#340 – Indrit Kasapi
Born in Albania, Indrit has made Tkarón:to his home since 2000. He is the Founding Artistic Producer for lemonTree creations and Artistic Producer for Theatre Passe Muraille. lemonTree creations focuses on queer works, and Indrit has produced, acted in, choreographed and directed several critically acclaimed and award winning productions, including a national tour for MSM [men seeking men]. As the Artistic Producer of Canada’s original alternative theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Indrit continues to develop exciting new theatrical voices while also focusing on national and international touring for the company. As a performer, Indrit has had the privilege to work with many talented writers, directors, designers and companies in a myriad of projects that more often than not are interdisciplinary in nature making use of both his ability with movement and text. Most notably he is a company member of the award winning dance theatre company CORPUS. Through Corpus he has helped develop and premiere two new works (Machina Nuptialis, House Guests) and continued touring other repertoire to North America, Europe and Asia. He’s an Acting graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, a 2018 Harold Award Winner and a 2020 Dora Nominated performer.
Twitter: @indritk
Instagram: @indritk
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Transcript
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Phil Rickaby
I’m Phil Rickaby, and I’ve been a writer and performer for almost 30 years. But I’ve realised that I don’t really know as much as I should about the theatre scene outside of my particular Toronto bubble. Now, I’m on a quest to learn as much as I can about the theatre scene across Canada. So join me as I talk with mainstream theatre creators, you may have heard of an indie artist you really should know, as we find out just what it takes to be Stageworthy.
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This week on the podcast, my guest is Indrit Kasapi. Indrit is a producer, actor, dancer and creator based in Toronto. He’s the founding artistic producer for lemontree creations, as well as the artistic producer at Theatre Passe Murraile. In this episode, we talked about how lemon tree creations first resisted and then embraced being known as a queer company decolonial rehearsal processes and exploring new ways to engage audiences through focusing on the audience experience. Here’s our conversation
could you if you were to describe for somebody your artistic practice, or describe yourself as an artist? How would you do that?
Indrit Kasapi
That’s such a tough question. I would, you know, I’d say I’m a performer, artist, writer, director, producer, I always say that I’m an artist who works a lot like in Theatre Live performance with with font and text. Nice is the general way to say that, you know it during the mean, it’s like, you know, your performance and you work with movement and text and can be so many things, right? So
Phil Rickaby
it’s a good way to put it because I mean, it does cover a lot of bases. I was finding interesting people’s people’s hyphen. It’s like how they describe themselves, because I don’t, I think in the entire time that I’ve been doing this podcast, which is about six years now, I think I’ve spoken to two people who describe themselves as one thing. Right. And that’s such a rare thing in the theatre world in the theatre. I guess we’re I guess world is the right term, just in terms of how we operate today. When I was in theatre school, they told us only do one thing. You know, and this was a long time ago, because I’m an old man. And they, they, they they were they made it very clear that you should never admit to doing anything other than acting and that was the thing retold otherwise, yeah, yeah. But nothing could be further from what what is necessary now. That said, Could you you know, I know I want to get to Theatre Passe Murraile. But first I want to talk about about lemontree creations. Because that is I like to things that I don’t know about are the ones that are most fascinating to me, and I have not yet heard of lemon tree creation. So I would love to, to learn about that. Could you describe for me lemon tree creations?
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah, lemon tree is a I always say it’s a collective of artists. It’s a project based organisation. It’s been around since 2008. It started off because I needed a name to put on my application to summer works. You know, and I was like, God, what am I going to call this thing it was not really like a thing that I you know, I didn’t really think it was going to be something that was gonna you know, go on for as long as it did. And Lemond we I grew up back home in Albania and we had a lemon tree in front of my house and my bedroom looked looked at this trees I thought, you know, that’s kind of like poetic. You know? I didn’t think it was going to stick so I just thought, you know, I’ll just call it lemon tree and, you know, sort of spiralled that way. I was at the time working with Jonathan Cena and on my new my first play that I ever wrote called The Red Devil and, you know, Jonathan, I started taking a lot more interest in queer theatre, you know, and And then at that point call out this came on board and then sort of materialised in this very organic, authentic way, you know, and Cole and I really bonded over, you know, theatre and queer theatre specifically. And I, at some point, it felt like, you know, when we first were in existence, we were resisting the word queer. And we were like, We don’t want to be queer. You know, that’s, we don’t want to, in a way we, we saw that as a way to limit ourselves. And but it didn’t matter what we saw ourselves as because the community started calling us the queer Theatre Company. And so eventually, at some point, we became, we embraced it were like, We are a queer Theatre Company, that’s what we’re doing, you know, right, yeah, ourselves here. So let’s just, you know, embrace it, let’s just, you know, let’s actually take it on, and then it has become this thing. Now, that’s very intentionally a project based queer collective of artists that come together and produce theatre, once, you know, will take like long periods of time to develop work. And we are definitely project based, so that if we want to fold at any time, we can
Phil Rickaby
now want to come back to the the way that you work the way that you create work, because I find that that a fascinating topic, but I will say how many theatre companies found their name because of the desperation to get something submitted for Flint, or summer works, or something like that. So many companies are like, well, I guess that’s our name. Now,
Indrit Kasapi
somebody that somebody needs to write a book about that, that’s for sure. For sure, yeah.
Phil Rickaby
Now, just, let’s let’s dive into the the way that lemon tree creations works like, Do you have a particular way that you you develop the work that you put out that you do? Or is it? Is it specific to each project? How do you how do you do the process of creating a new work?
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah, I mean, it has evolved, and it keeps evolving? You know, I think where we’re at right now is that we are very interested in decolonial ways of being in rehearsal and, and creation. And so we investigate that on a regular basis, like, what does that mean? What does that mean to decolonize? And, you know, we have those conversations on a regular basis. And whether it’s, you know, how is the room around? Who is in the room? How does the sort of hierarchical power structures in the room? How do they exist? You know, how is there a director? And how do the performers work with a director? And what kind of rehearsal hours do you have? You know, we’re, we’re thinking about that we’re thinking about holistic ways of, of making theatre. So that’s like one thing. The other thing is that what we do is we, we create new work, so we sometimes commissioned artists, to write new plays. Other times, we just produce new plays that have, you know, we’ve developed maybe a little bit but you know, we meet the artists at a point in their development where they’re closer to production. And also we revive like, what we want to call a queer classics, you know, like, for example, Lily’s that we did, or John Janay, we did some Jhangiani, at the beginning of, you know, this whole lifespan of lemon tree. So it’s sort of a combination of both when we’re reviving queer classics, we’re looking at it from the lens of like, why are we doing this? Now? What’s the point of doing lilies at this, you know, day and age. And when we’re looking at new work, we’re really kind of bouncing off of from the queer classes kind of going, what was not answered from these from this work, like we know, with, with body politic, for example, you know, we got, we got to do we were doing John Janae. And we were talking about queer life, you know, back in the day when John Janay was around, and we started thinking about what queer life was like in Toronto at the time. And so then we created still life as kind of a direct result to that question of like, what is it? What does it mean to be queer? I mean, such a big question. We try to answer it, you know, and I thought we, I think we did the best we could I’m not sure that, you know, fully answered the question of what does it mean to be queer in Toronto at that time when we created it, but, you know, we’re constantly I think, navigating work by questioning the work that we’re currently doing, you know, it’s like, oh, we’re doing this play. It’s answering this question. What does it not answer? Okay, maybe there’s another artist who can delve into that, you know, right.
Phil Rickaby
Right. Now, you mentioned about the way that you’re, you’re constructing the room, the power structures, and who’s in the room and, and all of that sort of thing. I think that’s something that is not totally common, I think in sometimes in indie theatre, and in some places, we’re talking a lot about about the room and what the rehearsal halls should look like. But there’s a whole history of the way that bursal halls have been run where the director is the is the, the, the be all and end all God to to the detriment sometimes of the people in the cast There have been abuses and things like that. So the the question of, of how the room works is one that that is important. So is this something that you have that lemon tree has always examined? Or is that a relatively recent thing that you’ve brought to the rehearsal hall?
Indrit Kasapi
It’s a relatively new, I wouldn’t say, relatively new, but it’s not something that’s always existed. Like I said, you know, it started because I needed a name on an application. I think it evolved. With time I think it took the first five years was just us doing kind of like everything, you know, we were doing fringe some works, shows and basements I had another friend of ours was like, Hey, can you produce our show? You know, we’re like, Yeah, let’s do it. You know, so there was really no mandate, there wasn’t really any sort of thinking deep thinking about it. Yeah, so in the last, you know, we’ve been around for was a 12 years now. So in the last seven years, it’s a, we’ve been more intentional in terms of what we’re exploring, and Lee evolving that, you know, in terms of, you know, the idea of decolonizing the room decolonizing the work like, that’s probably more in the sort of latter part of the, of our existence. And I think we, that’s what we love about it, you know, that we can continue to grow and investigate and, you know, make the creative process better, you know, so, yeah, I would say that’s, that’s, that’s a new thing.
Phil Rickaby
Awesome. Now, one of the things that I noticed in in your bio, is that you’re part of a dance company called corpus. Has dance always been a thing for you? Or is that something that you came to later?
Indrit Kasapi
No, I’m primarily like, you could say that I’m a dancer. Like, I trained as a dancer. I was five years old. When I started dancing. I trained back home and Albanian folk dance. And you know what ballet and we we call here jazz. But we call this something different there. You know, when I moved here, I was 15. And so I pursued that a bit more I started, I continued to dance. But you know, I don’t know if you know anything about the dance world. By the time you’re 15 year a little too old. To pursue it professionally. But it wasn’t that like I back home. I’m, you know, my family. Yeah, I was presented with the opportunity to pursue it as a career. And I didn’t go to you know, what, you what we have here, the National Ballet school there, we have the same thing. So, you know, by the time I was 15, I was kind of like, I don’t know, like, I’m not going in the route of a professional dancer, right? Like, I could have gone to, let’s say, post secondary schools. But I didn’t go to National Ballet. And so back in the day, I was thinking, like, if you’re not doing ballet, like you’re not really dancing, right, which was very limiting. But that’s, that’s the school of, that’s the school I came from, you know. And so, but when I got here, I was very lucky. I had an amazing drama teacher, his name is Theodore Dragonetti. And he’s still around. He’s an amazing artist. And I just feel like he’s just made me fall in love with theatre, you know, it was just sort of it was such an automatic kind of transition for me because I was I knew I wanted to do something with live performance. So I was like, Oh, maybe I should just try this whole theatre thing. And I was a new immigrant. It helped a lot with learning the language and the culture as well. And because now I had to deal with tax, which was such a huge challenge for me. And so, you know, I stopped dancing, I guess I would say probably around that time, and got right into theatre. I took theatre more seriously.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. Did I mean you were you were like a teenager at that point. Yeah. Yeah. Now, at what point did you figure out that theatre was a thing that you were going to like do that was going to be your your life?
Indrit Kasapi
Oh, I would say like, the moment I started, drama classes was with Mr. Dragon era, with Mr. Drag. I was like, this is like, this is it, like, this is awesome. I can do this. And I remember from the get go, actually, when I think back that what I loved the most was not necessarily being on stage, I loved directing and getting involved from that perspective of because I was a dancer. I also had this like weird kind of, like, a sense of competition, like, like, I want to be on stage, I want to be on stage, you know, like, because that’s, you know, like, I find a lot of young, young, emerging performers, that kind of theatre schools or any institutions where they’ve trained, there’s a sense that they have to be performers, you know, like that, that for some reason, all the other positions in the theatre that we have are like less than, you know, like that serve. Being a performer as as most sought after, or at least that’s like my sense. I could be completely wrong about this. But I remember thinking that I wanted to perform because it felt like I should, I should be a performer. You know,
Phil Rickaby
that’s a really interesting thing, because I know and I’ve talked to a few people who have They sort of tell the story of like going to theatre school thinking that they were going to be a performer because they thought that’s what you did. You should you had to. And then they did like a directing class. And they were like, oh, that’s now that I like and they sort of like shifted to that or they did a writing class. And they found that that was that was something they navigated to more. It’s interesting that so many I think of us go into the theatre school world, and go down that route, because that’s the thing that I think we think that’s what theatre is we don’t correct. When I was in high school, there’s no way that I thought that it was anything else. It was like theatre is being an actor.
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah. And that I would add that it’s not even that’s what theatre is, it’s that’s what success means, right? Or an actor, you know, and you can people define it in different ways. Some people define actor by being a Stratford, some others defined by being in movies, and film and TV. But regardless, that felt to me, like, you know, my success as a human being meant that I needed to be successful as an actor. And then me trying out the whole other all the other things like that I was really good at like writing or choreographing or directing or producing, I was really good at producing, you know, that for some reason, that meant that I was no longer now an actor and that I was no longer a good actor, you know, that I had sort of failed. And so it took me a long time to get to a place where like, you know what this is? Can you swear on this buck? Is because I fuck
Phil Rickaby
yeah, that’s, that’s fucked up. Like, yeah,
Indrit Kasapi
really fucked up, you know. And I was like, I’m really good at all these things. And I enjoy doing all these things. So why am I not? Why can I not? Why can one person not be a producer and an actor when I want to? And, and a writer or a choreographer, all those things, right? Like, you should be able to do that.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, I agree. I think that doing all of those things, makes you better at all of the things right? If you’re, if you’re a director, and you’re an actor, you’re a better director, because you’ve been an actor. And vice versa. The same with being a writer, the same with being a producer, you have this incredible understanding of all of the things that go into it. So it just makes you better at each of the things that you’re doing.
Indrit Kasapi
Correct? Yeah. And there’s something to be said, like, you know, I don’t want to put like, there is something to be said about the idea that, you know, you dedicate yourself to that one thing, and you sort of master it, there’s a lot of people that are very good at that are amazing directors, and they have no interest in being on stage. And there’s some people that are amazing performers, and they have no interest in doing anything else. That’s there’s, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I also think that equally to that, you can also be an amazing director, and producer, you know, you just have to learn how to do all those things and learn how you’re going to navigate that because I think sometimes the problem is that you end up in the industry we’re at right now is a lot of young artists are end up doing these things, because they have to, they end up producing because they have to. And then what they really want to do is right, or what they really want to do is be on stage. And so they are kind of like shitty producers, and then shitty writers. And so they’ve written a play, and they’re producing themselves and kind of shitty ways, but because they want to be on stage, do you? I mean, and so I think that’s what is not good is when you’re doing something because you have to. But if you really want to, and do you want to do it? Well, there are ways that you can do all these things like I don’t do I know my limit of these high finance, right? Like, I cannot do more than two high finance in one project. And there’s certain combinations of these high finance that cannot live like if I’m going to perform. I’m not doing any of the other things. Yeah, like, like, don’t talk to me because I need to like, you know, I’m a weird performer, I have a lot of like anxiety, and I need a lot of space and stuff like that. But you know, I can very easily write and direct, you know, like combinations like that, or I could write and produce length. There’s a lot of artists to do that. Donaldson, Donna, Michelle, St. Bernard is one person I can think of that have the capacity to write, you know, and focus on that and then they shift and they become the producer. They love both, you know,
Phil Rickaby
yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, the one of the worst combinations is that that dreaded actor director, Oh, God.
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah, you know, it’s, it can’t be done, though. There are people that can do it. i It’s very rare that I see like a show where I see an actor director, whereas where the, where the show that would clearly like the person who’s doing is has given has doing one thing better than the other, you know, yeah, it’s very clear that oh, God, like you didn’t direct yourself here at all. You know, you’re just sort of running around.
Phil Rickaby
I think there’s there’s only one way that that can work. And that is that the the person who is the director who’s also the actor has to be able to give up enough of their ego As the director, to have an assistant director, direct them, and give that person, empower that person to give them the kind of feedback that a director would give. Yeah, that’s a rare thing to find somebody who can drop the ego like that.
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah. Yeah. And again, like, there are ways there’s, if we’re thinking of the creative process in, in sort of other ways that exists, like, what if you do have a group of people that are directing, like what have like, you know, don’t call it director Colin, outside eyes, call it collaborators or outside collaborators, however you want to sort of frame at, but essentially, you know, the theatre, the beauty of theatre is that it’s live performance, and it’s your body and your spirit and your presence. And so be absolutely require somebody on the outside to tell you what it looks like on the outside, because it’s a different experience. And that’s what you’re doing it for, you’re doing it for the audience to come. See, it’s very simple. When we’re doing film, you can probably direct yourself because you can go back and see it. Like,
Phil Rickaby
yeah, that’s, that’s the main difference is you do you often see an actor who directs and they can do that successfully on film, because you can, you can, like you say, immediately go and watch the playback and see, yeah, if it was good or not.
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah, I would be like, and also to meet for me personally, like, I just don’t have those kinds of that kind of confidence. I know, you’re not the view, kind of, because it’s it’s two pretty big roles, right? To just kind of have that kind of confidence. You’re like, I’m, I’m killing it. I’m doing it really well on both sides. So usually, my experience is like, Oh, God, everything sucks, you know? Yeah,
Phil Rickaby
I have found it. And I’ve got I got some great advice when I started writing and performing my own stuff. And the great advice that I that people who had more experience in that than me, gave me was the fact that you should, as the writer, choose a point after which you are no longer writing. Yeah. Because I know people and they said, I didn’t do that. And I spent the time while I should have been rehearsing, still rewriting the piece. Yeah, it’s so to their detriment to the detriment of the show. Yeah.
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah. I often say, you know, I just say, look, the, the writer is not in the room, you know, and if you need the writer in the room, then you’re gonna, we’re gonna say, the writers in the room, and then I can be in the room as the writer, you know. But you know, I don’t, I don’t, I would never, I did that once with the first play, where I performed and I wrote the play. And that was the last time I will ever do that. Even with the last play, I wrote, I had to step in as one of the dancers. But very last minute, because we have a we had a small injury, but I would never step on stage as a performer. If it’s something that I wrote.
Phil Rickaby
It’s very difficult to do and you have to be able to, like get the you have literally have to be able to send the the writer out of the room and, and trust the director to now interpret the work. Yeah, totally. And
Indrit Kasapi
for me, personally, I can’t hear the play. You know, I can’t, I’m unable to actually hear the full play because I’m constantly concerned with like, my intentions as an actor, right. So I’m not necessarily hearing the rhythm of the whole play. And so I can’t it’s very hard for me to do that. I think some people can. I mean, obviously, you have like a writer or performers like damn, like, however amazing. Yeah, like incredible. So he’s got a system. I’m sure I have never worked with him. I don’t know what that system is, but it definitely works. Yeah, he’s got some
Phil Rickaby
for sure. For sure. Speaking of great plays, theatre passe muraille is a you are the artistic producer at Theatre passe muraille, how long have you been with the theatrepasse muraille?
Indrit Kasapi
I’ve been with theatre passe muraille for about three years now. Yeah. 2019 is when I started. Originally, I took over the time there was a GIF. Parasram was the Associate Artistic Director, and he moved on to become the artistic director at rumble Theatre in Vancouver. And he asked me to come in and take on one of the projects that they had going on at the time, which was the accessibility labs, I was doing some accessibility work at Cahoots Theatre as the Associate there. And so it was just a beautiful transition for me something I really cared about. Beautiful, like really awesome project they had going on. So I took over sort of freelance for that project. Very soon after that Marjorie, who’s one of my mentors and a friend. She moved on and she became the AD at a Theatre Passe Murraile And she asked me, she said, Well, do you want to come here as the Associate Artistic Director, I need one here. And I thought, Oh, that’s amazing. That’s beautiful. I loved working with her. And I wanted to continue growing with her. And this was a much larger venue, a lot of history, a lot of and also working with, like, independent artists, young, independent artists, I just, you know, totally right up my alley. And then things just sort of progressed from there at that point, I think You know, the pandemic happened, that, you know, that thing that shall not be mentioned, and eventually, a regime left, and I was asked to step in as the interim for a bit while the company was figuring itself out. At that time, we were really, I was brought into the conversation about the restructuring. They were reconsidering what leadership looks like, you know, especially for theatre Pasmore I, a company that’s founded by collective creation and collective ways of thinking from a group of, you know, very avant garde artists from a college and they did a lot of, you know, naked plays high on weed, you know, like, it’s got some very alternative routes, you know, and so it made sense. And I love that Marjorie was returning the company to it’s, it’s very alternative ways of thinking. And so what does that mean in terms of leadership? Well, maybe it’s not a sort of, you know, this hierarchy of just an artistic director and a managing director, maybe there’s three people running it. And so it was great to be a part of that rethinking. And now I’m sitting in the role of the artistic producer, with a new managing director on board, and Marjorie is the artistic director.
Phil Rickaby
When you say, I mean, we don’t like to talk about the pandemic, but you kind of have to, because you, you started, you started the role in 2019? Yes. Anytime somebody says they started something, it’s 2019. And my heart drops, because it’s like, I you start, and you go into 2020, with all of the ideas and everything else, then it all sort of falls apart. Yeah. But the one thing that I think that the pandemic did do is force us into a position where we are looking at different ways that theatre can be produced can be experienced and things like that. I know, that’s something that you’re also interested in, is that something that is that has been fueled by the pandemic? Or is that something that existed before for you and what does that mean to you?
Indrit Kasapi
I think I’ve always had sort of the spirit of wanting to reinvestigate things, for sure. But I think the pandemic enhanced that because it became very clear to not just me, I think, to all of us, that the theatre was in the middle of an identity crisis, you know, as a medium, like, What the hell are we doing? Like, who’s coming to the theatre anymore? And why do people come to the theatre? What kind of theatre are we making, you know, we’re still making theatre that is of a certain year round of a certain understanding of what theatre should be like. So now that the pandemic is happening, and people can leave their homes, and people clearly are obsessed with film and TV, even more so than they were in the past, literally is become their sort of way of surviving, you know, people were watching so much TV and, and film. And we were kind of like, you know, the thing that we had pushed the gains from was technology, you know, because we were, we were kind of what we’re doing, we don’t do film, that’s not our thing. You know, we’re, we’re theatre, so much so that even our unions, and our regulation is literally like, you know, dividing the two worlds, right, like drastically dividing. So suddenly, we’re doing digital art. And what does that mean? You know, so for me, I think the pandemic made me go, Yeah, look, what are the ways in which we can make theatre that can be different than what it looks like right now? And maybe we can address most importantly, this question around our identity, like, what is the kind of theatre people will you know, get out of their homes, buy a ticket and come to the show? Because the sense I get these days is that most people will come to show maybe once a year. And when I say most people, I don’t mean artists, right? Like, I mean, right, you know, engineers and accountants and, you know, people who didn’t do drama in high school or in college, people who actually have the financial capacity to pay 50 bucks for a show and come see a play. Why are they not come to play at once a month, you know, once a month, like, I can see that they’re bored at home you know, they’ve seen all the movies have seen all the TV shows, they’ve gone to the restaurants, they want variety, and so you can see the moment like blog to post about something wild going on, people are going to it because people want to go somewhere but why are they not coming to the theatre and it’s affordable, you know, some shows or 20 every theatre company in the city has a way for you to get a cheap price if you’re under 30 You can probably get like $25 tickets, or even less for some of them. You know, I have friends of mine who I was like, Do you know you can go to the National Ballet for $29 You know, you can go there like what I didn’t know that like, like, it’s not that they don’t know. And some of the information isn’t there. It’s the day it’s not part of our cultural sort of upbringing, or it’s not some part of our culture. We don’t talk about it. We don’t do it. Right. Yeah. So, I don’t know. I don’t know that I have the answer. But it’s certainly where I’m at right now. I’m asking this questions. The, the, the answers I’ve gotten when I ask people is to say, well, it’s too limiting. It’s really dark in there. The seats are really close. You know, I’m asked not to use my phone, which is so annoying, which these are fair. Like, initially, you’re like, Oh, come on, but they’re legitimate things, right. Like, that’s, those are the things that we like about theatre, we like that it dark. And we like that. It’s, you know, we’re squished, and we’re just gonna see magic on stage. But a lot of people don’t come because it’s too high risk. They can’t leave. If they don’t like it. They can pay 12 bucks to go see a movie and they hate it. They just walk out.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, no, that’s absolutely true. And I think I think that sometimes, you know, I mean, you bring up movies, so movies are dark, and people don’t use their phones in a movie, at least, they shouldn’t really get mad if they do. There’s always that one person though. But I think there’s the difference in like, so some people, they don’t go to theatre pass my factory Taragan they will go to the big Mirvish production. And, you know,
Indrit Kasapi
again, because it’s lower risk. Yeah, like, yeah, they know they’re gonna pay that 50 bucks, and it’s gonna be a great musical. And they leave whenever they want. Yeah, like,
Phil Rickaby
I mean, it’s still like, yes, sure, they can leave whenever they want. It’s still like everybody does watch you leave in that big theatre if you get up and leave. But there is an intermission, and you can sneak out at that point, correct? Yeah. I wonder because I think that we are, we’re a culture now that really is is is looking at, like people are going to experiences they’re going to the immersive Van Gogh experience.
Indrit Kasapi
Oh, yeah. Which is literally a projection show. Yes.
Phil Rickaby
It is literally a projection show.
Indrit Kasapi
He has been doing that we’ve been doing. Yeah, anyway. Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
But the question is, like, how, how do we get people to to come to that? I think we’ve done ourselves disservices in the past, because there’s lots of times when, you know, people go to see a show. And they didn’t get it, or they didn’t like it. And that becomes their whole experience of theatre. Right. I went to a play once and I didn’t like it. So yeah, I’m not gonna go again. We don’t. I mean, let’s face it, I’ve seen enough shows that are like you walk in, there’s a living room setup. And you’re like, okay, so Oh, god. Yeah, you know, and you know, those have their place. But when you see like, after, like, going to, like you’ve seen five in a row, the living room setup, you kind of like, I’m a little bored with that. So it’s one of those questions like, what, what do we do to let people know that the, like, how do we share the experience with them? Yeah. Well, I kind of sorry, go ahead.
Indrit Kasapi
No, I was gonna say is that I totally agree with you. And I think, I don’t know that I have the answer to that. But there are ways that we can at least try some things. That’s where I’m at right now. It’s like, we have to start trying to do things a bit differently. And so whether it is like part of it, I think that we don’t run our place long enough, because we cannot yesterday, expensive, you know, when you think about the vengo experience experience you’re referring to, you know, they ran that for a long time. So because word of mouth got out people you know, then then suddenly you’d start seeing the flock of people coming. But the time word of mouth gets out for plays in Toronto, it’s going to close it’s closed already, because it’s not running long enough. I think in Toronto, the only one I know that runs plays long, it’s probably terragon are a bit longer than the others. And even that it’s probably like four weeks maybe I don’t know that that’s enough time for the word to spread out. I’ve noticed that that’s the thing. The other thing is that we don’t have the marketing ability like it comes down to money like in order to in order for us to really invest in letting people know that this exciting cool thing is happening. Especially a lot of cool stuff that happens in Toronto is like at the indie level right? Like that kind of you know, you see these plays and they’re amazing and you we hear about it because we’re in the industry so the word spreads like you know, like fire and a lot of my friends that’s what they say they say well you know, I tell him to go see it as go see it now you know, but you know for the larger population, where are they going to find out about it? I mean, they don’t people don’t pick up now magazine anymore. Look at the listings.
Phil Rickaby
There is no now magazine to pick up any magazine anymore. No sad and and we’ve lost almost all of our media coverage as far as I Globe and Mail still is maybe the only newspaper that has a full time reporter covering the theatre, but they don’t really cover indie. Yeah. And they don’t, you know, so they’re like covering things on a certain level. Everybody else is sort of like hiring a freelancer now and then so maybe you see reviews, but that the coverage is not they’re not even blogged to that’s telling everybody about the, there’s a sunflower field and everybody rushes to the sunflower field to take pictures and grind, crowds it and ruins it, but they won’t talk. Like they’re not covering theatre at all.
Indrit Kasapi
No, no. Yeah, it’s very difficult. So you can see all the barriers that the that you know, and that’s not just the US Theatre Dance, you know, live performance as a sort of more, you know, mid sized to indie level, right? It’s very difficult you have, we do have people who still go to the theatre, and they’ve always gone to the theatre, and you’re always going to have that group of people that always come, I think, but to, you know, break through this level, where we’re at right now in terms of the amount of theatre that happens to serve the next level where people were you seeing lineups around the corner, like, now I was reading the history of theatre past Mariah, and they were talking about the farm shell. And they were talking about how long they ran it in the book, and they were talking about how there was lineups around the corner for the show. Like they couldn’t sell it fast. And like they they were just constantly selling tickets, you know, in my entire career in this industry. I don’t I think I can think of like one show. That’s how that kind of experience where literally, you’re selling tickets like crazy. At some point. There’s, there’s just a finite number of people that come see stuff here.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I remember, I did a show years ago, with a theatre company that I was part of, we did play in the style of a silent film. And I remember back in those days, my, my old theatre school acting teacher came to the show. And at the time, he saw it, and he laughed, and he said, Well, if this was a real city, this would never close. And I was like, at the time, I was like, what does he even mean by that? But then I realised that what he meant was like in a city like New York or London, it would run and it would run, and it would run, and somebody would say, Oh, I’ll bring this to the theatre, we’ll run it in perpetuity, because there’s so many theatres there that can do this thing and all that sort of thing. And that, that that kind of thing never happens here. And it sort of we’re not set up to be able to do that kind of thing.
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that’s why it’s like, how do we how but we have what we do have is creativity, you know, we have imagination. And so I think we just have to stop regurgitating the same kind of, you know, stuff, like even with the young people, I really encourage them to do, please do not do any more debt, David Mamet, like, you know, it’s, it’s such a, like, oh, I want to act, I’m gonna do David Mamet play, I’m like, Let’s do do something different, like, push the boundaries, you know, like, get people off the chairs, there’s, you know, during the pandemic, there was these pictures of, you know, because they were talking about a social distancing. And they posted these pictures of seats being removed from the theatre, and people were like, Oh, it’s so sad. And I was like, you know, what, that’s kind of cool. Like, maybe this is what we need, we need to remove his damn seats, and see what else we can do inside this space that might open our sort of minds and imaginations, you know, maybe we can rethink the way that we’re making things so that we’re maybe creating, you know, like, people are paying really good money to go see things in 3d, and I’m like, theatre is 3d. So, you know, let’s use that, let’s use people, I think people do want to get off their couches, and go somewhere and have like, an experience like an human 360 kind of experience. I don’t think people want to sit and watch something, I think people want to stand or lie on the ground or be sort of thrown into something, you know, like, so a lot of this kind of a lot of work. It’s happening here. You know, like outside the march does a lot of this amazing, kind of immersive kind of work. You know, Daniela Bartolini is another director, I can think of who’s doing a lot of the kind of work, but I think there could be more of that were inside the theatre. You know, you’re not necessarily being asked to do the thing that you’ve always been asked to do. Maybe now you’re being asked to stand and open a drawer and, you know, I don’t know, follow some storyline that way. And then you can maybe sit somewhere and listen to something, you know, like, I don’t really know. We’re playing with that a little bit of theatre passing right now. So we have a show coming up in our season called myrams. World, which is a you know, a lot of people might say it’s an exhibition, right? But to us, it’s an experience. So we’re trying the idea of bringing people inside the main space, so that they can move around it, right. Like they don’t have to necessarily stick and sit if they want to. There are chairs there. And they can stay for as long as they want but they can also just sort of sift through it. It’s up to them. It’s their decision to make what kind of experience they want to have inside. But it is a different way than, you know coming and sitting and going to intermission you know that kind of, you know, there’s there’s a beauty to it for sure, in terms of what the way theatres always made, you know, aspect, but I am I am investigating or I’m curious about other forms of experiences, theatrical experiences we can have inside our spaces. Years
Phil Rickaby
ago, I saw many years ago, I was in high school at the time, I saw a show at the Canadian stage, it was called donut city. And it was completely in like completely immersive. So scenes could take place behind you, or in front of you or over here, like you were in the space and it just happened around you. And that kind of experience of like, not knowing like, where the next scene is going to happen was it really jolted you out of like, any kind of complacency? You’re like, this is not what I was expecting. Because it was, it was very exciting to have happening right there.
Indrit Kasapi
It’s visceral. Right? That’s the beauty of that’s I’m saying I saw another show like that. At a Theatre Centre. I think Theatre Centre was doing a lot of amazing work. And I think it was called, this is how we got here, but I could be completely making that up. So do not quote me on this. I apologise. But it’s a beautiful dance show. God, I don’t remember the names, but you’ll in me, beautiful show. And same idea. You know, there was they asked her to take your shoes off and is it was one of those shows that I think if if Theatre Centre had the financial capacity to really market and to really say, Hey, this is what’s going on. This is super cool. Do not miss this. I think people would flock to it just like they would at a sunflower field to take pictures, you know, as Yeah, we’re inside of it. It’s visceral. Like you could send very close to performance, you can feel the moving. The lights are doing a thing on you, you know, the music is just moving through you. I think people want those kinds of experiences.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. To leave the theatre world for a moment. Yes. One podcast or to another. Tell me about your dating podcast. Oh, yes.
Indrit Kasapi
So fun. That this was a pandemic sort of love affair for, you know, that period of time, we were like, hey, maybe we should do something else. And you know, have fun with something else. A friend of mine really wanted us to start a podcast together. She’d been talking about a way before the pandemic. And I’d always sort of been like, I don’t know, I’m not really that’s not my thing, you know. And of course, the pandemic happened and like, everybody became a podcaster. You know, it’s like, oh, yeah, microphone, and I can do this. And so, we started, we decided, okay, let’s do this this time. And, yeah, we, we really wanted, I really wanted to do something that was just fun. You know, I didn’t want to do another podcast where you’re just talking, you know, like, I was like, I don’t really have much to say, you know, like, I’m not that smart. So I was like, I don’t know that we need to, like, you know, find a podcast where we’re talking to each other about things, you know, but so yeah, for some reason, the dating idea came on, it came, you know, about and we’re like, Oh, you don’t want that we don’t have we don’t have like a dating. You know, I’m obsessed with the reality TV show, like dating reality TV shows. So I was watching a lot of that. And I was like, I would totally listen to a dating podcast if there was one. So that’s where the idea came from. And we ran it for a bit until when it became a little bit too difficult to run. So now I’m just sort of in limbo, like in sort of, should we continue it? Should we not continue it? We’re still thinking about it.
Phil Rickaby
Like, did you follow a couple on a date?
Indrit Kasapi
So the show essentially, no, what we do is we bring on it’s a it’s a game show, so we bring a single of the week. And then we introduce that single of the week to three eligible other singles. And over the course of the episode, we play a whole bunch of games. And at the end of that, we say, Who would you rather, you know, who would you rather go on a date with, so they get to pick, you know, they haven’t met this, they don’t see each other at all, it says, line date, but what they do get to do is they get to play these games with them, they get to hear their voice. And they get to ask them questions, and vice versa, right. So it’s super fun. And, you know, I think people it’s also for me, it was sort of the obsession with dating apps, as I’ve turned the dating world into this sort of superficial, like swiping left or right. And so you’re basically making a decision whether somebody is the right match for you based on just like a two dimensional picture, you know, and you know, that we’ve forgotten about the three dimensionality that we have and how we turned on we might be by somebody that you might not necessarily swipe right on to and I mean, and so in a way the show was responding to that exhaustion around And you know, a visual base kind of dating to something that’s more auditory. So then you get a sense of them, you know, you really get to hear them. People responded really? Well, they loved the idea a lot of people that we had on our show, were kind of like, oh, this is amazing. Can I always date like this? Yeah, so that’s essentially the show. And then at the end of that, they get to go on a date together. But because of this pandemic, some of the dates were outside, and they weren’t alone. And, you know, that was completely between the two of them. But some of them were on zoom as fact. And so it was, it was super fun.
Phil Rickaby
Ya know, it. I mean, the whole dating thing is, is, you know, I like the idea that whole swiping thing has made dating feel like a catalogue. And so you’re, you’re like, always searching Amazon for Well, I found this but is there? Is there like something like, this is fine for now. But is there is there something better? Which is so like, you know, when I was, yeah, when I was dating, of thankfully, I’m not anymore. But like, I when I was out doing that it was all so very, you talk be talking to somebody, and then they would sort of like you get the sense that they’re just sort of waiting, like the I’m entertaining them for now. Until something else comes along? And it’s just so frustrating.
Indrit Kasapi
Yes, it feels and that’s what it feels like, it feels like people are just constantly distracted. Yeah, no, for sure. There’s a sure distraction. And the thing is, when you start dating at the beginning, you can be very easily distracted. Yeah. And it’s almost like people are too available. You know, here’s the guy had our kind of okay, day do you know, we wouldn’t even give people a second chance, because there was no can like, it was fine. But it was okay. And so you’re like, I’m just gonna go on the dating app and swipe again, you know, you know, I’m playing the it’s, you know, I heard this other podcast, I think that was talking about dating in today’s world. And it’s really set up in a way that it makes you want to go back because what the apps want is for you to continuously be single, yes, continuously play the game. They don’t want people to match up. I mean, let’s be honest here. Right. And so they might, that’s what they’re selling to you. So they want you to match. But what they want is for you to just kind of like play the roulette game, you know, again, again, again, right? And so yeah. Yeah, there. There are other ways to rethink, I think dating and against it. This has me rethinking things like structure of dating, and in today’s world, but the podcast was certainly one of the attempts, but I’m not sure if it’s something that you can, that you can sustain for a long period of time. It’s so
Phil Rickaby
I mean, there’s a lot of work involved in that kind of thing. Right? Like, yeah, getting
Indrit Kasapi
paid. Do you know, like, it’s like, just casting alone is, yeah, hours and hours and hours of work. And, you know, eventually we were like, this is super fun. We’re having a great time. But at this point, it’s turned into a lot of work. And yeah, the time, that’s the problem
Phil Rickaby
is, is, you know, almost nobody’s making money for podcasts. And yeah, news flash to anybody listening. But like, Oh, you’ve been doing it for six years. Good for you. Yeah. I must be getting something out of it. But it’s not money. But it’s it’s the you have to keep it at a level where it’s doable for you and you’re still enjoying it. Yeah, no, it that’s sort of the necessary thing. And if, if, if it’s taking more time, or it’s no longer enjoyable, you gotta let it go.
Indrit Kasapi
I agree. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not worth that, you know. And I think that’s where we’re at right now. We’re kind of like, that’s why we’re not fully letting it go. The podcast is available, people can listen to it, and what’s called Who would you rather you can find it everywhere. But for us, we’re saying we’ll pick it up again, when it’s time for us to have fun again, like, you know, for a while, we’re like, what are we gonna do our listeners were like, We can do whatever we want. Like, nobody’s not sleeping at night, because we haven’t released an episode, you know, like, it doesn’t matter. I think if we, when we started to look at it from that perspective, that it’s like, this is something that we can do, because we’re enjoying our time together, you know, the other the other two hosts and producers are friends of mine. So we’re like, we’re gonna pick it up again, when it’s time at this point. We have other things that are keeping us busy.
Phil Rickaby
It’s always the kind of thing we’re like, much like, you know, a your project based Theatre Company, it’s something that you can just sort of like, go to you could do a special episode and there would be, you know, exactly, exactly. You could it can be whatever, whatever and whenever you need it to be
Indrit Kasapi
I agree. I agree. Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. In terms of like, exploring theatre and live performance and how it can be experienced better. I mean, podcasting. You know, I experienced I experimented with some audio drama, things like that while the pandemic was on. There’s all kinds of different ways that that Companies have have sort of flirted with continuing to produce and video has been one of them. Theatre past summer. I did. Were there any attempts at putting anything out as a live stream or a live a live performance over video?
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah, I think for us, it became important that we wanted to continue, like you said, you know, we started in 2019, Marjorie’s like the to the 19 2019 2020. Season was a season that was already programmed by the previous artistic director, Andy McCann. So the 2020 2021, which is the peak of the pandemic was Marjorie’s first season programming, right. And in a way mine as well, because I was the associate. And so we were both very excited about the programming we put in place. And, sadly, we saw all the shows kind of have to move to a different way of thinking, and so we weren’t going to just let it go. And we worked with a lot of artists that wanted to explore what digital theatre meant. And for us, what we discovered was one of the core values of TPM is our desire to be an inclusive theatre company. So we’re really thinking about accessibility initiatives, you know, at the forefront of everything that we do. And we found that actually providing digital ways of experiencing theatre actually fulfilled an accessibility need, that there are individuals who are not actually able to leave their homes, and they want to actually have theatrical experiences. So, you know, for us right now, this is something that’s going to remain digital work is going to remain in our season, we have some this year as well, with a lot of live streaming. Last year, we did all sorts of kind of live streaming from, you know, very simple stuff like development, things of that a piece with Luke Reese, for example. And that’s in development, where the camera just follows him around the space as he’s telling his story. And, and then other pieces, like my play, which is called toca, where it was, you know, a multi camera, essentially, film shoot, you know, and it’s pre recorded and beautifully edited. And then it gets live streamed for specific times to the audiences, but it is a pre recording of a theatrical experience. But it’s really using capacity and beauty of film to its full extent, right, like, the close ups, right, like, was such so much power with close ups, we don’t have that in theatre, right? We have sort of magnitude in theatre, you know, sort of the big lighting, big set kind of idea. So we played with that a lot. And we’re going to continue playing right now we have a show called okay, you can stop now, which is a dance piece by Shaquille roloc. And with that one up, he’s investigating what the medium or the perception of of stories and people’s lives through the media, especially on on POC and black, but bodies, the ways the ways in which a story gets sort of twisted or told in a different way and how it’s framed or contextualised in a way that it makes one seem guilty or not guilty, right in certain circumstances. And in today’s age, we have these phones that we just pulled on are like, Oh, they’re I recorded it, you know. And then we’re just like, This is proof and you’re like What is approved, because maybe somebody just recorded a very small section to, or sometimes it is like, it is actual proof like, you know, they’ve captured you know, the situation when the reason that we responded the way we did to George Floyd is because we saw it. For a lot of people, they were like, This is what we’ve been talking about, or a lot of other people it was like, I cannot believe that this is what’s been going on, right? There’s a sort of like, disparate, but you know, people responding to that, because of that recording the ability of these little things that technology that’s, and so he’s really investigating that through dance, and what we’re going to do is going to livestream at through different cameras for the performers are manipulating. So you as an audience can come and watch it. And you’ll see different kinds of cameras capturing these different moments. So you’ll be able to see different sort of sections to and so we’re playing on that idea of what what the power of these phones are, or video capture can be and how it can actually support can make us you know, make this a better society and sometimes it can, you know, screw us over.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, for sure. I’m really glad to hear that theatre password is continuing with the video because I’ve been saying for a while that it opens accessibility doors, not just not just the accessibility door of for people who can’t leave their house, but also for people who maybe can’t get to the theatre. You Whether they live far away from the theatre or even like the go a night of going out to the theatre is too much because of you have to get dinner and you have to do this than the other thing. And there’s, I think there’s it opens up so much and I, there are so few theatres, who I think are still committed to the video, cuz there’s Acura and equity and they all want their piece. Right. Yeah. And that that becomes a problem that I think, I hope eventually they’ll come to some kind of accommodation. But part of the sceptic in Me thinks that they will just keep the status quo. But I think it’s so important to keep doing it in that way.
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more, I think that’s definitely what we’ll be doing. I know that there are other theatres are thinking the same, we’ve partnered with a culture in Vancouver, and they’re doing a whole digital series. So there’s gonna be digital presentations of their presenting one of our pieces, which is the euro, the cello that’s going on right now, the theatre pass tomorrow, you can come see them in person, but it’s, but it also will be an auditory experience. So you can come you know, experience it. We haven’t released the dates, but it’s gonna be something that you can also experience auditorily so we’re approaching it from different perspectives. Not every project uses video, some projects might be just auditory experience, my some projects might be, you get something sent in the mail, who the hell knows? Like, it’s, it varies on what the artist wants to be saying, you know, we always like to put the artist at the centre and what they want to say first, and then these other elements, I think should enhance what you want to say, like in this case was Shaquille, you know, bringing the video makes total sense, it actually, you know, helps tell the story better. And so that’s our approach. And I think I hope that other theatres do it as well. For me, personally, I just love that I can access Theatre in England or in Italy, or in the other parts of the world, that you know, you wouldn’t be able to see stuff because you can’t be there physically. Right. So now you can.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, I think it also breaks down the Canadian silo because, you know, if we’re in Toronto, we often don’t know what’s happening, or we don’t, we certainly can’t see what’s happening in Edmonton, or, or in Vancouver and things like that. sharing the video and making that available. Again, it lets us connect in this, this massive country that has all of these like little dots of theatre across it. And I think it’s so important. I know, it’s something that that the St. John Theatre Company, I did their Fringe Festival, and they had been doing video through the pandemic, and they even outfitted one of their main spaces with like a three camera setup that they could just like, run from. And they hadn’t intended to do video this year at their Fringe Festival. And they felt that their audience was demanding it. Wow. And so they, they flipped, and they were like, Alright, so we’re going to hear we’re going to offer these digital tickets, and it’s not going to be a live stream, because that’s too much for us to do right now. But they did record each performance each of the shows, and made it available for a limited amount of time during, during during the fringe. So during the fringe, if you couldn’t make it up to the theatre, you could still see the watching the show. That’s amazing. I think that kind of thing is so necessary to tie agree. Yeah, I really hope that it’s something we keep, we keep exploring.
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah. I also too, as well, I can see that. And, and not just that, but I hope that it gets you know that the technology gets better and better, and that we are able to have even more exciting adventures, you know, from a technological perspective. And I also think that that kind of work goes back to sort of where we started, or the conversation that we had earlier, which was, you know, how do we build better experiences that our audiences, I do think that this, this will bring more audiences to the theatre, we just have to start finding ways to use it. So that it doesn’t necessarily resemble, you know, a Netflix experience, right, like, right, because we can’t compete with that we cannot compete with
Phil Rickaby
no, and that’s the thing is, is I think it’s important that we you know, we’re still doing theatre, we’re not making films, we’re correct, but like to live stream and even if you can manage to get like a, like three cameras in a space, you can still make it dynamic and you can still make it make it correct. And it’s all doable, because you can all do that live. It’s just something that I think is worth exploring and I commend theatre Pasmore AI for keeping it going. And I hope more companies try that too.
Indrit Kasapi
Thank you on Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.
Phil Rickaby
But Andrew, thank you so much for talking with me today. I really appreciate your time.
Indrit Kasapi
Yeah, thanks for having me. This is a tonne of fun. Thank you
Phil Rickaby
This has been an episode of Stageworthy Stageworthy is produced, hosted and edited by Phil Rickaby. That’s me. If you enjoyed this podcast and you listen on Apple podcasts or Spotify, you can leave a five star rating. And if you’re listening on Apple podcast, you can also leave a review. Those reviews and ratings help new people find the show. If you want to keep up with what’s going on with Stageworthy and my other projects, you can subscribe to my newsletter by going to Phil rickaby.com/subscribe. And remember, if you want to leave a tip, you’ll find a link to the virtual tip jar in the show notes or on the website. You can find Stageworthy on Twitter and Instagram at Stageworthy pod and you can find the website with a complete archive of all episodes@stageworthy.ca If you want to find me, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Phil Rickaby and as I mentioned, my website is Phil rickaby.com. See you next week for another episode of Stageworthy