Stephen Near

Stephen Near is a writer and educator living in Hamilton. He is a graduate of York University (BFA), the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (B. Ed) and the MFA Creative Writing program at the University of Guelph. Stephen is a member of the Playwright’s Guild of Canada and an alumnus of both the Sage Hill Writing Experience and the Banff Centre. Last year, he was named the inaugural Writer-In-Residence for the Cotton Factory in Hamilton. His writing has appeared in a variety of online and print publications and his plays have been produced at a variety theatres and festivals, principally by the company that he co-founded, Same Boat Theatre. He is a proud husband, father and unabashed geek who is (still) obsessed with comic books and role-playing games.

stephennear.com
Twitter: @SNear23
Instagram: @stephenisnear

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Transcript

Welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host of this podcast. This is episode 328.

Stageworthy is a one-person operation, so not only do I perform the interviews, I also arrange the guests, I edit the show, I promote it, and I even created the music that’s playing under what I’m saying now. I also shoulder all of the financial responsibilities for keeping the show going, all while giving you this show for free. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider supporting it.

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Even retweeting this episode helps. You can find Stageworthy on Twitter and Instagram at stageworthypod, and you can find the website with the archive of all 328 episodes at stageworthypodcast.com. And if you want to find me online, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at philrickaby, and as I mentioned, my website is philrickaby.com. My guest this week is playwright and educator Stephen Near. Stephen joined me to talk about his new play Whale Fall at the 2022 Hamilton Fringe, July 20th to 31st.

Here’s our conversation. I want to get talking about Whale Fall at the Hamilton Fringe, and I know it’s a BYOV with the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts. Yeah.

Tell me, let’s start with, tell me about Whale Fall first. So Whale Fall was a play that I started writing when I was associated with Theatre Aquarius. Part of what they called their junction, the Theatre Aquarius Junction, which was basically this project, this program where they brought in creators who were actors, who were playwrights, who were whatever, like who maybe had an idea and just weren’t sure where to go with it.

Was it a play? Was it a performance piece? What have you? And I approached Luke Brown, who was their director of new play development at the time and said, you know, I got this piece and I don’t know, it doesn’t really feel like a, it doesn’t really feel like a play right now. I don’t know what it is. But, you know, I’m, my daughter, who is young, much younger, who’s younger than she, than she is now at the time, you know, has this big fascination with marine mammals and particularly orca and sharks and all other stuff.

And I really felt compelled to write a play about it or write something about it. And I didn’t know what, what to make of it. But I just really felt compelled to write about it.

So, so I started working on it in this junction, in the junction, and essentially it just started out as a bunch of monologues, right? A bunch of monologues about, you know, sharks and orcas and whales and all that stuff. And over time, it kind of took on a shape where, it kind of took on a shape wherein the narrative was essentially like her, my daughter as a character in the play, and me as a character in the play talking to her about whales. And so I thought, is this like a storytelling, is this like a storytelling exercise where we’re sort of, you know, my, I’m telling her stories about whales and then she’s sort of talking a little bit about them.

And then I thought, but it needs more than that, right? And Luke was, Luke, who was working as sort of a dramaturge or shots dramaturge was like, well, you know, if this is to have a narrative, like what does it look like narratively speaking? And I was like, yeah, it doesn’t really have much of a narrative. Like, I don’t know. It’s just like monologues about whales.

And that, that kind of got me thinking about, well, what does this look like from a, from a story telling perspective? What type of story am I telling? And it kind of, kind of brought me around to the notion that I was maybe telling a story about, about Becca reflecting back on a time when the orcas were still around because she’s living in a time when the orcas are extinct. And that was like, okay, so basically I’m projecting Rebecca, my daughter into the future as, you know, a young woman who’s been studying to be a marine biologist, being a whale biologist, but there are no whales. So what does that look like? What does a play like that look like? And then that led me to this pretty uncomfortable realization that in writing myself in this play, what role do I have in this play? Right? Like, what is my role in this play? Well, I kind of felt like my, I guess my role is like, you know, then questioning, like got to me questioning about the whole sort of overarching theme around the play, which is sort of my responsibility, my culpability to allowing species extinction, to allowing climate change.

Right. Which I think is the big question that is quite honestly facing so many creators nowadays. And it, it sort of dovetailed around the time, like, like around, I guess, 2020, because when we, we sort of all locked down, like 2020, the pandemic happened, and we all sort of locked down, but I kept on working on the piece, even though so the junction was sort of meeting remotely.

And, and around that time, there’d been a lot of talk about, you know, what, what, what types of projects, essentially, do playwrights like me or creators like me, you know, older, white, male, middle class creators, what responsibility do we have in terms of writing? Like, what types of projects do we really have a right to put a voice to? You know, because there was a lot of there’s, there has been a lot of talk recently, and rightly so, about, you know, white male or white writers, co-opting the stories of, of, of other cultures, right, other cultural creators. But I, when I kind of came upon climate change, I kind of thought, well, this is honestly a subject that I can talk about. Why? Because, you know, white, white colonialist culture is something that we like, like, and, and that type of oppression, that type of change, that type of industrialization, is something that, like, unfortunately, men like me have been, have, have been very responsible for.

And I kind of thought, well, maybe this is something that I can write about, that I can try and tackle. But again, talk about, you know, what responsibility do I have? What, what responsibility, what, what culpability do I have? How can I address this? How can I write about this thing? Which is, is a really huge worry. And back, even back in, like, 2019, it was, it was weighing upon us.

But now in 2022, it’s, you know, it’s critical. Like, it’s awful, the, the, the way that, that, that so much has been happening over, over these past few years, just pointing to some of the, I guess, some of the distressing news about, about climate change. And, and, and so this, this piece addresses that, but it addresses it in a very specific way.

It addresses it in, in, you know, by talking about this subject of species extinction. But one of the things I learned about when I was, when I was taking my master’s was, it’s very difficult to write about climate change. It’s very difficult to talk about things like extinction from an artistic standpoint, because a lot of times audiences kind of tune out, tune away from it, right? Or they’ll only pay attention to it if it’s, I don’t know, in, in terms of a, I guess, in a dystopian sense, right? Speculative fiction or whatever.

So that, so, so the way that I thought I could write about this is to make it very personal and to make it down to earth and make it very intimate. And really there’s nothing more intimate than, you know, the relationship between a father and a daughter and the, you know, the bond and the tension and the love between it, between the two of them. And so that’s kind of where this, this piece emerged was, was addressing this very big issue from a very, from a very intimate, small issue and trying to bridge that gap.

In terms of the, the writing of it is, did, what did the writing of it, was that a different process than the one that, than when you normally follow? Yeah, I was less interested in, I was less interested in character dynamics and less interested in sort of character backstory, like some of the world building that I usually do in a lot of my plays. I didn’t do any of that. I did a lot of exploratory monologues.

And when we, like, this is, this is sort of the first time this piece has been performed live, like, but we did a reading of it last year with the Hamilton, Hamilton Arts Week online. It was a digital presentation. So, so the, so when I wrote the piece for that, for that timeframe, I really kind of said, okay, how do I basically inject a narrative in this? What is a narrative? What does the story look like? And what it turned, what it turned into was it became a sort of a road trip, if you will.

And so that the play kind of starts with this declaration, like right off the bat, making it clear to the, to the audience, okay, the whales have disappeared. The whales are extinct. And so basically then the need, the journey of Becca as the primary character is I need to, I need to like leave everything I’m doing right now to see if I can find them.

And that kind of formed the backbone for the journey, if you will, of the play. But I didn’t. So in that sense, what I did is I took a lot of the monologues that I had written and then kind of filled them in with, you know, Becca on these certain points along the way, along this highway journey through BC, which was interesting because as I kind of took her on this journey through BC, there were all these other places for me to touch upon issues of environmentalism and climate change because, you know, no surprise, BC has kind of been the epicenter for climate change disasters for the last few years.

So I had a lot of material to kind of work with. Now the, the, the partnership with the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts, is it, is this, the play’s being performed there? Yeah. Yeah.

They have a black box space that they’ve kind of renovated in the last few years because it was, it was, they were using it like before the pandemic, but because of the pandemic, they had to obviously shut down. But now they, they are sort of trying to reopen it and are trying to promote, want to promote its use within the theater community in Hamilton. But I think they’re also trying, they were all, they’ve also been looking for, you know, partners that they can work with, you know, that can sort of, that can tell stories I think that will fit in there with their mandate a bit better.

And, and the Hamilton Conservatory of the Arts is, is very much youth focused, right? So they, they focus on dance, they focus on music, they focus on theater for, for children and for young people. So, so we were approached, we were actually approached by Stephanie Hope Lawler. Stephanie had, she works at the conservatory as their theater director.

But she was also in the production, the read through last year at, in, at the Hamilton Arts Week for WhaleFall. And in fact, she, when, when, before the pandemic, she was also part of another group at the, at Aquarius, the Actors Forge, that had actually read a lot of the pieces that had been written by the people in the junction. So she had actually was one of the first people to kind of take a look at the piece as it was emerging and read for the part of Becca.

So she is, she’s always, she’s been a part, attached to the project from the beginning. So when she contacted myself and Aaron with Saneboat and saying, you know, what are you guys doing for the Fringe? Would you be interested in, in doing, doing this piece as a BYOV? We were like, oh yeah, that, that sounds great. We’d, we’d love to partner with, with the, the HCA.

That’s great. That’s really exciting. It’s an exciting way for us to kind of get back into making theater for Hamilton.

We of course wanted to work with Stephanie. So yeah, it, it’s turned into a really, a really nice, nice partnership and a nice collaboration that kind of took us all by surprise. Now the Hamilton Fringe is, like many Fringes this year, is it back in person? Uh, yeah, I know.

I think there is some digital stuff, but, but I think they’re largely promoting it as, as back in person. Yeah. Just as a, I know for myself, navigating going back to the theater has been a little bit of, of a process, some anxiety, some like checking, like what are the protocols that they’re still following all this sort of stuff.

How do you feel as a presenter about going back into the theater? Yeah, it is. It’s, it’s all mixed emotions. It’s all mixed emotions.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. Like, yeah, I honestly can’t, can’t say it’s, it’s, I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m excited for the chance to go back. I hope it doesn’t get shut down again.

Like I, I hope that that all goes through. I know that the HCA will have some, some firm protocols in place. I assume that they’ll, they’ll still have masking and all that.

Um, I mean, I mean, COVID is not going away. Um, I just, I don’t know. It, it, it frustrates me that the issue of masking indoors has become such a political issue.

Like, I just don’t get why that is. Um, like there’s no, I don’t, I mean, I wouldn’t have an issue going into a theater wearing a mask. I don’t know why anyone else would.

Um, I haven’t been to see a live theater yet though, in, inside, like wearing a mask. I think the closest I came was in November. I went to see a movie, uh, and it was weird.

Like there weren’t a lot of people in the theater, so it didn’t feel too, too risky, but it was a weird feeling. It was a weird feeling. I’ll be honest.

There’s, I’ve been noticing, there’s seems to be like some, some real differences in, in, at least in Ontario. When I look at Ontario and theaters, um, compared with say, for example, theaters in New York, and I’m hearing a lot from people who are going to theaters in New York and you see a like adamant that mask stays on the staff, the ushers are going around, make sure people keep their masks on all of this stuff. And in Canada, we have some of our, our, at least in Ontario, some of the smaller theaters are like, yes, we’re still masking.

We’re still doing this. We’re still doing that. And some of the larger ones are like, we’re recommending, which of course means that people probably won’t.

And it seems to me that, that to me, not requiring masks is disrespecting the performers as well as your fellow audience members, but the performers are going to be there every night. And we’ve already seen how many performers and how many people on stages and behind the scenes are getting COVID. Every performer puts their body and their, their, their wellbeing on the line during this pandemic.

And the least you can do is wear a mask. And I just don’t understand why in a lot of places here, we’re being so cowardly about enforcing it. It’s a lack of political leadership.

It’s the same reason why mask mandates were, were removed in March. It’s the same reason why, why capacity limitations were removed. It’s, it’s a lack of political leadership.

It’s the, it’s, I’m going to just say it right here. It’s the, uh, it’s the conservative government that we have that wants to close the book on COVID that wants to project an image that the pandemic is over. It’s catering to the same people who are anti-vaxxers.

It’s the same catering to the anti-maskers, the same bunch of yahoos that went, uh, that went and, you know, parked their trucks in Ottawa in February. I’m just going to say it. It’s, it’s horrific.

It’s horrendous. You know, it’s, and I, I’m sadly, it’s not a surprise from the conservatives. It does surprise me that it’s happening from, you know, the, the chief medical officer.

But again, this whole thing has been politicized and it’s really distressing. It’s really upsetting. All of this is just to keep people safe.

But I guess it’s just the fact that, that people are, are, are complacent enough to, to dismiss it. Um, because it’s easier to dismiss it and walk away than have to have that extra level of care. Um, which also is distressing because one would think that, you know, in the, in the first year of this, all we were talking about was, well, you know, we’ve got each other’s backs and we’re all in this together.

Two years later, well, it appears we’re really not all in this together. Um, it’s, uh, it’s every person for themselves. Um, and that’s, that is disrespectful and that’s unfortunate.

Um, that said, I, I mean, I, I am seeing a lot of people who are wearing their masks in public. Um, but the fact that it’s not, not an, uh, a firm policy with many places just speaks to me of, of, of political complacency and, and catering to the lowest common denominator, the lowest hanging fruit, um, just for political gain and votes. Yeah.

I can’t argue with any of that. I, I feel like our conservative government in, in, in, uh, in, in Ontario has decided that they just want to be the ones that quote unquote finished COVID at least for this election. I could go, I could go on and on about the election, but I won’t because that’s a separate podcast.

That’s a completely separate podcast, but, um, yeah, it’s, I think that, I really hope that the fringes, um, having been through, uh, so much of that, like losing two years of fringe and, and, and, and performers that, that they have, that there’s an enforcement of the masking throughout, because especially for people who are touring, I can’t imagine being in another city, finding out that they are not going to enforce masking and then catching COVID when you have to either travel or decide not to. That’d be a, be a nightmare, right? Yeah. I don’t get the sense.

I don’t get the sense that I don’t, I’m not getting a signal from, from the fringe. I know the fringe here has been quite, quite cautious and careful, um, about, about maintaining, uh, safety that said they are managing to do, to do some events in person. Like I know they’ve, they, they, um, they had some workshops recently that were in person.

I didn’t attend them. Um, but I mean, I mean, we’ll see, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll see how it goes, but I, I mean, by and large, they’ve, they’ve, they’ve seen, they’ve seemed to be very, um, aware of the fact that this is still an issue, um, both for audiences and performers. And that’s good.

Now, as far as Hamilton fringe goes, do you have a, you have a bit of a, you have a history with the fringe. You’ve been, you’ve done a number of shows with the Hamilton fringe. Um, are you looking forward? I found my time at the Hamilton fringe, it’s a very warm fringe.

There are warm fringes. There are indifferent fringes. And I found Hamilton to be a very warm fringe.

Uh, has that been your experience? And, and, uh, what’s what, how long have you been doing stuff with the Hamilton fringe? God, I’ve been doing the, I’m doing the Hamilton for instance, since I arrived in 2011. Um, I 2011, I, uh, well, no, I arrived in 2010, 2010 was when I submitted, I submitted a play to the new, the new play contest for 2011 and one. Uh, so that was kind of my introduction to the Hamilton fringe was, was premiering my, my, my play as the, the winner of the new play contest.

Um, uh, interesting side note about whale fall. So I, I had submitted whale fall to the new play contest for this year. Um, but here’s, here’s how COVID kind of like, like the whole shutting down pandemic and the weird secluded life I’ve been living, you know, for however many years I submitted it like back in December.

And I completely forgot that I had submitted it. Um, so I was on my way, like, I guess it was in March. I was going off to, to pick up my kids at, at, at school.

And Aaron texts me going, Hey, you won the play contest. I’m like, what, what do you mean? I won the play contest. And, and this is at the time when we were talking about doing the BYOV.

So I was thinking, Oh, and I thought, of course me, I’m like, Oh, I won the new play contest. Well, I guess that’s interesting. You know, um, I guess, you know, this play that I wrote, this actual well-made play that I wrote, Oh, I guess it won, but I’m doing a B Y I’m doing whale falls, a BYOV.

I guess I’ll, what the best I’ll do is I’ll just get tickets. I didn’t realize, I didn’t remember that I had submitted whale fall as the new play contest. I thought I’d submitted this other play that I’d written.

So when I got, when I got back, I was like, Oh, whale fall, one second place in the new play contest. Oh, I guess that’s, that’s something I could use in marketing. Wow.

What a great surprise. Um, so, uh, so yeah, well, whale fall, the play that we’re doing at the BYOV, uh, was one of the award winners of the new play contest, which is always a plus because you’re in fringe, you’re always like, how, how, what, what, like, are all the different angles I could use to promote it. Um, but it was just so funny that I was like on my way and thinking, Oh, well, okay.

It was the other play that won the, won that one second place. Big deal. Like, this is how, this is how turned off, tuned out I am, uh, of, of the whole circumstance.

I think, I think we can talk a bit of that up to COVID brain. Cause we’ve all lost track of things. We’re all distracted still.

Yeah. And I guess like, just to, to speaking to your point of fringe, like of Hamilton fringe, like it’s kept on chugging along. Right.

Like, um, I just, I had, and you know, I know that other fringes have done this. I know Toronto was, was pretty active. Um, but, uh, I would, I would say like this year, like one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about, about Hamilton fringe was how, how sort of all the, um, where all the different venues are.

Um, but I, I know that I don’t, there may be some changes this year, to be quite honest, Phil, like, I don’t know which venues are still operating and which venues have been shut down. And that’s actually just, unfortunately, a sad reality to, to our city and our community right now that, that I know that some venues during the friend during, during the pandemic were shut down. Um, I don’t know if they’re going to be coming back up.

Like a good example is the staircase, right? During, during, during, um, the past decade, the strict staircase was like one of the destination BYOBs. Uh, I don’t know if it’s, if it’s going to be there anymore. Like the staircase shut down at the beginning of the pandemic.

Then it was brought back as like a restaurant movie theater. And then it shut down again. Apparently it’s come back, but I don’t know whether it’s a BYOB.

Like I have, I don’t know. So what venues are open, uh, is a bit of an open question. Uh, so what I’ll be honest, what, like, I, I have no doubts about the sort of the warmth, the, like the emotional warmth and the spiritual warmth of, of the people in the fringe right now in Hamilton.

Like I think people, you know, there’s a lot of artists here that are, that are eager to get back, that are eager to connect with audiences, but what stages are going to be left for us to perform on is, is different. Uh, because, because we’re BYOB, I haven’t seen what all the, what all the other actual official venues are. I don’t know what they are.

I think the question of venues is one of those questions that, that, that has been being, where a lot of artists have been asking throughout, like what is going to survive in Toronto? We are fortunate that, that the number of say independent spaces that are still in existence are still in existence, but, um, we did lose a bunch. So it’s like, and, you know, again, where, where’s the support for, for those because, uh, the independent spaces don’t have the profile of like some of the larger theatres. So they, in some cases lost out and, and had to close.

Yeah. And, and I mean, we’ve, uh, again, I we’ve, we’ve had, I think it’s, we’ve, we’ve had that happen as well. Um, I think it’s, I think it’s the question, I think it’s the question we’re coming out of.

Ironically enough, it was the question we were going into with. Um, but it, but I think it’s the biggest question now of, you know, what, what, what sort of resources do we have at our disposal now? Um, you know, what does it take to get audiences out to see live theatre? Man, that is right. Um, the idea, the idea of a packed, packed house for opening night.

How does that make you feel? I will tell you how that makes me feel. It makes me kind of feel a bit nervous. Exactly how I feel.

Cause I remember, uh, uh, watching a video, I guess in the, the, the new year, uh, just a few months ago of like the, the production of Hadestown and its first performance back on Broadway. And it was a shoulder to shoulder packed house, and it was very celebratory, but my hands were kind of sweaty. Uh, uh, just like watching that because not, I knew everybody was masked, but we’ve spent two years putting a distance between ourselves and other people.

It’s difficult to suddenly just sort of go, okay, let’s all sit close together in a theatre. Yeah. Yeah.

It is tough. It’s hard. Um, yeah.

And I, I, I don’t emotionally, I mean, emotionally, I, I have not, I don’t know that I’ve been doing all that well, um, with all of this. So, so, you know, how I feel about being shoulder to shoulder with, with all these different people, how I feel about being around people that I feel are being disrespectful, who, you know, how many, how many vaccines, how many, uh, vaccines have you had? Are you an anti-masker? Are you an anti-vaxxer? Um, you know, uh, how much do I trust my fellow human? Um, which is also sad because I didn’t, didn’t really feel like that two years ago. So I don’t know.

I don’t know. I, again, I don’t really have any ready answers. The only thing I can tell you is that I’m really glad that I’m returning.

I’m getting back into some live theater work now with the team that I have. Um, Aaron, Aaron Joel Craig is, has been my long time, uh, collaborator, right? I’m, I’m the playwright. He’s the director dramaturge.

And that’s a, that’s a relationship that we’ve fostered and cultivated over many, many years. So there’s a really strong, strong trust there, right? Like, like his voice when he, when he talks to me about whatever is going on within the script or otherwise is always something that I can listen to. Um, Stephanie is a, is a performer that we’ve wanted to work with for a long, long time.

She’s got a, I mean, uh, her, her resume and pedigree is, is phenomenal, but just as a, as a person, she’s just really, really lovely. And, and just, uh, is, is another one of these people that I’ve actually kept in contact with over the course of the pandemic. Like actually when things first started, uh, locking down, she kind of, um, took the initiative and said, Hey, why don’t we get together like every Wednesday night and read plays together over zoom just so that we can connect with each other.

It didn’t, it didn’t last very long, but it was, it was still a nice thing. It was, it was a very good thing to kind of keep us all grounded and together. And then, um, the, uh, the sort of the, the, the round who rounds out our, our cast, the sort of core working team, um, is, uh, is a man named Raymond louder.

And Ray was, uh, um, was a teacher was the head of the theater department at Redeemer college in Hamilton. Um, sadly Redeemer, uh, uh, shut its door or shut down its theater department. I think it must’ve been last year.

Uh, and there was much fewer about over that much hand-wringing about what that meant, what that meant, what the implications of that. But again, another one of these, you know, either an ideological or a cost-saving measure, um, that happened over, over the pandemic to which the arts, you know, were a direct, uh, culprit, but I’ve wanted to work with Ray for a long, long time. He has a really, really deep, deep understanding and a, and a deep love of theater.

Um, and, uh, and, and really loves the piece and has been able to connect with it on a, on a, on a deep level. So it’s, it’s, it’s a really fortunate and it’s a really big gift to be able to come back to theater with this piece. Um, cause it doesn’t feel like, Oh, it’s going to be a slog to get this up, right? It feels like this is, this is a story we’re going to tell.

We’re going to tell it to people at, at, at the HCA. And if they want to bring their kids, if they want to bring, you know, their, their young theater goers, they can, right? Like it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s not like a hard piece, like the, the, the piece that I did a few years ago about, about, you know, um, a radicalization of use and, and, and, you know, uh, terrorism overseas, which was a hard, which was a hard piece. And, you know, it was difficult maybe to, for some audiences to kind of take in.

Um, but this is, you know, I mean, this is a piece that tackles climate change, but it also tackles, but it also talks about the love between a parent and their child. And I think a lot of people can, can, um, can relate to that. I wanted to ask you a little bit about, about writing, but also about, um, being, uh, a geek, uh, as, as somebody who has, you know, you and I have both had experience playing role role-playing games and been in comics, uh, for you, were you writing before you were role-playing or did role-playing lead to writing, which, which came first.

Role-playing. No question. No question.

What was your, what was your starting game of choice? Was it D and D or something else? Oh, it was D and D of course it was D and D. It’s always D and D. I, I, I always want to say, oh, is this other game, but it wasn’t, it was D and D. It was the basic starter set. It was keep at the borderlands. You know, it was, it was the most basic, basic thing.

I think my, my first character was a, was a thief. I can’t remember his name. Um, Elvin thief, I believe.

But yeah, yeah, it was, it was D and D. Uh, but you know, I quickly graduated, you know, I went on to other games. I went on to, to, you know, all sorts of stuff. Um, but it’s funny, like the pandemic has kind of brought me back.

Although it like stopped me from role-playing, you know, LARPing, right? Like live action role-playing. It’s actually brought me back to tabletop as in the virtual tabletop. So I play in a, I play in a couple of games over the virtual table, over this server discord.

Right. Um, and I’m back to playing like my first, one of my first loves in, in role-playing, which is, uh, Star Trek. I’m playing a Star Trek role-playing game and it’s so much fun.

It’s so much fun. I, funnily enough, um, I did not start role-playing with D and D and my first experience with D and D was terrible. And so I didn’t role-play until I started LARPing many years later.

I know it’s, so what did you start with? What did you start with? I started with vampire. The masquerade was my first role-playing role-playing with vampire live action role-playing my, the first time I did tabletop when I was in high school, this is like way back, had a terrible day. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

And it played one game and I hated it because it was, he was just like very much like you roll this, you go this many steps and then we’re going to fight a monster. And that was the entire thing. It was not right.

And I thought if this is the game, I don’t know what people are crazy about. I’m not playing this. And so it was only many years later that I found my way to live action role-playing and then other games as well.

Oh, I see. Okay. All right.

Well, that’s interesting. Well, that’s an interesting journey there, but it’s interesting also just to, to, to, to lead like the, the way that, that creating a story on the fly, both like as a, as a, as a, as a game master or storyteller to, to have the plan, but the freedom and the, the need to be able to deviate from the plan. Yeah.

And like, there’s a real improvisational, like storytelling on the fly can be very hard, but it’s very rewarding. So it’s a fascinating thing to think about taking that and, and taking that into, into playwriting and other writing. Yeah.

I mean, it’s interesting. I didn’t actually come to playwriting until many, many years later. I actually never thought of myself as a playwright until like after I was well done university.

I, I, I, I think I was always creative, creative writing, but I never thought, Oh, I’ll be a novelist or I’ll be a short story writer. And I think maybe that part of that came from role-playing games cause it was acting out. So I took a lot of drama and I thought I wanted to be an actor.

And then when I went to university at York, I, I, I went into the acting program and then promptly decided I don’t want to just train to be an actor. So then I trained as a director dramaturge. And then when I got out of that, when I graduated that, I was like, yeah, I, I, I like, I like the scene, the scene analysis and the scene construction and like the play construction, deconstructing that goes into being a director, like IE a dramaturge, but I hated the, the, um, the, um, the authority I thought I had to wield as a director.

I got very uncomfortable with the status that I felt I needed as a director. Uh, and, and in fact, like for the next few years after that, when I was involved in directing projects, um, I never felt I did all that well as a, as a director. In fact, I remember I directed you in a, in a show, I don’t know, somewhere in the nineties.

And it was just, for me, it was not a project I felt good about because I felt, Oh, I’ve just fallen flat on my ass. It’s not. And it was only after that experience that I went, well, what am I, what am I actually in this for? What am I actually in theater for? Like I go to see a play.

I go to see, I go to, I go to see theater. And around that time, I was going to see plays by, you know, John Might and Jason Sherman, Judith Thompson, um, uh, Michael Healy, like all of these creators were getting their start. And I was like, why, what is the magic for me in going to see a theater? Will they be going to see theater? Do I envision myself being up there as an actor? Not really.

Do I envision myself, you know, being the director who is crafted and creative that created that. I don’t know that I am that either, but I am really excited to know like how that thing was put together and to put those stories together and put some of the weird stories in my head altogether. And that’s when I wrote my first play.

Not, not surprisingly, my first play was like, um, inspired by a role-playing game that I played and that kind of dovetailed into a whole lot of, um, plays that I’ve done that have sort of these geeky themes around them. Now that said, I think that, that, um, I do think that the genre is something that we don’t explore much in theater. Um, and there’s a few companies that do and a few playwrights that do.

And I’m always very impressed because again, we, there was a time when that was like what you, you know, you would see horror, you would see quote unquote sci-fi on the stage because that was where those stories were told, but we don’t do that very much now. But I think it’s like, there’s a lot of possibilities in that. So anytime I see that sort of thing happening, I’m always very, uh, very impressed and happy.

Yeah. And I, I think, I think, you know, obviously theater can do things that I think, uh, can do things much better than, than other mediums can. That said, like, I don’t know, there’s so many avenues of, of storytelling nowadays that weren’t really around, you know, however many decades ago, um, you know, podcasting for one, like listening to podcasts basically are now audio dramas.

And I know a lot of, um, I don’t know, there’s, there’s, there seems to be a lot of adaptations that are coming from podcasts and, and also like regular, like standard plays, which over the pandemic were then turned into radio drama podcasts. I listened to those pretty religiously, um, and, and got as much out of them. Uh, so I don’t know.

It’s, it’s again, this goes into my question of what, I just have a lot of questions about what theater is going to look like now coming out of this. And if really, are we out of it? Like, I don’t know if we’re out of it, but what is it going to look like now coming out of the lockdown mode of this? Like what types of things is, is theater going to talk about? What types of things are theater creators going to talk about? You know, um, what things have we not talked about? What are, what do audiences want to hear? Right? Like it, it’s a very big question. It’s a very big question.

Um, and, uh, yeah, I don’t have an answer. No. And I, I, you know, I don’t think that we will have an answer for a couple of years, to be honest.

I think that there will be that exploration to see, you know, what, what does happen. And I’m sure that at fringes across North America, there’s going to be at least one solo. This is how I spent my pandemic.

Oh, so I’m not looking forward to the, to be honest, I’m not either, but I’m sure they’re going to, they’re going to happen. But I think that that is part of the process of figuring out how we tell these stories, right. And how we, how we talk about this and where we are at.

I think we’re going to stumble a lot as we get through it. We’re going to stumble and then we’ll figure it out. Yeah.

I guess we can’t really avoid it. Yeah. As much as we might want to.

Yeah. Otherwise we’re just as guilty as everyone who’s not, not paying attention to the issue. Well, that’s the thing over.

That’s the thing. I think, I think we will figure out how we, how we talk about it and how, you know, do I think that people like, I don’t think that people want to see the play that is like, this is what the pandemic was like. But I think that, that, you know, people will work through it as we allude to it in different ways, or maybe in a few years where we will, we will, people will be able to sit through, sit down and enjoy a play or watch a play that is specifically about the pandemic.

But I think that, that, that we’ll, we will dance around it for a while before we figure out what it looks like. Right. That makes sense.

Yeah. Dancing around. It makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s the, the, the, you said something that I found, I found, like, I think is, is, is, is an important and enlightening question.

The question about, about where, where you, what you want to be in theater, what you wanted to, to do. Cause I think, you know, a lot of people, when they, when they, they start that road where you didn’t, I’m going to theater school and I’m going to be an actor. And then trying to figure out where you go from there.

And, and you know, to, I remember being directed by you and you were, you were a good director. I want you to know that you were a good director. Thank you.

And I think it’s a lot, actually, I gotta be, gotta be honest. I didn’t feel I did very well. I mean, this is the thing is, is especially when we’re, this is the thing is we don’t know what those stumbling blocks are.

We, especially early on, like, I think that, that I think that you were a good director, your instincts were good. And I think you put on a, you, you put out a good product. But I think that, that the question that you were then asking is, is one that, that, that people don’t often ask, because I think there’s a fear of, of really investigating that because, you know, we spend time in the theater.

I know when I was in theater school, way back in the ancient times, when I was in theater school, they were telling us a lot, like, you know, you only do the one thing, just be an actor. Don’t, don’t do anything else. Because if you do something else, do that.

And there were, there was the idea of being a multi hyphenate, which we, so many people are now, was not an option. Yeah. And it’s true.

And I, you know, and I, I, I also feel like when I was in theater school, there was this sort of unspoken rule or unspoken expectation that, you know, you had to pursue career above all else. And that, that, that fueled the, the, the sort of the, the one trick pony argument, you know, the siloing of it, you know, you’re in this discipline, you’re in that discipline, which of course I think was also the same because, you know, that’s how university programs are. If you went to, you know, post-secondary for art, for an arts program, that’s how you were sort of conditioned.

Whereas, you know, I, and you know, some artists who didn’t go through that have a different mindset. But I also feel like it’s kind of the same thing. Like there was an expectation that because your career comes first, everything else has got to come second.

And this is also something that I’m, I’m finding, you know, with my life right now, you know, I had, I had kids relatively late in my career. But there was always this sense of, oh, you know, if, if you have kids, then you’re not putting your career first. Right.

Or if you’re working a regular job, then you’re not putting your career first. Right. It’s just a hobby.

And that’s, that’s been something that’s been a real difficulty with me and something I’ve taken very great issue with because this play wouldn’t exist without, without my daughter, without my family, like it just wouldn’t. And in fact, the last, the last play that I wrote about radicalization, that wouldn’t happen without, without the birth of my son, without, without though the awareness that they’re, you know, that I’ve, I’ve, I’ve had a family that I’m creating a family and that there’s tensions that are around that there are anxieties around that as well as joy. And, and I guess it just, for me, it just speaks to the way that, and it’s funny, you kind of talked about, you know, I, I directed and I put out a good product.

I know it’s a turn of phrase, but I, but for me, it, it kind of speaks to the way that I think we’ve commoditized or commoditized commoditized commodified. Is that right? Made into a commodity theater, seen it as a commodity, right? Like, oh, you know, are you, are you, are you creating a good experience or a good evening for audiences? Are they getting a good return on their investment? Right. Like so much of this, you know, because I guess a lot of grants and, and, and, and and so much money in funding is, comes from this sort of, you know, what are you, what are you providing that will justify, you know, this model of funding to be applied to it? And I, you know, I’m not saying that we’re necessarily wrong as artists to think this.

I just think that we’ve been conditioned to think this way, that this is, you know, this is how it looks to be a professional, right. And it’s not. And I think if anything, maybe the, maybe the last few years, I’m seeing an awareness on a lot of artists parts saying, you know what, I don’t have to define success as this model that, you know, perhaps this, this actor that I, that I, you know, that I really idolized led their life as right.

Like, or, or, you know, I don’t, I knew a lot of, I read a lot about theater artists who left the profession. And in fact, I, I am still kind of on the fence in many ways. I’m really not sure if this is really where I want to be.

Right. I started writing, writing a book over the pandemic. I’m, I’ve written a couple of short stories, had a few of them published.

Like, I don’t know that now having with having had the pandemic and so many questions about, you know, what is it going to feel like in a shared space in the shared theater space? Is this what I want to do? Right. And also, I mean, theater, the way theater worked as a, as a, as a business model wasn’t all working all that well beforehand. So, and I guess it just is, has had me sort of questioning, like, is this the place for me? Is this where I want to be? Because it may be, maybe it isn’t, you know, I, that I, that, that I can’t, I can’t answer.

But I do know that there are certain things in my life that I don’t really want to give up as, or sacrifice as much as I was readily willing to do beforehand, which, which was, I don’t know that I want to sacrifice four days a week to going to rehearsal. Just don’t know that I really care to do that. But, but I guess we’ll see.

Right. Like that, that’s how I’m feeling right now. But again, I know an awful lot of people who, who said goodbye to this industry.

Well, I think, I think people’s relationships had with theater had to change when the, if, if your relationship with theater and being an, being an actor, being an artist in theater was that you wake up in the morning and you go from thing to thing to thing, and you were filling the day to make a little, to make enough money to, to, to get going. And you’re always going to this, that, and you’re doing this, you’re doing so many things. You never take a break and you never rest.

And then when the theater shuts down, yeah. What do you have? What do you have? And like I, years ago when I first took a day job and I went through a period of mourning my theater career or whatever and decided and thinking, well, I’m no, I’m taking a day job. I guess I’m not a theater professional anymore.

I guess I’m not a theater maker. And then a few years later trying to like balance, like saying, wait, why do I, why does it have to be one or the other? Why can I not balance making theater when I want to with keeping a roof over my head without struggling? And I think that, that, and I hope that we can change after this when people are thinking about what they want to do is the, the idea that you must sacrifice every moment of every day, sacrifice your body, your soul, your mind on the altar of theater. And never take a break, never take a rest, never take a vacation until you can’t do it anymore.

And you throw up your hands and you say, fuck it, I’m out. Or do you find a balance and actually, um, you know, make theater on your terms and make the decision about how you want to see it done? Well, it’s interesting that you go, you, you referred to the altar of theater. And of course, we both know, you know, what one of the popular beginning of theater was, was, you know, a religious, a religious experience, a religious gathering, right.

Uh, at least in the Greeks, if you look at it in the Greek terms, um, but I don’t know. It’s, it’s an, it’s an interesting, it’s just was an interesting image, um, sacrificing on the altar, the altar, um, giving up, giving up, you know, in exchange for, I don’t know. Um, yeah, I, I, uh, I, I, I would like to think there’s a balance.

Um, but at the same time, I mean, I mean, I’m not sure if it’s balanced or if it’s, or if it’s saying, you know, theater, theater has a part in my life as, as, uh, you know, but it, but it, but it, it has a part in my life that, that, that, that is no, no greater, no greater than, you know, wanting to raise my kids into, you know, into, um, worthwhile and, and lovely adults that will go on and make the world a better place. Uh, or is it any better than, you know, wanting to, you know, have a, have a strong relationship with my spouse or allowing them to, to pursue, you know, part of their career dreams. Right.

Like, um, so I don’t, I don’t know, I guess maybe for me, what, what, what I realized is that, that, that, you know, all those years of, of working, working, working, running, running, running was, uh, I don’t know, in pursuit of, in pursuit of something that maybe, you know, again, wasn’t really, wasn’t real, was just a construct in my own mind about, you know, what does success mean? And I guess maybe that’s it. How you, how do you, what is the definition of success? What does success look like? Um, and I think maybe that’s a constantly shifting, constantly changing, uh, image in our mind. Well, maybe it should be.

It probably should. And I think that there’s, I feel like we’re at this point now where there’s a rush to get back to exactly where we were in 2019. Yep.

Let’s fill those houses. Let’s get those things on their feet. Let’s do this.

But I don’t think we’ve, we’ve really taken a look at the fact that for a lot of people, their relationship to the industry has changed over these two years. And then maybe the way that we operate in the way that what we expect from our artists and our, our, our producers and everybody else also needs to change. And then it can’t be exactly what it was.

We need to find out where, how do we balance, how do we find work-life balance in the theater? And can we do it? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

That makes sense. Maybe I’m naive to think it can happen. I don’t know.

Well, I don’t know. I think we’re going to, I don’t, you know, I thought there was going to be a reckoning when, you know, all of this shut down. I don’t know that I see it coming yet.

So I guess we’ll see. I don’t know. Maybe, maybe it’ll all bounce back.

Who knows? I just, I, I think I was sort of expecting the same reckoning. And I, I think that, you know, there were, there were promises made in 2020, um, that I think are quickly being, there were a lot of promises made in 2020. You’re right.

And some of them were, were, some of them were fulfilled. Some, some of them I’m still waiting for. I think, yeah, that’s the thing of them.

I think a lot of other people are still waiting for it. That’s exactly the thing. And I think that at some point we need to go back and look at those promises that were made and start asking questions about when those promises are going to be fulfilled.

Which I guess, you know, is kind of a nice dovetail to the subject of this play, because actually part of what this play is, is, is kind of a recognition on the part of, of, of the main character, Becca, my daughter, that promises made about, about the world, about the type of world that she wanted to grow up in and, and the kind of world that she was expecting did not happen. And I think for me, that actually was a big part of why I wrote the play is, I mean, you know, what kind of, what kind of world are we leaving for, you know, for our kids, right? Like this sort of, this disposable world that we can just kind of say, well, we’ll leave. I’m not even thinking about, about going.

I might even thinking about my own death, right? I’ll just live forever and I’ll use up all the resources as much as I like. And I’ll leave them to worry about, well, this play actually deals spot on with that. Like my, I, as I, as a playwright had to confront the issue of my own mortality in writing this, because I was writing myself as a character in this play, right? I’m writing my daughter as a young woman in this play.

I’m writing about, you know, what happens as we get older, what happens as the two of us argue, what happens as, you know and I mean, it’s speculative, right? But it was a painful thing having to, having to write, well, what would an argument between myself and my daughter when I’m older and she’s older, what would that sound like? What would we argue about? Right. And all of a sudden the typical domestic, the typical argument between a young person and an adult that I was writing in plays, you know, when I was, when I was first writing, started writing plays like 25 years ago, I’m writing it about me, my family. That’s kind of screwed up.

But a lot of it again is, is a lot of, it’s actually, it’s a really good point, the idea of promises made and promises broken, right? What things did I not, you know, what things did I, what things did I withhold from my daughter about what was happening in the world, right? There’s a, there’s a theme about that. There’s one of the, the character Becca says, you know, were you not telling this to kind of shelter me from the truth, right? I could have handled it, right? I could have handled it and we could have talked about it together. And I think that’s a big theme is, is, you know, the, the danger of withholding truth for fear that it’s going to be too painful has been a big issue, right? Like, and the pandemic has kind of hammered that home for me, right? Like you wanted to, you want to, you want to keep your children safe.

You don’t want to have them not deal with the issues, but you know, like it, you know, I’ll go back to masks, the issue of masks. So many, so many people that I’ve seen argue against masks, masks in school, masks on children are like, oh, it’s just so terrible for children to wear masks. You know, they hate them and it destroys them.

And I’m like, well, actually it doesn’t, my kids learned, we taught them the importance of it and they don’t have an issue with it because they know how important it is. So it’s just another piece of clothing, right? And, and, you know, it’s because we had that dialogue with them, right? It’s because we didn’t withhold the, oh, you know, there’s something going on, but we’re not going to talk about what’s going on. Well, we can’t really not tell you what’s going on because all the schools are closed.

All the businesses are closed. All the world is shut down. Right.

And it’s interesting. One of the things that kind of came out of the pandemic shutting down, cause my daughter and I would like, would watch nature shows. And that was a big informing part of the play as well, right? This, this thing of the two of us watching nature shows, but because the world kind of locked down, a lot of animal populations bounced back, particularly whales and sharks.

But then the whole question is, well, now that we’re getting going and moving again, what’s going to happen to all those, those, uh, those lives that kind of bounced back, how are they going to be affected again? Right. Like, um, the issue of shipping traffic, for instance, was a big thing, right. Off, off the coast in BC, right.

Ship shipping was kind of halted. So, so Orca migrating in the, in the, the Salish sea and in the Georgia straight, you know, there was a lot more of them, right. Because with no boats, the seas were quieter.

So they could talk to each other. They could hear each other much better. But now, you know, the boats are out, people are out again and moving and making noise.

And, you know, now that one of the recent reports I’ve read is that they don’t know where the Orca have gone. Like, and you know, they’ve, they’re not, they’re not in the Georgia straight right now. So where have they gone? And so I really frighteningly feel that’s kind of prescient.

Like that’s something I directly talk about in the script. So, so yeah, I, I don’t want to say that this play is, is forecasting the future, but it’s more of a, it’s more of a cautionary tale. I like to call it a, a climate change fable.

Right. Yeah. Because that’s what it is.

It’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a fairy tale. It’s a fable. And I think the best fables are cautionary fables.

Ones that kind of give us pause to think about what’s actually happening. I think that’s a good, a good place to end right there. Thank you so much, Stephen, for, for this conversation.

Oh, thank you. It’s my, my genuine pleasure.