Stefan Dzeparoski

Stefan is a Serbian-born, Toronto-based international director and creative producer. He is best known for his interdisciplinary stage practices merging film, digital and live performance. Stefan’s work has been seen on stages in Europe, Canada, and Off-Broadway. He is a Director and Creative Producer at Toronto’s award-winning BirdLand Theatre.

Among other things, Stefan is the founder of a creative StartUp Digital Dream Society.
Stefan is alumnae of Directors Lab at The Lincoln Center in New York, and fellowship recipient of International Theatre School at University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

His work has been featured in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, and in many online publications.

Twitter: @DzeparoskiS

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Transcript

Welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host of this podcast. This is episode 320.

I really need to get better about celebrating milestones. I mean, this isn’t one of the big ones. This is a minor milestone, but it is 320 episodes.

And that’s something to celebrate. So I just want to sit for that for a second because I’m not really good at doing that. So let’s just think about the fact that I’ve done this 320 times.

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You can find Stageworthy on Twitter and Instagram at StageworthyPod, and you can find the website with the archive of all 320 episodes at stageworthypodcast.com. And if you want to find me online, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at philrickabee, and my website is philrickabee.com. My guest this week is Stefan Dzeparoski. Stefan is a director and creative producer at Toronto’s award-winning Birdland Theatre. He is best known for his interdisciplinary stage practices, merging film, digital, and live performance, and is the founder of the creative startup Digital Dream Society.

Here’s our conversation. You are a director and a creator of interdisciplinary stage practices, as you’ve described it. You mix digital and live performance.

Can you tell me, when did you first start doing that, and how has that changed for you during the pandemic? Oh, well, I think that I really never did anything else, actually. Since I started with theatre and live performance, it was always, for me, mixing different worlds and bringing them together into something that we accept as a live performance. And so my journey started way back in Serbia, I think in the very late 90s or something, when I first attempted this merger of different disciplines and different aesthetics.

And when I came to Canada, and when I started my master’s at the University of Alberta, I found there a very welcoming and extremely embracing group of people who really wanted to support me in this exploration. And from there on, I simply integrated both film and digital into my practice and into the way how I read plays and how I interpret them on stage. But, of course, with a pandemic and everything around it, that shifted drastically and pushed me more into this kind of digital realm when I started exploring more intensely how the elements of theatrical language can be translated into the digital realm.

And so I created a couple of projects with some colleagues from Europe, but also here in Canada that went on and gave some really interesting results. We created a couple of, let’s call them, like, theatrical films with my colleagues in Europe. And here in Canada, I collaborated on a few projects, and the one that I’m really proud of is Internal Iniquity that went on and won a couple of awards down in the States as the best live stream production.

The issue, not the issue, but the mixing of theatre and digital, I think, every so often I’ve seen people attempt it and try it, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But just like with digital theatre, I’ve often seen and heard resistance to the mixture of digital elements, even though in a lot of cases when it’s done really well, it sort of widens the scope of what can be done on stage. I think for some people there is a resistance to that.

Is that something that you saw, or was it mostly embraced when you were working on it? Well, this resistance is present always. It’s not just about the digital that we are talking about right now. It was present even before when different elements of the projected media were used in theatre, such as either live video or pre-recorded video.

There was always this resistance like, oh, that’s going to overpower, that’s going to overtake the theatre, that’s going to overtake the live performance. But to me, it can only enhance what we know about theatre, and it can only enrich the language we use in theatre. So resistance is there and it’s present, but I don’t think we should pay that much attention to that resistance at all.

I do think that there are people who get tied up, really tied up in what they will say that theatre quote-unquote is. And they sort of get hung up on theatre. If it includes this, it’s not theatre.

If it does this, it’s not theatre. And more and more recently, I’ve just been sort of latching on to the fact that theatre does evolve, theatre does change, and theatre is what we make it to be. And so it can stand to be online and it can stand to have digital elements and film elements.

It is what we make it. Yeah, and I don’t think that we should separate them. I don’t think that we should make this binary division between what is assumed to be a theatre and what is assumed to be a digital or film.

They are all together now. And I think we are at a very, very peculiar and extremely interesting moment in the evolution of theatre, where we are just about to abandon all those binary differences and accept the different modes of expression, the different modes of artistic interpretation, and accept them as one. And it’s not that digital theatre is going to overtake the live theatre.

No, that’s nonsense. That’s absolute nonsense. But it is opening a new venue, a new perspective on what live performance is.

For instance, the show that I did, that I mentioned, Internal Iniquity, I created that show with a group of people and we never met before. Like, we never met in person. We communicated completely online.

We created a show online. There was an audience who saw the show and the response was that they felt alive when they saw the performance. So, this kind of very antiqued idea of what live performance is has to change, because we carry in our pockets the devices that give us this illusion of immediate connection.

But when we come to theatre, we are like, oh no, that’s not part of what we are doing. And I’m like, excuse me, but that’s stupid. That’s part of your life.

So, it has to be included in your theatrical experience. And so, I really don’t like this binary division between what is considered to be a theatre and what is not theatre. Because I think we, as I said, we are at the moment when we are putting a completely new mind frame on what theatre is and what live performance is.

Absolutely. I feel like, once again, because we’ve done this a couple of times already, we start to open the theatres again. There are some people who just can’t wait to finally get rid of that pesky digital aspect.

And I think that’s a mistake. I think that experimenting with digital, and some people have a lot of strong feelings about this, but live streaming the theatre so that people can buy a digital ticket for people who can’t get to the theatre. And also, I think about, I mean I’m rambling, but I think about all of the shows that have happened in other places in Canada, for example.

I just can’t get there. We would be able to share those things if we could live stream our theatre. I think that to ignore the possibilities of what digital gives us in so many different ways is really short-sighted.

So, I’m curious what you think about the digital theatre in the post-COVID world. What do you think we should be doing? What are you excited to do? Well, I’m going to go back into things that were done in the early ages of the television, where actually you had live theatre being recorded and live streamed on television. So, you had this incredible setup of multiple cameras and broadcasting things just for the sake of people who are not present in the room, but they’re going to watch a theatre at their homes.

And it was an extremely common thing in Europe. BBC does that. German television did that.

Even Serbian television did that ages ago. So, it is not that we are inventing something that never existed before. We just have technology right now that is more immediate, more present, and more efficient in bringing this content live.

I remember when I was a kid, seven, eight years old, I used to watch theatre shows at my home in Belgrade that were done in Zagreb, Croatia, broadcasted by the television. And so, I’m like, what’s the difference between that and now? Not much. No.

I think about the first Shakespeare play I ever saw was on the CBC, recorded from the Stratford Festival, and it was as you like it. And it was the first time I’d seen Shakespeare, and it was the first time that I was able to say, oh, this is not complicated. You can understand it if it’s performed correctly.

I’ve also seen plays that were shot on American stages, like PBS, for example. Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and other shows that have been recorded and broadcast. And we don’t think that’s unusual or strange.

But somehow when we add the internet or the computer in, suddenly we’re thinking that it’s something new and different. I think it’s because in those days, television set was a gathering point, either of a family or friends or whatever. It was a gathering point.

You needed to be in a room with a group of people to witness something. What has changed now is that you can pull out your smartphone, have that content brought to you, so that you don’t need to be in the room with the people to witness something on the screen. So what is shifting, I think, is this idea of gathering.

And that’s at the core of what theatre is. It is a gathering point. We all come together to witness something as a group, as a collective.

What internet provides us is the ability to witness the same thing as an individual. You don’t need to gather in a living room of your best friend and with his mom and dad to witness a Hamlet. You can have it on your iPhone.

And I think somewhere deep in our collective consciousness, that is something that we might be afraid of, this idea that we are becoming extremely individual. One of the things that I think about is all of the shows that I just mentioned and a lot of the shows that I can think of that I’ve seen, whether broadcast from the National Theatre or the movie theatre or something like that, is they’re filmed or recorded or broadcast with a live audience present. And so I hear the audience.

I also have a sense that I’m having a different experience than that audience. The experience of watching theatre on a screen is not going to be exactly the same as it is when you’re in the room. And so they are different experiences, but they can be complementary as well.

For example, sometimes when I’ve seen a show digitally, I do think to myself, man, I would love to be in that room. I’ll seek it out later on if I can. But at least I have the sense of what it was like to be in that room.

But I think we have to acknowledge and accept that they are separate and different experiences. And when we can accept that, I think we might be more likely to embrace it broadly. Well, exactly.

And it’s not that one experience is more true than the other. They are simply distinct. But just as you said, they can complement each other.

They can go hand in hand together. So it is not about that we are talking about two different things. We are talking about the same thing.

And when we accept this idea of togetherness that can exist outside of physical presence, then we will evolve into another level of our consciousness. Either as audience or theatre creators. But the point is that nothing good will come out if we really focus ourselves on dividing those experiences.

They have to be brought together. The idea of togetherness, that’s all. How long have you been with Birdland Theatre? I think it’s been seven years or something.

Because I just had to check because you were, I believe, the dramaturg on one of my favorite theatrical experiences, which was back in 2011, which was Assassins. Yes. And I went with a friend and we talked about that show for days afterwards.

And it was pretty amazing to experience. And I know it was, I think it was the second time that Birdland had put on that show at that point. But what was, I mean, as the dramaturg, what was your part in putting that show together? This is the problem with technology is I stopped the recording by accident.

So I was asking your part as dramaturg on… Yeah, I was a dramaturg, like a production dramaturg on Assassins. And that was really an incredible experience to be a part of just being surrounded with all those geniuses of theatre coming together in one room to bring that show alive. And as a dramaturg, my focus was just to make the show relevant to the moment when it’s happening, to make the show be sure that it’s resonating to what we feel at the moment.

It speaks of the moment from the American past, but like, look what’s happening right now. Like, I think actually now would be the amazing moment to do that show again. And, but it was just, and my experience with a musical theatre up to that point was not that big.

And so for me, it was also like personally an extremely incredible opportunity to learn more about the form. And to learn more about how this structure of musical theatre actually works. And so I jumped on that opportunity and we all created, I think, a really good theatrical experience for everyone.

It was pretty magical, I have to say. And it’s hard to talk about something that people can’t go and see, right? Because now it was like in 2011, but it was pretty magical. I know that the show Assassins has not had a great experience trying to be produced on Broadway.

Like every time they try to produce it, there’s some event in the world that makes it not a good time to do that show. So at least we got to do it here. Yeah, well, it’s, and there is, I don’t know, I think here we felt a bit more free from what this giant of Sondheim that he is.

And we felt a bit more liberated to really play with the material. And to really explore how we feel about the subject matter. And what is our personal relation to it? And I think that was the genius of Adam Brazier that allowed everyone really to intimately and personally resonate with the material.

Instead of forcing them to fit into one image and one form that the show needs to be. And I think that’s why the show really, really had this incredible impact on audience because they, like performers, they all felt extremely intimately connected to what is going on. Absolutely, absolutely.

I know that Birdland has also, I mean, it might have been before your time, but Birdland did now a legendary production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which is I think the first time we got to see that in Toronto. And it was done in the fermenting cellar in the distillery district, which was really before the distillery district was what it is now. And that was, again, much like the way that Assassins was staged, this was like in an unusual space and put together.

So that seems to be something that Birdland is known for, is the unusual spaces. Well, absolutely. Yes, it is about finding spaces that actually resonate with material.

But it is also this passion of the producer of Birdland Theatre, Zorana Kidd, that she has about bringing people together into spaces that are stripped of preconceived formality of theatrical venue. So when you invite someone to a fermenting cellar, that’s not a theatre venue. That’s a space.

That’s a space that we agreed we’re gonna gather, that we’re all gonna be together. And there is something very raw about it, and a unique energy in it. And Zorana has this kind of crazy instinct about discovering those spaces and places when actually people can come together.

As much as it is about the show, it is also about something that is happening with an audience. The audience is connecting in spaces that are not traditional theatre spaces, so they need to start understanding each other. And then there is a show that comes to them.

And then on top of it, there is this dialogue, actually, that happens between audience and a performance within a space that is not traditional. And to me, that is the closest as we can get to a ritual in our time right now. As you describe this, to me, it makes perfect sense why that is complementary to the work that you’re doing, mixing theatre and film and digital production.

It’s the same sort of changing the space, bringing it into an unusual space and allowing this new space to inform the production. Yeah. I think we have lost a little bit of this idea of what our ritual is as a society and what is the myth in our society.

And so when we create events like this, in a way, we are creating a mythology. We are creating a new way of understanding each other because myths were created because we as a human race wanted to understand the world around us. And so if we start bringing that back in, either through the physical spaces or digital spaces, the core is creating this mutual ritual.

That’s a really powerful thing because generally in our day-to-day lives, we don’t have ritual so much anymore. And on some level, I think we do crave it. Absolutely.

And that’s where theatre comes in. And that’s why throughout the history, as much as theatre was celebrated, it was also prosecuted. Sure.

It’s dangerous. It created this gathering point that can change a society, that can change the way how we perceive our reality. Yeah.

And digital, again, gives us actually much larger audiences than the actual physical spaces can. There’s also, I mean, just in terms of what theatre can do is it can comment on things without necessarily obviously commenting on it. That’s why in some places, the theatre is very highly regulated because it’s too dangerous to let something that can be so immediate, that can’t be edited and controlled in front of an audience.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I’m stuck on this word, what you just said, it cannot be edited.

Because we are living at this moment, we are living an extremely edited reality. And theatre has ability, not just to show that, but to shift that. Because if you look again, back throughout the history, nothing good has come out of edited society.

You edited society created only anxiety, then created resistance, and then there is a rebellion, and then you have a revolution. So what we have right now, we have this idea that we cannot talk about certain things if they are not said in a certain way. But then if they are said in a certain way, that means that artist is obliged to follow a certain formula or certain set of rules to which he can say things or not.

And that’s a control. And that’s when things start to get very troublesome. I’d like to talk about your beginnings as an artist, as a theatre creator.

You mentioned seeing theatre on the TV when you were growing up. Was that your first exposure to theatre? And what made you want to be involved in theatre? Well, when I was a kid, we had those regular visits to the theatres as school groups and everything. But what made me really start seriously thinking about it was this idea of connection between something that is happening in front of me and me who is watching it, who is witnessing it.

And I felt extremely attracted to this idea to create some kind of energy that will bring people together. And then I started doing different things. I did a little bit of a film and things like that.

But theatre was always there. Is this the most immediate experience of simply being alive? And that fascinated me. What is this thing that is happening in front of me that makes me feel alive, more alive than I was like 20 minutes ago? And I always have that in me.

So you grew up in Serbia, is that right? And then you came to Toronto. Was Toronto your first stop when you came to Canada? Oh, no, no, no, no. My first stop was actually West Canada, Edmonton, Alberta.

I came to Edmonton to do my master’s in directing at the University of Alberta. And so I did my two years of the program there and then I stayed like two and a half years more in Edmonton, creating shows, participating at Edmonton Fringe. I had two shows there.

The first show I did for the Fringe there was Creation of the World and Other Businesses by Arthur Miller. And the second one was Anime, which was kind of a science fiction thing, almost like a Romeo and Juliet meets Blade Runner. And then after that, I came to Toronto.

It’s interesting you did a science fiction play because I think that we don’t, these days, we don’t, in the theatre, we don’t play with genre, like we don’t play with horror, we don’t play with science fiction as much as they used to. And I think that we’re missing out by not exploring those genres on the stage. Yeah, yeah.

No, I absolutely agree with you because I think genre gives you this very unique opportunity to start with a certain form and then expand it and change it. And to bring a completely different kind of content to the audience. And we, I think we are getting stuck in this idea of a theatre as a self-expression device.

Which, I’m not sure actually the theatre is. In one way, it starts from there, but if it stays like that, then it becomes a very self-indulgent thing. And I think this self-indulgence and correctness in congratulating ourselves and our friends on what we created does not move us forward.

And if we explore different genres, as you said, like science fiction, horror, I cannot remember when was the last time when I saw actually the horror show, horror theatre show. And I think if anything else, horror as a genre is the closest we can get to the Greek catharsis at the moment. Yeah.

I mean, there’s something magical that happens with horror because there’s, okay, so there is a Toronto theatre company called Eldritch Theatre. People who listen to this podcast regularly, they know about my love for Eldritch Theatre. Because they do a lot of horror-based stuff and it’s well done.

And it’s certainly, it does all the things that you mentioned. Because the genre of horror is one, when you watch it on a screen, you’re separate from it, right? Yes, you might jump, but you’re separate from it in a way that when it’s happening in the same room that you’re in, you cannot be separate from it. And so the reaction to a frightening element is more visceral than when we just watch it on a screen.

And it’s a fascinating thing to experience when that happens. Yeah. Well, we are going back to what we said like a minute ago.

This idea of closeness, of immediacy of the moment, of the immediacy of the co-presence. Because show is not something that is there to be performed. Show is something that is a living entity that is addressing you as another living entity.

And those two entities need to find a way to talk to each other. And it is fine if they don’t understand each other. It is absolutely fine if they hate each other.

And it’s also fine if they love each other. Because that’s what makes them alive. There’s a fascinating thing, I think, that in a lot of cases we really want our theatre to be everything tied up in a nice little bow.

We don’t like rough edges. We want everything really kind of a little too molded. And there’s something about seeing something that is a little rough around the edges that actually I think feels more theatrical.

Yeah. Everything doesn’t have to be tied up in a little bow. It can be rough.

It can be a little bit messy. And the messy can kind of make it even more exhilarating. Yep.

Because that messy part is probably the one that we connect with this idea of truth. Because it’s not perfect. And we know it.

And we know that we, as humans, we are not perfect. And so that’s to what we relate. And art starts at the moment when life and nature cannot explain themselves to us.

So we need theatre to explain life to us. And if it’s going to be tied in a nice sparkly bow, then somehow we know it’s not real. Hmm.

Yeah. I wonder if sometimes that’s encouraged or it’s sought or we think it’s sought because that allows people to separate from it and know it’s not real. Whereas if it is rough, then even that roughness, those rough edges make it feel more immediate for the audience.

Again, this idea of immediacy and how something evolves in front of you as an audience member. And when you’re watching a show, you’re witnessing a kind of evolution of something that started at the point A and it’s going to end at the point B. And you know that. But what you’re looking for is this moment in that evolution when this evolution becomes part of you.

And now going back to this digital thing is that this digital actually now allows this imperfection to happen in a real time. And we accept it. We say, oh, sorry, connection was bad.

Yes. Can you hear me? Oh, no. Are you still there? No.

Can you hear me? And we accept that and we move on. But just that little moment of, oh, sorry, can you hear me? Makes the connection authentic. And I think that’s what we are looking for in theatre.

And that’s what I’m hoping that in this post-COVID or whatever, call it, world, that will spill into theatre. This idea that you can check yourself in within the performance. Am I still there? Are you still there? Oh, OK, good.

We are moving on. So, yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, no, that’s great.

Too many things. Too many things to think about. I mean, there’s always a lot to think about.

It’s really it’s awesome. I would like you to tell me a little bit about your work in the intersection of mindfulness and art practice. Uh-huh.

OK. Well, yeah, I was always interested in that. I was always interested in this idea from where creativity comes from.

Because I always felt that this concept of being talented and gifted somehow is not right, because I always believed that we carry in ourselves everything that we need. And it’s about simply awakening those segments in us. And how I started with that was really through my practice when I was working with different sets of creative people, when I witnessed different kind of blocks that I experienced throughout the process and everything.

I always tried to provide them with some kind of tools, how to overcome them and accept them as a necessary part of creation. And from there, I started thinking, OK, maybe maybe I can really articulate this into a certain form. And practicing meditation for a certain number of years, I felt the connection between the creative process and meditation.

And then I started articulating that slowly into something that I can teach, that I can coach people to go on with. And that’s how I created this little thing that I’m calling the seven cycles of you. And the reason why I’m calling that is because it’s really just kind of simply the seven circles of a certain exercise that you can do.

And in all of those circles, the center of the circle is you. At the same time as a source and as a creation. And it’s been fun doing that because I’ve been doing that with a mature artist.

But I also was doing, I was coaching children with the same thing. And it’s amazing. So.

That’s that’s how I’m there. Yeah. Now, if somebody was interested in your course, where would they find it? Well, they can they can reach out either through Birdland and our Facebook page or they can look for a Facebook page of Digital Dream Society and simply leave a message there and I’ll get back to them.

Nice. It’s simple as that. Awesome.

Well, Stephan, thank you so much for talking with me today. I’ve really appreciated your time and I really love this conversation. Thank you.

Thank you so much for hosting this.