#60 – Eric Woolfe
Eric Woolfe is an actor, playwright, puppeteer and magician, and the Artistic Director of Eldritch Theatre, a Toronto theatre company specializing in horror plays using puppetry, live actors, and parlour magic.
His work for Eldritch Theatre includes The Haunted Medicine Show, Madhouse Variations, The Babysitter, The Strange & Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom, Dear, Grendelmaus, and Sideshow of the Damned. Some of his other credits include The Comedy of Errors (Humber River Shakespeare), The Last Christmas Turkey (Touchmark Theatre), Rocket & the Queen of Dreams (Roseneath Theatre), Little Shop of Horrors (Canstage), Timon in Disney’s The Lion King.
Eric Woolfe has been nominated for over a dozen Dora Mavor Moore Awards as both an actor and playwright. He is a three time nominee for the prestigious KM Hunter Memorial Award. The World Encyclopaedia of Puppetry lists him as one of Canada’s exciting new wave of notable puppeteers.
His non-creepy writing credits include Step Right Up!, and Twas, for Theatre Orangeville, Pomeranski Rex for The Toronto Fringe and the film scripts Momento Mori, Hungry Dead Things, and Blackwood Hotel.
Twitter: @ericwoolfe
http://www.eldritchtheatre.ca/
Twitter: @eldritchtheatre
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eldritchtheatre
Stageworthy: http://www.stageworthypodcast.com
Twitter @stageworthyPod
Instagram: stageworthypod
Facebook: http://facebook.com/stageworthyPod
Transcript
Transcript auto generated.
Phil Rickaby
Welcome to Episode 61 of Stageworthy, I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast about people in Canadian theatre featuring conversations with actors, directors, playwrights and more. If you like what you hear, I hope you’ll subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Google music or whatever podcast app you use and consider leaving a rating. It really helps out the podcast. If you 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 My guest is actor playwright puppeteer and magician Eric Woolfe. Eric is also the artistic director of eldritch theatre at Toronto theatre company specialising in horror plays using puppetry live actors and parlour magic.
Adriana introduced me to what you do with Eldtrich theatre, Eric, with she said the words its magic puppet horror theatre. Yeah. And I immediately thought that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard. But one of the things I’ve kind of been wondering is for you, which came first, the magic puppet or horror,
Eric Woolfe
okay, well, this is a good story. It’s also a long way. But it’s a good story. So I’ve been an actor since I was 10 years old, and I’m rapidly approaching 46. So, you know, like, I started professionally when I was 10. In my 20s, living in Toronto, there was a friend of mine that I’d grown up with who was moving to the city, and he was a musician. And I thought, well, we would do I knew that unless we had a project that we were working on together, I’d never see him because he’s a wonderful guy, but he’s socially myopic. So I said, Look, why don’t we do this thing, and I had always loved. I mean, it’s funny, because it sounds so squared. But I always really loved the idea of Billy Bishop goes to work as an actor. You had a guy who’s really good at music, they were friends, they hung out together. And it was this besides, and yeah, we’ll do something like Billy Bishop, or you play, you’ll be on stage. And you’ll do you’ll, you’ll write music for it. And I’ll play ukulele and sing. And I’d been a horror fan since I was a little kid. So I said, we’ll make it a horror play. And you and I grew up together, so it’d be a horror play about puberty, and all play all the characters. However, I at that time was quite close to Rod Beatty, who does all the Wingfield plays for the people who don’t know? I don’t know why you wouldn’t. But it’s a play about a Bay Street series of plays, but a Bay Street executive who sells his firm to become a farmer. And rod has been doing these plays for years plays all the characters, but he’s so good at it. When you think back and remember them. You actually remember all these other people on stage. I saw one night this was and this was just for this habit I saw I went to see one of them and Rod was really sick. So the protagonists character, well, Wingfield had a cold and kept having to drink water and blow his nose. And Rod playing Wingfield looked like really looked like he was going to die. But none of the other characters even had a sniffle. It was terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying. So as long as Rod was doing these plays, I thought there was no way I can, I’m doing a one person show where I step in and out of other characters. Because if you can’t do it like that, yeah, it’s like writing symphonies in the time of Mozart, you just shouldn’t do it. So I thought puppets were cool and creepy. So without knowing anything about it, really, I said, well, and we’ll just make puppets. So I gathered up a bunch of garbage and paper mache and made all the other characters out of puppets. And then we did this thing called the strange nearing Memoirs of Billy Wilder gloom for summerworks and then remounted it and it was a big hit, and a big critical success. And so all of a sudden, overnight after having been an actor for whatever it was, at the time, 20 some odd years, I became that horror puppet guy. Oh, that was neat. Let’s do it again. So for a number of years, the shows would get bigger, there’d be more, more people and more puppets and my skills at building the puppets became more ornate and more skilled. And so the show was kind of got bigger and bigger to a point up to about 10 years ago when I sort of got the sense that that the independent theatre or ecology was about to contract things shows weren’t going to be able to keep getting bigger and bigger because the money, the money was about to become suddenly finite. Yeah. So I remember by my second son had just been born. And I remember, like, sitting, I remember the exact chair I was sitting in when I had the idea. And I’d always kind of been interested in magic as an art without really knowing anything about it. And it occurred to me that quite naively, that you could use magic in the support of a narrative in the same way that you use songs in a musical. So it could it could
you advance the plot or provide a metaphor for something or illuminate an idea of a character.
And what tickled me about the idea is that you can do magic on a little tablecloth, or you can do magic that fills a hole amphitheatre. And whether you’re making an elephant disappear or making a coin disappear, it’s essentially thematically the same idea. And the other thing that excited me about it is that no one really had tried this before. Now, what I didn’t realise was that it was a little bit like being 40 years old and saying, you’re going to become a prima ballerina. So there was a learning curve, that’s been the last 10 years of kind of the Theatre Company’s existence in my my downtime has been spent making coins disappear and learning how to levitate a potato and do all that to make it
Phil Rickaby
feel like you weren’t confident enough to do some of those, like on a stage in front of people.
Eric Woolfe
Well. Still, not always. Yeah. Well, it’s been 10 years. And this last show was sort of the first one where the magic didn’t become a really daunting, where the magic had become kind of an organic part of the process, and not. Not a terrifying one. I mean, there was about, so I had the idea in 2006. And the magic didn’t really get rolled out till 2009 2010. And the first show we did it in, I mean, we kind of we started sort of dropping it in like we will, let’s there’s this, let’s do this one Victorian illusion. And this is going to be the finale is going to be we’re going to bring a puppet to life with Pepper’s Ghost. And that would be the so that would be the one thing the right set piece. But the so the duck weather glimpse haunted medicine show was the first solo show that we did. And the first time it was okay, this is let’s do wall to wall puppets and magic and see how it works. And it was it had way too much magic. It’s now looked back at I mean, it’s all I’m very proud of it. And I love I love it when we get a chance to do it. Again, it’s been, it’s been one of our most successful shows, but, but it takes an hour to load all that crap in my pockets, set all the little things because when you’re starting out, I think in any art when you’re starting out, you want to show how good you are at it and how hard you’ve worked. So if you can, let’s see if we can shove this little thing in here. Let’s shove this little thing in here. So it becomes there’s just there’s so much because you want to you want to prove yourself, right? And then. So the last two shows, it’s been a little bit more relaxed. And now I kind of feel like okay, I’ve got nothing to prove. Now we can just make it good. Now let’s make it easier instead of making it harder.
Phil Rickaby
interesting metaphor for life in hearing sometimes, especially if you’re a creator.
Eric Woolfe
Yeah, well, that’s kind of I guess that’s the like, I remember when I was a young actor, everybody’s saying, you know, there are no good actors under the age of 36. And I took great offence to that when I was 20. Yeah. Then when I was 36, I went oh, that’s Oh, because I’m not. I’m not on stage trying to show everyone my homework anymore. I’m not trying to. I’m not. I’m not trying to prove myself. I’m just doing my job. Yeah. And I’m not. I’m not making sure everyone can see me sweat. So they take me seriously. And I think that’s the difference between being being you know, a starving artist and the establishment in any in any
Phil Rickaby
field. Then on the other side, there’s also the Go big or go home. Like if you’re starting out at a thing. You want to make a splash because I know I worked with a company called Keystone theatre. Yeah. And we silent film on stage show was like this massive Yeah, they called the belle of Winnipeg. And we took us like, I mean, once we started it took four years to get from like create How do you do sign up? Come on. Yeah, used to the show. And then, you know, set and costume video elements. And it was massive. And after we did that, we were like, well, we can never do this again. Yeah, we thought, you know, there was like way, the cost way too much to do this again. Yeah. So, you know, the next thing that we did was like, how do we create a thing that can tour like the small? Yeah, small thing? Yeah. So it’s like, make your splash is the other side and like,
Eric Woolfe
well, you one can make a splash. I’m not talking about I mean, the I think this is sort of two different conversations, right? Because I firmly believe that at least for the next 15 years, the secret to having a successful career in theatre is finding the smallest way to do something. Man, I’m now in the last few years, I’ve been much more interested in what can we do that 20 people can see and turn a profit out and make it really good and really spectacular, then? How can we make a show that 1000 People will see and feel this? Because then you’re then you’re running after your your efforts are going to something that isn’t as rewarding? Yes. Yeah. And it’s harder because I don’t think the audiences have actually shrunk. I really don’t, but I think they’re not. The people who go to theatre aren’t the people who used to go to theatre and the people who do go to theatre aren’t going to the same kinds of theatre. It’s so much every everybody’s going to their own little niche. Yeah. So I think like doing something big versus doing something small is different than then show everybody how hard you’re working, and just do the work. Do the work and don’t get because if you’re if you’re just if you’re trying to drum up a sweat, you’re not. You’re spending energy drumming up the sweat, you’re not spending effort moving the piano, if you can move the piano without sweating. That’s all the better, right?
Phil Rickaby
The show that you did this this past fall,
Eric Woolfe
the harrowing of brimstone MacCready, which, oh, my titles are too long. It’s terrible.
Phil Rickaby
The thing is, like it does it, does it? I don’t know. I think the title says something about the show. I don’t think I don’t think you can I tend to write titles that are far too short. Right. The some? It’s my title is something and I think you could probably be a little more creative with your with your with your titles. I don’t think there’s a there’s anything about the wrong with a long title. It says something about the show. Yeah. It’s the is it the third show that you’ve done? In this sort of, like solo style?
Eric Woolfe
Oh, no, probably not. It is. Let’s see, it is it was eldritch theatres 12 original play, and our 23rd production. As far as solo shows. It’s, I mean, we’ve never been able to afford I mean, the most people we’ve ever put on any stages for. And so usually it’s, you know, two is the two is the true side to the dam had five. But that was back in the day when you could afford five and then nobody got paid anyway. Shouldn’t that sort of the recent of the puppets magic all Eric all the time. There have been like three of those, which is just what you said. And I was like, no, no, no. And then I count them and it’s three is each year in the past. Well, we try to hit every Halloween. It doesn’t really work out with grants and with but we try to have we so so there have been remounts but we tried to do it. We tried to do we try to have a new show every Halloween. And that kind of works out to a new show every other year.
Phil Rickaby
That’s good. I mean, yeah. I mean, the audience of the show that I was at for the first time McCready, they were definitely people there who who had come to see you.
Eric Woolfe
Oh, no, we have like the same. We’ve got like a really, I mean, we’ve been around since our first show was 2019 99 So we’ve been around and we have a really like we’ve got a loyal audience. We’ve got people who drive in from North Bay, we’ve got a lot of them don’t go to other theatre, a lot of them are under 40. Most of them are under 40. A lot of them aren’t they’re like all walks of life. And they come and some of them come see the same shows like over and over and over. Like there are people who’ve seen doc whether gloom five times. We’ve done it six they’ve seen it five years know and those aren’t those are real people. Those aren’t my Guney friends either because they’re in columns. Which is really neat, right? Like you don’t want to I mean, I sometimes I wish that, that we had, you know, we had our audience numbers were,
why don’t we sell out every time? We do you know, but we do. Why are we in this tiny theatre that only seats 50. But
on the other hand, like we’ve got, if I don’t do it, if I if we happen to miss a Halloween, I get 20 angry emails from, you know, I’m a mortician, and I always bring my family and there’s what are we going to do this Halloween? If there’s no creepy puppet thing?
Phil Rickaby
There’s something something really kind of amazing. Like, the people are angry if you don’t do a thing. Yeah. Yeah. People who miss it when it’s Yeah. Which is amazing. Yeah. I always forget to do something under somebody I don’t like somebody I don’t know, tells me Oh, I bought tickets to that. And I’m like, Yeah, I
Eric Woolfe
know. I’m always surprised to.
I’m always surprised at the fact that anyone even remotely cares. Cuz I don’t. The fact that people care really, you know, really shocks and moves me. I’m always surprised. What’s kind
Phil Rickaby
of interesting. For me, it was interesting. I mean, there’s been a lot of hand wringing in indie theatre for several years about where’s the audience going and that sort of thing. All right. Well, I
Eric Woolfe
can I mean, that’s, yeah, go ahead.
Phil Rickaby
There’s just a couple of years ago, there was a big powwow and I think I’ve mentioned it before on the podcast about you know, I think there are two or put together ended up being theatre pass, right. Yeah, it was be this conversation. Where’s the audience going? Ended up ended up being a bitch session rather than offering well of course. But I mean, it is that thing is like how do you get the audience’s out? And one of the things that I keep hearing is offer them something they can’t get. Yeah, Netflix and Moeller
Eric Woolfe
offer them something they can’t get. I mean, a lot. I know. Every boy Oh, no one’s coming to see in the theatre. No one’s coming. Well, of course, no one’s coming to see Andy theatre because you’re doing your your remounting a David Mamet play that was old 30 year like who wants to see Yeah, yet another production of American Buffalo like, why, like if you’re gonna be and I don’t it’s not just the Indies. It’s sort of across the board, right? Like, if, if I’m, if I’m say, a couple in my 30s working the nine to five job and I want to do something on a Friday night. I’m not going to say let’s pick Hey, let’s go see this thing that we studied in high school? Yeah, remember? I
got it. I got a B minus on that essay. Let’s go.
So so stop it.
It doesn’t matter. Like just don’t stop it. I’ve seen I’ve seen Glass Menagerie I’ve been in Glass Menagerie it’s a really good play. Stop it do something. Something new do something we
Phil Rickaby
can’t we can’t tie our horses to the same old shows and expect people to come and see them again. And again no matter
Eric Woolfe
how good it is. Right No matter how good it is or how rewarding it is Doctor normal. And the same. I mean, I have a real using theatre to make a political point is another another thing I mean, I I suppose you can use a cannon to swat that fly. But there are better uses for the cat and then there are easier ways to to kill the fly. I mean, if you’re because then you’re doing like don’t do theatre. Don’t try to sell people theatre because it’s good for them. Like I like you. I have been to some restaurants that serve a wonderful broccoli dish. Yeah, they don’t tell me this broccoli, you have to eat this broccoli because it’s gonna be good for you. It’s there may be broccoli on the plate, but they’re not advertising it as broccoli. No, no. And I think there’s a tendency to do that. As as theatre artists.
Phil Rickaby
I don’t think you’re tired of being told that the theatre that again, it’s like yes, good for you. Or this is super important. You have to see this. Like, I don’t necessarily want to see theatre that’s important with the capital I, I kind of want to be entertained first and know
Eric Woolfe
well, if you can’t I remember this is sort of the one thing I learned at Theatre School. The one thing that kind of stuck with me that was worth my, my two years before I quit, was that I had a teacher say, look, entertaining someone for two minutes is really hard. If you if you can entertain. If you can keep someone interested for two minutes, then it doesn’t matter what you say. If you can’t, it doesn’t matter what you say. Right? Like you have to you have to engage people before you before you preach to them. And if you have them engaged, if you’ve actually engaged them then then you were speaking to them on a level that is more complex and has greater resonance than than selling them a political message that they already agree with any way or they wouldn’t have bought The ticket. Right like to you know, there was a reason that Shah was had to spend so much time writing essays about why he was better than Shakespeare was because he actually wasn’t. Yeah. And the reason, the reason he wasn’t is because because of the untidiness that he was always criticising Shakespeare for because of that, that irrational, emotional. I mean, that’s what I mean, it’s a tired cliche, but you know, I remember reading somewhere that art supplies for society with dreams supply for the individual, you don’t, you know, you get nobody ever woke up from a dream about flying, because you’re trying to escape from a giant monster made a toilet paper and then converted to social Marxism as a result, like it’s not how we work. So, you know, stop it, or know that know that the real meat of what you’re doing is actually something else. You mentioned Theatre
Phil Rickaby
School, can I ask what theatre school you went to and then dropped out of? You can say that you
Eric Woolfe
can ask I don’t know why. I like to pretend I didn’t go to school. And I did, I did. And I, but I like to, I like to pretend I didn’t go in it. Because
Phil Rickaby
you, you felt like you didn’t get enough out of the school? Well,
Eric Woolfe
I mean, because like I was, you know, I grew up backstage, right? Like I, you know, I worked so much. By the time I started Theatre School. It was a very, it was in some ways useful to have a place where I could hone my skills without having to chase down the next job, right? It probably in my late teens and early 20s protected me from I don’t know, I just
Phil Rickaby
I mean, the thing is that theatre school is different for each individual. Yeah. And I know people who have had amazing experiences, people who have had horrible experiences, my own was somewhere in between. Yeah. And you get out of and I actually figured that I didn’t actually realise everything that I learned until about 20 minutes, 20 years after I left. Yeah, it was like, oh, that’s why we did this thing. Sort of. Yeah, no, fair enough. But where did
Eric Woolfe
you go? I went to George Brown. Yeah. What Yeah, see, George Brown was the place I went wasn’t was in its sort of its dying days of usefulness when I was there. I had a decent class. You know, it was two years it could have it put me in a, it put me in a fortuitous place. In terms of timing, and when I could be released into the stream. That led to some jobs that I’m glad I did.
Phil Rickaby
I mean, you’ve been doing theatre since you were 10 years old. Yeah. What? What was it? Were you somebody who like, did you want to be in theatre when you came to do your family say we’re going no, no.
Eric Woolfe
Well, when I was fun, okay. When I was just before my fifth birthday, my parents had a family called the tip comes over. And Gary Titcomb was loudly singing when I was trying to sleep. And I was I went downstairs and I yelled at everybody for loudly singing. And when my mum came to tuck me back in and apologised, she said, I’m sorry. Gary Titcomb was singing the words to all of her. And I said, What’s all of her? And she said, It’s a play, it’s going on in the park. Why don’t we take you to see it for your birthday. And so we went to see this thing that had kids singing in it and, and this guy threw this prostitute off a bridge and she died. And it was fantastic. And I remember turning to my mother and say, That’s what I want to do when I grow up. And I hope you know and she looked at me with or either because I was saying she was worried I was saying, I want to throw a prostitute off a bridge or I wanted to be an actor either either. Either idea, terrified or and then sort of that kind of became my driving passion. So I had them enrol me in classes and I auditioned for, you know, a couple of different productions of A Christmas Carol and ended up it was in London, Ontario, so I ended up working at the Grand Theatre with some great people. And then, when I was 15, I, I landed the part of Eugene and in a production of Brighton Beach Memoirs at the Grand Theatre that Martha Henry directed and then then we ended up doing all three and it became the only actor in the world who’ve done all three parts and all the right ages at the same theatre which, which were was I thought was cool. Apparently Neil Simon thought was cool. Someone told him about it. Tony Randall told them about it. You know, so that so so I had this kind of really neat career in my teens doing doing theatre kind of all across the country. And then
Phil Rickaby
and it’s something that you want you kept doing. Because, you know, I remember some of the things that I wanted to do when I was like five and started to do I’m not doing any more. Yeah, so you really It stuck with it. It was like a thing that became a real passion for you.
Eric Woolfe
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I mean, I’ve never often I think I wish I could go back in time and develop another skill or interest. But I don’t you know, I don’t know what that would be. If I did, I would go do it.
Phil Rickaby
I mean, I that’s I mean, that is the thing is that everybody always says you know, if you can do anything else do it. Yeah, business, you know, there’s something else that can make you happy. You should probably do that. Yeah. Cuz that may be because this this business is only for people who really just can’t really do anything else. Because that’s, they couldn’t be happy doing anything else. It’s,
Eric Woolfe
I don’t know. I don’t even know. I’m terribly happy doing it tell you to tell you the truth most of the time, but I don’t know what like what I kind of burned all my other bridges, right. It’s not like it’s I’m, you know, I’m almost 46 It’s not like it’s too late for me to be a dentist.
Phil Rickaby
I mean, you can be an ultra dentist one day with your hands. And I could be Yeah, well, you
Eric Woolfe
know, that’s, that’s about it.
You terrify children when they come in and you’re like, oh, yeah, in terms of the, this eldritch Theatre and the shows that you create? Does it take about two years to create a show from like idea to, to like depends to do you.
One. It it. There are a lot of things in play. I mean, sometimes, actually, I was thinking about this in the way over. Sometimes it’s like 1011 ideas 11 years, kind of teasing out an idea before it pays off. And sometimes it’s like, oh, let’s write a play about a flea circus. And then three months later, there’s a play but a flea circus. So it sort of depends. It depends on I don’t know it
Phil Rickaby
Do you have like a file of all the ideas that you have like a
Eric Woolfe
I used to but I’m five kids and I’m lazy and I can I don’t even know anymore like we’re working at this thing that we’re bout to do a little workshop on is this this play called Space Opera zero. That’s a it’s based on Middleton’s the changeling and it’s it was written for them. Come on para Henyk and Rebecca Northen and Melanie McNeil, a resident designer, and I wanted to do something that was like a 1930s pulp, weird tales, space adventure. And all those different ideas come back from all different places, and I never thought they were all the same play. And it really only occurred to me yesterday, how many different paths have kind of led to this one script? If you asked me this week ago, I would have just sat down and wrote that script and was like, oh, no, but wait a minute, we talked about doing a space thing right after sideshow of the doubt. That’s so that’s like 17 years that that one’s been percolating away.
Phil Rickaby
Do you have this not really a deadline but you’re expecting to do something each how are we
Eric Woolfe
well we try to hit we that kind of like we did how like we did have like how I mean the you know when you’re in like, the big end question is like what it used to be well where the hell are we gonna find a space it takes three years to get to space and now it’s it’s like the call one of the storefronts and if they don’t happen to close a couple standing Well, yeah, red sandcastle. Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
What was the question? Oh, just about like what you have like, Oh, yeah. So
Eric Woolfe
what happened was we did like two Halloweens in a row. And then now me magazine was like, it wouldn’t be Halloween without another theatre show or like, yeah. I don’t even think it was two in a row. I think it was like, we did the babysitter in 2006. We did the babysitter for Halloween and then four years later, we did another show when Halloween and then oh, well, it’s a tradition. Oh, well, if it’s an annual tradition and people okay then it’s a tradition.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, let’s do it. Follow
the tradition. Yeah, you know, do it I mean, it’s all peppers like every Christmas doing. Same same two guys doing lead roles in Christmas. Yeah. So you might as well I mean, yeah, well, that’s
Eric Woolfe
it. So eldritch theatre somehow and now everybody says for Halloween tradition. Now it’s last because we went because now wrote this thing and we said okay, let’s run with that. And now Okay, tell me and we got to do something
Phil Rickaby
that is that something like do you when you leave red sandcastle from like this Halloween? Do you say Okay, so you’ve got his pencil there for next Halloween and just know that you’ve got to do something or do you?
Eric Woolfe
I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I read in the paper the other day that the red sand castle is chiefly known for eldritch theatres for puppet magic shows I read that I just met someone posted that on my TA right that’s what 65 other shows in there during the year but it’s known for Yeah, no, I don’t I usually call rosemary and I guess February Yeah, I guess that’s coming up.
Phil Rickaby
It’s coming up. Yeah,
Eric Woolfe
it’s coming up. Pence. Listen, but it’s great. Right. Like it used to be the for those places opened up. You know, you’re trying to find you want to be in a theatre that’s under 100 seats because otherwise equities up your butt for having so all the salaries have to go up and but like coop combined, who really has who really is more than 50 people in the audience ever anyway, if not fewer. So. The last time we did a show that wasn’t at a you know, pop up venue hip was 1/3 of the budget just went to the rent.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. So that I mean, before this, the the store friends and similar spaces open. It’s like, the spaces were so expensive. Yeah. Well, that’s just it right. So
Eric Woolfe
there is that thing, that big power? What are we going to do independent theatres dining? Where did the audience come from? It has never actually been easier to put on a show. Because the rent is really cheap. You can run the box office for free. You never used to be able to do that. You used to have to print posters that people just tore down anyway, you now you don’t. You can mark it on social media for a fraction of what it costs in the olden days to print up 200 postcards that people just threw out. Or your actors were too lazy to hand out. It’s so easy now. Yeah, I don’t know what everybody’s whining about except that there’s so much of it.
Phil Rickaby
There’s a lot of it. And that might be I mean, there’s, I sort of I go there’s this fringe mentality though Fringe Festival mentality. Yeah. That sort of picks up when I was doing a show in Montreal, and Cameron Moore does this. You know, his fringe Metro fringe. Here’s like, it’s like fringe brochure one on one. Yeah, it’s a great little thing that she does. And one of the things she says there’s audience enough for everyone. And I still believe that but I also believe that we we have a tendency in indie theatre to to hold on to our audience is my audience. I’m keeping it here very safe, and you can’t have it, you can’t look at it. And if we get sort of like, pull those together, like because your audience is my audience, is there already? Well, yeah, sure. There are people who want to see theatre.
Eric Woolfe
Sure, but honestly, I don’t know my audience is. I mean, I think there’s a there’s a, we’ve got a nice little Venn diagram, but actually a chunk, I’m reasonably positive. Like a significant chunk of my audience doesn’t care about that production of American Buffalo that they just saw this ad right. 10 years ago for this horror puppet thing. And they went there’s such a thing of a horror puppet puppet thing. Let’s go to that. Oh, my God, he made a potato float right in front of my face. Let’s go see that again. And I don’t know that they’re the people who like I mean, some of them are right, like something Oh, you know, yeah, a barber finger wrote Asher, it’s always so great to see you. But I like the guy with the tattooed neck. Yeah, who comes in and like,
where’s duck whether gloom is he in this show? Like I don’t think I love that guy.
I love him. I don’t think he cares about your production of Glass Menagerie. Does maybe he does but that’s maybe he’s hungry
Phil Rickaby
for something that’s not those classics. Like maybe he’s Yeah, maybe he’s theatre brouhaha type person. He doesn’t know it yet. Because it doesn’t know who the fuck they are. Yeah, well, fair enough. Yeah, fair enough.
Eric Woolfe
So if you want us to put your flyer on your seat, we’ll do that because it’s not a as you say it isn’t keeping my audience from noticing your show doesn’t actually help anybody you know, it
Phil Rickaby
helps it helps nobody
Eric Woolfe
but I don’t I don’t I think that it’s like the it’s so easy. In this day and age no matter what kind of entertainment you’re interested in to find exactly what you want to see when you want to see it. Yeah, that that you can’t I think you can no longer programme Oh, this is this is we’ve got everybody’s gonna want to come see this because the quality is so good. The quality people don’t just come to see some I think that’s good. And even though like, if you can, you can, you
can watch any movie that’s ever been made ever. Yeah. On your phone without leaving your bed.
Yeah. So you if you want someone to get out of their bed to come see your thing, it’s not just enough that it has to be good. It has to be good. And it has to be something that they didn’t think to Google.
Phil Rickaby
Something that they didn’t expect. A lot of times and I expected quality. I mean, you know, the brimstone McCready, there was a lot to that, that I didn’t expect. Yeah. And, I mean, I didn’t know how that comes together. But it was, you know, really. Like, it was a night of something that I couldn’t get anywhere else.
Eric Woolfe
Well, okay, what what, what what parts of it were? I think, tell me more. Tell me more about my great work.
Phil Rickaby
So for me, it was. So it was one guy but it’s a cast of it’s a large cast. So you know, the puppets puppets are one thing. The it’s the combination for me of there’s a mood that happened in the room. When the curtain that curtain by the door closed? So starts there. Yep. And then you’ve got the magic and it’s up close magic. Even if you’re not one of the people who’s sitting Yeah, right. Yeah, it’s still because you’ve got the camera so you can see like the the card tricks and things like that in a way that you probably couldn’t. Yeah, so there was the some of the stuff that you did with with the camera and like telling your story. Where like pictures and some moving stuff that way? Yeah, it’s just like the the experience of all of that together and live in a room, which has a dynamic a dynamism. That doesn’t really happen. Because I’m passive here when I’m watching a film. Yeah. When I’m in the room. Was somebody
Eric Woolfe
more active? Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. The thing, too, I mean about that show is that we don’t that feeling and those things you described, don’t happen with every show, either, right? And so even even the people who see everything four or five times don’t necessarily know what to expect, they know they’re going to get puppets, they know it’s going to be spooky. They know it’s going to be funny. They don’t know what combination it’s going to be in. You know, we we sometimes the puppets are 15 feet tall. Sometimes they’re tiny little things that sit on the tabletop sometimes it takes sometimes we take up the whole room, sometimes it’s it all happens around a little table, sometimes both those things happen in one show. So we we try to keep those even the familiar elements as varied as we possibly can. I think a lot of the a lot of the the kind of theatre community to come cuz we don’t you most independent theatre is only seen by theatre people. Right? And that and our and Dylan Trowbridge, who directed the harrowing of brimstone McCready, it was he’s never seen any of our shows. And this was the first show verse he had directed and after the opening now, it might have been a few days into the run, he looked at me, he said, I’ve never seen such a
crowded theatre with no other theatre people in it. Yeah, don’t do
Phil Rickaby
anything in any theatre? I mean, I used to work in a couple of the big houses. Yeah. Sure, you know, mostly don’t see theatre?
Eric Woolfe
No, you don’t. But that’s a different I mean, because what theatre people can afford $300 to see.
Phil Rickaby
And then for indie theatre you are right now has a tendency to be like other people going to see shows was very, very unique to find an audience of primarily known people.
Eric Woolfe
Well, and I think part of that is because we sort of get dismissed as Oh, yeah, I hear those shows are great. They’re the kind of it can’t be our puppet thing. And there’s like, oh, it’s it’s probably like the, you know, that I guess it’s kind of like the Evil Dead show. Or, you know, like people sort of well, I mean, I don’t know, I know, it’s a mystery of need. I don’t know why we get I think a lot
Phil Rickaby
of times people like like to identify a thing. I think, well, you know, pop, it’s a horror, it’s art, whatever it is that that people are doing themselves. Yeah. They’re missing out. Yeah. But it is one of those those indie things. I mean, that is like the who goes to see the End theatre people who are an indie theatre. Yeah, but who are reviewers? People who are on the boards and yeah, who are maybe some of the public depending on Yeah, yeah, it’s funny. But then, I mean, there’s other shows that start Andy shass gallery for example, from surfline, which then went on went to salt pepper and did so well they I mean, they helped me scheduled it for two weeks and they held it over for another which was a tonne of a tonne of fun.
Eric Woolfe
Yeah, but yeah, that’s a weird that’s a weird new Canadian problem too that’s kind of developed since I don’t know Drowsy Chaperone and suddenly those the the fringe became the Fringe Festival became a
Phil Rickaby
feeder for like the big theatres.
Eric Woolfe
Well yeah when theatres used to theatres used to commission and develop work. And now they Oh, let’s go see here this thing at the store friend is actually good. Let’s see it and kick it upstairs.
Phil Rickaby
I kind of feel like that’s a relatively uniquely Toronto thing. In terms of, there’s a lot of because Toronto is pretty uniquely focused on itself where fringe is concerned.
Eric Woolfe
And yes, that’s true. Well, Toronto is uniquely focused on itself as far as theatre is concerned, is this true has always been that way. This
Phil Rickaby
is true. I do find the fringe has that tendency of being like, Oh, well, what we’re looking for is the next Drowsy Chaperone the next Kim’s convenience. Yeah. Next to kink in your hair. Yeah. And it’s a lot of the other Fringe Festivals. Like if I go to Winnipeg, or I go to Edmonton, they’re just looking for the next interesting thing they can see rather than the next thing that can be like, translated into something becomes a TV show.
Eric Woolfe
Yeah, well, and and an hour long, an hour long thing you can you can pay for out of your pocket change and the lint in the bottom of your coach should be different than this goes. Let’s this is this is this is our, our big main stage. Yeah, the two things shouldn’t feed into each other. Because what happens then is both audiences, both audiences get shortchanged, right? Because you’re always the people who want to see the people who want to pay $200 for a ticket, don’t get to see anything. Don’t get to see the kind of spectacle, the homegrown spectacle that they would get to see unless it’s something that’s toured in. And the people who want to see something that’s an hour long and kind of dingy. Don’t get don’t get. Don’t get that. You know, I mean, that said, Kim’s convenience chair is a good play
Phil Rickaby
and yeah, I mean, yes, it was,
Eric Woolfe
you know, but that’s always I’ve always found that a little bit. puzzling. I found that puzzling.
Phil Rickaby
I know there’s there’s some people who will who do the Western fringes who won’t come to Toronto because they’re told that people have told them they’re just not doing what you’re gonna do ally,
Eric Woolfe
Toronto now magazine once referred to me as the as fringe staple, Eric Wolff. And look, I’ve never done that.
I acted once in a fringe production in 1990. And that was but apart according to the front of magazine, I’m a fringe before it tells you something.
Phil Rickaby
You were you did do a summer.
Eric Woolfe
I did. We did. We did. I’ve done summer works twice, when eldritch theatre was first getting started. And we’ve done the fringe once. And the rest of the time we’ve, we’ve produced it outside of festivals. We can’t always trust what the media is gonna know. But I just find that an interesting. I mean, it tells you it, I find it an interesting symptom of a larger outlook on how theatre actually works is that well, we don’t do our stuff actually is even our small stuff is too big for a fringe thing, because you have to make the thing Yeah, for the potato to levitate. Yeah. And I can’t strike that in half an hour. No. So we don’t we don’t do that. Also, I like to pay my team as well as I possibly can. And I don’t they work. They’re all too good. And they work too hard to make $12 Yeah, right. So we don’t you just you just think it’s weird. So you’re saying it’s a fringe thing? Yeah. But it’s not there. Actually. It’s a different it’s, it’s weird, but it’s it’s not?
Phil Rickaby
Yeah, it’s not as it’s not part of that you because, yeah. Because you could never, like get that out of a space in an hour. No, it. I mean, you’re talking about the you know, having the, you know, wanting to pay I think a lot of people want to pay people go into it, and they don’t know how so. I mean, you’ve you mentioned like grants and things like that. Did you as somebody who you know, from a business point of view, did you start applying for grants like right near the beginning, or did you do any of the underpinning for this out of my pocket thing for a while
Eric Woolfe
It was pretty soon before. Before we like, went oh, well, like the first we did Billy weather gloom, it seems like so many so long ago. So Billy weather grilling was a summer Rick show that was the first thing I wrote me it was the first thing I produced. It was a big hit. I said, as I think everybody does when they have a big hit in a festivals. Well, I can do this on my own. On my own, and I crunched the numbers in my head. You can do this, if I just said no, I could do this. And so mounted it out of pocket and made the money back. But it was a nightmare. Yeah, it was. And then. And then we were ready to do a show called Grendel mouse, which we had a modest amount of grants for. But I ended up I got cast in The Lion King, which postponed Gretel us for a year, but in order to still have something to do, I wrote sites for the damned for summer works. And then because I’m slow to learn, let’s put it on her own. And then we put it on as an equity Co Op and everybody busted their ass and made $260. And it’s just like, Okay, well, we don’t do that anymore. Because that’s not you can’t do working. You can’t work with this calibre of artist and then say, sorry, sorry, enjoy your groceries today. Yeah, no. Right. So I think it’s, I think it’s a moral to, to, to write a show with a cast of 12 and know that you’re not going to be able to pay them at least, at least sort of like I’m not even, right. Like, it’s not even like I’m paying, like at least kind of try to pay them what they’d make doing. Something, right. Yeah. And if you can’t let them take home the TV used. Yeah. Otherwise, otherwise, I just think you’re kind of it’s not. It’s not fair.
It’s hard. Because I mean, it’s that whole, you know, you do it for the exposure, but you can’t like fight rosary with your exposure. Once you live in a world Yeah, after a certain
role. You can do it for your exposure when you’re 20. And it’s American Buffalo, but like, don’t, don’t I be live kids. I have a mortgage. I need new shoes. It’s got to, you’ve got to, you’ve got to figure out a way to do it. The people you’re hiring can be properly paid. Yeah. And if that’s not a, that’s probably not giant, full cast production of the aura sgia. I mean, I guess it’s okay to do that. If everybody knows that. They’re not going to score but, but I would much rather figure out okay, if we’re only going to get 30 people a night, and I want to work with you, and you and you and even you how can we what can we make? Were at 30 people a night and whatever modest money we can raise? Can everybody at least pay for their lives for the month for working here? Yeah. You know, I think that should just be, that should just be where you start as a producer. Yeah. And if you’re, if you’re
Don’t worry, everybody if we sell out, we’ll all make 1050. Yeah, don’t do that show. Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
Don’t do that show or? I don’t know. Yeah. No, it’s hard. It’s hard to be that that that person. It’s hard to be like the person who’s like trying to do with them. But then you also have to figure out that you got to pay people what they’re worth.
Eric Woolfe
Yeah, I mean, I guess you know what, I shouldn’t say don’t do that show. Because there’s like, I don’t want to that’s not the kind of thing I want to do. I want to be able to at least I don’t want to be embarrassed when when I write the check. Yeah, I might be you know, it’s never what I want to be paying people but I don’t want to I don’t want to be the guy going. Yeah, but yeah, you might get a door and nomination. Yeah,
Phil Rickaby
yeah. Yeah, it’s I mean, that statues too ugly to really?
Eric Woolfe
I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve never taken one home. Although, I believe I have been told that I have the most individual nominations without ever having won in the history of the award. Interesting, the biggest loser in the history of Well, yeah,
Phil Rickaby
that’s, you know, what on that note
Do you have a plan yet for what you’re going to be doing? Since you’re, you know, you’re now the the Halloween tradition.
Eric Woolfe
Okay, so the Halloween traditions so we’re we’re still figuring out there’s still negotiations are happening. For this Halloween, we’ll probably remount the harrowing of brimstone McCready for at least a short run. We’re working on a thing called Space Opera zero, which I mentioned, there is a new duck weather gloom play called The King in yellow pants that’s in the works. And there’s also at the really baby stages. This is you’re the first person to find out about this. Not even everybody in the team knows this. But at the really beginning stages, there’s a there’s an idea I have to adapt HG Wells, the War of the Worlds as it would be presented by a street soap pitchman in the 1890s Okay, so those are all the those are all the things that I think that’s kind of everything we’re, we’re tossing around right now. But you never know. Sometimes they wake up and I’m like, oh, no, it’s this and then it’s written and that’s what we do.
Phil Rickaby
Well then it’s like once you once you’ve committed to it, you start printing stuff, you gotta go with that.
Eric Woolfe
Yeah, that’s true once it’s on once it’s Yeah, Rue Morgue magazine one April wrote this awesome article and hosted poll corner. And then it didn’t get its grant. Or like, oh, but we have to it says in this magazine, and five people read the magazine and we have to do that
Phil Rickaby
so hard.
Eric Woolfe
Yeah. Well, we did it. We did it. We did it. Everybody kind of got paid. Everybody
Phil Rickaby
got paid. Nobody got paid. Yeah, getting paid is also Yeah, well,
Eric Woolfe
everybody got paid and everybody got paid a reasonable rate not at you know not exorbitant but everybody could everybody got to live for the two weeks we did have support corner.
Phil Rickaby
I like to thank you for Hey, thank
Eric Woolfe
you for having me. Thank you.