416. Ben Yoganathan

This week on Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby welcomes Ben Yoganathan, a Toronto-based actor, writer, and director whose latest work, Zeitgeist, will premiere at the 2024 Toronto Fringe Festival. In a lively and wide-ranging conversation, Ben shares the inspiration behind Zeitgeist, his theatre journey from Guelph to Toronto, his experience with unconventional venues, and his recent creation residency in Zurich. This episode dives into the highs and lows of making independent theatre and what it means to be a young artist in an overwhelming world.
This episode explores:

The inspiration behind Zeitgeist and its cinematic influences
The creative process behind developing a play about navigating life in your 20s
The benefits and challenges of unconventional fringe venues
Ben’s experience at a creation residency in Zurich
Thoughts on the shifting pedagogy of theatre education
The value of Fringe festivals in building a theatre career

Guest:
🎭 Ben Yoganathan
Ben Yoganthan is an actor, writer, composer, and director born in Sri Lanka and based in Toronto. Since graduating from Toronto Metropolitan University, he has performed as Hal/Henry V in Driftwood Theatre’s Henry V, Andrei in The Howland Company’s Three Sisters, and Todd Tweedle in Mixtape Project’s Dora-nominated musical Killing Time.

As a composer, Ben has contributed music to Kole Durnford’s play ECHO (Edmonton Fringe Festival) and several dance works: Embrasement Synaptique by Zach Bastille (Festival Quartiers Danses), a subject by Alli Carry (Fall for Dance North), and The Skin by Emily Duckett (Kinetic Studio Open Series).

Ben has written two full-length plays: Hunger, which premiered at the Terra Firma Festival at the Theatre Centre, and ZEITGEIST, a workshop production he directed earlier this year and is set to premiere at the 2025 Toronto Fringe Festival.

He recently completed a creation residency with Experi Theater in Zurich, Switzerland, where he developed and performed a one-person show. Ben was also selected for an international residency with the Odin Teatret in Ringkobing, Denmark.

Connect with Ben:
📸 Instagram: @off.the.nose

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Transcript

[Phil Rickaby]
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Stageworthy. I am Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. If you’re watching on YouTube, make sure that you like this episode.

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This week, I will be continuing my conversation with fringe artists. This is my first full length conversation with a fringe artist. We will also have on Thursday another fringe extra where I will be presenting shorter interviews with four fringe artists.

So if you missed the first two, those are released on the past two Thursdays, episode one and episode two of the fringe extras with the third episode coming up this Thursday as you listen to this. But this is my first full length conversation with a fringe artist. Before I get to who that is, let’s make sure to talk about my Patreon.

I can’t do this show without the patrons who’ve chosen to back this show. There are costs involved with producing a podcast. Even though I give this podcast to you for free, things regarding this podcast do cost me money.

Things like hosting the audio, the website, editing software, and all kinds of other things. In fact, I’ve recently stopped offering transcripts because it was taking too much work to clean up the transcripts that I was getting. There are services that are better, but those are paid services.

And I’m just covering my costs right now. All of the work that I put into Stageworthy and producing Stageworthy, including the fringe extras, which take a lot of work to do the interviews and assemble the podcast and get those ready. As with my regular episodes, those all cost time they take.

Each episode is maybe three hours of work each after the interview. And that’s time that I’m not being paid for. We’re just covering the costs right now, and not the cost of transcripts, which is why I stopped offering them.

Like I said, there are paid services. But in order to be able to have quality transcripts, I need more backers for the Patreon. And the Patreon is how I’m able to cover the costs.

And for my backers, I’m providing early access to episodes as well as discussions about issues that might be coming up. If there’s an issue I want to discuss, if there’s things that I think are important, we’ll talk about them on the Patreon so that we can figure out if maybe I’m on the right track or am I wrong and what I’m thinking. This is basically the trusted brain trust of Stage Worthy, where we will get decisions about what topics and how to cover them will be discussed.

I do need more backers if I’m going to add transcripts. If I’m going to be paid for my time, I need your help to do that. So please, if you like this podcast, if you find value in StageWorthy, go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a backer. It’s just $7 Canadian each month to become a backer and help me make this podcast. My guest this week is Ben Yoganathan. Ben is an actor, writer, and director.

Ben is the writer of Zeitgeist, which is being presented as part of the Toronto Fringe Festival. Zeitgeist is being presented at CineCycle in Toronto. It’s a non-standard venue, so make sure to check that out as well.

It sounds like a really exciting place to perform and to see theatre. So this is my conversation with Ben Johannathan. Ben, thank you so much for joining me.

I wanted to ask you about the show Zeitgeist, which will be at the Toronto Fringe this year. Tell me, what’s the pitch for Zeitgeist?

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah, so Zeitgeist is a show that I wrote that follows six 20-somethings in the wake of graduating from university as they navigate life, identity, and purpose in a world on fire, kind of what it means to be a young person in the world today, and how in the wake of insane global political, socioeconomic, technological problems, we can maybe hang on to each other a little deeper, a little harder, and form community, and how that community allows us to become a little bit more sane, a little bit more humane, a little bit more connected, and yeah, how that can help us find our place in the world.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, obviously, the world being what it is, that acts as a bit of an inspiration for the show. How did this show come to you?

[Ben Yoganathan]
So I started writing this show when I was in my third year of university. I think it was the earliest versions of the text that I have for it that existed in a big Google Doc. Yeah, it came when it was kind of the middle of the pandemic.

I was in school, and I sort of started writing this story about two people kind of finding each other post-graduation and forming this very intense connection. And I sort of kept chipping away at this idea for a while, and then maybe about a year, year and a half later, my partner was like, oh, have you ever seen that movie Before Sunrise? And I was like, no, I haven’t heard of it.

And then she showed it to me, and then it was kind of an infuriating experience because it was exactly the thing that I wanted to write, and it was already done, and it was going to be better than anything I was ever going to do. So it was kind of a shock for me to see that. But then I sort of kind of went down a wormhole and started just consuming all of these depictions of youth and youth culture, specifically on film, movies like The Graduate or Francis Ha, Reality Bites, all these movies that are so a part of the canon now, and kind of began to influence me and kind of began to also inspire me, but in a way that was kind of oppressive, I want to say.

I was like, it’s so interesting to come of age at a time when you have access to all these depictions of what it means to be a young person and what that time in your life is supposed to be like. So I wanted to create something that would kind of rift on those ideas, but took it to, I guess, another place and tried to make it relevant to the experiences of me and all of my friends today, because I found that all of the core struggles that you struggle with just as a person and a young person are kind of the same and have always been the same. But the particularity of our situation right now and the amount of information we have access to and are just inundated with every day is very unique.

So I wanted to create kind of an homage to those movies and pieces of culture that already exist, but also mash it up in a way that feels more contemporary and more like the insanity of being alive right now, if that makes sense.

[Phil Rickaby]
Kind of interesting to me, you described having access to all of these depictions of what it’s like growing up and sort of being like a young person, being a teenager. And what I find interesting about it is that, yes, there’s all of these depictions, but all of them are completely fictionalized, right? They are divorced from reality in that they still have to be entertaining.

So they have to have action. They have to have movement. Whereas a lot of times being a young person is an exercise in boredom, just like dealing with like, I don’t know what to do.

So I guess I’m just going to sit here.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah, it’s completely that. Yes.

[Phil Rickaby]
I was thinking about, you know, I mean, I grew up in the 80s. So a lot of the movies were like the John Hughes movies of the day. And as somebody like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles and like The Breakfast Club.

And as a teenager, I didn’t even, I barely resonated with those movies. And it was kind of weird that looking back, people like, yeah, I remember, like high school was like that. And I kind of go like, no.

[Ben Yoganathan]
It wasn’t, though. You remember it that way, but it wasn’t.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, exactly. In terms of that, what are, like you kind of mentioned the Before Sunrise and some of the movies. Is there one of the movies that sort of depicts youth?

Such an old man thing to say. But is there one of those movies that sort of depicts youth that sort of stands out for you as like, this movie is kind of like a seed of zeitgeist?

[Ben Yoganathan]
I mean, Before Sunrise, for sure, was like the beginning of it because I kind of decided, I was like, that’s a great idea. And it kind of gave me a lot of freedom. So I was just like, I’m just going to steal that idea.

I’m just going to take it. The idea of just like, that’s kind of how the first act of the play starts is just two people kind of bump into each other and have a conversation for about 30 minutes. And over the course of those 30 minutes, we as an audience kind of discover that like, oh, they have feelings for each other and they get along and maybe this progresses somewhere else and maybe it doesn’t.

So I kind of stole that idea. And then as it moves into the middle third of the play, so they meet at this art gallery and they kind of strike up a conversation, like I said. And then at the end of that conversation, he says, I’m having a party later, like if you want to come, but my friends are going to be there, then they go to this party.

And then the play kind of turns into this series of vignettes, almost where we kind of drop in and out of different conversations, the way life kind of happens at a party where you kind of go in knowing one person or a group of people, and then you kind of end up talking to different folks. So the night goes in ways that you don’t quite expect. So that’s kind of the middle third of the play is kind of dipping in and out of these conversations.

And yeah, in terms of an influence, there’s two Noah Baumbach movies. The first one is Francis Ha, which I think is a perfect movie and also does a really good job at kind of trying to do what I’m doing in this show of commenting on the fact that most of your life, I don’t know, maybe most of your life, full stop, but most of your life in your twenties is that feeling of waiting for something to happen, waiting for something to arrive, waiting for the big thing to occur. And it doesn’t, most of it is just working your day job or you’re watching a movie with your roommate when you’re supposed to be doing your laundry. And then, yeah, there’s a great sequence in that movie where she on a whim buys a plane ticket to Paris for a weekend on a credit card.

And she kind of goes to Paris being like, it’s going to be a great weekend and I’m going to be in Paris. I’m going to read all these great books. And then she gets there and she like sleeps in.

And then she wakes up and it’s 3 PM the next day. And she’s like, oh man, I have to get on a flight tomorrow. And I’ve wasted half the day.

And then she’s like wandering around Paris, like calling people that she knows that live there. And like everyone’s busy or unavailable. So she’s kind of walking around by herself.

And it’s just like a series of unfortunate events. Like she goes to see a movie, but like all the movies have already started. So she’s like not really doing anything.

And then she like flies back home the next day and she gets a call from her friend. She’s like, oh my God, this is so perfect. We’re having all these people over tonight.

And there’s all these amazing artists that are going to be there. And you should totally come. It’s such great timing that you’re in Paris.

And it’s such a great sequence because it’s like, I feel like that’s so much of your life in your twenties. It’s just like having this expectation of like, this is when the big thing happens. This is what I am going to fall in love or do my big thing or have my big break.

And then it’s just a day-to-day grind of living, which I think there’s beauty in that. And I think there’s goodness in that. And I don’t know, maybe we shouldn’t expect so much.

I don’t know. I kind of went on a tangent.

[Phil Rickaby]
No, it’s great. One of the things that I’m thinking about is, you spend those days when you’re in high school thinking that as soon as you graduate, your life’s going to take off. You’re going to get that great job.

All your dreams are going to come true. You’re going to meet that person. Your life is going to be this one thing.

And kind of because the media told you that, your parents, at least in my day, our parents kind of made it sound like, yeah, you graduate and everything’s going to be golden. And you get out into the world and you just sort of exist. And it’s the shock of like, oh, I’m in control of my life at the moment in a way.

If I don’t wake myself up and go to work, then I just don’t go to work. That’s my choice. Nobody’s going to be there being like, get up, go.

And a lot of us are kind of just unprepared for that, like that absolute freedom of adulthood to be like, oh, everything is on me now. I don’t know what to do with that. And that’s again, because we have this idea that, oh, my life begins at graduation.

And then my twenties, all this thing is going to happen when it doesn’t. And you sort of reach like 30. It’s kind of like, did I fail?

You know, I remember the year I turned 27. I thought I’ve accomplished nothing. My life is over.

And it’s a weird thing to have that realization at 27 and just be like, oh, wait, like a couple of years later, just thinking like, oh, I’m just starting like that.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah. Like 27 isn’t actually that old at all.

[Phil Rickaby]
30 isn’t that old. But yet when you’re like in high school, 30 feels ancient. That feels, yeah, like it’s the end of the road there.

Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the venue for Zeitgeist because it’s not one of the standard venues.

Tell me about the venue and why you chose that.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah. So the venue is called CineCycle. It’s this sort of underground cinema, art event space and bicycle repair shop down on Spadina and Adelaide.

I picked it because I applied to the main fringe lottery and didn’t get in this year. So then I decided to go with the unconventional venue category. And I was looking around and because of kind of fringe rules and also just my own preference, I was like, we could do it because the movie references movies so much.

And there are a lot of projections and things like that. I was like, we did it in like a movie theatre. That might be a fun way to sort of tie in the play to the actual space that the audience is in.

So I was kind of looking around for spaces and I looked at like the Paradise on Bloor or like the Revue Cinema. And I was like, those are fine, but those venues are like a little swanky and they’re like kind of huge too. So I was like, from a just practical perspective, I was like, I don’t know if we’re going to fill those houses.

And then I just like Googled like independent indie movie theatres Toronto. And I came across this like weird website for this place called CineCycle. And I was looking at photos and I was like, oh my God, it’s perfect.

So then I called them. And then this 85 year old British man named Martin answers the phone and he’s like, yeah. So he runs CineCycle.

He founded it in 1993. I think he came here from the UK. He loves biking and fixing up bikes.

So they still do that there. And also he loves movies. So he has like an old 35 millimeter projector, a 16 millimeter projector.

And they’ve just been, he’s kind of just started it as like screening movies for his friends. And then I think eventually like some indie filmmakers got involved and then they started screening their stuff there. And then it kind of just became this hub for like indie filmmakers in Toronto to screen their stuff for like, you know, cinema clubs and societies to do screenings and discussions and things like that.

So recently it got taken over by the CFNBC, which is the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Center. So they’re kind of running the whole thing now. And yeah, they’re a super amazing organization.

They’re the biggest distributor of independent film in Canada and they have like this massive collection of Canadian independent film. And yeah, they’re working with us pretty closely on this. We kind of negotiated using the space with them in terms of they’re doing a big renovation right now.

So we were like, okay, if we can do this show here, it’s something that you guys have never done before. And we can bring in a lot of new folks to see the space. The Fringe is like a great creative hub and there’s a great community around it.

And I really am in love with the space. And I think that a lot of people are going to want to use it and be in it once they see it. And yeah, CFNBC is just being really wonderful and kind of letting us do whatever we want in there for the next couple of months.

So yeah, that is the space.

[Phil Rickaby]
Are you getting to rehearse in that space?

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yes, which is a real treat, especially for the Occupational Venue category, because we’re going to be in a proscenium and we’re kind of using the whole space and there’s a screen on one end, which there’s going to be some projections on. Yeah, so it’s really a privilege, especially for a Fringe show, because often Fringes are not in the space until tech, and then you have like four hours for tech and then you just got to roll with the punches. So yeah, it’s been great.

[Phil Rickaby]
Fringe tech is usually very much an acquired skill. It is something that I think a lot of times it’s people’s first fringe, they completely blow their tech. You’re not quite choreographing and understanding exactly what has to happen in that time.

I’ve seen plenty of people who are like, yeah, we didn’t get a run through in, and we’re kind of winging our first performance because we didn’t get all through our tech. So it’s a real gift to have this space for a lot of time beforehand. Speaking of Fringe, the Toronto Fringe is one of my favorite times of year.

It’s like theatre Christmas. It’s like this great opportunity. I love the Fringe and I’ve been able to experience a bunch of Fringes in different places.

What is your relationship with Fringe, whether it’s Toronto Fringe or other Fringes?

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah, I mean, this is going to be my third Fringe. So yeah, I’ve been doing Fringe for a while. I love it.

My first Fringe was two years ago with Mixtape Projects doing their show Killing Time, which was amazing. We got nominated for a door for that show. We got patron’s pick.

So yeah, it was really great. And last year I did an immersive show at Supermarket called 86 Me with Dead Raccoon Theatre. We also sold out a run.

So that was amazing. Yeah. And this year, in addition to writing and directing my own Fringe show, I’m also in another Fringe show.

So I’m double dipping in Fringe this year. I’m going to be in a show called Iris Says Goodbye, which is with Mixtape who did Killing Time. So we’re going to be at Soulpepper this year.

So yeah, I love the Fringe. I think it’s really a special time, just in the city in general. But if you’re in the theatre community in the city, it’s like, it’s the best two weeks.

And yeah, I mean, other than seeing all the shows and seeing all the voices that get represented and get to be on stages that normally aren’t heard from, especially in mainstream theatre, mainstream Canadian theatre in the city, like the Fringe is so democratic in a way because it’s completely random, like truly anybody can get in. You have people that have been doing this for a long time that are producing really amazing, well polished, great shows. And people who are like, I wrote a show in my bedroom, I wrote this one person show and I got into the Fringe and that’s amazing.

And they kind of get a new audience and a new following. And then you get to go to the Fringe patio and it’s like all your friends are there and the whole community turns out. And yeah, it’s just such a positive environment and everyone’s really just trying to hype each other up and lift each other’s shows up.

Yeah, truly it’s like one of the few times of the year where everyone is just there for the art, just to see shows and be supportive. And yeah, I love it. One hundred percent.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. It’s one of those great opportunities, like you said, like you could discover somebody new, like the opportunity to see somebody who’s never done anything before and might be completely brilliant is exciting. And this year, I love the Fringe hub that they’re building with Soulpepper.

Like it sounds like from what they’ve described, it sounds a little bit like a return to the days when the permanent home for the patio was Honest Ed’s parking lot, just in the back, which for what I don’t even, it felt like this is where the Fringe belongs, in this place. And it was just this huge, like there’s so much space, so many opportunities to meet people. And I think I feel like this is an opportunity to get back to that.

And so I’m looking forward to having at least three venues at Soulpepper, I think, which is like to have like venues that are so close together, which is something that you find in like the Edmonton Fringe and the Winnipeg Fringe, where most of the venues are like in a finite area that you can pretty much walk across in 10 minutes, which is a gift considering the distance between some of the theatres in Toronto.

We’ve all had to make that wild sprint to get from Tarragon to Factory at least once.

[Ben Yoganathan]
People really pack their Fringe schedules pretty tight, which I mean, there’s a lot of shows that you need to see.

[Phil Rickaby]
I always forget to plan for food. I always forget to schedule lunch. So like five shows in being like, why am I starting to get so annoyed by everything?

And I realized, you didn’t plan for lunch. You need to eat something. So you end up being like, do I bail on a show?

Do I roll something down quickly? It’s one of those, I don’t know, I think a lot of people do the same thing. Oh, totally.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah. And then you’re sitting there and you’re like, do I not, do I actually not like this show or am I just, am I just irritated? Am I just hungry?

Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
I’m curious about, you know, your, your theatre journey outside of, of like Fringe and some of the other stuff. How did you start getting interested in Fringe, or sorry, how did you start getting interested in theatre? And what, what drew you in?

[Ben Yoganathan]
Um, yeah, I, why did I start doing theatre? Well, I mean, my parents always enrolled me and my sister in like a lot of extracurriculars when I was a kid. So I was in like karate and basketball and choir.

And choir was like one of the things that kind of stuck around for a while. So I knew how to sing. I learned how to sing when I was super young, but I didn’t really do like community theatre or anything like that.

Um, and I started doing theatre, I think it was my first year of high school because one of my friends was in theatre and he was like, it’s kind of cool. You should try this out. And I’m like, all right, sure.

I did the school play. And then I think I immediately, I, what I fell in love with was the community of it. I mean, I think that’s mostly, I mean, obviously like I do theatre professionally now and I act professionally, but I’m like, yeah, maybe half of it for me was just the community of people and being in that group of people.

Um, so yeah, I started doing it in high school. Um, and then just kind of couldn’t stop. Like those people just became my friends.

And then that thing slowly just kind of engulfed all of the other things. And then by fourth year of high school, that was the only thing that I did. I like just dropped everything out of my life that wasn’t that and any people in my life that weren’t those people.

Um, so yeah, by the time I got to, um, grade 12, I was kind of pretty clear. I was like, I need to go to theatre school. That’s what I need to do.

Um, I’ve kind of put all my eggs in this one basket, so I might as well go for it. Um, and then I took a year off. I had some health complications, so I was off for a year and kind of it was my gap year.

So I was just working and just living at home, which at the time I hated because I was like, I felt so ready. Like I was like, Oh my God, I need to get out and I need to go do my thing and I need to move to Toronto and I need to be in a big city and that’s what I need to do. Um, but looking back on it, obviously I’m super grateful for it.

Um, so yeah, then I went to Ryerson, um, for four years. Um, love that was the pandemic. So that was like a really interesting turn in my theatre education.

Again, hated it when it was happening, but looking back in hindsight, that seems to be a theme. I don’t know if maybe that’s just life as you go through like hard things. And in the moment you’re like, I wish this was happening to anybody but me.

You look back and you’re like, no, it was good.

[Phil Rickaby]
You mentioned that you wanted to move to Toronto. Where were you at that point that you were, you were like chomping at the bit to like get to Toronto?

[Ben Yoganathan]
Where was I? Oh yeah. I grew up in Guelph.

Yeah. Like I was originally born in Sri Lanka, but I moved, um, you know, when I was super young, like four or five. So I basically grew up in Guelph, went to school there.

So like not far from Toronto. So I’d been there. I’d been to the city.

I knew what it was. Um, but at that point when I was in grade 12, I was like taking the Greyhound with my friends to come to Toronto, like every other weekend, because I was just like, I gotta get out of this sleepy town, you know, classic, classic small town story. Um, no, growing up in Guelph was nice.

Now I’m like, now I’m here in Toronto and I’m like, I go back to Guelph and I need a break from the insanity.

[Phil Rickaby]
Um, I think sometimes when you are, uh, uh, you know, growing up in a small town, uh, uh, it doesn’t matter how close you are to the big city. Even if it’s like, if it’s like a 30 minute drive or it’s going to take like an hour on the bus or whatever it is, um, it looms so large and it’s so much more exciting than the small town that you grew up in. Um, I think, I think everybody who grew up outside of Toronto kind of has that, that feeling.

Cause I can remember in high school, um, you know, skipping school on a Friday. I’m like just going downtown with some friends. Um, you know, all the things that, you know, now as a mature adult, I shouldn’t have been doing, but you know, whatever, I was dumb.

Um, we did it anyway. Um, but that that’s it. The city seemed more exciting than the place where we were.

Um, and, uh, uh, but then, you know, you mentioned, you know, Guelph sometimes seems a little nice. And I think, I think there is some theatre out there. I think there’s, uh, there’s, there is some, so it’s like, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of great community theatre in Guelph.

[Ben Yoganathan]
And I, I mean, I owe a lot to them. I did community musical theatre in Guelph. I did like other community theatre plays in Guelph Kitchener, Waterloo.

So like, I owe a lot to those places. I mean, they kind of, um, yeah, got me through high school and through that gap year and like fostered my love for, for doing this thing. So yeah, those are super important.

[Phil Rickaby]
Was there a moment, you know, you, you, you were sort of doing theatre in, in, in high school. Um, was there a moment when you kind of realized this was something that, that somebody could do? Like, this isn’t just a, this, this doesn’t have to just be a hobby.

You can do this.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah. I remember particularly, I was like, I think it was like on, we had like a, um, a careers class. Like you remember that class where they like, when you plan out what you want to do, it’s just crazy.

It’s a crazy class that I have in high school. Um, but anyways, I was like, I don’t know. I was just kind of thinking, I was like, what am I good at?

Like, what am I? And at that point I was like kind of in grade 11. So pretty much all I did was theatre.

Everything else was like pretty marginal. I remember the last year I had to take like math or something and I was completely failing. And I begged my teacher to pass me.

I was like, I don’t think you’ll understand. I’m never going to take math again in my life. Like I just need you to give me minimal percentage to pass.

And he did, he took mercy on me. So grateful to him. But, um, yeah, I remember reading this book, but I saw a YouTube video of this guy on Larry Moss, who was, I guess he’s like a pretty famous acting coach.

He does a lot of coaching for movies and things like that. Um, but, and it was like an interview of him just talking about like the craft of acting. And I remember watching that and I was like, this is because I never had, like, I just never put that together.

I never put the people you see in movies or in plays, like, it’s like a thing that you can study and that you can do. And it’s like a technical thing that you can get better at. I kind of was just like, Oh, you just go on stage and you’re just kind of at that up until that point, it was totally just fun for me.

Like, it was just completely fun and I just loved doing it. So I didn’t put that together. And I went out and I like got a book of his and I remember, I don’t know where I was, but I remember buying the book and there was like a coffee shop or something next door.

And I went and I started reading the book and I read the entire book that day in one sitting because it was just like, I like, like the office, the good version of Pandora’s box is when you open something and you’re just like, Oh my God, this is amazing. Like, I didn’t know there’s this whole world out there and this thing that, um, yeah, kind of made me so excited. I was like, okay, this is a thing that you can really do it.

You can get better at this. You can maybe try and make a living doing this. Um, and then yeah, everything after that was kind of, I just kind of fell down the rabbit hole because, um, yeah, he was like, you should read all these plays.

And I started reading plays and then, you know, start reading Tennessee Williams and you start reading all these things. And then, you know, one thing leads to another, you start connecting a bunch of ideas and you’re like, okay, this is what it means to be an actor. This is what it means to be in the theatre.

This is kind of how you do this thing. Um, yeah, so that was kind of a moment for me.

[Phil Rickaby]
You mentioned that, that class that, that they do that when you’re making essentially what school is telling you, this is the decision that’s going to be like your whole life, which like you said, it’s insane that we ask kids in grade 12 to do this, like make the decision that you are going to, you’re going to go, you’re going to study this thing. And we assume that’s what you’re going to do for the rest of your life.

[Ben Yoganathan]
And you’re like, you’re 17. Like, can you imagine?

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s a while. And you know, I, I, listen, I, I always, I knew what I wanted to do much like yourself. Like I knew, but I was surrounded by people who were like, my dad says I should study business.

You know, like people who just didn’t know what to do. And I can remember, I don’t know what your school was like, but when I told my, my guidance teacher that, um, I wanted to study theatre and they were like, I don’t know how to help you.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Oh, totally. Yeah. They were like, we got, we got nothing for you.

We got nothing for you.

[Phil Rickaby]
They were like, would you like, have you considered a BA in English? And I was like, no, I want to go to theatre school. I have no idea what the steps for that are.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Totally. Because it’s, it’s really niche. Like it’s like the amount of people that do theatre in high school is like very narrow.

Then like the amount of people out of that, that like seriously consider pursuing it is like even smaller. And then those people that make it Bruce theatre school and then continue to pursue it is like even smaller. So the margin, it just keeps narrowing and narrowing and narrowing.

[Phil Rickaby]
It 100% keeps narrowing. And, and, and there’s, as you get older in your theatre career, you start to realize more and more people are dropping off because it, it takes, you know, and there comes a point where you were unwilling to make the sacrifices to start in a, like, you don’t want to upend your life and go to another city and have nothing. Like, how do I pay for my apartment?

I don’t like all of these things where you’re like, you’re, I’m tired of eating ramen for dinner. I don’t want to sleep on a couch, like all of these things. And so not only do some people not make it their first year out of theatre school, but just like as you know, 30, 35, like those years sort of pass and fewer and fewer people from the graduating class or even like in the industry anymore.

Total. Yeah. Um, how many people graduated from your class to you?

Cause I, we started with 30 and I think we graduated with 14.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah, we had, we had like a similarly big class starting out. I think it was not, not quite 30, but I think we started with like 25, 26. We had, I think when we graduated, it was probably closer to 20.

So it’s still a big class, honestly, bigger, bigger than you, than yours when you graduated.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. No, there were a couple of, a couple of years. I remember the, uh, when I started theatre school, there was a class of seven that was graduating and it was like very, like they whittled down like a lot of people.

But then again, in those, I don’t know, they, I don’t, a lot of theatre schools I hear aren’t doing this anymore, but they would cut people.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
Like, uh, Christmas and the end of the year, um, which I still kind of have a, a, a lot of bitterness towards like those people who were cut. They were essentially told, we don’t think that you will have a career in the theatre, which is quite a leap for somebody to make when you’re like in your early twenties to make the decision for you. So like, and I, from what I’m hearing, uh, that doesn’t happen so much in a lot of the schools.

And I’m really thankful for that.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Where did you go to school?

[Phil Rickaby]
I was at George Brown, George Brown, uh, theatre school. Um, but I was accepted there and at Ryerson. I chose, I chose, um, but again, I think, I think, I think it’s the same in a lot of, for a lot of the schools at that point, like they took in 30 people assuming they were going to kick a bunch of those people out.

So they would have like a smaller class.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah. Um, yeah, I was at Ryerson and they TMU now and they’d use, yeah, I think they stopped doing that maybe two years ago. Um, yeah, but that’s like a bigger shift.

I think like the pedagogy of theatre schools is like really shifting overall, like thinking in a good direction. I think, um, I don’t know, I kind of had to, um, question my initial impulse here because I was really kind of a hard-ass going into theatre school. I think I’m mellowed out a bit, you know?

And I think I really was like, Oh, absolutely. Like you should absolutely be cut. And if you’re, you’re cut from the program, I guess you just, you just can’t hack it, you know?

And that was sort of my mentality going in. And I remember hearing that they weren’t going to do that anymore. And I was like, I don’t know, I was, I was kind of upset.

I was like, well, like, you know, the standards are really kind of falling, I guess. Um, but now I look at it and I’m like, that’s kind of insane that I thought that, or that I felt like, I don’t know that that was the only way that you could, you could, you could teach people to be better. It was to put them in a culture of kind of fear or like at any moment you could be gone.

And like, in what way is that conducive to learning anyways?

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s a, no, it’s exactly, it’s exactly right. And also I think, um, it, it, it sort of goes along with hand in hand with the, uh, uh, sort of a certain, a certain school of thought as far as like acting goes, acting schools go, uh, people like sort of taught the way they were taught. Right.

And they, I mean, when I was in theatre school, they would, they would say, they would say, uh, so we’re going to tear you down so we can build you back up. And they spent a lot of time tearing us back, tearing us down and sort of never got around to the whole build you back up sort of thing. And so it was like a whole, like, Oh, so we just, not only do you like make us feel like shit, but now we’re going to go through our school year, except for a few who were like the golden children.

Um, the rest of us have to like, just live in fear of whether or not we’re going to be cut, which is a terrible way to make art.

[Ben Yoganathan]
It’s terrible. It’s terrible. Um, yeah, I think, I think it’s, I think it’s moving, um, in a good direction where you don’t have to, you don’t have to make people suffer.

You don’t have to, you know, did you get the clot? Like you get, you must’ve gotten like the, Hey, if you’re going to do this, you’re going to miss weddings, you know, you’re going to miss funerals. And that’s the way it is.

Yeah. I’m like, no, you shouldn’t. You absolutely shouldn’t don’t miss weddings.

Do not miss don’t miss your life. Right.

[Phil Rickaby]
And that’s, I think the thing like just, it is, yes, it is a career. It’s a vocation, but like, don’t miss the important things in your life for this, you know, um, we, they, they gave us a lot of, uh, uh, if you could do something else, do that, you know, and, you know, it’s like, yeah, sure. We could do something else.

I can do customer service. I can wait tables, you know, fine. That’s not what I love.

It’s just one of those things. Um, but you, I want to actually talk to you about, um, your creation, Reddit residency, were you, were you in Zurich? Yeah, I was.

How long for?

[Ben Yoganathan]
I was there for, oh man, I was there for like two months. Um, so it was a while. Um, yeah, I cold emailed a bunch of theatre companies when I got out of Ryerson kind of in my in between time, I was lucky enough to kind of start working in the city a bit.

I did some stuff with driftwood. I did some stuff with the Helen company. So I was kind of like hitting my stride.

It felt like, and then, you know, like so many actors, it’s like, you have that kind of period where you’re working. And then it was like, boom, I was unemployed for like six months and I was like, absolutely devastated. So then I was like, oh, maybe I need to like, maybe I need to get out of the city and get out of Toronto.

I feel like I know everybody here. I kind of know the scene pretty well after having lived here. So I was emailing a bunch of companies in Europe and just being like, Hey, can I give you, um, just like be with you guys.

I’ll pay my own way. If I can sit in a rehearsal or, you know, make you coffee and like anything, literally anything, I’ll do it. Um, and I got a response from this company in Zurich and we kind of went back and forth.

Um, they’re called expiry theatre and they’re like a BIPOC theatre collective working a lot in like physical theatre. Um, Grotowski is their main thing, um, which is, um, Grotowski was a Polish theatre practitioner. Um, and his whole thing was that the actor should be able to create any scene, any circumstance totally with their bodies and their instrument.

Um, and they shouldn’t really be kind of any sets or any lighting. Um, and the whole theatrical illusion can be created just between the audience and the actor. So it’s very physical.

It’s very intense. Um, I think kind of their traveling company that, um, kind of sets up and takes down their, um, stages pretty easily and quickly and it’s pretty mobile. So we went kind of back and forth with them trying to organize time for me to come over and manage to get some Canada council funding.

So I went over there and then I very quickly realized that I didn’t like these people very much. Um, the way that they worked or just the way that they were, um, it was to put it, make a long story short, it was very culty and it was very much a cult of personality in terms of the two people that ran it and all of the other young people there kind of, um, lived and died by whatever these two people said. These two older folks, little, little bit like theatre school, just a little bit.

Um, but then I was mainly there because I pitched to the Canada council that I wanted to, um, create a one person show about, um, my personal migration experience and how that ties into just the global migrant crisis we find ourselves in. Um, so then I kind of just put my head down and started working on that, um, which proved to be a really fruitful experience. Um, so then I came out of it with like this 40 minute show that was really this stream of consciousness monologue, like in the vein of, I guess, like Spalding Gray, which is like a huge inspiration for me, um, about just, um, migration and what it means to leave home and, um, the feeling of kind of being in another place and feeling completely lost and detached from your own community and what that means and how that’s such an experience for so many people worldwide. And, uh, yeah, so that was, that was my experience there.

[Phil Rickaby]
Aside from working with, with that company, did you get to experience theatre in Berlin at all?

[Ben Yoganathan]
I did. Yeah. So I saw some stuff in Zurich that was like touring in from Germany, which is really great.

Um, and yeah, I went to Berlin at the end of the month just to see some theatre there. Um, which is really great. I mean, here’s the thing.

It was like, I don’t know, circling back, like it’s all kind of connects, but like circling back to that thing of like, when you’re younger and you’ve like, the big city is like never close enough and you always feel like it’s bigger and better in some ways. And then you kind of experienced that coming out of theatre school. Like my thing, like when I graduated, like everybody wanted to go to Berlin, everybody wants to go to Berlin because it’s sort of seen as this kind of like, you know, this Mecca of like theatre and the art scene and everything’s really well-funded and the theatre there is super experimental and avant-garde.

And I’m like, in some ways it is. Um, but it’s not like it really is a grass is greener situation. And I’m glad I went and I’m glad I saw it because I, I did see some really interesting shows and they were playing with form in a way that was really interesting.

Um, but in terms of the kinds of stories that were getting told, um, and by who, and, um, in terms of the diversity of the stories and the diversity of people on stage, like they are way behind decades behind. And I think it’s, it’s partially, I think like the historical context of for how long theatre and theatre culture has been around in Europe has allowed them to develop an audience that is just more, um, perceptive and able to take theatre. That just isn’t like we’re in a room and it’s very just like proscenium and there’s a fourth wall and very realistic, very kitchen sink drama.

Like they’re, you know, more free to mess around because of the history they have and the culture they have. Um, but in terms of the stories that are getting told, it’s like much narrower. And then I feel like in Canadian theatre, it’s like the opposite where the form is very, um, kind of tame a lot of the time, very standard.

But in terms of the diversity of the stories that are getting told, especially in Toronto, it’s like, it’s incredible. Um, so yeah, yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
Um, I have in my day job, uh, I have coworkers who work out of Berlin and one of them was in Toronto and was looking at theatre prices in, in, in Toronto and was complaining because he said in Germany, the idea that there are not subsidized tickets for anybody who wants them is unthinkable. That like it should be, it should be affordable for everybody because they, the government subsidizes the theatre in a certain way. And that always sort of struck me in that that’s, that’s, you know, if you have a history of, of theatre, then that’s something that can grow out of it.

It becomes like an important thing to the culture on the other side, as you’re saying, um, you people get really tied to history and the way that we’ve always done it. And these are the kinds of people that we usually see on stage. So that’s the kind of people that we’re used to going to see on stage and you get sort of stuck in the history of it.

Um, and it’s nice to find a balance of like, we could subsidize the tickets and see and see a lot of diversity on the stage and tell some really interesting stories. It could be a lot of those things.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Totally. It’s the thing I always said was like, um, in terms of like the American theatre theatre or the European theatre is like, they have such, like they have this cannon that’s kind of already built and they have these great plays and they have these great playwrights and these institutions that are like ancient, you know, and they’re like these monoliths, but it’s like, it’s very, very hard to get your foot in the door of those institutions. I mean, it’s hard here, but it’s like, imagine like, you know, soul pepper, but it has like 200 years of history behind it. You know, it’s like, you can’t even imagine.

And the nice thing about Canadian theatre is that it’s, it’s happening. It’s happening right now. Like all of, you know, a lot of our great writers are still alive.

Most of them are still alive. Um, you know, Hannah Moskovich is still alive. Daniel McIver is still alive.

Like, like, um, Thompson highway is still alive. Like all of these people are, are still alive. Like the Canadian theatre is like still happening.

So it feels a little bit, um, it still feels as a young person, kind of impossible to get your foot in the door, but also it feels like it’s still happening. You know, it doesn’t feel like there’s as much weight of these old institutions. I don’t know.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s true because our institutions are really only formed at the end of the 1960s. Right. So most of those institutions are comparatively new.

Um, the other thing that we do have is, um, things like fringe festivals to bring things back around, which are, have become one of the necessary pieces to building a career in the theatre is self-production and in a venue like the fringe or other festivals, um, to like get your work seen and be to, to, to have a body of work or to, to have like roles under your belt. It’s a great way to, to, to start a career that, that has staying power. Um, and I think that that’s one of the, one of the benefits to festivals as a whole and fringe, especially because the theatre world sort of really coalesces around the fringe.

It’s like the only time of year when you can be guaranteed to run into almost everybody at a show, which is kind of amazing. Um, you’ve done some, you’ve done, I know that you did, you contributed music to a play called Echo for the Edmonton Fringe Festival, but did you, did you, did you get to go out to Edmonton for that?

[Ben Yoganathan]
Oh, no, I didn’t get to go out to Edmonton to see it. So that play was written by, um, a classmate of mine, uh, Cole Durnford. So we did it as a, um, a fourth year project like that.

We have this like new, new voices festival at, um, at TMU, which is kind of your fourth year, you write, produce and make your own shows. Um, so I made music for that. Um, and then that got picked up by Next Stage, um, and then went out to Edmonton for a bit.

Um, yeah, that was like really kind of an experiment for me. I started making music, um, I think in my gap year between high school and, um, university. Like I said, I mean, I’ve always like sung and been musical, um, but I never really thought of making my own music.

Um, but yeah, I kind of was just messing around with some stuff and Cole was like, do you want to make music for the show? And I was like, sure. But that was a really sort of fulfilling and gratifying experience and a nice way to like, um, I was like, it was nice to find another Avenue in which I could like contribute to a piece of theatre without directly, um, being on stage.

Um, yeah, but Cole’s great. He has a show out in, uh, in Edmonton right now called Force Play, which is, um, their new theatre lab out there. So yeah.

Nice.

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s awesome. Um, now Zeitgeist, um, has had a workshop previously. Um, but this is like, this Fringe Festival is like the premiere of, of its current iteration, if you will.

Um, what did you learn from the workshop, uh, of the production?

[Ben Yoganathan]
Oh man, I learned a lot. That was two years ago now when I kind of just, I just rented a studio at the Terragon and just had a bunch of my friends and folks that I knew, um, come see it. Uh, yeah, I learned a lot in terms of the rhythms of the play obviously.

And like, I think for me, workshops are primarily, it’s just about the act of having an audience sit in a room and you start to see your own work differently. Like I think feedback in workshops is like almost, unless it’s from a dramaturge, I think the actual feedback people tell you is almost entirely useless. I maybe that’s a hot take and I apologize to anyone, but like, I don’t know, you may, you know, get a wisdom, but I think anything that’s really useful is going to come from the dramaturge.

I don’t know, you seem like you have.

[Phil Rickaby]
No, I, I, I, it’s interesting because I think that, because I’ve done workshops, um, with two different methods. One where you, you know, you learn from how the audience reacts and then you say, does anybody have any questions? And you get a lot of, not a, not so much a question, but a comment, that sort of thing.

Um, and then I’ve done other ones where somebody who is acting as dramaturge has targeted questions for the audience. You don’t open it up to like wide open questions, but you have specific things. This is what we want to know from the audience.

And you ask those questions and nothing else. And you can get the information that you want to know. But again, when you just open it up to questions from an audience, uh, or, or suggestions from the audience, it is often like not what you Exactly.

[Ben Yoganathan]
And it’s like what the audience gives you is amazing. I mean, they give you their attention. They, you know, they, you can see when they’re bored, when they laugh, when they don’t laugh, like all of that information is extremely valuable.

Um, but I think having a dramaturge in the room is just like, there’s there, there are crafts people, you know? So they can very quickly like take a look at what’s holding up the play and very quickly identify, like, that’s, what’s not working. Like you’re missing something there.

You need something else there. Um, yes, but I also learned something valuable in terms of like, my thing when I started writing this show was I wanted to write the show that I needed to see on stage at that moment, but didn’t exist yet. I was like, man, I wish I could go out tonight and go see this show and come away feeling a little bit better about this state of like, hopelessness that I’m feeling as a young person right now.

I think there was a moment when we were just kind of rehearsing the show in the hours prior to the workshop. And I remember just looking at the cast and I’m like, this is it. Like, this is the show that I need to see right now.

And then we finished the workshop. And then I think some people liked it. Some people didn’t like it.

Some people resonated with certain bits of it. Some people didn’t resonate with other bits. And I kind of was like, there comes a certain point in your writing where you reach, you reach the limit of other people’s input, I think.

And I think I reached it right there. And I was like, I like this show. And I like what we’ve done with it.

And I think I’m going to change it a bit more, but I think it’s about cooked, you know, and I think I think I was sort of under the impression that like, you know, that I could just kind of keep changing this thing and keep trying to make an audience understand it or like it in a different way. But I think I was like, oh, you do you do reach a limit. And you’re like, at the end of the day, you kind of do have to make the thing that you feel like you need to see.

And hopefully it resonates with some other people and chances are that it will. Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
Well, you’re never going to satisfy everybody. There’s no way that that ever. You know, there’s, you know, a show that satisfies everybody.

It’s kind of enjoyed by nobody. It’s an impossible or at least it won’t be memorable to anybody. And you’re right.

A show at a certain point, you have to decide I’ve I’ve workshopped this enough.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Yeah, there is.

[Phil Rickaby]
I’m it’s done because you could you can write and rewrite and rewrite forever. But at a certain point, an audience of a proper audience, the disease needs to see the full thing realized. And speaking of that, with this, with Zeitgeist premiering at the Toronto Fringe, having gone through that workshop and, you know, sort of like being in rehearsal right now, Fringe is almost on us.

And in fact, when this airs, it’s only going to be like a few short days away. Don’t say that.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Oh, my God.

[Phil Rickaby]
I listen. You still at this moment, you still have time when this airs.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Right.

[Phil Rickaby]
I have no time. Right. You know, just but what are you most looking forward to about having audiences finally see this show?

[Ben Yoganathan]
Oh, man, so much. I mean, yeah, we’re just having some great moments in rehearsal where it’s like, God, we can’t just can’t wait for people to come in and see it. I mean, I think the play holds a lot in it.

I think it’s really deeply funny. I think there’s parts of it that people are going to resonate with and see themselves in, especially if you’re an artist in this city. If you’re like Torontonians, there’s going to be a moment like it’s very specific to the city and what it means to live in the city.

And yeah, it’s also it’s like there’s it’s kind of an energetic mashup of a few different forms. So there’s projections, like I said, there’s some film stuff that’s going to be going on. The foundation of it is that it’s just a play.

But then there’s like a movement sequence right in the middle of a play where we in the middle of the show where we kind of the show kind of breaks out of itself. So, yeah, I’m just excited for an audience to experience these people, these characters, kind of wrestling with what it means to be alive right now. I think whether you’re a young person or not a young person, I think just the collective act of us sitting there being like, what are we going to do?

Guys, this is this is a lot right now. This feels like a lot. I think people will resonate with that and come out of the show a little bit more hopeful and a little bit more in community with the group of, you know, a hundred or so people that they just sat through this thing with.

[Phil Rickaby]
Sounds super exciting. It sounds amazing. Ben, thank you so much for joining me this evening.

I really appreciate you giving me some of your time and looking forward to seeing Zeitgeist at the Toronto Fringe.

[Ben Yoganathan]
Thanks so much, Phil. Thanks for having me.