#68 – Alec Toller

Alec Toller is a playwright, actor, director, and Artistic Director of Circle Snake Productions. Circlesnake Productions uses collaborative creation to produce new work with a cinematic approach to storytelling. Circlesnake uses genres that are rarely put on stage to explore new approaches to theatre. Circlesnake grounds heightened theatricality through the understated realism of filmic performance. Circlesnake explores the intersection between theatre and film to find powerful new stories.

Circlesnake presents Slip, March 23 – April 2, at the Tarragon Workspace.

Slip follows Detective Lynne Barrett as she tries to piece together a mysterious death: a woman is found dead on the floor of an abandoned apartment with debris strewn everywhere, and a symbol carved into her arm. Her attempts to uncover the truth are disrupted by the overwhelming complexity of the case, and Lynne must untangle a mystery that escapes the simplicity of a single story. A play about crime, memory, and storytelling.

Slip is nominated for 3 My Entertainment World awards: Outstanding Production, Outstanding New Work, and Outstanding Actress – Alex Paxton-Beesley.

Alec Toller
Twitter: @alec_toller

Circlesnake Productions
www.circlesnake.com
Twitter: @circlesnake

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

Transcript

Transcript auto generated. 

Phil Rickaby
Welcome to Episode 69 of Stageworthy. I’m your host Phil Rickaby. You know, a number of years ago, I was at the Montreal friend with Keystone theatre. And on the first day that we were there the day before we did our tech at the Montreal fringe, we went to a seminar by solo performer Cameron Moore. And she was talking about how to promote your show at the fringe. She gave some great advice. But one thing that she said stood out for me, she said, there’s enough audience for everyone. And for me, that one sentence was a transformation, not just in the way that I look at Fringe promotion, but in the way I look at promoting Theatre in general. See, I believe that this concept, the idea that there is enough audience for everyone applies to all theatre, not just fringe, because I think the people who are inclined to see something that I’m producing, are likely to be inclined to see something that you’re producing. They just have to know about it. Sometimes in theatre, and especially in indie theatre, we’re a little precious with our audiences. It’s almost like, we treat our audience like their little birds. And if we open the cage that we keep them in, they’ll, they’ll fly away and never come back. But I think that’s completely wrong. I think that an audience who sees the work of one or the artist will be hungry for the work of other artists. And this doesn’t diminish the work of the first artist, it helps everyone grow. I have approached a lot of what I do theatrically with this, this phrase in mind, there’s audience enough for everyone. I’m always happy to talk about other people’s productions, even if I have my own in production. And I’m going to continue to do this. It’s one of the reasons I started Stageworthy Because I want to expose the work of many artists to to is as wide an audience as possible. There’s enough audience for everyone. And that’s my challenge to you this week. Share the work of another artist or company this week. Talk about someone whose work you’ve enjoyed. Want to tell me about someone’s work that I should see, I’d love to hear about it. Want to tell me that I’m completely wrong? I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’d love to hear that too. You can drop me a line at Facebook and Twitter on stageworthypod. And you can find a website called Stageworthy podcast.com. If you like the podcast, I hope you’ll consider leaving a comment or rating on iTunes or Google music or whatever podcast app you use. Comments help people find the show. My guest this week is Alec Toller. Alec is the director of circle snake productions slipped presented at Toronto’s Tarragon theatre workspace from March 23 to April 2.

Got the new show is called slip. Can you tell me a little bit about this not the first time the slip has been performed? This is like

Alec Toller
That’s right. This is a remap. We did it in January 2016 or February. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
So what what slip about

Alec Toller
slip is? It’s great. So I have to warn you. It’s a little tricky to talk about. Okay, because it’s a mystery.

Phil Rickaby
Okay. Okay, that does that does present some? What if you were doing the elevator pitch? Yeah, no. What would that be?

Alec Toller
I have that. Yeah. I just want to warn you that there will be some things I’ll be a little cagey about for sure. Absolutely. There is a there’s a twist, and it’s fun when it happens. I mean, it’s basically it starts out being sort of started being like a show that’s like CSI Crime Scene kind of thing. And procedural cop. Yeah, is procedural? Yeah. So we start with and then it ends up being a lot more about emotional internal experiences. Which I really like to do. So basically, the show is the audience comes in, and you sit on two sides of a corpse, and you’re in a crime scene. And detectives show up and they start to try and figure it out. But there’s too much it’s a really chaotic place. It’s there’s mess everywhere. There’s blood. It’s like broken glass just scrawled papers everywhere. totally chaotic. And so the detectors are trying to figure it out. But it’s it’s so complex that kind of escapes, finding one story to write a piece altogether. So as they go, it gets more and more complex to kind of find something that can make sense of it all. But as they go a sort of more President issue shows up. Okay. Yeah, sort of in deals with kind of mental health kind of stuff. So that kind of complicates things.

Phil Rickaby
So this is the remount is if somebody was to have seen slip before, yeah. As opposed to now, are there differences that they would that they would see? It’s all lasers?

Alec Toller
No. No, differences are that we did a good amount of rewriting. So I mean, it’s not, if you if you saw the show, it would be quite recognisable from the previous but we’ve tweaked it a lot. We fine tune it a bit. I just think it’s a it’s a much tighter script and a tighter show. So that to me is, it’s really nice to come back to show because I haven’t done a remount non. Like, this is comedic. Yeah. But it’s not like a sexy Rex show that I usually work on that is just pure comedy. Yeah. So this one, to sort of go back and dig in again. I feel like the actors have been finding lots of new material and new honesty in it. And I think that’s really, really exciting to bring and, and I should say that the original cast of five, one plumber Nunez couldn’t come back because you son, Secretary mainstage. But we did get an A call stamp to show up who actually has been on second. So you may say

Phil Rickaby
what was it like returning to the material? Did you? Did you were there things that didn’t work that you wanted to tweak? There’s just as it was performed? You, you you you saw things that could be improved? What was the impetus to revisit it?

Alec Toller
Well, certainly every time we do show this up, we want to change. And we’re pretty flexible, and pretty quick. So we do change most of those things as we go. And even sometimes during a run, we’ll make tweaks, nothing big, but we’re changes in line changes here and there. And this shows collaboratively created right, so Okay, so so it’s

Phil Rickaby
not it’s not like a single a single writer making choices. The cast is the whole everybody’s making choices. Yeah, more or

Alec Toller
less. I mean, I couldn’t fully articulate what the power structure is. But I mean, I’m directing them sort of head riding, but with Danny Padgett and Mikayla Dyck are my sort of core conspirators. And then who who did most of the three did most of the sitting down and writing. And then with the cast, though, we really did create the world together. So there is a lot of input from everybody. It just usually means one of the three of us vein McHale night, does this tell us the writing. But then, in rehearsal, we got the time has changed. So anyway, getting that was quite challenging with a mystery. Because we didn’t really know until we opened, if it makes sense, if it was a satisfying ending, if you know all those, like, if it was, you have to balance subtlety with clarity. Yeah. And that that’s quite out. Because usually, you just wanna make things really clear, I think. And this time, you actually want some opacity in it to like, trick your audience into, you know, have them engage in the fun of figuring it out. So that wasn’t, we didn’t know if it worked or not until we opened. And so to come back, yes, we can.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah. What was that, like? Opening that and not knowing if it worked?

Alec Toller
I feel like that’s how all my shows. Okay, I should say, we did three drafts of it before we started rehearsals. And so that rehearsal, like the show you saw in January would be like a fourth draft kind of show. It meant that, like our first draft is always a hot mess. Just because the first draft often is exactly it should be it’s just research really research in the guise of a draft. The second draft was like kind of close ish to what ended up being. And then the third draft actually wrote in on the plane to Costa Rica, I took all the changes, and I was like, I don’t want to do something vacations and then set it off. And I think by that point, I was like, Okay, this actually makes sense. Okay, like, it’s not hot nonsense. I know that much. But, and then I felt pretty confident that it would, there would be something is and I think, like, I wouldn’t, I don’t know, I guess I just trust myself now enough to know that I wouldn’t present something that was a total mess, right? So that would at least be pretty good. And they and I think, surpass that and getting people’s sure feedback. It’s just helpful to go okay, like because there’s some things that you know, you can tip the balance. I’m giving away what it is by one or two words, and we just have to be careful That’s something that’s hard to assess. So hearing that it was pretty effective overall, like, obviously we fix some things. And of course, but like, that was really that was something that wasn’t known. Sure.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah, I’ve had a couple of times with new shows when I was working with Keystone theatre. And we’ve everything we do in like a room we’re meant creatively creating. We don’t actually know like, funny to us. Yeah, right. Exactly. Or at least it wasn’t we started it. Yeah, at that point, you know, when you’re like, we’re not laughing anymore. Is it still funny?

Alec Toller
Well, that gets tricky. Yeah, we find that was secondary to because then you have to be wary, because you will then probably find a joke that’s funnier to you in the room, and you laugh abroad, and then you realise it’s actually a built on the original joke. And you can do that second joke, but you need the first order first joke in the show, at least to make the other one work. So yeah,

Phil Rickaby
I’ve had I’ve had many premieres of one of those backstage, like, just sort of gritting my teeth until I hear the first anything. Yeah.

Alec Toller
It’s funny with this show, it starts out pretty comedic. It’s kind of like they argue over points over who’s the better detective literally over a dead body. Like it’s, it’s sort of silly. But then as time goes on, as things go on, it gets more emotionally kind of rich. And if viewers, I think that’s what’s fun, if you’ve seen it before, or if you watch it more than once you actually see all the plants earlier on that that reveal what happens in the nice. That’s quite satisfying.

Phil Rickaby
That’s cool. What was the this this murder mystery, this? This, this idea there? Procedural? What Where did that come from? In terms of the the original idea?

Alec Toller
I’m so glad you asked. Because it started because we we, I think we’ve also, Mikayla has had the first conversation about it. And it was just I was just like, I hadn’t done my own play for a little while. Because I was working in film for bed. And I was like, I want to get back to the Fox Theatre in Toronto we’re seeing today was available. And we looked at the space and we booked it. And we were like, Let’s build a show for this space. And then we kind of brains brainstorm, like what could be there? And I had been there before for a reading or something. And have you been in the space? Or? No, I haven’t. Okay, so it’s, it’s real spooky. It’s on, off night on Agra off Bathurst. And it’s kind of like an industrial, old industrial sort of part of town, it actually did actually used to be a coffin factory. And we mentioned that in the show, but so you go in, and then to get into the space you go under, like this underpass thing, like built into the tunnel built into the building. And then you go around to this, like factory door. And you know, it’s an old warehouse, you go in and, and you have to buzz in often. And that’s just like, it’s, it’s super spooky. So when I first went in, I was like, Am I in the right? Place? Like, am I just gonna get mugged? Like, I was genuinely like, oh, I shouldn’t be here. And so we Mikayla were like, well, what would you find here? If you just walked in? And it wasn’t a theatre venue? What would be your and we’re like, there for sure would be a dead body. Absolutely. And we kind of came onto this thing about it being like an abandoned apartment, someone sort of squatting in it and kind of go from there. We brainstormed a dozen or so ideas. And then there was another. We wanted to support that. And then there was another issue, I guess, related to mental health is my roundabout way of talking about it, that we sort of had, that we thought would be really interesting to explore through a procedural form. You know, because that’s kind of what we tried to do. I think with most of our shows, we’ve tried to find a genre that people know, yeah, and then we try to add something else to it to not just to make it more interesting, but I feel like in our in our like, write up stop talking about like genre as a lens of looking at things. And generally donors have common topics that they look at. And so you kind of get the same perspective on these topics. But if you use a genre to look at a topic, you don’t usually look at it, then you get different perspectives on it. And I think that’s really cool. And

Phil Rickaby
what’s interesting is because, you know, usually when you would think about a police procedural and the police procedural would be dealing with a serious topic, it’d be like, I don’t know, a very special episode. It always comes across as kind of truthfully or Yeah, self important and never quite works. It’s interesting to take that into theatre. And I think,

Alec Toller
Well, what I find don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t work here.

Phil Rickaby
What I find intriguing about it is that there that in this particular instance, the whole procedural instead of like being that separation between you and your television, which is safe, is now you’re in a room with a dead body and the cops and you’re on either side. Yeah. out, which is which is a really interesting spot to put an audience for for this kind of thing. Totally.

Alec Toller
Yeah. Yeah, we were pretty deliberate on that. Yeah, we had thought about. I mean, well, I should say, it’s funny, because some of that is just from the confines of space. It I don’t personally, I don’t think the space worked well in a Premium Format. And you can fit more people. That’s sort of how we started it. And then from there, though, when you’re sitting on two sides, you know, and their chairs are basically right against the wall. So they’re in the room. Yeah, there’s a lot and the actors are kind of just doing their thing. Yeah, in the middle, there’s less of a wall. So you are, I think, more immersed in that world. And, like, yeah, you come in, in the original direction, you would wait in this lobby, and, and I, that’d be police tape on the door. And then I’d rip it open and let people in and there’s a dead body. And then it starts and they’re sitting around, they’re all looking at it. It’s funny, everyone’s looking around trying to figure out what happened themselves, like right off the get go. Yeah, I do think it makes it kind of more immersive. Without being like, a, you know, a type of art show or something where you’re actually doing more engagement. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
It’s interesting that the idea of like how close the actors are to the audience, they’re right up against the wall, that layer of safety then preceding them would would give them is kind of it’s kind of gone. They’re

Alec Toller
totally and there’s a moment in the first actors that don’t mind spoiling, which is the the coroner comes in, they stick the body briefly before taking it away to autopsy yet. So they come in, and he has a heart or a body bag, and they lay it down and they pick up the dead actor and put her on the tarp and wrap her up and take her out. And it’s it’s very fun to watch audiences. Watch that because there’s dialogue going on still. And it’s a bit bantery. But yeah, it’s not super heavy. But everyone’s just kind of like staring

Phil Rickaby
at because it’s not a thing that we would know that we normally get no normally see that part of the procedural. Yeah, like happens like usually in the procedural on TV. The body is already in the bag. Right? The stretcher and gets pushed away. You’re like, yeah,

Alec Toller
it’s either that’s done. You see it die. You see other crime scene or you see it at the more Yeah, I think it’s also like, on a screen, you know? That medium gives you sight and sound. Yeah, right. But here you get a little bit more tactile feeling. You see the weight of this actor as they have to lift them up, and they have to move them and it’s awkward. And yeah, and difficult. And I don’t know, it’s creepy. You get a creepy your sense of like to move a dead body like, Jaco. I think that’s, that’s fun.

Phil Rickaby
You were talking earlier about how one of the things that you that you’d like to do is give people what they think they’re going to see. And then sort of like, twist that. Can you talk a little bit about about where that comes from? For you?

Alec Toller
I’m a sneaky bastard. I don’t know. I think it’s what it where did it come from? Like, what? What makes me want to do that?

Phil Rickaby
What is your impetus for that? Like, what is it that sort of draws you towards that sort of thing?

Alec Toller
Well, I think it’s a couple things. One, I think that if you enter a show with an idea of showing one thing, and then having there be something else, you’re you’re probably going to have a wider experience for your audience. You know, because if you’re if I just had a procedural procedural, they would have a spooky, so that it would be creepy in the mystery. And that would be fun. And that’s great. Sure, but, but by also adding this sort of emotional content, then there’s something else that you get to explore, I think, is one thing. I think it’s part of that balance of striking accessibility versus maybe depth. You know. So, just just trying to find that intersection between something that everybody could enjoy. And also something that, you know, is trying to say something, I guess. I’m trying to think of, you know, because it goes if you go super art house kind of style, then you might lose a lot of people if you go pure action movie, then it doesn’t really change people and

Phil Rickaby
champion doesn’t really say anything other than Isn’t this cool?

Alec Toller
Exactly. Captain America is biceps are amazing, which is very important.

Phil Rickaby
The one thing that I do think is that sort of thing. It has its place, you know, that whole totally absolutely your action. This is cool.

Alec Toller
I mean, I enjoy the Jason Bourne movies, they are fun movies, they are thrillers, they just do that well, or like John Wick is just an excellent action movie and has no other content. But it’s great. It’s and then I feel like finally all that amounts to like to me, part of the point of like the Darden stuff is to get into that deep emotional area and to kind of break people’s hearts and crack them open and have people open to more emotionally rich experiences. So you But most people don’t want to do that. They don’t want to, like,

Phil Rickaby
I probably, you know, if you tell them that that’s what’s gonna happen. They want to do it right. Yeah. If you just sort of let that happen you draw them in with something that, like they think, Oh, this is what it’s gonna be. Yeah, and you. Exactly. It’s something else. They willingly went along with it and now you have to pay. Yeah, yeah. So much more rewarding than if they just used sort of that was this is gonna get really emotional and teach you something.

Alec Toller
Oh, exactly. Yeah. If your flyers like hey, come cry but yeah, like, Ooh, cool cop mystery that like, Oh, that’s fun. Yeah. What happened? Why? Yeah. So there’s a phrase cats I was used word she’s like, she because she often does something comedic and then very often tragic endings. And she’s like, I just tell somebody like they have to pay for the laughs that they are something that you have to pay for the comedy that you got at the start. Yeah,

Phil Rickaby
I had something like I did a show at Hamilton fringe this past summer. Yeah. And I had it was sort of similar thing. Bring them in with my, this is the you know, this is the music concept. So he’s just gonna be a nice like, thing or a discussion about this. And then I’m gonna punch you in the gut. Yeah. And about halfway through. Yeah. So I was like, very much like, you know, you’re gonna get those laughs But yeah, pay for it later.

Alec Toller
Yeah, absolutely.

Phil Rickaby
Is there has working with sex T Rex informed the way that you create theatre? That’s not straight up comedy.

Alec Toller
A yell louder? It’s funny, you should ask that. Because, like, yes, of course. And I think part of that experience is what is one of the things that influenced me being a collaborative creator, because that’s a pretty cloud, collaborative room. It certainly has pushed me to be more physical and try to find ways and tell. Like most of the stuff is narrative for sure. But like, I think every show I do have some physical or less narrative component to it, or less just purely verbal component, because I think that’s a really interesting form to include. I think the best example was a show we did dark matter in 2014. That was a sci fi adaptation of Heart of Darkness. And we did it with no set and no props. And we just did it with the sort of comedy techniques of mind and stuff that you do. But it was a mostly serious play. I mean, there’s comedy in it as well, but generally, about existential space sadness. So, you know, kind of darker themes. And that was, like really deliberately been like, let’s see if we can use these things in this format. So Yeah, certainly. And I think it also sharpens they’re all very funny. So I think it sharpens my own sort of comedic sensibilities and

Phil Rickaby
there because the work that sex T Rex does is very cinematic. It does more with less than you would find on in most straight on comedy shows.

Alec Toller
Yeah, totally. And it’s interesting because, like, in the 60s shows we absolutely are following a cinematic sort of genre plotline, of course, it’s sort of genre parody. But then it’s trying to do it really efficiently. Like that’s a lot of the content and the fun is how do we how do we put the actual movie on stage. Now we’ve done that once with that circles next show special constables, which was basically treating the TTC cops like homicide police. It’s very silly. But, but for me, because I’m often doing dramatic work, or most moreso dramatic work and, and physical comedy, like we’re more taking the cinematic, the structure and genre and stuff and sort of taking that kind of plot style. And then and then finding that sort of theatrical intersection somewhere else. So yeah,

Phil Rickaby
when you were going from from comedy to, I want to say tragedy, which something more serious. Yeah. Are there are there particular things that you take from the comedy to bring into the more straight drama?

Alec Toller
Jokes? No, really, though, but really, like, one of things I really like about sepsis is pretty funny to start, and, and we keep jokes throughout and, you know, the characters are cops, so they’re like, I wouldn’t say the most emotionally open characters in the world. So some of the ways they deal with stuff is through humour. And so I feel like, you know, to divide those experiences of something being funny as I mean, being sad is arbitrary a lot of the time like, you know, I’m really like having to put my cat down, and my family were like, crying then making a joke about turning into a rug and then crying again. So that I think that gets out of an honest experience. I also think that it it, you know, it gets audiences in you engaged, if we’re just like, summer’s here the whole time. They don’t have a way in. Yeah, exactly. So I think it’s a way of opening Opening the door. That’s that’s one of the reasons we’re actually deliberately more comedic in our first act.

Phil Rickaby
I also I also think that having a laugh makes the, like the sad or the more serious aspects even more serious, just by the juxtaposition that that word that I’m having difficult juxtaposition.

Alec Toller
That’s why it’s funny. That’s actually I believe, empirically validated through mental psychology courses, which is that effectively even habituate to whatever emotion you’re feeling. So if you see a show, that’s sad, and the whole thing is sad from beginning to end, and I think it shows like this, and you go first, I’m gonna be sad next minutes, like, Okay, last time, I’m so bored. Yeah. So you do habituate. So to have people move from different experiences with experience, you know, it will make each individual one that thing richer and deeper, or more full. I also think with the comedy especially sexier X, as much as it’s a bunch of dumb idiots waving their arms around. It’s also really founded on clarity, right? Yeah. So that’s something that I try to often keep in mind when I’m doing my shows, and especially a physical piece. I’m like, How can we make this as simple as possible? I think the hardest the thing I miss out of a comedy into a drama is that with a comedy, like, although you have, ideally real characters with real motivations, and all that stuff, and you’re trying to follow a realistic or like engaging plot, you can always do something to really dumb, yes, if you make it really dumb, you can kind of go anywhere. So I find it a little easier to follow a plot structure that I want. Whereas with a drama, I’m like, Okay, how do I actually, what would change this character realistically go here? Right, whereas the other one, they could just be like, like, you know, they just really like dragons, and they will do anything, whatever it is, you know, something kind of stupid.

Phil Rickaby
When we talk a little bit about how your studies and psychology have have affected Sure. The work that you’re doing, yeah, first off, like, What drew you to psychology?

Alec Toller
So just to clarify, I’m doing a master’s in psychology to your programme Adler. Not still Adler, but it’s a very, very, no, at some in my first year there, and just what drew me to it, my mom is actually a psychologist, and she does cognitive behavioural therapy. So I sort of grown up in that milieu for a while. And they’ve run workshops and stuff. So I’ve sort of been exposed to it for awhile. And it’s always informed my work. And the short version is I was working in the film ministry, and it wasn’t quite right for me, and I sort of always knew that I was going to go into therapy at some point. And that I was like, why not? No.

Phil Rickaby
Would you say that you always knew that you were going to going to be doing that was that just like from a kid? You always knew that that was something you’re gonna end up in, or I

Alec Toller
think it was a young animal. I think as a kid, I kind of took it for granted. Because, like, Okay, so my mom didn’t like do therapy on me or something like that. But obviously, she has a psychological way of looking at things. And so I just sort of grew up with that framework. So it was just sort of, that’s how my mom was, right? It was only as a young adult, I sort of looked back and was like, oh, that’s that thing. And I think, you know, coming out of I graduated from film school, and I was like, okay, you know, I figured I was gonna get the industry to try and I did, and I was sort of, like, in my back pocket was if it all goes to shit, I’ll just go become a therapist. I can just go do that. And then I just wasn’t the I was working in post production. And that’s didn’t work for me. So I just wanted to switch out.

Phil Rickaby
So you just, you just decided to, this was the time to do it.

Alec Toller
Yeah. And a big issue is like with the film stuff. You’re often working 1012 hours a day, and they your contracts can be six weeks to a year. And my idea was to do a contract for editing to make money and then do theatre and stuff. But I just found when I was on the editing contract, it was too much time to do anything else. So friend

Phil Rickaby
who does editing? I don’t see her. I don’t see her. I see her.

Alec Toller
You had a friend. I had a friend. Yes, exactly.

Phil Rickaby
Once in a while when there’s some kind of break or something. I may see her yeah, that I don’t see her again for like six months.

Alec Toller
Yeah, so that wasn’t right for me and doesn’t they’re not you know, the film industry doesn’t isn’t about work life balance. So therapy is so it can’t be anyway. So,

Phil Rickaby
um, what have you learned in the psychology that applies to directing or writing?

Alec Toller
Well, it’s actually funny. My drinking I think it’s always been formed by therapy. And we’re talking about a bit earlier but like the especially from a cognitive behavioural approach, like the way that a A therapist works with a client, I find really similar to the way that a director works with an actor. Not that I’m trying to solve my actors emotional problems. But that you are trying to elicit emotional change in somebody else, without telling them what to do or feel or think, but by helping them figured out for themselves through like Socratic dialogue or Guided Discovery or stuff like that. So I find that really helpful. And then, more specifically, sometimes we have used psychological frameworks to explore character. So dark matter is a good example where there’s a character who effectively had posttraumatic stress disorder from some pretty dramatic, violent event. And we actually looked at a model for how PTSD operates, and we went, Okay, rather than fixing it, let’s create it, we kind of want to what would be the you know, the sort of recurring imagery that comes up? What are the flashback moments? What’s what’s a stuck point that you can’t get past that? So we actually kind of built it through roleplay and stuff, what that would be like. And then again, in Queens, conjurer? Did you talk to us, but did you see it? Okay. So in that show, one of the characters is a historical figure, and Rick Kelly, and he was really hard to understand what his motivations would change. So much, she was always back and forth, really erratic guy had visions of angels. And you would think maybe he’s psychotic or something. But it was kind of accepted the time to do that to see angels. So we actually talked to my girlfriend, who is also becoming a psychologist, and specialises in borderline personality disorder. And we kind of looked at it like, oh, that actually kind of fits. And through that, it actually we went, Oh, he makes so much more sense now. Sort of dubbed as like an emotional burn victim, like he’s been really emotionally hurt before. So that was really helpful for getting to writing that character. And then ultimately, for Josh brown to perform it too. So I feel like it’s always there. And then very broadly, you’re just trying to, you know, both both fields are just trying to understand why people do what they do what they do.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah. Yeah. Have there been any revelations in actually studying psychology that things that you didn’t quite, I mean, obviously, there must have been some, but any that sort of related to like writing or directing, he’s even didn’t know that suddenly, snapped into into place because of the studies.

Alec Toller
I mean, that moment with Edward Kelly, I think is a good example of that. That was new. I think, for me, it’s kind of the like, the biggest stuff is the therapeutic skills. And sort of the ones that you do, in most any approach, like listening and empathy and being present. Those things I think, are really integral to my directing work, like what I’m like in the room. So you know, often, especially because I’m producing too, I can be stressed, I can be concerned and thinking about other things. And then I have to kind of go, no, okay, let’s be present, and just in the room just watching. And also, yeah, helping the work with an actor, you know, they get stressed out and concerned about stuff. And, you know, sometimes they have an issue that sometimes you just deal with the face value, that’s what it is. And sometimes it’s like, they’re actually, they don’t want to change this actually stressed out about something else. You didn’t explore that. So I think it just makes me I hopefully better to work with and, and to me, it’s really hard to get the best out of my actors. Like, that’s like worse. Yeah, I absolutely love it. So if I can get that out of an actor I am. I’m really happy with the work I’ve done. So I think the therapeutic stuff, not that I’m going into an actor’s personal life necessarily not at all, unless they really wanted to use that. I don’t know, but that’s complicated anyway. But overall, like just just working in alliance with an actor to really dig deeper, I think. I think that helps.

Phil Rickaby
So, you’re, you’re you’re, you’re studying psychology, getting your masters, you’re going to do therapy, you’re going to do that. What do you first see what do you envision your life? Like, when you when you’re done? As a, as a theatre creator? Therapist? How do you how do you envision that? Like, ideally, right? Does that look like?

Alec Toller
I mean, ideally, as close to Gandalf as possible, obviously, always, always. Or I suppose Dumbledore now that I’m reading Harry Potter, but Well, I don’t know. I feel like they would really, I think let’s continue to inform each other. I’m I’m only starting with clients in May. So I’ll see. I’m really excited to see how that yeah, because I you know, therapists you know, they always say you learned So, so much for your clients. And I really think that I will. I think I’ll just, you know, ideally, I just feel like I would have a really, really good understanding of people and why they do what they do. And I think that would, you know, trance, like transfer to my work with my actors, and then my work as a writer figuring stuff out, and then ultimately, transmit that to an audience do that, to, I don’t know, explore characters that seem incomprehensible otherwise or find depths and people don’t usually see like, I think that would be really interesting. And more pragmatically, like I would be working part time is, like, whatever, 20 hours a week as a therapist and the rest of the theatre person.

Phil Rickaby
So we wonder if like, being a therapist is like, similar to being like a massage therapist where you can only realistically see so many in a day. Yeah, just Oh, yeah. Spent.

Alec Toller
Yes. That is absolutely the case. People. Like, you know, if you were working full time you’re working 40 hours a week. Normal job that you can’t, you know, like a full time therapist will see, like, 20 clients a week, Matt? Yeah. Like, give or take? Yeah, that’s quite a lot.

Phil Rickaby
I would think that that’s a lot. Yeah. To do.

Alec Toller
You know, some of those are just might be a fun conversation. I’m sure. A lot will not.

Phil Rickaby
You have to deal with. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned how you’re reading Harry Potter now.

Alec Toller
This is for the fans. Yeah. One of the one of the

Phil Rickaby
interesting things for me is a lot of the work that sex T Rex does is based in pop culture Trump’s data now I don’t there hasn’t been like a wizards play for sex T Rex, but because of the things that Tex T Rex tends to touch. So founded in pop culture, yeah. What is it that like? Was it something that kept you away from Harry Potter until now? Or me as a reader as a reader? Oh, I

Alec Toller
see. So like, if I’m often working in pop culture, why have I not read? And just curious. Okay, so I the real, here’s the real, the real story. I did when I was 1011, ever the first two books. And I think I’m an we’re close to the same age as Harry Potter, like as it came out. And then I read the whole Lord of the Rings, I was like, 13. And I loved it. So as obsessive that as and now. And, and then the first two books of your thought are pretty kitty, you know, pretty sort of whimsical and silly and whatever. I mean, looking back delightful, but as, you know, overly serious. 11 year old. Yeah, you want you want to read the kids stuff. You want to read the adult stuff. So I just stopped. And then I think everyone was so into it, that I found it hard to get on the bandwagon because people were just too Yeah, I just had a little much and I think as a kid and teenager a bit more contrarian than I am now. So yeah, just kind of never did it. And then as I became more openly obsessed with wizards and did a play about a wizard, people were like, how have you not read Harry Potter? I was like, this is a very good question. So yeah, I started and it’s delightful.

Phil Rickaby
I’ve been following your posts,

Alec Toller
man to boy with

Phil Rickaby
it. And I was curious about about the delay, the quote unquote, delay and reading it. But also, it seems like like, you’re, you’re I mean, obviously, you’re discovering the depth in it. And I think you’re posted at one point about like, crying at the Dumbledore death or something. And that’s, you know, that’s the kind of thing that, you know, young seven year old Alec, probably, you know, you you don’t really think that that book is going to get to that point or anything.

Alec Toller
Well, the first book two books don’t really know. So I didn’t anticipate it, you know, of course,

Phil Rickaby
yeah. They they’re very light anything. Okay, so this for this series is going to be That’s right. Yeah. was sort of interesting about about, from a certain point of view. And that’s that twist in the play like the you know, this is what it’s going to be right brew draw you in with this is light and easy and then hit you with some more complicated stuff down the road.

Alec Toller
And quite right. I mean, hey, any comparisons you want to make from my work to Harry Potter makes? Absolutely,

Phil Rickaby
absolutely. It’s exactly like yeah, like Harry Potter.

Alec Toller
The cops are wizards. will also like can be a thing. Yeah. There’s also it’s also I mean, you know, in in the Harry Potter books, pretty much everyone it’s like, she’s, I mean, she’s a mystery writer, really. And it’s, it is a whole mystery in the last 100 pages, wrap it up. And, and in many of those books, it isn’t that wrap up that you get the sort of darker revelations of what was going on. And certainly at the end of book four when a character dies, yeah. That to me is like a huge turning point of darkness. Yeah. And I think you’re right, it is sort of a slap of this was a fun kid’s book and now everyone you’ve ever loved his debts. Yes. Yeah,

Phil Rickaby
it definitely definitely goes provide a bit of a bit of a shock to the reader. Because we’re not used to, especially in young adult young adult fiction, but also a lot of times in popular popular culture, right? Yes to a main character, a character that were like dying. I mean, yeah, Game of Thrones changes, that sort of thing. And Joss Whedon was doing that kind of thing. But generally, a great if you don’t think about all this character that are like, could die. Yeah. I think where I was going with that, but that doesn’t matter. coming back, coming back to slip the remount, which opens on Monday through Friday, but you’re opening on preview on Thursday.

Alec Toller
That’s right. So March 23, preview opens 24th and closes on April 2, there’s only a 10 day run at the box again, or is it? No, no, it’s at the Tergar. On Terry on Sir workspace, you’re

Phil Rickaby
doing it in the same. That’s right. So with that, remount. You said you found a you had to find a different actor for one of the roles. So much that that’s rewritten. Are there lessons that you learned from the original one that you’re applying to this one? Aside from just the rewrites? Are there things that the audience taught you? Oh, I see your design and things like that?

Alec Toller
That’s a great question. I mean, yes, I will be a little hard to articulate because after the show, we did a post mortem, and sort of assess what are the things we want to improve. And they were genuinely just, like, kind of just heightening the, I don’t know how many but furthering the concepts that we had, and just landing it more clearly. I think overall, the first show was successful. I mean, like, Yeah, I mean, overall, audiences were really, you know, really quite liked it. But there wasn’t anything that I recall, that was like, Oh, this needs to drastically change. It’s funny, because it’s a mystery. And it only kind of comes clear, by the end, people develop a lot of sort of fan theories as they go. And I think we might know, there might be, there is a fan theory, sort of that we have sort of, I think if you had that theory, the first one, you probably have it more so in this one, okay, even if it might not be what we think actually happened. But that’s kind of fun to play with. It was kinda like, Oh, that’s interesting to do. Why don’t we poke that idea a bit more? And yeah, something that

Phil Rickaby
I always thought I find really interesting is the idea of in movies and television, there’s a lot of hand holding. Yeah, there’s a lot of like, make sure that everybody understands everything that this is what we mean. Yeah. And there’s something to be said for like allowing your audience to have their own opinion, and to feel free enough that you’re okay. With the audience having a different opinion than you do.

Alec Toller
I have a different opinion than my lead actress on what happens right after the blackout. Very drastically different. And I don’t mind because the blackouts were the blackout. And I don’t think it it doesn’t like the way that she plays, it doesn’t totally interrupt the way I see it. And so I’m just like, great. If that’s how you see cool. Yeah. And I think that’s really fun.

Phil Rickaby
It’s really fun to like, be secure enough in your work to have the audience just make their own choice or even another actor. Choice, and you don’t have to, you don’t have to be right about

Alec Toller
that. Yeah, it doesn’t really matter.

Phil Rickaby
Is the fan theory something that is in the show? Or is it just something that like, there are people who have this theory, and they could still have this theory now? Do you believe this theory or is it something even better?

Alec Toller
No. No, I don’t because we have because it was a mystery. We had to construct a really literally what happened? So that’s what I see in it. Does the other theory hold up? Maybe? Maybe it does. Like I think I think there’s probably enough in the texts that you could read that. But yeah, I don’t know. I think I think that is you know, I was talking before about the balance of like subtlety and clarity. I think that you know, because if you go pure somebody, then you kind of end up with nothing. You know, if it’s just all amorphous, unclear what it is you just have a mess. See, so you don’t know what it is. And if it’s pure clarity, then there’s no ambiguity. Then you have a normal procedural really, which is like, this is what happened. We figured it out. It’s done. Right. And I feel like most of the things, most of the really good work that we like, you follow the story, but there’s questions throughout Yeah. That that keep you engage. I mean, even without spoiling stuff, even in the new logon movie? Yeah, there’s a lot of backstory in that they imply they don’t tell you right? Yeah. And I had good. It’s good to basically laughter What happened? Yeah, that’s fun.

Phil Rickaby
Absolutely. You know, one of the funny I was that, given the torah movie with the fairies. And as I read Pan’s Labyrinth, yeah, I debated with people for ages after that movie, right, what That ending was right, there are two factors, right. You know. And it’s great to have that when you when you leave the theatre. And I

Alec Toller
think it’s important that the you like, it’s interesting when there are sort of a two factor in there maybe three perspectives, because that, to me implies that there’s like a substantial body of evidence that can be interpreted different ways. Whereas if you have 40 theories, you’re like, Okay, that’s probably not actually enough of a spine of that story. That makes sense. I also

Phil Rickaby
love the fact that like, if there’s a debate after, like, people were invested in what you did, and, like, argue about it, or to have an opinion about it.

Alec Toller
Well, that was actually what was kind of, I think, the some of the faith that we were holding on to in the process, which was, like, you know, when we were concerned, like, does it work? I hope this isn’t, you know, engaging, does the mystery make sense is like, we start with a dead body on the floor. And there’s cops trying to figure it out. So the promise is figure out what happened to this body, right? And it’s really hard to remember not to just focus on that, you know, you just get so fixated on like, you get, there’s fun in a mystery, you want to know what happened. Yeah. And that kind of hook people get really into. And so I think that’s part of what carries through this show.

Phil Rickaby
What, in terms of creating a mystery for the stage, which I mean, mystery. novelists, you know, they have their way of, of working. Yeah, and some people will say that once they have read a novelist, like a mystery writer for a while they know their tricks and can figure it out. I see

Alec Toller
that a little bit with the Harry Potter books.

Phil Rickaby
When you are creating a mystery for the stage like this, was what was your starting point? Like, here’s a dead body. What happened? Or here’s what could happen in this room? What was the starting point? And how did you construct a well constructed mystery around

Alec Toller
it? Well, we, we did I mean, we did start with what happens in this room. And we tried to get pretty literal, in like what you could do there. And because in that original production, we played the space as the space, you know. And then from there, we we did go, yes, there’s a dead body. How did it get here, kind of thing. And so because we had improvisers than actors, we just kind of, we started with the victims story. And we improvised a bunch of their characters and who they were. And we built like, it’s funny, that sort of only a smattering of scenes from that person’s life, right. But there’s a wealth of stuff that we had that we just put on a shelf, because we had to like, because you’re sort of looking through little windows in the show to see that story that we had to build what it was, before we could find the pieces that would be ambiguous enough to fulfil what the cops think it is versus what it actually is. So yeah, we start with the victims, I built that and then put the cop stuff on top of that, and sort of been sorted. After we did those two layers, we sort of kept working with interactions between those.

Phil Rickaby
And did you did you know, starting with the mystery was the radio? Did it? Did you know what the mystery was at the beginning? Or did you have to discover that through what the victims life was?

Alec Toller
Like? Do we know how she died at the beginning?

Phil Rickaby
Like the answer to the mystery? Did I know that when you started or was that not really backwards, or you worked forwards?

Alec Toller
We worked through the victims life. We sort of knew in because we sort of already had this, like, a certain topic that we are in exploring. Yeah, pardon my vagueness, but a certain topic we knew is going to involve that topic. And we then it was a big question of how does that actually happen? And how it happened in this person’s life. And what does that look like? So we had an idea, I definitely remember there’s a lot of sadness as well on this show. And there’s like, moments when we were working together especially like signs Danny McCann line when we’re coming up with what oh, maybe this happens. Maybe this happens and going on. And it’s always over this have oh my god, and then that Oh, Jesus. We’re just bawling, crying just like, Oh, God, like, horrible. So really put that and yum, yum, yum, yum. So we had some idea, but we took it took a lot of exploration. I mean, you know, I can’t speak highly enough on this cast, but they just brought so much of nausea themselves in the personal life, but just like, gave so much to the process, and really, really did build it together.

Phil Rickaby
What’s the rehearsal process for this kind of collective thing look like? It’s about even With the rebound, in terms of how how many, like how long you’ve been working on it? Yeah. Like, what is that length of time? For this release? Rebound?

Alec Toller
It’s been a month, sort of a normal process. Yeah, this is, which is interesting. I haven’t really been there for a while. Yeah, there’s not the same amount of sheer terror. So this is more just like, you know, this is how the show is, and let’s make it work. But because it’s, it was a year ago that we did the original group of take. We’re trying to enter it with. We’re not you’re trying to get like, you know, we probably could have said learning lines hop up do it right. But we were trying to be honest with that, and really explore the process again, and revisit truly revisit these characters and find them again. So it ended up being sort of a normal ish rehearsal process. Cool. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
Cool. And we’re gonna find information about slip on what’s the website?

Alec Toller
Easiest is WWW dot circle. snake.com. named a company. It’s on the few Google terragon slip, it’s on their page as well. And tickets are available through both of those places. Cool. Yeah. And circle snake is on Twitter. Yes, it is at Circle snake. And you’re on Twitter at Alex taller, underscore taller. If you search hashtag man, man, two boys. You’ll find a lot of Harry Potter jokes and eventually me so yeah. Cool. One of the fun thing with the show is we it’s really exciting because we got nominated for much of these my payment world Awards, including Best Production best new work and Best Actress for our lead. Alex Paxton Beasley. And it’s fun because we get to do the shows that have a week before the awards. Yeah. Which is, you know, it’s such a rarity to get to do that before that. So

Phil Rickaby
because usually, it’s like so far in the past. Yeah,

Alec Toller
people were like, what was that show? So it’s, you know, it’s so rare that as an audience member or someone who goes to those awards, maybe to get to see any of the shows you go, that’s so happened what? So I think that’s really cool opportunity to get to see it. And, you know, it’s again, it’s a 10 day run. It’s super short, so I you know, FOMO guys gotta avoid that.

Phil Rickaby
Well, thank you so much for for doing this. It’s been great. Great. Yeah.

Alec Toller
Thanks for joining.