Fanny Dvorkin
Fanny is a recent graduate of Dawson College’s Professional Theatre Program. A writer and actor, they are most interested in how the classics can intersect with contemporary performance. As a queer artist, they focuses on how their identities can inform art, both personally and politically. These themes can be seen in their NTS ArtApart short film, SMASHCUT: INT. CHANGING ROOM. Prior to beginning their theatre training, they were an editor and academic, pursuing a Masters in Medieval Studies at York, where they portrayed MAry Magdalene in the Cornish Resurrection Cycle with the Lords of Misrule. They love a good mystery play, as long as it’s a little gay.
Twitter: @fannystage
Instagram: @fannydeedee
SMASHCUT: Int. Changing Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzb0Ops7qmA
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Transcript
Welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host of this podcast. This is episode 321.
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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 321 episodes at StageworthyPodcast.com. And if you want to find me, you’ll find me on Twitter and Instagram at philrickaby. And as I mentioned, my website is philrickaby.com. My guest this week is Fanny Dvorkin. Fanny is a writer and actor and a recent graduate of Dawson College’s professional theatre program.
As an artist, they focus on the way that identities inform art. You can see this in their fantastic YouTube short smash cut interior changing room, which I will link to in the show notes. Here’s our conversation.
How long ago did you graduate from Dawson? I graduated in May of 2021. So not that long ago. So half of my degree was in the pandemic, which was fun.
And half of your, like all of your career so far has been in the pandemic. So far, yes. God.
So I’ve never had, I’ve had one in-person audition. It’s all been self-tapes other than that. It’s me in my living room.
My apartment has been, my partner has been very, very understanding about the fact that I’ve had to push all of our living room furniture into one corner, making it unusable to have an empty corner to film in. Do you, how do you, do you enjoy those self-tapes? Sometimes. Yeah.
Now that I can have like a reader in the room, like now that it’s safe to even invite a single person over, it’s fun. When it was somebody on Zoom all alone, it was, that was, I don’t know. You just kind of get really in your head.
And you know, there’s people can give you feedback and notes and stuff for line deliveries, but for, you know, your body, it’s so disconnected, I guess. So part of the, the, the difference is with, with self-tapes. I, I feel like there’s something about being in the room with something, especially for a theatre audition, is you can get a sense of somebody’s presence that they might have on stage in the room, which is more difficult to figure out over, over Zoom or something like that.
Yeah. And I, they tried to, because we did, we only had our camera class over Zoom because it was the semester where everything was shut down. So they were trying to teach us framing and stuff, seeing us only on Zoom.
So that’s very different. So I mean, I think they did as good of a job as they could do. And having all that Zoom experience has actually been sadly convenient.
But, you know, just the setup and the light and, you know, all those things. We did get, everybody got a graduation present from the College of a ring light, actually, which was really kind. That’s actually really good.
That’s actually quite kind. Ring lights are like a good ring light is hard to come by. They’re less pricey.
So that’s pretty good. Yeah. We were all very excited.
But I mean, the thing about like doing an audition on Zoom and this is the thing is, and I’m so digital meetings and things like that is the fact that often my face is there and I can see my face is so distracting to me. Yes. I feel like a narcissist because I keep looking at my tiny little square in the corner instead of the big, like you can have the full screen of the other person.
I’ll just be staring at my tiny little self-portrait. If I’m in a meeting, I’ll be looking at the meeting and then all of a sudden my eye drifts over to me and I’m like, is that what I’m doing with my face? Yeah. And it’s so disorienting because there’s like a tiny delay.
Yes. So I would like to ask you about your theatre origin story. What is it that drew you to theatre? What made you want to go into theatre? I love these stories.
I love people’s like people’s origin stories. So I’m curious. Tell me yours.
Well, I fought it for a very long time. Um, my mom, uh, is a theatre person. Um, she was never an actress, but she was a director and a producer for theatre and TV and movies.
And I grew up on set and all that. Um, and I was like, no, I’m going to do my own thing. Uh, but I always loved it because she was the drama teacher at my school.
Also, I wasn’t allowed to take theatre because she was the only drama teacher. So they thought it would be biased and marking, but I was allowed to be in the school place, um, because those weren’t for marks. Um, and I just loved it.
And I was like, no, I’m going to do my own thing. Um, so I went to a university for English literature and then I went to get a master’s in medieval literature, medieval studies, um, in England. And then that I realized I didn’t actually want to, I thought I was going to be an academic.
I was going to go all the way, get a PhD. Um, and then I just realized doing that, that, um, I love academia still. I know a lot of people leave grad school because of problems with academia and there are a lot of them, but I had a very positive experience.
I just realized that it wasn’t for me. My favourite part of going to grad school was doing theatre. Um, we put on a hundred percent traditional, historically accurate medieval plays down to like costuming techniques and sub building tools and everything.
A hundred percent accurate. Well, to the best of our knowledge, you can’t be a hundred percent accurate ever. Um, and that was my favourite part.
So I was like, man, maybe this is a sign. Finally, was there a moment, was there a moment that made you, that made you think, Oh, I’m not, I, I’m not meant to do academia. This theatre thing is what I really want to do.
I mean, I guess it was just all the moments that I was putting off actually working on my thesis at all to run lines, I guess. That is a good sign. That is a good sign.
Yeah. You know, everybody else was, Oh yeah, I’m here to do my PhD and this is a fun hobby. And I was like, Oh no, I’m living for rehearsal and dreading class.
So that is, that is always a good sign that maybe the thing you’re, you’re studying isn’t for you. I mean, I still love it. I’m currently taking a class just for fun, um, online.
And I still read a lot of medieval literature and medieval history. Um, so practice my Latin grammar. Wow.
It’s probably the nerdiest thing that anyone’s ever said. That is the first time anybody has said this on this podcast. That’s for sure.
Um, yeah, I find, I love it more now that I’m not like now that it’s my hobby, like I’ve switched it around, you know, because now it’s actually just for me instead of the pressures, you know, trying to get a PhD. I have, I have an aunt who, uh, she’s, she’s still, I mean, she’s old school. She still laments that the church that she goes to doesn’t do the service in Latin.
And she, uh, would, she owned a few copies of children’s books in Latin and, uh, I mean, she’s old, so. No, yeah. Um, yeah.
I don’t want to get into, you know, religious politics. Uh, I’m not Catholic. I am Jewish, but I also still lament the fact that I can never experience a Latin mass because that is very, you know, I think you have to just go for the full on romantic Gothic aesthetic.
I mean, they have the robes and the gold and the candles and the incense and the Latin, you know. Yeah. I, I think they should offer it as an option.
I think there might, there might be a very brief period of people who are like very curiously going. Yeah. For tourists.
I think it would be a good draw because if churches love one thing, it’s tourists. Um, I don’t, I don’t actually think there’s a whole lot of controversy about the whole Latin thing. I think it might just be my aunt being the only one.
Oh, no, it’s, it’s a big, it’s a big controversy. I know this is supposed to be a theatre podcast, but it is, if you want to look it up, it is, um, the decision. Oh my God.
I’m sorry. No, no, no. Please hit me.
Hit me. If you want to look up the decision, um, regarding whether or not to continue Latin only mass, it’s called the Vatican two or the second Vatican council. Um, and that’s where they made that decision.
And it was to try and like stay hip with the kids. I mean, considering that people don’t really speak Latin, it kind of makes a lot of sense. I mean, my, my thing is, and the reason why I kind of dig this stuff is, uh, I was, uh, I was a preacher’s kid.
My father became an Anglican priest late in life, that sort of stuff. So like I, all the theology, all of that sort of stuff, I, I sorta like, it’s all buried somewhere in my brain. All that stuff, you know, it’s all in there.
Yeah. Now as a, as somebody who is Jewish, what’s what, and I know that you, you are really into 12th century Saint cults. Where does the fascination come from? The last, so that’s just, I just put that because that’s the class I’m currently taking.
Um, this is the end of the medieval portion of the show. I promise everybody. Um, yeah, I just, my area of specialty and what, when I was still pursuing this was, um, the 12th century, I was really into romance, like Arthurian romance.
I think that’s very theatrical, actually very dramatic. So, um, and basically just the class I’m taking. Hi, Dr. McIntyre.
Yes. My friend, Ross McIntyre, uh, his specialty is Saints cults, which is like when people get, would, you know, worship or pray to, or ask for help of various Saints. And they’re all very interesting and very cool and very, very weird.
Like some of the miracles there’s, um, a Saint where, where she was martyred in the town several years later, um, a woman, uh, got headbutted to death on the steps of the church. And this was considered a miracle. So just weird stuff like that.
Um, it’s very interesting to me. I think you could write a play about that. Um, and probably someone has, um, yeah.
So, and scene on turning this into a lecture. No, no, I love it. Um, speaking of writing, um, I know that, that you, you do a little bit of writing.
Um, when, have you always been writing or is that something that you discovered? Okay. A hundred percent, you know, little stories I would write, uh, I would give my parents, um, for their, anytime I had to give anyone a present, I would like write them a little book and illustrate it and staple it together. And, um, I obviously did all the academic writing, but I, um, in my undergrad, I double majored in English literature and creative writing, and I’ve published poetry previously, short stories.
Um, and, um, I am now currently in the process of writing my first play because I figured I had never before going to theatre school considered writing drama. Um, in my creative writing course, you had to pick you to do two of the three, um, fiction, poetry, and theatre. And I was like, only dialogue sounds really hard.
So I’m just not going to do that. Um, and it is actually really hard. Um, but I, you know, I figured I should try by now.
Um, so I’m running a play with a friend of mine, um, and it is nowhere near done, but, um, hopefully soon I’m trying to get it done on time to submit for next year’s Fringe, which is, I think, a reasonable, um, timeframe. Sure. I mean, give yourself some slack.
My solo play I wrote for eight years before I finally decided that if I was ever going to finish it, I had to have a deadline and that deadline needed to be a performance. So. Oh yeah, that’s good.
Um, what, I mean, as far as the writing process goes, are you, you’re, you’re working with somebody. What’s, what’s, what’s that process like for you? Um, what it looks like for me is that, um, I definitely think of him as like, um, my co writer, but I guess in terms of jobs, I just spew out everything and then he edits it. He’s a very good editor.
That’s how that works is that we meet up and I just say, I just talk and talk and talk and talk. And then he’s like that last thing only. That’s how we work.
Okay. Okay. That’s, I mean, everybody, especially if you’re right with a partner, you have to find a way to do it.
Like, um, I tried to write something with a friend a number of years ago and we would just like, we, we assigned scenes and each of us would write a scene and then we would like read the scenes and like give each other notes and things like that and maybe switch off and say, I’m going to just let me do a brush up on that. But it’s very, it was very foreign to me because everything that I’ve written previously has always been just, just me writing. Yeah.
I, me too before this. Um, but I was just, I felt like for dialogue, being able to just talk it out really helps me. Um, instead of, you know, if you’re writing, you can like any other genre, you can just, you know, write the descriptions and the, you know, internal monologues.
Um, whereas now has to only be external monologues. Um, but yeah. Uh, so it is different.
I just also, it was because, you know, the pandemic and he’s my best friend. And so for a while we weren’t able to see each other at all. And it was like a way for us to hang out essentially.
It’s a great way to hang out. It’s a great way to hang out. Um, can I, I don’t want to ask too much about it because it’s, it’s, it’s still, you know, you’re writing it.
Is there a particular theme or topic that you’re tackling with it? Yeah. So when we first became friends, he was obsessed with crime and punishment. Um, and he made me, um, as a condition of becoming his friend.
No, that’s not actually true, but it was, it kind of felt like that a little bit, just a tiny little bit read crime and punishment also. So I did read crime and punishment for him. Um, which is a big commitment, I guess I’ve never done that for anybody.
Um, and we wanted to, he had this idea of adapting it to a YouTube series. Um, this was like back in the time when like they were doing all those classics turned into logs. I don’t know if you remember that trend.
He wanted to do that for crime and punishment. And we tried for a while to think of a way to do it. Um, yeah, but you know, there’s a murder.
It’s quite a big deal in it. Um, so we just couldn’t figure it out. And then we both got jobs and I went back to school and blah, blah, blah.
Um, it never happened. So then this sort of started as that. So it’s very inspired by crime and punishment is not an adaptation.
It’s not just crime and punishment. The play, um, was very inspired by that. So it’s sort of about, um, just the actual plot is that there’s two friends and they have had sort of like an on again, off again relationship.
Um, and they both have a lot of deep seated trauma that they’ve helped each other with, but are also kind of, you know, kind of poking at in each other. Um, and they just sort of over the course of the play kind of, it becomes less and less funny, teasing and more and more really mean until there’s like an escalation moment, I guess, which sounds like, uh, you know, I that’s the plot. I guess I should really, I really need, thank you for this pointing out to me that I’m going to have to get better at that.
The thing is that it was almost, it’s a little bit unfair of me to say, can you tell me about this play when you’re writing it? Okay. So it’s about two friends and how they sort of deal with their, uh, trauma through violence, both like against each other emotionally and then against, uh, something else physically. Um, I told him that I envisioned the tagline on the poster to be murder is cheaper than therapy.
So I guess that’s, that is good. That is good. Yeah.
Don’t steal it, please. No, I’m not. No, I said that also.
Also, I mean, I like exactly, everybody would have heard that I stole your thing, but you know, those, those things aren’t copyrightable, but it’s good. It’s good. So I just want you to know that it’s good.
Thank you. Um, but I mean, like I said, I, the problem with like talking about a thing when you are writing it, which kind of made it an unfair question is that you’re still learning what it is. Yeah.
We have 23 pages, 23 great pages. It’s a great start. Thank you.
But speaking of fringe, you’re doing a friend show this summer. I am. And yes.
So it’s called what about Albert? Um, and yes. So I have, if you just give me a second, I, uh, got like the official, what I’m supposed to say about it. Um, cause I asked, you know, how would you like me to talk about it? Um, so yeah, it’s written by Alexander Barth and it’s being, um, put on by, uh, the malicious basement productions, um, which is an independent company in Montreal.
Um, and it’s about, again, two people, uh, who are two, um, like line chefs at a diner. Uh, and one is a full timer and one is a part timer. And, um, basically it’s sort of about, it’s very much inspired by waiting for Godot and other absurdist, um, playwrights and that genre of sort of living in a liminal space.
It’s about, um, it was inspired by the writer’s experience working, um, in these kinds of hourly sort of underpaid overworked type jobs. And it was about sort of the space when you’re almost clocking out sort of those last few minutes where you’re just staring at the clock. And it feels like those three minutes are an eternity and just the feeling of the fact that you can’t wait for time to pass, but also feeling like distressed and oppressed by the fact that you are hoping for your life to move by faster because you, you know, it’s horrible working those jobs some, some of the time.
Um, I also, my first job was, uh, being a dishwasher at a diner. I did my time as a, as a dish pig. So yeah, it was at a breakfast place that worked 6am to 3pm, both rushes.
Yeah. Um, yeah. So it’s, it’s really funny.
Um, there’s also a, uh, a cow. So there’s, yeah. Um, is this, is this happening at the Toronto fringe or the Montreal? No, it’s here.
It’s going to be in Montreal. Awesome. Here in Montreal.
Um, so the fringe is the, the first to the 19th of June. I don’t have at all what dates or what venue this play is going to be at yet. Um, yes, but that’s, you know, I’m very excited.
It was my first impersonal audition. That’s my first professional show. Nice.
I’m very excited. I feel very lucky. You know, this is like, you know, it’s soon out of theatre school.
That’s pretty great. That’s really great. And Montreal fringe is every touring artist’s favourite fringe festival.
Is it? That’s good. Everybody, everybody who’s on the tour loves to kick off their tour in Montreal. Really? I didn’t know that.
Um, it’s fun. I go every year. And that’s, that’s why sponsored by Santa was it’s because it’s a, it’s, it’s a, a real party fringe.
It’s a, it, and people love to a lot of it’s a, it’s a big kickoff to your fringe tour. Yeah. You know, there’s, yeah, you can have shows.
They start at 3.00 AM. I think they, they didn’t do that last year. They didn’t do the 3.00 AM slot, but 3.00 AM slot.
Yes. There, there can be sometimes some years. Oh my God.
But I don’t think that’s a thing during COVID. I, I had a, I made the year that I think it was 2012. I was there and it was like 3.00 AM.
No, thank you. It was late enough. If I went to the, the, the fringe, what was the cabaret anyway? I could be mistaken, but late, I think maybe only 2.00 AM, but there’s the, there’s the, the fringe after hours cabaret thing that ends in the dance party.
And that’s massively fun. Yeah. Sadly, the dance party did not happen last year, but we’ll see this year.
I don’t know yet. Here’s hoping here’s hoping. Yeah.
Did you grow up in Montreal? I lived in Montreal for quite a long time. But earlier on, I lived in New York, but I was born in Hungary, but I only lived there for six weeks. Like, yeah, I was born in Hungary.
So quasi by accident, my mom was working as a location scout and the production ran long and then she was too pregnant to fly back. So they just had to wait for me there. Wow.
I mean, that’ll happen as a, as somebody who was, who spent time growing up in Montreal did, did, did, did that, did Montreal the, like being in Montreal factor into your choice of theatre school? Yeah. I mean, I went to Dawson my first time around to see Jeff as well. And I had a really good time and yeah, I mean, I’m pretty settled.
I’m married, so I couldn’t, I didn’t want to be like, Oh, let’s honey, we’re moving so I can go to UCLA. Um, and you know, so, and I, I had a lot, I knew a lot of people who, um, had gone through the program and yeah, basically that’s why. It’s, I mean, it’s, it’s a good, um, I mean, you, you had already gone like for your master’s.
So yeah, that was interesting. Yeah. What was it like? Cause you were probably, you were obviously not going to theatre school right out of high school.
Like so many people, were you one of the older people in your class? I was, I believe I am now the record holder of oldest graduate of that program. Yes. When I was in theatre school, there was one person in my class who was in their thirties and we thought they were ancient because we were all like 18, 19.
Yeah. Um, it was interesting. Um, I was very nervous about, I was like, Oh my God, are the teens going to make fun of me? But actually everyone was great.
People thought I was cool, which was interesting because teens never thought I was cool when I was a teen. Um, yeah, um, they were really, are really cool, great people. Uh, they were very inspiring.
Um, they are much more politically active and aware, uh, than I was at their age. Like I have become quite politically active and socially active and stuff, but that was definitely like a early to mid twenties phenomenon. But they were like 17, you know, talking about ending the prison industrial complex.
And I was like, that’s amazing. There’s hope for the future. I have, I mean, I went through this whole period of, of, and I think a lot of people do when they leave theatre school of coming to terms with their theatre school experience.
Um, I think everybody has their own, even if your theatre experience, your theatre school experience was largely good, you come out with a certain amount of theatre school trauma. And, um, I often years, a few years after I graduated, once I was in my thirties, I looked back and thought, no, no, no. I should have gone at this age because there is shit I would not have put up with now that I did put up with when I was like 19.
Yes. So, um, yes, I’ve, I had that experience. There were certain things that I saw that, um, the younger students were just not even accepting, but not even knowing wasn’t allowed.
Like I had to explain to them that like, you know, you can, um, you know, get accommodations just in general. Like, um, that if your doctor says you can’t do something that’s, you know, you can’t argue with that or just like, just, you know, but just basic things that you learn through time of like how to navigate like giant institutions of just, you know, where’s the students with disability centre? What can they do for you? How to fill out a form, even just like that baseline, um, which I had like forgotten that is a thing you have to learn and it’s very difficult to navigate. So I was very, you know, glad that I could help people learn to navigate these things.
But also, um, also like at the beginning, I thought that I would, like you said, you know, not put up with anything, but at a certain point there were certain things that I did end up putting up with, even though I knew that I shouldn’t just because you’re so exhausted at a certain point. And sometimes these things are so endless or repetitive that some one day you’re just like, well, today I’m going to let it slide. And then obviously it’s, everyone knows, then the next time it’s harder to not let it slide and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So I feel like there’s, there’s a lot of times in theatre school. Um, they’re one of the most, one of the lessons that people take away from theatre school, even though they don’t realize it is that they’re being taught not to rock the boat. I know that when I left theatre school, if I look back, that is one lesson that I absolutely knew not to knew was don’t rock the boat.
And that is such a dangerous attitude to go into the theatre world with, or even the film world, whatever it is that, that, that, that the, the worst thing you can do is rock the boat. So it’s better to keep quiet, shut your mouth and stare at the floor than to speak up when you see something sketchy. Yeah.
Because I, yes, I definitely experienced this quite a few times where just in my first week, in my first week, it was very much made clear to me that a, um, you know, bad things, inappropriate things or any, you know, bad things were happening. And that if you said something, it was frowned upon would be putting it, you know, gently. Like I, my first, what’s my first day? Not what my first week.
Um, I saw, um, I witnessed one teacher say something, um, racist to, um, a student of color. And I, you know, it’s like, you, you know, I said, don’t say that. And then it was very much made clear that, um, you know, I was considered the instigator in this entire situation.
And it’s like, okay, I guess that’s how it’s going to be time to buckle in. Um, yeah, it’s kind of disappointing. Yeah.
Um, I do think that there’s a lot of schools. I mean, there are schools that are learning the lesson, um, very slow to learn the lesson, but there are schools that are learning the lesson about, you know, how, I mean, essentially you were having adults who are often not trained as teachers teach teenagers. Yeah.
And that is, you know, you have to, they’re there, you have to be careful. You have to be careful of inappropriate things. Cause there are people who went like the attitude is, oh, I had a miserable experience.
So now it’s my turn to inflict that on people. And that’s just the bare minimum. There’s, there’s shit that happens and there are teachers who get away with it and they’re protected.
And that sort of, unfortunately the whole not rocking the boat thing teaches you that that’s the same way it is in the industry. And the only way that’s going to change is if the schools can help the students learn not to just turn their faces away and to say something and the teachers have to take it other than rather than, um, turn it around on the, on and make the student the problem. Yeah.
Um, yeah, I agree. Yeah. 100%.
All right. Uh, so I know that you really enjoy Shakespeare. I do.
So tell me, did you have a moment when Shakespeare clicked for you? Yeah. My mom would read it to me as bedtime stories. No.
Yes. That’s amazing. Yeah.
So literally my whole life I, yeah, with the, you’re not telling me the plot, like just the original text. So I didn’t really have to learn to see it as a different type of English, which is a very big advantage. Um, but I, yeah, my whole life, I remember in grade nine, we went on a field trip to Stratford, which is really cool.
Um, and we went to see a bunch of plays and we got one afternoon off to go, you know, explore the town or whatever. And, um, I don’t know if you’ve ever been Stratford. There’s a really great, uh, candy store that makes a gigantic, um, candied apples.
This is their specialty. Um, everybody went there. I didn’t go there.
I went to buy a complete works of William Shakespeare. Uh, it was a really great deal. It was $12 and I still have it.
Uh, it’s terrible. It’s essentially, it looks like someone photocopied it. Um, but it was my first complete work.
So I still have it. Um, and I also still have the first copy of just Hamlet by itself that I ever had. And it’s literally falling apart.
I can’t open it anymore, but it’s the first copy I ever read. It has all my original high school notes in it. And it’s the copy I studied for my, uh, audition for theatre school from, so it’s very special to me.
Um, I know it’s cliched, but I stand by it. It’s my favourite play of all time. I find it like twice a year for me.
I remember my first, the first time that I saw Shakespeare was it was, uh, on the CBC. It was, uh, a Stratford production of, as you like it, because they would go each year and they would film a production and they would broadcast it on the CBC. And I remember watching it and I thought, I understand everything that’s going on here.
I understand all of it. Then I got to high school and I thought, well, if you see it, then you can understand it. But of course that’s not how we studied it in high school.
We studied it by having the teacher start at one end of the room and starting everybody reading people untrained who haven’t, haven’t really delved into the text and don’t know what it means. Just read it. So everybody would read it in monotone until we got through the play.
It was miserable. Yeah, that’s not great. And I could understand why people leave that thinking that they don’t like Shakespeare.
No, that’s definitely, first of all, two things. I have grown as a person. I’ve experienced real life character growth and I no longer think that it’s morally wrong to not like Shakespeare.
I’m proud of you. That’s good. That is actually a big deal because I was a little jerky snob as a teenager looking back on some of my, you know, I’m not like other opinions are, is very mortifying.
But yes, Shakespeare can be taught horribly. It doesn’t need to be taught like that. But you can also completely understand every single word perfectly and either just not like it because it’s not your style or you can have problems with it politically, which I don’t think should be discounted both from the content of the place themselves.
Like I said earlier, I am Jewish, so I have a very complicated relationship with, of course, Merchant of Venice, which is like, for no reason in many descriptions, he’ll just randomly add that Jews are bad for no reason. Completely irrelevant. And, you know, so for that reason, or just for how it’s been taught, you know, as like a tool of the British empire or to the exclusion of other authors, you know, women or, you know, people of color, black authors, like, why do we teach Shakespeare so much and not, you know, Langston Hughes or literally a woman? So 100%, if you tell me, no, thank you.
I probably deep down at this point, agree with you. I just can’t read any of his plays without weeping. So that, you know, it’s in my heart.
I feel like once any work is in your heart, you can’t really get it out. I often feel like when people tell me that they don’t like Shakespeare, I’m often curious why. And I’ll, you know, I’ll find out that they were bored by it in high school and that they’ve never looked at it since.
And I can understand, I kind of understand like you had a terrible experience. But on the other hand, you know, I’ve seen television shows that I don’t like, but I still watch television shows. Yeah.
I think that also, you know, you read like what, like three plays, three Shakespeare, you read, you know, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, maybe Midsummer Night’s Dream. And like, you can not realize how wide the range of plays are, you know? So there’s that. If you think they’re all the same because you only read, you know, two or three, that could be a reason or just, yeah, I mean, it’s often taught pretty badly.
I was lucky that at least my English teacher made us like get up and sort of act it out. Again, you know, nobody was trained, but at least we were up and moving around. Yes.
Yeah. It helped a lot. Yeah.
I’ll never remember in the, we were doing the Tempest. I’ll never forget. We were doing the Tempest and there was like a scene where they’re in the boat and she made one of the girls who was playing a character on the boat stand in the recycling bin to symbolize the boat.
And then she got stuck. Oh, no. But like, I remember that scene, so.
You will never forget that scene. No. Yeah.
So, you know, it’s just get kids involved. I’m curious about Identity for you. Yeah.
I know you’ve got, you were involved with a short film. Yes. That sort of focuses on that.
But for you, what is important about Identity in art? Yeah. So, okay. That’s a big question.
Sure. I guess for me, you know, it’s important to speak from experience. Obviously, you should also, you know, you can make art or write things, perform things that don’t have to do with anything that you’ve experienced personally.
You know, otherwise, most art wouldn’t exist. But I do think that you should bring part of yourself to everything. I don’t think that’s sort of groundbreaking commentary.
But yeah, that short film was about just sort of my relationship with, you know, gender and sexuality, which was very much at the forefront of my mind during the first sort of lockdown quarantine period, because I was stuck at home all the time with nothing to do. But think about, why am I in pajamas, literally all the time? And then also, why am I not in pajamas, literally all the time outside? Like, well, I mean, I know that that’s also not very, I just went like, how we present ourselves differs privately versus publicly. And I just wanted to make a little film about that shot on my phone, edited, directed and edited and shot by my wife.
She’s credited. I credited her, because she did that all on her spare time. So we had to, well, this was before my free ring light.
So we had to film when there was natural light. But our apartment is has only North facing windows, because of course it does. And she works nine to five.
So we shot from 505 to six. Every day. That is a very brief window of time.
Yeah, so it took like three weeks of shooting, like 45 minutes a day. Except on the weekends, the weekends, we could shoot more. But yeah, basically, Monday to Friday, we shot from 505 to 6pm.
That was fun. It was a good bonding experience. I mean, that that’s one of those.
I mean, one of the things that I think some people found during the whole lockdown situation was, since they were spending a lot of time with their spouse or significant other, that they didn’t like that person so much. It sounds like you guys have came together through this project. And that’s great.
Yeah, we’re annoying and gushy and mushy. No, but none of our friends. They’re tired of us.
Yeah, no, the other than the stress of, you know, thinking that every time I went to buy dish soap, I might contract a plague and die. That first summer of COVID was honestly great, weirdly, because I was on summer vacation because I was back in CJEP. And there was no pressure to find a summer job because there were no summer jobs available.
And so I just and she was working from home. And so I just got to hang out with like, during the day, I would go on really long walks in the park. And then I would hang out with her.
And it was fun. That’s great. That’s great.
Yeah, but there was also the existential terror. So that wasn’t as great. I mean, those are I think we all had some form of existential crisis at some point.
From your description, you talked a lot about pajamas. Now, were you pro pajama? Oh, no, for sure. I think, yeah, I would, you know, wake up in the morning and change out of my night pajamas into my day pajamas.
I mean, of course, why wouldn’t you? I feel like that was everybody, though. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like that’s still everybody, at least on like the lower half.
Everybody who’s still working from home, they have their work pajamas. Yeah. Yeah.
They, I saw ads for those. This was a thing that they were selling. I saw ads like on Instagram and Facebook early on in 2020 of like pajamas that actually look like work clothes.
So that you could just, yeah. You gotta love capitalism. Definitely.
I do, for sure. I got me on the record. I am pro capitalism.
I’m on the fence. Yeah, that soundbite is going to be taken out of context. Somebody’s going to isolate just that sound and they’re just going to play it back to you.
It’ll be a TikTok sound before you know it. I don’t have TikTok. Yeah, that’s just wise.
Should I get TikTok? No, it’s a wise choice to ignore TikTok. I think that when TikTok happened and I had absolutely no desire to even try it out, I was like, OK, I’m old. Because like I have Twitter and Instagram, but I don’t really use them.
But I have them and I know how they work. I could use them if I wanted to. TikTok, I’m not going to even try.
I’m old now. That’s fine. I will say this about TikTok.
You are more likely to fall into a TikTok hole and scroll for hours than to actually do something creative. Yeah, I mean, that’s how that’s how they all are. The algorithm, they’re designed to be addictive.
Now you say that you have Instagram, you have Twitter, but you don’t use them. Is there some reason why you don’t use them? Or is it just like you don’t want to put that kind of effort into it, which is valid? Yeah, I mean, I tweet occasionally when something pithy pops into my mind. When something vaguely witty pops into my mind and also I want attention.
Instagram, I don’t know. If I’m in a show and someone takes pictures of it or I’ll post pictures, I don’t ever bother posting to my story. It’s just so much work.
Now I really sound like a grandma. No, you don’t. OK.
You don’t sound like a grandma. I think you can put work into it. I don’t put a lot into those.
Sometimes I will go on a tear on Twitter. And with the election coming up in Ontario this summer, I’m sure that I will be tweeting a lot more. Yeah, I want to.
There’s a lot of stuff I want to say. I’m just like, I don’t. I’m scared.
I just, listen, it is natural to be scared at first. And you just got to do it. If you’re going to do it, you just do it.
And if you have to type out your tweet in the notes app and then edit it three times before you post it, that’s valid. My friend recently, he tweets more than literally any single person I know. I don’t know how.
I don’t know how he does it so much. He recently got retweeted by Trevor Noah. And then the subsequent 48 hours of his life were hell on earth.
So I don’t really want to test that out. But I shouldn’t be saying this. No, I am absolutely pro self-promotion.
I will plug anything you want. I am 100% going to self-promote my career adequately and in a corporate sponsorship friendly way. Because I love capitalism, like I previously stated.
I’m reiterating it because it’s true. It is hard to know how to, like, that’s one of the great things. It’s like knowing, like, it’s hard to know how to do that, right? It’s hard to know what to do, how to do it.
What should I say? What shouldn’t I say? Once I got into my late 40s, I decided that I didn’t really care what people thought. I mean, I don’t care what people think of me. I care if people, you know, harass me, I guess.
Or I’ve seen it happen pretty badly to some people. I could definitely understand the reluctance. I also on Instagram gave myself the freedom to post, just to take pictures and post them.
So when I’m out and about, I take pictures and I post them. It’s not going to be me. It’s not my lunch.
It’s not this. And every so often, if I have something to promote, I’ll post it there. But mostly, it’s just photographs I take around, just to… Oh, like of scenery and stuff? Yeah, yeah, just when I’m out walking.
Oh, yeah, that’s good. Well, that’s cool. But yeah, I, you know, photography is cool.
I’m very bad at it. I know that, you know, rule of thirds, and then I, it’s blurry. I don’t even keep that in mind.
I just take pictures and then I post them. Um, one question. You, I know you love a good mystery play.
And by mystery play, we’re talking about like the medieval. Yes. Yes.
Yes, that is what I mean. And in your bio, you say you love a good mystery play, as long as it’s a little gay. So my question to you is, what is the most gay mystery play that you’ve encountered? Oh, God, I don’t know.
You can make them all gay. I think the one that I was in in grad school is the Cornish Resurrection Cycle, which is about when Jesus comes back from the dead. And I played Mary Magdalene.
And Jesus and Peter and Jesus and Thomas both have scenes together, which are very, so wonderfully gay. I will now quote Jesus Christ. Touch me, Thomas, all the way, through the side, all the way.
It’s a line from a play about God. Yeah, I guess it’s just stuff like that. I don’t know.
You just gotta spice it up a bit. Awesome. Well, Fanny, thank you so much for talking with me.
This has been a great conversation. I’ve had a lot of fun. Thank you.
Me too.
