#64 – D.J. Sylvis
D.J. Sylvis has been involved in theatre for over 25 years as an actor, director, technician, playwright, and producer. He is a founding member and playwright-in-residence of Monkeyman Productions, Toronto’s geekiest theatre company. D.J. is inspired by monkeys, robots, cats, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bigfoot, that theme song from The Greatest American Hero, Arthur Kopit, 80s-era Justice League comics, various dystopias from his childhood(including Bible School), Lego spacemen, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (just the hosting segments), potato chips, Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, yellowed sci-fi paperbacks, friends, enemies, strangers in the night… and all things strange and wonderful in this world.
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Transcript
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Phil Rickaby
Welcome to Episode 65 of Stageworthy. I’m your host Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast featuring conversations in Canadian theatre. On Stageworthy. I sit down with actors, directors, playwrights and more and talk to them about their life in the theatre. 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 comment or rating. If you want to drop me a line. You can find Stageworthy on Facebook and Twitter at Stageworthy pod. And you can find the website at Stageworthy podcast.com.
My guest is actor director and playwright DJ Silvis. DJ is one of the founding members of Toronto’s geekiest Theatre Company, monkey Man Productions and its playwright in residence.
So DJ I guess the place that I want to start it with with you is, when did you start
with theatre not necessarily writing or like what was your introduction to theatre?
D.J. Sylvis
It probably would have been, and
I didn’t think of it as Theatre for a long time, I was raised in a really conservative religious atmosphere, I went to a Christian school. All of my like social activities were through church, and like, literally didn’t know the rest of the world was out there. It was that sort of childhood. So what I knew was like church performances, I do like skits and like musicals for Christmas and things like that. And I always did well in those and I always had a pretty good singing voice. And so I’d always get into choir and all those things. So it wasn’t until I switched back public school, which would have been, well, I switch back and forth a few times, but my senior year, I really sort of had started to rebel. And I was like, I’m, my parents had divorced, like a year before that. And so it was kind of like, I am going to experience public school system before I like, try to strike out on my own. And that was when I sort of realised that theatre was a separate thing, and certainly something I wanted to get involved in. I was I wasn’t certain
Phil Rickaby
Do you remember what it was like? Theatre was only you wanted to get involved in? Did you? When did you get a sense of that? Was there something going on at school that you heard about? Or?
D.J. Sylvis
Well, I think it would have been it would have started through choir because in choir, of course, we did show tunes. And then they had a like, sort of show choir thing, but I wasn’t a great dancer, so I wasn’t gonna do that. And in fact, my first real show as such was our senior live musical my senior year was little Abner and I played Marian Sam which is one of the supporting leads and was such as in fact, speaking of dance, he was such a terrible dancer that he has Marian Sam has one huge song like at the at the wedding for Abner and whatever her name is Ellie Mae or whatever, but not even just whatever the other thing but anyway so the big wedding and they started me on the centre because my big song they started me on the centre like doing all the same dances everyone else they slowly move me further and further to the side until I was standing like far stage left was singing and he was everyone else was dance during the song as well. Now over the over the course of rehearsals are like they’re like DJ, could you just move a little further over and just like the open
Phil Rickaby
in terms of after that, so that was like a taste of what you wanted to do.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah. And actually, I decided just solely based on that. And based on my acting teacher, Bill Kennedy, being like one of my favourite professors, one of my favourite professors, high school teachers, that I applied for university as an acting major, having done virtually nothing.
Phil Rickaby
You know, some schools really want that.
D.J. Sylvis
That’s true. And this was like a very small state school in western Pennsylvania Clarion University. And I started out as an acting major, I auditioned I was accepted into the programme I auditioned with this is this is like, like the kind of person you are as a freshman. I auditioned with Cyrano de Bergerac and Macbeth you know not not you know, taking on anything overly grand. So, but but I got into the programme and I did okay for a while and then again Dan started to kill me. You have to pass pass dance one and dance to to be an acting major. I worked my ass off every day dance one and barely, barely squeaked by, and I was like, There’s no way I’m passing the next class.
Phil Rickaby
It’s funny. I mean, I know a lot of schools, they are, in their minds, like we’re preparing you to do as much as possible in the theatre. And that means musical theatre, you know, you can do straight theatre, but we want to make sure that you’re ready for musical theatre, which is we’re going to try to teach you to dance but to hinge like, passing on dance, because not ever, I mean, I don’t dance that well. And if my becoming an actor had hinged on my ability to dance, I would, I would certainly be doing anything.
D.J. Sylvis
But But I think it turned out to be a good thing. Because I mean, and I acted a lot after that I switched majors a few times in law, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in General Studies, which tells you about how far I sort of wanted to feel. But found out pretty quickly in university after that, that I like to write I mean, I’d always like to write, like, play and then poems and short stories and stuff, all my life pretty much, but then sort of started to apply that to theatre and had a few things produced as a citizen undergrad. And but then wound up again, it’s like, middle of nowhere in western Pennsylvania, I got married right out of I took a year of grad school didn’t really like it that much. Got married, my wife, my first wife was a middle school English teacher. And so we wound up moving around a lot for her to have worked. And I was in little towns where there was barely community theatre, much rice, any sort of professional work. So I acted a lot. I did a lot of musicals, I did practically everything Gilbert and Sullivan have ever written. Well, I did the Wizard of Oz. But it wasn’t until I actually moved up here. Moved to when I got married, the second time moved to Canada, and then eventually Toronto, that I started, sort of, like, producing things myself and writing things for the company and all that
Phil Rickaby
when when you were first starting to write for theatre is there? Because I know for me, I don’t remember i i find it hard to remember when I started writing for theatre. But I know that once I started, that’s where my brain went. And so I’m almost probably like, I have find it difficult to write. Not theatre. Do you? Do you remember when you started to realise like certain started to want to write for theatre or when that became a thing for you?
D.J. Sylvis
I still have the first thing I wrote for theatre. I still have I saw the flight the finals going back music again. It started at university. My first play and the like, it’s kind of ironic considering the places mother it’s monkey man is gone since my first play was a 10 minute play about Godzilla and I haven’t been damaged.
Phil Rickaby
Okay, well, okay, so I have to have wasn’t surprised by the Godzilla. Little surprise by the I haven’t pentameter. Just
D.J. Sylvis
just terrible. I mean, everything. Everything I wrote in university is terrible. That was just starting at the good use of
Phil Rickaby
everybody’s first place. You’re terrible at how everybody’s like everybody’s first draft or usually, I don’t mind. For sure. You know? When you when you moved to to Toronto, Canada, and you started thinking about producing your own stuff was that? Did they were you trying to go the route of like trying to get other theatres to do yourself? Or did you immediately know that you wanted to do this stuff yourself?
D.J. Sylvis
No, I tried to do it that way. Again, like I a lot of my experience was like in very small towns and very, I didn’t really know how you went about. I had written plays, I’d had a play produced in Pittsburgh actually played line called a night at the world. My friends, Mike from university hadn’t started his own little company down in Pittsburgh, and he produced it. And so we had done that. But I didn’t know how you worked as a playwright beyond that. So I moved up here and I moved to Toronto, I knew there were theatres, I started sending out I’m sure it was like literally the first drafts of Godzilla on Sundays, which was like my first like, big piece of work, and send it to like, of course, like shooting for the tops. And it’s like factory instead, it’s tear gone and never heard a word back from them. Because why? Why would they? Yeah,
Phil Rickaby
I mean, generally. I mean, I definitely want to talk a little later about pop culture and geek culture in theatre, because I know that’s something that that monkey man has done that that’s sort of where your brain goes as far as a lot of playwriting goes. But, you know, I mean, Godzilla factory terragon kind of kind of fair. No, but of course, I mean, you do. You write a play you send it out, you know, let’s do how long between writing Godzilla on Sundays to doing that at the New Ideas Festival.
D.J. Sylvis
I think it was probably I’m trying to think back now. Because God that would have been, I’m trying to think of when I first moved because I moved to Canada in 2003. moved to Toronto in 2004. So it was probably 2004 2005 That I was first writing it and then you it would have been 2007 When new eyes did new ideas that didn’t we started the company in 2008, I guess would have been spring in 2008 than the new ideas.
Phil Rickaby
So the like that show that that that New Ideas Festival that that particular play, formative thing for for monkey Man Productions. Is that Is that Is that where you met Marty?
D.J. Sylvis
The court I knew I knew Marty a little bit from NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. But only as like this is a person I’ve seen across the room. We had never really talked or hung out or anything. But then I did get Godzilla into new ideas. And he was one of the director candidates. And we did the least recognise each other enough from that. And he had like read the script because you couldn’t read the scripts beforehand. And he had liked it. And we chatted and we clicked and no one else there was really no one else there that either of us were that interested in working with was there
Phil Rickaby
did you find when people were reading it? Like Were there other people who were interested in directing it? Or was it? I mean, new ideas is like this festival had the alumni Theatre, which is, you know, a great place for playwrights to get their stuff done for the first time. Oh, yeah. It’s
D.J. Sylvis
a wonderful thing and wonderful thing.
Phil Rickaby
Probably the Godzilla thing is not something that a lot of the people there were particularly familiar with
D.J. Sylvis
at the time. And I don’t think like I don’t want to like pop up my own ego and say and say that and say that, like we’ve sort of introduced gig theatre to Toronto, where we I don’t think that’s true. But I feel like we were part of the crest of that wave. And I don’t think that anyone was doing plays like that at that point. I
Phil Rickaby
don’t think that there. I still have to say that. I don’t think there are people who are doing it regularly, there might be an occasional single play that comes up usually at fringe or something like that. We’re like, well, we’re in Hearthstone. And it’s something like that it may be sex T rex is sort of like an example of like taking like some some really nice geek tropes and putting them on the stage. But
D.J. Sylvis
yeah, they do a lot of good stuff like bad dog.
Phil Rickaby
But I don’t think anybody has really, I think there’s anybody else who’s done on a regular basis, straight up plays that are of the kind of stuff that you’ve written, which are specifically plays that deal with either things in pop culture, or people who are who are basically nerds or, which is very, I mean, I think it’s unusual. In a good way, just to put that.
D.J. Sylvis
Well, I would hope so like you’ve done I’ve done a few times, I’ve all done other things. But I do
Phil Rickaby
think that it’s that nerd culture is something that that I mean, it’s portrayed us, we see it in books, and we see it on TV, and we see it in movies, but I don’t think it finds its way on the stage very often. And I wonder if you in plays pipe in if you think that I full of shit or if you agree with it’s theatre often thinks of itself as too important to deal with these sorts of things. And then it wants to deal with big themes, rather than people who like movies and books and TV and comic books.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, I think that’s fair. And I think that it kind of ties to into, I know that you’ve read Jordan Daniels book on theory, the unimpressive you’re talking about it. I’m sort of back and forth before that, the idea of like the climate great play. And I think that there’s an idea that even like contemporary playwrights should be trying to write the great play of this time. And because I didn’t sort of like, make my bones in that kind of culture. And I was more so didn’t as a kid and more so than like, comic books and pulp novels and stuff, that I just want to tell the story and the stories that come out of my head.
Phil Rickaby
It’s interesting, because to you know, to talk about the the Jordan Tannehill thing, there are parts of that book that I find myself nodding like the wellmade play, and everything resolved ends like that. I’m nodding my head a lot to that. The stuff that where it almost seems like he’s like talking about, like, I’m with him, and that book until he’s talking about how awesome he is. And then well, now you can stop. But most of what he’s talking about is I think, I think he’s right, about the way that that fear has been created here. And it’s interesting because monkey man, I mean, didn’t create plays in that way, almost, in in some ways. I mean, like, indeed theatre like as India’s, you can get like, how do we how do we get this on a stage as cheaply as possible? And you know what? I mean, for sure, for sure. In terms of you guys, when you came together, you sort of, did you have a vision for what you want McMahon to be? Or was it just like, let’s be nerdy and be proud of it on Theatre in theatre?
D.J. Sylvis
I think it was just and we can sort of loop back around to that original production of Godzilla on Sundays by talking about this, that I had met Marty. And he decided we wanted to do it we the original draft of Godzilla on Sundays, and the version that we did later on to produce ourselves is like an hour and a half, we had a 45 minute slot at new ideas. And we decided that instead of trying to tell half the story, we would condense the entire plate into 45 minutes. So that was fun. But we managed it. And so Marty was like, Well, I know these two actors I used to work with you do stuff with him at Ryerson when he was there. That was Brad row and Tom tin, not too messy. And so we went through that production, and it was awesome for us. I mean, I think they want new ideas like this well enough day, like, kept doing my plays after that. Yeah, but didn’t quite know what to do with us. But afterwards, we had such a good time that really, we formed the company, because we were like, none of us are having experiences like this in theatre. And let’s keep doing that.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. Yeah. In terms of when you’re condensing this 90 minute play for department and to be honest, I don’t I think that new ideas, they almost never want to do a play that long. Oh, yeah. Was it hard to convince them to do 45 minutes? Or were they like,
D.J. Sylvis
Well, no, that was the slot they gave me. Okay. I was, I didn’t know a lot about the festival before. I didn’t know a lot about the company. But I just again, I was submitting to anything that I thought it might fit into. And they did say like in the call if they would do like pieces of larger plays. So I think the difficult part was, again, trying to talk them afterwards and Tuesday, saying that we thought the better idea was to give the audience the full story, even if we sort of had to do it at speed. So,
Phil Rickaby
yeah, I mean, yeah, because they I know, they don’t, they tend not to like to read along, so they can fit more into a night if it’s shorter stuff. But I mean, they’ve, they’ve done, you know, they’ve done a bunch of stuff that they’ve done. It’s really amazing.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah. And I mean, they’ve changed that all since then. Because in part was the same thing, in part was like, I mean, I only had I only had the first act at that point, but it was 45 minutes, and they said that was the longest slot the gay if they don’t do that anymore. No, I think the longest slot now is 15 minutes.
Phil Rickaby
I think it’s 15 to 20. I think the last time I did it, it was like, I think we were going to 25 minutes and then kept being like it’s got to be 20 minutes, guys. It’s got to be 20 minutes, guys, but they let us go 25. But yeah, that was like as far as as they push us, or they’d let us push out of that play. That was the first truly monkey man production. What was the first thing that you guys did when it was under the banner of monkey Man Productions?
D.J. Sylvis
I think it probably would have been the first monkey sci fi horror theatre because we our first production was we did a CO production with another company. I’m blanking on their name now. But it was called theatre the obsessed and it was like we did three short pieces of mine that were all kind of thrown together a little bit. And they did a one person 45 minute piece about some alien abduction story. And it was kind of kind of cool. And so it kind of fit in with our like, sort of theme too. But after that, I think it was the next next show after that was on monkey sci fi or theatre, which was the second version, the original version of final flight of the Phoenix had been in our first production but the but the but the better, like sort of improved version of final flight of Phoenix, which was sort of my take off on Star Trek. And deadman switch party, which is our zombie apocalypse,
Phil Rickaby
right. In terms of like, start was like a double bill. Yeah. And do you remember? At what point did you write these pieces? Oh, cuz you wrote you wrote final Final Fantasy. He did that with this sort of like, double bill with a triple bill. When you were thinking about doing that again? Have you already written denman’s party? Or were you? Was that something that you were like? I need to write something for a second piece.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, I think that men’s party was new. I think dead men’s party came out of the idea that we one of the best things and like some of our core members, like Brad’s sort of drifted away a little bit and Tim’s sort of had to focus more on work in the past few years. But in those like those first years, we would go and we would have company meetings that were literally just us sitting there for two hours laughing our asses off making like inside jokes that would never work. Like just goofing off. One lot of ideas and stuff. And so dance party was sort of the idea that we would just do that on stage. It was just written for, like all four of us to act together. Because like I again, like never planned on acting again. Right? Yeah. But it was just for the chance of us for us to be like big goofballs on stage together. And deciding that, hey, if we have fun with that, maybe people will have fun watching it.
Phil Rickaby
And they seem to Yeah, I
D.J. Sylvis
think I think it
Phil Rickaby
asked you about your your writing, like, can you if you if you have a process for writing? Can you just what do you have a process for writing? Are you one of those, like, I sit down, and I write and then I fix? Could I, that’s how I write I read, I just sit down, I’m like, I’m gonna start writing and I’ll fix it later.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, but you’re a lot better than I actually feel like, you’re you’re a lot better at this point at like, the practice than I am, as far as you actually make yourself write regularly. And you’re pretty good about, like reading every day or every few days. Whereas I have hold months at a time or several months that will go by where I just can’t push myself to doing the day job is too much. Everything else is just sort of getting on me. But at the same time, it’s still building and building until you just can’t help it do it. And I’m sort of at that point right now. The and we can talk later about like what our current project is, if you want to, but the current project we’re supposed to be working on. I had a meeting with, with Marty and with Lisa last fall and said, Okay, I’m gonna have to have a draft for you by the end of January. And then the election happened. Yes. And the world fell apart. Yeah. And I mean, one of the things is just sort of like, and I think all like all artists everywhere doing this right now, just sort of questioning what you create. In the aftermath of that,
Phil Rickaby
I have to say, you know, I feel that way. It’s like, you know, I started, I started with something. And occasionally the worse it gets, the more I’m like, Is this enough? Is this enough? Do I have to like, I feel like I need to be like writing something more, because angrier? Well, no, I don’t need to be I need to take that anger and putting it on paper.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, because we mostly do like kind of silly stuff. And it’s got a heart. And it’s got important stuff in it. But it’s fairly, like fairly light and fairly silly. And so and that certainly the project that I pitched was going to be like that. And now it’s just do I have the right to sort of take the time for that? Do I have the right to I’ll be at least right now. Yeah. When things are so bad things literally. Like I feel like I can’t like go to bed. Like I can’t really go to Marshalls and stuff. But I like feel like I have to give every spare dollar to places like I have to like be like following the news and reading my MP every day and stuff like that. How do I like switch tracks from that to writing? Like a silly little like my Ripley’s Believe It or Not take off. It’s kind of what I’m playing with. Right now. It’s hard
Phil Rickaby
to figure that, like, it’s hard to do that like to have this sustained. I didn’t want to, I feel like I’m somewhere between sustained anger and sustained to the morning, or something. Somewhere in the middle of that. And I find that occasionally. The way that I look at Facebook now, or on social media is just like, I used to enjoy it. And now I feel like I have to to keep on. I need to know what’s going oh, yeah, but more in terms of like, just almost horror of what’s going on in the world.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah. So yeah. So I mean, it’s just like, how do you do your do your work, I mean, do your creative work after that. And especially knowing that, and there are people who write tremendous political plays, and God loved them. And it’s amazing, that’s never going to be my thing. So despite the fact that I would love to be able to, like, use my talent, and sir and immediately switch tracks to being able to go, that’s not what I’m good at. And so I have to find ways to sort of take the things I am good at, and maybe make them more aware and make them a little more awake.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. You know, one of the things that you said earlier about how you know, I’m making, I’m doing more and making, you know, my practice is, is maybe more advanced than yours, but I’m gonna I’m gonna come clean. And say there’s times when I sit with a notebook, and you know, I have my phone, so maybe I look a little more on face. Oh, yeah, for sure. But one of the things I do do is, there are nights of the week where I go, and I write, I leave work. So looking for the right place, because you need to sort of like if you don’t have an office at home, which I don’t my office living room, you need to like a place where you feel like you can sit for a while and right and there’s not too much going on. You feel like it feeds you and I’m still trying to find the right place but I sit for two hours with my notebook or whatever it is that I’m reading this week. And I sit and and there are two hours there with me in this notebook. Yeah. So I do something. But you know, there are nights that I’m like, I don’t want to fucking go home and I want to fire up my Xbox and I want to shoot things. Yeah. But I there the nights that I know that I’m writing, and that’s one of the things that I’ve found has improved my, my writing chances, like my ability to write stuff is just by setting aside the time that’s like non negotiable. Yeah. And I think that, you know, maybe for some of that time, like an hour of that, that time, maybe I’m staring at my notebook, to thinking about all the political things, but after a while, I think it goes away. And I think we do have a right to, and a need to write lame stuff like we there’s got to come a time people need a break. Yeah, you know, it’s like, when bad things happen, we can rage for a little while. But we do need a break from rage. And the stuff that you’re that you write and stuff that I tend to write, because I’m not a huge, I don’t write overly political stuff. I never have. That’s not where my head goes, I want to write lighter stuff than that. I mean, some of its serious, but I like to like to write some stuff. And I don’t know that that if that’s not where we are comfortable writing, I don’t think we should force ourselves to do that. You mentioned that other projects that that you sort of like, is there anything you could tell us about next month, because monkey man had, like you guys had a production that you were going to do and due to an actor having to leave you couldn’t continue with?
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, this would have been fall of 2015, we were getting ready to do and it still breaks my heart a little to talk about it. Because I think it’s one of the it’s still one of the best things I’ve written a play of mine called the beast from Planet X, which was sort of a mash up of sort of a straight office play and 50 sci fi. And it was sort of exploring how the culture of fear has changed a lot of the like old cheesy sci fi movies, Forbidden Planet, things like that. But I was drawing from our board about the things that America was afraid of it that, yes, the unknown, nuclear energy, and all sorts of things like that. And so it was sort of contrasting that with things we’re afraid of now, which have changed quite a bit. And a lot of it are usually more internalised we’re afraid of people on our doorstep, we’re on a flight afraid of what might face us in the unknown. So it was something that was sort of I felt like it was a big is going to be a big step for us. And we had put a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of energy into it. And one of our main actors had a death in the family had to leave the country to deal with it. And obviously, you can’t feel like you can’t feel bad about that are there so you can’t fault them. But it was someone who was impossible to replace in time. And we had serious talks about it and decided that there was nothing we could do, we had to halt the production. It was, in particular, the character was, had been written in this was something that Marty had brought to it. And one of the coolest things from our collaboration on the piece was making this character non binary. And so we had gone out of her way to like we’re writing our first non binary character, we don’t want to cast
Phil Rickaby
you don’t want to cast somebody you want to cause like, sis male,
D.J. Sylvis
exactly, to play that part. And so we had found an amazing, non binary answer to play that part. And they had to cut out and we had to pull our hair out to find like someone for that otherwise it was we’re never gonna be able to recapture that time. So we pulled out, unfortunately, we couldn’t pull out of our rental contract. And that was that’s painful $3,000 down the drain. We tried to do like a series of readings to sort of just fill the space. And some of those were fun. I actually, for one of them, I rewrote on Godzilla gender swap, okay, which was kind of fun without without changing the gender of the like spouse that sort of the point of contention. So that was kind of fun. And while there were some other things we had a reading of one of cats, cat Sandler’s pieces and did a similar thing, gender swapped the characters and that was kind of fun, but absolutely no money out of it. In fact, we unfortunately lost more money for the friend will produce it that can
Phil Rickaby
that can really put the kibosh on on stop. Yeah, so
D.J. Sylvis
we sat down after that and said, it’s not even just the money. I mean, okay, we’re down to a fourth of our like operating budget, but just nobody could face trying to like moved from that into creating something new a few months later. So we decided we were going to take 2016 and just go on hiatus
Phil Rickaby
and did after taking a break because I know that I think it won’t Went there might have been some talk about doing the banana, whatever it was the whatever it was called after I think it was a banana Festival at one time. And then it was the
D.J. Sylvis
now you’ve got me, you’ve got me. But yeah, we were getting we but yeah, we were getting ready. We already had the call for scripts out for our Spring Festival, but and we had about like 150 200 submissions and I had to go back and email each of them and say sorry, we’re not producing Theatre in 2016. And we’re not sure how we’re going to come back. So
Phil Rickaby
I after Rebbes, did you guys take a break from like each other in 2016? And did you? Did you were you meeting to talk to behind? Fair
D.J. Sylvis
in that, like I saw Marty a few times. And I saw at least a few times. But we didn’t actually get together until mid fall to sit down as monkey man and start talking about what if anything, we were going to take bring back. And actually our first meeting was just that just sitting down and saying, do we want to come back again? Can we come back?
Phil Rickaby
I take it since you’re talking about a project that you’re writing for monkey meant that the answer to that ultimately, yes,
D.J. Sylvis
it is. But we’re talking about coming back in very small and very tentative ways. One of the things that sort of came up out of that is that none of us are sure that we want to produce theatre right now. And so we’re talking about a radio play idea. And that’s what I’m like cheesing around right now. And it took a while because I had to like I don’t know if this happens for you. But for me, any idea that I come up with arrives with its own format arrives with what what it’s going to be it’s either an idea that can be a poem, it’s an idea that can be a short story. It’s an idea that can be a play. So I couldn’t just take one of my In fact, we talked about whether or not we could adopt planning next into a radio play, and eventually decided it wouldn’t really work as well. Because a lot of what made the play work was transitions back and forth between worlds. And so I had to, like sit down and like Toy through ideas and like, give my brain a tiny room and just sort of try to come up with a radioplayer idea.
Phil Rickaby
Did you did you find that? Because I tend to be I mean, although I you know, I write a lot of dialogue that I tend to be visual. So the idea of, of writing. And, you know, now that I’m saying I think, I don’t know if I’m right, I always hear people say radio is a visual medium, you know. But again, you can’t just like, say, you can’t have something that relies on people seeing what’s going on, you know, did you find that? Do? Are you finding that a challenge to write with?
D.J. Sylvis
I think it’s one of the things that is making it a little more difficult to get into. Just sort of allowing my my brain to switch tracks that way, because it is like I mean, my plays are obviously like dialogue is really important, as well. But yeah, you very much you think not that, not that I really state directions, particularly since Marty always ignores them. But But I mean, you do you think about people up there, and you think about what they’re going to do and how they’re going to look up the moving back and forth. I’m there. And yeah, coming up with radio play. And especially because we started talking about the way we’re gonna we would do it too. And it’s important that I like when I look at scripts for radio plays, and I’ve looked at like YouTube videos about like, how to do it and stuff. They talk about like doing it full force, like writing in the, the like sound effects and everything. And I don’t want to like a big part of like collaborating with Lisa tech person on this is that she’s excited about like going in there and like deciding on sounds and putting stuff in there. So I’m still only really want to be writing the dialogue and leaving her space to like comp with the other stuff that she wants to do and letting her fill in. Like the gaps to make it visual for the audience or make it fill up feel fulfil rich for the audience. And so the way we’re talking about doing it is me just writing the scenes, almost like I would have for a play, taking them in and will like, boss bounce them around. We’ll talk about like revisions and things were that were interested in. And then Lisa will go back and start working on what you’re going to play with as far as sound. I’ll go back and clean up the dialogue. And then Marty of course will still be directing.
Phil Rickaby
You know, I mean, think about it. I mean, if you’ve learned anything from Marty, that you’ll read stage directions and they can be ignored. And lo on the other side of that once something is written down, I know they always say actors don’t read the stage directions but we always do. They always do. infer they always in fact what we’re doing and you know will always ask about them. Don’t pay any attention to this age directions. Um It is, do you? I mean, you were saying that, you know, with the election and everything, you’re feeling a little a little like you haven’t? You didn’t finish it by the end of January. Yeah. Are you feeling like, are you feeling depleted in terms of the story? Are you still,
D.J. Sylvis
I still, I guess what I’m trying to do is give myself permission to go back to that. Because then I sort of spent a while to being like, okay, how can I weave this other stuff into it. So it’s touching on deeper things and greater issues. And if that happened, that would be fine. But I kind of feel like I’m making it too hard on myself now, too. And so I’m just trying to get back in the headspace where I can let myself just play with the original idea and see what happens.
Phil Rickaby
Is there a specific Are you trying to do like a single sit like, single radio play of a specific length, or you’re thinking episodic, or
D.J. Sylvis
it’s something that like, we’re not committing ourselves to anything at this point. And we’re certainly not going to like go around saying this is the first episode and an ongoing scenario. But it’s something that could lend itself to it. It’s the basic idea without giving away too much, because Marty will like show up out of nowhere, and he with a two by fours, way too much. But the way I sort of pitched it to them is what if Robert Ripley were two middle aged lesbians and a pot bellied pig? Okay, so it’s sort of this like, ongoing, like, adventure story thing. For with like, sort of lens sort of inspired by I know, you know, the comic book Lumberjanes. And cartoon Gravity Falls, sort of inspired by these sort of like cartoonish adventure, cryptozoology kind of things, and sort of creating an episodic thing for that. And Marty, just in our initial discussions, Marty sort of added another layer into it, it’s kind of fun sort of grounding in the real world. And, like, there are a lot of places we could take it, if it sort of if it if it kicked off, but I think right now, we’re just sort of let’s try doing it once and seeing if it works, and if not, then, like, we haven’t committed ourselves to anything this year. Anyway.
Phil Rickaby
The I mean, just from a certain point of view, the giving yourself the permission to maybe do something later. You can once it’s finished, like once the drapery to decide on that, yeah, for sure, decide how long it’s going to be. I want to I want to actually jump back to two, we were talking earlier about your your early days in Pennsylvania, when you were at like a religious school and things like that. In terms of now, you know, I, I, you know, I went I didn’t go to like a Christian school. But when I was younger, my family was very fundamentalist. And you know, so we, you know, I can sort of relate I knew people who went to went to Christian school, and there is people who are way more fundamentalist than we were. And they were like, a superhero. Not superheroes, that satanic like, anything that was like pop culture we are might have somebody who had like, I don’t know, like highs that looked evil or something that satanic we can’t, we can’t look at that. You did? Did you? Were you? Did you find it difficult to get your hands on pop pop culture stuff? Did your family stay away from it? And if so, when did you start to discover it?
D.J. Sylvis
The one real blessing that I think I had was that my parents were like, fairly focused on their own lives and didn’t really pay much attention to what we were doing as kids, they were very much at the like, plops in from the television and go do their own thing and not pay attention to us. So we watched a lot of what we wanted to. Once I started like buying books on my own, they weren’t really paying attention to the books I bought or read at the time. And because we started like, going to library and stuff, my mom, always the best library, our kids. And I went through like the children’s section in about a year and then started taking out at all books. But yeah, so they weren’t like not paying a lot of attention. Where they did was if it was something they were buying for me. So I was really lagged behind on music. Like I didn’t get into popular music until I was like late high school when I started buying Christian rock or were they like a rock? No, they weren’t like I started buying myself Christian rock because that was the way the way that it like acceptable way in. But no, my mother was like big like Barry Manilow and Beach Boys and like all the like light stuff. And in fact, when I was in seventh grade, and this was one of the years that I switched back and forth to public school, we did in music class, we were doing this project in seventh seventh grade, where everybody had to do a presentation on their favourite bands and people going in there and you’re doing like Blue Oyster called and whatever else was like popular and I went to the beach was so that I’ll tell you about how popular
Phil Rickaby
I would tell you like an embarrassing story when I was a kid because I knew that popular music came on like small 40 fives. And so in my mind the little records that was the pocket music so I found and 45 at a garage sale, I didn’t even pay attention to what it was. I was like, this is small record that means it’s popular. Yeah, so I’m probably at school so there’s like, I think on like Friday afternoons we could put like music on and so I was like this is this is going to become popular. I’m gonna take this and put it on, which tells you how truly nerdy I was that I would think that this thing that I hadn’t just because it’s this Yeah, must mean that it’s like gonna be popular. So I put it on, it was like Dean Martin singing ain’t that a kick in the head? By the reaction of everybody in the room, I knew this was not what I thought it was going to be very quickly. Like, I was like, No, I think I remember where they went. But like, so you know, I can relate
D.J. Sylvis
to that. But it kind of took me in odd ways that I think did like wind up fueling the way that I create now. Certainly, Godzilla came from like, very literally, like spending Sunday afternoons sitting there watching old Godzilla movies on like, whatever the New York channel was that we got in at the time. And a lot of the sort of odd humour that I have is based on the fact that I used to go to like Goodwill and buy albums that I had no player. And so I had like Spike Lee and I’d stand Freeburg. Like, these were my comic influences as a child ever.
Phil Rickaby
Did you ever tried to sneak listening to or did you? Have you heard of Dr. Dr. Demento at the time, and
D.J. Sylvis
I didn’t know about him until later on, but obviously the kind of stuff he was doing. And in fact, it’s kind of a funny story later on. When I was sort of getting to the point where I was buying some, quote unquote, popular stuff. My mom was sort of very vetting very carefully. I bought, it was when weird Alan 3d came out. And I talked her into a stem there at the record store, begging her to let me buy it on cassette. And she would only let me buy it if I promised to tape over nature trail to hell. Because it had the word elbow. That’s all she knows about. And of course, I promise and of course, I never did, of course, of course. But again, like once something was in the house, she didn’t pay much attention to him. So
Phil Rickaby
were you were you a comic later, were you a sight your sci fi reader when I was
D.J. Sylvis
a big sci fi reader. I didn’t get into college. But while I was in college, it was much from when I was a little kid that I didn’t get back into them really until university when I was like buying stuff on my own. But yeah, so I find almost all the way like I would go to my favourite day of the year wasn’t a holiday, my favourite day of the year was when the library would have their big book sale. And by the end of the day, they would just want to clear out the tables. So you can give them like five bucks and full of garbage or like a shopping bag for books. And I would do that I would do that three or four times and I would be like waddling home of course.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. For me in school that was the the Scholastic Book Fair, like the other day, which is like, you know what book you’re gonna get, you get the magazine and you like agonise? Yeah, I can only have one. Did you ever, ever doubt bringing pop culture onto into theatre? Was there any ever a time when you were like, I don’t know if this is this counts because of the topic or do or did you just know that it was a thing that you wanted to do?
D.J. Sylvis
I think certainly, it first helps. Like when we had the company and I had Marty and Brad and Tim and we were just really instead of focusing on whether or not it was real theatre, we were like, Finally we’re having fun doing this thing. And, but certainly, it’s something I still agonise about because we’ve been doing this for Well, seven years because we took last year off. And our audiences still usually range around maybe 120 130 over the run of a show. And that’s not enough to that’s barely enough to keep from losing money every year.
Phil Rickaby
Have you thought I mean? Obviously, I mean, indie theatre, the the biggest barrier is, aside from money is advertising and getting the word out, which is literally like what like if you can’t advertise, you can’t get an audience. If you can’t feed if you can’t crack that nut. What do you do? And of course, all that stuff costs money. Have you guys ever thought about what? What like what? Consider what you might be missing to take it further? Or is there anything that like comes to mind when you think about that? Or is it just like, I don’t know what it is how we cracked that nut?
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, we’ve talked about a lot but I don’t think any of us really has been able to figure it out. I think we all feel like the quality of the shows we’re putting on is is like sufficient. And I mean, we keep trying to make it better, obviously but I feel like we’re doing good shows, I feel like we’re just not good at getting the word out there and I feel like our audience. We started out really deliberately trying to target a non theatre audience theatre audience because theatre audiences weren’t really interested in what we were doing. And we had them for a while, but it’s been really hard to attain that audience.
Phil Rickaby
I guess that that I mean, the non theatre audience is going to come for a specific thing. Yeah, right. They’re going to come when you’re doing something that sort of speaks to them right now. They’re not going to be your audience. There are fickle. There are fickle lover, they’re not.
D.J. Sylvis
They’re loving, so our regulars. But
Phil Rickaby
the thing about regular theatre theatre audiences is they tend to be people who, like they’re inclined to go to theatre. And so if you can, if you can, like give them some kind of timeline, it’s going to be interesting to them, they are going to come out, but finding there very few people who could who could target that non theatre audience keep them coming back. I mean, somebody like, you know, theatre, brouhaha cat Sandler in the game, they’re, they’re really good at that. They can almost do like, if you guys listening to do a class do like a course, that people can come to and learn from you because you are doing the Lord’s work.
D.J. Sylvis
But again, I feel like the audience they’re targeting and I just, I had sort of like been catching up on Stageworthy a little bit before I read, I listen to your conversation with Tom again. And he talks about very much like, they’re targeting that very, like Metro Metro audience. And I feel like that’s an audience that goes out and does things more in general, and is more likely to go like more or like, our target audience is more likely to stay home and like, watch Civil War,
Phil Rickaby
you know, the thing that the thing is that I wonder if, like, your target audience, because nerd shit is more popular than it has ever been. And I don’t know that that just to play devil’s advocate on that, because I think that maybe your audience is this need to know about it. Because if people go to see like, they’ll go to the movie theatre, to watch Star Wars to watch this, that to watch the Marvel movie that something tickles them if they can have an experience, if that’s something that they want, I think they would go. But it’s it’s that whole, like, how do you how do you reach
D.J. Sylvis
them? Yeah, and that’s, and that’s fair. And I mean, obviously, that’s like what we counted on for a long time. But I do feel like part of the problem is like, none of us are just really that great at promotion, something we tried to teach ourselves and never been good at. And then we sort of hit a point around year five or so where fatigue really, really sit in. I mean, we we’ve been doing. We did for seven years, we did to at least two sometimes three productions a year. That’s a lot. And, and it was it it wasn’t like we were trading off, it was usually the same people and wound up. We started sort of like bleeding members after a while real life got to a bunch of them. Yeah, and other projects, got to touch a bunch of them and wound up being the same core three or four people who were producing and directing and writing every show
Phil Rickaby
that is a lot. And especially when you’re out of your comfort zone, because you know what? Producing is one thing on its own, but then when you have to pile marketing on top of Yeah, like just when you’re thinking about okay, so I need money for any space and costumes, I need this new thing. Oh, and now you have to write a press release, and you have to talk to people and get the word out. That is not an easy thing. And I’m seeing more and more I’m understanding you know why people splurge for like, publicity personal person. Now that shit ain’t cheap on for so I don’t know how indie theatre is going to do it. But I don’t know, there’s there’s got to be a way. And if I knew I would tell you, we would we would laugh all the way to the with the next with with nerd Hamilton or whatever it is, then we’re gonna get we’re that we would create. Do you I mean, you’re sort of like, with monkey man, sort of putting your feet back into the water a little bit after your, your year of of a break? Do you feel like you guys are hungry to do something? Are you really sort of like you’re gonna do this this radio thing? And if that doesn’t work, you’re done. Or do you think that you that there is there this this thing that you guys do has a future?
D.J. Sylvis
I think that’s sort of where we’re struggling right now we’re struggling. It’s I mean, it’s not this not necessarily this particular project. But it’s the fact that we sat down and this was the only one that seems really viable moment. But just the fact that we’re not I don’t wanna say strong enough for not together All right now to reach out and try to pull other people in, you kind of have to have like, a good solid base and a solid idea of what you’re asking people to commit to to do. And we don’t really have the money to throw it things right now. So we have to start small. And I think we’re just sort of it was good to have a year off. And I tried a bunch of things that I hadn’t gotten to try before. I got to play around with interactive fiction, which is something I always wanted to do. I got to write some little pieces that were completely unlike anything that monkey man would ever produce, and send those out into the world. And you revisited
Phil Rickaby
it. Yeah, target which, which you’ve got to do.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah. Which again, was something that monkey man was never going to wind up producing. So
Phil Rickaby
we had I mean, I remember when I’m there was there was a time we were talking about it. Yeah, it didn’t quite fit with monkey man’s usual thing. Did you have you found creatively the taking? I mean, you’ve done all these things? Do you feel like after 2016 A little bit rejuvenated in in creatively? Or do you feel like not doing stuff has been?
D.J. Sylvis
I think I will when I could start? Like seriously. And it’s not just politically like I had some other stuff. I had some health struggles, and I almost got fired, which can be good. But, but, but like a lot of other things I was struggling with in the past couple months. But definitely, I feel like I feel like I can and I’m starting to lift my head again, I’m starting to think about things. But it was such a huge blow. And honestly, it still killed me. When I when we sat down and talked about like whether or not we were gonna start again. The one thing, one thing we had to start with was we can’t go back and do Planet X right now. We just can’t start with that we lost too much trying to do it last time, just try to rebuild from that point. And it just killed
Phil Rickaby
it also, I mean, I can see from a certain point of view, like, this is the thing that sort of like made you have to take the time off. Is this the thing to start again with, and if it demoralise you when it didn’t work out, then why would you want to face
D.J. Sylvis
it? So soon, because we put into it because, because like literally that year 2015, I went through probably five rewrites of it five major rewrites of it with Marty and we changed huge chunks of it. He came up with a lot of stuff for it, he helped with making the character non mind binary, which was a huge, like step forward. And something else that we had wanted to do. We’ve talked a lot about representation. We went through casting very deliberately making sure that we had a multicultural cast, because one of the things I said was okay, if we’re doing an office story, there’s no office I’ve ever been in the Toronto that’s all white people. Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And, but so we were pushing for all these things, and like taking all the steps, and we felt like we were also proud of what was coming together. And then to sort of be cut off at the knees, always
Phil Rickaby
put your put everything into the stuff. What do you do it? Right? I mean, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be doing it. Right. I mean, if you didn’t, even if your heart wasn’t in it, you wouldn’t be doing like, you wouldn’t be throwing money at that you’d be saving for a vacation or something.
D.J. Sylvis
But it felt like the big step forward for us in a lot of ways. And so it was hard to talk about starting again, and say, Okay, we’re starting again, from doing very small. We’re starting again, from doing the sort of thing that we could have done the first year,
Phil Rickaby
right? Well, I mean, the theatre landscape has changed in a certain way. In fact, in 2016, the theatre landscape changed hugely. I mean, we lost a number of independent spaces.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, that’s the thing now is that like it’s getting harder and harder to find space much less afford it? Yeah, absolutely.
Phil Rickaby
I mean, there’s still a little bit more than there was when your choices were Palmerston library and factory paths MRI or terror gone yeah. But I mean, just to lose these independent spaces is a blow it on its own. But I mean, that’s changed the landscape. And you know, it’s hard to hard to face it again sometime Yeah, I guess you know. It are there themes like as you start to, you know, bring your you know, lift your head up from you know, all of the and let’s face it right now, when we’re recording this this is it things are shit.
D.J. Sylvis
There it is worse every day. It is hard
Phil Rickaby
to like wake up in the morning and feel like I’m like this is a day to create a thing. Are there things that that you can that you’re finding that are as you’re lifting your head out of the the post election like it that are that are fueling you that are attracting you to to stories or are you still trying to find those?
D.J. Sylvis
I think the certainly there are things muse in like pop culture that are still inspiring me. I’m a huge fan of Steven Universe right now right now, which I know you’ve seen me like post about a million times and talk about, and I have a tattoo of for God’s sake like six months after I started watching the show, I got a tattoo based on it. But and one of the things I like most about that is that it manages to deal with some pretty weighty stuff, but it’s overwhelmingly positive. And even like when they introduce a character who seems evil or seems like antagonistic, that eventually there’s a chance that they can be redeemed. And I just feel like I’ve never really done this. I mean, you know, my work, it’s, it’s fun, it’s like dorky. But it’s there aren’t a whole lot of really like happy ending. Yeah. And one of the things that I wrote that I was promised of last last year, looking tarps, great and building part was pretty much already there, it was just cleaning up and making it and like polishing, it was a little 10 minute play called stars, which is just like to longest since and I very specifically said I didn’t want them to be like recognisably like male or female, just sort of these like a gender characters like talking on the phone from across the world. And just like having this like random little conversation looking up at the stars, and you eventually find out that, like they’re in love, and they haven’t met yet. And so it’s just about like, this little positive little thing about them building each other up and like bolstering each other through this having to be a part. And it’s nothing that I would have written like, even a year or two before that, because I just would have been able to felt some need at the end to sort of like, put in a twist or put in a well, you know, we’re probably never gonna meet or something like that. But that just feeling like, and it’s not that there’s anything wrong, no telling stories the other way. But I really feel like right now, I have to find ways to like, add to the positive energy in the world through my work. And so that’s why like, the radio play idea, if it works, is it’s not ever going to be a big weighty thing. But it’s about like, adventure and exploring and like these two characters being like, head over heels in love with each other. And
Phil Rickaby
I think I think we need that. I think that more, you know, as the weeks go on, and although people were angry, that’s hard to sustain. And you need a break from that now and then you need a stranger things to come along, to be to remind you that there’s awesome in the world occasionally, you
D.J. Sylvis
know, well, it’s like, and by the time this comes out, we’ll be okay to say this, I won’t be like spoiling it for anyone. Like I’m showing you a picture of another tattoo I’m getting this weekend, which is another movie tattoo. And it’s based on like lyrics from Assam at the very end, which is one of the two places in the movie, I always break down in tears every time since I was a kid every time. But the reason why that resonates so much is it’s probably gonna but it’s about like, it’s about creating, and it’s about like finding people that you work with. And like, enjoy working with and just making that your life. And that’s, I think the reason why we haven’t let go of monkey man yet is because I still I sit down with Marty and I sit down with Lisa and I sit down with Tim and we joke about things and we talk about the stuff we’ve done the stuff we might do in the future. And that becomes like that conversation becomes the most rejuvenating thing in my life at that point.
Phil Rickaby
Amazing. And that’s why it’s important for you and it’s why it’s important for them and it’s why it’s important for the rest of us. Yeah, I think. Well, DJ, think thank you so much for coming to this great conversation.
D.J. Sylvis
Thank you for inviting me