Ryan M. Sero is a professional actor and writer. Past roles include Herbert Milk (A Modicum of Freedom), The Raccoon (Inbetween Places), Sancho Panza (Don Quixote), Mephistophiles (Doctor Faustus), Romeo (Romeo & Juliet: An Escapist Comedy), and Don John/ Don Pedro (Much Ado About Nothing).
Plays he has written include A Modicum of Freedom, Romeo & Juliet: An Escapist Comedy, The Cheese, Miracles Don’t Come Cheap, and the upcomingFor ‘Daws to Peck At – which will be part of the Pearl Company’s StaycationFestival in August.
He frequently works with Decoder Ring Theatre (an online audio drama group), Artword Theatre, and The Mysterious Players (improv murder mysteries).
He is the artistic director of Make Art Theatre.
Synopsis:
Anybody Else follows Thaddeus Blume, a would-be writer with the psychological inability to experience pleasure, as he searches for happiness and tries to figure out what’s really wrong with him. He’s having a hard time at work and in his love life, so when he meets Sigmund Freud himself at an art gallery, Thaddeus tries to get to the bottom of all his problems.
A comedy about love, life, happiness, and cough drops.
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Transcript
Transcript auto generated.
Phil Rickaby
Welcome to Episode 32 of Stageworthy, I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. On Stageworthy, I interview people who make theatre actors, directors, playwrights and more and talk to them about everything from why they chose the theatre to their work process and anything in between. Ryan Sero is a Hamilton based actor and writer and the artistic director of make Art Theatre. Ryan’s play, anybody else is currently playing to rave reviews at the Hamilton Fringe Festival. Our conversation was recorded at the Baltimore house in Hamilton. You can find stage really on Facebook and Twitter at stage relay pod. And you can find the website at stage relay podcast.com. If you like what you hear, I hope you’ll subscribe on iTunes or Google music or whatever podcast app you use and consider leaving a comment or rating.
What is your show for?
Ryan M. Sero
Anybody else? Anybody else? Anybody else? It’s a comedy about a guy trying to find himself and trying to find the meaning of life and happiness and save his relationship if he can, all with the help of Sigmund
Phil Rickaby
Freud isn’t isn’t a one person show? Or is it three people, three people,
Ryan M. Sero
three people. And I play the lead. And sort of like a half other part kind of thing. The other two actors play three or four parts each
Phil Rickaby
written by you. And you’re producing,
Ryan M. Sero
and I’m producing it. I’m not quite the raving egomaniac that it would take to direct it as well. So I’ve got Tyler Brent
Phil Rickaby
is directing, it’s important to have that extra set of sign I,
Ryan M. Sero
I don’t I feel like I could do any two of the three. I’m gonna say the big three. Even though I recognise that sound design and costume design and choreography and stuff. It’s all extremely important to a show as well. I’m not knocking those ones. But to me when I say the big three. I’m talking about directing, acting and writing. Yeah,
Phil Rickaby
I feel for myself like I could do. I couldn’t write and I couldn’t act, but I don’t think I could direct if I’m acting. Yeah, they don’t have.
Ryan M. Sero
Yeah. And that to me would be the hardest hurdle to jump over would be to go from would be to be able to direct yourself. Yeah. And I’ve seen it done. I’ve seen it where people have have done all three or where people have directed and starred in and you go, that actually was good. But I’ve also seen it go the other way where you look at their performance. And you’re like, see, you thought you were pushing yourself and you really weren’t.
Phil Rickaby
I think it’s I think it’s rarer than people think. Yeah, to be able to direct yourself successful.
Ryan M. Sero
I think it’s because we have a bad example set by Hollywood. Yeah. And I think it works in Hollywood, because you can watch the dailies,
Phil Rickaby
you can not only watch the dailies, you can like have immediate payback. So yeah, finish your shoot, go over and see how it looks to decide if it’s a thing that you’re going,
Ryan M. Sero
Oh, I didn’t like that I don’t like when I did that thing I’m going to do is I’m going to do a third tag. And I’m going to do it this way this time. Yeah, absolutely. So whereas whereas with an even that, even that it requires a very self critical eye who can recognise the scenes not working? And it’s my fault, because I’m doing this and even that would be a very, but but we see it done successfully. And this is the other thing is that when we see it done, it’s because it worked? Yes. You know, we see it done by certain people who do because not every director of us their work with good reason. And when we see it done, we go see they did it, they did it, you know, and and I think that oftentimes we think therefore I can do it, even though in order to get to that position such and such a director actor has done 25 years of studying and careful meticulous advancement in their work.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, I think also, I mean, it’s theatre, it can work as long as the director is directed by an assistant director who he trusts the director, which again, in some cases can be pretty rare. Yeah. It’s just this is my first year in the Hamilton branch. Have you? Welcome. Thank you. Have you been in a housing clean festival a long time now? Yeah,
Ryan M. Sero
the my first participation I wasn’t a show in but I was a volunteer in was in 2008, I think was my first one. And I volunteered and it was the first time I’d kind of earlier that year I’d heard about film or about Fringe Festivals. Director friend of mine told me about them and I was like fringe. That sounds like fun. Because I was I was just at a school and I was saying what do I do next? And he’s going okay, well you do this and this and this. And you talk to these kinds of people and you try to get your name out this way. And he says Fringe Festivals. Great. I’m like fringe fringe. What is fringe? Yeah. And he says this And so I’d go on the website. I say I want to volunteer. And that year I was amania. volunteered I was there I think as much as well, probably not, but three quarters of the time that the producers of the fringe were there. I was there, like, just because I signed up for like 30, some odd shifts, which are like an hour long each, or something like that. That’s the
Phil Rickaby
best kind of volunteer though. That’s volunteer. That’s like, gung ho, it’s kind of volunteer that you want.
Ryan M. Sero
So wanted to learn. And I wanted to meet people, right. And I discovered that the best one was, the best volunteer job was, was ushered. Because if you’re a ticket taker, you take a bunch of tickets, and then you slyly slide in the doors. And you get to watch a show. Yeah. And I’m not sure if they still do it. But at that point in time, any shifts you picked up at the fringe, as a volunteer, they would give you like, a little token, or maybe every three or something like that, they will give you like a little pass, and you could go see a show. Yeah, it was a it was a volunteer past to see a show. And so I would go and I would I would usher a show. And then I would see that show, and then I would go see another show with my pants. So I would double down. And so I saw a tonne of shows that was really great stuff and some really appalling stuff, which is I think the best part about a
Phil Rickaby
fringe no better way to learn. Yeah, then to see some garbage.
Ryan M. Sero
And, and I’ve talked to friends about it. And our least favourite fringe experiences are the ones that were mediocre. Where you’re like, yeah, it was neither here nor there. I didn’t really care. I kind of fell asleep a little bit, but not not it wasn’t so appalling. Our favourite experiences are the ones that blow our minds and move us. Yeah. Or the ones where we just want to yell stuff at the stage because we’re going I can’t believe you put that on still.
Phil Rickaby
There’s a certain passion to that. If you’re if you’re seeing something that’s mediocre, you have no pat, you’re like, this thing that you hated it. You’ve got something to rant about. Do you have something to rave about? And those are the two extremes and I think extreme? Yes,
Ryan M. Sero
yes. Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. It can be it can be just it’s especially if all of your friends went to see the appalling show. Because then you can go, you can sneak off to what you hope is a safe, yes. Environment and go, boy, wasn’t that terrible? And everybody else was yes, it really was.
Phil Rickaby
The danger with fringe is that you don’t always know where the safe environment is. So I have to have that conversation. Right now lock away before anybody gets to the fringe club. Yeah. You know, before anybody who could overtake Tim
Ryan M. Sero
Hortons is usually say, Yeah, I just because because artists types usually prefer like a, like, swanky or coffee shop, you know, like, they preferred like something quirky or more offbeat, or something like that, like if you’re going to the fringe club or, or you’re going you know, here they’re the mulberry coffee shop is around the corner and down James a little bit. And it’s a favourite hangout of a lot of the the artists type scenario where it’s like a Tim Hortons, it’s more mainstream, and so a lot of artists won’t. And that’s it. There’s one in particular on I’m giving my my, my my places. There’s one in particular on King Street, and it’s kind of known as like the biker Tim’s because a lot of like, sort of like biker chicks and biker dudes. And so nobody is who could possibly, and I’ve run lines in that Tim Hortons one time was kind of fun. A friend of mine. We were and myself, we were doing a production of Dr. Faust. Just last year. He was fastest, and I was Mephistopheles. And we went into this Tim Hortons. And we just did them did the lines at a table. And that was very odd and very fun.
Phil Rickaby
First, print experiences as well, and what was your first? What did you do for your first night? And so on to your
Ryan M. Sero
non volunteer was the next year sort of in 2009? Yeah, by my reckoning, I could be wrong, but 2009. And it was a play called a modicum of freedom, which I had written and wound up being in sort of by accident. Yeah. And it was basically because I didn’t know a lot of people in the area. And so even when we held auditions, we only got a very small handful of people out to audition. Right? And so by the time it came down to cast parts, the director and I are talking to the director, we were like, what about this guy would have, and I said, you know, I can do it. I’ll do it. And part of that was a kind of a, I guess it was, I suppose it was a trust issue where I’m just like, it’s the first play that I’ve written that was going up in front of people. Solo written, I’d done some stuff cold in school, but and so I said, I want this to be the way that I want it to be, and whatnot. So I did that. It can be
Phil Rickaby
really hard to give up that.
Ryan M. Sero
It can be hard, but when but when you do it, it can yield wonderful results because because an actor, if you get a good actor, they are a creative force in a different mindset than you and so, you know, for instance, I did a Christmas show last year, called miracles. don’t come cheap. And I remember specifically one line in particular. In that show, where I nearly put in a parenthetical in the script, I nearly said sarcastically, right. And I thought, You know what? It’s up to the actor to do it how she wants, I took it right out. And wouldn’t you know it? In rehearsals, the actor said it very genuine and heartfelt. And it still worked, it would just became a totally different moment. And I thought, what a wonderful thing to be able to see a moment that you had one way in your head, yeah, work at a totally different way on stage that you never would have gotten if you if you were micromanaging and controlling and tried to beat it into them and add all these little stage directions that manipulate them and control them. And so if you get a great actor, doing your work, or even one with just that, who’s a good actor, but has a radically different perspective, than you’ll come up with stuff that you never would have imagined for
Phil Rickaby
years. Yeah. And that’s, I mean, that’s kind of magic that you can put words on a page of somebody else even entirely different. Yeah, but it still works.
Ryan M. Sero
Yes. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s gold. And to me, that’s the best thing. One of the best things about about theatre is that it is not like a novel is one person usually there’s sometimes there’s too and to some extent, you’ve got an editor kind of helping coax them along, but it’s one person’s vision. A painting is one artist, yeah, is putting painting again. Usually I imagined that there might actually be double painters somewhere. Yeah, and I know some painters like Michelangelo employed and Rothko employed assistants to help them, but they would do stuff like prep canvases and sound like they were doing the Sistine Chapel. Maybe they were I don’t know, I don’t know that much about Michelangelo.
Phil Rickaby
His last name was blunter up there. And you don’t know that.
Ryan M. Sero
I did a project on him in high school. And I remember a couple little little pieces of detail. Anyways, he went blind painting the Sistine Chapel, for instance. But I got way off track. Most artists artistic disciplines are one person’s vision. But there’s a few a handful of disciplines that are that have to be collaborative Theatre has to be collaborative, and only with a couple of rare instances. Otherwise, even one man or one woman shows one person shows usually have a director, sometimes they even have three they got there’s one writer, there’s one performer and there’s one director, sometimes it’s all three, the same one, but a lot of times it’s multiple people’s vision designer came in a set designer, choreographer, somebody else came in to put their own unique spin on it, and put their own thing and and I love that, yeah, because it kind of it helps to remind you it’s a very, I think it’s a very easy profession to be in and allow your ego to, to coil around you and choke the life out of you. And nothing is better for you than to remember that it is not your soul work.
Phil Rickaby
I actually find that that as far as theme is concerned, it’s one of the reasons why I have difficulty writing in another style, because I’m so used to theatre writing where Yeah, it’s my job as a writer to leave empty spaces for somebody else to fill in. Absolutely.
You know, I don’t get I don’t describe the steps to designing to do that. They don’t tell the actor everything they want to do and everything they’re feeling because they figured, yeah, what’s what’s your, your theatre background? When did you first get interested in here?
Ryan M. Sero
I’ve been interested in my interest actually started I wanted to be like a comedian, like a sketch comedian in particular, I would have been around 14 or 15 whatever young boys are discovering Monty Python. Yes. And I did. And thought, oh, that if that’s a job if if there’s a penguin on the telly and and this parrot is not is dead, and if that’s a profession, yeah, I want that profession. Yeah. And so I the obvious thing to study then is theatre because I don’t think they they might offer them somewhere but there’s no real dedicated bachelor degree to be had and sketch comedy
Phil Rickaby
prepares for college as a comedy course, they might do rewrites
Ryan M. Sero
anyways, even even if there was. I feel like that’s, that’s limiting yourself. And so I thought theatre should be what, and somewhere during my theatre training, I was doing a show called, it was three that ends at our we pronounced it kneser. And, and during that it was a collective creation piece. And it was totally new and totally radical and bizarre and weird and fun and difficult and challenging. And I went, you know, it’s just as much fun tapping into the weird, the wild, the wonderful and the dramatic as it is tapping into the comic. tragedy is just as much fun and I thought and basically, that was I think I was already leaning towards his general performance at that time, but that was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back. That was the point at which I went, Yeah, I’m just going to be I’m going to be a theatre creator, not a sketch comedian, sketch comedian still on the table, perhaps but but I While at that point I was like no writing and acting and performing and Yes.
Phil Rickaby
When did you start writing? Around the same time? No,
Ryan M. Sero
I started, the first thing that I wrote theatrically was actually before I went to university. My dad’s a pastor. And so at the church, they were the youth group wanted to do a play. And that was like all they knew. Oh, and they had heard that I had interest in this kind of like theatre acting performance type stuff. And so they said, Do you want to try to write it says, Yeah, because when you’re 16, you have nothing but hubris, hubris, and the illusion of invulnerability, which is, which is an offset of hubris? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It’s just more hubris by a different name. So I said, Yeah. And so basically, what I did was I read a couple of I think Shakespeare plays because he was one of the only playwrights that I knew the name, of course, yeah, because I’m a teenager, and I’m dumb. And so it was a five act structure. And it’s like I, I based it like, the format was based off of whatever Shakespeare volume I had my parents had in the housing, so all this kind of stuff. And that was what I wrote, I wrote an adaptation of the book of Job. Okay, which I actually recently dug out, I think, a year and a half ago. And, and I was flipping through it. I was like, you know, a lot of this is quite naive, its execution. But some of it is, surprisingly not that bad. Yeah. I mean, if I really went through it, I would probably cut it from its like, 50 page length down to about like, 25, which I, which I also did recently with another script that I’ve written a while ago, and it was 44 pages. And I just, I just going through it, just reading through it and cutting whatever I felt was unnecessary. I like whacked it down to 21. Yeah, just like that. Just because I was such a different writer than I was four years ago.
Phil Rickaby
Also, I mean, you it’s easier to do when you have distance from something. But if you like, I find it so hard to do with something that I’m about to perform. But I’ve whittled away so much from my own. Yeah. Production. And really, because I’d be like, Okay, I really liked this piece. I really liked this. So I really like it. What’s the what’s his reason for being there? Like does it add to the structure? Or is it just something that’s there? Because I like it. Yeah, well,
Ryan M. Sero
and I’ve heard the old adage, Kill Your Darlings, absolutely. One of the things, it’s kind of a similar thing, one of the things that I like to do when I’m stuck, while writing is I write down my top 10 list of things that could never happen in this script. And nine times out of 10. When you do that, you go point numbers 367 And nine look pretty good. I actually I did it for the for the fringe show that I was working on. As soon as I came up with my first outline of the show, I wrote down four or five things that can never happen in the show. And literally one of them. And I won’t reveal which one should actually would reveal a plot twist. Yeah, but but but one of them I actually did do. I wrote I one of the things that I wrote and could never happen in anybody else. I did that thing. I think on my second draft
Phil Rickaby
Nice. Yeah. Have you ever been to other Fringe Festivals, or just to just Hamilton,
Ryan M. Sero
I’ve been to Toronto’s Fringe Festival a few times. I’ve both performed there and and just gone as an audience member as well. But I think that’s that’s pretty much it. I always mean to get out and see London’s fringe, which is another one that’s in reasonable proximity to me, like Ottawa and Montreal, are kind of far away. Unless I was gonna bring a show there. It’s hard for me to commute into Ottawa and see if I forget exactly what I mean. Like, I guess you could, you’d have to really want to go really want to go
Phil Rickaby
like, Yeah, I’m gonna go to Montreal, but it means Montreal friends. I know what Montreal free. Yeah, yeah.
Ryan M. Sero
And I think Kitchener has one now as well. So I feel like I should get out and see them. But it’s the kind of thing where, and the other thing is leading up to the Hamilton fringe. I’m super busy. So when Kitchener fringe is going on, I’m like, I don’t think that I have time to drive out there. Just because I’m editing and rehearsing and memorising And absolutely, trying to convince my child not to eat a crayon and whatever else.
Phil Rickaby
I mean, it’s hard because the festival gonna sort of go in a row in a row,
Ryan M. Sero
which is convenient for the performers. Because if you get into multiple festivals, and they they’re really good in the CFF, the Canadian Alliance Fringe Festivals, where they line them up so that you can go with a couple of exceptions. And there’s some hiccups here and there, but you can mostly go like East Coast to West Coast, just like one after the other. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And if you if you’ve by some miracle got into all of them. You actually could do all the fringe shows.
Phil Rickaby
There are a couple of conflicts. There’s I mean, I think that Calgary and Saskatoon happened at the same time. Yeah, there’s a couple of bugs generally, you could start in Montreal, go right across to Victoria,
Ryan M. Sero
Vancouver. Even Halifax I think you can start in Halifax,
Phil Rickaby
the Atlantic fringe happens in the fall, the fall coastal so that sort of their their own little circuit so you can sort of push across and then go back. Right. But each frame is so different. Yeah. And each branch has its own Yeah, personality and it’s kind of fun to get out. And you’ll never know it in a day. No. But you really know what he began to perform as a performer, you’ll know that. Yeah. And, you know, mostly all you’re gonna get a chance to show in Montreal.
Ryan M. Sero
I would love I would jump because, because I never been to Montreal and I would love to go,
Phil Rickaby
it is of all the fringes that I’ve been to. And I’ve done I’ve done Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton. Montreal is by far the warmest. Like, the most welcoming friends, I would recommend now, you know,
Ryan M. Sero
I won’t, obviously, because I haven’t been I have no experience. I won’t knock Montreal, I think in my opinion, I think you’re gonna find Hamilton to be pretty warm tool. Now, some of that is my opinion as a native, like, I’m I live here. So maybe that’s my perspective. But but the first couple years of doing it, I remember thinking, yeah, they’re very, very nice and very accommodating. And particularly if you make even a small effort to plug in on the Facebook group, which you have been doing, which is how I heard about this. People are willing to, and there’s a lot of people that are willing to to just like let you come and see their show. For instance, like, every year, I offer standby tickets to artists. So they have to wait until like 10 minutes before the show time. If it’s sold out, they’re gonna look but but if it’s not, then artists will get in for free. Because I very much believe that. If you’re here at the fringe, and I’m here at the fringe, let’s Screw it. Let’s see each other shows
Phil Rickaby
one of the my favourite things I’ve ever seen it a fringe was a guy in a line, he was firing a line. They can’t go to your show, because I already have tickets for this show. And the guy was like, Oh, wait, can you go see the show? And the guy said, Okay, I can go too far. And the guy said, Okay, so there’s this show in this show. What do you like? And he like helped this person choose the show from the shows that he’d seen your biggest promoters and Fringe Festival or other other performers, which I think is amazing.
Ryan M. Sero
I’ve done that. Yeah, I’ve done that people. People have said to me, like I you know, I’m coming to see your show on Saturday and what looks good. And I’ll tell them, you know, this and this and this. I like to open it up to the audience at the end of every show and say, Does anybody here have a show? They want to plug? Yeah, you know, because, you know, we’re all in the same boat. We’re all looking to draw audience. And the last thing I want is to create an environment where we’re all bludgeoning each other look, trying to take each other’s audience now let’s share him around, let’s make sure that it mixes up
Phil Rickaby
knowing going into Montreal friendly. Somebody said, there is all the incentive for everyone. Yeah. And I do believe that. Yeah, I believe that not just about fringe, but about any theatre in general, that we that we don’t need to cover in our audience, because our audience would go to see other indies Yeah, and also still be our audience,
Ryan M. Sero
especially at Fringe where it costs you less than $15. To see a show. Yeah. You can see four or five and still not have hit the premium seat pricing of some of the bigger theatres. Absolutely. And then again, at a maximum running time of an hour and a half, unless you’re looking at some of the Bring Your Own venues and stuff like that, which theoretically could go longer, though I don’t think they ever really do usually. But you know, and most of them are an hour. It’s not even a big time investment.
Phil Rickaby
I actually find that. For me, there’s there’s sometimes been a barrier with a 90 minute mark. Yeah, so about 90 minutes. So I sort of like at the 60 minute mark, that’s when I’m sort of like sort of getting antsy because at a fringe. I’m so used to seeing the colour on stuff. Yeah. And I’ve seen a lot of 90 minutes stuff that really didn’t even mean 90 minutes. Yeah, but it’s like, an hour for $10 or under $15. Even if it’s not awesome. You haven’t missed all that much.
Ryan M. Sero
Yeah. Yeah. And even then a lot of the 90 minutes or well actually went 75 or 80 minutes. So that’s not too bad. But you’re right, if when it starts to drag, it starts to drag. Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
You hurt yourself. I was at Hamilton native Are you a person who was born here this year for like many years,
Ryan M. Sero
I’ve lived here for a long time. Now. That’s why That’s why I say I’m Native here. I’m not native here and that I was not born here. I did not grow up here. But I kind of have roots here because my mom grew up in Dundas. So that’s right next door. And my dad grew up in Toronto. They actually lived in Dundas or if it was just an Eric but also grew up in the area and then they both moved, or he moved to to tobacco at some point, I think and, but but they start Get out of here. They went to high school together here. And, and hung out. You know, I remember driving with my dad at some point recently in the last like four or five years down Barton Street. And he commented, oh, such and such a bar is still there, I would have thought that it closed by now, you know, like this kind of stuff. So he still remembered the area. And they still friends in the area where they would say, their friends and say what are the kids up to? And they say Jodie and Ryan bought a house in the north end, and their friends would go, Oh, really, and mom and dad have to go. It’s changed a lot. Since we were kids. They’re like, No, no, they’re safe, because immediately and there are still sections of the North end that are quite forbidding. Yeah, where we are is lovely. But yeah, Mom and Dad would have to say no, now they’re fine. They’re saying what when I went to school at Redeemer, which is a little tiny University in Ancaster. And my wife got a job working in St. Joe’s hospital here. She’s a nurse. And so we just kind of went, let’s hang around and see what’s good. And from there, it became a very convenient location because I get work out in Cambridge, Kitchener Waterloo, I’ve gotten the occasional work in Toronto. I get a lot of work in Hamilton. And you turns out you can get a lot of places from Hamilton. Right? So Toronto is a major theatre hub. That’s a 45 minute drive. Kitchener. I found a surprise. I’m gonna work out there. That’s a 5060 minute drive. Yeah. Hamilton is right here. So there’s a lot of access. Yes, yeah. Yeah, to a lot of locations. So that’s why I guess I’m kind of stayed here. And on top of that, is, it’s been a really, really great town. Like it is I got a friend who describes it as either. It’s easy, since it’s either the biggest small town in the world that the smallest big town. And I would tend to agree. And I actually have described it before as like, when you watch a movie, non-mainstream little B movie independent kind of thing. But it blows your mind. And you start telling all of your friends like you are hired to do promotion for the thing. Yeah, I find that Hamilton is kind of like that. You get here. You’re like, there’s a lot of cool stuff going on. There’s a lot of cool indie art movements going on this week, Art Crawl, whatever. Supergirl, like you start going Gonzo about all this stuff going on here. And you start telling everybody like, no, no, no, it’s got its own cool vibe that you’ve got to come check out.
Phil Rickaby
I mean, that’s, I think a lot of people don’t know people from Hamilton have been like, talking about that. Yeah. Wow. But if you don’t, if you’re not from here, and you’re not going to plug in, you wouldn’t know.
Ryan M. Sero
And you’ve got to make a little bit of an effort. Because I’ve had, I’ve had talked to people who have come in for one project. And they basically they come in, they do the show, whether it’s a rock show or a theatre show. And they kind of commute home every day, and you talk to them. And they’re like it’s kind of scuzzy. And why don’t you like? Yes, just because you just drove through? Yeah, you didn’t take a look. And if you take a look, you find the stuff. And I’m kind of convinced that anywhere you go, if you take a look, you’ll find neat stuff everywhere. You’ll find great people and great stuff going on. Yeah, every city has got its downsides. But you’re going to find some interesting things going on.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, yeah. Definitely.
Ryan M. Sero
I think it would be I would be surprised if there was a city in the world. That didn’t have something going for it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I would include the most rundown plague infested, tragic third world kind of city, I would say, there’s something there. Yeah. I bet you not everybody lives here, just because they grew up here. I bet you some people live here because they believe in this place. People. Yeah,
Phil Rickaby
people come here for the for the arts community and for all our stuff. So I know that I know that that happens. I’m really I’m really kind of excited to see. Because coming from Toronto, there’s a certain like, there’s a certain idea of what Hamilton is.
Ryan M. Sero
I’ve run across that idea. I’ve talked to a lot of Hamilton, that one of the one of the weirdest things is every now and then you tell people that you’re an artist in house, and this hasn’t happened to me in a while now. But you tell people, you’re an artist in Hamilton, and they go do they have arts there? As though for some reason, like the geographical location was anathema to culture? Yeah. And you’re like, Yeah, we do.
Phil Rickaby
Is that I mean, when you when you’re thinking from a kind of an elitist point of view, that’s, that’s obviously a human thing. But then when he when he really sort of sit back and think about it, culture comes from the place. Yeah. And that’s why each place is culture is unique, so forth. The culture in ways like Hamilton is going to be different from Yeah, like Toronto or somewhere else, but that’s kind of what makes it cool.
Ryan M. Sero
Yeah, and I don’t I don’t mean to Say, I don’t mean to say that, like Toronto are a bunch of jerks, or anything like that. I don’t mean to say that it’s snobby. I think that a lot of times it was just that they just didn’t know about it. Yeah, it wasn’t coming from a place of arrogance. It was just coming from a place of like, I mean, if you exist in the arts scene in Toronto, you’re, it’s that’s got to be a 24 hour day occupation.
Phil Rickaby
Your, your, your garden, it’s your world, so you don’t look outside.
Ryan M. Sero
Exactly. There’s no need to go anywhere else. Because it’s, it’s quite fulfilling in its own right. So then when you kind of when you kind of walk out of there for a little bit, you’re like, Oh, right. There will be other hubs. And again, I don’t mean to, I don’t mean to say this, it’s naive or it’s ignorant or anything like that. I just think that it’s just because you wouldn’t need to look any further if you’re looking to satiate your artistic drive, whether it’s creating or just or just consuming culture. You don’t need to go more than a block.
Phil Rickaby
No. So I think it’d be a good thing to look outside of ourselves, though.
Ryan M. Sero
It’s a great thing, you know.
Phil Rickaby
Especially look to a place that’s closer than we think.
Ryan M. Sero
Yeah. And I had a guy. I’ve had people be very surprised at how close it is. Yeah. And I’ve also had, I had one guy who was surprised how far it was. I was, I was giving him a ride back. We’d been in Toronto doing a show. And he was coming down here to stay overnight for a couple of days. And he said, Do you mind if I kept riding with you? And I said, Sure, absolutely. So we’re driving back and he was like, how far it is. It is like it’s like a 45 minute drive. And he’s like, no kidding me. He had him for some reason. Geographically. He had Hamilton basically in the same places like Mississauga, Etobicoke. VAUGHAN or like, he thought it was like a suburb almost like right uh, butted up against it. And, and he admitted that he was like, he’s like, from the East Coast. And so I wasn’t really aware of the geographic geography of the area. Yeah. And, and then I ended, I joked, and I laughed, and I said, you know, when we get to Hamilton, you’re gonna see a lot of scooters. And he was like, what? And I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but there are a lot of those little, like, rascal. They’re like rolling people to get tonnes of,
Phil Rickaby
I noticed that. I was tempted the last day. Yeah. And I came a little early and noticed tonnes of it. Yeah, I was like, why
Ryan M. Sero
are there so many? Nobody knows. It’s part of Hamilton. It’s like It’s like the tiger cats and and the art crawl. It’s just there are scooters.
Phil Rickaby
Different favourite part? He would think about the animals drink.
Ryan M. Sero
I would I would point back to what I said earlier about it. It’s it’s very accommodating, very friendly. I really, I really like that. It’s nice to see it. bubble up. It’s been growing seemingly exponentially the last few years, which is kind of nice. I like that. It’s that it’s a big, there’s a lot of stuff going on. And yet it’s not overwhelming. Yeah. You know, you go to Toronto, and there are like 150 Show. And that’s besides the art exhibits and the musical demonstrations and whatever is going on at the fringe 10. And there’s tonnes of stuff. And that’s fantastic. But you’ve got no hope of seeing it all. I actually know a guy. I pretty sure since the fringes inception, Tom is that he goes to every show every year. I don’t know how he doesn’t. But he must sit down and come up with his schedule for the rest of the of the entire 10 days. And he sees everything. And you
Phil Rickaby
would have to have like a very careful, meticulous, no time to waste.
Ryan M. Sero
Exactly. And it’s great talking to him at the after party. You go to the fringe after party, you sit down with him, because you go what was the best show? What was the worst show? What did you love? And I love asking people what the worst show was. I don’t know why it’s maybe shot and fried. And maybe it’s professional jealousy. But there’s something about it to be like, what did you hate? Yeah. And it’s and some years, it’s a different one for everybody. And other years. Everybody says it was this.
Phil Rickaby
It’s funny, because, you know, I don’t I mean, I I look at I mean, Toronto has its own, the Hamilton fringe can be intimidating for many different reasons. Yeah. But having been to the Winnipeg and Edmonton fringe, which are huge. Yeah, that’s wrong. gargantuan. Yeah. Yeah. The Toronto fringe is like, oh, that small thing. Yeah. Because because the Edmonton fringe is like, I don’t know, like 300 companies. Yeah, it’s ridiculous. Yeah, it’s ridiculously huge.
Ryan M. Sero
But I imagine there’s exponentially more peripheral events as well.
Phil Rickaby
Oh, here’s I mean, there you can you can actually go to the window, sorry, the Edmonton trains and some people go Are the buskers Yeah. Yeah. And the fact that there’s a theatre festival as well, they don’t even notice. Yeah. It’s theirs.
Ryan M. Sero
And I love what? I love watching them grow. But I do still like, I do still like a skeleton, like maybe like a manageable bite. Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
It was actually, I mean, I hadn’t actually taken the time to really like, look at what the venues are. Yeah. And I sort of went through today, and I was like, Oh, my God, there’s really assignment to BYOB is is really, for venues in Hamilton. Plus there, the BYOB plus the mini series. Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s a manageable fringe. Yeah, that’s like
Ryan M. Sero
most of them. I’m sorry. I’m laughing because most of them were walking distance. And I was laughing to myself, because a friend of mine quoted a comedian today, or no, there’s my dad yesterday said, was quoting a comedian who said, you know, if you have the time anywheres within walking.
Phil Rickaby
That’s true. But
Ryan M. Sero
that said, mostly, I think you could you could hike from one venue from the furthest venue to the furthest venue probably like 2025 minutes.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, the only one that seems that feels really part of it is the staircase. And that’s a BYOB here that they have to BYOB.
Ryan M. Sero
And last year, they were involved with the BYOB two and this year, they basically done the same thing. Yeah. Which is that not just they are a BYOB, but that there are like a half a dozen shows there. Yeah. And so it kind of becomes its own like little mini. Yes. There was a touring show that I did a while ago, doing intuition move for sound reasons to just do a pause and it just
Phil Rickaby
we’ll keep it running. Okay.
Ryan M. Sero
Yeah, so, there was a touring show that I did a while ago, we went up to Thunder Bay. And Thunder Bay is one of these places where two cities existed. And eventually their borders expanded until it was one city, okay, and you kind of wound up with two downtown cores, which were sort of like rival to one. Right now. I didn’t sense a big rivalry between the downtown Hamilton fringe venues and the staircase, okay. But the staircase became its own kind of like it’s a second main hub.
Phil Rickaby
What’s kind of interesting about that, is that there was a similar thing that happened in the in the Toronto fringe a few years ago, there was a venue called Brennan circus. Yeah. And red circuits sort of ran its own fringe venue. Where they did was staircase, and sort of they became their own hub. And they had their own little festival there. They were own little venue. And you know what, in most Fringe Festivals in Canada, that’s not unusual. That’s inadvertently Lhasa tea, and school. The French school is a venue with two theatres. There’s all these venues and they’re curated. Yeah, somebody applies to those. And so people did this for that one, too. And after a couple of years, the Toronto fringe his response to that was to make that impossible to see you couldn’t do that anymore. You had to if you’re going to do if you’re going to do BYOB, you have to show that your show could only be done in that location.
Ryan M. Sero
Yeah. And this year is the first year that the Halton fringe made a distinction on applications between a byo V and a site specific Yeah, and I actually really liked that model where they say, you can have a byo V. Or you can have a site specific or both, I suppose, in a way, but But yeah, you can say, and I think that that’s great, because it allows for maximum possibilities and allows for somebody to do that.
Phil Rickaby
There’s definitely a lot of possibility that you have a lot of, there’s a lot of choice there. I know. In in some of the cities where they do you know that this style of BYOB the some of the people’s favourite shows end up being at the BYU becomes the place to go. Partially because in some cities, like in Edmonton, for example, there’s so many shows, yeah, that it’s such a crapshoot. Some people are just not willing to go through the crapshoot of is this show in a regular venue? Yeah. Gonna be any good. Or do I go to this curated venue? Yeah. Where I know that it’s going to be good.
Ryan M. Sero
And I’m not sure exactly how Colette like Kendall runs. I’m not sure exactly how she picks those shows. My understanding is that a lot of them just approached her and so I’m not sure exactly what kind of judiciary process she has four or she just says yeah, here’s the here’s the cut that I gave him. Come on down. I don’t know what that is. But because I’ve never, never done that option. Yeah. Not that I wouldn’t but just that I haven’t had to. Yeah. And and so I don’t really know what her deal is exactly how she selects those or She even does select them.
Phil Rickaby
What venue is, is you’re
showing theatre Aquarius? That’s, I mean, that’s, that’s the biggest venue in the in the fridge. Isn’t that in terms of?
Ryan M. Sero
I don’t know, because it’s not, we’re not in the main space. They don’t do that. They do the black box theatre there so that seats, it’s got a 75 seat capacity and they have the potential to add more. Which I have had the wonderful fortune to be able to do it. That’s good.
Phil Rickaby
I whenever somebody says that they’re theatre Aquarius, I in my mind, it’s like, in like the main the
Ryan M. Sero
main things that would that would kill you. Yeah. Because it’s, that’s like a, I think it’s like 800 seats or something like that. You would die because a decent fringe audience not great, but a decent fringe audience you can get by with like 3040 people in an 800 seat theatre, you’re dead. They didn’t use that space one year, but they didn’t use the main audience they built risers will then build them, but they put in risers and made a three quarter thrust stage on the stage. Okay, so everybody, audience and performers were all on the stage. And they just they did it that way, which worked in Winnipeg
Phil Rickaby
at the Manitoba Theatre Centre. They do use the main space, but they curtain it. Yeah. So it instead of like 800 seats, you have like 250, which is still that’s still
Ryan M. Sero
in that. Yeah, yeah.
Phil Rickaby
You know what? It is intimidating. But if you can fill it great, but man, if you can’t, if you get like, what is it would be a generous fringe audience? Oh, yeah. If
Ryan M. Sero
you’ve got to lay people, he was like, nothing. I mean, you know, I’m gonna 75 see Ben. Yeah, if I get 100 people, they have to add chairs. Yeah. And, and that will be that’ll be I’ll be over the moon. Absolutely. 100 people in a 250 seat house is less than half that’s on Yeah. And particularly I do a lot of comedies. If you if you’re packed in elbow to elbow with with a bunch of other patrons all loving it. And you’re all laughing Yeah, nothing is better for comedy. And nothing is worse than when you’re all spread out. Yeah. You’re not near anybody. You don’t feel like laughing and it kills every joke. Yeah, you just want to die.
Phil Rickaby
And a lot of feet. A lot of good friend houses are like 20. Yeah, in a big venue. That’s,
Ryan M. Sero
I’ve heard it said that a good a good a decent opener. You’re okay. If you open to like 2025. At that point, it’s got a bill, but that’s your okay. Yeah, if that’s the case. And, and that’s where I set my goal. I want to open to 2025 people. And I always somehow managed to pessimistically convinced myself that nobody’s coming.
Phil Rickaby
I mean, that is the that is the you know, you don’t know.
Ryan M. Sero
Yeah, you’ve got no,
Phil Rickaby
I don’t know, until until you get on that stage. Who’s there? You can’t really check the box office to see know
Ryan M. Sero
who’s doing now you can well, maybe there’s a way I don’t know, I’ve never asked
Phil Rickaby
you know, in Edmonton. It was the only place where you could Yeah, and you can log in and see how many tickets you’ve sold. I like that destroyed. Like that destroyed it for me. Because you would end up like sitting there obsessively yakking how many people were coming to your show
Ryan M. Sero
I was supposed to I would hate that I’m super glad to not have access or to think at least believe that I do not have access to those numbers. Because the worst feeling in the world would be lucky. It’d be like how many people one person for the one show I have at 730? You know what I mean? Like just, yeah, yeah. Two years ago. We, we were offering artists, complimentary tickets, artists tickets, they just had to email us and ask us for them. Now, we were very lenient, I would go to the box office. And I would say, Hey, let people in anyway, even if they’re not on my list, let artists if they’re fringe artists, let
Phil Rickaby
me do so. Is there like a friend identifier like an artist identifier? No,
Ryan M. Sero
it’s they moved over to like a password system.
Phil Rickaby
Recently. That’s, that’s pretty common, actually, in a lot of Fringe Festival,
Ryan M. Sero
the password. And I think that’s why they did it. It’s the three years ago where Kalyn started running the fringe. And I think she was more familiar with kind of Toronto models and other models. And she brought in a couple of aspects of that, like she got rid of the second year, I think that she got rid of the badges and just move it over to a password system and whatnot. Anyways, so last year or two years ago, we had we had this system where you could just you would just post a message on our fringe page or on our Facebook page, and we would put you on our list. And as luck would have it, nobody had done so like they just for whatever reason had not had not done so. And so I had convinced myself that that meant a All the artists that I know in the city, which is a bundle, none of them are interested in seeing my show. Which means, which means if my friends, my nearest and dearest aren’t willing to see the show for free, that means nobody’s coming. I literally sat on my couch in my living room for I think, like an hour or two in the afternoon, just staring into space. Yeah, totally despondent, absolutely had convinced myself that literally nobody and I don’t I’m not one of these people who uses that word facetiously. I know that it means an absolute truth. Literally, I had convinced myself that literally nobody was coming to the show that I would get there. And they would go, sorry, we didn’t sell any tickets. What do you want to do? And I’d be like, well, I want to go home and take up drinking. And then somebody comes backstage, it’s opening night, and I’m not looking. I’m in the green room. I’m like, I don’t, I don’t want to go anywhere near the audiences of I hear so much. One cricket, I’m going to I’m going to start measuring playing neck. And, and lo and behold, our venue, tech comes back and she says, We have to hold. We have to add shares. We oversold and and then I had to calm down because I got so.
Phil Rickaby
So getting that. I mean that’s the best case scenario, right? What’s the best case
Ryan M. Sero
scenario and it was it was quite a roller coaster.
Phil Rickaby
I had a story. When I was in Winnipeg, I can’t remember the guys name. And he had this drag queen character. And
he’d been there a year before this review that was so bad. Or at least like their main reviewer for the main newspaper, I think I heard about that, like hated the show, because
I don’t know he used bad language or something. And like gave him the worst of you. So the next year, knowing that he had to combat that. He was the hardest working guy I have ever seen. He was out every day all day. And as part of his show, he would say Okay, so how many of you? How many of you here are here? Because you saw me on the street today? Yeah. And like 90% of the house? Yeah. And
Ryan M. Sero
that was a fast lesson that I learned early on going to Fringe Festivals. If you don’t hit those lines, handout, cards. Hands, nobody’s coming. Yeah. Your friends. Your mom’s coming. And your lead actors mom has come. But yeah, but nobody else. And so you’ve got to hit those lines. And over the years, you know, you discover this is something I don’t think over the years, I also discovered really fast. You can’t do it in authentically. Yeah, you can’t pass it a bunch of cards and say, come to my show. Come see my show. Come see my show is great. And then like leave, nobody’s coming. No. You have to talk to people. To give them a reason. You have to give them a face because the difference between them coming and not coming isn’t caring about you.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. It’s funny, because that’s I mean, for me,
that’s the hardest part.
Absolutely. is like going up to people.
Ryan M. Sero
I hate that. Yeah. I mean, I often enjoy like, once, like once the conversation gets going, like I have had some wonderful conversations and met some wonderful, beautiful people.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, it’s that initial walking salutely conversation,
Ryan M. Sero
especially that moment when you know, when you know, it’s all on the line. And so you have to talk to all these people. And they’re in a conversation and you’re like, Well, I feel like a real jerk. Yeah. But at some point, you kind of have to interrupt and then you have to win them over. You have to that’s almost a play in and of itself. Yeah, you have to interrupt people having a good time having a conversation among friends, you’re coming up to sell them something and you have to make them like you in 30 seconds or less, or they are never coming to see your show. They’re actually gonna they’re actually gonna circle on the fringe guide coat. That guy was a jerk.
Phil Rickaby
There’s a fine line about walking up to somebody. And you know,
Ryan M. Sero
and I’ve seen people screw themselves out of out of a ticket sale by doing it wrong. I’ve seen that we hit the line wrong. That one of the most egregious examples of somebody who tried to pass up their card while I was still talking to passing on my card, and should have known better like, like, knew who I was. And it’s like, just
Phil Rickaby
somebody is like passing a car. It’s okay to go after them.
Ryan M. Sero
Absolutely. No, it was it and you can see it in the other person’s eyes how rude. They thought that person was being even though they didn’t know me and they didn’t know this other person doesn’t matter. They just went
Phil Rickaby
there. That was that was kind of that person is it? He’s dead. Yeah. You know, that was kind of rude. So we’re almost out of time. But I wanted to ask you for your show. Are you are you were you personally? Are you on social media? Yeah, website.
Ryan M. Sero
We have both of those things. Make Art Theatre has a Facebook page. From there, you can get to our website, but that would be make our theatre.weebly.com and that will give you will get access to all of our up and coming shows as well. Great. Because we’ll be doing further projects down the line. First, check your local listings.
Phil Rickaby
Well, thank you. Thanks so much for doing this. Thanks. For my schedule,
Ryan M. Sero
thank you for having me. It’s been really fun