433. Michael Kras

About This Episode:
This week on Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby is joined by Michael Kras, playwright, director, and one of Canada’s busiest magic designers. Michael has designed magic and illusions for theatres across the country and is the resident magic and illusions lead for the North American tour of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. He also joins the Tarragon Theatre’s Greenhouse Residency to develop his new solo play Love Me Back, a piece that blends sleight-of-hand magic with storytelling.

This episode explores:

Michael’s path from magician to playwright and director
Integrating magic into theatre in meaningful ways
The role of magic design in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
The Hamilton theatre scene and its challenges
Writing for young audiences and why those stories matter
The creation of his magic book Synthesis and Secrets
Developing his new play Love Me Back at Tarragon’s Greenhouse Residency

Guest:
🎭 Michael Kras

Michael Kras is a playwright, director, and magic designer based in Hamilton, Ontario. His plays include the Voaden Prize-winning The Team (Essential Collective Theatre/Theatre Aquarius), No Big Deal (Roseneath Theatre), The Start-Up (Theatre Aquarius/Brave New Works), Love Me Back: A Magic Show (Green Light Arts/Tarragon Theatre Greenhouse Festival) and The Year and Two of Us Back Here (Broken Soil Theatre). He has been an artist-in-residence at Roseneath Theatre, Essential Collective Theatre, Theatre Aquarius, Green Light Arts, Tarragon Theatre, and Caravan Farm Theatre.

He currently serves as the Magic & Illusion Lead for the North American Tour of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Sonia Friedman/Bespoke Theatricals) and previously served as resident magic director for the play’s Canadian premiere with Mirvish Productions. Other magic direction credits include the Canadian premiere of Clyde’s by Lynn Nottage (Canadian Stage), Versus (QuipTake), The Extinction Therapist (Theatre Aquarius), Richard III: A Spectacular Stand-Up Act (Caravan Farm Theatre), A Christmas Carol (Maltz Jupiter Theatre), and Franklin’s Key (Pig Iron Theatre).

Michael is an alumnus of the Theatre Aquarius Playwrights Unit, the Caravan Farm National Playwrights’ Retreat, and Directors Lab North

Connect with Michael:
🌐 Website: michaelkrasworks.com
📸 Instagram: @michaelkras

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Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated and may contain minor errors.

[Phil Rickaby]
Welcome to Stageworthy, I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. If you’re watching this on YouTube, make sure that you like this episode, hit the subscribe button and click that bell icon so that every time I release an episode, you’ll get notified. And if you’re listening to the audio only version, make sure you’re subscribed.

Just open your favorite podcast app, search for Stageworthy and hit the follow or subscribe button. That way, whenever I drop an episode, it will get downloaded directly to your device, you won’t have to do anything. Stay tuned to the end of this episode for a little preview of who my guest is next week.

But this week, my guest is Michael Kras. Michael is a playwright and director and also one of Canada’s busiest magic designers. He’s designed magic and illusions for stage productions of all sizes.

And in addition to his work in theatres across Canada, he’s also the magic and illusions lead for the national tour of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the national tour. I had a great conversation with Michael, we talked about magic, we’ll talk about playwriting, we’ll talk about what it’s like to design magic, we’ll even talk about the magic book that Michael designed. Now, here’s my conversation with Michael Kras.

Michael Kras, thank you so much for joining me. Just to jump in, I think you just were able to announce that you were chosen for Tarragon Theatre’s Greenhouse Residency. Tell me about that.

Are you working on something specific? And tell me about that program.

[Michael Kras]
Yeah, absolutely. So I am working on a brand new play called Love Me Back. And Love Me Back is a play with sleight of hand magic, and it’s a solo piece, and it’s something that I’ll be performing myself as a magician, as a storyteller, actor, and also the writer of the piece and the designer of the magic in the piece.

This is a play I’ve been commissioned by Greenlight Arts in Kitchener to work on, and then the residency with the Terragon is a way to explore some of the initial ideas around it and do some proof-of-concept audience and performer relationship stuff. So we’ll present an excerpt of the piece in January at the Greenhouse Festival at the Terragon, and then after that, we will develop the full show to present with Greenlight Arts in a future season.

[Phil Rickaby]
Now, you’ve been a playwright, you’ve been a magician, doing mostly sleight of hand. Is this the first time that you’ve put these two things together? In this way, yeah.

[Michael Kras]
Yeah, I’ve only recently begun doing magic direction and design for theatre in the past couple of years, and this is the first time that I’m writing a piece that directly integrates magic, and especially one that I’ll be performing myself, so it’s really kind of unchartered territory for me artistically, and I’m really… it’s the scariest prospect of writing a play that I’ve ever had by a long shot. Largely because it centers me, but also because it centers magic, which is something that I have separated from my theatre work for so long, and now I’m finally merging those things in a really meaningful way.

So there’s lots I don’t know yet that I’ll be finding out when I start this residency, when I’m working with Greenlight on the full play, and we’ll see what happens. I don’t know.

[Phil Rickaby]
Can we delve for a second? I would really love to talk about if there’s a reason why you kept these things so separate, the writing and the magic.

[Michael Kras]
Interesting. Well, I think I’ve been a magician for much longer than I’ve been in theatre. It’s been even like a childhood obsession of mine.

And when I got more into theatre as a young adult, and went to college, and went to Humber College, and studied acting in their physical theatre program, and magic was still part of my life, but it largely took a back seat, because I, at the time, saw magic as sort of this dishonest barrier between me and my audience, where there was this sort of built-in idea of, I’m going to do something that I know how to do. You don’t know how to do it.

I’m going to deceive you. And therefore, it felt like a roadblock to the honesty that I really wanted to integrate into my theatre work as an actor, as a writer. And so the way that people approached me, and the way that people treated me when I did magic for them, was something I kind of wanted to put aside, and really focus on becoming a well-rounded actor and theatre maker.

And then I only decided to merge those things again when I started doing magic design and magic direction. And that started when Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opened in Toronto, and I got hired on to be their resident magic director. And I got to see firsthand that magic can actually be quite an interesting and honest and impactful tool for storytelling in a piece of theatre, and not just an imposition on it.

It doesn’t create a wall for its audience, it helps to support a story. And so that’s why I’m all of a sudden like, oh, I can actually do these things in tandem in a really exciting and novel way.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, there’s two thoughts that occurred to me, because Penn Jillette has often complained about the dishonesty of magic. And it’s the thing that the Penn and Teller team have often been like, this is illusion. Nobody’s going to pretend that this is like magic, this is illusion.

And sometimes they even do their stuff showing how it’s done, and things like that. But also, I think it was the magic show with Doug Henning, I don’t think anybody’s ever remounted it. But it was like, Stephen Schwartz created a musical featuring Canadian magician, Doug Henning, way back in the 70s.

And so it’s something that has been done, like the marrying of magic and theatre. But it was the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child that sort of like, open your eyes to the possibility. Definitely.

[Michael Kras]
And the magic show, I grew up on the magic show, there’s like a recorded version of it that was shot at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto, with a lot of the original cast, including Doug Henning, many, many years ago. And you’re right, it’s never been renounced, because it was kind of meant to be a star vehicle for Doug Henning. And it was also, when I watch back that show, I look at the magic and I think, oh, wow, this is kind of like when you see, and it’s not a bad musical, but it makes me think of bad musicals, where the songs are like, we’re going to stop the show, here’s a song, and everything kind of gets like driven, like just stops in its tracks.

And the magic show for me is kind of like that, where all of the magic in the show feels like this weird sort of like, hokey, cheesy imposition on the story, or it feels shoehorned in there. And then Harry Potter, the magic in that show is like bespoke for the show. And it’s stuff that was built to support the story in a magical realm, which the play and that world exists in.

And so all the magic, everything in that show is built to further the plot and the story, and it feels of a piece with what’s going on. And so that, to me, was the big difference. And that made me go, oh, this is what magic can do in a play.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. I definitely think, because, you know, first off, Doug Henning, not known for his singing ability. And also, you know, here’s Stephen Schwartz creating a musical as a vehicle for Doug Henning.

But also, I definitely see it as something like, we do the thing, there’s a plot, and then Doug does something. And that is like, I could definitely see that as a possibility. Now, the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

How did you find yourself as the magic consultant for that show?

[Michael Kras]
So that was, from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, it was that sort of thing, where I had received a direct message on Instagram from someone that I went to theatre school with, who wasn’t in my year, but we knew each other. And she knew that I was a magician, and also a theatre person. And she reached out to me saying, Hey, I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who’s looking for someone is has a background in magic and also in like theatre and directing.

I mentioned you I hope that’s okay. And I said, Oh, sure. I don’t know what it’s for.

But great. And then I found out later that it was for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. And I went, Oh, interesting.

I don’t know what they could possibly want me for. But great. Yeah, it was cool.

And no one reached out to me for weeks and weeks and weeks. And then I saw Mirvish posted like the first day of rehearsal videos and stuff. And I thought, okay, whatever that was, the ship has sailed.

But then two weeks after that, I got an email through my website from the Broadway magic associate, my friend Skylar Fox. And he reached out to schedule a phone call with me. We chatted for a long time on the phone, we talked about philosophies and magic philosophies and theatre directing and leaving a room all of those things in tandem.

And, and he just sort of vetted me and make sure that I was like a normal magician and not a weird magician, important distinction, and that I also knew how to lead a theatrical process. All those things were important. And so after we talked for a while, I was asked to assemble a resume of just my theatre and my magic experience.

So I did that, sent it off. And then a few days later, I had a zoom call with all the original creatives on the illusions team for Harry Potter. And then a few minutes after I finished that call, I got a call saying that they wanted to hire me for the job.

And I was joining the rehearsal process four days later in Toronto, took a train in, and I just sort of had to learn on the fly. And it was all about inheriting all the magic for the show, because every, the role is sort of like the dance captain in a musical where there’s like a hundred plus magic effects, big and small things, sleight of hand tricks, big, large scale illusions in Harry Potter. And they needed someone to help direct those sequences and also teach understudies and swings and covers, and then look after the show long term.

So I’m always taking notes. I’m always watching the show, making sure actors are supported in what they’re doing and that the magic continues to look amazing. So it’s sort of, it becomes like a dance captain resident director kind of role.

And there’s been a big push. I mean, before Harry Potter, you would have called this kind of role a magic consultant, but I think now it’s a more integrated job where a lot of magic designers around the world, like the magic in Harry Potter was designed by Jamie Harrison, who’s one of the big magic designers in theatre around the world. He’s done a bunch of shows.

If you see magic in a play, there is a good chance Jamie or someone that works with Jamie did the magic for that show. And there’s a big push to no longer call it a consultant and to call it more of a magic designer or magic director, just like you would call a lighting designer, a lighting designer, and those sorts of things where it’s you become integrated into the process. And it’s not as simple as I’m going to come in for a day, teach a trick and then leave.

It’s like, no, you’re part of the entire creative process in a very holistic and integrated way. And so that’s what Harry Potter kind of set the standard for. And that’s what’s popping up more and more in theatre around the world.

And it’s starting to come into Canada more too.

[Phil Rickaby]
Now, you alluded to this role being more like a dance captain than sort of a consultant. Does that mean that you’re like, are you are you there watching the magic every day like a dance captain is? Listen, I worked as an usher for a bunch of shows at Mervis Theatres and would watch the dance captain come out from the back to watch in the balcony for like the big dance stompers and things, take notes and give people things like that.

Are you doing that kind of thing? Are you coming in occasionally?

[Michael Kras]
I’m doing I’m doing that exact work, but on a more occasional basis. So right now, I mean, I when I did the Canadian production of the show, I watched the show twice a week. Now I watch it about once a month or more if I’m going down to I work I look on the I look after the North American tour of the show now.

So I’m going to the United States a lot. And so I’ll go into the States and watch the show like that. And I’ll sit in the audience.

I will take notes. I’ll support the cast. I’ll send them notes.

I’ll talk to them in their dressing rooms and make sure that all of the magic continues to look just as sharp and amazing and specific because it is so I mean, I quite literally feel like a dance captain sometimes because some of the magic in that show to make it as clear and exciting as possible is tied to choreographic beats and to music. So when I’m rehearsing with actors, I’m counting like a choreographer would and really making sure that all the beats are super clear because when you’re doing magic on stage in a play, sometimes the difference between a trick really landing and not landing at all is the rhythm of it. So making sure that all of those beats are super clear all the way through and that every moment of magic is landing very specifically for the audience is a huge part of the job in a way I didn’t expect.

[Phil Rickaby]
Is it similar to the way that like, you know, there’s sport fencing, which is closer to actual like sword fighting and there’s stage combat sword fighting, which is really about being flashy and make sure that everybody if it lands that it everybody can sort of see the thing happen, right? Is that is it closer to that?

[Michael Kras]
Yeah, it’s very much like that. And it’s it’s funny because that’s often it’s often walking that fine line between the magic looking really contrived and looking like it’s part of the world of the show because it’s not even just the magic moment itself that I’m looking after. I’m also looking after all the periphery because sometimes before a trick is done or after a trick is done, there’s something sneaky happening on stage in one way or another.

And I have to make sure that that sneaky thing looks completely natural and unsuspicious before and after the trick happens, right? So yeah, exactly. So oftentimes when I’m doing the trick with someone with an actor, I’m making sure they’re doing something in a way that to them probably feels really forced and contrived.

But I tell them it lands very clearly for the audience and it doesn’t feel contrived to us. It feels contrived to you because that’s not the way you move as a human being. But for the story to land super clearly, you really need to make sure that when this object appears in your hand, you hold it in the same point in space for a couple of beats so everyone sees it like it’s stuff like that.

Yeah, but it’s it’s very it’s it’s so detailed and specific. It’s almost you want to tear your hair out over it sometimes. But it has to be that way because magic it’s not like choreography in a show where if someone misses a step or two, no one really notices or cares if a magic trick doesn’t work.

It’s not magic. It’s either magic or it isn’t. So you really need to make sure that all those things land super clearly.

Otherwise, there’s no moment of magic. That sounds very difficult.

[Phil Rickaby]
It sure is. I want to actually want to ask because because you your history with magic, your magic background is primarily sleight of hand. But this is like big illusions.

What’s the learning curve for you like coming into like a role like this when you’re usually doing something that’s more like a close up magic thing and this is a bigger illusion trick? Or is it just principles are the same? Or what’s that learning curve like?

[Michael Kras]
In some ways, it felt completely foreign to me. In other ways, it’s like, oh, this is the same thing on a different scale in a different context. And I actually think about it in terms of whenever I do rehearsals with brand new actors coming into the world of Harry Potter.

If we have a new cast joining, I do intro to magic, which all of the magic directors for this show around the world do where we we teach a very basic sleight of hand trick to get the process started and to introduce the company to all of the principles of magic, of sleight of hand, of misdirection, of illusion. And we do this tiny sleight of hand trick. But then we also emphasize that everything in the show is basically just this trick on a larger scale.

So the principles inherent in this trick translate perfectly to everything else in the show, even if the thing we’re doing in the show is 200 times bigger than this little sleight of hand trick. So on those terms, I came in with a lot of internal knowledge, even though I hadn’t done big illusions myself as a performer, I knew all of the things that went into creating that illusion. And so I was able to support that magic pretty much right away.

But in terms of really, really working on it and refining it, it was a very different language for me on those terms. And so it was kind of the best of both worlds of being really challenging and really new and exciting. But also I had enough internal basis in my own kind of magic brain to be able to support that work right away and help it look amazing.

Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
Now, one thing that just occurred to me is the fact that you’re working on this on on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which is, I mean, sort of I don’t even know, like the breadth of people who have are familiar with that story sort of like is not theatre for young audiences anymore. But your playwriting has largely been about theatre for young audiences. And so this is sort of an extension of that kind of thing.

Your playwriting and your magic sort of coming together into one thing. Yes. Yeah.

Now, as far as like the playwriting and writing for young audiences, what has made you want to primarily write for young audiences?

[Michael Kras]
I think what excites me about plays for young people is that the inner worlds of young people are so expansive and so big and deeply felt that I just love living in those stories because I feel like young people are in a constant state of self-discovery, even if they’re not always aware of it. A lot of young people think they have it all figured out, but they still are learning every single day about themselves, about the world around them. But also I don’t think we ever stop growing up.

I don’t think we ever stop the process of coming of age. I think we’re still learning about ourselves until the day we die. And so I think there is a universality to theatre for young audiences that extends well beyond the worlds of young people.

But I think that TYA is a great way of introducing really, really big ideas about the world in a really palatable and accessible and approachable way. Because everything I’ve written for young audiences deals with very heavy topics like toxic masculinity and sexual assault and bullying and internalized misogyny, all of those things. And yet they exist in these realms where they’re given that weight.

They’re given the weight they deserve, but they’re told in a story that feels like it’s easier to buy into than maybe something that just hits you with a big adult punch right away. So I love that because also I think that young people wear their hearts on their sleeve. And I love the way that they communicate with each other.

And I love how it is both extremely flawed and fractured, but also really, really openhearted and really, really vulnerable and honest. And I just find that so exciting as a writer because I love capturing people who are trying their best to find the correct way of expressing something and not quite being able to do it. It’s my favorite thing about writing plays.

I think there’s so much dramatic tension in that kind of writing. And so I love to capture that.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. One thing that you said that I really loved was that we never really grow up. We continue to find ourselves every day.

But I think that there’s sort of like a, it’s, I don’t know, toxic ageishness where somebody sort of calcifies and believes that now I am finished. Now I know everything I need to know and they stop growing. They stop trying to grow.

They stop trying to find themselves, which is, I think, something that the world outside of say theatre, where we play every day and we’re discovering things all the time, can sometimes find people and get them stuck and stiltified. And it’s kind of good whenever you can bring people into and disarm them with magic and both through playwriting and bring into the magic of theatre, but also like illusions, because you sometimes do illusions on Instagram, on reels and stuff. Do people react in sort of a childish way when they, can you watch the child in them when you’re doing magic?

Yeah.

[Michael Kras]
In a big way, I think it is kind of the ultimate way of unlocking that side of someone. When a magic trick is really amazing, it upends for even a brief moment, your understanding of the way the world works. And it takes you back to a time where you were still really, really learning how the world works.

And so I find that when a trick really lands for someone, they go back decades in their life and they become a young person or they become a child just for a moment. And I mean, I’ve been working with the director and my dramaturg on Love Me Back, which is my magic solo play, is Matt White, who’s the AD of Greenlight Arts. And I’ve been pulling out magic for him while we’ve been working and trying to see what’s landing for him and what isn’t.

And there are moments where we’ll be sitting with each other, I’ll do a trick for him, and he’ll stand up and walk across the room and just vocalize in these ways that are totally uninhibited. And it’s such an exciting contrast from the very kind of straightforward adult playwriting work we’re doing together. All of a sudden, the person I’m working with in the room becomes a kid just for a moment.

And I find that really exciting because there aren’t a lot of art forms that do that to somebody in a really, really profound way. And I think magic has the power to do it if you do the magic well.

[Phil Rickaby]
I fully agree. I fully agree. I love watching magic.

I love it. And I’ve always, I always have because I grew up watching, I’m old enough to have watched like Doug Henning’s specials on TV where he’d laugh like big, like everything else stops Doug Henning’s on that sort of thing. And so I definitely could see how it affects that way.

But I want to go back a second. I really want to talk more about you and theatre and playwriting. And I want to ask you about how that started.

How did you discover theatre? How did you get involved in theatre? How did you start writing?

[Michael Kras]
Ooh, I discovered theatre young enough that I don’t remember exactly when it happened. But I do know that whenever it, whenever it took me, my hooks, the hooks were deep. I saw my uncle in community theatre productions of musicals like Jekyll and Hyde, the musical, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when I was a kid.

And it unlocked something in me. And I remember going to the library and pulling out Broadway cast recordings of shows that sounded interesting to me and discovering theatrical storytelling through music and through musical theatre. And then that turned into me putting on productions in my basement with my sister using found objects, which is very much in the spirit of devised theatre.

Just didn’t know it yet. And then that just turned into a lifelong obsession with storytelling and with performing and with just communicating with people in an artistic way that involves two bodies in a space sharing a story together. And so from there, I did theatre in high school.

I was an actor. That’s where I got my first taste of playwriting was doing the Sears Drama Festival when it was still called that. Now it’s the NTS Drama Festival, but those were my earliest exposures to it.

Studied acting at Humber College, did physical theatre there. Left that school thinking, I think I’m more of a playwright and director than an actor. So that’s been my focus largely ever since.

And ever since then, it has been the same thing of I want to tell stories that illuminate my own perspective on the world and also the things that I wish I knew more about and want to understand better and want to have more dialogue with other people about. And that’s why I write plays is I want to put stories into the world that are entertaining and that make people really, really feel something, but that also make them engage with ideas about the world around them in a challenging way or a different way.

[Phil Rickaby]
Do you remember when you discovered or learned or when was the moment that you figured out that like theatre was a thing that you could do? Not just a fun thing that you sort of did in your basement, but a thing that you could do?

[Michael Kras]
I think it was probably through the Sears Drama Festival, where all of a sudden we had resources to create a thing on some form of a scale. But then also, I mean, it’s weird to think of theatre in like a meritocracy sense and giving awards to plays to young teenagers who are still discovering themselves. You know, I think that in some ways is an inherently flawed idea, but it was also as someone who won a couple of Sears awards, it was very encouraging.

And I remember, I think what maybe pushed me into continuing to write plays after high school was that I wrote a play in my final year of high school for the Sears Festival. I had never moved past the initial like district qualifying round in Sears, and that was the year that I really, really tried all my best to do that. Didn’t make it for my final year, was kind of bummed out about that.

But then I was, my play, the script was one of the four finalists for the new play award at the provincial level. And I got an envelope mailed to my high school that said that, and that was a huge encouragement because all of a sudden, I had these score sheets from people in the theatre industry who were telling me really, really encouraging things about the way I was writing and encouraging me to keep going. And I’m like, oh, these are people who work in Canadian theatre, and they’re telling me that they think that I have, there’s something to the work I’m doing.

And some of those people I’ve worked with to this day, Andrew Lamb, who is the AD of Roseneath Theatre, he was one of the people that scored one of my high school plays. And Roseneath has produced my work since then. I’ve written a play for them in residence, and it has toured with them in past seasons twice.

And I met him and became aware of him when I was not even 18 years old yet. So I think that that was one of the key moments where I went, oh, maybe there is something that I can do with this in my life in an actual legitimate way that is a part of my existence on this planet in a professional way, but also in a personally fulfilling way.

[Phil Rickaby]
There is something about, I mean, you alluded to how weird it is to give awards for theatre. I mean, everybody says that until they’re nominated for a Dora award or whatever. But it’s like, rewards are dumb.

Oh, an award? Okay. Yes, please.

But also for a high school student, it is so, it’s literally rewarding. It’s literally like something that says, yes, you’re on the right track. Yes.

Yes. Keep going with this. Yes.

This is worth it. In a way that outside of say something like the NTS Drama Festival or the Serious Drama Festival doesn’t really happen. People don’t tend to get awards in high school or anything for acting.

People get medals for like sports stuff all the time, but not so much for the arts. Yeah. The work you’ve done at Hamilton is quite significant.

You’ve been working with, you were part of the Theatre Playwrights Unit. You’ve been doing stuff all over Hamilton. I think, am I wrong that you’ve done stuff at the Hamilton Fringe as well?

A few times, yes. One of the things that I’m trying sort of discover as I’m doing this show and trying to be a little less Toronto-centric is the theatre scenes outside of Toronto, which as somebody from here, I don’t get to experience as much. What can you tell me about theatre in Hamilton?

[Michael Kras]
Theatre in Hamilton is a very unique beast. In some ways, I just love it with everything I have. In other ways, it breaks my heart constantly, to be very frank.

I think we have a beautiful regional theatre in Theatre Aquarius. Right now, under the leadership of Mary Frances Moore, it’s doing incredible things. It’s really putting the spotlight on the city in an exciting way.

There are also lots of really exciting professional artists who live in Hamilton now who are trying to make work here. At the same time, there is a gigantic gap between our one big A-size regional house and all of the community and independent theatres in this city who are making work on a more sporadic basis or in a non-professional context. We don’t have a mid-size theatre culture the way that Toronto does.

We don’t have a Terragon. We don’t have a Factory or a Passener Eye. I wish we did because there are so many incredible storytellers in this city from many, many backgrounds who have really exciting and novel stories to tell, and there aren’t many platforms for them to tell it.

The Fringe is a huge one, but again, that’s a lottery system. Just because you’re in Hamilton doesn’t guarantee you a slot in the Hamilton Fringe. It once did way, way back, but not anymore.

I think I would love to see more infrastructure for professional artists. That’s something that I’ve tried to make with my work, and I’m only one person. I’m only one artist.

I’ve done some producing through the Fringe and through other things, but I’m not a producer. I am someone who’s really good at getting a grant and paying the people I’m working with to do things and saying, Hey, you’re in Hamilton. Let’s do a play reading in Hamilton, and I’ll pay you equity rates for it, and you get to make a professional wage in your hometown.

I think that’s so important, but there is a very limited, at the least, there is a very limited, sustainable way of making your living as a professional artist in Hamilton while just working in Hamilton. You have to go somewhere else. So even though Hamilton has a beautiful theatre scene, the people who work in this industry in a very, very serious, ongoing way have to go elsewhere to do a lot of that work.

I don’t know what the answer is because, frankly, these discussions have been had in my city for decades of like, We need to do something. We need to build another small space. We need to build a midsize theatre company, and none of it has happened yet.

I don’t know if and when that will happen. I know there are lots of people in this city that are hungry for it. I think that Hamilton has a bit of an identity, I wouldn’t say crisis, but still figuring itself out as far as what its artistic identity is in the grand scheme of things, and I think while it’s figuring that out, we are also trying to figure out what does theatre mean to this city, and how do we make stories in a sustainable way that gets artists paid in a sustainable way and brings new work to the city that actually matters a lot to Hamiltonians.

[Phil Rickaby]
I definitely see that as an issue because to be able to start something like a midsize theatre requires not just will but money. It needs a whole lot of things. It needs city cooperation.

It needs a big infusion of money, and it needs people who have the will to do it, and cities are often not at that point. They’re not ready to commit funds, things like that. The time that birthed Passemarais Factory Tarragon in Toronto is long past.

That was at the end of the 60s, the beginning of the 70s, a huge infusion of government money to help build these things, and that is not something we may ever see again, which is tragic because I know how hungry Hamilton can be for theatre. You could see it during Fringe, how people just are hungry to see something new and exciting, and it’s a city that deserves it, and it’s really too bad that it hasn’t been able to happen yet.

[Michael Kras]
Yeah. I think there are lots of artists here who are trying to make work like that, but it’s hard to do it in a consistent, sustainable way without that funding, and as we know, across the country, arts funding is at a crisis point in a lot of ways, and there are too many applicants for too little funding, as it always has been, but now it’s really, really, really vast, and so the idea of being able to sustainably fund something in a way that also keeps up with living wage, it feels almost impossible in so many ways, and so there is no institution in Hamilton besides Aquarius that has its feet on the ground and can pay artists in a sustainable way, and I mean, it would be great to see some kind of like repertory company here, or a company where there are a ton of resident artists a la Soulpepper or Shaw or Stratford, and where it’s like the same company of artists making work on a regular basis and being able to support themselves doing it, because otherwise, what do we really have?

If we don’t have a culture that can support artists making that work, those artists are going to either go elsewhere or go into careers where they won’t be able to give enough of their time and energy to making theatre work in a sustainable way, and that’s a problem everywhere, but it’s a problem in a place like Hamilton, where there’s so little infrastructure for theatre artists so far.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, even during Fringe, there’s a bunch of theatre venues, they’re not really theatre venues, there are bars, there’s a couple that are like some of the, I think some of the 3D theatres, some of those spaces are used, but there’s not a lot in terms of theatre space outside of Theatre Aquarius.

[Michael Kras]
Yeah, there isn’t. There used to be a few venues, the Pearl Company was a really beautiful one, some nice black box spaces that no longer exist, and a lot of the venues that are used in Fringe are music venues, like you said, there’s bars that are used, some of our indie cinemas are used and turned into theatres, even though they’re not built for that, or aren’t built for that anymore, and so having a space, an actual black box space in this city is so crucial to being able to create work on a mid-size level, and yet there are so few spaces. I mean, this has been a crisis point in Hamilton for a long time, the access to space, and to affordable space. The staircase, which is such a beautiful little black box theatre, is under different ownership with different intentions now.

It’s still a performance space, but not in the same way it once was, and that used to be a place that I could go to when it was run by the wonderful Colette Kendall, and I would be like, hey, I’m 16, I have a thousand bucks, and I want to put up a play in your theatre, can we work something out? And the answer would always be yes. If you had a button and a piece of gum, Colette would find a way to make it work for you, and those kind of artist and venue relationships are a thing of the past in a lot of ways, probably everywhere, but in Hamilton especially, and without those, I wouldn’t have gotten my start in writing and producing plays, because I wouldn’t have been able to afford to do it, and I wouldn’t be where I’m sitting today, talking to you, so those things are crucial. Yeah, for sure.

[Phil Rickaby]
The staircase was one of the first theatres that I saw when I was in Hamilton the first time, gorgeous space with a lovely bar out front, so much potential to be a great hub for theatre and indie theatre, and The Pearl, I did a show with Keystone Theatre so many years ago, and even then, when they were talking to us about a lot of the difficulty that they were having, they were getting pushback from the city about their existence, and it’s like, you could have supported this.

The city could have supported this theatre, even just not giving them a hard time about being a theatre, but they eventually closed, because I don’t think they had the support they needed.

[Michael Kras]
Yeah, support is huge. Audience support is huge. City support is huge.

I don’t know what the answers are. The answers are that it’s a structural, systemic issue, as it is in a lot of art centres, but especially one that is less developed, like it is in Hamilton, and all I can hope is that there is enough tenacity in the artists that live here to make something of what’s going on in the city, and that won’t happen unless we have enough infrastructure already that artists who have trained in their theatre schools in Toronto actually come back to their hometown of Hamilton and make their work here. So many artists go and train somewhere else, and then they stay there because that’s where the work is, so we lose great people, and without those great people, we can’t build something great. But we need something great to get those great people to stay here, so it’s kind of a catch-22, and I don’t know, ultimately, what the long-term solve is for it.

All I know is that very little has happened in the city so far, even though there’s been so much talk and passion about doing something, and I think we just need smart and driven people who know how to build infrastructure to really, really do something and to really take the lead on it, and I think a lot of artists are keen to just wait for a thing to be built, but it’s like we can’t wait for a thing to be built. We have to be the ones that build it if we want to see something happen in this city, and it’s a massive undertaking.

I haven’t started doing it. I’ve talked about it for years and years. I’ve had conversations with other people like, hey, what if we did this?

And then somewhere along the line, it just falls apart, and it’s tough to keep momentum behind those things going, and it’s tougher and tougher in a culture that puts less and less value on arts and art spaces, especially on a funding level.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, the funding level, I mean, money is probably the thing that is lacking because once you start to look at what do we need to get this going, it’s probably money, and you can have all the passion that you want, but money is absolutely necessary to get this stuff going, and like you mentioned and like I’ve talked about, it’s not common. But again, it is so hard to keep that momentum going when it seems there’s no easy answer, and that’s the trick is that it is probably going to be a long, hard road to get that going, and this is depressing.

So let’s move on to something else. Let’s get back to your playwriting a bit because you mentioned the play that you wrote in high school, but do you remember after you finished theatre school and you’d realized that you were more of a playwright? What was the first play that you wrote, and what was the impetus for writing it?

[Michael Kras]
After theatre school, the first play I wrote, I wrote a bunch in theatre school, and they read like someone who was in theatre school wrote them. The thing I wrote that was fresh out of theatre school was a play called Hashtag Dirty Girl, which was a play about a mass slut-shaming of a young teenage girl whose nude photo she sent to her boyfriend got leaked on, wait for it, Twitter. Already, Twitter was on the way out in 2016 when I did this play, but I had such an interest in exploring the story that was outside my own experience, and I was really engaged in a bunch of…

I just read a bunch of feminist literature, and I was like, I feel like there’s a story here that I want to help give space for if I can, so I wrote this play, which was sort of a horror play, and as the play went on, Twitter became this sort of omnipotent monster, and it was this really strange, high-concept piece that was imperfect in so many ways, but also did some really, I think, interesting things that I still hold on to this day as being really interesting ideas, and that was a play that pushed me to tell a story that felt more innately political, and more also just something that was a bit more challenging of something outside of my own lived experience, and that let me tap into stories that were outside of my own and find an empathy for them, because to write a play like that in a way that felt respectful and nuanced, I had to do a lot of research, I had to put my ego aside on a lot of things, I was a cis male playwright writing a story that centered two young women, and how do I do that in a way that is respectful of those experiences, that isn’t overstepping, or isn’t male gazey, but that is something that also just goes there, and is able to tell the story in a way that’s really challenging, and I wouldn’t write that play the same way today.

It’s been almost 10 years, oh god, since I wrote that play, now that I’m thinking about it, and the way I would write it today is very, very different, but it was sort of my introduction into, I’m going to tell something that, tell a story that feels like it’s going to get audiences talking in a way that is really complicated, and really juicy, and might completely backfire, so it felt like a risky piece to do on those grounds, but it’s also the play that I feel is most in line, it’s a place where I felt like, oh, this is the moment where I started to come into my voice as a playwright, and the ways that I want to tell stories.

[Phil Rickaby]
Was that play produced at the 2016 Hamilton Fringe? It sure was. I remember, I remember, that’s the year that I was doing my show at the Hamilton Fringe, so I remember, I think you won a couple of, at least, it was well reviewed, I know that, I remember that, let’s see, again, it’s almost 10 years ago, so it’s hard to think back.

Yes, we won the Audience Choice Award. There you go, there you go, yeah, which is great, it’s always, that’s one of my favorite kinds of awards, like the Audience Choice is always like, oh, this is one that, like, the people who came to see this one voted for this one, so it’s always kind of special. I think it would be remiss of me not to discuss the fact that you, as, just to move away from playwriting for a second and back to magic, it would be remiss of me not to bring up the fact that you’ve written a magic book.

I sure have, yeah. You’ve written a book teaching magic, sleight of hand tricks, things like that, what was writing that book like?

[Michael Kras]
It was so hard, I never want to do it again, no, I will, at some point I’ll write another book, maybe not on this scale, but it was a hard task, I, because I felt so reinvigorated by magic when I started doing Harry Potter, during that time when the Canadian Mirvish production was on, I started writing my book, which is called Synthesis and Secrets, there are 500 copies of it in the world, they are all over the world at this point, and I wanted, I have behind me on my shelf right now, I have a bunch of beautiful magic books, I love collecting magic books, and I wanted to make a book that felt just as beautiful as the ones already on my shelf. So I did it, I wrote my own book, I’ve, in my time doing sleight of hand magic, I’ve accumulated a repertoire of original magic, stuff that I’ve created myself, so the book is a capture of all of that stuff, things that I’ve created over the past 15, even 20 years of my life, and I’m only 32, but some stuff goes back to when I was like a preteen, and then there’s also a bunch of essays on the synthesis of magic and theatre and the way I see those two disciplines as being the same or supportive of one another in really interesting ways, so it’s a collection of tricks and essays, and I hired one of the best magic book layout designers in the world to lay it out, I hired a local illustrator who I love very much to illustrate the book in full with hundreds of hand illustrations, teaching people how to do the tricks, it looks so gorgeous, I got it printed as a cloth-bound hardcover with a foil stamped cover, I went all out for it, I raised money through Kickstarter, I raised almost 20 grand to produce it, and it cost that much to produce it, that’s how expensive the materials for this book were, but it’s done, and I’m so happy it’s in the world, and it’s kind of a little bit of a legacy piece for my own internal contributions to magic.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I mean, is it difficult to break down a trick into its component parts to describe it for people once you’ve got it into your body?

[Michael Kras]
Oh yeah, it’s a fun exercise to do it, like I would sit down and write down my tricks and be like, oh, I’ve never described this in such detail before, and it really made me reacquaint myself with technique, and also the why of certain technique, and so the more detailed and granular you get while also being really accessible and easy to follow, that’s sort of the sweet spot, and so I tried to achieve that, but it is tough because you’re trying to communicate really kind of complicated, minute little ideas in a way that is easy to understand, and ultimately, it taught me a lot about how to teach magic in theatre as well, going back to that and to Harry Potter and stuff, because oftentimes when I’m doing magic direction for a play, I’m teaching magic tricks and sleight of hand and allusions to people who have never done them before in their lives, and have to be able to do it with a certain degree of proficiency in just like a month’s time, on things that magicians work years and years and years to do as well as they do, so it becomes this constant dance of how do I break this down enough that all the details are there, but also make it very approachable for someone whose first language is not magic, and so I tried to apply those ideas to writing my book and making it as digestible as possible, but also honouring the specificity required to do those magic effects.

[Phil Rickaby]
Wow. Sounds like a major undertaking. It must have taken ages to do.

[Michael Kras]
It sure did. I tucked into it every day for months to write the original draft, and then it went through multiple revisions and passes and editorial passes, but I’m happy with the results of it.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I want to talk about the fact that as you’ve been working with the Harry Potter show, a lot of the work that you’ve been doing recently is across the border in the States, and you are somebody who has since the pandemic has continued to mask, which I completely respect, and I do as well. You mask in transit, you mask on airplanes, you mask in public.

Now, going to the States, do you find pushback on the masking when you’re going and working in those spaces?

[Michael Kras]
Good question. Honestly, not so much. I think what helps is that I’m going to spaces where people do tend to be more politically and socially aligned with my values already, and I may not go into a lot of spaces where I see a lot of people still wearing a mask on a regular basis, but I’ll go into spaces where people will put one on if they feel unwell, and that’s more than a lot of people do nowadays, so that feels good to me.

The pushback feels the same in Canada as it does in the States. I’ve had very, very few moments of someone directly making it known that they don’t like that I’m wearing a mask. I’ve had very few instances of that, but they’ve happened in kind of equal measure on both sides of the border for me, so it’s no bother to me.

It’s a deeply held value of mine, so no one’s going to stagger me or change my mind on it, and it’s something that I do. It’s one of the few things that I hold socially and politically for myself or on a personal and community care level that is very visibly telegraphed to the world, so that’s a big difference, but it doesn’t change much of my day-to-day. It feels kind of integrated into what I do, and it hasn’t changed any of the ways I live my life or do my work.

I’m able to work to my fullest in all the spaces I do while still doing things like that, and on a larger scale, I think that the theatre industry had a major opportunity to seize a different way forward for audience care, for performer care, and artist care, and crew care, and I think so few theatres actually kind of took charge on that and do things today. I love the theatres that still have an investment in clean indoor air, that still have an investment in public health and safety policies for their artists in rehearsal, for audiences when they come to the theatre, making ticket exchanges very easy and accessible if you are feeling unwell so you don’t come to the theatre sick, having mask mandatory performances, which some theatres in Toronto still do, which is a really, really great gesture, but I think for the longevity of our industry and for the longevity of people in general, I think adapting to the world the way it is post-2020 is a thing that we still need to catch up on doing.

I think the world is different than it was in 2019, and I think we’re trying to live as if it is still 2019, and I don’t think that’s sustainable. I don’t think it’s sustainable for our industry, I don’t think it’s sustainable for our humanity. That’s a much bigger conversation, but I think if there was some investment in not just financial, but also just in terms of internal infrastructure and policy for theatre companies, for art institutions, I think we’d have a better way forward and a more sustainable and healthy and equitable way forward.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of theatres that sort of threw off the mask as soon as they were able to, a few held on to it longer, but I do know that, especially for some of the indie theatres in Toronto, the pushback they got, kind of from people who were against masking, was so, violent is the wrong word, but it was very adamant and unpleasant. Lots of yelling and lots of messages yelling, that I think that sort of pushed them to let their guard down and let that go because they were unsupported. They were just left to deal with inordinately angry people just yelling at them about a simple thing like a mask.

Wearing a mask on the subway, I haven’t got sick from the subway. The only time I’ve gotten sick is when I was not masking, which tells me a lot about how I got sick in the past, on the subway or taking transit or something like that. It’s such an easy thing to do and too few people are doing it.

[Michael Kras]
I think everyone doing it imperfectly would be so much better than just a few of us doing it way, way more. To me, I think about, I’m not vegan, but I’ve had friends who are vegan or were vegan and we used to have conversations about that and they would say things like, if everybody just went meat and dairy-less a couple of meals a week, that would have more impact than a select few of us completely swearing off animal products entirely, which is such an interesting idea. I think if there was a cultural shift when the pandemic hit and more people adjusted to wearing a mask every time you get on a plane or when you’re in the grocery store and that’s an essential service that everybody has to access in some way or another or a medical facility, I think we’d be so much better off.

There are times where I feel hyper-vigilant in what I’m doing for myself, like wearing a mask, and I would feel more comfortable doing it less if more people did it, even sometimes. Or if there was more investment in cleaning indoor air, which I think is the future, in a future where there are wildfires every summer across the country and across the board, it’s spread to here, and when there are illnesses like COVID or like any other airborne illness that can really, really affect how they cancelled shows, audience health, artist health, I think if we had more emphasis on making sure the air indoors was clean and that people were able to enter spaces and not be at such high risk of getting sick all the time, I think we’d all be in a better place. I fully agree.

[Phil Rickaby]
I fully agree. Just in closing, I want to, just as you’re heading into the Greenhouse Residency, tell me about how you’re feeling about Love Me Back and how you are approaching it as you head into this.

[Michael Kras]
That’s a great question. I feel very much like I’m floating in a vast, dark space right now with it because it is so different from the way I normally write plays and ultimately, it’s coming from me, so it’s going to be in conversation with the other stuff I write, but I’m also writing for myself, as in like for me to perform, and I write differently for myself the way I would write for other people to say my words. So that alone feels different, but then also the idea of integrating magic into this in, again, in a way that feels more like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, less like the magic show with Doug Henning, where it’s like, I don’t want the magic to be these like impositions and interstitial interruptions for the narrative.

I want them to support the storytelling. So I’m going into it trying to emphasize for myself that I’m going in on story first and text first and finding magic to support that text after the fact and not going in with, oh, here’s a bunch of tricks I love and want to do. How can I write a story around them?

Because that’s going to end up being contrived and forced and feel really clunky. And at the same time that I’m working on Love Me Back, I’m designing a few magic, not magic shows, plays. In Toronto, I’m designing magic for Clyde’s, the Lynn Nottage play at Canadian Stage, which is directed by Philip Aiken and going up in the spring.

At the same time, I’m doing a new play called Verses by Adam Lazarus and Guillermo Verdecchia and Anne-Marie Kerr. And so those are two pieces that have magic as a consistent through language in the piece that is there to support the text. And it’s magic that I’ll be creating in response to the text.

So that’s going to be the same with Love Me Back, where it’s like I have to write a play and then I have to create magic that supports that writing and really lifts it in the way that you would write a song for a musical to say something in a way that plain text alone can’t.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I definitely see. I like that. I like the the allusion to writing for a musical.

Yeah. But it’s also interesting. I was the way that you describe like it’s different than writing for yourself, than writing for others.

I was talking with the playwright, Chloe Whitehorn, just a couple of days ago, and we were talking about how every time we sit down to write a play, it’s like we’re relearning how to write this play. But I wrote that play. I wrote this play.

That’s how I wrote this one. And this one, I will have to learn how to write this play. And every play is a new learning experience, which is always like sort of a fascinating way to be is to just sort of realize that you’re always learning and you’re always growing.

And each time you sit down, what worked last time doesn’t necessarily work.

[Michael Kras]
It’s so true. The way I wrote my last play is not necessarily useful when I’m writing my next one. And this is the prime example of that, because it is such a personal piece.

And the way I write for other voices is a way that I love to write. But if I wrote for myself the way I write for other people, it would sound so strange, because it’s not the way I speak. And so I need to write in a way that feels like the way I speak, but is also elevated and artistically rendered and not just, oh, I’m just writing a thing in plain speak that I would normally say.

It’s like, how do I write something artistic and elevated and lifted and poetic that feels at home in my voice specifically as a performer? And that’s a different thing. It’s a very different thing.

And it sounds like a beautiful challenge. It very much is. And I can’t wait to dive in and see where this takes me.

And there’ll be an excerpt of like half an hour of material I’ll present at the Terragon in January for the Greenhouse Festival. And we’ll see what happens there and how it informs the full show.

[Phil Rickaby]
Michael, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. And I’m looking forward to see what you do with this new play.

Thank you so much, Phil. Thanks for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. I hope you enjoyed it.

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Before I get to who’s on the show next week, I’m going to talk about Patreon. I can’t do this show without the people who’ve chosen to back this show on Patreon. People like Heather, who was in from the beginning.

I couldn’t do this without people like Heather, who are helping me to cover the cost of producing this episode. But there’s so much more. There’s a lot that goes into creating a show like this.

I have to pay for website hosting for the audio files and distribution to all the podcast directories. I pay for editing software. There’s so many things that cost money for a podcast that I give away for free.

I don’t even have advertising on this podcast. So if you find value in this show, please consider supporting it on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/stageworthy. Patrons get early access to episodes participating conversations about the show are absolutely part of the team helping to make this show. Without you as a patron, I can’t make this show. There are three levels of patronship, all of them very affordable and all of the Canadian dollars.

Just like I said, go to patreon.com/stageworthy. And check that out. I would love to have you as part of the team making this podcast.

Next week, my guest is Michael Esposito II. Michael is an international actor and singer and is preparing to present a production of Daniel MacIvor’s Monster. We have a great conversation about that coming up.

Michael’s production of Monster will be seen in Kelowna, British Columbia. If you’re in Kelowna or nearby, that’s October 31st to November 1st at the Film Factory in Kelowna. Check that out.

It on stageworthy.