Dauntless City Theatre’s This Earth of Majesty

On this episode of Stageworthy, joining host Phil Rickaby, are Kate Werneburg, Suchiththa Wickremesooriya, Eric Benson and Chi-Chi Onuah from Dauntless City Theatre.

Dauntless City Theatre is dedicated to bringing site-specific performances to non-traditional spaces. This summer, Dauntless presents This Earth of Majesty an adaptation of Richard II by William Shakespeare, directed by Kate Werneburg.

www.dauntlesscitytheatre.com
Instagram: @dauntlessto

Kate Werneburg is originally from Ottawa, ON, which is on the unceded and traditional territory of the Algonquin Nation. Niagara-based, she is a queer settler. She brings social justice work along with artistic and administrative experience to her work with Dauntless. Highlights in theatre: Carousel Players, Dauntless City Theatre, Theatre New Brunswick, The Nearly-World Famous Dufflebag Theatre (bilingual troupe), Ergo Arts Theatre, A Company of Fools, The Great Canadian Theatre Company, Elizabeth – Darcy. Journalism: She Does The City, Intermission Magazine. Poetry: The Quilliad.

Twitter: @KateWburg
Instagram: @katewburg

Suchiththa Wickremesooriya is a multi-disciplinary Sri Lankan actor and educator who has recently been drawn to multi-sensory theatre as well as physical theatre. As an educator, he holds a M.A in Musical Theatre Performance and is the Associate Producer, Education for Shakespeare in Action. He was most recently seen in Bend it Like Beckham in its North American premiere in Toronto and in a Summerworks presentation of Deaf-integrated Theatre techniques. Other Select Credits include Ariel in The Tempest (Citadel Theatre), Fakir in The Secret Garden (Theatre Calgary) and Ifty in Pocket Rocket (Lost and Found Theatre). Since Covid19 hit, he’s been involved in several Workshops both on and off Zoom including Sweeter, Sister Warriors, Leopards and Peacocks, Off the Beaten Path, and many other new works in progress.

Twitter: @SuchiththaW
Instagram: @SuchiththaW

Eric Benson is a Toronto-based actor. He was a core member of Halifax’s DaPoPo Theatre from 2005 – 2013, and was part of the Stratford Festival’s director mentorship programme in 2011 and 2012.

Chi-Chi Onuah is a Canadian-Nigerian actor, mover, and singer. She studied Devised Theatre (B.A.) at York University in Toronto.
Some of Chi-Chi’s notable credits include: Bianca (Othello) and the Ensemble (Coriolanus) for the 2x OnComm and special OneOff award-winning web series, The Show Must Go Online (Rob Myles).

Most recently, Chi-Chi Onuah was featured in CBC Arts about Netflix & Shondaland’s “The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Experience” in Montréal.

chichionuah.com
Twitter: @chichionuah
Instagram: @chichi.onuah

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Transcript

Welcome to Stageworthy, I’m Phil Rickaby, the host of this podcast. This is episode 337. My guests this week are Kate Werneburg, Suchiththa Wickremesooriya, Eric Benson, and Chi-Chi Onuah from Dauntless City Theatre’s This Earth of Majesty, which is on now until August 28th at St. James Park in Toronto.

So here’s our conversation. Would one of you like to talk to me about This Earth of Majesty and tell me what that is? I will jump in on that. I am the co-artistic director of Dauntless City Theatre and I’m the director of this production.

So this is an adaptation of Richard II that we’re doing in St. James Park this summer. And we adapted this text with the help of AJ Richardson, who is the dramaturg. So this is an ambulatory outdoor performance.

So you follow the action from space to space within the park. And it’s as if we have shrunk down to the size of a blade of grass and we’re watching the insects and the sinister fairies go about their business. So that’s the conceit that we’re working with here.

Now, I mean, Dauntless City Theatre, I used to have a different name. I don’t recall the name. But has always done like site-specific outdoor in the city, in places that you wouldn’t expect to find Shakespeare or any other theatre.

What is one of the unique challenges to doing Shakespeare in a space like this? I think there are many and I’d love to hear from the actor’s perspective what they perceive it to be. I mean, I guess I can jump in. I think one of the challenges is that unlike a more traditional show, and I mean even a traditional outdoor show, not everyone in your audience is someone that plans to be there that day.

Therefore, not everyone in your audience was primed for Shakespeare when they showed up. And therefore, not everyone in the audience knows what the heck they’re seeing until, I don’t know, I’m guessing about two or three scenes in. So I think that’s one challenge.

Do you ever find that some people come more than halfway through? Yeah, absolutely. People join the show unexpectedly and stay to the end. Some people wander off in the middle.

It’s very dynamic and we place great importance on that in the style that we perform our Shakespeare in. Because we know, I say this over and over in rehearsals, the audience can choose to go have an ice cream at any time and don’t let it be your scene that they decide to wander off and get an ice cream in. So it’s really on us to hold their attention and to do something that matters in front of them.

So I guess one of the questions that I would have is how, I mean, the sort of flippant answer is act good. But how do you hold an audience’s attention when there are streetcars going by, there’s kids playing in the park, there’s people walking by, there’s partygoers going wherever they’re going? How do you hold the attention of an audience that has so many potential distractions? Well, I think that somebody likened it to children’s theatre or all ages theatre. That your energy levels have to be consistently high.

You know, there’s so many distractions, there’s so many good ice cream places, that the audience has to be entirely engaged. They just have to be entirely engaged. It’s very much like doing theatre for kids or for all ages audiences.

Because if you kind of decide to phone it in for a scene, those audiences immediately clock out. And I think it’s very similar with this. You have to be loud enough to be heard over the streetcars.

You have to be interesting enough that the band that’s decided to play on the other side of the park doesn’t take their attention. Yeah, I think it’s just a question of energy levels. It’s a question of absolute engagement.

Which is, you know, ideal for performers anyway, I think. But even more important for theatre like this. Now one of the things that Dauntless is pretty known for is, in terms of the Shakespeare that’s being created, is to make it a little queer.

Or sometimes a lot queer. And also to be anti-oppressive. So I’m curious, just to start with for each of you, what do those things mean to you? And Shakespeare being a colonial thing, how do you present Shakespeare in an anti-colonial way? That’s a fantastic question.

And it’s one that we wrestle with all the time. It’s really important to me that we do these pieces in a way that reflects the city that we actually live in. We cannot put a play up in the park that doesn’t reflect the reality of the space that it lives in.

So we are always striving to represent not just the people who might be the core demographic in a place like Stratford, but the people who come to the park, as my colleagues were saying, as the people who don’t expect to be there and to be in the middle of the performance. So that’s something that I have my eye on as artistic director, as co-artistic director. I’ll also add, just doing Shakespeare period today, I always ask myself the question, why though? And then I ask that question as someone who actually quite likes Shakespeare.

And I think for the most part, if, as Kate said, it isn’t relevant to either the city we live in or the world at large that we live in, then there isn’t a point. And so with this play, particularly like Kate, when we were chatting about it before we even started, and she was talking to me about the role, we were talking about what does transfer of power look like in context of modern society? And what does, who are the rulers we want to win? And how do we get fooled by those who we want to be fooled by? And all those questions that I think this play asks and doesn’t necessarily give you straightforward answers, but definitely makes you think deeper about them. So I think that’s one good reason to do a play like this.

That doesn’t answer your question about, you know, queer representation at all. But I think that will be perhaps better answered by Chi-Chi or Eric. But I mean, you guys, I mean, this is an adaptation of Richard II, which is kind of a queer play anyway.

Yeah, sure. I’m curious about Kate, Chi-Chi, if you have thoughts about the queering of Shakespeare, especially as it pertains to this show. Yeah, I’m happy to speak to that as I adapted to this and I am a queer person.

So you referenced that Richard II is often thought of as a queer play. And I think there are a couple of things that stick out in the history of performance of this play. One, that there are often queer actors who play Richard.

And two, that it’s sort of like a dirty secret that Richard is coded queer. And it was very important to me that we not even accidentally replicate that dynamic in our version. We have a Richard who is an out and proud king.

We are not trying to conflate the idea of queerness with badness or incompetence. So you’ll see that in our adaptation, I hope. Maybe Eric, who is playing this part, would like to speak to that.

And I’m very curious to hear Chi-Chi’s thoughts as well. Sure. Yeah, one of the things that I find really interesting about this particular adaptation, and I think the work that I’ve seen with Dauntless before, when it comes to queerness, is, and I’m really pleased about this, that the world in, say, Richard II or This Earth of Majesty, is a world in which queerness absolutely doesn’t seem to matter.

It’s not a point of interest for Richard’s character or for the world that Richard is maybe a queer king. And we never really talk about the gender of Richard’s spouse or any of that. It’s not presented.

We’ve kind of, I think, worked hard to make sure that that’s not a factor in the consideration of what Richard is. It’s just kind of like, oh yeah, that’s just kind of, that’s the dude, that’s the person, that’s the character. And I think that that’s really valuable.

And I’m not trying to undermine, and I think it’s important to note, I’m a gay person myself, so I think it’s important not to undermine that there are elements of queer culture that are eternal, that are owned by queer communities, and it’s not that we’re trying to get rid of those. And we never will. We never should try to.

But being able to put on a play, which is, in my mind, a form of perfected reality, right, in which you get to pick and choose which elements are important, and in a weird way, removing the importance of that element is a way of empowering it, if that makes sense. That, like, Richard is not a gay king. He’s a king.

Like, yeah, probably gay. I don’t really care. And I hope that the audience doesn’t care, because, as Kate was pointing out, and it’s something that playing the character virtues that’s super important to me, is I don’t want random passing-by audiences to accidentally or deliberately, in their own minds, conflate queerness and authority, or queerness and, say, kingliness or whatever, as bad things.

You know, Richard’s kind of a crap king, and I don’t want anyone passing through to be like, oh, yeah, the gay king sucks, huh? No, no, not true, not true. And it’s been, for us, it’s been, for me, sorry, I shouldn’t say for us, for me, it’s been a bit of a sticky journey, if that makes sense. Yeah, Chi-Chi? Yes, I’m not sure if I can speak to the queer representation in the production, but I can speak to, you know, making it anti-colonial.

I find that the role that I’m playing, Child of Bright Lake, is someone who has, you know, suffered a great loss, and the authorities that be haven’t really done anything to, you know, either investigate or to make reparations. So the Child of Bright Lake takes it into her own hands to, you know, bring about change. And while she may go a bit too far, I think in making this production, you know, anti-colonial, I think it gives the Child of Bright Lake agency and seeing how she’s played by myself, a Black woman, through that lens, it does, you know, represent a lot of the community in what we’re dealing with today, especially with, you know, with Black lives being handled with authority and how that is all very muddy.

So I find that, you know, having passerbys see myself as Child of Bright Lake, you know, making bold choices and seeking answers, I think that will definitely spark interest into whoever’s walking by and, you know, have them stop and take in what’s going on. Because they’ll see myself, they’ll see, you know, our cast, and they’ll see, yeah, you know, they’ll see themselves. And that’s so important.

I’m curious about, for all of you, and I’d like Kate to go last on this, but as far as your history with Shakespeare, either in performance or as an audience or both, what’s your experience with Shakespeare been? What’s your relationship with Shakespeare’s plays? Woof. Well, I really disliked Shakespeare when I was, you know, like a teenager, because as somebody who was getting into theatre, I was like, oh, everybody loves Shakespeare, I should hate it, you know, that sort of thing. And then I had to learn a monologue for an audition or something.

It’s like, oh, shit, this is really deep. There’s a lot. Woo, there’s a lot here.

This is awesome. And then I kind of went from there, and I didn’t do a lot. But then kind of one year, I was in the process of applying for a mentorship program at Stratford, the Shakespeare Festival.

And that year, I was like, I’m just going to do as much as I darn well can. And, like, played Cassius in one show, was played Edmund in kind of a stage reading of Lear and assistant director at Fault Night, and there was another one, I just forgot. I just did as much as I possibly could, and I just love it.

I love early modern theatre. I love the poetry of it. Like, it’s, I hesitate to go down the precious route of it, but I just, there’s something about that particular era of which I personally feel Shakespeare was a height that I just, I find really attractive and really interesting and delicious and tasty and timeless and very, very human.

That’s my answer. Chi-Chi, I think you had started to have a thought. Do you have thoughts on that? I do.

Yes. For me, Shakespeare has, the language itself has really spoken to me. It’s always been very poetic and beautiful, much of what Eric was saying.

But I think I came into it kind of with the, I would say, the roadmap of knowing that the roles that would be offered to me would be quite limited because of who I am. I’m a Black woman, and Shakespeare is primarily for Caucasians. So I always came in with that kind of sitting in the back of my head, and I think it wasn’t until I got into university, I think it was my third year, I was taking a couple of Shakespeare courses, and we were doing scene studies, and I got offered to play the role of Juliet in the balcony scene.

And for me, that was, it was just very, I was pleasantly surprised, but also very bewildered because I usually expected myself to be playing the nurse or some sort of best friend’s side character. So to be offered the lead in such a memorable scene, it was both very exciting and really gave me the confidence to see myself as not just the side character, as someone who could play multiple different roles within the Shakespeare canon. So to be playing the Child of Bright Lake in this production of Richard II, it’s been really, really exciting.

And again, going back to the idea of having agency and taking matters into my own hands via the Child of Bright Lake, it’s been very fun and exciting, and it just keeps adding to my toolbox of roles that I can play in the future. So Chita, how about you? Yeah, I almost have the opposite journey to Gigi in some ways. So when I was a kid in school in Sri Lanka, I had a really amazing school where you could be a jock, you could be an arts kid, you could be whatever you wanted, and no one judged you for that.

And so the Shakespeare kids were actually some of the cool kids. But I was never one of the cool kids, so I never did Shakespeare. And then when I went to university for engineering, I decided I would join the musical theatre stage society.

But I kept getting ensemble roles and comedy parts, but nothing particularly meaty and serious. And then on a whim, I just decided to audition for the Shakespeare Society at the university, and they started giving me more meaningful roles. I played Iachimo in Cymbeline, which was not a role I genuinely would have thought I could have played at the time.

And then I played Alcibiades in Demon of Athens. And I realized that I was actually quite good at Shakespeare because I really love poetry. I love living in heightened language.

And I think, like Eric, I don’t necessarily think Shakespeare is the best, but I do think he has absolutely mastered a sense of poetry in heightened language for that era of writing, certainly. And so, yeah, that’s kind of how I got into it. But then I went to actually study musical theatre and didn’t do Shakespeare for many years, and then fell into the same kind of catch-22 of if you don’t have any Shakespeare on your resume, no one will give you Shakespeare.

And I was very fortunate in the space of, like, three months. No, three to six months, I landed two Shakespeare gigs back-to-back by people who didn’t care about those things and at fairly decent companies. And since then, I’ve kept in touch with Shakespeare, if that makes sense.

And, yeah, and here I am now. Kate gave me a call, and now I’m here. Speaking of Kate, Kate, tell me about your relationship with Shakespeare.

What really pushed me down this path, I may have told this story already on your podcast, but I’ll tell it again. When I was in second year university, I first met the dear departed Ian Watson, who taught us, and he was a very inspiring teacher. He was the sort of person who would look around the room, and you would tell him what you thought were your silly little ambitions, and he would say, well, why not you? Why shouldn’t you do it? He uplifted people, and he uplifted me all the way into playing the good part of King Lear, like the last, the first, the storm scene through the last mad scene I got to do when I was 20, and in second year university.

I’m sure I did it very, very badly. But what I remember from that is we were in rehearsal one day for the storm scene, and I was struggling with my text, as we do, and he said to me, we were doing the, talking to the beggars of Lear’s realms, you know, your looped and windowed raggedness, your houseless heads, you know, wheresoever you are, he just looked at me and he said, Kate, there are people right now sleeping on the subway grates outside of Tim Hortons, and what did you do about that today? I was like, nothing. I did nothing about that today.

And it was him who really put in my mind how we can use this text to talk about the important pieces of some of the human experience. How? Because this is, you know, something that’s horrible to know is that the settler kits that they would give people who were settling the stolen land we call Canada, they had two books in those kits, and it was the Bible and it was Shakespeare. This is what we have lying around our colonial house, and we kind of have to use it to our advantage.

And so that’s always been my attraction to this, the immediacy of the language, the beauty of the poetry, and how can we use it to our advantage? So Ian started me down that path. And then I met Scott, who founded Dauntless City Theatre and was our first artistic director. And I auditioned for him a couple of times and didn’t make it into his productions, and then he gave me Hermione in The Winter’s Tale.

And I remember standing in the square the first time we did it outside, you know, the courtroom scene, and I just remember the park stopped. Mums with their prams and business people on their lunch breaks, the park stopped and watched with great attention. And it just hit me in that moment that I represented everybody who is having a terrible marriage.

You know, people in St. Jamestown, people in Rosedale, behind closed doors, people in this city are having this conversation. And in that moment, I represented them. And that is my impetus.

That is what spurs me on to continue in this line of work, is that kind of immediacy and relevancy is what I seek. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

I think, I don’t know about you, Kate, or the rest of you. I’ve been having, you know, I grew up, I still remember the first Shakespeare I saw. I was a kid in school, and when we were studying Shakespeare, the one who admitted to liking Shakespeare, you know, because, you know, they teach Shakespeare so poorly.

But I have such a difficult relationship with Shakespeare now, partially because of the way that it’s been treated, the colonial nature of it, the way that, you know, the Bible, as you were saying, Kate, the giving of the Bible, and the works of Shakespeare, and all of that stuff, that I feel like it’s been used poorly. Like the idea of when Chi-Chi says that it’s something for white people, then I, and I think I agree. And it’s no wonder that that’s how we see it.

I’ve seen productions that feature Black actors, where they suddenly start getting comments like, Oh, but that character was historically white. But worse than that. And it’s something that I think is, that kind of history makes it difficult to wrestle with.

What do you guys think about wrestling with that history, with the way that it’s been used in the past? So one part of my story that I didn’t talk about is, I actually work for another Shakespeare company called Shakespeare Action in the city. And we’ve been wrestling with this for the better part of the last two years. Because we were settled in Weston, which is, if you look at the last century, a very white community.

But then in the last 30 years, 30 to 50 years has been a heavily Vietnamese Canadian, Jamaican Canadian, most in the last three decades or so, Somali Canadian community. And if you, I’ve managed to do some of the research on this. One of the major attractions of Weston is the train station.

And even though there’s no evidence of Indigenous communities in Weston that we have record of, we have evidence of them at Bloor Street on that train line. And when we set ourselves up in this community, in that community, sorry, in any community, truly, in Canada, we have to wrestle with all of those realities as we make art. And so we ask ourselves, at least I ask myself the question, if we’re telling this story, who does it serve? Who does it ignore? And who are we trying to appease? And if we can answer all those three questions, and the answer to all three certainly isn’t the people who already have power, the people who already have influence, the people who already, whose narratives are already told ad nauseum, then I think there may be a purpose.

But still, you know, I’m not a Shakespeare purist. I will rewrite entire monologues in modern, in the middle of a piece. For some of our adaptations, we’ve just, the most recent one we did called Three Tempests, included stories from Hurricane Hazel in Toronto, 1954, as well as stories from COVID-19 from nurses and patients in and around the Northwest Toronto area.

So that, yeah. So if I’m not doing something exciting with Shakespeare, if I’m not doing something that’s relevant and current with Shakespeare, then there’s zero purpose to it for me. I think that’s the big question because, you know, I’ve seen people will say that you could do anything with Shakespeare, and I’ve seen people try to do weird things with Shakespeare that sort of bump up against the words, right? You can go so that your concept works against it.

But I think that, like you said, it has to have a purpose. It has to have a relevancy to now. I think I’m tired of seeing Shakespeare plays done because I really like that play.

And I think that I want to see in my Shakespeare more than just I really like that play. I want to see what its relevancy is. I want to see more than that when I see Shakespeare.

Right, and like the interrogation is, okay, but why do you like that play? Right, because I like that play is fine. But is that the only play you like? You know, why that play today? Because I bet you there’s at least, you know, every artistic director in this country has at least 10 plays that they really like. And, you know, at least 100 more that they would like to do.

So why this Shakespeare play? Why Shakespeare at all? And people constantly bring up this thing is, you know, it’s a classic. And again, such a colonially tinted, tainted word, because Rumi is classic. It’s just not in some people’s minds.

Rabindranath Tagore, I think 19th century Indian poet is classic. But, you know, there’s only 2 billion people who know who he is. But that’s not the work that’s considered classic.

And I think that there’s definitely a hierarchy in how we think about what the classics are. And it’s very much a hierarchy of ignorance, in my opinion. And that’s why, you know, right now, for example, Shakespeare in Action is not doing a Shakespeare play for its summer show.

We’re doing a Korean fake folktales play. Because that’s what we thought would be more connected this year to our community. Yeah.

I want to change gears a little bit. And I want to ask some questions of each of you. Chi-Chi, just apropos of nothing, I understand that the Scream trilogy is your favorite horror film trilogy.

As somebody who has never really been a horror watcher, tell me why I should enjoy and watch the Scream trilogy. That is a great question. I’m glad you asked that.

I think you should definitely check out the Scream trilogy, simply because it’s my type of horror, which is just on the edge of gore. But it can’t be horror, if that makes sense. If you’re someone who’s not into all the gore and the mess, then it’s like right up your alley, because it’s not too messy.

It’s mostly commentary on the actual horror genre, which I find really, really fascinating and really funny to watch. And also, I love that Neve Campbell, she is the Scream queen. She is Canadian.

So it’s really cool to see someone who, you know, I share the same nationality with, who is leading this whole franchise. But yeah, I think if anything, you should watch it because of the horror commentary, as well as Randy. He is a movie buff, kind of like myself.

And a lot of what he says is very, very accurate to what happens. So without spoiling it, definitely check out the Scream trilogy. Now, outside of the Scream trilogy, are you a horror fan? Or is Scream the horror trilogy that you like? Ooh, I’m definitely a horror fan outside of the Scream trilogy.

That just happens to be my favorite. But yeah, outside of that, I love The Cabin in the Woods, another movie that pokes fun at the horror genre. I would say I kind of like dip my toe every once in a while into the sci-fi horror.

I haven’t seen Nope by Jordan Peele yet. But that is definitely on my list. I’ve heard nothing but good things.

And I do love a little bit of a alien sci-fi meets horror film. So yeah, I would call myself a horror buff. I also enjoy listening to horror podcasts.

Yeah, it’s something that I like to do. I don’t know how I fell into it. But I’m sure it has something to do with my childhood.

But yeah. And when you say horror podcasts, are you talking about those true ghost story kind of podcasts? Or are you talking about fiction? Oh, yes, definitely fiction. I find that with the horrors of today, I do not need to listen to a true crime podcast.

I feel that it would be a waste of my time. I would much rather dive into someone’s world of their imagined stories and kind of pick their brain through that lens. Now, Sushita, there’s something that I have to ask you about.

Because I know that you are a sci-fi fantasy nerd. But as am I. Long time nerd, geek, whatever. But you’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons.

And I am curious. Why? Yeah, to my ever-loving shame. I need to jump in and say that it’s not a judgment.

No, no, it’s to my ever-loving shame, to be honest. Because I spent many, many years, because my first D&D experience was bad, because the Dungeon Master was bad. So I never picked it up again until much, much later.

So what is it that has prevented you? Well, so I’ll start by saying that, you know, growing up in Sri Lanka, Dungeons and Dragons, at least from my experience, is just not a thing. I don’t think anyone there plays it. And even though I have been a sci-fi fantasy nerd from childhood, none of my friends were.

So I was just, you know, enjoying it on my own some, buying all the novels and all the comics and everything I can get my hands on. But none of my friends did it. So that’s part of the reason.

I, you know, I started playing Magic the Gathering in university when I was suddenly surrounded by a bunch of engineer nerds, which is great, and I really appreciated that. But I really haven’t had a close circle of friends who play Dungeons and Dragons until I started working on, half the cast has had me plug this already, but Off the Beaten Path, the musical, which is a choose-your-own-adventure D&D fantasy musical, which if you’re a D&D fan, highly recommend you go check it out. We perform it once a month on Zoom, and there’s spinoffs and so many things and Discord and more.

So I’m basically just waiting for a group of friends to play Dungeons and Dragons with who have space for me. That’s really the answer. I understand.

I understand. Now, I’m just going to stay with this for another second. Not about D&D, but as a sci-fi fantasy nerd, what was your gateway drug into being a sci-fi fantasy nerd? I’ll give you the short answer is Isaac Asimov.

That’s an excellent answer. That is an excellent answer. The longer version is, I think I’ve been one since before I knew what that genre was.

Sci-fi nerds are going to think I’m a real loser here, but I’ve never seen the original. I’ve never seen Star Trek Next Gen or whatever the first series is called. I’ve started watching Star Trek with Voyager.

Of all the ones to start with. And you know what? At the time I watched it, I had loads of fun watching it. I mean, that one is good.

The unfortunate thing is that it’s followed by the worst of the bunch. Oh, I mean, I didn’t watch that. There’s something, I guess.

I got into sci-fi pretty young. I’ve been watching anime since I got cable as a kid because that was the only way we were going to get anime as kids. To me, Lion King is fantasy in some ways.

It’s just such a reinterpretation of a story of betrayal and all of that through this completely fantastical lens. To me, Disney is fantasy. I know fantasy nerds don’t count it as fantasy, but to me it really is.

And so I think I’ve been in fantasy since I was a child. And it’s just as I got older, I started to get broader and broader with it. So Lord of the Rings definitely was kind of like, in terms of high fantasy, quote-unquote.

Probably my first entryway, then Terry Brooks with the Shannara series into fantasy. From Isaac Asimov, I went to Arthur C. Clarke, partly because he’s Sri Lankan. And yeah, I’ve just kind of kept going down that path with anything I can have the time to read.

Now, Eric, I know that you were a member of Depopo Theatre in Halifax. Are you from Halifax originally, or how did you find your way to that company? No, I’m not from Nova Scotia at all. I’m from Northern Saskatchewan.

And I found my way to Halifax partly because I kept following in my sister’s footsteps. My sister is a phenomenal actor, for example, and that’s really what I would argue non-metaphysically is the chief reason that I got into theatre. Because I saw her perform.

I was five when I saw her perform in some school play, and I was like, I’m going to do that because she’s good. Anyway, she didn’t pursue theatre and I did, so too bad. But then she went to university in Halifax, and I had a very brief stint at theatre school and then left theatre school and took a year of linguistics at university in Saskatchewan and just kind of didn’t really respond to that atmosphere.

The subject matter was fascinating, but I wasn’t feeling it. And then wound my way to Halifax to go to the university that my sister did. So that’s really what landed me there.

And then in a very specific, to answer your question very specifically, a friend of mine with whom I’d done some theatre in university, the university I went to had a very, very active student theatrical society. And I did a lot of plays. And one of the people I did a fair number of plays with said, you should come see this show that an independent company in Halifax has put on because my partner is in it.

And I think you would really like their artistic director, Nudge Nudge. I did really like the artistic director, for what it’s worth. The two of us then were partners for seven years after seeing that show.

And of course, I just kind of then fell into the company that he was working with, that he was running. And it was fascinating work. It was very political.

It was very kind of experimental and also not experimental. We kind of did everything. And that’s really the long answer.

I guess there is no short answer. I just kind of wound my way to Halifax from Saskatchewan and then fell in with this, what I think is an awesome theatre company. Awesome.

That’s great. Here’s an interesting question, just to bring things around back towards the Earth of Majesty. We’re still in a pandemic, no matter how much people might want that to be gone.

And I think one of the safest things that you could do is probably perform outdoors. But how has the pandemic informed this production and whatever protocols are happening around that and just the performance in general? Kate, I’ll start with you. Yeah, I mean, I think we’re very lucky in that we are an outdoor theatre company.

So it is more… Sorry, I realized it was far from my mic. I’m just going to start that again. Yeah, we’re very lucky that we are an outdoor theatre company.

So we already have a precedent of performing outside. One adjustment we made right off the bat this year was we also wanted to rehearse outside. So we’ve been doing that mainly.

We’ve only had one weekend where we needed to come inside full time. We have a strange rehearsal schedule to accommodate as many jobs as we possibly can. We also just did simple things, like we bought a box of N95s and we encouraged everybody to wear them.

Our wonderful stage manager, Jackie Williams, figured out that we as an organization actually qualified for COVID tests. So the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce has been furnishing us with COVID tests because I actually live in Niagara and we’ve rehearsed a little bit in Niagara. So we’re very grateful for that practical support so that we can actually test and have that reassurance as well.

So we’ve just been trying to do those simple things of wearing good quality masks that follow science, of being tested and working outside as much as we can. And I’m curious what everybody else thinks, how you feel about being back to performing, how you feel about performing in front of audiences, especially in a situation like this. What are you guys looking forward to? What are you concerned about? Tell me everything.

Chi-Chi, how about you? Yeah, for me, it’s been, I would say it’s kind of like learning how to ride a bike again. You gotta start to recall your training and remember that you’re back in the room with living, breathing people and figuring out how to collaborate. And yeah, personally, I think the hardest part for me has just been remembering how to memorize lines again.

That’s always been a challenge before. And with the pandemic, many things were happening. And so now having the gift and the opportunity to have that be a struggle, it’s been both a blessing and just a challenge just to remember how to do all of that.

But yeah, it’s been fun. And also remembering that you’re performing in front of people. So keeping that performative element in your performance as well as making sure that you’re serving the story.

It’s just a lot of juggling balls that I’m learning how to juggle right now. But yeah, it’s been pretty fun to stretch those muscles again. I don’t know if you or anybody else has experienced this, but I’m rehearsing for my own show that I’m doing at the Fundie Fringe later this month.

And the first thing that I noticed is that all of my breathing technique, all of my proper projection technique, all of that stuff, out the window. It’s like I’ve forgotten it all after two years of this. And I just… It’s just like trying to relearn it while also trying to remember how to perform.

Have you guys found any of your technique missing or rusty? First, I just want to say, Chi-Chi, I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say you struggle with memorizing. You came off book first of everyone in the cast. But secondly… Hey, hey, you did though.

But no, honestly, the thing that came… It was hardest for me to build was building back the technique of self-confidence. Because to me, I think that is actually part of the technique of an actor is to build your confidence in what you can do and what you do do. And I remember… I remember halfway through the pandemic going, oh, I wonder what other actors are doing, discovering that some people were getting in shape and learning new acting skills and doing all of this extra work.

And I was in a 10 to 6 arts administration job and not finding the energy or the motivation to work on any of my skills. And so finding my confidence in myself continuously dipping as I did less and less work. I was lucky enough to do a few Zoom workshops and even a couple of in-person workshops at the top of this year.

But this is the first time I’ve put together a whole play in costume on my feet with other people in the space where we actually interact with each other as opposed to maintaining six feet at all times. And so finding the confidence to simply walk up to someone and hold their gaze while being less than two feet away from them. Yeah, I found that was the thing that was the hardest to do.

Eric, how about you? Yeah, learning lines. I’m typically really good at learning lines and it has been a muscle that’s gone a little bit haywire. So that’s been frustrating, not going to lie.

Also, on top of that, I guess, is not having performed outdoors for a while, my voice is shot. Sorry, everyone. It’ll be fine by Friday.

But even today, I’m wandering around my house to start day off today. I’m like, wow, my voice is really low. My throat’s a little bit sore and I’m kind of gravelly.

What the heck is going on? Oh, I’ve been yelling in a park for a week. Oh, I’m not used to this. So that’s been a little bit of something that I have to relearn and drinking the right tea and making sure I’m hydrated and projecting instead of yelling and that sort of stuff.

And especially being in a busy park and there’s streetcars and there’s music and there’s children. Just kind of remembering to support my voice instead of strain my voice has been something fun to relearn. It’s kind of amazing how quickly we forget those things that we spent so long learning.

I know, like I was saying, like just talking for an hour has been, I’ve had to relearn how to do that. Kate, as far as putting this show on its feet, returning to live performance in the pandemic, how do you feel about it? Tell me about this return for Dauntless to live performance. This return means so much to me.

Chanakya Mukherjee and I came into leadership at Dauntless, I guess at the beginning of 2021. And we really hoped to have a summer season in person that year. And we made some very difficult decisions looking at what was possible and what was safe, what we didn’t know and what we couldn’t control.

And we decided not to pursue it because it just seemed too risky to us. So to be able to be in a place where we could have safeguards, where we had more knowledge about what was riskier, what was less risky, and to be able to accomplish this means the world to me. As an actor, my happiest days were in the Dauntless company.

And so to be able to recreate that, I hope for others, is really important to me. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten part of your question. Could you repeat it, Phil? That’s all right.

I’m just curious about any of you. I think you’ve answered the question of the return. Oh, this is the other thing I wanted to say.

Yes. Is that because we have had these two, three years of disaster and bad management, and also things like life-saving vaccines, I am so happy we are prepared. We had a general understudy.

We have an understudy bench that’s three deep. There’s me, there’s our producer, and then we had a general understudy. And we did lose an actor who had to step away from the show.

And that understudy, his name is Ryan Bannon, and he’s joined our main cast. I think he joined us on like three days ago, fully. And so that’s been incredible.

You know, I am not pressed. I’m so proud of this cast. They’re doing incredible work.

I think they’re doing stuff that will comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable. And it’s a joy for me to support them and to watch them do their work. One of our cast members yesterday said to me, you seem really calm for someone who’s in Tech Week.

And I’m like, yeah, nobody’s dying, literally. I’m just like, this is thrilling. This is a play and we have the great joy to perform it.

Well, I want to thank you all for taking the time to talk to me this evening. And I really appreciate this conversation. And it sounds like another great, dauntless show for the summer.

Thank you so much for having us, Phil. It’s our absolute pleasure. Stageworthy is a Canadian theater podcast produced by Phil Rickaby.

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