Margo MacDonald(she/they)From Ottawa but currently based in Toronto, Margo is a multi-award winning playwright and performer who primarily creates work highlighting lost bits of queer women’s history. Her solo show, The Elephant Girls, (which she wrote and performs) has been touring nationally and internationally since it premiered in 2015, including runs in London, England, the Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival in Ireland, and the renowned Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. To date, the show has won eleven awards.Her other plays include: Shadows (about out lesbian theatre maverick, Eva Le Gallienne, and her partner Josephine Hutchinson), Rap Once for Yes (about Radclyffe Hall and Noel Coward holding a seance), Maupin (about a cross-dressing, bisexual, swordfighter, opera singer, and duellist in 17th century France), and, together with Geoff McBride, The Persistent Stain (about an aging Canadian punk band).Other recent performance credits include: Dressed as People – a Triptych of Uncanny Abduction (undercurrents festival), Heartlines, and Albumen (TACTICS Mainstage); Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), and Fly Me to the Moon, (Great Canadian Theatre Company); Henry V, and Much Ado About Nothing (A Company of Fools); and The Penelopiad (Citadel Theatre).
www.parryriposte.ca
Twitter: @PRPtheatre
Instagram: @margo_thespian
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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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Margot MacDonald is a multitalented chameleon from Shakespeare to improv comedy musicals to modern drama from playwriting to performing she has pretty much done at all. In this conversation, we talk about the genesis of her solo show dressed as people as well as her first solo piece, the elephant girls, which you can see in Ottawa, April 14, and 15th. And at the Halifax out fest, April 24 to 30. Here’s our conversation
so Margo, welcome. Thank you for joining me. Today, you recently did a production at the red sand castle, one of my favourite little theatres in the city, I wasn’t able to see that show. And I know it’s not the one that was the main one that we wanted to talk about. But I want to address that show and talk a little bit about it because I heard some buzz. Tell me about that show that you just performed recently at the red sand castle.
Margo MacDonald
Well, thank you very much, and thanks for having me on your show. So the show that I just did at Red Sand Castle theatre is called dressed as people a triptych of Uncanny a production. And this is a solo show, but it’s three long form monologues, I play three very different characters. But they’re connected by the theme of somebody encountering something to do with the paranormal and also somehow involved in an abduction. Maybe they’re part of what caused the abduction, maybe they’re the one who’s been left behind. Or maybe they were the one that was taken. And this show came about because in right before the you know, pandemic started, I had a spot in the Ottawa Fringe Festival for which I was going to be writing a new show and testing it out. But then when the world stopped, that went away, and they forwarded my acceptance to the following year. So in 2021, we all thought we’d be able to get back into live theatre. But they decided in the end, to do it as an online festival. And I had had not written something that could work in an online format. Not only that, but it was a very hard time. And I found it almost impossible to write at that time. So I reached out to three of my friends who just happened to be some of Canada’s top award winning speculative fiction and horror writers and said, What would you think about each writing me a monologue on this theme, and they all immediately got on board. And that’s how it happened.
Phil Rickaby
I want to say, I want to I want to thank you for talking about like not being able to create during those that period, there’s some people there’s two kinds of people, some people were like, I have time and and oh, I have time I’m gonna write and they had this great creative period. I was one of those that spent far too much time doing scrolling and the anxiety was too much. So for quite a bit of that, that that early part of of the pandemic. Creativity was not Even something I could I could deal with, the only thing I could pretty much deal with was like playing Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch that was about the extent of what I could what I could handle eventually, obviously, that that that lifted, but it was, for some of us some, some people had a tough time being creative. At what point did you feel like you could be creative again?
Margo MacDonald
Well, I think you’re absolutely right, that we are kind of trained to just always say, Yes, of course we can. You know, it’s part of the audition culture that we as performers are trained with that you, you never show weakness that you, you just, you dive in, and you just say you can do it, whether you really have the energy or the ability to focus, but but I’ve decided to be honest with people about how it was for me, and I was, as I said, I was literally just about to start putting pen to paper to write this new show. I haven’t written a word of it since. And I think I will get back to it. But it’s almost there. It’s almost time to start writing theatre again, for me, but I, frankly, it was 2020 was going to be an amazing year for me, I had a bunch of gigs lined up at some things that I never thought I’d be able to do had been offered to me. And they all just disappeared one after the other. And it seems silly to talk about now. But at the time, and I know I’m not alone in this, it really started feeling like maybe live theatre would never quite come back, at least not the way that we knew it or wanted to do it or hope to do it. And I think that was just all a sign of how overwhelming the whole world stopping and our whole world of theatre being shut down that there was this fear that it wasn’t going to come back. But in any case, yeah, I wasn’t able to write at all. Or even really think about creating anything for the better part of the last three years, I guess. So. It’s only recently that now that I have been able to perform in a few shows over the past couple of years and most recently be able to perform dressed as people live. Because for the online version, we we filmed it. And you know that that was an interesting experience. But my number one favourite way of performing is live in front of an audience. And so now that things are happening again, starting to feel more capable of approaching creating something new from scratch.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, absolutely. It’s it. I mean, that was certainly a strange time those those first and first year, I mean, the whole pandemic are still there, you know, all that stuff. But it’s that that time when Broadway shut down, and then all of our theatres shut down, there was a real palpable, like, what is happening? Will this ever what will will the theatre survive and all this sort of stuff? Overwhelming at that point, just to wonder at what the state of things will be in the future. I know a lot of people were, I’ve spoken to people who were like, I know people are doing this online thing, this film thing, but I just can’t it’s not theatre, it doesn’t feel like theatre. And I agree that film theatre does not feel like theatre. No. I like I kind of make a distinction. I like live streamed theatre from this space. Right? Like, I like the idea of live streaming. So that if somebody is not able to get to this space, they’re able to watch it. And they can hear the audience. But it’s also like a sort of like a mean taste of like, you’re not in the room. It’s different in the room. But you know, that sort of thing. But filmed theatre was sort of like a temporary state that we sort of accepted. But nobody really enjoyed.
Margo MacDonald
Yeah, for dressed as people. We were on another lockdown here in Toronto, so I couldn’t even you know, the plan was originally I would travel to Ottawa where my director is and we would be together in a room and then that wasn’t able to happen. So we rehearsed over zoom, which was weird, but you know, better than nothing. And how we did it for the online version was that we filmed it as as if you were standing in front of me. So it was just a single shot the camera and I did it we did it without any editing. I wanted it to feel as much like a theatre performance as possible. So there were no special effects or you know, no cutting away no different angles. It was just kind of like you’re seeing me now just you know, yeah, in the middle. little zoom box or whatever. People responded to it. Well, they said that it made for a really intimate performance. But I agree that I hesitated even over, over doing that project because I tried to watch various different offerings online, and couldn’t really get into a lot of them. I think as, as it went on, and we got used to being on screen more with each other, that capacity increased, but But it worked out pretty well. Still, I’m glad to be back doing theatre live in front of audiences.
Phil Rickaby
Absolutely. There’s an interesting thing. I think that this sort of format, you know, as I’m looking at you now, our listeners can’t can’t see this. But you know, we’re in you’re in a box, you’re looking looking straight at the camera, that sort of thing. If, if the last few years on tic toc have taught me anything, is that that that that engenders that brings like this, this false intimacy, this parasocial relationship, because generally, we’re like looking, it looks like we’re looking right at each other. And it feels very personal. So it’s no wonder that like, doing a show, like that would feel super intimate, because, in essence, you’re tricking somebody into feeling that way. But then again, it’s not theatre, it’s, it’s, it’s video, and it’s this, so very different. And that that run in Toronto was was was pretty successful from what I could see. And so congratulations on that.
Margo MacDonald
Thank you. Thank you. Yes, the response from audiences and reviewers was extremely positive. And it was really wonderful to, to get to talk with people are getting after the shows and hear about their experience of, of witnessing it and going through the journey of each monologue. And everybody had their, their different favourite monologue for each audience. And yeah, it was, it was a, it was a great time. I love that little space red sand castle, the eldritch theatre folks who were managing it now have done a great job of fixing it up. And it’s a lovely little intimate space, just the sort of place I like to perform it.
Phil Rickaby
Absolutely. And I’ve talked to people who were about to perform there, but it hadn’t like been in this space before. And you don’t realise how intimate of space it is until you’re like standing on that stage. And like that the audience is so close, but it’s so wonderful to have. Yep. Let’s talk about elephant girls, which is the show that it’s upcoming for you. Tell me about elephant girls.
Margo MacDonald
Okay. Well, the elephant girls is a show that I have actually been touring. It premiered in 2015. And I’ve been touring it. In Canada, not not all across Canada yet. But but within Canada, but also overseas as well ever since. And it’s it was my first solo show. And now I have dressed as people but the elephant girls is one that I also researched and wrote as well as perform. And it was my first time doing a solo show. So that was the challenge that I had set for myself and and it turned out to be a wildly successful show that people really love and that I love performing. So it is based on the true story of an all female gang, that 40 elephants who operated out of the Elephant and Castle area of London, England. They say from about the mid 1800s to about the mid 1900s. But the show focuses on the time period when they were at the height of their power. And also when they the big event that happened that caused their downfall occurred. So that would be the 1920s and the character is telling the story from her point of view. She is one of the gangs enforcers. There were women who wore men’s clothing and you know, did all the violence. Well, not all the violence but but did the enforcing that was necessary and also drove the getaway cars and that sort of thing. So this character is an amalgamation of several different historic characters and also entirely fictional.
Phil Rickaby
When did you first hear about about this, this this gang and how did how did this story become something that you wanted to write about?
Margo MacDonald
Well, it’s kind of funny because somebody posted a photo. It’s a Victorian photo of two women wearing men’s clothing very much looking as if they’re on their way to a costume party or something. But the person who posted it, I believe it was on Facebook had written a cute little story underneath saying that this was the notorious Clockwork Orange gang and all female gang and wrote this little story. And we were all responding saying, you know, great little story, you know, to go with this photo that that this person had found. But in the comments somebody wrote, but Wait, have you heard of the 40 elephants? Because they were a real, all female gang in the Victorian England? And I’ve said, what? Why haven’t I ever heard of them? As this is the sort of thing that I am drawn to write about is lost bits of particularly female history, and especially the queer female history. And this was a story I’d never heard of, well, it turns out, they’d kind of been forgotten about for quite a while. Then a man wrote a book about the gangs of London as it’s called the gangs of London. And in his research kept finding references to this female gang, the 40 Elephants are sometimes known as the elephant girls. And he included a very brief chapter about them in his first book, and then later on, wrote another book that was entirely about them, though, that came out. Well, after I had already written the show, but I found other people had done a bit of research as well. And once I started looking into them, I knew that I needed to write about them, and decided that the best way to tell the story was from this single character’s point of view, and they’re very much an unreliable narrator, that you have to put together the truth for yourself as the the three acts of the show, move forward.
Phil Rickaby
It’s always fascinating how a little thing can like inspire a bigger thing. A photograph inspires a story and then takes you down this rabbit hole of research. And, and, but then again, also, I sometimes find, you know, I’ll do the research, and then I’ll decide no, like, That’s great to know that, but that doesn’t work with the story, I have to do something else, you know, yeah, like, adjust it a little. But just it can be the littlest thing that like, sparks a great idea. Did you find in the research of this, that it was set little pieces of all over the place, and there wasn’t like this a definitive story? Because, of course, in the Victorian times, people wouldn’t have been writing so much, they would they would have mentioned it, but it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Because, you know, women were very much discounted at that time. So were they just little pieces? Or did you find some really good, robust, great sources?
Margo MacDonald
There? Well, it is, as you say, through little pieces that we know of their existence at all, unlike a lot of the male gangsters from the 1910s through the 1950s, who, you know, after a certain amount of time, they were too notorious to even work anymore. And they would write their memoirs or have someone write their memoirs for them. And we know a lot of their names today, and movies and television shows have been made about these male gangsters. But the female gangsters, a lot of them were were illiterate, or would never think to share their story in that way. And most the most of them never became that famous. They. We know their words, only through what was recorded at their trial. Transcripts are in the the newspapers that reported on the trials. None of them ever wrote anything down themselves. So it’s all through hearsay. And there are no definitive histories of these women. Even the ones that have been written have to rely on a lot of speculation. And so that’s great for somebody who is a playwright because it allows you and me the freedom to extrapolate and fictionalise a lot of the story. And so, the central storyline even the character that I’m playing are fictionalised the kind of queer bent on the on the story that I’m taking is not one that was recorded in, in in straightforward words at the time, because of course it wasn’t. But the very fact that they had women who dressed in men’s clothing and walked through the world like that, and where else are queer women of that time period going to find refuge but in something like an all female gang, especially women who are not from a wealthy class, and so all of this together using my own instincts as a storyteller and as a human being, but also Getting, as you say, the little bits of inspiration from here and there in the accounts that we do have of them, putting it all together and making it into a story. There. There are lots of events that I talk about in the play that are, are definitely factual or were reported in the courts and the transcripts. And all of that’s woven together with a fictionalised story as well.
Phil Rickaby
Nice. Now, as a as performing this as a solo performer, was, was that something that you had wanted to do that you wanted to find a project to perform solo? Or was it just that this was the right project to perform solo?
Margo MacDonald
It’s both i at the time? Well, first of all, I should say, I’ve never, I’ve never satisfied I, I always feel like I want to take risks and challenge myself and audiences along with me. I like to try ways of performing that I that I’ve never tried before. And, you know, always learning something from doing that. And, you know, succeeding a lot of the times and not not so much some of the times. But one of the things that I knew I wanted to try that the time had come was to try doing a solo show. And it was around the time that I was looking into this gang. And at first I was thinking, well, will it be, maybe it’ll be four person show or six. And then the more that I thought about it, the more I realised that there was, there was a lot to be gained by having it told from the point of view of just this one character, because then it doesn’t need to be the truth. It just needs to be the truth according to this character.
Phil Rickaby
Now, was there something that in terms of what you expected as performing solo to be like, that you found out was wrong, or that surprised you about performing solo?
Margo MacDonald
Well, I’ll tell you that the very first performance was again at the Ottawa fringe, and that’s where I’m from. So a lot of my work has premiered in Ottawa, and especially the fringe is a great place to try something new out. And that’s where this premiered in 2015. I was literally standing backstage, before the first performance, listening to the audience and knowing that the show was going to start any minute, when it only then occurred to me that I was going to be entirely alone. For at that time, the show was 60 minutes, I’ve since expanded at about this about 75. Now, and I don’t know why it never actually occurred to me before, that there was no one to save me. If it’s a it’s an nonlinear and fragmented text, it’s like, it’s like you’ve sat at a table with this character over the three night Bender that she’s having at this pub. And she’s talking to you and telling you the stories and you’re getting drunk with her. And it’s like how you remember it after when you remember the stories, but you don’t remember how you got there kind of thing. So it’s very easy to lose your place. If you’re not if you’re not on top of it. And I was standing backstage realising that if I forgot where I was, there was, there was no one to help me, you know, sometimes you dry on stage or you get a little nervous, you’re in the wrong spot. But your stage partners can assure you that, you know, you have their work to go off of as well. And that was terrifying. So but it’s it, I didn’t get lost. I didn’t lose my place. And it went over extremely well. And it was funny afterwards to think why it had not actually occurred to me
Phil Rickaby
when I was getting ready to perform my solo, so the commandment, my director had said to me, Oh, of course the audience is your scene partners, you’re going to have to make eye contact with them. And I had never considered that, that I would have to like, look people in the eye. Ah, and so that was like I, the first time I performed, I performed it. I cheated. I didn’t quite look people in the eye. I sort of looked between people and faked it. But also, I spent that entire day because, you know, I was very aware that I was going to be alone on this show. I spent that whole day felt like I was gonna vomit. Just like just just ready to just like hurl, but I got through the show. And after that. I didn’t feel like I was gonna vomit anymore. And I was I would look people in the eye. Did you? Did you have any kind of revelation about like looking audience members in it right, like right in the face and like looking at them?
Margo MacDonald
Well, no, because even before that I had done a lot of clown work. work where you’re always with directly with the audience. And in conjunction with that, I co founded a Shakespeare Company in Ottawa back when I was in university called a company of fools. It’s still going strong, though, I’m not having anything to do with the running up at anymore, but happy that it’s still going. But this was a Shakespeare Company, we started out as a street theatre company. And so our style always was talking directly to the people, there’s no, you know, there’s no pretend wall between us when I’m working it out as this character in Hamlet or whatever, I’m talking directly to you, the audience. And so I’d had a lots of experience. But what’s interesting that you say that though, because the elephant girls, it doesn’t quite work that way. It’s not like a personal story type show where you’re where you’re talking directly looking in their eyes, it’s the conceit is that she’s in this pub, some young guy from the local college recognises who she is, and maybe he’s trying to write an article or a book or an essay, or something about the gang in this would be in 1937. So about 1010 or 12 years after the gang has failed. And she decides to talk to him. But it’s kind of like you, the entire audience are this guy that she’s talking to. And so although my, my direction that I’m talking to is to the audience, it’s not from person to person to person, it’s kind of like talking, talking to him as if he’s sitting there. And then at a later point, he’s sitting over there sort of thing.
Phil Rickaby
Now, so you perform this, this solo show, your first solo show, and then you wanted to do another solo show? What is it about performing solo that that drew you to doing another solo show?
Margo MacDonald
Well, to be honest, the, my intent was not to do another solo show. It was purely the circumstances of needing a show that I could perform online for the Fringe Festival, the one that I was planning on writing, I still hadn’t decided how many people were going to be in it, but I thought it would probably be a two hander. But it just, it just came about that the the best plan for the circumstances was to do a solo show and have the writers write three monologues that I would perform as different characters, which which, again, was new, because the elephant girls, I’m just the one character for the whole time, even though takes place over three, three, back to back nights, in the time of the play. This one, each character is completely different. They’re different time periods, different places, their stories are different. And so I’ve always loved being a bit of a chameleon and the work that I have done throughout my career, I very much a character actor. So it was fun to get to kind of stretch those muscles and switch from one to the other right there in front of the audience.
Phil Rickaby
Now, you mentioned company fools. And, you know, I’ve worked with people who grew up in the Ottawa area, who, who ends up doing shows with company fools at some point during their, their early acting years or later acting years. And, and so it’s a company that I’m familiar with, and I’ve heard of, in terms of getting that company started, what was what was the impetus to do that and what was your relationship with Shakespeare at the time?
Margo MacDonald
Well, here’s, here’s the truth is that I was in university, I’ve always loved Shakespeare, you know, my, my siblings, when I’m the youngest of a large family. And when I was going to high school, they were all like, oh, no, now you have to study Shakespeare, and it’s so hard and so horrible, and you’re gonna hate it. And as soon as I was introduced to Shakespeare, I immediately loved it. And I’ve loved it ever since. So, the first time I ever got to perform any Shakespeare was, I was I went to University of Ottawa for a concentration in theatre. I was also doing professional improv comedy at the same time, but we got to perform scenes from Shakespeare in class basically, and with another classmate of mine and who then at some point became my roommate as well. Heather Joplin. Were like, we want to do more Shakespeare but nobody in Ottawa was doing Shakespeare at that time. We had no money because we’re broke college students. So we just said to each other, like, what if we just went on the streets of Ottawa and performed scenes from Shakespeare? Just for fun and for people throw money in the hat kind of thing? We’re like, yes, we asked a few more friends of ours who we knew from university and me from the improv scene, and that’s literally what we did. We went out that first day having memorised four of our favourite scenes from Shakespeare. And we was a very quick learning curve of how, what style you needed to perform in in order to keep the attention of the passers by in the streets. And it was, was really surprisingly successful people would would be passing by realise what we’re doing, and they would sit down and watch sometimes they would watch our whole half hour sets or that we eventually had and so on, and all of us within the company would know all the parts so we could switch in and out and, and then we started coming up with this broad physical style that we needed because we were a street theatre company, you needed to maintain the the interest of the people passing by. And then you know, people put money in our hats and we were able to buy ourselves lunch, that sort of thing. And so, this broad physical style, tending towards the comic, but not necessarily became the heart of the style of a company of fools. Later on when Scott Florence became the artistic director, he’s somebody that I did improv comedy with back in the day and lured him into the Shakespeare Company. But he had a real interest in learning red nose clown, so he went away to California study clown came back and suddenly he’s like, we need to do we need to do clown with Shakespeare. Everyone thought he was mad. But we did. The first show we did was a red nose clown version of Romeo and Juliet, that we actually toured in high school students side and from there we just learned and grow eventually, Scott and I became a clown duo, pump fruit and Rusty’s. And we did a handful of shows that are inspired by Shakespeare but performed with clowns and and that was something else that the that accompany falls did well while we were there. Now, Scott is up in Sudbury, doing other things teaching improv and so on. And, and I’ve since moved to Toronto, which was, which was a love decision rather than a career decision. But But here I am doing work still. And often being drawn back to Ottawa to work, the company fools still still going strong eventually, even while I was there, we moved to doing outdoor park tour in the summer of full length Shakespeare shows but cut down for a maximum of six actors. And they were an hour and a half long so that we wouldn’t have to rent porta potties to bring them to the parks. And we toured from Park to park around Ottawa, it was always past the heart, so anybody could come see it, no matter no matter if they had money or not. And because we’ve always kept the cast size to six, it meant a lot of playing many different characters, and, you know, really stretches you as a as an artist and as an actor. And again, that direct interaction with the audiences, which I’ve always adored.
Phil Rickaby
It’s trying to picture a red nose version of Romeo and Juliet, I can only imagine that some chaos may have ensued.
Margo MacDonald
That’s the word for it. But we still managed to get the story across. Now I will say that we we did much more refined and clever shows after that, but it is the one that we that we had our growing pains on with learning how to combine Shakespeare with red nose clones.
Phil Rickaby
There’s something about some that is not refined. There’s something about about the raw and the rough that I sometimes wish we celebrated more in the theatre the down and dirty the this is still a work in progress. Even sometimes at some of the Fringe Festivals. We don’t Yeah, we don’t. We look for something more polished. But like the it should be something you know, the experimentation, we’re never going to get anywhere really awesome. If we don’t have the experimentation and that kind of like, just roughness is so important to the theatre.
Margo MacDonald
Well, but how many times have you gone to see a workshop showing of something or a workshop production of something where you go in knowing that it’s like a work in progress? And you’re like, oh, wow, like I really loved that. Or there’s something about that, that I just loved. And then maybe a year or two later, you go to see the finished product, and it’s all polished and perfect. And it’s got its huge design and budget or whatever and you’re like, oh, yeah, like the workshop production. And so yeah, I agree with you. I think I think it’s really important that at the same time we want to present something you know that it is as good as possible. For the people who very willingly parked with, with their hard earned cash to come and sit in an audience and watch it, but at the same time, I agree that there is something lovely about the rawness of something that you’re not sure yet how it’s gonna go, or you’re not sure how this particular audience is going to go with it. And that’s, that’s something I learned a lot from doing clown and doing that. That very freestyle Shakespeare in the parks where, you know, anything could happen at any moment and did. Because we didn’t have a stage or anything at the time, we were just literally performing on the grass, people would bring their lawn chairs, you know. So, there, there’s a real beauty to that. You, the performer, and you the audience are together on this little tight rope going. Let’s do it. And let’s see how it goes. And let’s just have a great time together and see what happens. So something else I love about live theatre and and also creating work.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know exactly what you mean about the seeing the workshop and then seeing the final production sometimes. It’s, I think there’s the desperation in the workshop, the the fear, and then at a certain point, the fear maybe goes away. But then there are other shows that somehow managed to keep walking that tightrope. And it’s magic. Yeah, magic. One thing, I actually want to harken back to something that you said about doing your show at the red sand castle. And you mentioned, talking to people about their experience of the show afterwards. And I’m always fascinated by the different ways that audience members perceive a show that that they will come and they will, they will talk about their experience of the show. And maybe it’s different than you thought and sort of dealing with that. Years ago, I was involved with a theatre company, we did silent film style plays. And because there’s no verbal narrative, people fill in the blanks, it was always fascinating to us how people would watch the same show and have very different opinions and thoughts about what was happening on the stage. And early on, we were like, We would like No, no, that’s not what happened. And then after a while, it was like, oh, no, please tell me tell me more about about what you think is? Because they’re their experience that matters to them. So it was always fascinating. Are there surprising things that people will express to you about seeing the show that you weren’t expecting? Yeah,
Margo MacDonald
yeah, I lost the hat. And, and I agree to that, I think, you know, when I first started out, it’s very frustrating if somebody didn’t get it, you know, or they didn’t see it the way you saw it. But then I I like you learn to actually love that they were having their own experience of it. And I will say that the elephant girls, there are things that are not 100% explained, and that you the audience, will decide for yourself, what exactly happened, or what is the truth of what she’s said. And so, I’ve written in, I’ve written it in, that the experience that one audience member will have in the person next to them might have a slightly different one is written into the show itself. And, and I do love that people come up to me with different theories, or sometimes there’ll be next to the person they saw the show with, or the person will say, Oh, I love that this was what happened. And the person next to them will say what, I didn’t get that at all, and it’s just really fun. And, and there’s Yeah, there. We have to realise that once we’ve made the art and put it out there for the audience, it really it belongs to them. And it’s up to it’s up to them. What the purpose of it is, what the story of it is, what the emotional context for it is. And it’s been interesting. I’ve never done any show for the length of time that I have been doing the elephant girls of course, it’s on an off and on often a little tour here and a little tour there sort of thing. But, for example, we got invited to go to perform it at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. And we did 24 shows in 25 days. In a place we’ve never played before with an audience completely different from the Canadian audiences we’ve been playing for up till then. And it was a fascinating experience and I learned so much of At my own show, that time that I actually after that festival, that’s when I expanded it. Because doing so many performances back to back and talking to audiences after I came to realise that there were two very specific things missing. And so I wrote those those scenes in. But you know, fabulous things happened like one audience, I had 14 Audience members leave during the middle of the performance. Now, mind you, they were all a family group who were there together. And I think they hadn’t quite prepared themselves for what they were getting into. But they did leave. And I’ve often had people come to see the elephant girls and say to me afterwards, you know, how much they loved it and then say something like, it wasn’t what I expected. And I’ve never quite been able to get out of people what they mean by that, or what they what they were expecting. I do think there’s a bit of a, you know, a bit of a trick to the show, in that I take the audience with me on the same journey that happened to me as I was researching and writing the show, that when I first heard about this awesome kick ass female gang, I was like, That is so cool. They’re awesome, I would have wanted to be one of them how kick ass is that? Everybody needs to know about them. And then, of course, the more research that I was doing, and, and looking into that gangs existence, and then into some of the psychology and so on of, you know, why do women form gangs or join gangs and things like this? That initial enthusiasm for they are so awesome, I kind of kind of ventually realise, but they’re also a gang. And they did really awful things. And they had to be part of this world, a lot of them because of really awful reasons, and so on. And so the journey of the show starts out as this very kind of, here’s some great stories that you’re going to love about my cool gang life and do to do, but it gets darker as it goes along. And, and I think sometimes that’s what people mean, that they they thought it was all going to be just, here’s a fun story about being in a gang, but it’s it’s actually goes way, way deeper than that.
Phil Rickaby
One of the things that I find fascinating about that is if it didn’t take a turn like that, it wouldn’t be theatre, it would be just like a sketch comedy show. Yes. My show that commandment, it has got a light press a premise, and people come to it. And there’s laughs at the beginning, and it takes a dark turn at the end. And some people and there’s been a couple of reviewers that don’t like that. They’re like, I thought it was just gonna be light. And they they, you know, not just reviewers, but some audience members. They’re like, I didn’t expect that. But that’s sort of the point. I feel like, if if it was just going to be light and funny, then it was just stand up comedy, but it’s the turn that makes it theatre.
Margo MacDonald
That’s right. Yeah. And I understand that some people don’t like to be fooled. They don’t like to be tricked. But the elephant girls is not like it doesn’t kind of pull up pull the carpet out from under you. It kind of little by little pulls it out until you realise you’re standing on a bare floor. If I can use that analogy.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, yeah. This thing that you’re talking about, like the the way that people have their different perceptions of the show, there is something about trusting your audience enough to not have to explain everything to them, and to revel in the fact that they might have a different opinion, I think you have, if you can accept that, then the relationship with the audience is actually more full, because you can really sort of like hear with their personal experiences of the story.
Margo MacDonald
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, because I do a lot of festivals, a lot of indie theatre, one of my favourite things is that I get a lot of opportunities to have direct contact with my audiences after I almost always will end my shows by just saying, you know, after curtain call, just like saying, Hello, and thank you for coming. And if you want to stick around and talk to me, but here’s sort of thing because I feel like all my experience of the show and their experience of the show sometimes is made a little better by just having a little a little chat afterwards, even if the chat is just, oh, wow, I really liked that. Or, you know, my favourite part was this or, you know, in in the show, dressed as people with the three different monologues it was always fun to hear someone say that one was my favourite and the person next to them. No, this one was my favourite and the reasons why. All of that is knowledge for going forward and creating more things because you, you learn to see your work through the lens of the audience more and more
Phil Rickaby
Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things that I’m always fascinated by, and I’ve spoken to people over the seven years that I’ve been doing the show, and it’s my favourite question to ask, and that is about your theatre origin story, we all have that thing, that or that moment where theatre became something for us and became the thing we were going to pursue. How did you discover theatre? And how did it become the thing you were going to do?
Margo MacDonald
Well, Phil, it’s because when I was five years old, now I’ve already mentioned, I’m the youngest of seven and a large family. So we didn’t always get to go out and do fancy things like going to the theatre. But when I was five, my parents and some of my siblings, we all went to go see a production of all of her the musical that I think was, I think it was just being done by, you know, the local Ottawa, amateur musical theatre company, Orpheus, I believe it was them. But I don’t know what my parents don’t remember when I asked them years ago. But it was definitely all of her. And I still can see some of the stage and the scene with the coffin is like impressed in my mind. And we can remember, we were sitting really far back in the theatre, at least, it seemed to me at the time. And, you know, my mom would talk about how I came home, and I was singing all the songs, and I’d only ever heard them that once you know, and then somebody got me the album. And so then I was singing, I would look at my window and pretend I was all of her singing that song and so on. And it was at that moment of seeing that show. And, you know, and I think asking my mom that I learned for the first time that that was something that you could do with your life. And I was five. And I said, Well, that’s what I want to do. And my mom was like, Oh, I know, you know, all little girls think they want to be actors, you know, this sort of thing. But she was kind of, you know, cheekily supportive of it at the same time that she was very good about, you know, making sure I took typing in high school just to have something to fall back on, and that sort of thing back in those days. But um, but yeah, that was it. That was it for me seeing all of her when I was five. And sadly, I’ve never had a chance to be in that musical. But, but it is what it from that moment, there was no going back, it was always I was going to be an actor. And that’s, and that’s what it happened.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, is there because, you know, a lot of people see shows when they’re kids, and they think they’re going to be actors. And then at some point, as they get older, and as they go through high school, that that sort of changes. Was it cultivated for you? Or were you just stubborn? Was there something that like, that kept that passion and that desire going for you?
Margo MacDonald
I was stubborn for sure about it. You know, like I wrote to Stratford when I was 13. And said, you should hire you know, they wrote a very nice response. But I, I was fortunate in that I had some great drama teachers along the way, I had a particularly great drama teacher in grade seven and eight, which I went to an actual middle school that was separate in between grade school and high school and had him for both those years and and he did some wonderful activities and events with us that I haven’t forgotten and, and you know, and he, he really encouraged me, I think, cuz he could see that. That I really wanted it but also that I wasn’t completely talentless, or anything that he’s like, No, you could actually pursue this. I got into high school and I was on a semester system, high school. So I was able to take you know, like, grade nine drama grade 10 drama in one year and then grade 1112 And, you know, and then the improv games, I got involved with them and then started training, you know, coaching other teams for them. And that’s how I got, I got drafted right out of high school off of my improv comedy team to form a new professional improv comedy company. So that’s the very first thing right out of high school that I was performing professional improv comedy and not only that, but our director Willie Wiley. taught us how to produce a show how to advertise a show how to stand on street corners with flyers in your hands and convince people to come to your show. And apart from the training that we got, as performers, that more than anything has affected my ability to keep doing work, because here, you know, in Canada, it’s almost, it’s almost impossible to simply rely on other people to, to give you enough work to be getting on with, you need to find a way to either, you know, with some other job or something else that you do. But also too, if, for me, you know, if I wanted to tell the stories that I wanted to tell, if I wanted to do the work I wanted to do, I needed to just buckle down and start producing or CO producing it myself. But that being said, I have had many other jobs over the years. One of my longest standing jobs is that I work as a tour guide and a researcher and I write write material for the haunted walk. So I’ve been with them since well, since 20, since the year 2000, I think, or 2001. So quite a while now. And so this kind of weirdly little by little this other part of my life about telling ghost stories and interviewing people about their ghost stories and learning more about the paranormal and then writing things about the paranormal. It’s kind of just crept in, and that’ll start it I guess, from my brother trying to scare me by telling me ghost stories when I was a kid.
Phil Rickaby
I love the haunted walk, I’ll try to do a try to do a different one. Each each fall. Yeah. Just to just to get out and, and you know, learn the haunted history of the city you’re in, you know, that’s always fun. Did you falling into that? Were you did you just sort of like, jump in with it? Were you trained? Was there anything? Or did you just like, jump in with two feet and start like researching and doing these stories?
Margo MacDonald
Well, I love ghost tours. And I trained in England for a while I went and did my post grad in classical acting at at lambda. And while I was there discovered ghost tours for the first time and it was like, This is awesome. This is a great way to see a city, I came back to Ottawa. And by then Glen Shackleton, who started the haunted walks when he was a student in Kingston had moved to Ottawa and started them there. And I saw them walking around, and I was like, There’s a ghost here. And then I found out, they were hiring. So I applied, I got accepted, we did get, we did get some training. And we got scripts, and we were encouraged to do our own research to help, you know, add to the stories that they the company would use on their tours. And little by little, you know, you just learn how to research people’s ghost stories and how to research places for the stories that are in them. And yeah, it’s kind of this fascinating side side journey that I’ve been on this whole time.
Phil Rickaby
Now, just to bring this back to the red sandcastle, which we’ve discussed. While you were there. Did you meet the spirit at the red sand castle?
Margo MacDonald
It is haunted, you know, and you can feel it when you’re down. Okay, people may not know this, but the dressing room area is in the basement of the red sand castle. Now they have made it as nice as they possibly can. But it does still have rock foundation walls. It’s very dark. There’s lots of creepy props and things down there. But it also has a feeling like you’re not alone down. And so I was told by JB who was our technician who is the technician for the venue. They were telling me ya know, it’s haunted. I usually say hello to the ghosts when they come in and ask them not to mess around with the lights and things like this. So I went down the the first day I was getting ready to do the run through of the show in the space. And I just talked to the ghosts. Hello, I’m here I’m doing this show. You actually might like it. One of the stories has a ghost in it. And if you really great if you did not play with the technical equipment while we were doing the show, I’d really appreciate that. So just every once in a while I would talk to them. There were only a couple of like little weird things that happened that I would not have thought anything of except for I was so wanting that ghost for me. But I have heard stories from Adriana and Eric and some other folks who work there that they have definitely You had some odd experiences there.
Phil Rickaby
I’ve seen their security video how they haven’t showed it to me yet. It’s unnerving. It’s unnerving. Just to see like, something definitely is moving in that. It’s, it’s pretty wild. It’s pretty wild.
Margo MacDonald
I’m gonna I have to go back and get them to tell me their stories and show me the video. But yeah, we had a weird light thing one day and one day I, I always did the same thing of like turning out all the dressing room lights and securing the door before going up into the theatre. And when I came back after doing during the show, I swore that I heard somebody walked down the stairs into the dressing room. And I thought Eric wouldn’t come through the back door and go into the dressing room in the middle of a show. And he was the only person who could possibly have done that that night. When I got finished doing the show, I went down in the dressing room door was not secured anymore. And one of the lights was on. So I spoke to JB and I said, Is there any chance that anyone Eric or Adriana, or anyone would have come through the backdoor went into the dressing room during the show? And they were like What? No. And they heard anything like somebody walking down there. They did say the door never stays shut. So door debunked, but the light was on. Yeah, so that was I think my second show and I think it was just the ghost it’s letting me know that they were there. Yeah,
Phil Rickaby
that’s pretty wild. That’s pretty well, you know, with the things they’ve done to that space and the the curiosity the cabinet of curiosities window and the horror of the of the what the bathroom they’ve created the little haunted house bathroom, it, it certainly does add to that whole like haunted feeling,
Margo MacDonald
let alone the arcane spells that Eric intones and a lot of his shows in the space exactly. I got to expect it to be haunted.
Phil Rickaby
So you’ll be doing the elephant girls in Ottawa, and that’s April 14 or 15th. And then you’ll be going to Halifax it out fest for April 26. And 30th. People should in Ottawa and Halifax should definitely look look for you there. And is there anything that you want to end with that you want to tell people about?
Margo MacDonald
If they want to find out more about my work, they can go to the website, my production company, it’s Perry repulsed, like fencing because it was supposed to be for a fencing show that never yet has happened. But parry riposte.ca I think you have it in the show notes. Yeah, I don’t need to spell it. But do do get in touch and hope to see out at the shows. And thanks so much for having me on your podcast.
Phil Rickaby
Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Margo. I really appreciate it. Yeah,
Margo MacDonald
it was fun chatting with you.
Phil Rickaby
This has been an episode of Stageworthy Stageworthy is produced, hosted and edited by Phil Rick. 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 helps new people find the show. If you want to keep up with what’s going on with Stageworthy en 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 @stageworthypod and you can find the website with the complete archive of all episodes at stageworthy.ca. If you want to find me, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram @PhilRickaby And as I mentioned, my website is philrickaby.com See you next week for another episode of Stageworthy