#48 – Michael Kras

Michael Kras is a Hamilton-based playwright, actor, and director. His play #dirtygirl was recently the winner of the Audience Choice Award at the 2016 Hamilton Fringe, and he’s developing a new play with Theatre Aquarius. His work has been supported by Roseneath Theatre, Young People’s Theatre, and the Ontario Arts Council. Recent works include Teach Her My Name, which played to sold-out houses at the 2016 HamilTEN Festival; For Kiera, which is published internationally in Bare Fiction and was shortlisted for the HA&L Short Works Prize; and Places, winner of the 2014 Audience Choice Award at the Hamilton Fringe. This year, Michael was honoured with a nomination for a City of Hamilton Arts Award in recognition of his work as an emerging theatre artist. Michael is a graduate of Humber Theatre School, the artistic director of Broken Soil Theatre, and a member of the Theatre Aquarius Playwrights Unit.

Twitter: @KrasMagic

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Transcript

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Phil Rickaby
Welcome to Episode 49 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 stage relay on Facebook and Twitter at stageworthypod. And you can find the website at stagewor podcast.com. If you liked 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. Michael Krause is a Hamilton based playwright, actor and director. This past summer, his played dirty girl was the winner of the Hamilton fringe Audience Choice Award at the 2016 Hamilton fringe.

So you’re a playwright from Hamilton.

Michael Kras
I am yeah.

Phil Rickaby
And this summer at? I actually want to start with with the Hamilton friend. Yeah. So you did at Hamilton fringe? And that was called Dirty girl. Dirty girl. Yeah. Can you describe what that play was?

Michael Kras
Oh, boy. It’s a, it was so many things. But then it became a kind of a ghost story about Twitter became like a horror story about Twitter. And it started out as just this kind of teen drama about social media. And it just became, I just started turning Twitter into more and more of this like, monstrous kind of creature or force. And so it basically to two best friends are having a party in the basement together, just the two of them. And one of them discovers that a naked photo that they sent to their boyfriend has ended up on Twitter under a fake account. And they of course, assume it’s the boyfriend that posted it. And it’s kind of spirals out of control from there as I tried to figure out who did it if not the boyfriend and why. Right, and how to at least soften the storm that’s headed their way. Right.

Phil Rickaby
Do you were saying that, like the way the retelling the story sort of evolved over time. And your your original starting point was just Twitter was

Michael Kras
it just became it was kind of just Twitter as Twitter but it framed in the sort of mass public shaming as we see so often on social media nowadays. Yeah. Which was like, it was a big inspiration to read John Bronson’s work as a journalist, he talks about public shaming a lot. And just to see how huge it can go and how short of a time it can go in. And I wanted to apply that to a story I had been exploring the year prior and the fringe as a solo piece. And then it just kind of went crazy from there. Right?

Phil Rickaby
It’s interesting, because you’re talking about both Twitter in general. And your story features to young women. Twitter is can be a brutal place for young women. Oh, yeah. Women, it doesn’t matter. If you’re a woman on Twitter, it can be a brutal place. You just have to look at what happened with Leslie Jones. Yes, sir. After the Ghostbusters came out, and the abuse that was just sort of like heaped on her. Yeah. forcing her to like causing her to leave to leave Twitter. And Twitter can be a bit of a monster. So interesting that you you sort of like, started taking it down sort of a horror movie. Yeah. Sort of direction.

Michael Kras
Yeah. The Leslie Jones thing that Yeah. And her being a woman of colour especially that’s like, yeah, that’s making it doubly worse on her. Yeah. And it did. Absolutely. And so yeah, the horror movie angle, like the fact that it turned into a monster, the the monster the way it manifested in the play, is not that far removed from how it can be just like humans talking to humans. The only difference being that at a point, it stops being this this Twitter storm and trending topic and Twitter itself morphs into this thing that can see and hear their every move, even when their phones are gone, even when all the technology it could come from is not there anymore. It just kind of hangs above their heads literally and and terrorises them and continues to do so.

Phil Rickaby
It’s interesting that you were doing this play at the Hamilton fringe. And while fringe tends to skew younger, generally, than some of the more established theatre companies generally fringe, in most places goes a little bit younger because of the Independent Spirit your play seemed, from what I could, could, could tell, really resonated with, you know, that generation that so many theatre companies are wrestling with, with trying to talk to millennials and people who are are even much younger than in the millennial generation. Was that something that you You chased after somebody that you were trying to speak to? Or did? Was it like a sort of a happy accident?

Michael Kras
It happened that way? Oh, no, it’s, that’s fully what I always chase for with my work. Especially, yeah, in our like, evolving theatre Recology, just kind of in Hamilton, specifically, but really everywhere, where theatre companies are noticing their audiences literally dying, yes, and having to make adjustments. And I know, I know, a lot of theatre companies for a while in, in Toronto anyway, and probably surrounding areas would try to engage younger people just by making it financially more accessible for them. So offering student rates and stuff, which will help if the teenagers are trying to attract they’re already on the pulse of theatre, right? You know, it doesn’t really make a difference unless they actually care about theatre to begin with. But how do you then engage the people that don’t care about theatre yet? Or don’t think it’s for them? Right? And so that’s kind of my mission as a creator, in Hamilton. And anywhere I work, I guess, is just how do I not only find that audience, but also tell the story that matters to them? And then specifically forget about them? So I mean,

Phil Rickaby
just just, you know, I mean, maybe some people might think it’s a dumb question, how do you find that audience? Yeah.

Michael Kras
I mean, part of it right now is that I’m fortunate to be pretty young myself, and therefore, my personal networks, and my networks, networks, and so on, and so forth, are about as young as my target audience. And so promoting myself through social media channels and stuff, it ends up reaching those younger audiences. And I think it just comes down to how do you tap into the communities that these young people engage with? How do you make them think that this is something for them and something they actually want to see as opposed to spending their money on something else? And, yeah, so it just and telling a story that is directly foreign about them? Which so much theatre that we expect young people to see isn’t? Well,

Phil Rickaby
I mean, that I mean, that’s sort of that’s one of those things that I think people are grappling with, in in, you know, both the indie scene and also just generally, is the whole idea that, okay, first off, everybody knows that they have to reach a larger, like a younger audience. But generally, what a lot of the larger theatres present is the same damn thing that they’ve been doing all along, that their ageing subscriber base has been going to see. Yeah. There’s a couple of problems with that, that I see first, I mean, you get young people into the building, and they’re looking around and they’re seeing, they’re seeing blue hairs, they’re saying to themselves, apologies to the blue hairs. They’ve, you know, they’ve kept a lot of theatres going, but they look young people are looking around, say this is not for me, right? Yeah. And also, how many times can you see Hamlet or The Importance of Being Earnest not that some of the bigger theatres are doing that, but there comes a time when she’s throwing the same? Like, every year, we’re when Stratford is giving us either Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, or Hamlet, how many times can we can we have that? Yeah, you know, so. approaching it in a different way, is kind of important, and yet how to how do you expect a company where the people at the top are still the same people that were speaking to that older group, you’ll be able to talk to a younger group? Yeah,

Michael Kras
it’s, it’s, I mean, a lot of it ended. This is speaking as someone who works administratively and artistically at Hamilton’s regional theatre, where they do like a lot of their season is programmed with sort of a wide mainstream audience in mind. And that’s, you know, totally for the life of the theatre at this point. And it’s, it’s worth mentioning that a lot of these theatres, it feels as though a lot of the theatres at least at this point, are trying to kind of slowly warm the bathwater. So none of them are going to immediately programme a new season. That’s all completely different work for a different audience, but even even the theatre I work at it. Every season there’s one or two shows that are bit more edgy, a bit more challenging, maybe a bit more tangible or accessible to a younger audience or a more culturally contemporarily savvy audience. So there’s that.

Phil Rickaby
But does does that actually bring that younger audience in?

Michael Kras
That’s the, you know, it’s, it’s tricky. The work itself might, because how do they know it’s necessarily for them? Right? Yeah, I mean, a theatre company promotionally speaking, it doesn’t really serve you to say this is a play for you explicitly, because they’re gonna go Yeah, sure.

Phil Rickaby
Of course they are. Yeah. Because you’re the same company that’s been doing, you know, Romeo and Juliet for the past three years, or whatever it is. Yeah. You’re the company that is doing the same old stuff that I’m not interested in. Now. You’re telling me this is for me?

Michael Kras
Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s a tricky, multifaceted question and multifaceted problem that I see. Yeah, different companies trying different things out, and some being far more aggressive about it than others a bit more experimental. This might not exactly apply, but even just the steps taken by Factory Theatre with their incoming season, it’s a completely it’s a whole different, like, the entire season is of non white creators. And so that’s, surprisingly, something we never see.

Phil Rickaby
Well, it’s so rare to see that not just non white creators, but I mean, it’s, it’s the season programmed by a white male full of white males. Yeah. both onstage and in the writing. And that’s something that a lot of theatres have justifiably been taken to task for.

Michael Kras
Yeah. i It’s a thing. I mean, I’ll speak from my own experience of doing dirty girls specifically. Because I, I’ve listened to the podcast before and I heard the fringe roundtable and I heard this might play talked about a fair bit. And Brian Morton, I think it was was talking about the the plays evolution from a solo piece that I performed the year prior that ticket sales wise, didn’t do well at all. And that was just because I couldn’t figure out how to sell it to the audience that I needed to sell it to. And an older audience felt detached from the work in a way or felt. Because the the work for all the things that tackled a big part of the story was also a child porn investigation. And so a lot of people were kind of weirded out by that, understandably so. The play wasn’t creepy about it, it wasn’t exploitative about it, but people had no reason to believe anything else. And they just see the words child porn. And they go, that’s not not gonna see. Exactly, exactly, that’s a dangerous. And then the same thing kind of happened for, for young people where I, we didn’t succeed in making it sound like something exciting, and something at least genre wise that they could engage with, I think, turning dirty girl into a genre piece, I think inherently made it more interesting to people. Just the horror angle of it. Yeah. made people go like, Oh, this is this is interesting. See, what’s interesting. Is

Phil Rickaby
that is that, you know, having been around the the Hamilton Fringe Festival while this was going on? I don’t think I was aware of the horror aspect from what I was seeing. Was that something that you were sort of keeping, like for a word of mouth thing? Or was that did that? Did I miss something?

Michael Kras
I a lot. I mean, we didn’t we weren’t explicit about the horror, because I also it was this tricky balance of not wanting to people to expect that we were doing something blatantly in the horror genre, because it was a horror play in the same way that the works of someone like Annie Baker, I know is played a lot with this kind of pseudo horror, where the play itself is not a horror, but there are elements that can be taken as metaphor, or taken as something realistic and happening to them in their literal world. And sort of dropping things in. So there were no like, blood and guts in the play. The monster never manifests itself, physically, per se. So at its core, it really is just a more it’s a drama with these horror elements kind of propelling it forward into something even more intense. And so I dropped the word horror a lot because it, it was intriguing and not incorrect, but I also didn’t really use it super aggressively because I didn’t want to build expectations that we weren’t going to meet right. So it was billed as a techno horror story. Okay. And, you know, we didn’t do much more beyond that.

Phil Rickaby
It’s interesting about about, you know, it’s kind of important not to tell everybody everything about your show. otherwise it loses the hook. I was very thankful that with my show it at Hamilton this year that people who reviewed it didn’t give away too much, right? So that the humorous angle of the you know, the atheist who’s chosen by God to deliver with his new commandment doesn’t get people don’t know that there’s a punch in the gut twist at the end. That sort of changes it. So people come in expecting, you know, this, this, you know, weird, quirky comedy, and they get something that’s a little a little heavier. It sounds like with dirty girl. People came in, you know, with maybe the Vegas sense that there was something or but like hearing your description, without knowing that like Twitter sort of becomes this this monster within it. I just think that it’s the horror of like having the world of Twitter turned on you rather than Twitter itself?

Michael Kras
Yeah. Which it is for most of it, and then it just keeps upping itself and upping itself and upping itself. And it just becomes this relentless thing where you think it goes about as far as it could go. And then it goes further than that. So that was what we were trying to sort of capitalise on where the elements of like you think you know where the story is going to go. But it’s going to go even further than you think.

Phil Rickaby
And this wasn’t this isn’t your first Hamilton, for instance, you’ve been? No, no. How long have you been been participating in?

Michael Kras
I think this Yeah, this was my fourth year as an artist.

Phil Rickaby
Cool. And before that, were you an audience member? Or did you just come in as an odd as

Michael Kras
occasionally I was, I think, in in my sort of pre theatre school days, I didn’t get to see a whole lot of, of Hamilton fringe. And then when I was in my year about to go into theatre school, I attended as a community reviewer, they would recruit community members to review shows, which was interesting, so I got to see a lot that way. And then the next year, I submitted a play I had written a year prior for this year’s Drama Festival, and kind of reimagined it and did really well, I think which which kept us coming back. Because yeah, for for a first timer, and especially for people that were just kind of young across the board. Yeah. Not many of us topped 20 years old. And the show did really well it won Best of fringe that year. So it was kind of a nice way to start. And that’s a big part of what’s kept me coming back

Phil Rickaby
are a number of people that I was that I saw, with, with shows this year that that skewed quite young, as far as the friend went in Hamilton, I was it was really good to see that, that fringe was attracting artists that were that were sort of, you know, on the lower end of 20 year and working that way. I mean, it also, of course, always, you know, it’s a lottery so it attracts people from Yeah, it will spectrum. But it’s always interesting to see, you know, the age range of the artists and sort of, I think that says a little bit about the place where the friends would take is happening.

Michael Kras
I think so yeah. And I think it says a lot as well about how the theatre scene in Hamilton is changing. Because four or five years ago, I couldn’t say I would have returned after theatre school. Because I studied here in Toronto, as most people I went to Humber College, so I studied physical theatre there. And my whole idea with that was I’m not going back to Hamilton afterwards. I’m like, the theatre scene in Toronto is huge, their their actual, you know, shots at a career for me. And all the people I had known to go to theatre school were like, they’d left to Hamilton and stayed in Toronto after leaving their conservatory. And so that was going to be my plan too. But then after participating in the fringes every year, every summer in between years of school, and just seeing like, Huh, okay, things are kind of growing at a decently rapid rate, just like the second year that I did fringe, I think nearly doubled its attendance. And then of course, this year shattered attendance records for the fringe as a whole. So it is continually growing. And I think the arts as as a kind of general unit are are becoming this huge thing in Hamilton and the community is really really embracing it in a way that wasn’t evident before.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah. What about theatre outside of fringe in Hamilton, because of course, I only know the scene in Hamilton during fringe having having been there this summer. So what what is the theatre scene like in Hamilton, when fringe isn’t happening?

Michael Kras
It’s small, and in a lot of ways problematic. I think the fringe is kind of the peak of, of the year from a theatre perspective, especially from my perspective and in terms of people getting to develop new work on a public and pretty well attended platform. Other than that, There’s really not a lot of routes to go in the city at this point towards new play development. Theatre. Aquarius has its playwrights unit, which I’m a part of. But other than that, and there have been a couple of initiatives that have popped up and haven’t really continued since their their inception. So it’s this constant battle of needing a platform to develop new work in a supported way. Because unless you are really driven and independent and have producing savvy, which I mean, I had to learn that really, really fast to do my own work in the fringe, which I’ve done every single year. With limited resources. Yeah. Which a lot of people have to do, especially in in in Hamilton, where it’s, yeah, I’d like to see more of it. I’d like to be part of creating some more of it in the city as well.

Phil Rickaby
In an ideal world, like what would if you could pull out any solution that you can think of what do you think, would need to happen in Hamilton to make that happen?

Michael Kras
I think there’s this weird, and this is not a general truth of the city. But not a tonne of people at this stage anyway. apply for grants or for funding for their work, whether that’s the fact that they don’t know how or that maybe things get in the way. But it can be it’s I don’t often see. Arts Council funded work happened in the city outside of theatre Aquarius, or the odd thing that does pop up here and there. And that’s the thing like I remember going to a grant writing session where we were told as a group because of Hamilton the way it is in Toronto the way it is, if a Hamilton artist and a Toronto artist were to each submit a grant application of equal heft. The jury would be more likely to choose the Hamilton graduate with the Toronto vote to

Phil Rickaby
say, because if you’re looking I don’t know what the Canada Council but Ontario Council is very much interested in supporting stuff is not from Toronto. Yes. Bad news for me. Good news for other people. But you have to you have to ask for it. Yes. Um, what do you like? So people were to apply for grants. Are you looking? Are you thinking playwriting grants development grants? I don’t know that like because I don’t know this scene outside of Toronto. I know what I would do here in in Hamilton, have you had your prefer, like, what would you love to see happen for you? And everything was to fall into place? Right.

Michael Kras
I would love to see a professionally funded playwriting development initiative, maybe some kind of festival or series where the artists involved could also reap professional benefits, which I think is very important and doesn’t happen as often as it should in Hamilton anyway. And supports the work of new voices who don’t hear themselves on stages. I mean, Hamilton is full of community theatres and community theatre groups. Yes. The problem with those groups is, of course, I understand they have to stay afloat. Yeah. But there is a tendency, again, to programme the same old kind of stuff. And it’s rare to see a community theatre, I think, in a lot of places to programme out new work by a new voice, especially a local voice. So while there are a lot of really successful booming community theatres, I mean, Hamilton hosts the oldest living community theatre, and I think North America. And, you know, it’s become a staple of the city. But I’d love to see more and even like community initiatives, and the players guild did have a play development initiative called first stage that my dramaturg Steven NIR was sort of the pilot of, and I hope to see that return. It’s kind of taken a hiatus, I believe, but it seemed to be a great thing and a great step in that direction.

Phil Rickaby
I think that I think that the scene that I saw is the kind of thing that I think if somebody was to come in and do a storefront style theatre there, they could really tear things up. Yes. Like, just somebody who could, if you could take the Toronto storefront model and like move it into Hamilton and programme. A lot of Hamilton playwrights and things like that you could really be transformative

Michael Kras
in yesterday, I think. Yeah. And a lot of young artists have been talking about such an initiative. I mean, it’s, it’s in ridiculously early stages of discussion, but there is a very passionate group of young artists and creators in the city, who are frustrated by the lack of opportunities available to them, and the lack of assist stainable I mean, there are numerous routes through which to programme your work, you’ve got the fringe, you can always if you can get the resources independently programme your work, but there’s no way to make any semblance of a living or even like a respectable portion of a living doing theatre in the city. So I’d like to see some, some initiatives or some programmes or some some kind of establishment that can offer the professional artists living in the city with professional interests. Yeah, something that helps make their career sustainable in Hamilton, because a lot of artists, myself included are fine, we’re finding that a lot of our professional opportunities are coming externally, from places like Toronto, and I find myself having to get my foot in the door in Toronto theatres. And because that’s kind of where I’m at.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah, it’s interesting, because, you know, if you’re talking about a group of people, we’re talking about this sort of this sort of thing, that’s probably the way a great way to do it would be to have an umbrella organisation that sort of like was a group of a theatre professionals interested to get together on a project like a friend theatre is probably the way that I could see that succeeding, even if, you know, aside from the two that I know of in Toronto, you could read sand castle and the storefront. Though, I think that groups of artists have a really good chance of like putting those sorts of things together.

Michael Kras
Yeah. Where

Phil Rickaby
just to come away from just the Hamilton scene and fringe for a second. What is thinking back? When did you first start being interested in participating in theatre or like, see that as something that you wanted to do? Oof.

Michael Kras
I mean, performance and and being the centre of attention has always been a thing since childhood. I think I only realised my love of theatre specifically, when I was in my later years of high school, I took drama classes throughout, like even my early years of high school, grade nine and 10, I think grade nine, I failed or came close to failing drama. I think I left with like a 50%, or a 58%, or something. And I did not do very well. Which then, fast forward three years at my school, I was writing and directing our seniors Drama Festival plays, and it became this thing where I’m like, Yeah, this is, and I enjoyed being in a leadership role with it as well. I enjoyed kind of taking the reins and guiding a project towards something and collaborating on it with others, who were just as passionate about what we were doing, as I was. And after that, I think it just it just kept, kept growing. And then I went to Humber, and had my world changed there as so many people do in their theatre schools. And yeah, the rest is kind of history.

Phil Rickaby
Do you know what changed for you between that first year in, in drama class where you almost failed? And after that,

Michael Kras
yes, I’ve, I’ve always been whether or not drama without my heart was in drama class. All throughout, it was my heart was always in performing specifically as a magician. I was a magician first. And so at my high school, I had a reputation for that. And it was a thing that I did constantly and I’d entertained in the halls. And I even had like a YouTube series, which was like, David Blaine style, where I’d walk through the halls and film myself doing magic for people. That so that was kind of my claim to fame. And then by the time I think I was in grade 11, when serious Drama Festival auditions were going to happen. And I was interested in that. And I had been encouraged once people found that I want to audition, I was encouraged to bring some magic to my audition. And they were thinking like, because the play was very fantastical. They said, like, we’d love to maybe see if you could do some like cool transitional stuff for the play, and just come out do magic between scenes or something. They were kind of working on this thing. And I was like, No, I’m not. So I went to the audition. I brought no magic. I brought a monologue. And I ended up getting a lead in that play and the experience of working with this small but committed team because singers festival, while it can be a very political thing is also it really kind of pushes a drive in those who really care about it. So I every Here I did see her as after that I was like, it was go time around zero time. And I was like sick to my stomach all week, which I still am with every idea of course, man. But it’s yes, Sears was really the launching point. And it really it gave. It gave theatre a sense of greater purpose in my mind, even though it’s framed as a competition, and that’s kind of weird. There’s still this, like we’re recognising those who perform excellently, we want to acknowledge people who are doing, doing good work, and encouraging them. So I remember, I think it was my my final year of Sears and the play that I ended up bringing to the fringe my first year, it was looking back a very ambitious piece for a 17 year old to write it had a cast of 13. And each person kind of had some were more thinly drawn than others, but everyone had their own agency and had their own narrative arc in this piece. So it was kind of a it was a huge undertaking, and I’m not sure I could do it. Now. I’m not sure I’m not sure I’m as audacious as I was. But we did the piece, and then our adjudicator, who is a pretty notable dramaturg. Before the big adjudication that happens at the end of the week, we’re all sitting in anticipation. And then someone walks on stage and says that the adjudicator would like to see all of the student playwrights in the lecture room. So we all go, okay, and we go to the lecture room, and we sit there and the adjudicator comes in with a big stack of all of our scripts on his lap. And he just picks each one of them and kind of just goes through and points out specific things and says, like, you don’t need this whole page, this whole page is garbage. You don’t need it. Do you know why? Why did you write this? Why? Why is this this way? And he just basically brutally dissected all of our work. And we’re all kind of sitting there blindsided. And I left that. I mean, I think part of me felt kind of crushed by it. But I think a bigger part of me respected it a great deal. Because not

Phil Rickaby
everybody would would would do that. I mean, especially when you’re not expecting it. If that’s not part of the standard. It’s not and and that happens. That is a blindsiding. Yeah. Yeah,

Michael Kras
I had done Sears for two years prior to that. And we had never had anything like that it was remarkably unusual. And so having that happen was like Wolf, like, what was? Yeah. And he would, you know, he would praise certain elements of what we’d created. And then he would just rip apart other elements of what we’d created. And you know, he didn’t pull any punches. Yeah. And I’m thankful for it. Because I was, I mean, working on other work at the time, and it forced me to go to that work and, and do some pretty drastic things to it that I might not have thought to or known to do. Yeah. Unless he had said, like, you know, he taught me the importance importance of cutting. Yes, yeah. And I had to learn to fall out of love with so much I had written and say this isn’t necessary. Let’s get rid of it. You know, I

Phil Rickaby
think that fringe helps with that. A lot of times, if you’re in the 60 Minute category, I’ve seen a lot of shows that are in the 90 Minute category that could be in the 60 Minute category. I’ve almost never seen a show at 90 minutes that needed to be,

Michael Kras
justifiably, 90 minutes long. Almost never. Yeah, it was I’m in the same boat. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
So very, very rare that that happens. And the 60 Minute category can really force you to be to sit there and brutally decide, what do I need? You know? And most shows benefit from cutting. You know, most shows benefit from taking. You know, if you really love something I’ve heard and this is the hardest thing I’ve found to do. I’ve heard you know, if you really love this, this sentence, this phrase, this paragraph, take it out. Yeah. Because it’s probably there because you

Michael Kras
really love it. That’s yeah, that’s that’s a good way of putting it. Yeah, yeah.

Phil Rickaby
She went to Humber. Yes. Was Humber your first choice for schools?

Michael Kras
New not even close. Okay. Let’s, let’s

Phil Rickaby
talk Theatre School. Yeah, oh, let’s

Michael Kras
talk theatre school. I had always envisioned myself going to a place that was more text based, more, more or less because of my love of text. And my, my passion for for playwriting and for words. And, I mean, I was going to study acting because I love acting and I love but there I likely would have studied playwriting. Had there been more accessible avenues for it? It’s like National Theatre School or bust. You’re right. Absolutely. And then to students serious problem.

Phil Rickaby
I mean, there’s there’s the device programme at York. Yes. But aside from that, and nothing National Theatre School nobody else is touching playwriting?

Michael Kras
No, it’s it’s a minor in you can take it as like an extra thing if anything else. Yeah, it’s like a small part of a creative writing course at fast Yeah. So that’s been a trouble. It’s like if you’re not one of the two students accepted into NTS every year, then what do you do? And so I thought George Brown and it’s you know, it’s focused on sort of text based classical work, and training people classically, would be a good fit for me. And the audition. Scared me out of my mind when

Phil Rickaby
when when you auditioned, were they at the young centre? Yes,

Michael Kras
sir. Young sir. Okay, it was at the young centre. And so I remember walking into a big room with a bunch of people who said nothing to me. Okay, I stood on an X about my 30 feet away from them, okay, like a whole ocean between us. I just walked in said my name, said the name of my first piece did my first piece said the name of the second piece did that did like, seven seconds of my song before they cut me off. And then I walked out, and nobody talked to you don’t really know. I think they might have said hello,

Phil Rickaby
the the audition process. When I auditioned for George Brown. We were at this before the centre was ever going to anybody’s I we were in a small warehouse at King and River Street in Toronto. Okay. And we went into one of the studios there. We went as a group and they spoke to us all. Peter Wilde, who was the head of acting at the time gave us all the no one wants you speech. Oh, which everybody gets which is, which is the nobody wants you because actors are a dime a dozen. If you can do anything else, leave now go do that.

Michael Kras
Right. We were told that I mean, not not in those exact words. But I remember being told, before we before things got underway, they were like, This is what we train actors to do. This is what we want out of an actor. If this doesn’t sound like your idea of acting or theatre, you can leave now we’ll refund your audition fee. And you can go and then no one left.

Phil Rickaby
Because whenever I know, when I was getting the nobody wants you speech, I was like, fuck you. They want. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Yeah. And I’m sure that everybody who goes to the through that that particular speech is thick. And basically the same thing. We got an interview after our hour. After we did if we

Michael Kras
were lucky, I didn’t get that far. They they think they kept like they had a group of maybe between 15 and 20 of us that day. And they came in and said, We want to see you and you everyone else can go. So it was like most of us were sent home. And then there were like two or three that got I got to stay and talk to them some more. So it was a very short lived experience. It’s

Phil Rickaby
probable that George Brown I think has a reputation now that it didn’t have, it was only starting to get when I when I was there, which was it’s you know, it produces actors who can deal with texts and produces actors that go on and do stuff and things like that. It had a certain reputation that was developing that at the time. And I think maybe now it has more. Excuse me more of that. Yeah. Were there other schools that you looked at? Aside from George Brown, it was

Michael Kras
between George Brown and Humber at that point, I think it was because I decided to apply so late in the game, I had already taken an extra year of school because I didn’t feel prepared enough to leave just yet or to at least to go to a post secondary institution. So it at that point, think it was just kind of colleges that were left. Yeah. And George Brown was one and then I saw Humber. And that’s where my dad went for something else completely. But so I was like, no, why not? I might as well I’m paying $60 to apply to these schools. So I might as well just toss that one in. And then I went and there was something about it, where I was like, Oh, this is like, because it’s such a diverse training programme. In many ways, especially now, where a lot of the students emerge. It’s a very diverse group of actors that they pull in every year now to. But even just what is taught and how it’s taught, like, you, it kind of runs the gamut. I mean, there’s there’s that we have that solid, rigorous classical training in text with and we also had very European avant garde physical theatre style training. And basically, the whole programme was framed as some classes are not going to resonate with you at all, we’re sure. And you will take what you get from everything you take for all the classes you take. And if things resonate with you, then these will be tools in your bag. And if not, it’s only a semester at most. So just, you know, learn what you can from it and let it go if you don’t think you need it. So it was a great environment to kind of, they gave you building blocks, and you got to build the kind of actor that you wanted to be in the kind of actor that you were kind of meant to be as a human being,

Phil Rickaby
I guess is the Humber programme. A conservatory programme? Yes,

Michael Kras
it is. Yeah. And it’s it. I think. By the time I had started, it had only been for maybe just over a decade. Only then had the training really He adapted into into what it is now, where we were told that before us and maybe about 10 years before us, the programme was just kind of this like mishmash of stuff. And it didn’t know what it wanted to be and people were leaving and not getting hired anywhere. And so it became what it is today. And it’s it’s become a very strong training programme that’s training, brilliant artists that are doing amazing, amazing things. And it’s constantly in flux. That’s one of the beautiful things about it is I could go up to someone who’s planning to go to Humber, like a few of my friends are starting, they’re in first year now. And I could, I’m like, I could try to tell you what you’re going to do. But I don’t honestly know, but because it changes every year. Like, we had programmes that we were like the pilot class to try, like we were the first, we were the first class to do the Theatre for Young Audiences project, which I think is probably one of the if not the most valuable project that Humber does. And I think that they should always keep it. Because I, I think we all learned immensely from doing that kind of work.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah, I remember I remember performing for for, like, we would do a children’s show. When I was at George Brown, we would do that around Christmas, which is you know, when you do that,

Michael Kras
is it the Robert Munch thing still? Or was it different?

Phil Rickaby
It was different than we would do a different one. At that time. There was a different show each year. And kids are hard. Yeah, like they will they will not you cannot bullshit. Yeah, you cannot bullshit a child audience.

Michael Kras
Yeah, we did 14 year olds. That was and you know, before we get started doing TYT, we didn’t really know what it was. We all had our preconceptions of oh my god, we’re doing children’s theatre, which isn’t actually what ended up being we were guided by Mary Beth Beatty, who has a lot of experience doing theatre for young audiences. And she’s like, we’re gonna do a piece for high schoolers. And we’re like, oh, okay, so then we started reading plays like Hannah moszkowicz is in this world. And Misha by Adam peddle things meant for kind of a more adolescent or high school age audience, and the proflight, just that we would read them as a class for like two week intensive at the start, and the profound effect those plays had on people in the class in in ways that I had never personally seen any other work due to anybody like it was the connection to that material, even though so many of us were so far, because we also read some that were like, intended for five year olds, or, and the effect they had on us were like, wow, like this is, this is powerful stuff. And it’s not at all what we thought it was. And then we dove into creating this piece for 14 year olds, which was informed by actually, we did a tour to high schools throughout the Toronto area. And we, as we were creating the show, we went to those schools, and did drama workshops with the kids who were going to be seeing our show. And those were also a way for us to observe them in their kind of natural element. And just watching them behave the way they behave. And the the kids who were too cool to participate in the drama games and would stand off to the side or the kids because it was just like a constant battle of status all the time. I we played the game, do you know the game, Adam? Like you’re all walking around the room and someone screams at them. And then a number like Adam four, and four of you have to grab and link arms or just hold on to each other? And if there are people left over there out, right. So that’s the there are different versions of this game. But we played that version. And at the close of the end, it was Adam to and there. I think there were enough of us that everyone could grab someone. And then this one, young boy tried to grab another young boy by the arm and the other boy pulled away and said, I’d rather be out and touch you, yo, whoa. And we had to just stand there and observe. We couldn’t be like, Whoa, like, we just had to be quiet about it. But it was like, Oh, these kids are brutal. Yeah, it was insane. And it later flips, because then that same group of kids came to our turf. So for another session, they came to Humber. And then they were totally different. They were watching, they were in our school. And their dynamic was totally different. And they were just kind of sat in and just watched us do ensemble work and kind of rehearse a little bit. And they were just kind of like in awe of what we were doing and how we were doing it. And then they all left. And this one kid who was I think one of the quote unquote, cool kids. He kind of ran back after his whole group was leaving, and just like stood there and being about what we were doing. He was like, how do you guys get into the school? Like, this is amazing. Like you have so much fun. This is like incredible. And it’s not something he would say in front of his friends. You have to wait till everyone was gone. Yeah. And then it goes gush to us. Yeah. Which was really amazing. Like, yeah, it was it was a very fulfilling way to work. And that’s what informs the way I write now I write for young people to get

Phil Rickaby
those audience is that those kids into theatre? And not the kind of theatre that we tend to send them to? Yeah, like, you know, if they’re in high school, the kind of theatre they’re going to see is they’re probably going to read a Shakespeare that they don’t want to read somebody who doesn’t know how to perform. Yes, yes. Make some really like literature, and then they are forced to go and see that play. Yeah, but they already hate because they’re being forced to read it by somebody who doesn’t know how to perform it. And then they’re not going to enjoy it, rather than getting them into see theatre that that would speak to them or be interesting to them. Yeah. You know,

Michael Kras
yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s huge. And that’s why I love touring companies like Roseneath. And, and companies like why PT who along with their works for for younger kids, they all they also programme or two are works that are meant for an older audience. And I’ve been able to see some of these and go like, wow, yeah, every kid this age needs to see this play. Because it’s it’s bold, and provocative. And really pushes the boundaries. Like, I could see a young person watching this play, and being just drawn in by the fact that it almost feels like something they shouldn’t be watching, right? Because it just like, yeah, and then just even reading some of these works, not having seen them staged. I’m like, wow, like, I can only imagine what a young audience would think of this. Yeah, like in this world by Hannah moszkowicz is a big example of that. You can tell in the play, it’s about like, just under an hour long. And you can tell it kind of like the halfway point of the play, where the kids are going to kind of do a one ad where you can imagine them kind of laughing at the scenario. And then there you can tell on like on the line, you can tell where they’re going to flip. Oh, oh, yeah. Which is why I love that play, and why I love writing provocative plays for young people.

Phil Rickaby
When you’re, let’s, I want to, I want to sort of to break down a little bit about writing provocative plays for young people. How do you? I mean, I’m 46 years old, so Right. And I feel like for me writing play for young people is like, I would be, I don’t know, if that’s not where my brain goes, I’m not young enough, I think I would have to do a lot of research and get somebody to help me. But when you which is, of course, a problem that a lot of theatres have when they’re trying to talk to, to younger audiences. In terms of when you’re writing something that’s intended for a young audience, you’re trying to write some of this provocative to that young audience. Can you do that without offending their parents?

Michael Kras
It’s, well, yes, I think

Phil Rickaby
or, or do you have to make them promise before they start before they see the play, that they won’t tell their parents or anything they’ve seen that day?

Michael Kras
It you know, it’s it’s, it’s a weird is, I mean, from dirty girls, specifically, when I did that play. One of it was more or less a challenge to myself as a playwright, but it kind of, I think it made the play better to not have really aggressive swearing in it. I’ve written plays that are more profane, dirty girl, there was not one fucking dirty girl, there was not one shit. Like it was it was a pretty clean play by those standards. I still had offended parents who were offended by the use of the word slut, because it’s used a lot in the Bronx. So I was like, I didn’t really think of that as as a thing that could make you mad to

Phil Rickaby
hear. But I know the thing is the I don’t know if you could write that topic about Twitter, and about a picture of a girl naked that shared on Twitter. And really, you can do that without using the

Michael Kras
word slot. And not at all. Yeah, not in a

Phil Rickaby
truthful to the, to your to your to your premise and your topic.

Michael Kras
Yeah, it’s it. And it’s an important word. Yeah. And it’s it was important that it was in the play, and it wasn’t there to be gratuitous, and it was there for a very specific purpose. And I think, if you were to write a play for a young audience, and so obviously withhold language like that, where we know in their world it would be they’re gonna call bullshit right away to call bullshit, and they’re gonna disengage. And so it was a difficult place to write because not only was I writing from the voice of young people, but from young women. Yeah, and I am I’m not a woman. I’m not I don’t I haven’t lived that experience. So it required a lot of research reading was important. The most important thing was talking to young people young women and and the I was grateful to have young women open up about experiences not unlike what happens in the plate not extreme but dealing with that culture. Yeah, and, and even like giving dude like lit drafts of scenes to young people, young women and going like read this. Call up my bullshit, please. And they would they would say like, yeah, my friends and I would never say this. And it was, it requires you to put a lot of your ego aside as a playwright, it requires a lot more work. But it paid off. Because when we did the play, I got a Facebook message from someone who saw it, who has a daughter and my daughter, a sister, who is the age of the girls in the play, who came to see the show, and said that they were happy to see a play where teenagers actually sound like teenagers and not what someone thinks they sound like. Yeah, so that was a really, it’s it was, it was a lot harder to pull that off than I think it sounded because the dialogue that I write generally is very messy and very frenetic. And, and so it was, there’s a lot more effort in it than it seems. And it picked off because young, you would see, especially young women would grab on to this play. And there was one performance of it were weirdly, there was like just 3050 year old men there. Like there weren’t really any young people at one performance of the show. And they were like dead quiet the whole show. Like and not in like an engaged way. They were like what the hell like this is this is this is shit. And it was a real was a rough run of the show. And I left feeling miserable. I’m like, Oh, they none of the jokes landed. No, of course, none of the really provocative stuff landed or resonated with them either. And you could just there was a restlessness in the theatre where I was like, Ooh, this is painful to sit through. Yeah. And if you for a second or for a night, I guess you feel kind of awful about your work, and then you go, but it’s not for you. And this isn’t a play about you. It’s not for you. And so there were there were, of course, a lot of people who are outside the demographic of the play who connected with or appreciated or affected by the way. A lot of parents saw it, and were affected by the play for whole different reasons. And there was a performance to where there were these two young ish girls who I didn’t know, sitting in the very front row of the staircase, I sat at the back, usually. And so about, like, two thirds of the way through the plane, maybe three quarters, I saw them like slumping down in their seats, and just kind of like hidden away. And they looked like they were just lethargic. And I’m like, fuck, like, this is like at least pretend you’re enjoying it or something. I’m sitting here too. But I’m like, hey, if they if it’s not engaging with them, and it’s not engaging with them, and I found out afterwards, like I, we were striking the set, and my actors, like Did you see those girls like crying in the front row. And I was like, I thought they were like sleeping. And so they were actually they were the opposite. They were like, and what they were they were friends. So they were both like getting down low to sort of get closer to each other. And they were because they were in closer proximity to the actors than I was. The actress could hear them like whispering things right? And kind of like whispering like, no, don’t do that. I don’t know. Like they were as if they were trying to will the actress different. So it was yes, it was completely opposite thing. And I was like, wow, like that. Yeah. And so the reaction out of young people, the ones that did come see it like that? Yeah,

Phil Rickaby
that’s good. That’s good. I, you know, sometimes I wonder if, you know, we’re just, again, it goes back to we got to stop doing the same old thing to try to, you know, we can entice young people in with the same old.

Michael Kras
No, it’s it. You know, it goes two ways to buy programming new work by new voices. We’re not only opening up the doors to new audiences, but we’re also opening up doors for those new voices exactly to get on those stages. But we’re

Phil Rickaby
also opening the door the experience of the people who wouldn’t be coming anyway, like, people that you know, who

Michael Kras
broadening their perspectives. Yeah, and it can be tough. Like it’s that kind of warming of the bathwater that I was talking about, where I know, one of the plays that theatre Aquarius programmed, it was their their CO pro with Ken stage. They did tribes, which is a very profane play. And they did that as part of their season. And I recall stories of a lot of walkouts during that show, because the usual Aquarius Aquarius audience couldn’t really handle the profanity, and were offended by it. And so it takes some climatization. It’s not going to be immediate now. But the more I see classics programmed, and they’re still a valid part of our theatre ecology. I want to see them a lot less. Yeah. And I want to see bigger platforms open up for new emerging voices. So they too can have a chance of being canonised like Shakespeare, yes, or like the playwrights that we hold on a pedestal now. Why do we just keep giving them the biggest platforms and there are voices that are saying something about the world right now who are are kind of getting pushed aside. We

Phil Rickaby
need to make a space for the next. Judith Thompson and the next Daniel McIver? Yeah. Next, Brad Fraser and the next whoever Yeah. Because those people have their place but new stuff happens to Well, I think we’re about at the end of our time. So thank you for for coming on and talk with

Michael Kras
us. Yeah. Thank you very much. This is great.