Chelsea Woolley
About This Episode:
This week on Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby is joined by playwright Chelsea Woolley. Chelsea discusses her latest play, Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs, which is being produced by Nightwood Theatre. She shares the fascinating, eight-year journey of the play’s development, from its original concept to a workshop production with theatre students, and the challenges of being a playwright in the rehearsal hall. Chelsea also talks about her unique approach to writing, which involves infusing humor and absurdity into a serious subject to create a piece that can only exist as live theatre.
This episode explores:
- The development of Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs, from its original idea to its current form.
- Chelsea’s collaborative process with director Andrea Donaldson and the cast during rehearsals.
- The strategic use of humor and absurdity to make a serious play more engaging and a unique theatrical experience.
- Her theatre origin story, from writing plays in grade school to her realization that playwriting could be a career.
Guest:
🎭 Chelsea Woolley
Chelsea’s playwriting work includes: Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs (Nightwood Theatre), Paint Me This House of Love (Tarragon Theatre), The Mountain (Geordie Theatre), and The Only Good Boy (Theatre BSMT). Her work has been featured at the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C., and at the “Shakespeare is Dead” Festival in Belgium. She is the founder of the Mixed-Arts Performance Partnership Program connecting young artists living in precarity to professional mentorship, and co-wrote a script titled, One Day with teens at Red Door Shelter. Chelsea is the Head of Drama at the Canadian Children’s Opera Company where she has directed a number of operas including the 2025 production of Dido and Aeneas. Chelsea is the 2025 Tarragon Theatre Bulmash-Siegel New Creation Development Residency Award recipient, and is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada’s Playwriting Program.
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Transcript
[Phil Rickaby]
Hello and welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. Stageworthy is Canada’s theatre podcast.
And on this podcast, I talk to theatre artists from all over Canada, some of whom are household names, others I think you should really get to know. This week, I will be talking to playwright Chelsea Woolley. But first, if you’re watching the video version of this on YouTube, make sure that you like this episode, and if you’ve been liking the episodes I’ve put out, why don’t you hit the subscribe button?
And while you’re hitting the subscribe button, hit that bell icon as well, so that every time I put out a new episode of Stageworthy, you will get a notification that a new episode is available. And if you’re listening to the audio only version, did you know that you can watch this on YouTube? If not, you can just go to youtube.com/@Stageworthy, and you’ll find the episodes, or if you’re listening to this episode on the website, just scroll down a little bit and the video will be right there. Just watch there. And while we’re talking about the audio version, if you’re not subscribed to this podcast, you really should, because it’s a great way to make sure you never miss an episode. Just go to your favorite podcast app, search for Stageworthy, and hit that subscribe button, and that way, every time I put out an episode, it’ll download directly to your device.
Did you notice that I put out an extra episode last week? Because I did. I put out an episode where I talk about some of the impending cuts that are coming from the federal government, who have basically said they’re going to slash programs, which means that arts funding is going to get slashed on the federal level.
So what can we do about that? I have some thoughts. Go back to that episode.
Give it a listen. I’m curious about your thoughts as well. Leave a comment on YouTube.
Leave a comment on the show page on the website. I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts. Like I said, this week, my guest is Chelsea Woolley.
Chelsea is the playwright of Enormity Girl and The Earthquake in Her Lungs, which opens on September 18th at Nightwood Theatre’s new space, the Ed and Nancy Jackman Performance Center. I’m looking forward to both checking out the space and this show, especially after having the opportunity to talk to Chelsea. I really enjoyed this conversation.
I hope you do too, because here’s my conversation with Chelsea Woolley. And stick around to the end of the episode to find out who my guest is next week. Chelsea Woolley, thank you so much for joining me.
I really want to get into this. Please tell me whatever you can, anything you can about Enormity Girl and The Earthquake in Her Lungs.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Sure. Yeah, you got the title. It’s one of those titles where when people say, like, what’s your play called?
I sort of like have to apologize, but it’s so long.
[Phil Rickaby]
But I will say when I first read it in my head, I said it. I was like Enormity Girl, like she was a superhero or something.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’d be like a children’s version.
Yeah, so we call it Enormity in the in the rehearsal hall, and it’s a play about a young woman who has just arrived at a woman’s shelter, like 30 seconds ago. Lights go up. She’s there and she’s trying to figure out what to do next in this situation that she’s never she’s never assumed that she’d be in a situation because, of course, whoever would.
And as she sees it, the two options that she has is either, like, commit to being in this shelter. The vulnerability that comes with that, talking to the person out front of the door, putting on the scrubs, making the bed or other option is like, get out of there. It’s making her feel uncomfortable and crazy.
But of course, as we know, statistically, you know, if you if you deny the deny the help or flee, flee the help of being offered. But statistically speaking, there’s a high chance that you would return to the thing you were fleeing to begin with. So she has this big choice to make up.
Does she go? Does she stay? And as that sort of like builds and builds and builds in herself, her mind, I guess, explodes and six other versions of herself sort of explode into the room.
And so it’s this one woman’s story. But then there are six other we call them the tendrils that are like fragments of her personality that all have their own opinion on what she should do. So some of them are really aggressively for like, get out of here.
And some of them are super aggressively for stay here, commit to the help. And then the play just becomes like this cyclone or earthquake of the noise of all of this, this giant ensemble trying to make this is one seemingly simple.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, with the seemingly simple decision, there was nothing simple about that decision. What what was the the the seed that started this play for you?
[Chelsea Woolley]
So I started I applied to write a play as a part of Night with Eaters right from the HIP program eight years ago at this point. And I knew I wanted to apply to the program. I was brand new to the city, had had literally moved.
Like I did my interview for it from the HIP the second day that had ever been in Toronto. And I applied with the play that was very different from what it is now. But the seed of it that has remained the same was was originally the play was about this collection of suburban moms, but they were like caricature moms who were on a camping trip and were learning how to be like wild women to defend themselves against like the monsters.
And we find out as the course of that play goes on that that the monsters are actually, you know, behind the white ticket fences, behind their doors, and that what we what we understand or assume about suburban life in a certain sort of echelon of woman or, you know, proper lady of society is, of course, again, statistically, we know that violence happens everywhere. And so it was a look at like that particular kind of of community and how how violence sort of lurks in ways that are maybe not expected when we think about domestic violence and what to me that means we’re talking about. So that was the original idea pitched to Nightwood, pitched to Andrea, who I had just worked with coming out of NTS when she had come and worked as my guest director on my graduating play.
So propose that to them. And the play has over them for the last eight years shifted enormously. But that was the initial seed was this relationship between suburban life and and like ideal womanhood and the relationship to violence.
[Phil Rickaby]
I was going to say, as you were describing that after hearing the current state and hearing that story, the that is that is quite a change. But a lot can happen in eight years. Yeah.
With all of those changes, what is what is the main thing that’s remained the same at the core of this play?
[Chelsea Woolley]
I think it’s still it’s still a play about this relationship between what we think we’re supposed to be, the kind of person we think we’re supposed to be and and the reality and like coming to terms with your own reality. And this woman, this main character, she does. I mean, the suburban moms make an appearance in this play in a very different form.
But but there’s a part where the ensemble says to her, you know, you’re young, socially connected, well-educated. How would you end up in a place like this? So that the idea of her having to reckon with like her own assumptions of why she shouldn’t be here is still a huge cog in the in the play workings.
[Phil Rickaby]
As as you developed this play, what is what did that process look like? How does the how does the process of writing something that changes so drastically, what does that look like?
[Chelsea Woolley]
So the the plan I just described was only ever in the works for about a month of this whole eight years. And I just had the hardest time writing it. And I think what it ended up being that was the block was that I had all these ideas of what I wanted to say about this topic.
And I know I I wanted to cram it all in. But writing this like very heightened sort of stylized, almost like farce about these women, women, farce or satire, like when you go and see like noises off and there’s all this door gag, it seems like it’s about chaos. But I think that that form of theatre is actually very, very structured.
And you have to sort of fit like you fit the the play you want to tell into an existing form. And so I didn’t have the patience to do that because I just wanted to get all of these ideas out. And so credit to my collaborator, Andrea, who after about a month of me like sitting down to write and basically writing nothing over and over and over again, she said, well, if you have all those ideas, why don’t you just write them all out first and then we’ll sort through them and see what the what the structure should actually look like.
So I ended up writing the first real draft of the play, like going from a month where I couldn’t write anything. Then I wrote the first draft in 36 hours and it was no characters, no real plot. It was just dashes on a page of when the next person person should speak.
And sort of like a Carole Churchill love and information where each scene is like it’s not moving yet. It was just these like little snapshot pictures of different different kinds of domestic violence, different situations. I always talk about like there was a scene that I ultimately cut, but it was about red demon pigs.
And I don’t don’t ask me why they were in there. I don’t remember. It was eight years ago.
But but there were all these like really like weird, disconnected scenes that all had this common theme. And the play existed as that for for a couple of drafts. And then after getting more content than I could know what to do with, that’s when we went back in, Andrea and I having the conversation of like, OK, now we have this wash of content.
How do we then narrow it down to one story or, you know, it became one story. But like, is it for people’s story? Is it two story?
So going backwards, it felt a bit retroactive. But going taking all of the plot that I had created and then going back and saying, who are my characters? What do they want?
What is the actual like narrative arc of this particular story that happened like draft three of the play? And that is now what the play feels more closely to.
[Phil Rickaby]
That is such a fascinating process because that’s happened to me in the course of writing a solo play and in create a collective creation, like creating all of these things and then like, you know, we’ve got so much. What’s the story? What do we have?
What do we have? And like looking all of it being like, I think we can make this this story and then like fitting everything into that. And it is it is fascinating.
So that’s that’s that happened in like the third year. Third draft of the third draft. OK.
Yeah. And then there’s there’s like still like you said, how many years of writing. So now here you are and it’s about to be produced by Nightwood.
Yeah. Looking back on it, how how does that journey feel?
[Chelsea Woolley]
It it’s great. And I’m I mean, so the play, it went through a year long development process with the Rip From Hip emerging artist thing. That was all the first year.
Had a beautiful reading at the end of that year, just with music stands. And then there was like another year of just just like me and Nightwood developing it privately or independently of the program. And then it was actually set to be produced in 2021.
And so March 2020, we were casting. Surprise! Can’t remember why that didn’t work out.
[Phil Rickaby]
So many stories have that little break.
[Chelsea Woolley]
I mean, well, so it really was like there was a draft ready to go in 2021, was put on hold. And I think during that whole time, it really was just like in suspension. Once we got out of pandemic land, it it still was not in a.
Well, I think like producing something this big with an ensemble where basically these six, the six out of the seven characters are on stage like 90 percent of the time. So they’re in every rehearsal. If someone’s out like you can’t rehearse anything because they’re all so intertwined.
So the idea of doing that when COVID was still a dominant force just felt crazy. So it was just in this like in this beautiful purgatory of like we want to do it. We still want to do it, but it can’t be now.
And then I think it was two years ago, maybe three at this point. But we we did a workshop production of it at TMU with the students there. And that was really helpful.
I was doing rewrites throughout that because it was really the first time that we like really dug into it beyond just a runoff workshop. So that happened, did some more rewrites. And then two years later, that was now.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Chelsea Woolley]
So there are these like pockets are really intense work on it. And then there were pockets of just waiting for the world to get itself in order.
[Phil Rickaby]
Can I ask you about that workshop at TMU and presenting this or having this? How long was that workshop for? And and what were the things that you learned about the play through that?
[Chelsea Woolley]
So the it was between it was like it was a full studio production length. So I think it was September to November, December. Like it was it was like upterm.
And it was it was pretty wild because we were working with students who because of COVID had this was their they were in third year, but this was their first production ever. And there were 25 students in the class and the play is for seven. And so every every part, except for this one lead character, all of the tendril parts were cast with five, four or five.
And they spoke as one like in a choral speaking thing. And they moved as sort of like one physical blob within a bigger blob. So the so the stage was was busy and loud.
And the play itself, which is trying to recreate this idea of what’s going on in your head when you’re trying to make a huge decision. So in that way, it was fantastic because the like noise that I imagined when I was writing it was right in front of me, 25, 21 year old. So that was really great.
I think in terms of like how it helps develop anytime you get to hear it out loud earnestly, like with people who are really going for it, it becomes really clear. Like what’s the what are the dead pockets? Where are people like?
I’m so afraid of the like the bum shift and when an audience is like, OK, we’re into it, but not right now. Like kind of anything where there’s any bum shifting. Yeah.
So so getting to hear it with an audience, with with students who were like really keen to talk about it and like get into it and also like we’re frustrated by it because it’s it’s a crazy it’s a crazy ensemble play where you never have a break. And so asking like these young actors to do that as their first play was pretty wild.
[Phil Rickaby]
That is that is that is wild. There must have been combating like all of this. Like they have so much time, like not being in person.
And this is their first thing. And now they’re in the room together. And it’s this play.
We’re all first lovers. And it’s a workshop and all of that. So, yeah, fascinating.
And I love the things that you can learn from an audience. Like you can’t know when those bum shifts are going to happen until you see an audience doing it. Yeah.
And then you can like make notes and stuff. But like only an audience will tell you where those are.
[Chelsea Woolley]
I’m a big cutter, too. Like I even today, the assistant director came up to me and she said, really admire how you’re not precious. Like if something’s not working, I’m just slowing it down.
Like it’s out of there. I’ll take today. There’s a line that I really love that the director was like, I think it’s messing with the pace.
And so I had to take like 30 minutes of like, I’ll think about it just to like mourn it. And then and then I was good to get rid of it.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, there is something to be said about being in service to the play. Right. Like if something is interfering with the play, it has to go.
No matter how much you love it. It’s it’s so it can be a really painful thing. Now, you mentioned being somebody who cuts.
Is that something that you’ve learned how to do to cut things more easily?
[Chelsea Woolley]
Yes, for sure. I think it was my first dramaturge back in Lethbridge, Alberta, when I wrote my first like really big play and a professor offered to dramaturge it. And he was the kind of professor that was very like no nonsense.
And I’ve since worked with dramaturges who are really great at like splitting that difference where they’ll give you all the notes, but they’re not going to make you like go home and cry. But this professor was very like, I’m just going to tell you straight, like they’re bad or whatever. So that was my first relationship to dramaturgy.
And although I’m glad to have moved beyond that, I think it really did build that resiliency to that kind of note taking. And I think also maybe I didn’t learn it with that teacher, but I have since learned it where you don’t have to take every note. Like I’m not afraid to take every note.
But but ultimately, if if both the director and the assistant director and the dramaturge and me, we’re all on the path of like what makes the play better. Sometimes that means me saying, no, actually, we need that line because of this thing that’s three pages later that nobody else has thought of it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, again, we’re looking at like how collaborative the art of theatre is. But I I’m also curious because you don’t always as a playwright get to be in the rehearsal hall when a play is being rehearsed. So what is your role in rehearsals right now?
And what’s that been like?
[Chelsea Woolley]
That is such a great question because I think it changes every time. Not not every day, but every production. I think I find one of the hardest things about being a playwright is going into a new director playwright relationship and having to figure out kind of on the fly, like what what is that relationship?
Because there are some rooms that I find very open to like best idea wins. And, you know, let’s let’s all contribute to the ideas in the space. And then there are other rooms where because of I mean, they’re for all sorts of reasons, but that it needs to be a little bit more structured and more like focused on one or two voices in the room.
So for this particular play, because I’ve been working with Andrea on this project and many others for 10 years, we have this shorthand that I love that I don’t have to be worried about that when I go into the rehearsal hall. And so I’d say for the first couple of weeks with this particular play, because it is very poetic and it’s very chaotic, like there’s like sometimes there’ll be one conversation with three of the characters and then like somebody else is having a totally different conversation over there. And so tracking those threads of like who’s saying what to who?
What is what is the objective? When the first couple of weeks in the room, that was my task was to just to participate in like, what does this mean? What is the intention of this?
What is my character doing? I always say that being a player in the room is sort of like being the kid that studied too hard for the test. Like everybody’s showing up day one and like figuring out what this play is.
And you’re like, don’t don’t give away the end. Like they have to go on their own exploration journey. But I’m here if you’re really stumped.
And so I feel like that’s my job a lot of the time. And now that I’m in the room, I was away for a week. It’s my first day back after a week away.
And they did a stumble through today. And so that was great to see where it’s gone in a week. So much has happened in a week.
But now I think more of the job is I’m still making cuts, made some cuts today. But it is more now like meeting with Andrea after a stumble through and talking through like intentions that aren’t landing that I was hoping to land or like, yeah, things from like a story perspective that that are either there or not there or too there, you know, like but not doing that in the room like a director would, but sort of having those conversations so that Andrea can either say, like, I’m on it. Don’t worry, which is most often the case. Or we can talk like where our goal for that moment diverged.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Is it is it as as they’re rehearsing it? Now, you know, they’re going to stumble through, which means they’ve got to a certain point.
Yeah. Is it sometimes I work with playwrights who are cutting and rewriting huge swaths of a play while you’re trying to rehearse it? And that can be very difficult.
How is it for like, is it is it easier to cut now or is it harder to cut now?
[Chelsea Woolley]
I think the cuts have to be very purposeful now, particularly again with this play where you cut one thing and the dominoes of the ensemble like crumble around it. So we’re not cutting willy nilly. But like, for example, today I cut about two and a half pages.
It was a whole scene that I was like, it’s not working, let’s cut it. And then what was great was the actors were advocating like, no, no, we need that moment because that’s leading me to this note, which was so great to hear. And we ultimately ended up putting half of the scene back.
But. Yeah, that would be like that would be considered at this point like a big, a big change. But again, I think I take my leave from the director, like Andrea has said in past things that we’ve worked on that.
She’s like, we’ll cut until dress rehearsal. And I like the clutching my pearls like that seems a little crazy. But with this particular play, I think that the time is coming close to when I would have to say it’s frozen, probably by the end of this week.
[Phil Rickaby]
Right. Now, you mentioned the ensemble cast. And it must be I mean, they’re all sort of playing facets of the same person, but different, different, different facets.
Tell me about this cast and putting this cast together.
[Chelsea Woolley]
They’re so great. I they’re so great. So I got to be in all the auditions.
And I don’t know if this is this translates to trying to describe it, but we saw so many people for all the parts and really that. So the parts are nondescript about like age or like any identifiers. It can be it can be anybody who just fits the like the personality of the character.
And so we were really like swinging wide to see as many versions of each character as as we could. And with each of the people that ultimately have made up the ensemble, my visual was like it was like to the core, like you would be seeing so many people say the whole the same, you know, cut. And then all of a sudden someone would come in and just like it would explode into like that’s the character that is like then the insides that they are showing on the outside are so perfectly aligned with this character.
So that’s been really fantastic to see like them take whatever is at the core that they shared with us and then and then just magnify it in this ensemble. So everybody has their own little thing like they sometimes the characters align and have the same goal. But there’s multiple ones who wanted to get out of there, but they want it for different reasons.
And so each of the characters have a really clear, distinct personality that I think was also how we designed this ensemble. Like they’re just awesome actors who have like really. Fantastic personalities that work really well together.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s awesome. Yeah, but the play that you’ve described is very dramatic one. But an audience can only take so much probably drama.
And there needs to be humor. There needs to be something like comedy in amongst the drama. Just like I think within a comedy, there needs to be drama within that.
You can you can’t do so much of the same thing. Tell me about adding humor to a story that’s as serious and dramatic as this one.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Yeah, I feel like every time we talk about this play, anybody who’s a part of it, the first thing we say is like, it’s a play about domestic violence. But no, no, it’s it’s funny. And you have to really try to, I guess, convince people.
But but it is funny. And it was for that very reason. Like, wait, you’re slowing.
I think especially after the pandemic years, like telling someone I think our attention spans have gone down. So if you say this plays two and a half hours, which it’s not, people are going to be like, oh, this is like, you know, this is a clean 90 minute play. And then also promising levity is is so important.
And I also think from like a selfish playwright perspective, it means that people got to break. So, you know, I’m asking you to go in, go in deep, go in hard. But then every six lines, you’re going to get a joke that sort of like, you know, gives you that chance to take a breath, do the bum shuffle, the shuffle.
And and also from a playwright perspective, it’s really helped me keep all six of these characters, keep all of the balls in the air for the whole play because they’re on stage the whole time. Not every character can be driving every scene. And so say three of them are involved in whatever the current like drive is for me, I still have three other characters where I need to do something with.
And so I found that comedy is such a great way to still have them participate in the in the world and what’s going on, but do it in a way where the audience isn’t like trying to focus on two very serious, important conversations at the same time. Like one of the characters can be, you know, throwing throwing out the jokes that are giving the break. But but not be so vital to like focus on the whole time.
[Phil Rickaby]
In terms of of learning this, because this is this is if playwriting is a craft, the ability to add humor that just works within the play is its own sort of thing on its own. How have you honed that craft over the years?
[Chelsea Woolley]
This is a great question because I’m teaching a workshop on it in a couple of days through Nightwed. And so I’ve been thinking about this a lot, like what is the what are the tools to do this? And I don’t know.
I think I think that a lot of what I find funny is just built on like really embracing the like. Inner beautiful weirdo that I am. And also, I think not not being shackled to the idea that every play has to be like a play that’s naturalism.
I think when we think of like a well-crafted play, a well-made play, we think of like a mid-century American play where it is very structured and naturalism. And if you liberate yourself from that, anything is possible. And the the things that I find most interesting to make possible, I think are often the things that are absurd and often things that are absurd are funny and also are like I there as an audience, again, this idea of giving an audience a break.
It also involves like doing something completely unexpected. Things in this play, I’m not going to give it away, but things fall from the sky in this play. Because why not?
Like, why not create things? I’m really committed to creating theatre that can only be seen in the theatre. And so for me, that involve absurdity, which often means comedy.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, the thing about absurdity is there’s so many situations which. Past the surface are just absurd. So if you can find the absurdity in it, then you’re just like just mining a gold mine there.
And you mentioned wanting to to to write you create plays that can only exist as theatre. What does that mean for you?
[Chelsea Woolley]
I think because media is so accessible now. Every playwright should be asking that question of their work always. I’m asking an audience to get out of their pajamas, you know, like leave their dog at home, turn off Netflix and like go somewhere.
And it’s it’s cold 90 percent of the time you’re like. So I’m asking a lot of an audience. And so because of that ask, I think I have to promise something to or make a promise to the audience.
And so for me, that promise is going into a space. You’re going to you’re going to share a space collectively with a bunch of other people, which also I think is why comedy feels important to me to infuse in the play, because laughing with a group of people is is joy and like is an experience in itself. So, yeah, asking people to participate with a group of people.
I think also like laughing is the last thing that we let audiences do. When you think about like 17th century, I’m maybe making up the years, but like the like old timey theatre where you got to like throw orange peels on the stage and talk to the actors, we don’t do that anymore. And maybe that’s for the best.
But this idea of being able to like vocally participate through laughter theatre is the only place that you get to do that still. So, yeah, so I like cherish that. And then also, you know, going back to absurdity, I think it’s a lot easier to, you know, call for things to fall from the sky in a play and make it like an experience than it is to like see it on your screen, where, you know, like we’ve seen every Marvel movie ever, like nothing is shocking anymore when it comes to special effects.
But in the theatre, totally.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think that that this is one of the things that we need to be better at as a whole in the industry is to talk about that experience. We know that that experience of being in a theatre, breathing with an audience, with the people on the stage is a singular thing that is so different from watching a movie or watching TV or whatever it might be. And we’re excited about it.
But there’s people who don’t know that and they don’t. And people are looking for experiences, right? People pay like fifty dollars or whatever to go see Van Gogh paintings projected on a wall.
That’s an experience. Yeah. So this is much better than that.
[Chelsea Woolley]
You know, we think.
[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, it is it is much different from that and it is more communal. And I think, again, having respect for the for what you’re asking an audience member to do and the thing like in a lot of cases, especially now that people are going back to the office, you’re asking them to go home, get change, get change, have dinner at home or on the road or like somewhere else, find parking. If they’re not taking the subway is like subway or take the subway.
Like we’re asking a lot. We have to give them something that makes them want to do that.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Yeah, I want I want people to talk about it afterwards, like the depth of theatre. And unfortunately, it’s a lot of theatre that I mean, a lot of theatre I see, but probably a lot of theatre that most people see, you see a play. And then as soon as it finishes, it’s like, well, let’s wind up some nachos.
Like and you don’t talk about the play anymore. So I really come to a place with my writing where I’m going to take some swings. And I think half the audience is going to be like, let’s unpack that.
That was great. I leaned in the whole time. And then maybe 20% of the audience is like, what was that?
And that’s OK. Like, I’d rather you have that conversation with your friend, too, than the like the nothingness, not your conversation.
[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely. I mean, listen, I used to be an usher at one of one of the big theatres at Toronto and I worked on the door. So I heard all the things that people said when they left that theatre.
Yeah. And a lot of it was that was nice. Or something to that effect, and who wants that as the response?
Because that’s the end of the conversation when they leave.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Yeah. And like as a playwright, you write a play for three years. In this case, you write a play for eight years.
And that’s you don’t want people to leave and go, that’s fine.
[Phil Rickaby]
No, not at all. But you want them talking about it. You want them affected by it.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Yeah. Yeah.
[Phil Rickaby]
I am curious and I’m always curious about the paths that people take to get to where they are in their theatre career and what even brought them to theatre. Now, you were raised in Alberta. You came to Toronto.
Yeah. What is your theatre origin story? What got you interested in theatre?
[Chelsea Woolley]
I love talking about my theatre origin story. It sounds like a villain legend. Thank you for how I turned evil.
[Phil Rickaby]
This is exactly the point.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Yeah. So, yeah, so so born and raised in Calgary. And just think back, like, what was my earliest theatre experience?
It was my my parents were big, like theatre audience members. But it wasn’t like like, you know, the midsize theatres that that I mostly worked at, it was like, you know, going to see musicals because they’re on the roof, all of her, you know. And that was like awesome as a as a little kid.
And and also I think having a sister like to this day, the creative one in the family is my sister. She’s like she’s she’s just her brain is like this expansive, incredible place where I can like make up worlds. And she’s amazing.
So having that and being the little sister to that meant a lot of like, and today we are princesses and you are not a princess. You are my footman. And then like, you know, doing that.
And so in grade four, I started writing plays. And I had a teacher who we had like a free writing class every week, like once a week. And she let me write plays and then she let me cast my friends.
And then by the time I finished writing the play, like it took like a month of the one once a week writing class. And then like credit to her, she would let us go in the hall and rehearse it. And I would direct it.
And then we’d come back and perform it. And being like, I work with a lot of young people now, and I think like real credit to that teacher, because I would be suspicious if a bunch of kids are like, we’re going into the hall to practice our play. But it really like validated this art form and this thing that we were doing.
So I became, yeah, it was the playwright of my class for a couple of years until probably about grade six, when none of my friends wanted to do that anymore. I guess, you know, when you get to grade six, you don’t want to be in front of your class doing silly things. So thus ended my playwriting career for a while.
And from about grade seven to 12, like that’s when school play started to happen, drama class started to happen. So I shifted gears and I went much harder into like the performing side, the acting side of things, which was also great. And I loved so much.
And then when I graduated high school, I wasn’t yet at a place, being like a spreadsheet kind of person meant like committing to studying theatre felt like way too scary. So I ended up going to the University of Lethbridge for history and a teaching degree. That’s like a five year combined program.
And looking back at that, I don’t regret that little five year detour at all. I think like so much about being a playwright is having an idea or seeing something in the world and like finding the thesis, I say in air quotes, because it is kind of a thesis, like how you want to unpack that thing for other people is exactly what studying history taught me. And also studying education taught me, like who is your audience and how do you share the world with the audience?
So I did that in Lethbridge for four years in Lethbridge. And during that time, I was the head of the university plays, but this is when playwriting started to creep back into my life because I wasn’t satisfied enough with, because I wasn’t in the drama program. I was auditioning for plays, but that was it.
And so I was really like, I was getting drama hungry because I had so much of it in high school. And then I had none of it in university, really. So I started writing little mini plays.
And then the University of Lethbridge, to this day, they have a playwriting competition that the chair of the university, who’s like a big supporter of the arts, he funds every year. And like, for me, this is like proof that funding the arts really works. Because out of this playwriting competition, like a bunch of 19-year-olds were like, yeah, I want 800 bucks.
In the three years that, like my three years, me and then two years above me, out of that have come like three Canadian playwrights who like Macombe Samombe, who’s maybe been on the show, like she’s incredible. And she came out of this program and another playwright who was in the West, James Wade came out of the program. So yeah, so we would, I took these little mini plays I was writing and I expanded one into like a two and a half hour mammoth play, submitted it to this competition and ended up getting some good plays, which I say like to this day, and I mean it, is like one of the most meaningful awards that I’ve ever been given because it was that opportunity at a really important age where somebody said, like a bunch of, a jury said, like, you’re writing things that you should, you know, your writing has merit and we’re interested in what you have to say. And that really launched things forward. So that play that I ended up writing for that competition, a student director ended up convincing me to do like the student production version of it.
So that was my first big production. And that was when I started working with that dramaturge who was very aggressive in the way he came out. So it was like my first experience with production was working with a director and working with a dramaturge.
And so from there, that was really, I think, the first time that I thought, or I think it’s the first time I realized like playwriting was actually a thing you could pursue and not just an interesting side hobby. So from there, I ended up applying to the Naperville Theatre School, right? I graduated, had my teaching degree, had a job offer at a high school.
And I think this is a good reminder, even to myself now, when I applied to NTS, I was so nervous because I thought I’m making this choice between these two things that I love. And I can only do one of, like I can only ever teach high school, which I loved doing, or try to be a playwright and say goodbye to that life forever. And of course, now I look back and I’m like, yeah, I’m a playwright.
And also like I’m the head of drama at the Canadian Children’s Opera Company and I direct operas for children. It’s like my other job. So I’m doing both of the things now.
But yes, applied to NTS. One of my best friends also applied for the design program. So we were kind of holding each other accountable.
And I don’t know, I think I maybe would have backed out had we both not been like, you better do it. You’re going to do it. I’m going to do it.
Thinking there was no way I was going to get in. Only two people get in a year to the playwriting program, but I got in. And so then I moved to Montreal for three years, did that program.
And the best thing about that program is that it’s just like three years away from every other part of your life where you just get to like spend every day writing plays. And so I wrote a play. And then from there, I moved here.
And that was now eight years later.
[Phil Rickaby]
I always find it interesting the way that in some people’s stories, they are turning away from theatre. They’re like, I’m not going to do it. I’m going to go off and do this other thing.
And somehow it creeps back in and sort of draws them back to it. Yeah. It’s sort of like this fascinating thing that like.
It’s in your it’s in it gets into your bones, it gets into your your being.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Yeah, it was something like you were always like, even just looking back to that, like kid in grade four. It’s like you were always meant to do that. You were you were doing it before any other kid knew what being a playwright looked like.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I also find it fascinating, the idea, like because when we were in, I remember being at theatre school and they were like, you’re going to do one thing. You’re going to be an actor.
And now every actor I know, everybody who’s in theatre is many different things. They’re writers, they’re stage combat, they’re they’re they’re intimacy coaches. They’re all like so many different things because nobody is one thing.
And the industry kind of needs us to be many things. And it’s so it’s interesting how, you know, you were like, I can either do playwriting or I could be a teacher. And both of those things still are part of your life.
[Chelsea Woolley]
And I think it’s like both of the the parts of those things that are the most interesting parts. Like I wouldn’t I don’t want to do report cards. I don’t want to teach to the curriculum.
Like my sister is a teacher and she’s very good at it. But she’s also like, like sometimes I try to give her math classes and she’s like, I can’t do that. That’s not what that’s not my area.
So I don’t want that. But but now I got to basically like just do the part of being a teacher that I loved, which was like put on the school play. But I just get to do it all year, multiple times with like the kids who love it the most.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s the most incredible thing, like like nobody who’s doing what you’re doing is like, I don’t want to do that. Like you don’t have to make anybody do anything, which is pretty good for being a teacher.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Yeah, well, and this is I mean, being self-employed is such a such a double edged sword. But I really do think like if if you’re the kind of person that’s like I’m going to I’m going to take the best part of this and the best part of this and I’m going to figure out how they work together. Like you can you can craft your own, choose your own adventure career out of all the best thing that you want to do.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. I was just looking at the names of your of some of the plays that you’ve written and and I’m fascinated by titles and where they come from, because I think sometimes finding the title of the play is one of the most difficult. Like you have the working title, but that’s not necessarily the final title.
How do you find the title of your plays?
[Chelsea Woolley]
Oh, it changes every time. And I think the the biggest struggle for me is that it either comes right away, like before a draft is done or it takes forever. That is never right.
I guess Normandy was actually a bit of an outlier in both of those. I didn’t have it for the first probably two drafts. There was no title, probably because there was no play or just a lot of dashes on a page.
And so actually probably out of those dashes, I’m trying to remember eight years ago, out of those dashes came this title and it emerged because there was no plot. I remember finishing the play and thinking, what is this play actually about? And so then I went back to the play and I found like the words that popped out to me that felt like we were sort of revolving around them as a visual concept.
And so all of the words in the title, Normandy, girl and earthquake in her lines were all like these little thematic things that were popping out of these like vignette scenes multiple times. And still to this day, like those vignettes have survived eight years of cut to be to exist in the play. So it did feel right.
[Phil Rickaby]
Does having a title, especially a title like this, give you any kind of guardrails or does it do something for the play moving forward once you find the title?
[Chelsea Woolley]
I don’t ever feel restricted by a title because I would change it if I, I mean, I can’t change it now, but I would up into a certain point. I think it does. I think what I like I search for in a title is that the title reflects the kind of play it is.
So with this one, because it’s like it’s a play with a lot of noise and a lot of words and it’s like rhythmic and it’s like linguistically like churning. So having a long title and having a title that has sort of poetic imagery, like the earthquake in our lungs, like that’s the kind of language in the play. So it gives you a snapshot image of what that’s going to be.
On the flip side, like my next play that I’m writing is called The Apology, which is like the easiest title in the world. But that play, that title feels really important because every single scene, this might change, but right now every scene has the words I’m sorry in it and some caucasity. So that felt right because it’s like, it’s very simple.
The game we’re playing here is everybody needs to apologize, but to everyone.
[Phil Rickaby]
Now you mentioned this rhythmic text that you’ve written in this and that is part of your writing style. Does, I mean, sometimes I think like for me, writing rhythmic can be difficult, like trying to translate that for the actors. When you’re writing in that rhythmic style, does it take the actor a while to find it?
Or do you have to modify it once the actor starts to speak it?
[Chelsea Woolley]
It takes a while. That’s challenge number one for them currently and they’ve been at it for three weeks to four weeks. Yeah, I don’t modify it.
And sometimes it doesn’t work. And that actually is where a lot of these cuts will come in is when that rhythm gets like, like you can hear it. It’s like one of those things, like the record players when it like scratches.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Chelsea Woolley]
The rhythm isn’t like, isn’t doing the thing that you want it to do. I try to come in with it pretty, like flowing pretty well. And I do that by like, I’m sure my neighbors think I’m crazy because I’m writing like a, I don’t have a page, like for the whole day, we’ll just be like repeating the lines and tweaking them and making sure the rhythm work.
I’ve had a couple of people now, so I feel like I’m safe to say it. A couple of different actors in different projects have said that the plays that I write, feel more like a music score than script, which I take it like a high compliment, but it is interesting that like, I think different playwrights approach material from different angles. Some see what it should look like.
And then that’s the challenge is like, you can’t write every stage direction. So how do you make sure that the important things are in the play? For me, I don’t see anything.
I’ll do whatever you want. For me, it’s like the rhythm is the thing that I have control of. And so in that rhythm, like I’m building, like a piece of music, I’m building the crescendo.
And so I assume, and it is the case, like a director’s job is like, okay, how do we visually build to that crescendo within the staging?
[Phil Rickaby]
But it’s nice to have that not be your job, right? It’s nice to be able to, something that doesn’t always happen in indie theatre, but like, it’s nice to be able to be like, oh, this is my job. I work in this box.
Somebody else has to worry about things like staging and all that kind of stuff.
[Chelsea Woolley]
But I will say then the worry that I do have, or that I have to sort of like keep under control is when they are learning things, they can’t go at pace. They can’t keep the rhythm. They have to explore like what they’re saying first.
So again, going back to like being the kid who studied too hard. Part of my relationship to the room is maybe like, and I know enough to like on a break be like, this has got to go faster, Andrea. And Andrea was like, I’m not giving them that note right now.
Like they’re worried about like where their feet are going. We don’t need this note, but we will get there. Like if not, she’s saying that’s important.
We will get there, but we’re not gonna get there today.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, yeah. The only thing I can imagine like when it’s like people are trying to figure out the rhythm and it’s slow, there’s an internal like trying to like get it to go. But again, like you said, they’re trying to find their footing and they’re trying to find that on their own.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Yeah, yeah. One of the actors kind of teases me, but I have a note in most of my scripts now in the playwright’s note off the top. It’s the last note on the page always.
And it says pick it up, it’s faster than that. And so I’m sure it’s eerie because like that’s like my number one thing. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that, but I feel like it’s like an old playwright’s saying an actor comes up to them and says like, what are my intentions?
And what are my tactics in this moment up there? It’s like, just say it loud and fast.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, no, absolutely. Just as we’re starting to draw through a close here, the rehearsals have been going, this show is going to be opening very soon. And so with that looming, what is the thing that you’re most excited for as this comes to the stage?
[Chelsea Woolley]
Because this play has been my longest baby, I’m really excited. Truly, I know everyone says this, but I really am excited to finally like share it. It was the first play I wrote when I first moved here.
And it hasn’t been the first produced now because it’s been so many years. And so in some ways, there was a piece of me holding back the playwright I am in this city because this play hadn’t emerged into the community yet. And so I’m excited to show it off and show what I’ve been working on for eight years.
But also, it’s become a bit of a scrapbook of who I was when I wrote parts of it eight years ago, but also who I was when I wrote the last insert five days ago. And so it’s this time capsule of who I am as a playwright in this first decade living in Toronto. And I am so excited to share that.
I’m also so excited to share it in Nightwind’s brand new space. Like probably most of the audience who comes to see it will have not seen a piece of work in this space. So I think it’s like, it also transports people.
It does some of the work for us to do that transporting because it’s not a space you’re familiar with. So I’m just excited to like, to celebrate the newness of the piece, the newness of the space and this ensemble with audiences.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s super exciting. Chelsea, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
I’m really looking forward to this play.
[Chelsea Woolley]
Thank you. This was so great. I can’t wait to see you there.
[Phil Rickaby]
Thanks for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, leave a comment on YouTube, on the show page, on the website at stageworthy.ca. Before I get into who’s on next week, I want to talk briefly about Patreon. I need my patrons to be able to make this show. I had to take a year’s break, not necessarily because I was tired, but I was a little bit tired. But mostly I was finding it difficult to keep up with the financial needs of creating a show like this and giving it to you for free.
Because things do cost money. I have to pay for website hosting, for hosting for the audio files for the podcast, and all kinds of other services, editing software, things like that. And that’s not all the cost.
There’s also my time, because it takes time to put an episode of Stageworthy together, as well as booking guests and all the other things that go into hosting a podcast. So if you like this, so if you appreciate the work that I do with Stageworthy, join my existing patrons and become a backer. I just added a new level to Patreon at $2.
You get most of the perks that the other levels get, just with a couple of limitations. But aside from that, you would be on par with my other backers trying to open it up to more and more people to be able to back this show. People like Cassie, who backed me right from the beginning of my announcing that this show was coming back.
And I’m so grateful to Cassie and all the rest of the backers on Patreon. So if you are interested in joining in and being part of this show, getting early access to episodes, participating in conversations about issues and things like that, please come and join the Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/stageworthy.
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I would love to have you be part of the people who help make this show. My guest next week is Hamilton playwright Liz Buchanan. I had a really great conversation with Liz and I can’t wait to share it with you.
So tune in next week for my conversation with Liz Buchanan.
