Vishesh Abeyratne is a Sri Lankan-Canadian playwright and dramaturg who divides his time between Ottawa and Montreal. He is currently the Artistic Facilitator at Teesri Duniya Theatre where he also coordinates the Fireworks Playwrights Mentorship Program. Before this he served as playwright-in-residence at the Great Canadian Theatre Company (GCTC). His plays typically use dark political satire to interrogate and critique the destructive effects of white supremacy and capitalism upon the humanity of individuals.
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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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Vishesh Abeyratne is a Sri Lankan Canadian playwright and dramaturg, who divides his time between Ottawa and Montreal. He joined me to talk about his play blood offering, which is being presented as a workshop performance at York University presented by Alma mater as productions. Here’s our conversation.
Vishesh thank you so much for joining me that probably the best place for us to start today is to just talk about blood offering and what what it what it is.
Vishesh Abeyratne
Yeah, so blood offering is a play that I’ve been working on for a few years now. I started writing a I started reading it in 2018. And it was just a short 10 minute piece when I began working on it. But then I years later, when I came back to Ottawa from Victoria, I came back just in time for the pandemic. And I got an opportunity to develop it further when I became a playwright in residence at the Great Canadian Theatre Company. And so I developed it further into into a kind of a longer one act play. And what really began it well, I can tell you a little bit about, I tell you a little bit about what it’s about. It’s set in the United States, and it takes place after yet another mass shooting has taken place at a mall, resulting in the death of a young girl. And this all takes place before the play begins. And the play focuses on different members of the community that have been affected by her murder. Her teacher, Mr. Naqvi, who was a Pakistani American. He’s known her for a long he’s known her for a long time. There’s also her friend Fareed, who, they who had a bit of a, they had a bit of an unrequited crush on her and never got to tell her before she died. And so play kind of opens with them sort of bonding over their shared loss. And then things get complicated when her parents enter the picture. Because they have in the wake of her death, they have been campaigning to, to change the they’ve been campaigning to get Republican politicians to change the gun laws and to add some new ones to sort of make it harder for people to access firearms and military grade assault rifles and all kinds of other kinds of weapons that people don’t actually need. And of course, that’s resulted in radio silence from their representatives. And so they come up with a plan to essentially recruit for read to carry out another mass shooting at at Kayla’s school, so that Republicans will finally be scared into the vinyl they’ll finally be scared into sort of passing gun control laws that will prevent people from accessing firearms and by people in this case, of course, I mean, people of colour brown people. It’s sort of, I sort of got this idea after In 2018, after I think hearing about yet another mass shooting, and then doing a little bit of research, and finding out that and this is actually discussed in the play as well, finding out about a piece of legislation that was enacted in, I believe it was the 70s, called the Mulford act, it was passed in California, Reagan signed it into law, and essentially it was, it was written and passed in response to the Black Panthers trying to basically follow cops around and making sure that they didn’t kill or injure any more black American citizens. And so it was one it was one of the few times that the NRA actually acted in support of gun control, which I found really interesting. Because it revealed a very kind of disturbing, double standard, at the heart of, you know, the way lawmakers determine who does and doesn’t have access to guns in America. And it’s, and so I sort of, from there, I sort of made the conjecture, well, you know, what, if, you know, what, if a young brown man who was seemingly radicalised, you know, the young brown man who was essentially like, the stereotypical image of like, the radicalised Muslim went in and shot up a school wasn’t that like, wouldn’t that art art, you know, art white American conservative, supposed to be scared of that, of those kinds of kinds of people taking over? Like, wouldn’t that finally push them into, into protecting into protecting Americans from gun violence? So I began to sort of extrapolate on that idea and kind of form a dramatic, a dramatic through line and a dramatic exploration of like, what would actually happen if this idea were put into place?
Phil Rickaby
See, I actually remember the story that you’re you were talking about, about the Black Panthers. And it’s just like, you’re like you said, it reveals the, the Aaron Herod racism of the Republicans of the of the NRA of just a generally, because it’s gun control for for other people, but not for us white folks. I think the sad thing about a play that the deals with this topic is that it seems like it will always be relevant. There will always Unfortunately, it seems that there will always have been some form of shooting or gun violence in the US that is relevant to this to this particular play. I’m one of the questions that sort of jumps into my mind as whenever we as as, as Canadians are faced with problems that are in the US. We often would there’s sort of a separation because we don’t we don’t live there. As a as a as a Canadian as somebody who lives in Canada and you know, works in Canada as it was a Canadian. What is your draw to address this particular problem? In a play? Just as because of the separation of the did the you know, we have we have gun laws in Canada? We would like to strengthen them a little bit. But you know, we have generally have pretty good gun laws. And so what what’s your draw to address this as a Canadian?
Vishesh Abeyratne
Yeah, so I think that I think that even though this Yeah, even though this play is set in America, and it deals with a uniquely American problem, I think the logic behind it can be applied to pretty much any any pressing social problem that is that has received, you know, continual inaction from lawmakers and politicians and the people who do actually have the power to to change the social conditions. You could apply it to, you know, because essentially what the play is about and what it explores through the character of of the characters of the Gordon’s Kayla, the young girl’s parents, as what happens when people you know, what happens when people are up go unheard for long enough. What how what does it take for somebody to finally become radicalised and resort to incredibly extreme actions, seemingly in the service of benevolent social ends, in this case ended gun control. So, I mean, here you could apply that to you could apply to a bunch of things you could apply it to the fact that you know, various indigenous communities don’t have still don’t have clean drinking water for example. You know, what would you like if you were to resort to in an extreme situation to fix that problem, what would that be? And, you know, does it ever become acceptable to? Does it ever become acceptable to resort to violent ends to do that? I think when you take that when you isolate that question, it becomes pretty applicable to a lot of different political and social problems across the world.
Phil Rickaby
I think one of the interesting things about that, since the very situation that you outlined, is we’ve had literally a situation in Canada where indigenous people were blocking a highway, we’re blocking transportation, regarding oil, and a militarised police force. And I acted to remove them. However, when a white group of people attempts to do the same thing across a bridge, the trade bridge in the US know, nothing happened for weeks. And so again, it’s sort of like shows the the inherent racism of the system, if the brown people do something, we’re going to act quickly. And if the white people do something we’re going to ask nicely or not to anything at all. It’s it’s a stark reminder of the kind of thing that you’re describing for this play.
Vishesh Abeyratne
Yeah, very much. I think that. And it’s also interesting because I kind of what I what I wanted to do with this play is to kind of shift the, to kind of shift the focus of you know, of how we look at Pete like to get to sort of get ourselves to look at our reactions to when we see kind of different people becoming radicalised and resorting to extreme violence as the Gordon’s are who are the people who come up with this to various plan or this, you know, nice white suburban, middle class couple, probably the last middle class couple in the world, really. Who and, but they still they’re so wracked with with grief over the loss of their daughter, and they’re so exhausted, and they’re so angry, and they’re, they’ve just come to the end of their tether and trying to deal with this problem and trying to get some response to their, to their, to their inquiries and to their concerns that they finally feel that they have no choice and, you know, hopefully, hopefully, some people who see this play, you know, when they, when they see them, they’ll be able to I mean, they’ll be able to kind of empathise and hopefully, they’ll be able to kind of examine their own reactions to like you said, this, this, the the kind of inherent racism, of being able to empathise with, you know, white, white protesters over protesters are over people of colour who are exposed to these kinds of radical actions. And, yeah, it’s just one, it’s just a microcosm of, you know, the way we kind of react to to larger social movements, really,
Phil Rickaby
I would almost suggest that there’s another is from what the way you’re describing it, there’s another layer of, of racial politics in that the white family asks a brown person to do something terrible, knowing that the end for that brown person is either jail or more likely death. Hmm,
Vishesh Abeyratne
yeah, it’s, yeah, their whole plan, essentially, you know, their whole plan essentially hinges upon a brown person doing something doing something horrifically violent, and, you know, conforming to this, you know, conforming to the stereotype that’s persisted in, you know, ever in, you know, ever since 911 happened. And, you know, in doing so, it results in not only the death of not only the deaths of many more innocent children, but it also results in, you know, an, a group of people that’s already marginalised, being further stigmatised because of this, because of this crime. And so it’s also, hopefully, it also kind of examines, you know, when, if you want to be generous and call it, you know, revolution when a violent revolution happens, who are the groups of who are the groups of people that get left out? Who are the groups of people who get sidelined? You know, who are the groups of people who become collateral damage in this in these moments of great upheaval?
Phil Rickaby
It’s very difficult it just in terms of I anticipate that when people see this play, they want a very visceral reactions to it. And because, as you describe it, I Have a very visceral reaction to it. And so that’s, that’s, that’s just because I think leading down the path that we’ve just gone in, in discussing it, it hinges on a white family asking a brown person to do something that that that sort of like sparks the the inherent racism in the system to hopefully get an end that benefits them. And there’s like there’s there’s so many layers of, of racism to that. So I think that there will be definite reactions to that. In terms of the the politics of that, are you are you prepared for for I mean, I remember just just slight tangent in Toronto last last year the the Play As You Like It, which has been remounted by the ervices as the the the land acknowledgement, or as you like it, because there were people who had a very visceral reaction to that play, to go into see what they thought was Shakespeare, and then got a solo play. That was very uncomfortable for them, because they thought they were going to see some nice Shakespeare as you like it, everybody likes to play that sort of thing. And people stood up and shouted in the theatre, people laughed loudly. There were very visceral, loud reactions. Not ironically, or unexpectedly, mostly from a nice white people who’ve gone to see the show. Do you expect that kind of, are you? Are you ready for that kind of reaction with this show?
Vishesh Abeyratne
Yeah, I am definitely ready for people to I’m ready for people to sort of come away from it. The feeling very upset, and very disturbed. And very, because I mean, we’re dealing with, you know, apart from, apart from examining, you know, racial politics, which is always, always uncomfortable territory, you know, you’re also dealing with, you’re also dealing with the deaths of children, which is that that will, and you’re dealing with grief, you’re dealing with, you know, parental loss, I mean, these are all things that are very, very hard to sit with, for anybody. And so I think that’s a very, the play contains a very kind of, potent mix of, of uncomfortable, difficult things that audiences are going to have to, are going to have to sit with. And I, you know, I don’t want to, and I’m very much aware of that, I was aware of that, when I first started writing it, and I don’t want them to, I don’t want the play to be entirely devoid of you know, of heart or humour. Because of that, in fact, I want to make sure that those elements are very present, I want to make sure that these are characters that, you know, even even the unlovable characters in this use, you find something that you can, that you you find something to which you can emotionally connect in their in their situation. And so I hope that will carry people through, I’m also not, you know, I’m also resorting to a bit of a different approach from the cliff Cardinal, I’m not trying to sort of surprise people or startle them or, or kind of spring anything on them. So I think that will, I think, I think that also makes it a little bit easier to, to sell it to people, like you know exactly what you’re gonna get when you cut her.
Phil Rickaby
I think I think sometimes people people think they know what they’re gonna get, and then when they get what they what they what they were going to get, but maybe it’s a little different. They react to it, or maybe they they, they people have theatregoers are strange and we live in a in a strange time, this pandemic time and we’re sort of like, poking our heads out. And maybe it’s post pandemic and who knows what was what people are kind of relearning how to be in the world, and some people are not doing it very well. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s difficult, because like you said, it’s a very different different thing than say, the, the cliff Cardinal situation, but again, it’s, it’s people are going to have a visceral reaction. And, and they should, that’s what theatre is for. It’s to have people react. The worst thing is when somebody leaves and say, Well, that was nice, you know, that’s a non answer. I had a thought, and I’ve lost it. So that that’s what happens.
Vishesh Abeyratne
It’ll come back. It’ll come back to you.
Phil Rickaby
Maybe it will. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. Maybe it wasn’t a good question after all, um, One of the things that Oh, I was thinking about, about, you know, the the need for humour. And I think sometimes I’ve, I think we’ve all seen this play is very serious, but forgets to have the humour and, and we need it, we need it in order to release tension, you could build the tension, but there needs to be a release. And we need that in any play, whether it’s tragedy, whether it’s revenge, whether it’s revenge, tragedy, whatever it is, we laugh during the tension, we need it, because otherwise, it’s just, it’s just too much. You’ll look at the darkest plays. And and after a moment of of sadness or anger, you’re laughing A moment later. As a writer, how do you find the comedic moments for yourself in in serious topics? How do you do that without deflating the seriousness of the situation?
Vishesh Abeyratne
Yeah, it’s a, it’s a tricky balancing act to pull off. Because there’s, there’s two kinds of laughter for me that you can, you can kind of evoke in audiences, there’s comfortable laughter that kind of affirms that kind of suits and affirms, you know, established thought and you can kind of just, you can sort of lean back into it, it’s very, you know, it’s, it’s very non threatening. And then there’s uncomfortable laughter, which really throws me for a loop, because you’re not expecting, you’re just you’re not expecting the, you’re not expecting the plate to go there, you’re not expecting it to kind of be this irreverent about something so heavy or serious or potentially controversial. And it just, it like, completely throws you back in your seat, and it’s like a bucket of cold water poured on your face. I love those moments. And I love I love experiencing those moments as an audience member. And I love I love evoking those moments. It’s, it’s tricky, because you have to be able to do it in a way that you mean, you have to be very clear in what your targets are. I find because I mean, the the risk, you know, like, every everyone who writes satire is, you know, they don’t necessarily intend to offend people. That’s not their goal. Their goal is to entertain people. But we all know that. We all know that we run that risk. And so you have to kind of go according to your own internal ethical barometer have good sense and good taste, in deciding where you want to what moments you want to kind of destabilise the audience and throw them for a loop. But it’s the the end results when you get people. You know, when you get people laughing, and then wondering why they’re laughing. I mean, to me, that’s, those are some of the moments that I live for the most in theatre.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, absolutely. Satire is very different, as we know from I don’t know, people sharing the Beaverton on on Facebook or the onion. I remember a few years ago. See, CBC of fake news programme satire is that terrorist satirical news programme had a an episode about the entire government banning breakfast sandwiches. And if you came in, and he didn’t know that you were listening to a satirical programme, it sounds like a news programme. And I know people who heard that show, and were raging about it, they we talked to it, I was like, That’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. And then hearing a rerun of that programme, realising that you’re listening to satire and feeling like an idiot. So satire is is is both fun and difficult to do. And it’s also difficult because it’s out of context. It can be out of context by certain people, it can be used as a tool, right? By like, here’s an article out of context. How terrible is this? Now, fortunately, with theatre, we don’t have to have that taken out of context. Because we’re, you know, it exists in a moment, right? It exists in a moment. It’s not something that that people are particularly reading or sharing in that way. As far as satire goes, What is your current favourite source of satire?
Vishesh Abeyratne
Oh, my current favourite source of satire, I would have to I’d have to name a couple I’d have to name a few because there’s, there’s just so many going back from, you know, the comedies of Aristophanes to the writings of Swift to get to two of my favourite movies. One is Dr. Strangelove the classic. Kubrick’s a satire We’re on nuclear war and our propensity to create systems that will eventually that, if left unchecked, will eventually destroy us all. And there’s another movie by the Greek filmmaker, Costa gabrus, called Z. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. It’s a, it’s a movie from, again, I believe, from the 70s. That won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, it’s, and it takes place in Greece at around the time when it’s centred around the assassination of a left wing political leader. And you find out later that it’s sort of it’s paced like a thriller. And you find out that it’s the people that were connected to the assassination are connected to the military, and it’s a, it’s part of this, this coup that’s taking place and for, you know, right wing fascism to, to sort of rise up and control the population in Greece. And, I mean, the country is not named, but it’s very, it’s very clear that Costa gabrus is writing about his own his own country of origin. And the way that it’s the way that it all unfolds, there’s this undercurrent of re of bleak and savage irony, you know, as he uncovers the layers and layers of corruption in, you know, the judicial system and the police system. And sometimes it’s, I heard I was listening to one and I was listening to one analysis of the film that put it very well, sometimes the best way to do satire is to just reveal the truth and let it mock itself. And that it was that approach that I really kind of wanted to employ for blood offering. Because the premise, the premise of the play is very satirical in a very kind of modest proposal sort of way. But it unfolds like a tragedy, because, you know, you want the because I’ve, you know, I found this in earlier drafts of the play, you know, if that human element is not there, if that sort of, you know, if we don’t feel the emotional devastation of what’s going on, then audiences are going to tune out pretty quickly. Because when it’s done poorly, satire can be very didactic and preachy. And that’s, that’s not what I wanted to do hear
Phil Rickaby
her? I was totally, absolutely. You mentioned just sort of a little earlier that you can’t you, you, you, you came to Ottawa, back to Ottawa, from the West Coast, just before the pandemic. Now, was the pandemic, what brought you back from the West Coast? Or did was that a unfortunate timing kind of thing?
Vishesh Abeyratne
It was very unfortunate talk thing. Yeah, my partner and I came back in late 2019. For basic for a bunch of different reasons, healthcare reasons and financial reasons. And we just thought it would be best to come back. And so we were just, you know, we were settling into our lives here when? Yep, COVID hit and then changed everything.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Were you working on anything at the time that the pandemic hit was something was anything interrupted for you?
Vishesh Abeyratne
Um, I was. Well, I had been working on a couple of different things. One of which is a play that actually I just had a reading at the undercurrents festival here in Ottawa, they have an event called me play Tuesday. And we did a staged reading of it one night, it’s called white line, brown Tiger. And that takes place that is very explicitly a Canadian play. In contrast to this. It takes place in a thrift shop in Victoria, where a fight breaks out between two Sri Lankan employees, and their white manager tries to defuse the tension between them. And it becomes this exploration about, you know, identity and heritage and lasting trauma from the Sri Lankan Civil War. And again, very, very much very much like blood offering tonally, it’s, you know, very political, very darkly funny and ironic. And, but also with that also with a fair amount of, of heart as well. So, yeah, I know, that’s the that was what I was working on. At the time I came back and blood offering was kind of a 10 minute play that I had kind of put to the side. I didn’t know what it was going to do with it. I didn’t know if it was going to blossom into something else the way it has. But it’s funny the way things turn out, you know,
Phil Rickaby
was it somebody that was at a project that you started like that you turn to when everything was set during the pandemic that you decided, like, I guess the challenge is to expand this into something like what how did that how did the writing of it come about from the 10 minute play to what it’s become now?
Vishesh Abeyratne
Yeah, so I, yeah, I’m just looking at different plays that I had, I had started working on bar that I that I’d had, you know, first drafts finished, and I was, and I thought, you know, which of these can be, which of these Can I really turn into something that when all of this is over, we will be worthy of being put on stage. That’s what I was like, that’s what I was doing. Because I was like, okay, if I’m stuck in my apartment, then I’m going to, I’m going to use that time to really, like, build up a body of work. And really, you know, create some things that are going to be that are really going to have a profound visceral effect on people when they’re finally staged. And, and this was one of them, I read it again. And I just thought, you know, there’s a lot that can be explored here. And there’s a lot that can be elaborated upon, and a lot that can be dramatised that can’t be touched on in just 10 minutes. So
Phil Rickaby
no, absolutely, absolutely. What during those early days of the pandemic back when, you know, first we thought, Oh, two weeks, and this will all be over, and then six weeks, and then lobby over? Did you were you able to write during that period, because I know for myself, as a writer, I spent quite a bit of time unable to write in the first six months of the pandemic, just sort of like, all I could do was Doom scrolling, it didn’t have the creativity and it came eventually. But for quite a while before that it was it was not possible. Did you find any kind of block in the whole bleakness of of everything, or were you able to write during that time.
Vishesh Abeyratne
If you know if anything, it was the opposite. For me, I found that like, I had to, I had to write, I had to be working on something to kind of just focus on a project, you know, for the sake of just distracting myself from everything that was going on, because it really felt like, you know, the world was, the world was coming to an end or I guess, an accelerated end. And it just became, but that even that wasn’t necessarily a positive thing for me all the time. Because it felt like, you know, because I didn’t know because this was in the days when we didn’t know, we didn’t really know about the effects of COVID. We didn’t know what it was going to do to people. And I didn’t know like, if I get this virus, like, is that it for me? Am I just going to am I just going to die? Is that going to be it? So I thought, you know, if that’s the case, then I have to really like I have to I have to like finish this work. And I have to get it out there. So that, you know, sounds a bit egotistical, perhaps but like in the event that I this thing kills me like, I’ll have left something behind that, you know, is worth preserving.
Phil Rickaby
I don’t I don’t think that sounds you know, I think that’s the I think that’s the artists urge, right? That’s the artists, like, especially writers like you do this writers, painters, actors, if you’re in theatre, a little less so but still, you’re leaving behind a body of work, right? You’re trying to find like, in some ways, this is how you’re remembered. You know, yeah, by by the creation. So I think that it maybe it’s egotistical, but you know, I think we all have it, we all have that kind of that kind of thing. As far as as writing and theatre in general. What is it that brought you to the theatre we all have our origin stories as, as theatre creators as theatre artists, what’s yours? What is it that made you first want to do theatre?
Vishesh Abeyratne
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s always been a part of my life from when I was a kid, you know, my, my mom signed me up for drama classes. And, and I thought it was, but I wasn’t like serious about it that necessarily like I thought it was a fun activity for me, but I didn’t think it was necessarily going to be my calling until until I got to high school. Because my school I was fortunate enough to go to a school that had a very strong drama programme. And I remember in grade nine, I my drama class, basically kind of had to collectively write a play together. And we all and we, as actors, we kind of wrote the scenes that we were directly involved in. And I remember it was about was about a kid who, who’s had kind of a troubled home life his parents fought all the time and he had nightmares and, you know, we like people use like shadow puppetry to like, you know, put lip to like, show the you know, all the bad dreams he was having and, and I played the kids dad, so I wrote all the scenes with all the scenes with him and the kids mom who were fighting all the time. And it was funny. I when it finally premiered when it when we had, you know, all the parents came to see it and everything they were it was funny because they were all laughing at several moments. And I didn’t I wasn’t necessarily thinking of that when I was writing those scenes. I was like, Oh, I, you know, that’s interesting. Like, I was I meant it to be very, like very serious. And this is, you know, this is very dramatic and very intense. But I don’t know if they were laughing because of like, my writing or is it was because they were laughing because they were looking at kids trying to imitate adults. But it was a very, it was very interesting moment for me because I thought like, because I heard that and I thought oh, like these are this is the effect that my words can have on people, you know, what’s the contents of my head or are now being acted out for a bunch of people. And I thought that was just the most incredible thing and the most magical thing. And I that was when, because I knew I wanted to write but I didn’t necessarily know what direction I wanted to go. And that was when I knew I wanted to be a playwright.
Phil Rickaby
One of the things, I think that we all who write in the theatre or work in the theatre, like creating the theatre, there’s a moment, you know, there’s that moment where we figure out, oh, I want it you could do this as a as a college can be a career, then you have to break it to people and figure out how that’s going to happen. You have to go to guidance counselor’s and tell them that you want to work in theatre and have them try to figure out what that means. Because they weren’t expecting that, you know, I remember my guidance counsellor didn’t have any resources for me. So I had to figure it out on my own, because they were like, I don’t know anything about that. Oh, it was that it was on my own. What was what was your journey to like? Becoming like deciding that this is what you were going to do? And getting there?
Vishesh Abeyratne
Yeah, it’s, I guess. Well, once I, once I graduated high school, I kind of went on a bit of a, I kind of went on a bit of a zigzag because I thought initially like, maybe I’ll do, maybe I’ll do something a little bit more. A little bit safer, I suppose a little bit more conventional, and then do my writing on the side. So I signed, I got accepted to the liberal arts programme at mera INNOPOLIS. And that, and then it took me only a couple months to decide like, no, actually, I can’t just, I can’t just sit in it. It was when I was when I knew that academia was not so much for me, I needed to actually be on the ground creating, making art instead of just talking about it. So I, I switched to creative, the creative arts programme at Dawson college. And I did you know, I was part of a group called the Dawson theatre collective and that really only cemented my desire to to try and forge something of a career in this path. And I and then I got accepted to the playwriting programme at Concordia and I got to specialise even more. And, you know, the good thing about that, that programme about, I think theatre programmes and universities in general is they give you a platform in which you can just, you can just test out a whole bunch of ideas, and you don’t have to worry about, you know, because in the professional world, you have to worry about, you know, getting grants and you have to worry about breaking even and box office and all that stuff. But in school, you don’t have to, you can just try stuff and not worry about you know, the consequences of failing, you can fail all you want. And in the process, you can figure out just what kind of a writer you want to be what, what, what your focus is, what your concerns are. So, yeah, I mean, I’m lucky I had people who really kind of supported me on that journey and who were really able to kind of Yeah, just helped me figure out who I was.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, yeah. Now as a as a fan of speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy and horror. And now for the longest time, genre was something that that seems like a Canadian theatre and maybe theatre at large. In recent years, we have avoided there was a time when horror happened on stage at Jekyll and Hyde in the Victorian era era you had Dracula as as a play. Tara Find people in the Victorian era. And then we did movies and then people were like, well, I guess theatre isn’t isn’t isn’t scary anymore isn’t isn’t fantastic anymore fantastical. But over the last few years, I’ve noticed more groups and more writers and more creators starting to dabble in the Sci Fi in the fantasy for you, what’s the importance of genre theatre? on our stages? What does it bring that that say, non genre theatre doesn’t?
Vishesh Abeyratne
Ah, well, I think that, you know, especially with science fiction, I mean, you have the potential to, you have the potential to completely remake the world on stage. And kind of show people alternate ways of being of I’ll give you an example of that. At the great Canadian theatre company where I work in the box office, we just closed a run of Yvette Nolan’s wonderful play the unplugging, which takes place during a post apocalyptic future where two elderly Indigenous women have been banished from their community for, you know, being being too old, being past childbearing age. So they’re, they’re thrown out. And they find they they use, they’re eventually able to use their their traditional knowledge, their knowledge, the land to survive on their own and kind of create their own sort of matriarchal society have to, and there, and then eventually, somebody from the community try to go out to find the men tries to entice them into coming back. And it’s sort of it gets us to think about, you know, what, you know, it gets us to think about different ways of cooperation. And, you know, as opposed to competition, it gets us to think about our relationship to nature and the land, it gets us to think about, you know, how we, it gets us to think about how we treat the elderly in ways that, you know, a completely quote unquote, realistic story set in our own time might not be able to do so, you know, one of the I mean, one of the greatest things about science fiction, fantasy horror is that there are, you know, there are no walls, there are no, there’s, there’s no rules associated with these genres, you can do anything you want, you can set it in any kind of world that you want. And the thing is to, I think a very popular misconception about speculative fiction in theatre is that I think people tend to shy away from it, because they think it requires really big budget fancy effects, the way that Hollywood movies and television have shown us. And really all you need is, you can you can do as much you can tell a story that is as mind blowing in thought provoking with just, you know, a couple of people in a chair, that’s all you really need. And I think that, I mean, I’m certainly trying to, I’m trying to add to that, with that sort of growing cannon with my own work. I mean, I’m working on a play right now, which is about a young, you know, Sri Lankan Canadian technical writer who works for an arms manufacturing firm. And he has a special power, while he has two powers, one of which is that he is unable to feel pain, but he can transfer it to the nearest living individual. And the other is that he heals. So he’s basically invincible. And he has to when he’s outed by one of his co workers, he has to decide whether he wants to sell his DNA to, he wants to let the company he works for sell his DNA to the Saudi Arabian army, which, again, is a commentary on, you know, Canada’s complicity in various human rights abuses around the globe. So there’s, you know, it’s, you can kind of use this these sort of imaginative tools to comment on on, you know, larger social and justices. And you can use that for dystopian or utopian ends, it’s, it’s there. So we’re just now waking up to the idea that there’s there’s so much you can do with genre fiction in theatre and I I’m really, I’m, I want to do everything I can to like, push that forward and to sort of facilitate the growth of, of essentially a new kind of theatre a theatre that looks to the future instead of just the present in the past.
Phil Rickaby
I think it’s fascinating that we are coming back to to the genre aspect of it, which was gone for so long, like I like I mentioned but more and more people are starting to dabble in it, because you can say things without having to say them. allegory is so common in in this Onra and actually, in many ways more effective than, than like just coming out and say, This is a play about the something important, you can sort of like, hide your important thing, and somebody in the middle of the play will go, oh, and suddenly realise what you’re talking about. And also, the thing that I love about theatre is that you like you’re mentioning, people imagine more in the theatre than they do when they’re in in watching a movie or watching television. If you tell people that we’re now on another planet, as they will be like, Okay, so now we’re on another planet, like you can do, you can suggest it with maybe lights with maybe something else. But the audience is more likely to just go along with it in a way that they’re not going to if it’s a movie or or TV.
Vishesh Abeyratne
Exactly, yeah, it calls upon people too. Because theatre relies so much on suggestion, as opposed to like, you know, if it’s a movie or TV show, you can, you can use CGI and practical effects to like, show that you’re on another planet and Okay, we just buy it instantly. But, you know, with a little with maybe a minimal set, you kind of you’re asking the audience to sort of, yeah, it’s a greater it’s a greater suspension of disbelief that you’re asking of them. But once they agree to go on that journey, it’s, it’s, it’s so much more rewarding, I think, because you’re using your imagination, and you have a role in creating the piece as well, in a way.
Phil Rickaby
Absolutely. I always I’ve always, I’ve had people, you know, I work with people in my day job who are not theatre people. And so for them, they wonder, like, what’s the big deal with theatre? And I always give two examples, like, or one main example, like, if you’re if you watch a movie or a TV show, and somebody gets slapped, you don’t react to that. But if you’re in a theatre, and you’re watching that, and somebody gets slapped, everybody always reacts to that. Because it’s happening right there. It’s physical. It’s, it’s, it’s in the same room. And so suddenly, things become more immediate, which is a fascinating thing to exploring those differences. Now, just sort of in closing, I want to talk briefly about the Ottawa storytellers and how you work with them. Tell me about about about what you what you do with Ottawa storytellers.
Vishesh Abeyratne
Yeah, so Well, I’m I’m, I might be involvement with them began. In I think 2021, or there abouts when I saw a call circulating around that they were looking for storytellers to participate in a digital video series called stories and one ad. And that, that’s a series that’s, you know, it’s continued on into a second season now. And you can find, you can find recordings of it on YouTube, I have a couple of traditional Buddhist stories that I’ve retold for both seasons. And that was a lot of fun. It allowed me to kind of it allowed me to kind of access a part of my imagination that hadn’t necessarily been explored. Up to that point, I hadn’t really dabbled that much in oral storytelling. I just think it’s so cool that there’s a group that’s dedicated to keeping that, that art form alive, probably the oldest art form in existence, you know, and it’s an it encompasses so many different things, you know, they tell, did they do revivals of fairy tales, and folk tales, and myths and epics, they also do, but they’re also dedicated to like, you know, telling personal stories and, you know, you know, sort of turning the contents of your own life into into performative art. And, and I’ve found that through them, I’ve been able to sort of, well, I’ve been able to explore my own fascination with myths and legends and the ancient epics of the past and, and trying to sort of update those stories and bring them into into the present. You know, I think it’s very, I think it’s a really intriguing exercise to be able to do that. And also, I think, it’s allowed me to sort of renew my commitment to, you know, committing stories to memory, which I think is an art that we I think that we’ve kind of lost and I think that as we move towards, you know, as the world we live in grows more and more precarious and we don’t necessarily know if our way of life is going to last into the centuries to come. I think that’s a skill that more of us might want to try and pick up.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, you’re right about that for sure. Now, just in closing, I want to talk about blood offering in perform rents and people seeing that I believe it’s going to be seen to Toronto. What? Where? And when? Will we be able to see it in Toronto?
Vishesh Abeyratne
Yes, I know. It’s it’s going up at York University. It is going up at the end of April. I believe the performance dates are. Let me just double check. I believe they are April 28, and 29th. You’ll be able to see it. So yeah, you’ll be able to see it in exactly a month.
Phil Rickaby
Nice. Awesome. Will you be there? Will you be seeing it in performance? Or will this be your first time seeing it in performance?
Vishesh Abeyratne
It will be said I’m super excited to see the see the actors bring it to life. It’s going to be truly wonderful. Awesome.
Phil Rickaby
Well, Misha, thank you so much for for joining me. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Vishesh Abeyratne
Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to be able to talk about this and other things was great meeting you to
Phil Rickaby
get to meet you.
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 podcast, you can also leave a review those reviews and ratings help new people find the show. If you want to keep up with what’s going on with Stageworthy and my other projects, you can subscribe to my newsletter by going to 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 the 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