Claren Grosz is a Toronto based writer, theatre and visual artist and Artistic Director of Pencil Kit Productions. She recently published her first illustrated chapbook of poetry, starting with the roof of my mouth (Gap Riot Press, 2022). Some of her favourite theatre projects included directing CHICHO (Pencil Kit Productions/Theatre Passe Muraille, 2019) and co-creating and directing Shadow Girls (Pencil Kit Productions, 2018). She is the recipient of the 2018 Ken MacDougall Emerging Director Award and the 2015 My Entertainment World Outstanding Direction (Small Theatre) Award. When she isn’t making art, Claren teaches children and teenagers math on zoom.
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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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Claren Grosz is a Toronto based writer, theatre and visual artist and artistic director of pencil kit productions. She’s also the creator and performer of I love the smell of gasoline, which runs from March eighth to 19th at Toronto’s Aki studio. In this conversation, we talk about writing a show during the early days of the pandemic, her love of using overhead projectors in her shows and much more. Here’s our conversation.
Claren, and thank you so much for joining me. I’ve actually turned out I’ve been following pencil kit productions for a very long time. And so on Instagram I’ve been following probably a couple years now. So I’ve seen a lot of the stuff that you post. And I’ve seen I’ve seen a lot of overhead projectors. In the pencil kit production things I want to get to the overhead projector. But first off, could you tell me about the show that you’re currently working on I love the smell of gasoline,
Claren Grosz
I would love to. So I love the smell of gasoline is a play that I wrote him in performing in it’s an autobiographical solo show. I use the word solo loosely here because there’s actually three other people on stage with me doing these overhead projections. But I’m the one who speaks. And it is basically a play in which I’m trying to reconcile my own personal roots to the energy industry to oil and gas specifically, I grew up in Calgary, Alberta, my dad worked in oil and gas, and how I like balance knowing that with the impending environmental Apocalypse that is upon us, and also how I balance. You know, in my life, I know oil and gas workers and I know Albertans I know conservatives, and then most of my life in Toronto is kind of like a liberal arts bubble of sorts, and how I navigate conversations on kind of both ends of that spectrum. And yeah, how I kind of try and balance these really contradicting truths. Sometimes that’s kind of what the play is about.
Phil Rickaby
Now, as somebody who grew up with family in the in the oil industry, in the gas industry, all that sort of thing. What’s interesting is that a number of years ago, my brother started going out to Alberta to work in, guess what? Oil? And so I feel somewhat in a similar situation. The way that my brother and I have have learned to deal with it is we don’t talk about that. Yeah. Because, you know, for him, it’s just a paycheck doesn’t matter. And for me, it’s like it’s a little bit more than that. So, do you find something similar when you’re when you’re talking with with people back home? How do they are these conversations that actually happen? Or are the is the distance to great
Claren Grosz
whatever I was most the conversations happened with my parents. So there is a different level? Well, it’s just kind of the same proximity you have it’s a familial one right. And I have always felt perhaps because I grew up with that truth and I grew up in a in a culture like of Calgary where oil and gas is not a big demon thing. It’s really something that one in five people are working in, you know what I mean? That’s a made up statistic. I don’t know Actually no. Six that is on me, Claire, it gets close. I’m sure it’s close. But a large part of the workforce is working in that sector, right? It’s not in a primary industry than in a secondary or tertiary industry, is that right? So for me, it is just like part of the fabric of life. And I don’t see working in the producing end of oil and gas as any different than living in the consumption and oil and gas, which we all live in, right, like we all are heating our homes and driving cars and consuming those resources. And to me, that is on the same level ethically, as working in oil and gas. I mean, I at the broad brushstroke, obviously there are nuances to that opinion as well. But especially like, if we’re not talking about like, you know, the people who are making millions of dollars a year off of destroying the earth and coming up with Yes, or a cease to, like make Jack You wanna invest, you know, what I mean, obviously, and course, gradients here, then people who work on the rake, you know what I mean? Of course,
Phil Rickaby
I mean, it’s similar to like, you know, you’ve got, you got the, you know, you’ve got the plastic industry, you’ve got, you know, which which has successfully convinced us all that it’s our responsibility to reduce our plastic consumption. Also, I mean, you could go into as far as like, the ethics of my iPhone, you know, all of that sort of stuff, exactly.
Claren Grosz
That there are some saturated with that. Exactly.
Phil Rickaby
And, and, and I think that, you know, you have the people who produce it, and it makes them a living, and then the rest of us just sort of mindlessly consignment consume it. And we don’t, it’s so uncomfortable to think about. So. But but you’re you had to think about it because of the familial connection. And what made you want to write about that.
Claren Grosz
Um, so I actually started writing a play in the fall 2019, which was federal election season. And it’s when we exit started becoming a saying, and Alberta and Saskatchewan, like, exclusively voted conservative across the board. And, you know, people in my circles really, kind of think, kind of think of people who vote as conservative as being like, just completely unrelatable. Like they like, it’s unethical. It’s all of these bad things that they cannot even begin to wrap their head around. And I’m like, okay, but there is a whole province of people voting this way. Do you know what I mean? And it can’t be that everyone in that province is evil. No, and I’m. So I felt this tension between the narratives that I was hearing coming out of Alberta, and the narrative that was hearing from my friends, and just like the inability for those narratives to meet, they didn’t even have an opportunity to meet right, or to have conversations across that. So I wanted to read a piece of art that did bridge these things, right, I see art that just argues for environmental progress. And, you know, we see a lot of eco activism art. And then I see, you know, as the art about conservative oil and gas use, but
Phil Rickaby
not, not usually not usually. But like maybe you’ll
Claren Grosz
see a Calgary Herald article, but he don’t see those perspectives at the same time. And so I was like, How can no layer these and try and like, sandwich them into a lens to understand Canada? And what is happening? How can I try to understand it all? If that makes sense? Yeah. I don’t know if that makes sense.
Phil Rickaby
No, absolutely. Absolutely. So So I mean, in terms of like trying to put these things together, how how, how do you stitch these things so that they can be coherent? How do you? How do you distil two things that seem so distant into a show?
Claren Grosz
Well, one of the things I kind of started right from the top was embracing a kind of collage structure, which is just to say, to put the two contradicting truths right next to each other. So you know, to spoil one scene in the play, I talked about how I used to work in retail. And, you know, when you’re working in the fitting rooms, it’s actually often like a very intimate environment and you’re working with like, you know, I would be working with women who are buying a dress for a significant occasion or like, are in the middle of a really bad situation in their life, and they’re trying to get a dress to feel better about themselves. Those kinds of things as a talking about like the emotional pole of that moment, and like what it means to buy a new dress, and then immediately following that up with the just the fact that that dress is made from spandex and polyester which is made from petroleum, and that that dress is made overseas in bad conditions for the workers and that it’s coming wrapped in plastic and the bad dress is gonna end up in landfill like these. These are just both true at the same time. So a lot of the play is just collaging together these facts so we can hold them as close together as we can at the same time. And I think that having to sit with that discomfort about our own ethical choices opens you up to sitting with the discomfort of other people’s as well. Just so that My Well My hope is that we can start having conversations that are a little bit more compassionate, and empathetic and understanding that other people are yes, also making questionable ethical decisions. But from the same place that we are all are that we’re trying to do our best, and that the world is making that really difficult. And that we have to be on the same team as we’re like approaching fixing the world.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s the whole, like, sitting in two different things is kind of interesting to me. I wrote a solo play that I’ve been forming for a number of years, called the commandment number of years ago. And one of the things that I enjoyed about about that show is when I would pitch it to people, it didn’t matter if they were atheists or Christians, they both thought that they were going to get the experience that they thought they were going to get, like, the Christians were like, Oh, it’s so great. The atheist is gonna learn to come to God. And the atheists were all like, all the agents gonna, like stick it to God. Like it was like this really interesting thing, where they both got it. And interestingly, my director was an atheist. But he recently performed it in Edmonton. And so we’ve both come at it a different from different ways to create this same show, and the show doesn’t change. It’s just your perspective changes. In terms of your audience, is this a show that you could perform in Calgary? And in Toronto, and have people have their own experience with it? Or is this a show that is kind of just for Toronto kind of thing?
Claren Grosz
That’s a great question. I am actually trying to take it to Calvary. So grand scheme. Yes, I think it’s a show that could be performed in both and that I’ve tried to write about both cities in a way that will make them both feel honoured. It would have to be tailored a little bit though, because it really is specifically like you Toronto audience don’t know this about Alberta, which would have to be tailored just a little bit. Right. But um, no, a lot of adjustments. So just have to be like you Albertans do know this about Alberta? Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know about this about us, like, you know what I mean? But I do tend to always speak to the audience as an us and I think that like when I’m talking to my Toronto audience, it’s an US US Toronto people. Yeah. When I’m in Calgary, it would be talking. This is an us, you and me, Calgary.
Phil Rickaby
You mentioned starting to write it in 2019. I’m always fascinated about the writing process and how long it takes to write something. The commandment took me years. I know. But I’ve said, you know, the solo gets easier. That’s just like, the first time you read is really, really intimidating.
Claren Grosz
And Tom has Demick you don’t know. I mean, got it. Done. It did.
Phil Rickaby
You did? You did. You did have that. But I’m just gonna, okay. So during the pandemic, I think the first year of the pandemic, I had no creative juices whatsoever. Like for most of 2020, I was just like, I’m just doing scrolling, just whatever this is all I have in me right now. No creativity. Did you find that that in those first days of the pandemic and the first month that you were able to be creative? Or was it were you in a similar situation?
Claren Grosz
I will give the context of I was really blessed in a pandemic with I didn’t end up in any kind of financial precarity, like my job transition on to I work as a tutor, and that transition online, if anything, I could take on more students like, Janine and better. And my roommate worked from home. So a lot of the things that made life really hard for people during the pandemic I did not have. And so for me, I ended up with a lot more time. And my biggest obstacle in life was boredom. So I would say I actually did get a creative burst, I did a lot of art, visual art. I did a lot of creative writing, like poetry. I actually just released an illustrated chat book of poetry with gap right press in the summer nights from all that, and also part of this creative moment in my life with writing this play. So yes, I would say it went in bursts though, like I would have, you know, three nights where you’re staying up until 3am writing and then not touch it for months, and then read three nights where you’re like,
Phil Rickaby
yeah, absolutely. Now, that process of writing this play, you know, the first draft is always the first draft. And then if you look back from between the version that you’re, you’re rehearsing now and about to perform, and you compare it with the early days. Do they look like the same show? Or are they is there like vast differences? What, what what, how has the plate changed?
Claren Grosz
That’s a good question. And it’s funny because I was truly yesterday looking at the first draft for the first time in years. And there are definitely still a lot of sections in it that made it into the play. I will It’s a it’s a completely different beast. But it was longer. So for example, the play right now is like, is 28 pages, like on a normal printer page plus it has like a column of stage directions. So it’s a quite short play, it’s like 65 minutes, the original draft is 50 pages. With no column procedure access was much longer, much more rambly. And I know that the way I just approached it, is I would just, I didn’t journal about all these different things and just figure out, the idea was, I’ll figure it out later how and if any of these things fit together. For now, I’m gonna write out these chunks, like crea generate some material that I can then collage together was kind of the strategy. So I would say it was a much more verbose version of what I am now working with.
Phil Rickaby
The way that you describe that I’m curious about your theatre school experience, if you did go to theatre school? Where did you go?
Claren Grosz
I went to TMU.
Phil Rickaby
Okay. And at any time, in that time, did you do what’s called a vocal mask? Or does that phrase mean anything to you?
Claren Grosz
I don’t think that means anything to me. If I am getting forgetting all my schooling, but yet, I
Phil Rickaby
will. I will say that if you have done a vocal mask, you would not ever forget how vocal mask because your your vocal mass, the way that we did it, I went to George Brown Theatre School, and we would do one each year. And you’re collaging of from found materials. So you’re like finding material and you’re trying to create a cohesive entertainment out of it. But that knowledge is sort of like carried over to where that ability is carried over to the way that I now create solo shows in terms of like, I write, and I write and write, and then I see what comes out of that writing, and what can I use and that sort of thing. So just curious if that sort of came out of a theatre school thing? Or did you find that on your own? For me, it
Claren Grosz
came out of actually devised theatre. I’m thinking of I directed and dramaturge a play in 2016, Persephone, so we adopted as an ensemble, the story of Persephone for the stage. And how I did that is I would give the cast prompts that I was curious about, and they would respond. And we just kept doing that until I ended, we had generated a big mass of material, and then I kind of splice things together and checked in with them. And we put it together. And then I was kind of like, okay, I could do that on my own. Like I could give myself prompts about things I’m kind of curious about and see what comes out. It’s also the way that I co wrote a play called Shadow girls with Kashia POM. And we also did the same thing of like, we have to come up with five offers, here are some prompts, that basically is forcing yourself to generate something. And because it’s two different skills generating and then piecing together, right, and I think if you treat them separately, they both feel easy. When you try and like do it at the same time. You’re like, I have to create a play that feel you click off.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, no, no, no, no, that’s I mean, I sort of stumbled on on you know, taking the vocal mask. Exercise into creating a show because the idea of creating a solo show is too big, too big, so big, especially your first one, but just generally, it’s like I have this is gonna be me doing this thing. And it’s a bit too much. But the idea of like, just like writing a bunch of ideas and seeing where they go, and then like finding out of their cohesive things or putting it together later that that is doable.
Claren Grosz
Absolutely. breaking it into steps. Yeah, absolutely.
Phil Rickaby
So now I want to know about the overhead projector because I grew up in a time because I’m an old man, I grew up in a time when the overhead projector was like every class had one. Yeah, the big light bulb the thing and the acetate and teacher would like right on it and stuff like that. It was like, just like, that’s how we did it. You know, that’s sometimes they would do if they’d come in, they’ve had everything prepared and it just be like, slap the acetate on the thing. And then we would all take frantic notes, that sort of thing. I don’t even know if they if they use those anymore in school. I highly doubt it. How what what was your experience of the overhead projector and how did you decide that you were going to use that in theatrical productions?
Claren Grosz
I have two answers for this. The one and the smart answer is that I liked the way that overhead projector art as a medium was a bit of a Reduce Reuse recycle thing. It was reducing an entire lighting grid to one simple machine. It’s repurposing something that has been in ticketed, it is a lot of the projections are created with found objects. So there’s like a bit of recycling in the things you use to create the projections. So thematically that’ll fit plus I liked the idea that it was this a learning tool right in the play is, in some ways, kind of like, I want to say luxuries. That sounds boring. But there is definitely an element of like sharing research to the play. So thematically it really seemed to fit. That’s the good answer. Perhaps the real answer is to set I love overhead projection art as a medium. And I wanted to do that. So I was like, It’s my plan, I get to do what I want. I want to use alberca projector.
Phil Rickaby
That kind of answer is NO is absolutely my favourite answer to any question. Years ago, I was at many, many years ago at New blondes and I came across this installation where there was a structure and they had balloons and they had lights. And it was fascinating. And I went inside and it was great. And I said to the guy that artists was there. I said, Where did you come up with this? And he said, I just wanted to put a balloon on a light. Yeah. I thought it would be cool. And I was like, That is 100%. The best answer that I’ve heard.
Claren Grosz
Yeah, yeah, that’s the real answer. Right? Yeah. A lot of real art answers, but we have to come up with better things for grant applications, right.
Phil Rickaby
I think we should be able to say, I just thought it would be cool to put a thing on a thing. And I think that should be acceptable. And
Claren Grosz
I was right. It was interesting. So you know, I balloon guy, he’s like, John,
Phil Rickaby
there you go. Now tell me about the set for this show. It’s it. There’s sounds like there’s more to it than just projection. So tell me about, about about the visual in terms of this set for this show.
Claren Grosz
Yeah. So we’ve worked with echo zoo as a criminal as a set designer, and then also worked with Jessica Heemstra, who is a visual artist. And when Jessica has done for us, is create these big crew plastic bank art installations. So kind of picture like a waterfall made out of plastic garbage bags, pouring out of an oil barrel is what’s happening on stage. And those are quite beautiful. And I, I’m gonna just go ahead and steal her words, Jessica Heemstra, just so we all know who I am crediting here. But she told me when she crew was building these, that what she liked about what we were creating that mirrored what she thought was happening in the play is that we’re playing on that tension between something being beautiful and giving us something appealing that we like, but also being wrong and dirty. And so you see this sculpture, and it’s quite voluminous and shiny, and really pretty looking by it is made of plastic, like is made of this awful, awful thing that we’re all here to like, you know, talk about how bad it is. So that tension, and I thought that was really neat. And also the tension between something being so clean and beautiful and pristine. But actually so dirty and evil. Yeah. So that kind of I liked. I was like, yeah, like, let’s put those up.
Phil Rickaby
That’s, that’s fun. Now, you are a theatre artist. And you were also a visual artist. This is a podcast about theatre, but I like to I like the arts. So tell me about can you tell me about your visual art and when you started painting or, or doing visual art?
Claren Grosz
Yeah. So I, I actually, I was into visual art. Before I was into theatre. And in high school, I was more committed to the visual arts and I was to theatre until an amazing, amazing drama teacher changed my mind. But my visual art is mostly drawing, actually line drawing, with just ink, and also more like realism drawing with pencil work. And then in the last couple of years, I’ve just started to get into painting with goulash, and watercolour and acrylic. But I really like it. One of the things I like about my visual arts practices, I didn’t end up pursuing it professionally, I continued to pursue it, just like a desire to create art. Which means I think I have a lot if there’s no pressure in there, you know, if I don’t create visual art for a year, literally, no one’s gonna care. And when I do create it, it’s always motivated, like, truly from an emotional place. You know, in the way as a theatre artist, I often am creating because there’s, like a sense that I need to, like you need to prove something or like if you don’t create something, you’re gonna fall off the treadmill of relevancy, or that’s my job. Like, I have to, you know, to do something and make something and I don’t feel that way with art. So visual art, so yeah, they’re complementary.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, I want to drill down on that thing you just said about about the the way that if there’s the pressure to create, to make sure that you’re doing something. And I think that that’s something that we all have felt, and we all feel like, if I’m not doing this thing than Am I an artist and then the pandemic happened, a lot of people were like, oh, Oh, like I, what is this mean? Who am I all this sort of stuff. And some people hit the ground running and creating another people took longer did you experience with the with on the theatre realm? A sort of like taking a downtime taking a breath in the past three and a half years? And how did that feel as because we it’s something that we don’t tend to do in theatre very often.
Claren Grosz
Yeah, well, actually, to be honest, my work as a theatre artists, especially because I work mostly as a director actually means that I go long swaths of time without gigs. And that’s not uncommon to me. And I was actually in the middle of a long swath of not working on a project when the pandemic hit. And in a weird way, this is gonna sound terrible, but in a weird way, everyone was stopped to do theatre stopped from doing theatre, and I was no longer just like, taking a break, everyone was taking a break. And it made me feel less of that pressure. And I got to relax. And then that coupled with the fact that I started writing this play, and I also started working with a number of other playwrights to get their work off the ground. So I actually in the last couple of years, I’ve had a big resurgence and cross off a lot of career milestones in my life. That yes, but for me, the pandemic kind of had that opposite effect. But I do want to stress especially if you know it’s theatre people who are listening just, I do not have back to back to back to back work. Like, I think there is a conception that everyone is getting a tonne of work all the time. Oh, yeah. We
Phil Rickaby
love to portray that. Yeah. Love to portray that like, Oh, what are you sorry? All the time? Oh, yeah. I hate that question. By the way. That’s the first question that theatre people always ask each other. And I hate it personally, because I, like I’m always working on something but don’t like to talk about it always. Like if especially if it’s an early stage, people like, what are you working on? And I’ll be like, it’s too early to talk about it. I want to say anything quite yet. And they get awkward and shit. But it’s like, it’s such a such a, it’s like the worst question.
Claren Grosz
Exactly. The question I switch to is what’s got you excited these days? Huh? She that’s a much better question. Yeah. And it could be work, you know, someone will, you know, if they want to talk about their work, then they can use that as an excuse. But I also be like, I’m just learning how to bake bread. Like,
Phil Rickaby
I mean, hey, yeah, absolutely. Now the name of your theatre company, the theatre company, or the artistic director of his pencil kit productions. Now, where does that name come from? Is that Is it come out of your visual art? Or tell me about about that?
Claren Grosz
I got to be honest with you. That name comes from when I like signed up for the fringe lottery in 2015. And you have to put down a company name and I looked around my house instead of what is nearby that I can name a company after and I saw peds look at and I was like that’s a good productions. Yeah, but have no alliteration thing going on. I’ll go with that.
Phil Rickaby
And the desperation of the desperation of fringe application forms has been the birth of so many theatre company names. And every time I hear it, it’s like you think was gonna be some like real deep answer to it. Just like I needed a name for fringe. And this is what we ended up with. Oh,
Claren Grosz
yeah. And well, good on fringe for just pushing us all
Phil Rickaby
to exact quickly come up.
Claren Grosz
But I feel good, that like, you know, the name did work. And we have like, a nice logo designed at that time. And, I mean, yeah, it all it all worked. I’m glad that that worked out.
Phil Rickaby
Nice. Nice. That you alluded to a bit of your theatre journey, but I want to I want to talk a bit more about about your theatre origin story, because you use you mentioned that you were going to go into the visual arts until a theatre teacher changed your mind. Now at that point, before that, did you have a any kind of experience of theatre or Was that your first experience of theatre? And how did you go? How did one teacher change your focus from art? To I’m going to do theatre with my life?
Claren Grosz
Uh huh. So I had theatre I’ve been in like, you know, I was in Calgary, young people’s theatre plays, you know, like the community theatre for kids growing up. I did a lot of theatre outside of school, but it was always an outside of school thing. And then when I was picking my courses for high school, I felt like I had to kind of pick because I was also I’m also really big on math and sciences. I knew I was going to take at least two sciences, all the math courses. Big on the academic so it really came down to I could only pick one art that I was going to do. And I remember thinking at the time, it’s easy for me to do theatre with this community theatre that I do theatre with and at school, it makes more sense for me to focus in on that Sure. So that was kind of the starter to it. And then I ended up auditioning for the school play and getting a role, which I remember really shocked me at the time because I wasn’t part of like the drama kid community, and it was like a five person show. So I really did not think I was gonna get it. It was kind of shot in the dark. And I did and it was an incredible experience. This drum teacher, her name is Caitlin Kalish, and lo, when she works at Western Canada High School. She’s a brilliant director, and like so that her kids just did a device theatre piece that went to highperformance rodeo. So very neat work that she’s doing with kids. And that was incredible. So after that show, I was like, Oh, my God, like, I think I need to get into drama class, like, I want to be with these people. I want to keep working with you. And so she let me skip grade 10 and go straight into 11 and 12 in grade 12. Like I did grade 11 and 12, cedar back to back and the last year of high school. And in that same year, my parents were probably like, what just happened? So I was committed to the visual arts, but I was also committed to math. So I thought I would do something like architecture, because that would unify the math side of my brain in the visual arts. So my parents are all like geared up for years. And like, yeah, she’s gonna do architecture, it’s gonna be great, what a great job. And then I’m like, actually, I think I’m gonna be a theatre artist. But the other decision was made, frankly, by my drama teacher, she pulled aside like a handful of us one day and Ray 12 and was like, Okay, we need to start preparing your auditions for university. And I was like, what? That’s like a thing that people don’t even like it to even think that was thing I remember looking around at the other people being like, did I miss a conversation? Like, why am I in this conversation? She just talked about it as if it was like a real thing that can actually happen. And I was like, Well, if it is a real thing that can actually happen. Then sign me up. I want to do that
Phil Rickaby
was like your first inclination or first inkling of the idea that this is something you could do like, this could be like a profession.
Claren Grosz
Yeah. Yeah. Like it really didn’t occur to me that that was like a professional thing that I think real people did. I mean, I went to play. I don’t know what I was thinking. But it just felt it felt so far away. Like those are stars on stage. That’s not like a real thing. Yeah, no.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. And then so you went to you went to Tmu. And was that? That’s what brought you to Toronto. Yes. And you stayed.
Claren Grosz
I stay. My mother hates that. But you guys
Phil Rickaby
which was, which was a more difficult conversation, telling your mother you’re going into theatre, or that you’re going to stay in Toronto?
Claren Grosz
Probably that I was gonna stay in Toronto, but she got, she got like, you know, it’d be like, Oh, I’m coming home for summer each year. And then I come over somewhere a little bit less. And then I got a job and then I’m just gonna stay put. So it was like a slow dying of the dream that I Are you kind of eased into it. Yeah, but I gotta say the dream was non dead. Like she every time I talked to her on the phone, she’s like, you can still move back to Calgary. I mean, I could probably, like, afford some property at some point in the future. I moved back to Calgary. That’ll never happen in Toronto.
Phil Rickaby
Now. Now. And that is why Alberta advertises me subway tell me Torontonians to go to Alberta. I
Claren Grosz
do look at those sometimes. And I’m like, yeah, yeah.
Phil Rickaby
But yeah, absolutely. Now, math. I will be upfront. About About my math experience. I was diagnosed with dyscalculia. Very, very young. So math is not a thing that my brain goes to. was math always a thing for you. Was it always like a thing? I’m good at this?
Claren Grosz
Yeah, I was always like, good at it. When I was a kid. And then in high school, I was doing like advanced math courses, or I like completing calculus early while I was in grade 11. And I was fine. I liked it. But I sometimes do wish that I’d had a teacher that had done the same thing that my drama teacher had done for me when I was in high school for math. Because again, it just didn’t occur to me that math was something that could be fun and interesting. Like I was good at and, but it wasn’t a cool, interesting thing to be good at. So I just didn’t pay much attention. And now
Phil Rickaby
we’re just naturally good at the math and nobody was ever like, we can nurture this.
Claren Grosz
No, no one’s really pushed me in any. My parents really just like, let me do whatever the heck I wanted. Which was lots of stuff. I mean, I you know, I did all the advanced math courses, but no one was ever like, Yeah, you should really you know what I mean. But then I became a math tutor. And once I started teaching math on my own that you know, there’s no, the burden of it is gone, because now I’m like, kind of just doing it for fun for my own thing to teach other people. I was like, Oh, this is so much funner like what I do when I get to teach calculus now I’m like, really enjoy it. That’s my favourite sessions. And I’m like
Phil Rickaby
you find do you find? Do you find interesting ways to help people understand the math? Are you working with people who are like having trouble with math, and you find different ways to to help them I understand what the numbers are doing.
Claren Grosz
Yeah, I do. Yes. And I work with kids, the youngest kids I’ve worked with have been in grade five. And then the oldest ones I work with are in grade 12 and varying ranges, right? There’s like kids who are working in calculus. And then there’s kids who are just trying to figure out their times tables. So yeah, and each kid needs math explained in a slightly different way. So it is also kind of a creative endeavour to try and try and teach different people math in a way that will work. Yeah, right. But also like, it has to come from my brain. So it has to be how I understand math. Right? painted in a way that they will understand.
Phil Rickaby
You have to find some kind of translation to Yeah, with letters. Yeah.
Claren Grosz
It’s a lovely directing actually. Something in your brain, and you need it in their brain. How are you going to us? Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
Interesting. Interesting, that worlds do collide. Now, this show that you started writing in 2019. And you know, you’re basically about to perform it. As we record this, you’re going to start performing this next week. Not to not to stress you out. Oh, it’s been so long. I know that that you’re super proud of the team for this show. When did the team for I love the smell of gasoline start to be assembled.
Claren Grosz
The team that we have right now is assembled for the fall for the we did a workshop performance at the Roots Festival in the fall. But the project has been developed by a lot of different hands. So I want to give a shout out to Luna Narrows and Emily Jiang and J. Northcote who have also worked on the project in the past as projectionists through different workshops. But the the team we have now came together in the fall. So that’s all the designers and projections that are currently working on the show, the stage manager, etc. That’s what really came together.
Phil Rickaby
And how, how did you go about finding the right people to fill these roles? What does that what does that process look like to find people to be like, Hey, we’re doing this weird projection thing? Who are the right people to assemble into the the Avengers for this show?
Claren Grosz
I gotta tell you, it’s really difficult to actually it’s really difficult, like down to like, how do you even put on a call, like, Who are you trying to target? There are no projection artists out there, like are overhead projection artists out there. So how did we do that? Well, one of our revenue is going to tell you in case by case what it was Elise, who is one of our projection artists, at least wha she worked on Shadow girls, which is the play that I referenced that I co created with, with cash upon, and that was also an overhead projector play. And so she’d worked on that and she is gifted at this stuff. Like if there was an overhead projection Artist Title, she would, you know, just she’s, she does a great job. So she was an eye and she she doesn’t even work in theatre as much anymore. She works as a doula and a yoga instructor and has her own like business that she’s running and I just called her up and I was like, Listen, I need you to come back to theatre. I need you to do this for me. And she was like, Yeah, you know what Absolutely, like, all goes through that open door. So that’s how I got her on the project. Jessie is a projection artist who works as a puppeteer often. So I targeted them because I was like, Okay, someone who works in puppeteering is going to be good with their hands good with visuals that don’t shadow puppets that feels like it’s called lots of transferable skills. And it did. They’re also great at it. And then stuff our last projectionist was one of the directors, the co director will, one of his colleagues that he’d worked with before, and I honestly had just been like, hey, we need a third projection artists do you know anyone who would have this niche set of skills including being good with their hands, visually oriented, a sense of rhythm? Anyone? And he was just like, Okay, well, there’s this one girl that I think would be really, really great to work with. She’s never done it before. But I just have that feeling. She’ll be good at it. And she was so we lucked out. But in the past when I put out calls I don’t know I just say everything I just said about you have to be good with rhythm. good with your hands. It’s yeah, it’s so nice. I don’t know, really any skill set.
Phil Rickaby
But fascinating. I mean, it’s not something you see every day. So like, I can, I only I can only think of one other show. That used overhead projector projection that I saw many years ago. But it’s the only show that I’ve seen that that has used the overhead projector projector. And so and it didn’t wasn’t like that. The I would say the slides were a utility slides and not like artistic slides for that show, so it’s not something that you often see. So it’s interesting to hear you describing like, how, how do you describe what this is for people who were going to do it? You’re you are creating a new role.
Claren Grosz
Yeah, I actually, you know, I often describe it as like choreography. I’m like, it is an hour and it’s, you know, it’s 65 minutes of you doing choreography with your hands. Mm hmm. Because it’s not also it’s also not just transparencies, we do print out a lot of transparencies like those acetates. Here we’re talking about, but we also like put a dish full of water on the projector. And we also, you know, layer on. Of course, now, I can’t think of a single other image, of course, of course, but that’s just a lot of different different things. So it’s not just Yeah. Yeah. Anyway,
Phil Rickaby
the the interesting thing is as now, do this is like such a logistics question. But do you as somebody who’s used this overhead projector projector in the past? Do you have a more than one projector? Or in be more than one bulb? Or is it like, this is the only projector? And if it if it ever dies? We can never do a projector show again? Because nobody makes these holla?
Claren Grosz
Yeah, it isn’t been like,
Phil Rickaby
no, just I was reacting to the
Claren Grosz
Yeah, it is a bit of a, like a low key stress that we run into every once in a while. Okay, so we have I own personally five overhead projector, which is just a reasonable amount for any sane person to have.
Phil Rickaby
Absolutely, absolutely. Most people own as least between three and five. Yeah,
Claren Grosz
I’ve just accumulated these over the years. But I would say only three of them really worked great. And those are the three we’re using for the shelf. We did have to buy a bunch of backup bulbs. And the bulbs are expensive, because they are so niche, right. And if one of those breaks, you know, we have an interrupt, we could use one of the other projectors in the interim that it would have some kind of sacrifice, like not as bright, who would be the biggest thing. But otherwise, we have to try and source another one last minute. I mean, you can find them on Kijiji, and you can find them on Facebook. But I am also kind of cognizant, I’m like, there is a limited timestamp like eventually, there are going to be no overhead projectors, like you know, they’re simple Delfines and they’re gonna break like supply is dwindling.
Phil Rickaby
Not just supplier of the of the machines themselves, but also the moms the the bulbs,
Claren Grosz
and there’s no replacement parts. Like if one thing breaks on it,
Phil Rickaby
you know, you would almost have to find somebody who could like, if possible, 3d print you a replacement, because nobody’s producing those parts anymore.
Claren Grosz
You know what, though? I do wonder, you know, if you spent money to hire people who are good at building things, they’re pretty damn simple machines. Sure. Yeah. Like, I feel like you could build a projector from scratch. And you know, the right person can do that. Probably without too much sweat.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, just they have to also below, like, manually create the bulb, as well. Oh, yeah. To find somebody to Jedi. That’s,
Claren Grosz
I guess you could probably use a different type of bulb maybe?
Phil Rickaby
I guess. Yeah. I mean, if you’re building it from scratch, you can use whatever Yeah, maybe maybe when the industrial version, just so happens, you’ll be able to, to do that. Now, in terms of like, putting the show on, its on its feet and getting the final version, your main, like I said, You’re opening next week, or this week, if you’re listening to this. When it comes out in terms of like putting it putting it together. You’ve got your team, what goes into the process of like, the behind the scenes, getting it on the stage and working with the with all of that, like how, how does that come together?
Claren Grosz
It’s really, really collaborative. So I’m co directing the piece with William Tao, who is a really brilliant emerging director. And all the projections are, I would say, collaboratively developed. Some of them have been developed in the room with the projection artists that are present. Some of them were developed in workshops with the previous projections that I mentioned. Some of them were just concocted in my brain as I was writing. But we always get into the room. And everybody including the stage manager, I like I’m really who it has actually also Taylor Young has also worked as one of the projectionists before everyone gets a say in what the production is going to look like it’s so that’s really collaborative. And it was a bit of a weird process, especially for me because I’m looking at the playwright and the per Former and then also like designing these projections and CO directing. And in the fall, what it looked like we had to prioritise because staging the projections takes a lot of time. So we kind of built the show around the projections. And then I had to act within them was kind of the process, which is different than, you know, a typical structure where you build a show around actors, then you add design on top of that. It was the opposite. We built the container for the show, and then inserted me as a performer.
Phil Rickaby
But I could definitely see the need for that as far as like if you’ve got all this choreography going on to get to get the projections working. That’s sort of the the machine of the show that that has to work. And you can as the performer can be somewhere within that. It would be almost impossible to work the other way around.
Claren Grosz
Absolutely. Yeah. So it’s been wrong. Yeah. Strange. Go
Phil Rickaby
ahead. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you’ve done a show that you’ve done shows it did use projection in the past. Was that a similar situation then? Or is this a more elaborate production? As far as the projections go?
Claren Grosz
This is more elaborate just in that. I mean, right now, it’s a 65 minute show. But at the Roots Festival, it was an 80 minute show. So I know, I should get a lot of props as a playwright for shaving that many pages off my screen.
Phil Rickaby
So there’s a lot of pages that’s a lot of babies to to kill. Yeah, I was like,
Claren Grosz
Oh, my darlings. Anyway. What was I gonna say? So yeah, just the scale, like there’s just so much more of a shadow girls was a really tight like, I don’t know, under 15 minutes, I think, short little show. But it’s still it was very labour intensive to get 50 minutes of overhead projection work. And in that show, we had four projectors coming in, like in an L shaped stage. So the two projectors on each side going from different directions. It was quite a elaborate tech time there. So yeah, this one is bigger, just in that it’s bigger space, more design components and a longer script. But technically about the same like the images can only get so complex with the overhead projectors, so now sent answer the question. Yeah,
Phil Rickaby
absolutely. It does. Absolutely, it does. So last question for you. Is after all of this time working on this show from 2019 going through workshops and doing it the rudest festival and, and now getting to hear is there something you are most looking forward to discovering from this production?
Claren Grosz
Yes, this production the big new thing that I’m very excited about is that we have ASL interpretation on two of the night. And we just you know, speaking today, what is it today it’s February 28. We just started ASL rehearsal today. So the next few days are dedicated to ASL. We’ve got sage actually ever said their name out loud their last name out loud level level, who is working as a performer alongside me. And we have a he Persaud and Harry interpreters as well. And it’s just been fascinating, like today was fascinating to see how do we translate from my spoken English into ASL? And how do we apply it’s just really, really fascinating how we block it. And I’m really excited to see how that turns out.
Phil Rickaby
Fascinating essay, my father was a teacher at schools for the deaf through most of my life. So although I never picked up the sign language, I always just fascinated with watching him turn words into into signs. It’s not just like it’s not a direct translation. So I always found that fascinating. Yeah, one of
Claren Grosz
the things like I learned today that there are three different signs for Calgary. And all of them are interesting. I’m going to describe them because I love them so much. One is shaking, see. And one is like finger guns, which makes sense like a cowboy. A certain thing for Calgary which I love. And then one is gesturing to the elbow, which I thought was great because I introduced Calgary off the top of the show as being at the Mogens Deus, which is Blackfoot, for elbow. It’s the place where the Bow River and the elbow river meet. And so that is such a beautiful interpretation of Calgary for it to be a gesture to the elbow. So I love that.
Phil Rickaby
That’s fascinating. That’s great. Claren, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. Really appreciate it.
Claren Grosz
Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure talking to you Yo
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 podcasts, 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 philrickaby.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 @stageworthypod. And you can find the website with a complete archive of all episodes at stageworthy.ca. If you want to find me, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at @PhilRickaby and as I mentioned, my website is philrickaby.com See you next week for another episode of Stageworthy