Lindsey Middleton & Ben Hayward of Theatre by Committee

Theatre by Committee is proud to present “FAITH”, a new play by company member Ben Hayward. After a successful run at the Hamilton Fringe, “FAITH” will be performed in the Chapel of St. Luke’s United Church. “FAITH” follows the coming of age a troubled teenager and her complicated relationships with God, her father and the minister at the church she no longer attends. Written by Ben Hayward, directed by Brandon Gillespie, and featuring Lindsey Middleton and Ben Hayward, “FAITH” explores issues of morality, authority, love and finding meaning.

Lindsey Middleton:
Lindsey Middleton hails from the teeny town of Ridgeway, Ontario. Lindsey is best known for playing Vanessa on the internationally award winning, Toronto based web series, Out With Dad. Lindsey also co-produced her own spin off series called Vanessa’s Story and recently won the 2015 IAWTV Award for Best Female Performance in a Drama for her role. Lindsey has also worked on international best selling writer Linwood Barclay’s book trailer Tap at the Window and you can find her in the horror feature Red Spring. In 2016 Lindsey will reprise her role as Vanessa in the new series Counselling Vanessa and return to Out With Dad.

Lindsey is a very active member in the Toronto theatre community. Lindsey is a graduate of University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College Theatre and Drama Studies Program, a co-funder of Well Fought Theatre Company and Theatre By Committee. Upcoming in 2016 you can find Lindsey starring in Theatre By Committee’s remount of FAITH and in the new IPF winning web series Squadron 86.

Lindsey has also co-created a brand new documentary web series HappyHer focused on sharing women’s stories about happiness from all over the world.

Ben Hayward:
Ben Hayward is a Toronto-based writer, actor and director. He is a founding member of Theatre by Committee. As a writer he has authored the plays ‘Faith’ (Best New Play Hamilton Fringe 2016); ‘Pathetic’; ‘Andy Warhol Presents:Valerie’; ‘For Elise’ (presented at Luminato); and ‘KINK’. He is currently developing ‘The Food Project’, a piece of documentary theatre in collaboration with Unit 102.

http://lindseymiddleton.ca/
Twitter: @lmiddleton_

http://theatrebycommittee.com/
Twitter: @TBCommittee

Stageworthy:
http://www.stageworthypodcast.com
Twitter @stageworthyPod
Facebook: http://facebook.com/stageworthyPod

Transcript

Welcome to episode 45 of Stageworthy, I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast about people in Canadian theatre, featuring conversations with actors, directors, playwrights, stage managers, producers, and more. If you’d like to be a guest on Stageworthy or just want to drop me a line, you can find Stageworthy on Facebook and Twitter at StageWorthyPod, and you can find the website at StageWorthyPodcast.com. If you enjoy the podcast, I hope you’ll subscribe on iTunes or Google Music or whatever podcast app you use, and consider leaving a comment or rating.

My guests are Lindsey Middleton and Ben Hayward, who appear in Theatre by Committee’s upcoming production of their fringe hit, Faith, starting October 19th at St. Luke’s United Church in Toronto. Yes, it was a script that I originally wrote when I was 18, and I was like really mad about religion. Um, you know, I felt like I’d been duped, you know, that sort of like standard teenage, like, oh my god, everybody lied to me, but god, it’s so bullshit.

Um, and I don’t know why it came out in the voice of like an angry teenage girl, I guess because I didn’t want it to be me, I wanted to, you know, couch it in something, and it wasn’t a very good play, and I just sort of like put it in a drawer and never did it again. And then, uh, a year and a half ago now, I pulled it out of the drawer and was like, there’s some good stuff here actually, like if David gets rewritten and I add some more, um, contrasting opinions and stuff, then this could be a cool play. So then I started working on it again, and that’s how it came in its current form.

What was it like revisiting something that you wrote when you were basically a teenager? Uh, it was really interesting for me because now the way the play works is I get all of Faith’s ranting is as written when I was 18. None of that changed. Okay.

Um, some of the bridging monologues and all of the deep poetry stuff and all that got added in, that didn’t used to be there. Um, and then in Faith’s more like charitable, lucid moments where she sort of sees things clearly or is maybe nice to somebody or, you know, some of that stuff got tweaked. But most of her, uh, religious ranting and her talking about her dad and her mom are still in my original teenage voice.

Everything else is new. So it’s, the play is now like a, like a dialogue with my teenage self. It’s like I’m having an argument with me from seven years ago.

Did, were you raised, were you raised in a religious household? And then when you were a teenager, you were like… I was, I was raised in a, a mixed religious household. Like my mom thought it was important to go to church, mostly based on community. Like if you grilled her on any of the specifics of Christianity, she would have absolutely no idea.

She like, she knows the like picture book Bible stuff, like the Bible stories. And then, but you know, like I had an argument with her about, um, taking the sacraments and whether or not she thought that it was transubstantial or consubstantial or whatever. And she had no idea what any of that was.

And she was like, I don’t know. It’s just like, it’s symbolic. And I’m like, but it’s not symbolic.

Like it says in all their books that it’s his literal blood and body. And it’s just like either, or, or it’s, you know, symbolic in a very important way, but like, it’s not what you’re saying. Like it’s a fun little ritual.

We do like, no, we’re eating Jesus. Um, so she’s that kind of a religious person. And my dad was an atheist, uh, well, not atheist, like sort of very uncommitted agnostic, uh, who never went to church.

So everybody at our church thought that I had, uh, I came from like a single parent home. Uh, because my dad was like, yeah, whatever, go, go visit your imaginary friend. And then, so I got like really into the community of church and really got quite religious by the time I was like 15, I was like bugging my dad about his immortal soul and like, um, trying to live faithfully and doing like Bible studying and shit.

And then, uh, that’s a new part that I’ve added because I didn’t have the clarity of mind at the time, um, was the, her talking about the youth minister. We got a youth minister who was like a really hardline, um, biblical realist or whatever you call those people where it’s like all of the old Testament happened as written, yeah. Um, so, you know, like the, and, and so, so, you know, I was sort of like, okay, so, you know, sit through the tower of Babel talk and that’s all fine and good.

And then you sit through the Noah’s ark talk and that’s all fine and good. And then you sit through the Adam and Eve thing and you’re like, lady, you can’t possibly believe that there were two people. Otherwise what’s the deal.

Incest didn’t matter then, but now it matters for some reason. Like how can you possibly think the world is 6,000 years old? Oh wait, I don’t know. Oh my God, none of this is real.

And so I left shortly after that. You probably must have probably lasted a little shorter than I did. I think that that was the hardest to not talk for me until I was like 19, 20 when I really started to ask questions.

But until then it was so easy just to be like, okay, yeah, sure. Well, especially when most of it sort of makes sense and you think like, yeah, okay, like be a good person. Don’t kill people.

These all seem like rules I can be okay with. Um, get together and sing. You know, I could never quite figure out why the songs weren’t cool, but that was fine.

Um, like, and I never got why Christian rock bands couldn’t just be good rock bands. That used to bother me when I was a kid. Um, cause I would be like, man, I want to like Reliant K or whatever it was, you know, and it’s like, but they’re so bad.

Why are they bad? And the thing is, as somebody who grew up with, with Christian rock in the eighties, Reliant K is a really good band compared to Christian rock. It was like Resurrection Band or like Striper or something like that back in the eighties. So, you know, it’s still the same thing.

No, I never, I still can’t figure that out. Yeah. Very similar.

Like my mom still goes to church every Sunday with my grandma and my aunt and my dad just like avoids it at all costs. Um, and my mom is still, we had a great like dialogue after seeing the show that like, well, do you think this is this and blah, blah, blah. And she was like, I think having her own realizations about things.

She was like, Oh, I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it. And I was like, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, no, that’s a, that’s a point of the show.

Um, so yeah, almost very identically similar where I like went, I like, I got confirmed and I was doing like Bible studies and went to Bible camp. And then I think it was my older brother that influenced me more, but he just, he was always like vehemently against it for so long. And I don’t know if we just had a chat one day and then I was just like, Oh, he doesn’t have to go.

I don’t want to go either. So yeah. And then I just have never gone back since I was like 13 or 14.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I was actually kind of nervous about my family seeing it because a lot of the women are very religious. Um, but like, they’re always very supportive of whatever I do.

My grandma said, quote unquote, not my favorite, but good job. And, um, my grandpa actually, I haven’t told you this. I didn’t mean to tell you this.

So after my grandpa saw it, he was so fascinated by like how it all worked. Like, and you’ve seen a lot of shows I’ve done, but there’s a lot of like geography and the show and things like that. And he kept asking my mom on the ride home, like, did she have like a map on stage of like where to put the chairs and like all these things.

And he was convinced you were a real minister. I had to tell him like five times on the drive home that no, like Ben is Lindsey’s friend, like you’re actors, like he’s not a minister. Like he, I think he kind of thought it was like maybe real.

And then I went home, uh, like two weekends ago and I saw my grandpa again and he was like, well, how are you? And I was like, well, I’m doing that play you saw again. And he was like, that was so good. Like he loved it.

And I was like, that’s good. Thanks. And then my dad was just silent on the matter.

And then, yeah, my mom and I have had some like interesting, like dialogues about it. And I’m excited for her to see it again in Toronto and then have even more conversation because she saw it twice in Hamilton. Do you think that like, is it changing at all between the iterations between Hamilton and Toronto? There was a lot of stuff we had to edit out just for time’s sake, um, for Hamilton because it was an hour.

So I think Toronto is going to be like an hour 15 to 90 minutes. We don’t really know. Somewhere depending on, cause there’s, there’s about 95 minutes of script.

Some of what we’ve agreed upon is kind of redundant and doesn’t need to be there. So it’ll be depending on how much we want to have fun with things. And there was also some scene bridging stuff and some storytelling stuff that we wanted to spend more time on.

And just because of the crunch of the frame, we were like, well, we can’t do that anymore. Let’s just cut that and not worry about it. Um, so hopefully it’ll be about half an hour longer, but just for people who haven’t seen it, what would somebody, what would you want somebody to know about faith before they see it? The elevator pitch? Yeah.

I actually want people to know as little about faith as possible, except for that it, you know, it deals generally with, uh, a teenage girl’s crisis of religion and identity that happened at the same time. Um, and that if those are the kinds of things that would interest you, which I assume most people aren’t interested in, then you should come see it because it’s, um, something that I think what has surprised me most about, let me rephrase, what is surprising most about audience responses to the piece is the amount of people who come up afterwards and go like, that’s exactly the way I felt. Or, you know, that’s, that was, that felt just like me.

And I’m talking like, you know, 50 year old men who say this, you know, it’s not like 20 year old girls come up and say this. Like pretty much everybody who sees it identifies with this terrible anger, but desire to have meaning at the same time. And on the flip side of that, we’ve had a lot of people from the religious community come to it who also had very interesting views on the piece.

Like I was very nervous every night because I was from a very religious upbringing and I was the one saying the majority of the more bold things against religion. And I was so nervous before every someone’s going to like heckle or like, but they’re religious. So maybe they won’t, they’re supposed to be nice people.

So maybe they won’t do that. But, um, we had a United Church. She worked for the United Church magazine or whatever their magazine is.

And she came up afterwards and was like, what an interesting depiction of the United Church minister. And like, we’d love to do a piece about you guys. And here’s my card.

And it’s so terrible that he was tempted by that woman in that way. And he was like, yeah, did you watch the same play? People of different faiths also respond. That’s something I also want people to know is that it’s not just a 90 minute atheist diatribe.

Um, because I think that faith does play a really important role in generating meaning for most of the human population. And I can’t discount that. And so I try to play to give it a fair shake as much as possible.

If not your first performance in Hamilton, one of the first. Um, and it asks a lot of questions. She doesn’t just like go anytime.

She’s like questioning a lot. So there’s a lot of back and forth. So it’s not like one note for her.

There’s faith asks a lot of important questions. Of course, there’s a lot of people who are going to church or something don’t like to ask those questions, but they’re important questions to ask. Um, so when, just to get out there early on, when are you, uh, mounting a play in Toronto? So the show is running October 19th to 30th every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday at 8pm.

And we’re actually doing it inside St. Luke’s United Church, which is awesome. Very excited about it. Um, it’s at the corner of Carlson and Sherbourne, and it’s going to be taking place inside their chapel as well, which is even more exciting.

You can get tickets online at theatrebycommittee.com. Yeah. Or search for tickets. Yeah.

Um, but yeah, no, it’s, it’s pretty cool that the church, cause we sent it to a bunch of churches and it was a lot of like initial interest of like, Oh, we’ve never had a play and this would be so great. Thanks for thinking of us. And then can we read the script? Yes.

And then St. Luke’s was like, yeah, yeah. They were like the Hail Mary. I was kind of like, I don’t know.

They were like last on my list for some reason. I was like, okay, I’ll just call them. Cause I didn’t have an email and I just hate calling people.

And I was like, why? So I was like, hi, we have this show. And then she was like, yeah, it all sounds great. And I was like, yeah, but we say this and do this.

And she was like, yeah. And I was like, I’m going to come in and meet with you. And like, we could actually afford it.

Like I could not believe how expensive churches were to rent. I was shocked doing this research to try to find a venue. I was like, holy cow, it’s moneymaker.

They rent a venue there. So yeah, we got something. Well, that’s the thing is like, and we didn’t rent the actual, um, not the sanctuary, not, not the sanctuary.

We rented the chapel, which has all the, the, the depth outedness of the sanctuary. It’s just condensed, which is actually better for us because we’re never going to be able to fill a sanctuary. Yeah.

I have high hopes, but they’re not that high. We’ve already sold some tickets. I got the ticket report today.

So I was like, wow, that’s good. Now in promoting the show in a Hamilton and Flim situation, walking with people and talking about the show, um, I had, you know, my show was about religion in some ways. And I had one or two reactions.

People would either tell them what the show is and they’d go, yeah. And also I lost, I got a no. They would be like, God, no, I’m going to pass it back because it was about religion.

Did you find that? Did you find that pitching the show to some people was just like the topping was a non-starter? Uh, I found that the conversation didn’t go anywhere. We could always sort of get in the door with like, it’s about a girl who’s struggling with stuff and like, yeah, cool. And then as soon as it was, she’s struggling with religion and it was sort of, yeah, it was either one or two.

And it’s weird the way people shut down about it. It’s like when you, I guess it’s like walking up to somebody on the street, going and being like, can you talk about your politics with me right now? And they’re like, yeah, or they have a ton of really well thought out things that they can tell you. Um, what I was surprised about is when you talk to people about the show, that it’s not a certain type of person who always says no.

Like, um, I found that some people who were quite religious wanted to talk to us about the show and others didn’t. And some people who were really, you know, didn’t seem like they had any religious leanings at all were much more likely to say no to talking about the show than religious people. But that might be the type of person who is religious versus the type of person who isn’t.

Yeah. I really found that there were people who were, I think the people who immediately reacted with a no were people who were not religious and uninterested in speaking about it. Yeah.

But they would like the show because it actually plays into all the things they probably don’t want to talk about and throws it in their face and opens up the discussion of like, yeah, this is a non-follower. Talking about it is almost as damaging as not questioning the faith when you’re inside. Oh, for sure.

100%. And that’s the whole point of like rewriting Faith was that it was like, it was more about questions and debate than it is about like one side’s wrong, one side’s right. Which I actually borrowed from religion.

It’s just catechism. It’s just, you know, there’s no like right answers for me. You’re not just naming apostles.

Um, have you always been in place? Yeah. Yeah. Pretty well.

Yeah. I actually like since, since before university. So yeah, that’s, that’s my whole life now.

And it’s still doing seven years, seven years, a couple of days ago. Facebook told us. Yeah.

Facebook’s like, you’re fucking old. And I’m like, thank you, Facebook. Seven years ago.

Well, now that Facebook’s out, we’ve been like, I’ve known this person for so long, and I actually had them on here, so like, wait, I knew them before Facebook, so. And they send you like a really awkward video with like the worst photos you’ve ever taken. Yeah, yeah.

Just you together. Always, always a photo. Just you looking terrible.

Or like the same photo three times. And you’re like, you can’t be that good of friends. You can only have one photo.

No, we have two photos that were good. So do you remember how long ago you started writing plays? Yeah. I wrote my first play when I was 14, 15.

And it was, it was for this thing that my school did called Showcase. You could just like write a little thing. It had to be less than 20 minutes.

And you can just, if you could get students together to do it, it was totally student driven and produced. And, you know, and they would like clear it, obviously. But then if you passed that, then you were, and then you could perform your thing.

And so my thing was called Embrace It. And it was nine minutes long. And it was about this kid getting braces, because I was really upset about braces.

And it was like, because I got braces. And I felt like I had been shafted. Because I got braces really late.

And I didn’t need them. I had one crooked tooth in the bottom. And my mom was like, well, you know, you’re gonna have to have braces.

And I was like, I can’t, I can’t. Like my social life is pretty precarious as it is. I can’t add braces to this.

And then so I thought, you know, it’ll save me. Socially, I’ll write a play about getting braces. And then everybody will think I’m cool.

And that works terribly. But the play was actually pretty funny. And then I had really a lot of fun doing it.

And I was like, this is like a thing I can get on board with. And then later that year, my school did a collective about the murder of Rita Burke in BC. And so I wrote for that.

And I was it’s kind of just been ever since in increasing length. So I started with nine minutes. And now the latest one is unwieldy.

Hilariously, I started at my church. My mother taught Sunday school, which meant she also be like, I don’t know, we do play at the church like three times a year, maybe like I remember my first play was the nativity scene. And for some reason, there was a lion in this version, which was of course me because I had to be the unique lion child at four years old.

So no, I remember starting like, at my church actually did my first musical I ever did was about Jonah, like the story of Jonah getting eaten by the whale and like living in the whale. There’s a video. It’s excellent.

I played sassy angel number one. My audition song was Britney Spears. Yeah, I don’t know.

It was just always something that since I was a child, I was just I don’t know, I just had to be praised and validated and looked at I guess it was just something that was in my like need. And then I started doing like musical theatre at 13. But then I think in high school is where I really kind of seriously understood what acting was because I had a phenomenal drama teacher.

We both had amazing drama teachers, which I think is why we do what we do. And it kind of just made me realize what it is we’re doing and the impact you can have because that’s kind of what I like to do. I like to do theatre that like has a message and has an impact.

And I’m obsessed with the show because I think it does have that for a lot of people. And yeah, then it just kind of took off and I haven’t stopped and just keeps going. Yeah.

When did you figure out that it was a thing that you wanted to do with your life as opposed to something you wanted to do in a part time job? Well, I always said it like if you go through my like kids stuff until I was eight, I wanted to be a vet until I was eight. And then my dad was like, you realize you have to kill the animal sometimes. And then that dream died.

My dad put it real like black and white for me. And I was like, oh, I don’t want to do that. He’s like, that’s part of the job.

And I was like, great, I’ll be an actor. And from then on. But yeah, I was in high school when I was in grade 10.

We did a UNESCO play and which was so different. So I’ve been doing musicals and biblical shows up until then. And we did a UNESCO play and it just kind of like changed my outlook on everything.

And I was like, I have to do this. I have to like, just have that feeling of when it’s just I don’t know, you can’t describe it, that good feeling on stage. And then I’m just feel like I’m always like chasing that high, that like euphoria that you get.

Cause you don’t get it every time. Like I find one string or run and you get that one show that you’re like, I was not here. I was like the character.

I was somewhere else. And like, I just love that feeling. And so.

Did you have many shows where you were performing David Hamilton? Faith was one of the scariest shows I’ve ever done. Cause I feel like I’m doing standup comedy for a lot of it, which is not something I’ve ever done. Like I think I’m mediocrely funny, but I never label myself as like a comedian or even a comedian actor.

Um, I feel like there were definitely some shows where it happens. I find it’s normally when I have like certain people in the audience that are just really close to my heart and I don’t know, you feel like you’re just doing it for them and you’re not like, I don’t know, it’s like a different thing, but yeah, there’s definitely those moments in most shows, except the really bad ones you wind up in that you’re just like, Oh, get me off the stage. I mean, a lot of what you do in Faith is monologue to the audience where you’re seeing them.

Yeah, they are. And that turned like, that made us, it’s almost partially a one woman show with also another actor that you do some scenes with. We called him my prop.

Yeah, we joke that it’s a one and a half person show. You don’t get David’s story, right? You only get him through the lens of Faith. And that’s the most consistent thing that people say to me afterwards.

It’s like, well, how come I don’t get David’s story? It’s like, because it’s not David’s story. And like, for me, it’s important that Faith is the proprietor of the story that you get that she’s lying to you and that, you know, that things are not exactly as she says. She is the one telling the story.

Yeah. So to suddenly get David’s story from his point of view did not make a whole lot of sense. No, it’s a different play.

Yeah, it’s, yeah. It did, because performing, because I mean, the show that I did in Hamilton was my first time doing a solo show ever. And I had one show where I felt like everything was firing and it was like, the audience was right there.

And the audience was there a lot of the time, but it was one show where they were all there. And I went on stage after that show and I was like, I’m going to do that for 10 minutes. Because it was just so overwhelmingly amazing.

But you don’t always get that. I think for me, the note that my director gave me was just concentrate on the story. Don’t worry about how the last show went.

Just do this one. And that was like the best piece of advice I could have given for that show. So that was, I mean, you went through, I started with church and then moved on through, into high school.

Did you go to a post-secondary? Yeah, that’s where we met. We both went to U of T and Sheridan College. They have a joint program where you do two degrees at the same time.

Madness, but a lot of fun. And yeah, that’s where we met. And then we just kept, thought he was cool on day one.

He had a great yellow shirt and he said a lot of inappropriate things. And I was like, wow, this guy’s bold. I think I want to be his friend.

Yeah, no, we platonically dated for first year. Yeah, we definitely did. We definitely did.

Yeah. And then we’ve just, we’ve been friends ever since. And we’ve been, since the theatre company started, even when it was under a different name, we were in it.

And we always knew we wanted to work together because we’re a good balance of things. I’m like, I would be very happy to just like sit in the tub and read all day and write plays and never show them to anybody and just slowly disappear. So having somebody like Lindsey.

That’s my worst nightmare. Yeah, having somebody like Lindsey in my life is really wonderful to call me and be like, get up and go do things and work on things and we need to do this. And then I, you know, I’m around to tell you to sit down and have a nap and maybe think about it for a second.

Take care of myself. Yeah. It’s a good, it’s a good balance for, for a partnership.

That’s good. Talk a little bit about Lindsey’s comedy theatre. Talk briefly about your stuff around the place.

But why things? What kind of theatre is it for you? Okay. So this is, unlike Lindsey, if you were to go back through my, like what I want to be when I grow up, I was like the only 10 year old ever who was like, I want to be a cognitive psychologist. You know, like I was like super specific.

I wanted to do psychoanalytic research. And then I was like, maybe that’s a little bit heady. I don’t know.

So maybe I’ll just do poli-sci and then labradashery with like a view towards politics later on in my life. And then I was like, I was, yeah, I was not a normal kid. And then in high school I was doing this that I, you know, it was the first extracurricular that I’d ever done.

And I was like, yeah, this is fun. But I never took it particularly seriously. And then I saw Daniel McIver’s Monster at Buddies at Bad Times.

And that was the moment where play has sort of clicked for me. Where I was like, you know, before it was just like fun sketches. And then in my school, there was some cachet because the showcase was really well attended.

And if you made people laugh, you know, so there was social capital to it. But this was, that was the first show where I was moved in a way that I had never felt in a movie or at a concert even, or at other live events. You know, it was like, I was like actually wrapped and on the edge of my seat with somebody in the same room.

And it was so exciting and it was so meaningful. And so I was like, well, shit, I gotta do that. That’s the only thing I want to do now.

And then that of course went away. You know, lawyer, that’s a great job. Don’t be that guy.

That guy’s insane. And then in like my last year of high school, I was doing this show where I was a drag queen and I was like, you know, I’d like narrowed my legs and I had like tights and this like sweet Tina Turner dress and like really glammed out makeup. And I like spirit combed my eyebrows away and like, had like a Liza Minnelli wig and big fake boobs.

And I was on stage doing this and I sort of like went off on the night that we opened for the, for the school and parents and stuff and was like, I think I want to do this more than anything else because otherwise this makes no sense. If I don’t want to do this professionally, why am I doing this? This is, you know, and my girlfriend was so upset at the time because she was like, you’re dressing up like a woman in front of the school. What’s wrong with you? Right.

This is back when, you know, like, you know, this is still an issue socially. And I was like, it’s because I want to do this more than anything. And so, you know, that was like, when I was like, I’m going to apply for theatre school.

So you hadn’t planned to do theatre school until then? Never. Very, very sober career choices until then. And then did you apply just for U of T? No, I applied to U of T. I applied to George Brown and I applied to New York and Ryerson.

Oh, I applied to all of them. And then, uh, I got into Ryerson and I got into U of T and everybody gets a New York. And my mom told me that I couldn’t go to George Brown because she wasn’t going to pay for me to get a college diploma.

If I wanted to get a college diploma, then I could pay for that myself. But otherwise they were going to help me with university. So I was like, okay, I’ll do that.

And then, so I went to see, um, Ryerson and I talked to, so I talked to the guy who runs Ryerson. I don’t even remember his name. He was such a dick.

And I hope he doesn’t listen to this or, you know, maybe it was a bad day. Yeah, but if he does, you were a dick man. You were such a dick that day.

You don’t remember me. He was just like, he just didn’t have the time of day. And he was just like, you know, and I asked him what kind of stuff we were going to be doing.

And he was like, well, you’ll be learning to act. And he was talking about like Shakespeare, like, you know, like an angel who didn’t shit into his mouth. And it was like, it was just the worst.

And then I went to the tea and it was very cuddly. And it was like, we don’t turn the class size down. For me, that was really cool.

And they were honest about that, that like, we only take 20 kids off the top and then we don’t lose any. Not like the York or the Ryerson model where they take like 40 kids and hope to lose half by the time you’re done. George Brown too.

They’ll tell you, they’ll give you hope to end with 15 or less. Yeah. And I think that’s so fucking bogus.

Like, you know, you can’t deprive people of half of their education and then tell them that they’re going to get the same meaningful experience outside. And, you know, like, oh, we’ll just read about it in a book. It’ll be the same.

Like, no, it won’t. And there’s a reason that you’re keeping the other 15. So fuck off.

Pick them from the start. When they were at George Brown, they were letting you go. They were like, you know, they were like, you know, this is for you.

Like, you can get this in a book. You should not do this. This program is not for you.

Because sometimes what they said, because people came to that when they were really young, they said, go and take a year and then come back to us. And for some people, it was like, no. Which was like, and for some of us, it was like, every year, like, you would sit down at Christmas and you sit down for the summer.

And you’re like, oh, is this really a movie? All right. So what can I say? Yeah. And I didn’t want that.

So that’s why I went to UT. And to be honest, it was a great education. And that’s what I wanted it to be.

I didn’t want them to teach me how to do theatre. I wanted them to teach me about theatre. And in the end, I don’t think we do theatre that is anything like what we were taught how to do.

You know, we did very, like, well-made fourth wall plays. And we don’t, we’ve never done that as a company. And if anything, we’re getting further and further.

Yeah. Yeah. I’m talking exactly about, and I too was unimpressed.

Big ups, Jordan. It’s a good book. But like, you know, it’s, yeah, it’s the boring Canadian drawing room or wishing it was a drawing room play.

And some people do them very well. And I mean, like, like some of Michael Keighley’s well-made plays are actually good. And, you know, big ups to Jordan Walker and Johnson.

But like, yeah, for the most part, I think the Canadian canon sucks. And the way that we approach theatre is boring. And we didn’t want to do that.

And increasingly, I think, you know, if I’m going to posterity somewhere that I think we really are doing cool stuff. Finally, in like, in the 10 years that I’ve been paying attention to theatre, it has gotten way more interesting. I kind of feel like, I think you’re right.

But I think that there’s, there’s, it takes time. Absolutely. There’s all these, all these theatre companies that are, you know, aside from Charlotte and Stratford, there’s these companies that are run by old folks who still do the classic what they know.

And you have to wait until these indie, the folks doing the indie theatre sort of bubble up and like, take over. Yeah. And you can do some really interesting stuff in those spaces.

Well, it’s like, like Factory is having that renaissance in the last two years, right? Like, like beyond the Great White North is something they could never have done five years ago. That’s, you know, and now everybody’s like, you know, rah, rah, Factory, because they did the negatives. And then it was so good.

And everybody was like, oh, fuck. Okay, maybe. And so now, now we’re ready for Factory to be this new cool thing.

Yeah. But you’re, I think you’re right. But it took a lot of time.

It took forever. Yeah. It like, you know, and that establishment is just hard to get out of the way, because theatre is also one of the only careers you can do until you die or give up.

Yeah. There’s no retirement day. I think we’re doing a little better now because there’s more venues.

Yeah. Because, you know, it’s not just Mirvish, then Factory, Terraform, and Factory. There’s also some small time theatres, there’s, there was even one or two, there’s all these other, there’s all these other spaces where you can do stuff, which is so and important to development of new work.

I mean, but like, one of the things that really depresses me about Canadian theatre is, is the like, the idea that something that happens in a new space can’t happen anywhere else. And like, that’s why I really like Outside the March and their stuff is because they never do it out of space so that you don’t associate them with a particular venue or with a brand of theatre that it’s just like, sometimes it’s in an abandoned movie hall, other times it’s in a parking lot, who the fuck knows. Yeah.

To me, that seems very exciting. Something we certainly think about all the time when we’re picking venues. When you’re picking venues, I mean, I mean, venues was a barrier for a very long time in terms of, in terms of like getting a space, like having to, to rent a space that costs like $1,500 a week.

Yeah. When you, that could be your whole budget for like, doing a show. Yeah.

That’s a huge barrier. But what are you looking for when you’re looking for a venue? I think it more just depends on the piece and what would suit. Yeah.

The piece, obviously there’s like restrictions of, well, how many people can we fit? And can we afford it? And what is like the electrical system like for lights? Because we’re going to be bringing those in and that’s always fun. And, but I think what we always look for is like, where would this show fit? Like, what is the point of doing a show outside of the theatre? And like, what, like, what are we starting to say by doing it here? Yeah. Like faith in the chapel is like a pretty obvious connection.

Yeah. And because the show is so interested in the sacred, the profane dichotomy, then that works really well. For us, I think it’s also like, we had a lot of old semioticians who taught at our school.

And so there was like a lot of like reading about the frame of the theatre and what the place you do, how it informs the spectator before they come in. And I think that’s something that we’ve internalized as a company is like, we want a space that is going to gear you towards a certain experience. So it either is, can be dissonant or complimentary, but we want it to be something.

So we did line in the streets in a glad day bookshop, which is this like beautiful, warm space. And you walk upstairs and everything’s super friendly. And then we had a plastic sheet that you walk through.

And when you walk through the plastic sheet, there was this terrible graffiti all along the walls of garbage bags. And then there was a big pile of garbage and shit on the floor. And it was like, so we conditioned you to feel one thing and then you feel something terrible when you walk in.

And then that speaks to your experience in a fun way. And that’s what we look for in spaces is just so like, you know, glad day wasn’t the ideal space for that, but we used it in a way that we got told the story about. So when we, when we pick spaces, we’re always talking about, we have like big company arguments about this all the time about like, we can’t just do it in the space because it’s cheap.

There has to be a reason. What kind of reasons are you looking for? Like for me, sometimes I can afford this space. Like I’ve done stuff that some of the storefronts, I can afford this.

Yeah. Well, that was our thing with glad day is logistically, it could fit the number of seats we had. We were new.

We had a relationship with the owner, which was amazing. We had a great time working out of that space, but then it was what Ben was saying of just like turning it on its head. Yeah.

So because we settled on glad day because of cost restraints and just feasibility, we placed a ton of emphasis on modifying the space to make it not glad day anymore. For us, it was like, if we’re going to do, we can’t just do like chairs in a row and then a couple of lights and have them be like lying in the street. It’s got to be immersive and that the space needs to be its own assertive thing.

And I think it worked. I mean, I think we ended up, it was an insane amount of work. Kelly Anderson designed it and it was, I remember walking into the space finally after like I came later in the day and a lot of stuff had been put up and I was like, Oh my God, like I wasn’t even expecting this.

So it’s amazing how it transformed. Frightening. Yeah.

And it was, yeah, it was nice. What are you guys looking forward to about revisiting the space again? I like David. David is not like me.

I’m really angry, which you can’t maybe hear in my voice, but just if you know me as a person, I’m just like, everything is shit and it’s all corrupt and there’s all just like, Oh, and the more you look into shit, the worse it gets, you know? And that’s sort of, and David has figured out a way to be at peace with himself and to allow dissonance in his life without it wrecking his day. And I love that. I feel very calm for like an hour.

I, well, I like being scared. That’s why it was so refreshing to do this show. Cause this will be, I think like my seventh show this year, like doing this remount.

And it was the first one that I was like, Ooh, I like have like some deep feelings going on backstage. Like before I do this, like I was, I was like a sweaty, like monster of mass and like shapes. And I was like, this is so nice to feel because I’ve been doing this for like over 10 years.

And to have that feeling again was really refreshing. So that I look forward to, but also I always just look forward to the conversation after. And I don’t mean like, did you like the play? I hate that conversation.

I like the conversation of like, what did you feel? What didn’t you get? Like, who did you side, especially with this play? Cause we’ve had such contrasting things of, Oh, I hated Faith or I didn’t like David or like this one was in the wrong. Or I loved them both. Like we had people like really angry and walk out.

And we also had people crying because they were just sympathizing with the character so much. And I love that. I love Ben’s writing because it gives you so much that the audience can take away from it.

And it’s so personal when you see a show, what do you feel? And I just love hearing that from people. Did you have people walk out of the show? We did. Yeah, we had one that I remember.

One lady walked out in a kind of like aggressive, loud way. It’s almost never very surreptitious. It’s often, especially if it’s offended, like I’m offended.

I don’t like this play where you’re sort of swept out. She lasted a long time. Yeah.

She lasted like an hour. She lasted like 45 minutes in. Does Jesus have to be fuckable for us to like him? No, I was past that.

Cause that’s like the, that’s my line where I take like a deep breath. That’s the one where I think somebody might have an issue of like, don’t talk about fucking Jesus. He’s so sexy and why? He’s always so sexy.

So she lasted beyond that. I don’t know, but I just remember being like, oh, someone’s leaving. Which like is really nice in this show because Ben has granted me the liberty.

Like there is a script and a lot of people would say this is like a lot of my best friend went, I didn’t know what was the script and what you were improvising, which is a huge compliment to me because this girl knows me extremely well. Um, but basically Ben’s giving me the script and said, if anything exciting happens, go with it. Like we had one show where the audience, like they could have not been there.

There was no laughs, nothing. And we’re used to like some pretty like good chuckles. And when they finally laughed like 10 minutes in, I was like, oh, thanks.

Fuck. You’re alive. Like, you guys are out there, which like kind of loosened them up.

Cause I know a lot of people always say to me after they see theatre that they never know when they’re allowed to laugh, like where the permission comes from. And so for me, I was like, great. I would grant you that permission that this show is dark comedy, but I would love if you laughed at it right now.

So that loosened them up a bit. That was also when my mom brought 11 of her United Church friends to the show. So it was a very fun one for me.

Nope. They were pretty quiet. Actually.

Cause my mom, worries like I do. And she phoned up her friend who I guess was the most religious of the bunch. And it said like, um, I noticed you’re really quiet on the drive home.

Like I just really hope like everything was okay after seeing it. And her friend was like, no, I actually was reflecting a lot because in this one was in her sixties. She was like, I’ve been having a lot of new thoughts about religion and things like that.

And the play actually stirred up a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about that I’m challenging in myself and my view of religion. So I thought that was really cool. Yeah.

So that being said, my grandmother is still not coming to this. I had, I had relatives who were, who were like, my mom was going to go. Okay.

Yeah. My family normally came to everything except lying on the streets. That was the only time I’ve ever like censored my family from a show.

I had, I allowed two of them to come out of the normal, like 18 show up. And I was like, just you and you. Cause there was a lot of content in that show.

I don’t know why my casting seemed to go like, your casting was just sexually dark. She played both women who were in abusive relationships in the show. And it was just like top to bottom bad times for Lindsey.

I got to play the cheerful gay characters. So I was good. But like Hannah, Hannah got fun characters, but you were, you were, uh, unfortunately, just sad.

Yeah. And you ended up in your underwear in that show too. Yeah.

That’s another great reason Pepsi phase. You want to see Lindsey Middleton in her underwear. Yeah.

I’m going to ask, but I mean, it is a tagline. Maybe not, not the, but since that’s come up, is that something that you were, you were at all concerned about in, in this show or that they were like, well, I can take my clothes off or is it? No, we didn’t have the discussion of like full frontal naked. Well, with me, nudity, like I’ve done things where I took off all of my clothes and it’s all just about what the like art or the message or the thing is saying.

Like if it was American pie, knowing how am I going to do that? If it’s something that there is a purpose and, um, like a driving force behind it, I’m like, yes, this supports the message that the show was saying, then I’m up for it. Cause to me, it’s like killer Joe. If you saw that, um, last winter, I thought it was amazing how they did all the nudity.

Cause there’s a lot of nudity in that show, but it was done in such a tasteful, but needy way. Cause that’s where the characters are. And I was like, his faith, this 17 year old girl, someone who’s going to get like fully naked.

I was like, no, but I think she’d go out and buy some like, well, it sends a girl like Ron panties. And then you’re like, this is my idea of being sexy at 17. And, but yeah.

Well, that was a conversation we had was like, she needs to be sexual. So what is that for her? And then when he was like, well, what about like, well, it sends a girl underwear. I was like, oh, that’s perfect because it’s simultaneously, it is kind of sexy, but it’s also kind of for the adults in the audience who recognize it.

Right. And for me, looking at Lindsey and what sends a girl makes me deeply, deeply uncomfortable because I have those, like, you know, it’s the like conflation of like, it’s the only time in the show where I’d see her as being as young as the character is. And I realized how wrong the course of action David’s about to take is.

Um, and so I think for that purpose, it tells the story. Yeah. I think it works.

Right. We never wanted you to do anything that made you uncomfortable as well. Like we’re not, we’re not about that.

No, no, no. Except for, you know, my new theme. It was tragically cut.

No, yeah. It was just one reversal. We thought we’d have a nice sleep in pants.

Um, oh, here’s a question. Um, so this play won the literary contest. Yes.

Yes. Um, is there a reason why, and I know this is not maybe just on Hamilton, but why Hamilton? Uh, it actually was one night I was sitting around with Brandon, our director, who’s Graham Hamilton, uh, indulging in some adult beverages. And Brandon was like, do you know Hamilton Fringe has a playwriting contest? Cause I was bitching about it.

Oh, I missed the deadline because we dropped the playwriting contest. And I was like, I’m so stupid. I can’t, I should have done it.

But, and then he was like, you know, Hamilton Fringe has one. Right. And I was like, why would I do that? Yeah, exactly.

I was like, oh, Hamilton with the mole people? No. And then, I mean, big ups to Hamilton. Cause we went there and actually had a really good time.

And yeah, like it’s, it’s such a nice city with such a refreshingly open and cool arts community. Um, but yeah, I didn’t know. So then he’s like, we pull it up on the computer and he’s like, see, look, there’s like a prize and you get to do your show with the Fringe and it’d be like a free workshop for the show.

We can decide if we want to do it later. And he’s like, oh yeah, we got nothing to lose. Sure.

Why not? And then, you know, I was super surprised when we won. I had no idea. I, Claire called me and like, I was always like walking down Bloor one day.

He’s like, hi Matt, it’s Claire. And he’s like, hi Claire. Cause we’ve done a show together.

He’s like, hi, hi Claire. What’s, why are you calling me? How do you have this number? Like, an assistant director on that show. I didn’t think they were particularly close.

And she’s like, I’m the artistic director of Hamilton Fringe. You won the playwright contest. Oh, great.

Awesome. Thanks. I’ll be there.

Yeah. And so our directors are really proud of Hamiltonian and he hates when we rip on Hamilton. And so this was, I think also his way of proving Hamilton’s cool too.

And it was cool. It had some great tacos. It had some great meals.

I had some great meals in Hamilton. It’s really good meals. It’s really good fun.

Met our director’s parents, who I would like to go on record as saying are really pleasant lunatics. Yeah. Awesome.

Yeah. They were great. Did you guys accommodate each other? Every day.

Yeah. Cause we all have jobs and we all had different hours we were working that week. And we had one car.

So that way it was so impossible for us to kind of like get into the festival. Like when it’s in Toronto, I find I’m so invested in it every night. And that’s what you do for 10 days.

But with Hamilton, it was kind of a shame because we were commuting and we were like, well, someone needs to drive home. So like, we don’t want to see the bar too late. Cause I’m like, that’s just not fair for them.

Or someone has to be up early or somebody’s got work later that night. So, you know, yeah, there was a whole bunch of times and we would end up having to leave late because our stage manager, Hannah, who drove the car, would have work in the morning. And it was just like, it was, it was, it was fun.

It was, we learned about trans GTA traffic. Yeah. Yeah.

It’s just mysterious. Yeah. Yeah.

We were texting on the Facebook. Oh, it was brutal. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I sort of, I, I took time off from my job so I could let it drop. Of course I did that.

And then I found out that there’s like nothing for most of the, during, like during the week, like during the day, nothing starts until five, but I was like, oh, so what? I was like, I wanted to, to, to not have, number one, not to look at commute and everything, but also just to like, as much as possible, do whatever you guys want on the part of the festival. Yeah. Have you guys thought about taking the show to other, other festivals? We have talked about it.

I have emailed today about the like lottery fringe thing. And I was like, it’s a portable show for us. We just need a cute van.

It’s just the 10 chairs. Yeah. So it’s super portable and we have talked about it, but we’re designing this new fringe show now.

And so it’s like, I don’t know. I think we’ll end up unless, unless if the trauma run ends up being well-received and there’s interest in doing it again. And yeah, I think we should, it’s a really fun show for us, but we also have seven members in our theatre company and they probably want to act at some point.

Yeah. So we should probably move on. Came up because of, we won the lottery, not lottery, the play contest in Hamilton.

And then it just kind of made sense. We have so many people who couldn’t make it out, like bless our friends who did. That was great.

But there’s a lot of people who were like, oh, I wish you did in Toronto. And then when the venue magically came together and turned lovely there, I loved talking to them. It’s so easy going.

I was like, great. Okay. And it’s already built.

Yeah. It’s already done. Didn’t have to learn the lines, except I got like two new paragraphs.

And we might actually, you know, get into a run of a show and learn new and interesting things about it. Cause that’s one of the other tragedies of indie theatre is that you do all this work and then you do like what, 10, 15 shows and then it’s gone. And you’re like, I didn’t learn anything.

You know, you think about like Hamilton’s on it’s what, like 9 billionth performance at this point. How much more do they know about the show? And I’d love to know that. It’s not very often in life that you get to remount a show.

Like this will be my third show that I’ve remounted out of like, I don’t know, 40 productions I’ve done. So it’s pretty cool when you get to do it. Cause like little things change and it just keeps exciting and you never know what you’re going to find.

It’s really cool when you get to do that, when you get to take a show and then do something with it where you like do it more than you ever thought possible. Yeah. And I’ve had the opportunity to do that with a couple of shows.

Like take a show to like four or five festivals. And by the time you get to that last one, you like know that show so well. Yeah.

And it almost is difficult to like not do that show. I’m excited to do it in this space because the space is a lot more intimate. Our space in Hamilton was for us like way too big.

We would have been happy with a third of that space. And so it would be really nice to go in a really intimate, which is where most of our productions are. They’ve always been in really small quarters.

Yeah. We always do like big things, small rooms. Yeah.

So I’m excited to be even like closer and like really with the audience of like, yeah, we’re in this together, people. That’s really awesome. Yeah.

Well, we’re almost at the end of our time. So I want to thank you all for coming on and talking. Thanks for having us.