Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster

Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster is presently a resident artist and the Shen Fellow at Soulpepper Theatre Company. She is a Founding Member of The Howland Company and a graduate of UBC, the Citadel/Banff Theatre Program and the Soulpepper Academy. Selected theatre credits include Spoon River, Blood Wedding, Incident at Vichy, The Dining Room, Eurydice, Of Human Bondage, Marat/Sade, Alligator Pie, Idiot’s Delight, The Barber of Seville, The Royal Comedians, The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, Assistant Director on The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine (Soulpepper); The Flood Thereafter (Canadian Stage); As You Like It (Blue Bridge); Pride and Prejudice (Citadel); 52 Pick-Up (Co-Director, Howland Company). Screen credits include The Drawer Boy feature film, Murdoch Mysteries, Fringe, Supernatural and Shattered.

http://www.courtneylancaster.com/
@courtneyvl

http://www.theatreinamorata.com/
@theainamorata

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Transcript

Welcome to episode 90 of Stageworthy. I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy features conversations with Canadian theatre makers, from actor to director to playwright to more.

If you’re listening for the first time and you like what you hear, I would love it if you’d subscribe to the podcast. You can find Stageworthy on Apple Podcasts, Google Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. And whether you’re a new listener or you’ve been listening for a while, please consider leaving a comment or rating.

Your ratings and comments help new listeners find the show. And if you want to drop me a line, I would love to hear from you. You can find Stageworthy on Facebook and Twitter at StageworthyPod, and you can find the website at stageworthypodcast.com. If you were listening last week, you heard me go on something of a rant, which was a bit of a departure.

While I’ve occasionally had something to say about Canadian theatre before going into a conversation, I’ve never done a rant-only episode of the podcast, and I don’t intend to make that a habit. But I still think that it’s important. And I still think it’s important that when we see theatre companies that don’t reflect the diversity of our real lives, of Canada, that we call them out.

But a couple of people were quick to tell me and to let me know that while I said that Factory Theatre in Toronto was the only theatre company that had a person of colour at its head, that that was not quite correct. There are a couple of other theatre companies, and I would love to call them out just to recognize them, because it is important that when a theatre company is reflecting the diversity that is an essential part of Canada, that we do call them out. And so I want to point out that the Gateway Theatre in Vancouver has their Artistic Director, Javani Sai, and Theatre Calgary has Stafford Arima as the Artistic Director, and also One Light Theatre in Halifax with Shaheen Seadi as the Artistic Director.

And there are a number of other theatres that do have people of colour at their heads, and it is important that we both patronize and that we recognize those theatre companies for their diversity. So thanks again to everyone who reached out to me about my incorrect statement, and as always, thank you so much for listening. My guest this week is actor-director Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster.

She’s currently directing Theatre Inamorata’s Grey, which opens September 21st and runs to October 1st at the Commons Theatre in Toronto. I’ve done the classic thing that I do whenever I have a period of unemployment, which is I’ve agreed to do far too many things right now, which is fine. I’m in a show.

I’m directing a show. I’m producing a series of events at Soulpepper. I’m sponsoring a refugee family.

Everything’s fine. It’s all going to be fine, Phil. Of course, of course.

It’s just, you know, you just do what you do. Yeah, you just get through it. It’s good.

I mean, you’re probably in the same boat. You seem to have a million things on the go. I have a lot of things on the go, but, you know, I have my day job and I have so many other things that I do as well.

So I know how it is. I just, saying no seems to be a problem. I say this is the year that I’m going to say no to things.

I’m going to be discerning and careful about my time and protective of my time at home, which is important and valuable. And I fail. I fail.

Next year, though, Phil. Next year. I always say the same thing.

Actually, I’ve gotten a little better at saying no. I have a few friends who are completely incapable of saying the word no. And then they’re like, why am I doing 15 things and I don’t know what I’m doing yet? And you’re like, well, you did that to yourself now, didn’t you? Yes.

Yeah, basically. But then we have a nice conversation about the importance of no. Good.

It’s good that you’re sharing the gospel. I mean, I spent so much time saying yes to everything until I exhausted myself and burned out. And then I said, OK, so now I’m going to have to pick and choose.

Yeah. Yeah, it is a legitimate problem. I think it’s a kind of a general problem in our industry.

Well, I mean, generally, I think that we don’t. I think that we do too much because we love it. And I think in a way, sometimes that undervalues what we do.

Oh, man, that’s a whole other podcast. I’m really torn because I work. I often work under co-op, under collective contracts like all of us.

Yeah. And we’re all just so game and so willing to work for no money. But that that’s a double edged sword, isn’t it? It really is.

It really is. I mean, we love the work we want to do. We want to support it.

But then we end. Well, I guess the question is, you know, if we didn’t do that, would the work would that show have seen the light of day? And is that worth seeing the light of day? It becomes one of those catch 22 things. It’s really difficult.

Whole other podcast. Hold on. Of course.

Yeah. But to your point about like about the no and wanting to work done, I agree with you. But I also think there’s times I know personally there are times where I say yes out of a kind of anxiety or an almost egotistical need to like a gratitude for being even asked.

And because I have this period of maybe where I’m not working or I have some time and that’s terrifying to have some time. And so I say, yes, maybe not. And it’s not always about the work.

And those are the ones you really know. You should have said no to. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. It’s one of those like I don’t wonder where that comes from, because we spend so much time saying yes to things that we like. We feel like, oh, I’ve got some free time.

I have to fill it with something. Yeah. Yeah.

Because it’s because it’s such an inconsistent life we lead. Right. We never know.

We will have something when we don’t. So. Absolutely.

Absolutely. So before we start talking about about gray, I would love to talk to you about. Well, I mean, one of the things that I always like to like to sort of explore is why people choose this career path, this life.

So what drew you to theatre and what made you decide that it was the thing that you were going to do with your life? Wow. I bet a lot of people have really deep answers to that, and I feel like I don’t. I grew up in I grew up in a very, very rural Nova Scotia and I in a small, small town with a great little town, Anaganish, Nova Scotia.

There’s a university there. So that brings a bit of the world to Anaganish, whereas a lot of small towns you don’t necessarily get exposed to a lot. So Anaganish had a little community theatre and a little sort of summer stock theatre in the in the summer times doing some professional stuff.

And so as a kid, I started doing some community theatre and I was a super awkward child, really, really nerdy and not not great with people and not cool, not cool. So I know that must be shocking to hear, but I was not a cool child. And and then the theatre, I think, as it is for a lot of people, became a kind of oasis in that I felt at home and everybody was lovely.

And I suddenly I felt in control of myself and my body and my voice in a way that I didn’t feel in any other part of my life. So it became really attractive. And so I started doing a lot of it, a lot of community theatre.

And at some point someone said, well, why don’t you do this for a job? And that had never really occurred to me as a possibility, but nor had anything else. That’s the funny thing. I kids I meet teenagers in Toronto and they’re so sophisticated.

They all go to like science high schools or arts high schools or technology high schools and they all know what they want to be. And in rural Nova Scotia, when I was 16, I had never heard of any jobs at all. And so it seemed perfectly reasonable that I would go to school and become an actor.

And I’ve certainly had I have no regrets. I’m very, very fortunate as an actor and I’ve had a lot of fun and I’m, I’m planned to keep doing it for a long time, but there have been the occasional moment along the years where I’ve been like, oh, if I’d known about engineering, like if I’d heard about that or like, like accounting or some sensible career, like maybe I would have done that. But fortunately I never heard about other jobs and acting was the only job I knew about.

How old were you when somebody said you should, you should think about doing this for a living? Uh, probably 16 or 17. Okay. Yeah.

And I mean, you were saying that you’ve never heard, you’d never heard of any other job. Did it seem like, did you sort of wonder like what you can, you can get paid for this? Uh, yeah. Um, well, and part of that probably this is only just occurring to me now, but because Anna Ganesh had this little summer stock theatre company.

And so every summer these like actors would come from these exotic places like Halifax or Toronto and would come and spend three months in Anna Ganesh making, doing plays in the summertime. Um, and so I had actually seen working actors who got paid. I had no idea how much they got paid.

Um, right. And, but, but it, I saw people making a, what I presumed was a living at it. I know now that, you know, it was probably a hard go for those actors, honestly.

It’s, it’s a living. Yeah. It’s not, it’s, it’s sometimes not a particular lucrative or comfortable living, but it’s a living.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s a great living.

Who are we kidding? We love it. We love it, but no, it’s not easy financially. No, no.

And that’s, I think the thing that, I mean, no, almost nobody ever tells you that like early on. Um, I remember when I was going to theatre school at my audition, uh, the head of acting had this big, nobody wants you speech. And it was the first time that anybody had indicated that, you know, a life in the theatre might be hard.

But of course I was a cocky, like 19 year old. So when he said, nobody wants you, I said, I thought, yeah, you don’t know nothing. I felt the exact same way.

I think we all do. Cause I had the same thing. People tell you it’s hard and you think to yourself, yeah, it’s hard for everybody else.

I’m going to be fine. You don’t, you don’t know me. Right.

That’s that cockiness of youth. I think that’s that. Yeah.

And now I have this, I’ve developed over the last few years, um, a weird fetish about personal finances. I really like talking about it. Um, in fact, like a friend took me out for beer yesterday because he had questions about HST.

Uh, and I, on the, on the bike ride to the, to the bar, I thought to myself, Oh my God, what if he’s actually playing a prank on me? And he just told me the thing he knew would get me to the bar. I’m such a nerd that I would love to talk about HST and I’m going to get there and he’s going to have some prank or something like that. But no, he, where did that come from? Um, honestly, my husband, I met my husband, who’s a little bit older than me and just had his stuff together a little more.

Um, and I, and, and not out of, not in a, not in a patronizing kind of way. Uh, very early when we started dating, he just sort of was not prying, but would ask a few questions about like, Oh, you know, do you have any investments or anything like that? Um, cause he did and I didn’t really. And, and he sent me a couple of links to things.

And for the longest time I thought, Oh, this is so boring. It’s so boring. And I tell you, Phil, and maybe, maybe you’ll get bitten by the bug too.

I don’t know. Maybe, maybe you love personal finances. Um, there’s this moment where reading about personal finances, where you go from like, this is so boring.

This is so boring. And then one day it clicks and you suddenly understand just a few small things and you’re just addicted. It’s so nerdy.

Oh, I’m so lame. I’m curious. I’m curious.

Cause when, when he said, I mean, I know what, if somebody had said to me, uh, when I, cause you know, I have a day job now, but when I was trying to make a goal of acting full time, I have somebody who had said, Oh, do you have any investments? I would have said, sweetie, I’m an actor. Totally. And I did, I think I did feel like that, but then I sort of, you know, you’ve got the equity RRSP, right? And so I sort of started paying a little bit more attention to that.

And then I sort of thought, Oh, you know, I could open a TFSA and I could, I could just squirrel away 20 bucks a week or something like that over time. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not rolling in but, but I feel a little bit in control, uh, which I think is important.

And, and I bring all this up to say that, um, I do think artists could, I think artists are often told that they shouldn’t, or get the sense that they shouldn’t care about money or know anything about money because, and that they won’t have any. And I really feel like the opposite is true. You, we make so little money relative to many other industries that we need to be more in control of it and more aware of it than most people.

Um, and I don’t know how you tell that to people in university or in a training program, because I, I certainly know that we had a couple of days of business class or what have you at UBC and man, that completely went over my head. I don’t know how you get a 19 year old to pay attention to the fact that they might have to pay HST one day. Um, but, but I do think it’s important.

Well, that’s a tough one because I think there’s a lot of things that they should be telling us in theatre school, uh, like about producing totally since that’s something that we all have to eventually learn how to do. I didn’t get any of that. Did you get any of that new training? No.

I mean, of course, I mean, I keep asking people who’ve come out of theatre school, uh, uh, more recently than I, I came out of theatre school in like 93, 94. So, uh, at that point, like when they would talk about fringe, it was like, you know, or, you know, if you can’t do anything else, you know, you could always put it on your own thing. You know, it was like, yeah.

And now it’s like, of course you’re going to do that. But apparently I’ve been talking to people still, and it’s still not something that they talk about. Um, maybe they’ll mention it, but nobody really talks about the essential need for knowing how to produce and they don’t teach it.

I wonder why that, I wonder if that’s like a, this is a wild generalization, but a bit of it’s a, a generational thing. Cause the professors presumably have been there for a while and are of another generation where maybe self-producing was less of a thing. I think that’s part of it.

I think also if you’re depending on the type of school you have, um, like if it’s university, you’re looking at a little more academically and probably those guys have been there a lot longer. I came out of, uh, uh, uh, I came out of the George Brown, uh, school and all the teachers were professional actors still. And, um, they were, it’s a conservatory.

So it was all about like preparing you to go to the audition and get the job and go to the next audition and get the job. And that’s going to be your career. Um, I think there’s a slow realization that producing is a thing, but it’s, it’s a, I think it’s, I think, I still think it’s a long way off.

Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.

I don’t know. I don’t know why that is because it’s so vital. Hey, we all, that’s why a gen like a place like generator is so important.

And it was so clever of staff to realize that if they really wanted to serve the community, they needed to change their mandate and focus on helping people learn how to produce. It’s I mean, and there’s so like a lot of us sort of like learn the hard way. Like you get a show in the fringe and you’re like, Oh fuck, what do I do now? Oh, that’s exactly what happened to me.

Howland company got 52 pickup in the fringe a few years ago. And none of us had ever produced anything. And we had no idea what we’re doing.

And fortunately it was a fairly small show, although we made it more complicated by having four different casts and eight actors. But, um, but, uh, it was such a great learning experience and thank God for fringe for that reason. Well, while we’re on the topic of that, the Howland company, um, what was the impetus to start to, to, to, to, you were the, one of the founding members of the Howland company.

So what, what inspired the start? Was it getting into fringe that birthed the company or was it something else? We, um, we had been kicking around for about a year or so before we got into the fringe. Um, really Ruth Goodwin, James Graham and Paolo Santalucia were three friends who then asked in turn a bunch of their friends to just come hang out and talk about what we wanted to do and what we wanted to be. We really started as, um, uh, a kind of a practicing training opportunity for each other.

So we’re all mostly actors. So we would get together and read plays together. We still have an ongoing play reading series, uh, during the year, not it’s on hiatus in the summer times, but every month we read a play with whoever wants to come and read with us.

And, uh, we would also ask, um, people in the community that we were interested in if they would come and teach us. Uh, so we did that for about a year, but maybe in part because we’re all actors, uh, it was a bit hard to get off the ground where producing was concerned. So then when we got this fringe slot, that was a real kick in the pants.

Um, and that’s, it’s continued to be a bit like that because we then, uh, we, we certainly have drive, but it also helps when we’re sort of forced into things like we applied for this great Canadian stage residency and that kind of forced us, oh crap, we actually have to make something happen for this. Um, uh, and, uh, we, we sort of started talking to Holger Seim and he had a project he wanted to do and we said, oh crap, we can’t let Holger get Holger down. So we have to make that happen.

And, and we’ve got a punk rock coming up next year, uh, in the crows theatre studio space. And that’s the same. We’ve booked the space.

So crap, we’re going to have to make it, have to make it happen. Yeah. It’s funny because I, there’s so many times when I’ve, I’ve, you know, people have a, it’s a great idea.

Let’s get some actors together and we’re going to, you know, we’re going to do, you know, we’ll do some readings, we’ll do some stuff. But without a solid project, it’s hard to herd the cats into one place for any length of time. Yeah, absolutely.

When did you start directing? Um, I directed a small project in Anna Ganesh years and years and years ago, but then really 52 Pickup, which I co-directed with Paolo Santaluccia, uh, was my, my first project. Um, I’ve always wanted to, to direct more and I really love it because I love ordering people around, but, uh, that was a first project. And so with that first incarnation of 52 Pickup, we had four casts.

And so I directed two of them, uh, and Paolo directed the other two. Was there, I mean, you directed when you were still at home, um, and then, uh, coming to this project, did you have any hesitation in directing or was it just something that you knew you wanted to do? Endless, constant hesitation. I’m terrified right now.

We opened Bray on September 21st and it’s going to be great come, but, um, but I’m terrified. Uh, it’s really nerve wracking. Um, I have benefited immensely, quite honestly from watching Albert Schultz direct at Soul Pepper.

I’ve learned a lot from, from him and I’ve learned a lot from, from Paolo when we were working together on that project and its subsequent remounts. Um, but it’s, it’s a really nerve wracking thing. Um, I honestly, here’s a secret Phil, don’t tell anyone.

I honestly think a good portion of directing though is keeping your anxieties to yourself. And which isn’t to say you can’t say, well, okay, I don’t really know what we’re going to do for this next transition. Anybody have any ideas? That’s always fair game.

Why not take advantage of all the brilliant minds you have in a room? Let’s, let’s think of things together. But the, I don’t know if this is working. I’m so stupid.

Like, no, no, you need to be the captain of the ship a little bit. And, uh, and just, just tell your actors that they’re good and they’re going to keep getting better. And, uh, and you’ve got their back and you’re not going to let anybody look stupid out there.

So you just have to swallow all of those insecurities for a while. A little bit. Yeah.

And then maybe go to a good mentor here and there and ask questions. Who are the mentors that you turn to? I have a good friend and mentor in Leah Cherniak. Uh, she taught me clown when I was in the Salt Pepper Academy and she founded Theatre Columbus here in Toronto.

Um, and she’s just, she mentors me in every respect of my life. We have drinks and I talked to her about, I don’t know what I’m doing. And like, I think I’m going to marry this guy.

What do you think about that? And I think I’m going to do it. And she’s just endlessly encouraging and, and is a big fan of taking risks. And that’s what’s admirable about a lot of the work that she’s done with, with Theatre Columbus and, um, and with Salt Pepper and other places is, um, Leah is always game to make a mess and makes no promises about cleaning it up afterward.

She’s just going to try some stuff. We’ve been working, uh, on and off on a project that she’s leading about, uh, Chopin. And I tell you, like, she makes me crazy sometimes because we’ll, we’ll start working and she’ll play a prelude and she’ll kind of be like, okay, go.

Meaning what? Like go and do some stuff on the stage. Just go act. And sometimes I’m like, no, tell me, tell me what to do.

But she just has so confident, so much confidence that actors have enough in them to, to, to make, make something. And she’s a really like, she’s really going to sit back and wait and see what happens. I’m a much more, um, I’m far more of a control freak.

So, uh, my actors right now will tell you that I’m very much like, okay, you’re going to enter on this line. But, but I think that’s why she’s such a good mentor to me because, um, in a way her, her taste and her style is so different. So it pushes me to, to let go of some of my, my tendencies.

And how are you doing with that? Is that, is that something that you struggle with or letting go of being a control freak? Yeah. Yes. I think most control freaks struggle with letting go of control.

Um, but you know, back to what we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, I think that’s one benefit of, um, overstretching yourself is sometimes you just have to admit, I got to let this go and trust that it’s going to work out. Yeah, that’s true. There’s a, there’s a certain amount of trust in, in theatre anyway, that you just have to put it out there and hope that what you think works in the room actually works.

Yeah. Yes. And it is a terrifying thing when you do your first stumble through your first run and you have people watching in the house, even it’s, it’s just your creative team.

It’s just designers. And even though they’re not saying anything or doing anything and they’re probably smiling and they’re probably laughing or whatever, all of a sudden you see the show completely differently because there’s new eyes on it. And you see all of the flaws of your own making, uh, that you’ve never seen before, but that’s why you need to have audiences.

And that, that, that goes all the way through to the run. It’s never going to be perfect. You need to show it to someone.

And I do, I do wonder sometimes if we spend too much time workshopping stuff at times. Sometimes I wonder, cause I’ve heard people say that maybe we need to workshop more and I’ve heard other people that, that maybe we spend too much time workshopping. So I think they’re, they’re very, very much two different, uh, camps in things.

You know, I think, I think that the, the risk averse, like the idea of, uh, workshopping more and more. Right. There’s something about throwing it up there and figuring it out.

Like we think it works and now let’s find out if the audience thinks it works. Right. But what is a workshop? Like a pro, see this production of Grey, we’re going to run it for two weeks in September.

I mean, I guess we’re not going to advertise it as such, but in my mind, it’s very much a workshop in the sense that we’re, we’re doing it on a, on a low budget with time limitations. So it’s not the Broadway production, you know, um, we’re doing our very best. Uh, we’re, we’re working with the playwright who is so wonderfully generous and open with his time and game to make changes if needs be, or to, to work on things.

And, and that’s, that’s a workshop and we’re going to present it. And, um, and if it should have another life beyond that, we’ll make changes. I have no doubt of that.

Uh, I worked on a project last year called Other Jesus with public recordings, uh, that Frank Cox O’Connell directed and brilliantly, and sometimes frustratingly as an actor, but, but mostly brilliantly. Um, we continued to rehearse that show, uh, throughout almost the entire run. So we ran it for not long.

I think we just ran it for a week. Um, but we had four or five rehearsals after opening and, and then I think we did the last two shows without any more rehearsals. Part of that was because public recordings knows that they’re remounting it and they’re going to do it again next year.

Um, but I also just think for a new work, why not? Why not continue to tweak? I mean, you know, tweaking for a month is probably excessive, but a run of audiences it’s, it’s, cause we don’t generally have a lot of previews, especially in indie. In indie theatre. No.

Um, I like, I think sometimes we’ll call our dress rehearsal a preview. Like we don’t, we don’t have a lot of opportunities to preview. And previews are really important, especially if you have any kind of comedy.

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, Albert Phillips at Soul Pepper will tell you, like, he does most of his work in previews and that’s, that’s really true. A show that he’s directing will change drastically from the first preview to the opening. I think that the first preview of Spoon River, I wasn’t in it, so I might be making this up, but I’m pretty sure the first preview of Spoon River had an intermission and was like two hours long and the show is now a 90 minute one act show.

Right. So that’s, you know, that’s drastic. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s always really, really hard to know. I mean, I remember, uh, when I was working with the first show that we did with Keystone theatre, we did this massive play in the style of a silent film called the bell of Winnipeg.

And our first, our, we did this workshop where we like spent a week and we were finally, we’d spent three years developing characters and ideas and storylines and sticks. And we put it all together and then we did it for an audience and they kind of hated it. Um, well, I mean, the thing is that we’d tried to put so much in that they couldn’t follow it.

So it was totally an important learning experience. And you didn’t know that until you had people there, right? Exactly. We had no idea until we had an audience not react to things.

Um, and then we took a whole lot out and we focused on what the important things were and we never would have made that discovery if we didn’t have that first shot in front of the audience. So, but then I think there, go ahead. Oh, just like, I don’t know if there’s a way to like get audiences into the rehearsal hall.

I don’t think anybody’s really come up with a good consistent way to make that happen beyond like special occasion things, but especially for comedy, because your castmates are going to get sick of your joke after the first four days and then you don’t know anymore if it works or if it doesn’t until preview. Yeah. Every time I’ve done a show with Keystone Theatre, the first performance, I’m holding my breath backstage for that first laugh because we think it’s pretty funny, but we don’t know for sure.

Yeah. No idea. No idea.

Yeah. And I’ve enjoyed like, I’ve enjoyed like doing like longer runs of things as an actor and it does feel like a laboratory sometimes. Well, that’s such a rare gift.

We almost never get the opportunity to run things for a long time. Yeah, that’s true. Mostly it’s remounts and that’s one thing that I wish we had a better consistent way of making remounts.

I think remounts are really important. I guess that’s to the point about workshops. The first production of anything, if it’s a new script, it’s a workshop.

Yeah. And it should change if there’s going to be a remount. It should, there should be changes unless it’s miraculously good.

There almost always are beneficial changes that can be made provided that there is a remount. So remount everything. That’s my new dictum.

Well, I think, I mean, imagine what you could do with a remount. I mean, if you’ve only had the chance to run something for two weeks, if you’re lucky three, the opportunity to do it again and take everything that you learned from performing it and just put that into the show again and say, instead of saying, Oh, I wish we could have done that to say, Ooh, now we can do that. It’s, it’s, it’s a gift that we so rarely get.

Super valuable. So you were going to ask me about Grey. I was going to ask you about Greg.

I’m curious about, first off, how you got involved with, with the project, how you see it. And let’s start with like, what’s it about? Yeah, well, Grey is, it’s a wild adaptation of A Picture of Dorian Gray. Christopher Van Solen has taken the basic plot of A Picture of Dorian Gray and transposed it to modern day and, and switched a lot of the genders of the characters.

So it’s a primarily female cast now, which, Oh my God. Have you seen today that there’s going to be a movie version of a movie adaptation of A Picture of Dorian Gray with a female lead? What? No, I didn’t even see that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I just read it on, on Slates today.

That’s crazy. St. Vincent is going, the, the pop musician St. Vincent is going to direct and I’m reading this on Variety, is going to adapt and direct A Picture of Dorian Gray with a female lead with Lionsgate. You’re ahead of the curve.

Exactly. So I forwarded that to Chris and he was like, so it must be a good idea. Yeah.

So I, I’ve kind of been in touch with the wonderful women at Theatre Inamorata for a couple of years and when they, they’ve been adapting this for a while and then they asked me, they asked me last year if I wanted to do it. So I was, I’m, I’m always quite keen to find opportunities to direct because I want to learn, right. And I think you just need to practice.

So I said, Oh my gosh. Yeah. But it is, it’s a challenge in the sense that I’ve never directed something this big.

It’s six actors and quite a sweeping story over a long period of time. Um, and so it’s certainly a challenge, but it’s going well so far. That’s good.

And, and you came in a year before? Um, we workshopped, no, not that long ago. We workshopped it in, I think June. Okay.

And they’ve been adapting it for years. Chris has been working on it for quite some time. Um, so I’m a relative newcomer to the project and, uh, so I’ve been through like a couple of drafts, but my understanding is that they have gone through quite a number of drafts with some pretty, pretty big changes over time.

Um, have, have, have you, as the director, uh, coming into this thing that’s been in process for quite a while, um, have you, did you stand back and just let them, uh, uh, keep working on or did you come in with suggestions and what on, on directions they could go or. You really should interview Chris. He’s so great.

He’s such a generous and patient playwright. I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to have this total newcomer. Who’s like read the script once come in and be like, yeah, I was thinking maybe you should change the order of these two scenes.

And I think you should cut this part. And I think you should add this part. And what And he is so good at culling my good ideas from my bad ones, unfortunately.

Um, and so patient with me. Um, uh, so to answer your question, no, I’ve been quite vocal and a little bit bossy. Um, part of that is just like wanting to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.

Were there things that you threw at the wall that didn’t stick and you just sort of had to admit, no, that wasn’t a good idea. Hmm. I don’t know.

I forget my failings immediately. That’s probably a good idea. Yeah.

I mean, the thing is, I think this show, I think we’re going to do really interesting things with it. Um, with a kind of low budget theatricality. Uh, but it’s the kind of thing that could really scale up or scale down.

So I will say the first time I read it, I was like, how do we do this on a low budget? Because, you know, a picture of Dorian gray, you immediately can imagine artwork and full-scale oil paintings and sculptures and projections of paintings in progress. And it could, it could be really quite high-tech and expensive, but we’re going to leave a lot of that to the audience’s imagination. What does, what does, uh, transposing the genders in, in some of the roles do in your mind for the plate for the piece? Yeah, that’s, um, that’s such a good question.

And I, it’s funny. Um, the word like this is a feminist production has been thrown around a lot in part because theatre in a Murata is a company that is interested in creating work for women and adapting classic works for women and, and is a feminist theatre company. Um, and I’ve been kind of rolling that around in my head a little bit while just, just doing the work, telling the story.

And then this fantastic article came out today in intermission magazine. Um, uh, uh, Kim, uh, Kim Solga wrote this great article about, uh, the, the Backeye at Stratford and whether or not it’s a feminist production. Um, I, I haven’t actually seen the show yet.

I’m hoping to catch it, uh, later this summer, but, um, she talks about this conflict between the director’s vision and maybe the playwright and the cast’s vision, because the women in the play do terrible things. They’re kind of awful people. And similarly in Dorian Gray, many of these female characters who were originally male characters do terrible misogynistic things to each other.

And so the question is, can that, can it still be a feminist play? And what, what Kim says in this, this play, in this article in intermission that I think I completely sense also in our production is that there is a, a singular narrative of feminism to quote her, um, where feminism and feminist shows can only portray women doing good, strong feminist things. Uh, and I don’t think that’s the case. And indeed in this show, we’re showing complex women engaging in sometimes terrible acts towards each other.

And I guess that’s the thing about changing the gender is even if they’re engaging in the same actions as the male characters in the story, when you make it a woman, it brings up all of these other questions of, of representation and whether it’s okay for women to do these things and to be terrible and to be villains. I wonder about, I wonder about that, like having to ask that question, like the question of, is it okay for us to have women who do these terrible things? Uh, does that make us unfeminist is almost an unfeminist question in my mind. Exactly.

Exactly. If we’re just concerned with having women be good to each other, then we’re falling victim to like every, I don’t know, the trope that like a lot of tropes that I can think of that are not particularly feminist. Yeah.

Delicate, good, good girls. Right. Yeah, absolutely.

But I think that’s, um, that’s something that a lot of, a lot of us are grappling with in this time, especially when you’re adapting a classic like this is just wanting to serve our own ideals. Right. And I do absolutely identify as a feminist as do, as does Peter in Murata wanting to serve those ideals.

But I think Chris and the theatre company have not backed down from portraying in gray, some, yeah, some really complicated and at times really terrible actions by women. Has anything surprised you working on this show? Just anything that happened with, with actors, with the script, anything that you didn’t expect? Oh, constantly every day, every single day. Um, everybody’s, everybody’s so generous all the time.

Oh, we have this like brilliant new performer. Uh, uh, Sydney, uh, Violet Bristow. And, uh, she’s very new to the theatre scene.

Um, she’s trans and she’s playing a trans character in the play and her incredible patience as a newcomer to the, to the theatre scene, um, in a room full of people who’ve done kind of a lot of theatre, um, is forcing me to revisit my own training and really learn to how to like slow down and actually break down what acting is and what directing is and what music is. We were doing a little bit of singing together yesterday, she and I, and, and that’s, that’s been a really big surprise is actually how useful it can be to have somebody really put the brakes on things. Now, is, is she putting the brakes on things because, uh, she’s, uh, questioning what is quote unquote understood, um, or just asking good questions? Um, what is asking good questions and maybe sometimes not even knowing what question to ask, but just knowing that she’s not sure, right.

She’s, she’s, and I can, I can see that. And, and she’s, she’s not afraid to say, I just, what’s happening, you know? Um, and she has a really complicated part in that she has to perform some Shakespeare in the play. She’s, she’s playing the role of Sybil, which in the original, as in our script is this, um, young actor who, um, uh, Dorian Gray sees and becomes enamored with because she’s so talented.

And then she, I don’t think I’m giving anything away by, because it’s Oscar Wilde. Um, and then she gives a terrible, terrible performance, um, in part because Dorian Gray has professed, professed love to her and it distracts her. And she gives this terrible performance that Dorian has invited friends to.

So Sydney, who’s a relative newcomer to, to, to the theatre scene, um, but who’s fantastic, uh, has to be both the most brilliant Shakespearean actor you’ve ever seen and the worst Shakespearean actor you’ve ever seen. And amongst also acting the story of, of this, this actor who’s, who meets Dorian Gray and falls in love. So it’s this incredibly complicated part.

Um, so I, I didn’t really anticipate that, oh, I’m going to have to really revisit my own Shakespeare training and, and try to impart some of that and help her through that. Um, and she’s so game and so enthusiastic, thankfully. Uh, so that’s been a really big surprise for me.

I think it’s interesting, the, the idea of, of just like having somebody who’s like free to ask questions and to say, no, I don’t understand that. Like how many times was I, I think of myself, like how many times was I too afraid to ask that question in a rehearsal hall? I know. And I’m so brave.

Yeah. It’s so brave. And I, I read this somewhere years ago that sometimes, uh, having a polite actor in a rehearsal room is not nearly as useful as having a, an antagonistic one.

Um, you know, you don’t, you don’t want to work with assholes, but people who are willing to question and comment and attack, oh, is this actually useful? Is this, is this a story we’re telling? Um, but, and I’m, I’m guilty of this myself. We all kind of want to work with friends we can go for a beer with after rehearsal, right? Of course. And, and, you know, we have to, because especially if we’re not making a lot of money, we might as well have some fun.

Well, exactly. But I do think there’s something to just taking the gloves off in the rehearsal room and admitting to your own doubts and questions. And I think somebody told me once that to be theatre in Halifax.

Um, I don’t know if this is true. I might be making this up about them, but they’re all friends and colleagues and they have a process that of creation. Cause they make a lot of work.

They do a lot of device work. Um, we’re in the room. They really have a policy of, uh, asking each other, oh, do you like my idea? And the rule is you have to answer honestly and say, oh, that’s so hard.

Oh, how do you even get to that point where you can actually do that? I don’t know. Cause I think it’s, it’s all well and good as long as everybody agrees. And then you’ve got, there’s like that one time where you have to be the asshole.

Who’s like, uh, no, I hate that agreement. If you’ve made that agreement, I didn’t even know how you do that, but there’s a safety in making the agreement, I guess. No, we really, we hold, we hold to this and you asked me and I have to say, I hate your idea, the terrible idea, which doesn’t mean you can’t still defend it.

But right now I hate your idea, but then you really have to trust each other’s taste too. Oh, you really do. You really do.

And it’s like the idea that you can do that. And like, I guess part of the process is getting to the point where you can do that. And that happened in the room rehearsals over.

Let’s go for a beer and not hold the grudge. That’s tough. That’s a really tough.

We, uh, I have this friend, Hannah Miller, who I did the Academy with and we did the audition weekend for the Academy together. And the audition weekend for the Academy is very much about making little devised works together. Okay.

And like something about our energy together, we were on fire that weekend, Phil, you know, we’re making these little things. We had scenes together and we had little creations together and we were on fire and we just, and then we got into the Academy together and she would say the same thing. We can’t work together.

We make each other crazy. Oh really? Oh yeah. Like we have completely different tastes and we hate each other’s ideas.

And I think it really worked for that brief period of time because the pressure was on and we were really willing to be like, no, I don’t want to do that. Yes. I want to do that.

No, I’m going to do that. But then we got into this longer protracted working time and it was harder to kind of shove aside the passive aggressiveness. And, and, and so we agreed that we would never make shows together.

Um, except, except if we did, we’d have a theatre company that we’d call mutual destruction, but that’s what it would be. We would just kill each other. How long did it take you to realize that? I mean, you have that, you have that, that, that, that great period of creation when you’re at that, at that weekend.

And then how long after you got into the Academy, did it take for you to, to realize that no, this doesn’t work? I actually, you know what? Probably not that long, but we kept trying for months, probably like three weeks in. I was like, Oh, you make me mad. Uh, but, uh, probably we kept trying all year really.

And we finally did this, um, collective creation project all together. And we just, just hated all of her ideas. And she just hated all of mine.

Unfortunately we could kind of break apart and just, we just, we just, we realized, Oh, we can’t work together. We just can’t, we can’t, but it takes a while to admit that we’re so Canadian and we don’t want to ever admit not getting along with someone. Oh, of course.

Of course. Yeah. And we’re actually really quite good friends.

Like I, I really like her as a person. I just, you just can’t work with her. So as we, as we sort of start to, to, to draw to a close, um, uh, I’m just curious about, I mean, you were saying that, that you learned so much from, from watching Albert, uh, uh, Albert Schultz direct, um, uh, and, and you have your, your mentor who, who directs it in such a very different way from you.

Um, can you, aside from, I mean, you sort of alluded to being a control freak and, and, and I think you used the word bossy once, um, can you in, in a little more depth, could you describe your directing style? I say sorry a lot, but I don’t mean it. Um, I, uh, I think, gosh, that’s hard. It’s hard to know yourself, isn’t it? Um, well, right now we’re kind of going through our second pass of the play and I always schedule not enough time because I’m not willing to admit how slow I go.

Um, but right now it’s really just, what are these words mean? How are you saying them to each other? What are these little moments of connection? And it just takes a long time and I need to see things over and over and over again. Um, so that’s why I say sorry a lot because I’m constantly saying, sorry guys, sorry, sorry, but can we go from the top again? Sorry, we’re going to go back. So let’s stop.

Sorry, stop. I’m going to stop you. I know I only let you do two lines, but I’m going to stop you.

We’re going to do that again. And this is why. Um, so I hope, hopefully detail oriented, um, but, uh, not super prepared.

I’m not like a big director. I don’t have little charts. I did a show once years ago where, uh, I got to rehearse on the first day and the director had this booklet with little, little maps of where we were to stand, uh, for any given scene.

And I know those, I know that book I’ve, I’ve worked with directors who have that book in, and I don’t particularly enjoy it. I know, but I admire it because if you have a huge project, I get it. I’m just incapable of it.

Uh, I get it. If it’s like, if the stage is full of people and there’s intricate movements, I see, I absolutely see mapping that out. Yeah.

Yeah. But seeing that much anymore, actually, I wonder if it’s kind of going the way of a dinosaur or something, those booklets. Um, so I’m not, I’m not super prepared in that sense, but, uh, hopefully detail oriented.

And I just need to see things over and over again. I’m, um, I’m sometimes a little bit slow to pick up on what’s happening. And I, sometimes I think that’s actually useful because audiences can be a bit slow too, if you’re not clear about what the story is and what the connection is.

Um, so I, sometimes I think not being super swift on, on picking up the nuances can be useful. Um, and yeah, and I just, I need, I need to see it in front of me in the room and I need to do it over and over again. And, uh, and like I said, I apologize about that a lot, but I don’t mean it.

I think there could be no more Canadian statement than I apologize a lot, but I don’t mean it. Right. Well, Courtney, thank you so much for talking with me today.

This has been a lot of fun. Hey, thank you, Phil. This has been a, yeah, a real treat.

And I love what you’re doing. I think that it’s a brilliant thing to have this kind of podcast on the air.