in my second year I wrote, uh, like we have this thing at York called playground. Um, and it’s like a short theatre festival where there’s like 15 minute plays and there’s seven of them. Um, and it’s a good way to kind of like test the waters.

You’re like, is this good? No, it’s not. Okay. Nevermind.

Nevermind. It’s only 15 minutes or is this, which is really fun. It’s like a really cool way for like, like, um, theatre students to see what they like in theatre.

Um, but yeah, I like row, um, this 15 minute, like like pour out piece called concealer, where it was like three, uh, black girls in, um, a bedroom, their best friends. And they’re figuring out like what the hell they were going to do when they graduate. Cause they weren’t going to have each other.

And one of them was going to go to Queens, which is not the best place. No, it’s not. It’s not diverse.

Yeah. Moving on. And so they were all just like talking with that.

And, and it kind of like, like it was the, it was a very much straight play, uh, straight short play, I should say. And then I was like, Oh, cool. I like this.

I want them to move. And then the next year I was like, I devised, um, a 15 minute play for the next year’s playground festival. Um, where for, where we would hear the stories of the daughters of African women, um, because, um, I’m an African woman, um, like tell their mother’s stories.

Um, and they would move like their mothers and they would sing their mother’s song, sing lullabies of their grandmothers. And it was so like, it was such an important piece to me. Um, and I was like, I want to do this again.

And I want to make it an hour. And, um, York annually puts on The Vagina Monologues. Um, and they, and I applied to be director and I was like, we’re not doing The Vagina Monologues because it was done every year for 20 years.

Sure. They had like one maybe person of colour on a good year. Seriously? Well, like I don’t, I, theatre is a very, yeah.

And I told, and, and the directors would usually like, they just didn’t know how to like, they didn’t know you, you need to have specific people direct for their specific people, find their specific people, right. For their specific people. And I really wanted to do that.

And I was like, let’s just change things up. Like The Vagina Monologues is an iconic play. Everyone knows it.

What if we create something brand new? Um, and that’s what I did. I found like eight actors and we all wrote together on prompts and wrote about our experiences as women and people of colour. Um, and everything, what it’s like to grow up, what is as a girl of colour to a woman of colour.

Um, and then we just created the script and, and we hope to stage it. We like, we, it took a year. We started in September and we wanted to stage it by summer, like in September.

Ha ha. When we thought the pandemic would be over. Um, but alas, that’s life.

And that was kind of the process. I just kept like wanting to do more. Like once I like achieved something in my creation work, I was like, what’s next? What’s something next I can do.

Hmm. That’s how it kind of came to be. I think that one of the worst things about our theatre system is the fact that our, the, the schools are predominantly attended by and taught by white people.

Yes. We are not producing and making theatre spaces that are friendly to people of colour. Um, I know when I was in theatre school, we won’t talk about how long ago that was.

Um, my class, when I started had, had two black kids in it. And by the end of the first year, both of them were gone because they had been cut from the program. And that was what we sort of saw in several different years was that that was the pattern we would bring in diversity and then divest ourselves of it through the program or whatever by the time, you know, that’s how, but I mean, a lot of that I think is not just like the students don’t see themselves in their teachers and the teachers don’t utilize them in, in, in, in, in, in, in any way, you know, and that’s, that’s, I think one of the things that, that ultimately is the, the, the tragedy of the theatre system that we’ve built that really needs to be torn down.

I think some theatre schools are getting better sort of slowly. I think it’s a long way to go though. I know.

I know. That’s why I say sort of because theatre schools move slower than the theatre world. Yeah.

It, it’s, um, it’s one of those things that like, and I think it’s not just enough to say we need to make this big, this space friendly to BIPOC. It needs to be run, managed and, and boarded by people of colour, people who are two spirited, people who are indigenous, because first of all, we’re on unseated lands as a nation, right? Yes. And like, if we’re going to be telling art on a space, you can’t take the space out of the context of the art, which I think a lot of programs have been getting better about, but then you get those insincere land acknowledgments at the beginning of shows that there’s so many things and I’m really glad that we’re addressing it now, but I think you’re very right that it needs to start in the schools with the professorial staff and with the staff who manage the departments, because if arts are going to set the precedent as they always have about leading progressivism, that’s where it needs to start.

And, you know, and then what we’re really seeing in my opinion is just faculties and people refusing to retire who really should. Yeah. Right.

But then we see that, we see that in the leadership at all, like not just in theatre schools, we see the leadership in a lot of theatres as well. People who’ve been in that leadership position for 10, 15 years, just holding on and still doing things the way that they’re doing, not fostering really the new generation of arts leaders. Now, Megan, you are in the unique position of having started theatre school pre-pandemic and then having to finish it in the midst of a pandemic.

How was that adjustment for you as a student? Um, it was hard. It was just sad. I think it was just sad, especially because it was my final year, so we didn’t get our final like mounted shows, which would, you know, we’ve been looking forward to for four years.

Um, so that was sad. Um, yeah, I just, I mean, it’s kind of what I said earlier. I just miss feeling few.

I mean, I had a hard, I had a hard time in theatre school, so I kind of took it as like a way to kind of heal myself. Sure. Like I was like, okay, what’s the silver lining here? And like, I got to focus so much more on swallow the skin and, um, learned who I was as an actor alone.

Like that was something like to completely train alone, like your movement teachers on zoom. Okay. You got it.

And you got to rely on yourself a lot, um, which was really, I think actually a really great thing. Like I learned a lot of self-discipline, um, because it’s, it’s really you. So I guess that was really helpful, but I mean, it was really sad to, to miss like, you know, the final hurrah.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so were your classes pretty much all online from like March last year? Uh, yeah.

Well, luckily like we finished right around when it started. So I finished my third year. Um, we just, yeah, but fourth year was like completely online.

Um, like, but the good thing, I mean, the good thing is we would done a little good thing. We did a lot of camera work stuff. So it wasn’t as bad as like theatre.

Cause like theatre is so hard on zoom, like film, like figure it out a little bit better because it’s camera already. Um, so we kind of just focus on that and voice work rather than like stage theatre. And then the play that we would have staged, it just became an audio play, which was more than five.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s just a difficult transition to make because, you know, especially when you’re looking forward to that final production, that showcase production, and then to have to sort of let that go and just make it an audio play.

Yeah. I know. And I was excited.

I mean, I got like, we thought we were going to stage it and I was lucky enough to, um, but I mean, what, what, who, what am I going to do? I’m going to yell at the sky. I can’t really do anything about it. I was like, well, do you know what I mean? I was, I talked to my life, my artist friends.

I’m like, there’s literally nothing. Like there’s no one to get mad at. There’s nothing to do except for breathe and use this opportunity to continue your craft in any way you can.

Um, so that’s, that’s, that’s, I mean, that’s how it is. I mean, it’s looking up from here, but I don’t want to jinx anything. Knock on wood.

No, nobody wants to. It’s like, it’s we’re talking about like the future in Ontario and nobody wants to actually say anything just in case. Megan is, is school doing anything like, cause I know that final showcase is supposed to be where they invite agents and they invite theatre directors.

Are they doing anything to compensate that side for you guys? Uh, yeah, I think it was like a Canada wide thing. It was still done. It was just in a different format, like online.

Okay. Cause I, yeah, everything was online, you know, fun, fun stuff online. Yeah.

Really, really like, and I can’t imagine going in theatres. Oh, sorry. What? Oh no, no.

I was just saying like, I like, I’m still trying to figure out what theatre like theatre means online. Yes. You know, I think, I think that’s the question that we’re all kind of asking is what is it? Yeah.

That’s after the lockdown happened is when I was supposed to graduate Queens. Um, and we, we missed out on all the pomp and circumstance, but I was actually totally fine with it because it’s really just a bunch of people sitting in an overly hot room. Right.

But it was the, it was the grad school kicker for me. It was the acting school that, that I had to say no to, um, but I’ve been so upset about, uh, cause I’d spent months, you know, auditioning and I went down to Yale and the whole shebang and, um, things had gone super well. And, and then I was just like, I got into one of my dream schools and just had to say no, because it was a year program.

And I had this feeling like, even when they were like, Oh, it’ll be three months, right? Three months of a, of a pandemic. I had this feeling that it was going to go really long just in my gut. And I, it was, it’s been a rough go for a lot of theatre artists.

I know Megan and I have been lucky to be busy and be involved in our craft. Um, but I know so many kids who this was their dream. And now they’re, you know, at home doing what a lot of people have had to do, which is just get an, a quote unquote normal job.

Um, and, and suffer through it. But even worse than a lot of those quote unquote normal jobs is those are online too, in a lot of places. And so you don’t even have like the camaraderie of going into an office.

Yeah. It’s it’s so, and for people who usually thrive on human connection, right. We’re now all stuck at home, unable to connect in any meaningful way.

Yeah. Um, yeah. I, yeah.

Just as we start to draw to a close, um, one of the questions that I’ve been asking everybody essentially since the pandemic started is a question about joy. And that question is because we’ve all had our ups and downs during this, this pandemic, this, these 15 months of, of this pandemic. And I think it’s a good idea to share the things that have made us joyful, that have given us joy.

So if each of you could tell me something that has been giving you joy lately, Oh, that’s a really nice question. Meg, do you have anything? Um, yeah. I mean, I feel like I’ve just been like, I’m like listening to like life so much more.

Oh, that’s so cheesy. Megan, you’re such an artist. No, no, no, no.

It’s awesome. It’s wonderful. I shuddered as I said that I’m so wonderful.

I feel, I don’t know. I just feel like I pay attention a lot. Like everything is so nice.

Like everything is just so important. I feel like every time, like every, I laugh a lot because like, that feels nice. I love coffee.

That’s great. Like just seeing, going outside, breathing air, like with other people though, like seeing my friends, like, you know, even though we’re farmers and you know, we’re safe, like it’s just to see them. This is so nice.

And it really, like, I think as an artist, it’s so important to really take in those things and feel those things and feel life because that’s kind of our job, especially as actors to like, we just show life in different ways in our bodies. And that’s been nice to do in this, in this new way. I guess everything’s a bit more heightened, which is kind of, you know, a silver lining to all of this.

You know, I was thinking as I was outside today, I was passing by a coffee shop that was pretty much shut. And I imagined myself walking into that coffee shop without a mask on and having people sitting around at seats and ordering a coffee at that coffee shop. And I had a moment of like, how beautiful that would be to do.

That’s amazing. But isn’t that sad? Like, it’s not, it’s not sad, but it’s, it’s like, it’s a very poignant sensation, isn’t it? Looking, especially I just moved to Toronto in January, and I’ve never known the city outside of a pandemic. Oh my God.

And I find myself looking at places going, Oh God, I wonder what that would be like to walk in there or to go shopping there or to meet my friends there. You know what I mean? It’s, I, uh, I think I’ve been finding joy, much like Megan said, the, the pacing change. I remembered before the pandemic, and it’s that fear that everybody has when they’re getting ready to graduate school, right? God, I wish I could just take a break.

I wish the world would just freeze for a minute. Damn. Did I get what I asked for? But it’s, it’s been, I have found joy in doing a lot of inner work on walls that I have put up as a person because of some of the things that, that I’ve, that I’ve been through and in my own growth and letting people back in, in a way that I didn’t think that I would like.

I, I always fancied myself much more introverted than I think I actually am now, if that makes sense. I, I have found a lot of joy in, in new people and new things, um, and just learning to, to listen, I guess, to, to the pace of things and to the heartbeat of things around me. It’s been, again, a very cheesy line.

There we go. No, it’s wonderful. You know, I have a theory about, about introverts as one myself.

Um, and in fact, I, I have a pod, another podcast about being an introvert, um, with another actor. Um, and we’ve, we’ve, we talk about a lot of people misunderstand introversion, but that more people are actually ambivert. So somewhere else on the spectrum between introvert and amber and, and extrovert, um, more people sit there than on either of the extremes.

So one can go back and forth in a very, uh, uh, fluid way. And so even though I think a lot of us during this pandemic have found a little bit, ourselves a little bit more introverted when the opportunity comes, we may find ourselves sliding back along that spectrum into a little bit of extroversion, even though we normally probably wouldn’t have. Yeah.

It’s, it’s been, it’s been flexing a muscle I didn’t know I had, um, or hadn’t flexed in a while. It’s been, it’s been joyful. Gwyneth and Megan, thank you so much for this conversation.

I’ve enjoyed this a lot. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.