Benjamin Blais and the cast of Tough Jews

The Storefront Theatre and the Spadina Avenue Gang, present the world premiere production of Tough Jews, by internationally celebrated writer Michael Ross Albert and directed by Storefront founder and Co-Artistic Director Benjamin Blais draws frightening historical parallels between a forgotten chapter of Toronto’s history and the city’s current emerging climate of intolerance. Set against the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and one of the largest riots in Canadian history, Tough Jews is the story of an immigrant family of would-be criminals, and their struggle to rise above their station in a violent, intolerant city

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Transcript

Hey everyone. So, it turns out that I have been accidentally inflating my podcast episode numbers. So, while last week, I announced the Alec Toller episode as episode 69, it was actually episode 68.

This episode is actually 69, so welcome to episode 69 of Stageworthy, I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. You know, if you enjoy the podcast, I hope you’ll consider leaving a comment or rating on iTunes or Google Music or whatever podcast app you use. Comments really help people find the show.

If you want to drop me a line, you can find me on Facebook and Twitter at StageworthyPod, and you can find the website at stageworthypodcast.com. This episode is my conversation with Benjamin Blais and the cast of Tough Jews. Benjamin was the founding artistic director of the Storefront theatre and is the director of Storefront theatre and the Spadina Avenue Gang’s production of Michael Ross Albert’s Tough Jews. Also joining us for the conversation are cast members Blue Bigwood Malin, Louis Fernandez, G. Kyle Sheeds, and Stephen Joff.

Tough Jews opens March 31st and runs to April 16th at Kensington Hall in Toronto. Can you tell me a little bit about Tough Jews? About the play or about a bunch of Tough Jews? Well, let’s start with the play. Let’s start with the play.

Yeah. We can talk about actual Tough Jews then. Well, this play is a world premiere production of Michael Ross Albert’s.

Let’s see. He’s a young playwright here in Toronto, and he’s published, he studied in New York. This play, he’s been workshopping for about eight years.

I saw a reading of it, gosh, maybe four or five years ago when it was almost an hour longer, and I saw that it had something really interesting in it, to it, something very compelling. I was fascinated by it, but it seemed so far away, and then I started to get to know Michael a little bit more. We were doing more productions.

Our machine became more efficient, and so I felt like this was a really good time to bring this play to light. It’s always been in the back of my mind, like, oh, that’s a really cool play about interesting stories that happened in our backyard, our history, Toronto’s history. It’d be great to see that play done.

And then when Michael submitted it for the storefront season, I was like, this is gangbusters, great. And then he called me and asked me if I would be interested in directing it, to which I was incredibly honored, so I jumped on it. Yeah.

Was it the stories, this part of Toronto’s story that you didn’t know before, is that what you saw in it, or was there something else that sort of, like, you said you saw something. It was that. It was that quintessential gangster story that we hear often happening in Harlem or New York City, but it was here, in our world, and in a place like Kensington Market, which I have lived in, I have worked in, right? So, and always, always seen such an eclectic and fascinating spirit in that neighborhood, that it was such an exciting opportunity to be able to, like, explore one of those stories.

And I honestly feel like we as Canadians, we have so many of these great gritty stories in our history that we tend not to tell, you know, the CBC shies away from it, and yet they’re there and they’re luscious. So it was, I was really excited to be able to dive into it and flesh out this story and these characters. I think it’s one of those Canadian things that we don’t like our own stories unless they’re told to us by somebody from outside.

Right. And then, but this story is like, right, this is a downtown Toronto story. Is it the 1920s, 1930s? Yeah.

The first act takes place in 1929 and the second act takes place in 1933. Both times in our history where there was crazy things happening in our city, some of which people don’t even know about, you know, in the second act, the story surrounds the incidents at Christie Pits, the riot. And when talking to some people about the play, they’re like, what riot in Christie Pits? And it’s so wild to me that something like that had happened, hundreds of people rioting for three days, and now we don’t, we don’t know about it.

But it’s funny because if you talk to anyone in the Jewish community, they’ll be like, ah, yes, the riot. And everyone’s got a story. Right.

Right. Right. Yeah.

What is, what is everybody’s, at the table, everybody’s connection to the story? Like, I don’t know everybody’s background because it’s a play about tough Jews. What’s the connection that everybody has? Does everybody have a grandmother or something? To me, I, you know, I’m the director of the play and I, my, I’m not, I’m not Jewish, but I am ultimately fascinated by the cultures of the world, regardless of what they are. I have a ton of, of, of Jewish friends and I’ve been invited to seders and my connection to it is, is the, the people in this family.

And so it’s not, it has nothing necessarily to do with the cultural aspect of who these people are. But, you know, Jewish people love stories and this is a great story. And so, you know, it all kind of ties in.

But yeah. That’s cool. Yeah.

Well, my family, one side of my family actually were Jews from Eastern Europe that fled the pogroms and came to Canada in the early 1900s. They went to live up in Kirkland Lake in Northern Ontario. So my connection to this show and I think a lot of the anger and the desperation I got through just talking to my relatives, my dad, my great aunt and some of the hardships they had to face, a number of them were actually involved in small time crime in Montreal until they were managed to make a business that was profitable enough and then sell it out and then move on.

And now we’re the kids of those people who grew up in these very desperate circumstances. I mean, my dad used to work in a coal mine when he was 14 years old and got the, you know, got beat up all the time because he was the only Jewish kid. So from a young age, I was always told those stories about just how desperate things were for them.

Yeah. I’m the fraud in the show. I don’t.

You’re not the only one. So I’m not actually Jewish. But what’s interesting to me about the story, which I mean, I’m an actor as an Italian-Portuguese background.

And for me, you know, I always want to play. I guess that’s when I started an actor. I want to play characters like this, like mafia characters, which got me into acting in the first place.

And then the first chance I get, it’s a Jewish mafia, not the mafia, which is interesting. But I do think that what’s weird for me is that I still feel very connected to it because my own father is from Portugal. He’s an immigrant.

And the stories that surround this play about sort of like growing up in a place that doesn’t accept you. My father used to be in like the way he tells it. I’m not sure how accurate stories are, but he was all he didn’t speak a lick of English.

And he was like thrust into the school system in Toronto. And people he wasn’t even sure necessarily to be made fun of. I’m sure he was.

But people would talk. They didn’t understand. We just start a fight.

You just fight. You know. And so his whole experience is like it’s so similar to a lot of the stories in this.

So I don’t feel like I’m completely out to lunch. But that’s definitely what drew me to this play. Yeah.

Yeah. For sure. I, my family’s Jewish.

My mother’s side ended up in Montreal by way of Shanghai because when we had to escape the programs and everything, everyone kind of went in every direction. So we ended up in Montreal from kind of like Poland, Russia, settle area. And then on my father’s side, we ended up in Mexico, actually.

Because at the time, Canada really didn’t want very many Jews and neither did America. But Mexico was pretty much down to take whoever wanted to come by. So yeah.

And then my parents ended up meeting in Montreal when my father’s in medical school. But yeah, I mean, in so many ways, this story, it’s a Jewish story, but it’s also primarily it’s an immigrant story and it’s a family story. It’s about this family of people defending their home.

I don’t know. Yeah. So that’s kind of my relation to it.

I got roped into it because Ben talked me into it at a party. I was very drunk. He goes, lights up.

Bang. You shoot someone right there. End of act one.

Well, I shouldn’t give it away. Don’t give it away. I actually also got cast in this show at a party with Ben drunkenly grabbing me and pulling me into an alleyway.

I mean, like, I want you in this. OK. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. Like when people are in repose, I get to watch them. I get to watch them work a room and I get to watch them as as as creatures exhibit themselves in a moving and real space.

You know, when you when you host auditions, it’s such a it’s such a facade. Yeah. So it’s so I you know, I I people get on my radar from the auditions, but I usually will approach them in casual settings where they can’t fight where they can’t fight.

But also also also where where you know, where you where you see them as they truly are. And I see things in them that I’m like, OK, well, this this is this is what we want. You know, in the play, the play that we’re doing where we pretend like it’s real life.

So I want you to this is this guy over here. And then, you know, to me, this this craft is is rooted in its sense and power of community. Right.

So here we are at a function where you’re shooting ideas around and it’s, you know, this liberal exploration of your rhetoric. And so here we are. This is what we’re going to create.

Also, when you rehearse a play, you you spend six weeks together. Yeah. Right.

So is this person fun to hang out with? Are they going to are they going to play with us? Right. I think another thing that brought me to the show is that it just feels like I mean, I kind of signed on to it before the world started. It feels like regressing.

And I think you can all say that pretty clearly. But it just with every day that passes, it feels more and more like a necessary story. I think we’re forgetting the path that things take.

And it’s in a lot of ways, history is can be seen to be repeating itself. I’m very tired. I’m going to know.

No, it’s true. I think you’re actually you’re you’re sort of hitting the nail on the head about what’s happening in the world. Yeah.

That’s what glommed me onto the show. Originally, after reading the script, it was like, well, I mean, kind of world events started unfolding. And I was like, yeah, repetition of mystery.

Yeah. When you guys started working on this, was this like started talking about like who was going to be involved in this pre-November pre-election? It was. Yeah.

For for for a lot of people, some of us came in afterwards. But we’ve been prepping this show since the spring of last year. So watching the course of world events unfold, the relevancy of this piece was becoming really potent.

And like, Jesus, how a hundred years ago, things were the same. The the xenophobic tendencies of of our governments. Right.

Like that. We’ve seen it happen again. The you know, the anti-Semitism that was experienced a hundred years ago is being reflected in the in the in the Islamophobia that we’re seeing today.

Wow. You know, with all the information that we have, it’s it’s so crazy to think that we can’t we can’t see our own natures in front of ourselves. It’s astounding to think that that that we’ve come almost full circle from like what birthed the World War II to to now and seem like the same attitudes happening again in our backyard.

Yeah. And you can’t like it’s it’s it’s almost so ridiculous. Like someone wrote it down and it’s a bad musical.

Yeah. But it’s not. It’s real life.

Like if I wrote this like a year ago and this is what they’d be like. No, no, no. It’s too on the nose.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, we were rehearsing in here when there was a bomb threat at the JCC just down the street. I mean, it’s really just it was such a clear.

It was like our second rehearsal and it’s just such a clear showing of like how much these issues just are still in our society. So clearly. Yeah.

They’re still playing swastikas on synagogues in Ottawa. Yeah. In Etobicoke.

And in the beaches. It still happens here. Yeah.

Yeah. Every every synagogue in the city has a has a security guard who’s watching out for them. Yeah.

Yeah. And it’s crazy when I think when Michael wrote the play, he wouldn’t have known that that we referenced a bunch of a bunch of times in the play that they’re putting out swastika. Now that’s happening again, which is just under the surface the whole time.

Yeah. Back then they could say, oh, no, no, no, no. We have no Nazi affiliation.

It’s it’s it’s a it’s a symbol of good luck. That’s all it is. People are still trying to pull out the Pepe the Frog thing, too, that they have like lots of symbols that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

The staging of the show, this is not like a sit in the audience and watch it play out on a on a on a raised stage. This is like sort of an immersive in the round kind of thing. Was it written that way? Or is that how you chose? No, it wasn’t necessarily written that way.

I guess it could be staged in a proscenium, however you like this. It was originally slated to go up at the Storefront Theatres, a location at 955 Bloor Street. And then, you know, due to progress, whatever, that space no longer exists.

Gentrification. So what’s happening now is almost serendipitous in the sense that we’ve found a place in Kensington Market where this ostensibly could have really happened. It’s a basement that used to be a booze can that two people have died in over the course of its history, right? So they’re a legit ghost.

This could be the place that the booze can was. So there’s an aspect that I had wanted to do regardless, wherever it was, where I wanted to do this play in a photorealistic design sort of world. And so now there’s an added element that you’ll be literally in the place where this could have happened.

You’re going to walk down this graffiti-covered alleyway, turn a corner and go back in time 100 years. We have this set design by Adam Belanger, who’s just a genius, very detailed, full of Easter eggs and really rich detail. So you as an audience member will truly feel like, wow, I’m being transported back in time.

You’ll watch the course of events unfold for this family, bear witness to some, you know, some pretty crazy shit and then walk back out into today’s world and be like, wow, here I am, like stepping through the veil of time. And rather than it being in Bloor Court and you’re like, oh yeah, the market, that’s neat. You’ll actually come out into the market and then I just feel like that, that’ll wash over people in such a powerful way where they’ll look around and say like, oh shit, this really could have happened.

And as far as promotion goes, we have a photographer named John Gandhi who’s done an incredible job recreating these historical photos and putting us into them. So we had a whole day in Kensington Market where we went out and we did a photo shoot and he would take a photo from the history of the Jewish history of Kensington Market and he’d say, and I’m going to put you two in like this. So we’d find our position from the same street corner where this photo was taken.

And then so that’ll be part of the promotional material for it. And I wanted to add, Isabel, like about the idea of not having it this sort of close quarters. I think it’s almost essential.

I mean, maybe it wasn’t necessary in the writing, but these sort of stories, we normally get them through film that has the wide array of tricks to make you in the moment. I think that to have the visceral experience that film has for like a mafia story of this sort. I think that it’s necessary to bring people in because people, you know, they’re usually seeing this with like, I can follow the bullet, go on bullet time through and we need to compete with that as artists, as theatre artists.

So I think that that’s another element. And there’s also a separation when we’re watching TV or a movie, we’re sitting very comfortably and it’s like, there’s this screen between us and the action and theatre brings us more into it. But then to have it all around us, immersive, there’s no say it’s almost like there’s no safety there.

Yeah. You know, theatre, I put my butt right in their faces. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s going to be all around them. Yeah.

There’s a, there’s a, you know, you hit the nail on the head, this sort of immersive quality that we want to create. I was saying to the designers, I want the audience to literally feel like flies on the wall and the strange footprint that we have in this space is forcing us to stage it in what, you know, I guess you could call a thrust formation. It’s not quite around, but you will be really close to the action, which does allow the players to capture a more filmic quality with their performances, which also allows them to, to sort of, to play in the nuances of what’s going on.

The subtext can really live. It doesn’t have to be so telegraphed. And I think that if it was sort of removed for a little further removed, yeah, the, the, the piece wouldn’t have as much power because you’d have to telegraph so much more like that.

These guys, they don’t have to, they don’t have to yell. They don’t have to, you know, a little, it can be like watching a movie because you’re so close to them. And also, as you say, that’s true, like in the medium of film where you’re so far removed, it’s a passive entertainment, like theatre, the part of its joy is that you as an audience member are complicit to what you see on stage.

You know, there’s some violence in this play where if you saw that at a bar, would you jump up and stop it? But here, yeah, you can’t, but you’re so close that you have to, you have to suffer it with them and it makes you, it really includes you in it. Like you, when you go to see a play, you have to really agree with yourself that I’m going to immerse myself in this, going to enjoy it. And so we’re going to meet them even, even closer than halfway and really put them like right there on the wall.

I would wear, wear a poncho. I have to head out. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Our, our lead actor has a hot date. It’s a lie.

He doesn’t have a date at all. He’s going to work. He’s going to go work on his lines.

Making the money. He’s going to go work on his lines. He did the grind.

He’s got a date with the play and his homework. Thank you. Thank you.

See you tomorrow. Bye Kyle. What a great guy.

Yeah. I like that guy a lot. Now that he’s gone though, here’s some salacious details.

Oh, let me tell you about Kyle. Just, I like to start at this side and sort of go just to the other side and, and of the, the line of people that I have here. The question that I, one of the questions that I always ask people when I’m, when I’m doing these, these, these, these conversations is what is it that, that, that brought you to theatre? So I want to start with that.

Okay. So I really like when people look at me, to be totally honest, man, I love attention. I used to have a lot more like, you know, meaningful answers, but it’s all bullshit.

I just really like attention. I do a lot of different things. I’m also a, I’m a, I’m a writer, a creator, I’m a musician, I have a band called Birds of Bellwoods.

I like being on stage. I like cathartic, direct experiences. I think I’m good at it.

So, you know, I don’t have a university degree, so I might as well continue on this train. I just, I found theatre when I was, when I was seven, I was in a kindergarten class and these people came in and they were like looking for someone to be in this movie and they hadn’t found this kid yet. And they were like, Oh, he has red hair.

We don’t have one of those. So I ended up going in for the audition. I didn’t get the part, but I got representation and I loved it because everyone was like, Oh, what are you? Studs talking to me and asking me questions and the youngest of four.

So you know that that was refreshing to say the least. But I only really did film and television. And then it was in high school that I ended up in a Canadian stage production of Wild Dogs and I was working with Tony Nappo, I’m sure, you know, and like, yeah, I was like 16 and he was like, you know, punching the wall and like, Oh, feelings and art.

And like, it was just this whole, like, it was like, Oh, this is where the cool kids hang out. You know, he’s like, give me rides home and like bum me a cigarette and I thought it was so boss. And I was like, Oh, film and television is full of people like jogging and eating walnuts and this and that.

I was like, that’s cool. And I applied for National Theatre School and I got in and I, you know, and I also like, I don’t know if I’m rambling, but I also feel like I really discovered my genuine love of theatre after I started playing music with my band, because there was something before then that was kind of still hanging on of film and television for me, where I felt like I had to block certain things out. And then when I started playing music with my band on a stage, I was able to look people in the eye and just really be like, Hey, you’re in this room, I’m in this room, let’s have an experience together.

And then since then, it’s just like all the muscles that used to tense me just kind of drifted away. And now I just feel like, yeah, we just create this cathartic experience and we all, you know, we share that. Cool.

Yeah. That’s a tough one to top. For me, I guess for me, like in high school specifically, I was sort of that guy, that youth that had all the potential in the world, but I didn’t give a shit.

School was just sort of like a stop gap between me getting back to the N64, you know what I mean? So to be honest, and I was like a bit of a class clown. I was more, I was more interested in sort of making my friends laugh or, or just sort of drawing the pole of the teacher’s authority to me. Like that was what I always did.

And the drama class that I went in was, I was told it was a bird course. That’s what I was told. That’s what we called it back then.

The Genos. It’s a bird course, bro. You certainly dated yourself with the N64.

When I went to high school in Ajax, everybody was like, no, take the theatre arts. It is easy. You know, exactly.

So yeah, I did that. And then like suddenly, like the shit that was getting me in trouble, suddenly I was like, like the man, like I’m fucking killing it in this class, you know what I mean? And so it kind of ended with my teacher at the end of the year being like, she helped, she got me to like start a drama club and stuff. And I did, I was never doing anything like that before.

I was like, why am I here after classes are done? Like, this is fucked. And so then like from there, she said, you know, at the end of the year, she was like, I’m going to get you, I’m going to get you to go to the Tarragon spring training program. Every drama teacher gets to nominate one person to go to this thing.

And I was like, oh, in the summer, what? I have to be in theatre all summer? I was like, not down at all. And my girlfriend at the time was like 16 or whatever. And my mom were like, you got to do this.

You were selected, you were chosen. I was like, ah. So I like went into like the library and I got like a monologue book and I picked a monologue and I didn’t know who wrote it or where it was from.

And I go to, I went to Tarragon and Tarragon’s is fucking, you know, it’s stately to say the least. And then I was like this big fucking wooden door. And I was like, I don’t, I’m not doing this.

And I was going to leave. I legitimately was going to leave. And then I got like sort of door swung open, are you here for the auditions? I was like, I guess.

And then I went in and there’s this guy, I think his name is John Winters. I don’t know if he’s still an actor who, where he’s going to have to him, but he’s just like this like prototypical actor sort with like the long mullet ish hair and like wearing a black turtleneck. And he had like a portfolio, which like I was like, what? Like, and he was just the most confident guy in the room.

And he’s just like, yeah, it’s going to be fine, man. He’ll be fine. Goes in, he’s screaming, banging on the wall.

I don’t know what the fuck he was doing in there, but I knew he was going to get in. And then I went in and I just fucking had the worst audition of my life. I blinked.

The woman was like, so Sarah Stanley. I, which is like, so what do you, do you play any instruments? No. Do you sing? No.

Have you ever been in a production before? No. Have you ever been in a film? No. I was like, okay, what’s your monologue? What’s your monologue? I’m like, um, you know who the playwright is? No.

What’s it from? It’s from a monologue book. Okay, okay, we’ll go. And so I’m just like, I’m standing there and I, I blinked horribly.

And I did it again and blank and did it again. And I blanked. I started to get real mad.

I was like, fuck. I got screaming. I was like, okay, calm down.

We don’t know what, who the playwright is. We don’t know what play it is. So really, if you know it and we know, you know, it just, if you get into a stumble, just, just do what you gotta do.

Just get through it. And that kind of gave me this confidence and I did it. And then I, you know, I, I, and I didn’t have to ad lib that time.

I actually got through it. I was like, wow, that was a great director. And I left there feeling a piece of shit.

And I was like, well, that was a fucking debacle. I was mad at my parents. I was like, why would you tell me to do that? And then a few days later, I get a message saying, you got it.

And I just knew in that moment, it’s like, I did not select this. It is selected me. I’m not, I don’t even have any interest in this.

And suddenly I’m in it. And I think that was for me. That’s where it all began.

And my whole life from up to that point now is like, I can’t imagine what I’d be without it. This is like what I do. Fucking warts and all.

I have no money and it’s fucking tough. And that’s what I do. So that’s how it all began.

Fuck. Well. We just wandered in here.

I was sleeping in the studio and they just kind of found me here. Yeah. I was like very, very young when I decided I wanted to do theory things.

I was always a very introverted kid, but I really liked movies. And my stepdad was this huge movie buff. And he like made me watch like Pulp Fiction when I was like nine years old.

Because it was a really good film. And so I watched Me, Myself and Irene with Jim Carrey, which isn’t a very good movie. But I watched it as a kid.

And I remember he’s doing this scene where he keeps switching personalities. And watching it, I was just like, I want to be able to do that. So I joined this community arts thing on Toronto Island where I grew up.

And it was like stilt walking and like caravana style art. So my first role ever, I was a fish on stilts. I had this big fish hat that I made.

And I’d walk around on stilts for a couple hours. And then from there, I like got into an improv club on the island. I went to Rosedale Heights for the arts.

That’s where I went. And no shit. Yeah, I did.

Went for my final year. It’s a good school. But yeah, I got into improv really in high school.

I had always liked doing stage stuff. I just sort of found my way into improv. I did the like Canadian improv games.

We went to Ottawa. It was like best experience of my teenage life. Going out there for this like big stage with a bunch of people having people laugh at you.

And they had a good drama program there as well. But I like never landed any big stuff in high school, anything like that. I was getting all prepped to be an engineer.

And I was doing all of the proper math courses and everything like that. And then the time came for selecting a university program. And I talked to my drama teacher.

And she was just like, I don’t know. I think you could do this and you won’t regret it. And York has a good program.

And both my parents taught there. So I got to go for free. I’m still paying my York degree.

So yeah, I just kind of selected it. I didn’t audition anywhere else. I just auditioned at York.

Got in and then went through that whole program. And now I’m here. Well, I love it when a plan comes together.

And I guess I learned at a very young age, there is no better way to galvanize a community than through a powerful platform. When I was younger, we had this sports day or something. And I think I was 10 or 11, grade 5, grade 6. And they separated the school into colors.

There’s the red team, the blue team, and the yellow team. And it was an event that all the grades would come together. It was like a team-building exercise.

And one of the first things they did is they said to us, OK, each of the colors are going to figure out your team chant or whatever. You could do a little show to stoke your team up. And I volunteered to be the mascot or whatever.

And I recognized that I made people laugh. And we brought our whole blue team together. We created some chants.

Then I was on the map. I became a part of the community, became a person of interest who had political clouds and who could affect change. And then I began to recognize the power of community and how creating shows is such a great way to bring people together.

The creative teams that generate the work and all the great stories and relationships that form out of that and the people that bear witness to the work and have a shared experience through that. It’s really rewarding to stand at the back of an auditorium where you’re watching a show that’s got 20 people in it and another 100 people watching it. And they’re all together.

And they’re all doing the same thing. And they’re all enjoying it together. And there’s something really, really, really wonderful about that.

I, of course, love the attention. We all love a lot of people looking at us. But for me, I wanted to be an actor for a long time and then was frustrated with the looking at some of my other artist friends.

The musician can play alone. The visual artist can paint that masterpiece alone. The writer can create their own work to be an actor, to be a part of the theatre.

You need others around you to help you create it. But through that, you create these lifelong friendships. And it’s important.

Being an actor and doing these auditions and hocking garbage products on television for money, it’s like rolling the dice. And you think to yourself, I’m spending all of this time and energy. But what am I doing for the world? What am I doing for society? And so here was an opportunity for me to create something that was actually bringing people together that can affect change, that has created opportunities for others and created opportunity for myself.

And to me, that’s really profound. One of the things that Storefront has, I think, does is create a great venue for communities to form with the Sing For Your Supper and just the indie artists that come together and a number of the other, the playwrights union, things like that, just to put all that together. So I think that you’ve found the successful.

Totally. I created all three of those things. Sing For Your Supper was generated because I wanted to create a collaborative networking environment.

You know, I was a young artist. I wanted to meet more young artists. And I had been to a number of readings where, yeah, you’d read this play and then it would be adjudicated in this really sort of formal way.

And people would walk away without knowing each other. So we created that event. It was also to create a monthly event that would sort of keep us on the radar, because at that time, we were only producing maybe one or two shows a year.

But then I recognized, oh, by creating this community event, we’ll be able to announce our projects and always check in with people. This storefront theatre was birthed out of, you know, not necessity, but I wanted to put on a show. There was a show I never directed before.

I wanted to direct a play called Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott, which is this gripping thriller. And it was in our MO back then to go and sort of pop up in these locations. It was cheaper for us to do than renting a theatre.

Plus, you could like have your own sort of stamp on the city. Like, yeah, we built this place and we used to set up and then disappear like the circus. But in the case of the storefront, we built this.

We ran the show. It’s very successful. More artists were like, hey, what is this place? I want to create here, too.

So I recognized an opportunity for the community. So here, OK, we’ll return to the group. And I was like, I think we should change our model and, you know, and create some roots, create an HQ.

And so we did that. And then the playwright unit, again, was created because as we were presenting work in the storefront theatre, we came to realize that that what we needed to do was to begin generating the work, really fostering the the social capital here in our city. Right.

Like, yeah, you wrote a play. Great. Let’s take that.

Let’s let’s give it credence. Let’s give it shape. Let’s give it validity and then put it up into the world.

So all of those things sort of they grew organically, but they grew in in from that place of like, let’s bring it together. But like, let’s all bring it together and then remind ourselves that this is a legitimate thing. You guys all went to theatre school.

You paid a lot of money for it. Right. These are marketable skills you have.

It’s hard because you can’t do it alone. It’s hard to take that step from like just doing shows in your backyard for your friends and family to doing it for people that regard it as as as actual product to remind the actors, remind the artists that like what your work is valued. You know, we were sort of in a we’re sort of in a in a corner.

We as artists, because we have it inside us. We need to create. So we’ll do it anyways.

And it kind of sort of undercuts us. Yeah. So it’s important to find like minded people who want to who want to help you actualize yourself and say, yes, this is worth it.

Yeah. Yeah. And in a way, as if I can go off that sort of if you build it, they will come thing.

It’s so true. I’m going to think that all these things start with I have an idea and I want to and then suddenly you open up a space and you realize that you need it. And so does everybody else.

And I think that was like the most telling thing. I did the unit one or two space in Parkdale. And it was like I had no designs when opening it to make it like a hub for the community at the time.

It just I simply wanted to have a place to do my stuff. And I was shocked at how desperately it was needed. And I think that’s what all the storefront theatres it’s about.

It all starts with I have an idea and then suddenly you realize so do a lot of people and they need someone to do it. And I think that way I don’t speak for you, but I’d imagine like when you when I was doing it, it was sort of like you doubt that people like people are doubting you before it happens. But then when it starts to happen, it’s snowballs and people don’t start to they don’t start to like think it’s a wild idea anymore.

Now it exists. It just takes the balls to say, I’m going to do it and do it. Exactly.

It ain’t easy. If I mean, if it was easy, everybody would be doing. Also, I mean, there is a hunger for space.

Yeah, yeah. In this city. And I think in most cities.

Oh, man, our spaces were overbooked. Yeah. You know, we would we’d have to spread it around.

Like, do you need people? I can send people down to you to learn to and vice versa, because we’re like, shit, there’s so many people that have a show that they want to. And then suddenly you get squeezed out. You’re like, I have no time for my show now.

It’s like, what about my what about Christmas Sandwich, the musical? Well, because I mean, I remember our tears ago being like the only spaces that I could that you could get would be to rent a factory, Tarragon, yeah, a pass. Or if you didn’t mind that the media wouldn’t come a feeder of the university. And there’s just a need for for all these places.

Now, the unfortunate thing is that that these many of these places like like Starfront, like you didn’t want to there. They’re shutting down. They’re shutting down.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s this is, you know, as we were talking about history repeating itself in the play, the history repeats itself in the microcosm of our city. When I was coming up and the reason why we were doing these sort of site specific shows is because a number of these indie spaces had shut down.

We’re standing in the old poor Alex Theatre. Yeah, right. That had shut down.

The Art Word, which was down at King in Portland, shut down because they put a condo there. Mump and Smoot had this great place. I remember that place, the lighting fixture store on DuPont shut down.

Like all of these tiny little spaces shut down. So again, yeah, the only place to rent was a tarragon. That’s too expensive for a nascent company.

Spend no one is going to take a risk on them. The media is not going to come. We don’t want to spend more like the first show I put up, I think, cost 800 bucks.

Right. And so that, you know, I feel like that’s going to happen again. And there’s a new generation of young people.

I mean, I don’t want to sound like I’m tired, but like we’ve we’ve done that. We put a good run in. We reminded people that this is important.

You guys need spaces. And already I know that there’s a number of people who are popping up spaces and it’ll grow again. And what I think needs to happen is that, yeah, there’s a there’s a glut.

So that we’re forced to recognize the value. It’s happening to the music industry, too, right? They shut down the Silver Dollar, the Oak Room or the Holy Oak. They shut down so many.

Central, Soy Bomb, the Hoxton. All of these places where artists are able to cut their teeth are gone. That being said, the artists, it’s not like the artists are toothless now and they’ll just gum it up till the end of no way they’re going to start.

They’re going to start playing on street corners, rooftops. They’re going to start carving it out and and it’ll help separate the wheat from the chaff because the people that really need to create will create and that work will be will be good. It will be it’ll come from a place that really needs to happen.

There will be no laissez faire. It was it’s sad, though, because I just did a show about Parkdale and what was sort of gleaned because we had to do a bunch of interviews for this sort of project we were doing. And the artists go somewhere because they need to go somewhere.

And suddenly they’re the seed that brings gentrification. Somehow you are responsible for fucking this area up, although, you know, it’s a it’s just weird cycle. It’s a horror neighborhood and then it’s an arts neighborhood and then it’s a cool neighborhood and then it’s a rich neighborhood.

Yeah, and it’s a snake hitting its own tail. Yeah, exactly. That’s happened in Parkdale.

It’s happening in Hamilton. Yes. I have a bunch of friends who’ve gone down there.

I know a lot of people who’ve gone there and, you know, Hamilton is to say, you know, art is the new steel is their unofficial motto. Well, that’s just for the just, you know, really, it’s just for the rich people come back and then those people can go away. It’s just like because that’s what happens in every neighborhood and every place that totally does that.

And it’s just part of the cycle. This play, Tough Jews, it opens when it opens on March 31st and runs until April 16th, Wednesday through Saturday at eight p.m. And then we have Sunday matinee at two p.m. On April 5th, I believe it is. There’s a walking tour that is coupled with the show that you can purchase.

So I believe the Kensington Historical Society will walk you from, I believe, somewhere in U of T through like around Christie, walk you through all the spaces that we talk about and it’ll end at the show. That’s awesome. Yeah, yeah.

So that’s something you can find out the information on the website. It’s thestorefronttheatre.com, www dot, I believe. Well, thank you so much, you guys.

It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you. Thank you for having us and meeting the Wolfmans.

Stern. He’s the cousin.