Rebecca Northan is a Canadian actress, improviser, theatre director, and the creator of the hit show Blind Date. Originally from Calgary Alberta, where she began her improv training at the Loose Moose Theatre. You’ve seen her on stage, TV and screen in everything from This Hour Has 22 Minutes, to Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.
Twitter: @RebeccaNorthan
Blind Date:
Twitter: @blinddateontour
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlindDateOnStage
http://www.blinddateonstage.com/
Stageworthy:
http://www.stageworthypodcast.com
Twitter @stageworthyPod
Facebook: http://facebook.com/stageworthyPod
Transcript
Transcript auto generated.
Phil Rickaby
Welcome to Episode 40 of Stageworthy I’m your host Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast about people in Canadian Theatre on Stageworthy, I might talk one on one with an actor, director, playwright or producer or I might get a group of people together to talk about a specific aspect Theatre in Canada. If you’d like to be a guest on stage earlier just want to drop me a line you can find stage where the on Facebook and Twitter and stage where the pod and you can find the website at stage where the podcast.com My guest is Rebecca, Northern, an actor, improviser and director and the creator of the hit show blind date. If you enjoyed the podcast, I hope you’ll subscribe on iTunes or Google music or whatever podcast app you use, and consider leaving a comment or rating.
I noticed that I mean, I reached out to you on Twitter, I noticed that that your your Twitter profile says that you’re lists Calgary and Toronto, are you sort of like moving back and forth between each? Are you in transition between one and the other?
Rebecca Northan
No, um, I have one firm foot firmly planted in each city. Cool.
Phil Rickaby
Is do you find? Do you find that difficult transitioning between two cities?
Rebecca Northan
Now I’ve been doing it for such a long time. No, like I grew up in Calgary, I moved to Toronto in 2001. But I’ve always gone back to Calgary to work I have really good professional relationships there and colleagues that inspire me and and continue to encourage my work. So I’m very happy going back and forth.
Phil Rickaby
That’s, of course yeah. If you’ve got if you’ve got the people, then of course, you’re gonna go back. I mean, you’re most known because of I mean, for a number of things, but I think I first became aware of you because of blind date. Which came first blind date or Mimi.
Rebecca Northan
They arrived simultaneously, actually, yeah, I was asked to by Tina Rasmussen to create a short piece for the Spiegel show at Harbourfront Centre. And I think it was 2007. And the idea for the very short little clown turn and the character of Mimi both showed up at the exact same time. I had never previously I’d never done clown before. But because the environment of the Spiegeltent was sexy adult circus, I thought, well, there’s probably room for a sexy clown in there somewhere. And
Phil Rickaby
I mean, how long was it originally?
Rebecca Northan
The piece itself? Yeah, it was just, it was 10 minutes. Okay. 10 To 12 minutes, it was a really short sketch. The guy that I brought up on stage really didn’t get to do any talking at all. And, but it went really well for the whole summer that we were there. And at the end of it, I was left with the question, well, what if? What if we took the time to get to know this person who we’re bringing up on stage? And that’s what blossomed into the full length blind date?
Phil Rickaby
Was, was the idea of of like, I mean, it is a mystery who you’re what you’re gonna get each time you bring somebody up like that. Was that? Did you find that exhilarating? Terrifying?
Rebecca Northan
Both? Yes, both Absolutely. Both both completely. I’m certainly an adrenaline junkie, otherwise, I wouldn’t be an improviser to begin with. And I love the challenge of of working with the unknown of a different person each night. So that’s really, really exciting. But it was also, you know, there’s a tremendous amount of fear when you realise 50% At least 50%, if not more of the performance I’m about to do is in the hands of a stranger who’s not a performer. So I had to learn to trust my own instincts and my improv abilities and also make lots of space for that person to show up and be who they are and to have their own element of control in the show. And there’s actually like a tonne of delight in that for me now.
Phil Rickaby
Is there is there Do you have any of you have, have you been worried about about you know, somebody comes up and they are completely shut down? Once they’re up there? Is there is there anything built in to help bring them out of their shell or to make them blossom or?
Rebecca Northan
Well, the the pre show selection process is something that we’ve as a company refined over the years and got we’ve got very good at it. So we all as a company, patrol the audience or mingle with the audience before the show, and we have, we all have pretty good instincts. And when we’re out there we are looking for someone. Our rule of thumb as a company is, if you were at a cocktail party, who did you meet in the lobby that you thought I would want to get to know them better? So we’re looking for someone who’s open and friendly and a little bit playful. You know, we we never want to put someone on the spot. And we also, we tell people in advance. Listen, you’re on our shortlist. Do you understand how the show works? And how would you feel if it was you that got chosen? We usually have five or six people on our shortlist. But we give everyone the opportunity to say, oh, no, absolutely not. Please don’t pick me because we don’t want to put anyone into a really uncomfortable situation. We want somebody who maybe is a little bit nervous, but but also kind of intrigued and game to play with us. And then once you’re I mean, one of the things we’ve certainly learned is you don’t know how someone’s fear is going to change them. So the person you met in the lobby, if they get really, really wigged out on stage could be something else might show up. But that hasn’t happened for a very long time. That being said, we have a timeout is built into the show. So either myself or the guest can call timeout, anytime they need to step outside of what’s going on and check in and we do everything that we can to make sure that person looks good and has a really good time. And we joke with them. And we say, you know, we want you to feel like you’ve been to the theatre Spa at the office.
Phil Rickaby
Now, I noticed when you were last doing the show in Toronto, you were subbing out every so often so that somebody else could come in and I was in Hamilton recently and noticed that I think that person is is performing that show. Is it strange for you to give over and teach someone to do a show that’s been so inherently your show for so long?
Rebecca Northan
It actually, you know, it. It hasn’t been my show for that long, actually. I maybe did one or two very short runs of the show. And then we went down to New York. And at the end of the New York run my producer down there said what did you learn about blind date that you didn’t know before you came to New York when we went to New York, that was the longest run I had done up until that point. So we did a one month run in New York. And I said, I’ll tell you what I learned I can’t do eight shows a week. This shows exhausting in a way that no other performance has. So from that point on, there’s always been two women, okay, that travel with the show. The the headlining clown does six shows a week, and then the Mimi alternate takes the matinees and does too. So that’s usually how it plays out. So when I was at Paragon I was the lead clown and Christie Bruce was my alternate, right. So she did the matinees, but Christie has been headlining blind date. For a long time, there’s a woman named Renee Amber who lives in Alberta, who has headlined the show before. And it’s there also, it’s a really great way to bring new Mimi’s on board is to say you get to work backstage and watch this other person do the show. And then you you have a controlled release into the show, basically, because it’s not something you can really do a tonne of rehearsal. For you really need to you can learn the arc of the show. And then you need to jump into the deep end of the pool with a member of the public. And give it a go brings
on an interesting question. If there’s if there is no way to really rehearse that, Oh, what was the creation process? Like?
I should circle back I didn’t totally finish answering your question. Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah, no, no, that’s okay. It’s because I just went off on a tangent. But that being said, Is it difficult for me to release the show and watch other people do it? Not at all, like every single woman that has come on board and done the show has been a close friend of these other improvisers people I’ve known for more than half my life. And it is delightful for me to sit back and watch them. Because one of the things that’s inherent in the show is that we tell the truth. So any stories that come up about our lives, our thoughts, you know, our political leanings, that’s the truth of the woman in the cloud nodes. So none of us do the show exactly like and so we are always surprising each other. So it’s actually a really, it feels like this great kind of gift that we all share with each other. So it’s really fun. It’s really fun. But then like the The rehearsal or the creation process was a lot of hypothetical Well, I think maybe there’ll be a scene in a cafe and then maybe this will happen. And maybe that will happen. And then you can only do that discussion so long. And then you’d actually just have to put the show up in front of an audience and try it. So most of the work that I’ve been doing in the last eight years has been in this form, which I’m calling spontaneous Theatre in which we go, okay, we think we have a structure Great, let’s start bringing in people, non performers and putting them through the structure and see, see how it goes?
Phil Rickaby
Well, that I mean, that’s the advantage to being somebody who comes from an improv background, I imagine that you’re a little freer than than somebody who maybe is a strictly theatre person, too, you’re better able to deal with the surprises that you might get in that situation. Well, you
Rebecca Northan
would hope. Fingers crossed, you never know, you know, you just you cannot prepare for every possible scenario. And every time we map out a show, and we think, Oh, this is great, we think we know how people are going to respond. I think it’s very similar to the designing of a video game, we’ve actually started referring to our our rehearsal volunteers as our beta testers. And they come in and they break the show, and we go, oh, wow, we did not see that coming. Okay. What do we what do we do to change the structure and continue to hone and refine these structured narratives so that it truly is a meeting in the middle between improvisation and scripted theatre? Which is why we call it spontaneous theatre?
Phil Rickaby
Did Did you learn anything? By watching other people perform the show? I mean, I know that you you learned that you couldn’t do eight shows a week when you were doing it yourself. But do other people teach you something about the show?
Rebecca Northan
Yes, every time I watch someone, a new person do it, I go, Oh, the structure of blind date is really solid. It really the structure itself really works. And, and it’s strong enough that it makes a really solid foundation for people to stand on top of and improvise inside of. So that’s really a good thing to know. And then I would say that all of us all of the women who do blind date, we all steal from each other. You know, someone will come up with a great line one night, we think well, that’s, that’s great. I’m stealing that. We all lend and borrow. And, and the other thing too, is I learned things about my friends that I didn’t know. So I get the opportunity to watch them in this conversation with a stranger and you never know what questions will come up. And just when you think you know everything about your best friend, a date asks a question and an answer comes out and you go cheese. I didn’t know that about Christie. That’s amazing.
Phil Rickaby
That’s really interesting. Yeah, it’s really cool. So this show came out of the Spiegel tent. Yeah. And I, you know, that was that feels like such a long time ago. And I remember it was the Spiegeltent. I think it ended up being on the Harbourfront in Toronto for a little bit longer than they originally envisioned. Because it was so popular. Oh, yeah.
Rebecca Northan
It’s they kept extending and extending. And it was it was easily one of the coolest summers I’ve ever had in my career.
Phil Rickaby
Well, I mean, and it gave you something that you’ve you’ve been doing kind of ever since.
Rebecca Northan
Yeah, I know. I’m really grateful.
Phil Rickaby
What was I mean, I know that you sort of have an improv background. But did you ever envision doing stuff in a theatre? Or what did you think was going to be your trajectory in the entertainment industry?
Rebecca Northan
Oh, gosh, you mean when I first started out? Yeah, I had no idea. I mean, I think really early on as a student, you know, doing my undergraduate degree at the University of Calgary I thought, I just hope I make money. That’s all. And I think I, I’ve kind of held on to that. In terms of I like all aspects of the business, so I like producing, I liked directing. I’m playwriting like traditionally writing scripts more and more. I started improvising when I was 16. So I’ve continued to do that and I love that I’m, I get bored very easily. So I like to kind of jump around a lot. I even love I particularly love the marketing and PR side of the theatre business. I find that very fascinating and I love you know, working with designers to come up with a brand and a logo, etc, etc. I love all of it, all of it, all of it. So I know when I was a student, a lot of talk in class was G. Well, everybody’s saying like, well, if you’re really lucky, someday you’ll work at Shaw or Stratford. And I thought, yeah, sure, yeah, I’d love to work at those places. But I also want to work everywhere. So in my mind, I’ve always had this like, I’ve talked about this in other interviews that I have like a brownie sash. In my mind that I you know, that you, you sort of collect badges across the country of like, Yes, I have my, my tea ya touring an event in the middle of winter badge. And, you know, I’m always sort of thinking, Well, what badge? Am I missing? What I want to do next?
Phil Rickaby
I am kind of getting the feeling that I mean, well, I think a lot of people still hold it. You know, if you’re lucky, you’ll, you’ll work at Stratford or Shaw? I do. I do see so much more going on in the indie theatre scene. It’s so exciting. It’s so exciting that there’s that there are careers that are not just at those big theatres anymore. Yeah, people are able to make work on their own terms in a way that I don’t think that people ever have before.
Rebecca Northan
I yeah, I mean, I’m no expert. But couldn’t you also look at the business world that way too, and say, well, 100 years ago, there were a whole bunch of big companies, and you would try to get a job at a big company. But as time has gone on, more and more people have adopted the entrepreneurial spirit and you see more and more startups and you’ll see more and more people interested in being their own boss and working for themselves and making a go of it. The idea of working in any company, whether it’s in mainstream business, or you know, if we’re talking about those, those big, theatrical institutions in the country, the idea of working at a company for 15 to 35 years in one place. That’s a rarity these days.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, that’s very true. That’s very true. So you said that you started improvising when you were 16? Was that? What drew you into improv at that age?
Rebecca Northan
Oh, my, one of my best friends had started volunteering at some theatre called the loose moose theatre and he said, you might really like it, you should come check it out. And I had started playing theatre sports, in my high school drama class. And then going up to loose moose realised, oh, the guy who invented theatre sports, started the loose moose Theatre Company. And then here’s people in their 20s and 30s, who are playing theatre sports every Sunday night. So I was enthralled and went to the artistic director, Dennis Cahill, and said, Wow, this place is amazing. Can I start coming here and playing here and our high school team had been invited up for some sort of high school tournament and I just never left and even now when I go back to Calgary, I continue to work with Dennis and collaborate and a lot of my closest colleagues I met at loose moose when I was 16. And we’re still all really good friends. And we continue to make work together even though we’ve kind of you know, scattered all over the place. But I would say that loose moose moose, the alumni of the loose moose theatre company have a better track record than any than a lot of training facilities in the in the country. You know, right. People from loose moose have gone on to write on Jimmy Fallon and the tonight show and have their own television shows and their own radio shows, you know, Peter old ring and Pat Kelly, have a radio show a very successful radio show on CBC called this is that, you know, these are all my contemporaries. And the generation ahead of me was, you know, Bruce McCullough and Mark McKinney from Kids in the Hall got their started at loose moose or
Phil Rickaby
that is a pretty good track record.
Rebecca Northan
It’s pretty amazing. It’s pretty amazing.
Phil Rickaby
Was improv your I mean, you were you were in theatre arts, and that’s where you see you were you were playing the theatre games. Was theatre, something that you were interested in before that before I was 16, did you take did you go? Did you go into theatre arts, like some people do because you thought it was a course that you were something that you had to take? Are you interested in theatre before that?
Rebecca Northan
No, I knew I probably knew from a very early age, I was going to I wanted to be an actor. There was no question in my mind ever. that I knew. Do you remember
Phil Rickaby
what it was that made you know?
Rebecca Northan
Hmm. No, probably not. At the time, I think I mean, I certainly have strong memories of being taken to see plays at Alberta theatre projects in Calgary and I do have a distinct memory of being 15 years old and standing at the back of the Martha Cohen theatre as the house lights came up at the end of the show and thinking Someday I want to work here. I don’t know I I just it was always the most exciting thing, whether even in elementary school, when touring productions would come in getting to take the afternoon off and go down to the gym and watch a play was the most exciting thing ever. And I was far more turned on by that than, say sports for example.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah.
Rebecca Northan
And my brother and I, my brother is also a performer and he’s one of my collaborators. We work together all the time, my brother and I used to put on sketches in the living room at home to entertain our parents. So we’ve kind of always been doing it. And I have a, it’s in it’s in our family like I have a second cousin, who’s one of the founding members of Bard on the beach in Vancouver, and she’s now the head of the theatre arts department in Regina, her name is Katherine Brock. So and she tells me she’s got some old black and white family photograph of our you know, ancestors Lance’s That’s too old the board but our family members coming up from the states and running out of money and so stopping to put on a play to raise money so that they can continue on their journey. So
Phil Rickaby
I’m before before the the invention of Mimi, what sort of brought you to that world? So you went through the loose moose? And you were, did you do theatre school?
Rebecca Northan
Yeah, yeah, I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary. So while I was in school, you know, in the week, in my acting classes working on Shakespeare and Sean Ibsen and Chekhov, and all that, you know, doing my Tom Stoppard units, and then on the weekends, I was still improvising. And then I also started to, I think, in my second and third year of university, I started auditioning for theatre companies outside of the department, which kind of got me in a little bit of hot water as a student, they were saying, you know, we think you should be doing student productions. But I started getting cast in semi professional stuff and making money as an actor before I graduated. And I ended up doing summer stock when I was still a student. And I also got paid to be part of an in house improv group at a comedy club. So I was always my my artistic pendulum was always swinging back and forth between mainstream scripted theatre and improv. Always. And, and so I worked as an actor in Calgary for, you know, quite a few years after I graduated, and then when I moved out to Toronto, I thought, well, I want to I’ll take the path of least resistance and I auditioned for the second city, because I had a lot of friends who’d gone through there, and I ended up that was sort of my first foot into Toronto was working in Second City.
Phil Rickaby
Do we were in the company at Second City?
Rebecca Northan
Yeah, I started out in the touring company. And then I was on the mainstage for about a year. Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
Now, it? I did, I didn’t notice that you have a pretty I mean, for a Canadian artist, a pretty extensive entry on Wikipedia. I don’t know. I don’t know how much is is actually accurate. I actually find it really rare when I’m talking to somebody and they have a Wikipedia entry entry. So whenever that happens, I do I do have that open. And I sort of look at it. And I there’s a number of things that come up here. List of theatres that you’ve worked at working Dora Mae, a Dora award, things like that. But the one there’s like a one line that sort of talks about the show. This is cancer. Yeah. Which was that the first show that you create that you helped create on your own?
Rebecca Northan
Oh, no, no, no, no, I know. I’ve been like creating shows and self producing forever. So I mean, right out of university, some friends of mine and I in Calgary started a theatre company called upstart crows. And we did sort of reduced comedic versions of variety of Shakespeare plays. And we would do those in pubs, which was really, really fun. So I’ve kind of always been doing that. You know, before we did this as cancer, Bruce Horak, my collaborator, and I did what we called the Macbeth show in Toronto, which was a reduced comedic version of the Scottish play. But how did this is cancer. This is cancer came about because Bruce had been cast in a show called the hollow that was directed by Mike canard of mumps and Smoot, so he started to learn about the world of Buffon. Yeah, and he He was on a variety Bill one night and whatever. I can’t remember the original name of his Buffon character. But he was told that the name was too close to somebody else’s name and that he needed to change it. And he was kind of pissed about it. So he said, Okay. Tell the audience, my name is cancer, introduce me his cancer, and everyone went, Oh, that’s awful. Oh, no, that’s terrible. And he’s like, yeah, exactly. I’m coming out as cancer and I’m going to try to seduce an audience member. But it planted the seed for us of you know, what? If so, what if you expand on that idea? I mean, what if what if the disease of cancer was personified Bruce, as a cancer survivor, we both of us lost a parent to, to cancer. So we kind of, you know, we’re speaking from personal experience. But what if cancer were personified, and he was coming to town to do a cabaret? What would that look like? You know, and what if cancers not out? To maliciously get us? What if he falls in love with people? What if that’s his thing? So we started to kind of build up this this original mythology around cancer. And it turned into this is cancer, which Bruce has performed, and toured every year for the last 10 years. Wow. Yeah. We’d like to do long shows short, because we’d like to do shows that just play over and over and over so that we, we ended up we eventually ended up getting paid for the rehearsal time that we front loaded for free.
Phil Rickaby
Well, I mean, that is, I mean, in terms of like, when you’re creating shows whether for Fringe Festivals or, or other things, that is kind of the dream. I mean, you would love to have a Rick Miller Show, and travel the world and just do that show. Sure. For ages, when you’re doing a show for 10 years or eight years. In the case of of I think you said eight years for blind date.
Rebecca Northan
Yeah, coming up. Oh, nine. Wow.
Phil Rickaby
I mean, obviously, one of the things that that is something that an actor has to learn is how to keep it fresh. And as though you’re performing it for the first time. That’s like Lesson number one that we really have to learn. But then when people think about performing a show for for 10 years.
Is there?
Is there a way? Are there ways that you’ve learned to? I know that what my answer to the question is, but I’m curious about for you how you keep it fresh over so long.
Rebecca Northan
Well, you know, even this is cancer. Again, it’s scripted, but it has pockets, significant pockets inside of it, where there’s improvisation happening and there’s audience participation. And blind date is very much that and so are my my newer shows, similar legend has it and these other ones I have in development at the moment, is, at least in my mind, sort of I feel like I’m pioneering this genre that we’re calling spontaneous theatre is is always including the unknown. So I never know what an audience member is going to bring to the stage. In terms of like, I personally, the idea of doing the exact same scripted show for 400 Plus performances over 10 years that I don’t know if I can handle it, I might go crazy. But you just I think you have to continue to find different challenges for yourself. So you know, blind date has had has had over 400 performances now I’ve shared those with other other women I’m not doing I haven’t done all of those, but I will set I will have my friends that that I work with on the show, give me an agenda to play out right before I go on stage. So you know, try being softer tonight, or work on being more playful or, and you can do that inside of scripted work. I mean, I ran the mainstage show that I was in at Second City. We ran I think for eight months. And so in that case, I kept it fresh for myself by saying okay, I know I’m getting X amount of laughs In this sketch by doing what I’m doing. What happens if I do a little bit less? Oh, same amount of laughs That’s interesting. Tomorrow night I’m going to do a little bit less Oh, bigger laugh that’s a surprise. So experimenting with how much energy Am I putting out you know how real Can I play it and still get the same amount of laughs etc was like giving yourself little homework assignments. I think
Phil Rickaby
that’s that’s really fascinate because I know recently I performed my own solo show for the first time and I think what surprised me that I don’t think I’d quite consider heard when I thought about performing a solo show was how important the audience is. Oh, yes. How much how important it is to talk to the audience and use them as your scene partner. I mean, I’ve seen solo shows before, but it never, it never somehow never occurred to me that, that other people say that your scene partner, it never occurred to me until I was doing it that yeah, that’s your scene partner. Yeah, they really are. Yeah, you have to react to them, and you have to talk to them. And there’s no way to fake that. Yeah. When you were first performing solo. How, how terrifying was that for you? How because some people find it terrifying. And other people go in exhilarated at the thought of it.
Rebecca Northan
Oh, so scary. So, so scary. When we first brought blind date back to World Stage at Harbourfront. I mean, the first thing I mean, I didn’t think anyone was going to come. So I was sitting in the dressing room, kind of like preparing myself for you know, 10 people in the audience. And then my brother came and knocked on the door and said, so we’re sold out. And that was worse. No, that is worse. That was worse, because I thought, oh, no, like, what am I going to do? And I was so afraid I had never been this afraid of my life. I was so afraid on the opening night of blind date in Toronto that my hands were visibly trembling. And I was almost crying. Actually, I think I did burst into tears when he said, we were sold out. And so right before I went on stage, and I was hyperventilating. And this is not in character for me. My brother came and he put his hands on my shoulders. And then he said, I don’t want you to think about the audience, I want you to think about and I don’t remember what he said, but he gave me a homework assignment. And that’s where that whole idea of work on something different every night came from was him just saying, Stop thinking about the scary stuff go out and this is your agenda. And that completely grounded me. Now in the case of blind date, I’m not really it’s not really a solo show, you know, I’m there. I’m up there with with my scene partner is someone from the audience. But I have in the last two years written and performed my own true solo show, written in an autobiographical sense dramatised. But I didn’t like it. I don’t like going onstage all by myself. And yes, I very much love playing with an audience. But I didn’t like being alone. Backstage alone in the dressing room. I didn’t like coming off stage. And, you know, thinking, Well, what am I going to do go for a drink by myself after the show? No, I did not like it. So I’m not sure if I would, if I would solo perform again. Or if I if I did, it would have to be someone else’s material. I think
Phil Rickaby
that’s I mean, you bring up a good point, because I mean,
if you’re doing the show with other people, they you know, you’re backstage with them hanging out, you’re there your company, both onstage and off there, you know, you’re you’re you’re hanging out together supporting each other. And then after the show, you do go out together, and that’s doing a solo show is entirely something different. Yeah. And yet, I find it, you know, I’ve finished my, my solo show and thought I can’t wait to do another one. Now, for you. I don’t know how that’s going to feel later on, if I’m travelling. And it’s just me, but I think, you know, I enjoyed the performance of it. Well,
Rebecca Northan
listen, I have a lot of good friends who are stand up comedians, and travelling by yourself. And that’s pretty lonely. Going back to a hotel every night by yourself is pretty lonely. But I will say, I do think I think every actor should do a solo show. Once in their lives. You know what it’s like to be completely by yourself. And two, as the lights come out, reach out energetically and go, can I feel the audience and what’s their temperature tonight and okay, I want them to come on this ride with me. And it’s just me. I mean, it’s never just you, you still have your stage manager and you have your lighting design and your music and those really become your comrades on stage. So you’re never really alone. 100% But the experience of being the solo performer I think is invaluable. Even if you just try it and go oh, that was horrible. I never want to do it again. At least you know. Yeah. The next time you’re in a play, you have so much appreciation of the other people on stage.
Phil Rickaby
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, for me, I think the first time I performed a solo show was that like the anytime I connected with the audience, there was a desperation of of needing other people.
Rebecca Northan
Look, we’re primates like yeah, he’s wired into us that if you’re alone, you’re dead. You need community.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, So
having having performed your your solo, you’re the you’re truly solo show your autobiographical show. Is that something that are you? Are you have you now that you’ve done it? Are you done? Are you? Are you done with with Julie’s solo stuff? Or is it something that you want to explore more of?
Rebecca Northan
I don’t know. I’m done for now. I have other stuff that I’m more inspired about. And I’m done with that show in particular was called troublemaker I think yeah, that’s good. I can check cross that off the list. Mission accomplished. Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
Um, and so I mean, you’ve been you’ve been sort of alluding to things that you’re working on, is there anything that you can, you can talk about something that you’re really excited about that you’re in the process of working on are about to do a
Rebecca Northan
whole bunch of things I’m heading into this fall. We are adapting blind date for Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto and we are doing queer blind date. Interesting. So I have two of my very good friends, Julie Orton and David Tomlinson alternating. So first week will be lesbian blind date and the second week will be gay blind date, and then the third week there they will alternate and fingers crossed, it’ll get hold held over. And simultaneous to that regular blind date is running with Christie and testing in Stein, theatre, Aquarius and Hamilton. So I’m really stepping into my director shoes and kind of shepherding these two productions in the in the training of new clowns.
Phil Rickaby
How does it feel to step into the director? She’s I mean, it’s not your first time directing?
Rebecca Northan
Oh, no, I love it. I yeah, I love it. I’m happy to do it. And I’m happy to see the show have a continued life. And I am so thrilled and humbled that Evelyn Perry was open to the idea of this next chapter of blind date of like, this sort of the core of blind date, our thesis is that everyone is loveable. So then it only stands to reason that we need to keep opening up the show and opening up the show and allowing a larger and larger array of audience members to come up on stage. So when I do the show, I choose men because I’m straight. Yep. And I want the show to be truthful and honest. And so to get to share the love with the with that the buddy’s audience just seems like the next most obvious step to me, and I’m so excited.
Phil Rickaby
I have to agree that that seems that seems to me like the, I mean, again, if everybody is lovable, or it’s it’s, it only stands to reason that the show would work in that setting and the buddy setting as well as on any other stage.
Rebecca Northan
Yeah, definitely. And then, what else am I doing? I have a project called an undiscovered Shakespeare that we’ve been workshopping at the Stratford Festival, just as we’re just about to head out there. So this will be our third year. And the premise of that is every life is Shakespearean. So we got a true life love story from someone in the audience. And then we, in theory, turn it into a five act undiscovered Shakespeare play, improvised in iambic pentameter. It is the scariest thing I’ve ever attempted.
Phil Rickaby
Okay, that does sound pretty terrifying. It is just the idea of improvising. I have a Pentameter just as a start.
Rebecca Northan
Oh, yeah, we’re terrible at it. But Katana is a really good friend of mine. And she is an amazing teacher. And so we’ve been working with her and she’s been coming in and drilling us in iambic structure and sonnets and the language of Shakespeare and, you know, but as someone who’s been improvising for more than half my life, it’s, it is both terrifying and refreshing to step up on stage and, and observe and myself, Oh, I’m afraid to speak. Because I don’t want to make a horrible mistake. And I don’t want to do it badly. And I don’t want to look stupid. And yet because I’m an improv teacher, I know that that’s exactly why I need to open my mouth and not worry about it.
Phil Rickaby
Right. So you said how many years have you been workshopping this?
Rebecca Northan
This will be our third summer going back to strapping
Phil Rickaby
and how how, like, how do you how has it been going in terms of like, getting that undiscovered Shakespeare in and creating that? Are you do you usually get the five act structure? Do you usually get the am big Pentameter or do you even just care until after?
Rebecca Northan
Well, we had we had two public performances last year as part of the forum. Basically, the way our show is structured is act one is the audience member gets to come up on stage They go back in time, they get to hang out with William Shakespeare and his acting company in the pub. And so act one really is very much an interview, if that makes sense, where we’re getting the story. And then we take intermission, and when we have 15 minutes to sketch out for ourselves what we think the outline of a five act structure would might look like. And then we come back after 15 minutes, and we just start. And we, what we what we learned last year, because last year is the first time we did we did it publicly was if you just really jump into the deep end of that iambic pentameter rhythm, and you go for it, sometimes it happens. And then and then what would happen to me is I would, I would hear myself speaking in iambic pentameter, and I’d get really excited that I was doing it, I’m doing it, I’m doing it. And as soon as I got excited, and self congratulatory, it would all fall apart. So then you fallen off the metre, and then you just get back on. So there’s a real sort of sense of jazz to it. But a good friend of mine from the regular Stratford company came to watch it. And I asked him for feedback afterwards, and he said, Boy, you guys sure are adept with the text. And I thought, wow, that’s the greatest compliment ever. Because there’s no text.
Phil Rickaby
We’re no, absolutely.
Rebecca Northan
I’m sure, though, I mean, that being said, I’m sure any Shakespeare expert would come and sit and watch us and, you know, have their toes curl in Shakespeare’s rolling over in his grave. But I think it’s, it’s worth trying, you know, I don’t want I don’t I’m not particularly interested in things that I know for sure. Gonna be 100% successful, like, what are those? I don’t even know what those are. But to sort of issue that challenge to myself and some of my colleagues to say, what do you think this sounds really hard and scary, right, guys? Let’s try it. And everyone goes, Oh, yeah. Okay, that’s crazy. Let’s do it. And the
Phil Rickaby
fascinating because it the the idea, like everything that you’re describing here, about this show, just makes my stomach clench up in a way that not much else does. But how incredible to get up and do it and just go for it.
Rebecca Northan
Well, my, my early improv training with Keith Johnstone was you have to risk failing. And that, you know, to watch, if you were watching golf, and it was hole in one after hole, and one after hole in one, that would be the most boring thing ever. That it’s the attempt that’s more interesting than the success itself. So and that the struggle is interesting, and that that’s where theatre lives is the attempt and the struggle and the failure and then how do you recover? And oh, you’re successful? And oh, no, you lost it. And that’s, that’s, to me is a thrilling night in the theatre. And also, I mean, ultimately, it’s a metaphor for life to write, like, who’s having 100% successful life and let’s go drive over them with the truck.
Phil Rickaby
It occurs to me that one of the things that you said about this, that about performing this undiscovered Shakespeare is that when you get excited and you started thinking about about how you’re doing it, and and that becomes a conscious thought that that’s where it falls apart. Is there a lesson about about improvisation in there? Yes. But
Rebecca Northan
there’s a lesson about improv. And there’s a lesson about acting the moment that you’re outside of yourself, patting yourself on the back and go on whether it’s Wow, look at you being a great improviser or look at look at this amazing acting moment you’re having right now well, then you’re no longer in the moment you’ve stepped out and you’re being you’re, you’re editorialising on your own performance. So cut it out. Try to take your ego out of the equation, but how to successfully take your ego out of an out of that equation. On a on an ongoing basis, I have no idea. I mean, I think I just kind of go in and out of that. And it’s like meditating when you catch yourself having a thought you go oh, I have to let that go. Yes, I’ve missed missed the I’m missing the moment again.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, no, absolutely. That’s sort of I did find when I was performing my my show recently that that there will be moments when I’d be like, This is going really well. Oh, fuck, you know, just to just to get myself out of thinking about that because the moment I do that I’m not connecting with the audience.
Rebecca Northan
Actually, you know, the I try to do this the moment that I have the thought, wow, this is going really really well. I try to follow it up with stop being an asshole. You are being an asshole in that moment where you’re like, oh my god, I’m just So awesome. Look at what I’m doing then it should fall apart.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, this has been really great. Like I want to thank you for for being a guest on on the podcast, and thanks for being a great guest. This has been a lot of fun for me.
Rebecca Northan
Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on.