Natércia Napoleão

Natércia Napoleão is a multifaceted Brazilian theatre artist and community advocate.

Over the past eighteen years, she has had a wide influence within the Albertan theatre community, with experience in site-specific theatre, dance theatre, multimedia performance, television, musicals, and a wide range of classical and contemporary theatre. Performance highlights include the acclaimed Fado: The Saddest Music in the World (JAYMAC Outstanding Production Award) at the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver.

Recent directing credits include Hummm (Climate Change Theatre Action/ New Harlem Productions); Orange Skies (Tarragon Theatre’s Young Playwright’s Unit); and the multidisciplinary theatre piece, Threshold (The Lobbyists collective/2021 Chinook Series).

Natércia is an associate producer with Dora Award nominated manidoons collective having recently supported the sold-out production of esteemed playwright Yolanda Bonnell’s White Girls in Moccasins, in co-production with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

Natércia is currently developing her first full-length play, Michener Park, alongside renowned Chilean author, playwright and activist, Carmen Aguirre.

As a community advocate, Natércia spearheads and contributes to grassroots initiatives regularly. She is a strategic planner working with institutions and companies exploring equitable practices, such as Musical Stage Co. and Outside the March.

Natércia is the incoming CAEA representative for the Alberta North/N.W.T region.

Intstagram: @natercia_napoleao

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Transcript

Welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host of this podcast. This is episode 323.

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You can find Stageworthy on Twitter and Instagram at StageworthyPod, and you can find the website with the archive of all 323 episodes at stageworthypodcast.com. 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 Natércia Napoleão. Natércia is a multifaceted Brazilian theatre artist and community advocate living in Alberta and creating site-specific theatre, dance theatre, multimedia performance, television, musicals, and a wide range of classical and contemporary theatre.

Here’s our conversation. You are a multi-hyphenate artist. Correct.

So if you were to describe yourself to somebody as an artist, how do you do that? Hmm. It’s so funny because I’ve grown to despise a bit explaining all the things that I am. And I’ve investigated, tried to investigate why I don’t like that.

And it’s because we, it’s tied to this theory that I have that our industry teaches us. I wrote about this in an essay that was published. It teaches us to think of our practice and more than just ourselves, our outlook to one another in a very vertical fashion.

For example, we have an expectation that a performer will spend the rest of their lives perfecting performance. But we don’t, in my opinion, I don’t think we give enough room to one another to be multiple things at the same time with full permission. I think we hold back on that permission ever so quietly sometimes to go, how dare you? I do.

Sometimes I wonder if we give ourselves horizontal permission to travel around, meaning that a performer could be the lighting designer. The lighting designer could be the director. The director could be a musical director.

A director could be a performer. Now I travel between all of these things and I think I’m only starting. So I consider myself a very fluid artist.

And when I arrive at each discipline, I’m fully committed and I feel at home. Yeah. There’s the interesting thing in what you’re saying.

And back when I was in theatre school in ancient times, when I was in theatre school, they essentially told us not to be like, if you did anything other than be an actor, don’t tell anybody. It’s essentially what they told us. If you were an actor and a writer, maybe just tell people you’re an actor.

Don’t mention being a writer. If you’re an actor and a stage manager, don’t mention that you’re a stage manager. Just be an actor.

And in fact, pretend that you don’t have a day job. There were all these things like, just don’t allow yourself to have things outside of acting. I think we’ve come a long way since that.

But I think you are right about how we treat the hyphenates, right? Yeah, I would say so. And maybe it’s just a product of being older too, or getting older, but I feel that permission is more and more being birthed out of myself. And I’m less and less reliant on confirmation from the outside.

And that’s a very different feeling. It also makes me stand on my own two feet and be grounded in what I’m doing. And while I appreciate discourse and criticism, I’m not as moved as I used to be when I was in my younger 20s, let’s say.

I think there’s also something about as we get older, we are less, what’s the right word? I think honestly, as we get older, we give fewer fucks. And eventually we want to claim who we are for ourselves and not play a role for somebody else. I don’t want to pretend that I am not all of the things that I am anymore, that I can do all the things that I want to do.

So as I have gotten older, I am unabashed, unabashed? I unabashedly talk about all of the things that I do that I want to do, rather than just hide them. But it took, for me, that was a journey to get there, because I spent so long when I was in theatre school, like I said, being told, don’t talk about those things that are not acting. Wow.

And you know what? I was about to ask if we can swear on this thing, and I’m so glad that you read the word. I love it when the host models the swearing so that we could do it. Thank you.

But there is something about, I think, also as we get older, modeling the behavior of being able to claim all of these things for people who are younger. Yeah. Right? Just like being able to be all of these things and just sort of show them that you can do it and you don’t have to hide it.

And the other thing that I would add to that, and this is a conscious discovery that I made. I just wrote my first play. And the reason why I don’t think I could have written this play, or even been in a place where I’d want to, is because, and I think playwriting is really just an example of a discipline within the umbrella of theatre.

But these extracurricular activities, I’ll call them that, these extra disciplines were always put in my way as something someone like me would have to do. So, you know, Natercia, if you want to get here in your career, I’m sorry to say, but you’re going to have to become this kind of artist, and you’re going to have to do this in order to be taken seriously or to get this person’s attention, this company, this institution. And over time, that created resentment for whatever that thing was.

So, I didn’t have this natural wonder or curiosity to direct, to be a dramaturge, to be a choreographer, to be a playwright, to be a producer, because it was always something positioned that I had to do. And so, my biggest thing for when I’m teaching now and mentoring others is I never put it that way. I never put it that way.

And I think I’m now undoing that for myself. Yeah. I think that we, and it’s kind of sad, but a lot of us spend a lot of, have spent many years undoing the damage that theatre school did to our psyches in some way.

Absolutely. No, absolutely. But it’s also, I think of previous mentors that I’ve had as well.

I think of individuals in the industry who, and I’m not blaming them because I think they only regurgitate this mantra because it was the same mantra that they were taught. And maybe from their point of view that they achieved success through. So, it worked for them.

And so, they’re repeating it now to others. So, I get it. But for me, it had the exact opposite effect.

And yeah, it really held me back. So, yeah. I’m proposing that we say different things and to see how that lands and how it’s different.

I think it’s, again, it’s funny. When I was in theatre school, they told us, like they talked about self-producing as though it was for people who couldn’t make it. Like, oh, maybe you could self-produce if you couldn’t do it.

It was a detrimental thing. Now, creating your own work and all of these things, like you said, are often positioned as this is what you’ll have to do to make it in the business or to be seen to do this sort of thing. Again, the attitude towards this has changed over time.

And it is fascinating to me how our discourse about it is changing. If I was to describe to somebody and say, you know, if they were like, I don’t know what I have to do. I think telling somebody that they have to do something in order to get seen or this or that or to be in the industry.

Like, I think that’s detrimental. Tell them that they can do it if they choose to. Right? You can do all of these things if that’s what you want to do.

There are other paths. There’s so many ways to exist in this business. Absolutely.

Look, because one is positioned from a place of inspiration while the other is a position of lack and scarcity and fear, you know? Yeah. Now, one of the things I love to talk to people about is their theatre origin story and what first drew them to the theatre, what sort of made them want to do this. So for you, do you recall when it was or what it was that made you want to do theatre? Yeah, I think I do.

And I would parcel it out into two stages. One of them was when I was really young. I’ll mention later a play that I just wrote called Mitchener Park, and it’s based off of a real place.

And a memory that’s not in the play that I hold really dear to me is when I was about six or seven years old, I remember the exact spot I was standing in, the weather outside, my surroundings. And in a very innocent way, I looked up to the sky, and I think I was addressing God or what I thought God was. And I actually tilted up my head to the sky, and I might have put my arms out, and I said, I would like a voice.

Give me a voice. And I remember that. I really remember that.

And I feel like something happened in that moment. And of course, as you know, I’m a theatre rat when I describe something like that, and it’s very theatrical. But it truly is how I remember it without any embellishment.

It really felt powerful to me. So anyways, but however, I was also a late bloomer in terms of theatre. And oh, and this is such a cheesy story, but it’s the truth.

I was set to go into post-secondary to be a visual artist. I really loved collage work. I loved Robert Rauschenberg’s work.

And I was doing really well as a visual artist in high school, and I thought that this was my pathway. And let’s see. So, Moulin Rouge had come out.

This was beginning of the era of movie musicals coming back. This was a long, long time ago. And Chicago, the movie musical had just come out.

And there was this scene of, I think it was one of the Roxy numbers, and she was being held up in the air. And Phil, I looked at that. I looked at this whole thing that was happening right in front of me.

I think I was at the movie theatre by myself too. And I said, it was like a lightning bolt hit the top of my head. I don’t think I slept that night, because the thought was, oh, I could do that.

I could do that. I don’t know how, but I’m going to do that. And I was very sure about it.

Resolute, in fact. And so, I dropped my application, and I put in an application into a musical theatre program. And Phil, I had nothing on my resume.

Not one thing. No, I’ve had nothing. Yeah.

I got into the program, and the rest was history. Yeah. You know, what’s interesting about that is when I was in theatre school, everybody in my class had been doing theatre in some way for years, whether it was in high school, amateur theatre, all this sort of stuff.

There was one guy in my class who came in, and he had done nothing. And our acting teacher loved him. And our acting teacher loved him because he didn’t have bad habits.

He hadn’t developed any mugging for the audience or bad acting habits. He was this pure thing that could be molded into a good actor, and nothing had to be broken down. So, there’s something about the actor that hasn’t done anything.

But going into a musical theatre program, did you feel that that was something that, without having anything on that resume, was that treated as a detriment? Or how was that treated when you were in school? I don’t know. I feel like there’s a lot of new people around me, too. I didn’t have anything on my resume.

That’s true. But I recognized a natural storyteller ability. I’ve always had the value that I’m an actor first in everything that I do.

And I believe that this is the secret to musical theatre that a lot of people don’t realize, is you must be an first. Or else, you’re just going to be, there was just, I think it was Kelly Robinson who used to lead the theatre department, the programs at the Bounce Center. And I attended a short-lived program that was there.

And he criticized a lot of training institutions for musical theatre because in his opinion at the time, he said, they just breed showmanship and not actors. You need to be an actor first. And the minute he said that, I was like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I’ve always thought.

And so, I always considered myself a performer first. So, I felt when I attended school for the first time doing musical theatre, I felt very affirmed that I was on the right path. Within my first year, I was shortlisted to play Tracy Turnblad for the Mirvish Hairspray production.

I didn’t get it. But things like this kept happening. I mean, my path from there on was not perfect by any means.

But again, within a year of deciding to be a performer, to have that happen to you is quite surreal. So, yeah, I don’t know. I found my way.

Yeah, yeah. That idea of being an actor first, a performer first, I think that that’s, you know, I think everybody has worked with either a playwright or a director or producer who has not done what an actor does. And then they’ve also had the opportunity to work with one of those positions where they have been an actor.

And the experience is always so much better with somebody, no detriment to some very successful people who have made their careers never being an actor, but there’s something about having been an actor that allows you to understand what’s happening on the stage in a way that you wouldn’t if you had never acted. Oh, 100%. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I’m starting to feel this too, as Phil Aiken would say, don’t say emerging, say early in craft. So, in honour of Phil, I’m going to say early in craft. As an early in craft producer, I’ve taken away a lot from that because, yeah, it’s quite a humble position to be in, right? Let’s think of a company and the managing director in the office who’s probably one of the people who doesn’t get an opening night card because the company doesn’t think of them as being a part of the process.

But in fact, they’re integral to the process. So, I highly recommend and I would inspire anyone to explore producing because it really gives you this well-rounded, bird’s eye view of the industry and all the people that make things happen. But anyways, going back to performing, yeah, I carry that with me in every role and I’m very grateful for that.

Mm-hmm. I think that you’re right about being a producer. And I think that although producing for a fringe festival, for example, is not like producing a full play without the festival behind you, it is still a really excellent way of getting a producing experience under your belt.

And the things that you don’t know when you are an actor, I think everybody should, I think, just to build on what you were saying, everybody should take the opportunity to try everything once. I think that’s so great. Yeah, I’m having a lot of fun.

I’m having a lot of fun picking up my chair and sitting in a different little spot on the table and just seeing how that feels too, right? Assessing whether you quickly find out if it’s for you, if you could do it again, what you would improve upon next time. And maybe there might be some roles that I would try out for the first time and go, thank you, but no thanks for the future. I have yet to find one of those because I really truly love them all for separate reasons, but I don’t know, it’s possible that something in the future might make me think that way.

Sure. I think it’s great to give it a try though. Then you know that was certainly not for me.

Let’s talk about Missionary Park. Tell me about that play. And it’s your first full-length play, so I want to talk about not just what it’s about, but the writing process.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I want to be careful because I don’t want to give away, I’ve decided that I don’t want to discuss this play like maybe other plays would be discussed in terms of plot, characters, what’s in it. I think that needs to be experienced.

But what I can say is that Missionary Park is in the process of being demolished since 1967. I think that’s when it was built. It was the social affordable housing unit for the University of Alberta’s graduate students with families, and over time this space became a very important and international landing pad, the first home for many newcomers here in Edmonton.

Kids like me back in the day who had a parent that was studying at the U of A. And so, it was affordable, and that was a huge reason why people could come and have their start. And in 2018, the University of Alberta decided to shut it down. This was after many years of neglect, and in 2020 they began the demolishment phase, and that’s where we’re currently at.

So, Missionary Park is also on the route back home for me in Edmonton, and my partner kept tugging at me every time we would drive by and saying, you know, if there’s a person who’s gonna write a story about this place, it is you. And I would brush him off and say, are you crazy? I barely even read. Get out of here.

You’re just, that’s insane. I’m sorry. And I, oh, what else can I say? I started to be haunted by it.

I started to have, I’m not making this up, I started to have visions of Michener Park as I would fall asleep at night, and I started to really feel haunted by the place as if the place had a spirit of its own. And I didn’t start to feel better until I actually started to write the play. And before I started to write the play, I wrote grants because one of the pieces of advice that I got from people in the industry was, well, honey, if you’re gonna write your first play, you better be ready to write it for free.

And I said, I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I think I’m gonna try to get funding so that I could build a lab for this process. And I wrote grants for the first time in my life.

I wrote to the Edmonton Arts Council, the Edmonton Heritage Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. And I got all three grants. Nice.

And then maybe one of the most important artists that we have in so-called Canada, Carmen Aguirre, who’s a huge figure within the Latinx theatre community, agreed to be a dramaturg on the play and to direct the workshop of it. And I began a year-long process of conducting interviews, researching Michener Park, and slowly but surely piecing together the pieces of what would become a play. And maybe two weeks ago, I finished a workshop.

And on April 2nd, I had my first public reading, which was a massive success. And Carmen Aguirre, for those who don’t know, is one of the Stratford Play Development Associates. There was another associate by the lovely name of Mukonzi Muzioki, who was there at the reading.

And both of them said to me after that they read hundreds of plays for their jobs, and not every play, as well-constructed as they are, hit the mark or make you care. And they both looked at me and said, we care about this play. So, good job.

And then Carmen said, as an elder, I would consider Carmen an elder, as would many people, if this play gets produced on a major stage, it could be the first Brazilian play in Canadian history to be programmed, because I can’t think of another play. And so, I’m, I think that the future is bright. Yeah.

Nice. In terms of the writing process, you talked about interviewing people and talking to people. As the play gained form, what surprised you about where it was going that you didn’t expect? Mm, I would say that I felt guided.

I felt guided towards a certain direction. And it’s a one-person show, but it also feels like a full house on stage. And I don’t want to explain further than that.

I just feel like I’ve achieved, I mean, this is a, this is not a new concept, right? That, you know, there’s a lot of established playwrights that say, write and get down to the specifics in your play. And the more specific you are, the more universal it will be. And so, I think I had moments, probably a classic rookie mistake when I was writing the play thinking, who’s going to care about this? Mm-hmm.

But that’s not up for me as a playwright to deem, I discovered. It’s really not for me to say. It’s just my job to write it and present it.

And the audience will let me know. And so far, the feedback I’m getting to my surprise is that this goes well beyond Edmonton, University of Alberta, Alberta. Yeah.

The idea of specificity is, I think, like you said, the rookie mistake of thinking, oh, who’s going to care about this? I need to make this universal, quote unquote. And that dilutes the idea, it dilutes the connection, because we want to connect. And only by really knowing a character and knowing a situation can we connect.

I remember hearing somebody say that, for example, Fiddler on the Roof, which is a musical about Jewish people, that everywhere it plays, the audience sees themselves in it. They’ll see this play that’s very specifically Jewish, but Koreans see Koreans in it and Chinese see Chinese in it. So it’s like, because it’s so specific, everybody can see themselves in it and relate to it.

And it’s a fascinating facet of the human psyche. Absolutely. You think of, you know, I don’t know if most people know that, I hope this is accurate.

I’ve always heard that Kim’s Convenience is the most successful Soulpepper play of all time. And I don’t know about you, but when I saw Kim’s Convenience, I saw my family in that family. Carmen Aguirre’s The Refugee Hotel, this is a story about Chilean refugees.

It’s one of the, in my opinion, Refugee Hotel is one of our best Canadian plays. I’m not a Chilean refugee, but I see myself in her play. So I have countless examples like these two, but it’s true.

What those two plays have in common, though, is that those two writers got down to the very specifics of those folks, right? And those stories. And I think that that’s just so great. So I feel so overjoyed to get it.

You can learn this maybe in a class about playwriting, or you could just write the play and feel the lesson through the work. And I’ll never forget that now. That statement is one of those, it took me years to just stop reading books about writing and realize that, yeah, you can keep reading books about writing, but the only way you’re ever going to learn about writing is to sit down and do it.

And get it done, struggle through that, and then find out what an audience thinks of it in a workshop or something similar. Yeah. I know.

I know. You just got to do it. Yeah.

Now, I hear that you’ve created a theatre company. Oh my god, Phil, don’t. We have to keep this between ourselves.

Okay, just between you and me. Just between you and me, please. Okay, okay.

Tell me about your theatre company. We won’t tell anybody else. Okay, please.

So, when I was producing this workshop of Michener Park, there comes that moment when you receive your contracts from Canadian Actors’ Equity and Associate Designers of Canada, and there’s this little line that says, artist or company. And I thought, ooh, this is interesting. If I were to put a name here, what would it be? And it just lives in this tiny little line with some people in the offices, but really, I don’t have to tell anyone about this.

And I’m Brazilian. I’m from Rio de Janeiro. So, if you think of, I call it the Pão de Açúcar, but it translates to the Sugarloaf Mountain.

Is that what they call it? I don’t know. But I was always really entranced by this whimsical little contraption, this gondola that travels between these two humongous rocks. And for what and why? And as a child, I always looked up and thought, well, isn’t this fascinating? And sure, there’s a pretty view up at the top, but this is the image that came to me when I was thinking of what my company name would be, because I also thought about, at the same time, what it’s like to be an Albertan artist, and to be an immigrant artist, and to have tufted out here for close to 20 years.

And in 20 years, you see a lot of people come and go. And in my time, I’ve seen a lot of marginalized artists leave, and for good reason. I also see a lack of elders that live here.

I think Carmen’s a great example of that. We don’t have a Carmen in Alberta. And so, I’m not gonna call it a mandate, but a value that Sugarloaf Theatre is a theatre company that brings people back to do work here, or it brings elders in to affect the quote-unquote theatre industry here.

And let’s face it, Sugarloaf, I’m an original Sugarloafer. That just sounds like a 90s punk band name that I really like. I could see that on a t-shirt.

I would 100% get that t-shirt. I would 100% get that t-shirt. I know! I’m an original Sugarloafer.

I like the sound of that. So there you go. Don’t tell anyone.

We won’t tell anybody. We won’t talk about that again. But I am curious about making theatre in a challenging community.

As a person of color working in Alberta, and you mentioned people leaving and things like that, what do you see for the future of theatre in Alberta? Oh, I hope it gets better. But I honestly don’t know if I’ll be around enough as I have been in the past, because I’m getting a lot of opportunities elsewhere. But I do wish that the circle can be widened.

Because I can only speak for myself. I think a lot of the reckoning that we’ve been experiencing in theatre for me, my own values about it have been to widen the circle. I have never intended to extinguish anyone from a community.

I don’t think that that’s right. But I feel a keen resistance to do that here. I feel like there’s a lot of gatekeeping tendencies that still happen in Alberta.

And we could really benefit from from letting that go. I just don’t know. I just don’t know on an individual level how ready individuals are here to do exactly that.

But I have a hope that it will, we will get somewhere. Yeah. It’s years ago, I toured a show across Canada, we went to the Edmonton Fringe.

And as I recall my time at the Edmonton Fringe, I don’t recall a show at the Fringe that had people of colour in it. And I don’t know if that’s changed since I was there. Because like I said, it was a lot, it was quite a while ago.

But my sense of Fringe in Alberta and some other places too is relatively white. Yeah. I know my brother spent some time in Alberta.

And it is the only place in Canada, where he was freely called the N-word. Oh, wow. Yeah, I’m not the only place.

Unfortunately, I’m not surprised about that. Yeah, I would say that we have some really backward points of views here. And also just, there’s a lot of fear, I think of, yeah, and I’m sorry to be so repetitive, but it is, there’s a fear of just widening the circle, pulling up some extra chairs and genuinely showing people the way and letting them in, you know, and it’s very unnecessary.

And some days, Phil, I find it very comical, because I think that a lot of my colleagues would really benefit from working with different people, and not being so segregated. This is a, this is also appeared in the same essay I referenced earlier, but, you know, it’s a very colonial mentality to say, Oh, okay, Phil, you want to do this? Great. There’s this patch of land on the edge, right over there.

Why don’t you go pitch the tent of your theatre and do what you need to do right over there. Great. Have a great day.

Bye, you know, instead of meeting people in the middle space and creating together. And so, if I had to describe the Edmonton theatre, I won’t call it a community. I’m just going to say Edmonton theatre.

I would say that everyone is in their own respective club. And, and that’s anathema to a community. That’s why I don’t call it a community because that’s not how you build a community.

No, I think I don’t think that that’s unique to Edmonton. I don’t think that’s unique to Alberta. I know, you know, I, I did a, an essay on, on this podcast a few weeks ago about, about the quote unquote theatre community and how we would talk about it, but it doesn’t really exist.

I think that there are some places where people cross paths more often and are more likely to work together, but those don’t stick. I, it’s, I think in a lot of, in a lot of places, the, what I think that keeps people from widening the circle is this outdated attitude of, if I include people, that’s less for me. I have to keep my circle small and then I can have the bigger piece of the pie because the more people we add to our circle, the less pie we get.

And it’s just so limiting. Absolutely. Yeah.

And again, we return to, to fear and scarcity, right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s a scarcity mindset. And I think that sort of lies in the heart of, of the idea of, of, of competing.

Sometimes people will go into say a fringe festival and look at other companies as people they’re competing against. And I for years have refused to see the theatre world that way because I don’t think that, that, that an audience member for me means one less audience member for you. I think that, that, that there is audience enough for everyone.

We just can work together to share those audiences together. Absolutely. And it’s also just how we conduct ourselves too.

One of the principles that I would say I’m proud of for the Latinx diaspora is that typically these are people that really value discourse. And discourse can, can also mean that sometimes we’re in conflict, that we agree and disagree, but that that’s okay. And so, we, we talk a lot, and we get passionate about what we talk about, but we walk away still as colleagues, as friends.

And we, I’ll speak for myself now, I really value people who think differently than me. I mean, I think it’s the reason why I’m partially a theatre artist. You know, we’re in an art form where part of our practice is to develop plays, study plays, put them up on its feet, discover the nuance in characters.

A villain is never just a villain, it’s a three-dimensional being. So, how can we create more nuance? How can we infuse it into any script? How to make a script better by discovering how much more nuanced it can be. But then we forget about all of these values in our real lives with how we treat one another.

And I, we’re reaching a really dangerous point with this in, not just in theatre, but in society at large. And I, I think it’s really contradictory to what we’re trying to do as theatre artists. And so, I really, really value a mentor like Carmen, who I have seen with my own two eyes, viscerally disagree with someone or having someone viscerally disagree with her.

And she will still call them a colleague, and she will not cancel them, and she will keep them in the circle. It doesn’t mean that she won’t try to debate and create discourse around whatever it is, but she will not exile people because she knows what it’s like to be exiled herself because of her history of being a political exile. So, I really, I want to put forward that value, and it’s one of the reasons why I honour someone like Carmen.

I have been, that, that idea of, of, I think, I think there’s this, this, the idea of discourse, and the idea of debate, and these sorts of things are things that, that we’ve, we’ve lost. Yeah. And I think, I think we started to lose these things when we decided, or when it was decided, because we didn’t decide, it was decided, that in polite company, we did not discuss religion or politics or, you know, there’s this list of things that you don’t discuss in, quote, unquote, polite society.

In which case, we’ve unlearned, by avoiding these things, how to have difficult conversations. And that just essentially keeps us from having them and throwing up our arms and refusing to have them because now we’re uncomfortable. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And we’re weaponising that word, too. I’m uncomfortable. Can quickly shut down a process that needs to happen, right? So, I, I’m one of those people that I, I try to stay away from saying that we’re going to create a safe room.

I don’t really think I believe in, in trigger warnings for shows. I think we’re starting to approach a time when we’re forgetting our own agency as human beings. I don’t walk down the street with someone beside me saying, trigger warning.

You’re going to cross the street and there’s cars and one of them could hit you. Trigger warning. This is like a sketch, by the way, if I ever had to pitch a sketch for SNL, this would be it, the trigger warners.

So, I, I shy away, I’m shying more and more away from using this language that is unrealistic and feels more and more performative to me. See, I, I had that idea for quite a while. I, I actually, my, my solo show that I performed and will one day perform again is a show that, that, that in which there is a character who, who dies by suicide.

And for many of the performances, I did not have a, have any kind of content warning or anything like that anywhere. I thought, you know what, people are just going to deal with it. And then I spoke with a number of people for whom they, when that event happens in that piece, the people, they, you know, their own trauma from people that they have loved and known who’ve died by suicide prevented them from experiencing the piece.

Now they were taken out of it. And so for me, it became important that, cause I’ve been in that spot to let them know that, to let people who might have difficulty with that, that this is going to happen. You can brace yourself.

I don’t have to tell you when it’s going to happen. I don’t have to tell you exactly what happens, but you should know coming in here that something that may take you out of the play, if you’re not prepared for it is going to happen because I don’t think that, that it serves anybody to have, to be taken out of the performance in that way. This is so fascinating.

And remember when I just said that I love discourse and I love finding people who disagree with me on something, this is perfect Phil. I would argue this is, and thank you for explaining that on your end. I feel the opposite when I, when I am given a trigger warning, I feel like that takes me out of the show.

And by the way, of course, I’ve also seen shows where I didn’t know what was going to happen. And there’s one in particular that, that really did give me the, not just, not just a regular cry, but I’m going to call it a scary crying momentum, you know, billowing from me and to the point where I didn’t know if I could contain it and not disturb the people around me. But to be honest with you, I look back to that show and other shows that have done this to me and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

I really wouldn’t have. So I’m open, but I still have not been convinced fully about trigger warnings. See, I, I do think they can be overused.

Yes. Yeah. But I also, I had some very frank conversations with a number of people cause I was, I went back and forth over the idea of trigger warnings and it was a very fascinating debate and conversation that was had with a number of people about it.

And eventually through that, I landed on the necessity for some kind of content warning for this particular play. And I, I do feel like, you know, it’s there, it’s on the poster, it’s, it’s in the program, it’s, it’s there. Um, that, that the people who come to the play are better able and better prepared to experience the play without essentially being ripped out of it by being shocked by that moment.

And I’ve, I feel like the audience that I’ve had since I included that content warning have been a better, more reactive audience for the play than before I had that, that content warning. Oh, interesting. You just made me think of an experiment that I would love to do.

What if we, what if we created a show and in the lobby we had one of those big, um, maybe drawing pads that has a cover to it. So you can flip it over to see what’s on the next page. What if we presented trigger warnings in that, um, covered page so that audience members could flip it over if they wanted to know, or it could remain concealed for those audiences that don’t want to know.

See, that is, that is a fascinating thing. And, and, and it has, I’ve, I’ve seen shows at fringe that do that. Like they have, like there’s content warning.

If you want to know what that is, there’s an envelope over here. You can go and see it. The only reason, the only difficulty that I have with that is that not everybody needs the same trigger warning.

So for example, for myself, I don’t need a trigger warning for sexual assault in a play, but I know people who do. I, I appreciate a trigger warning or a content warning about, about suicide. And therefore that’s something that I want.

But now if you tell me there’s a trigger warning, if you want to know, you can go over here. Now I’m, I’m like, okay, do I, do I, like, what do I want to know? What do I need to know? Is there, does that mean that there’s a suicide in this? Does that mean that there’s, there’s sexual assault? What does it that’s in this? I can, I can put myself into a bit of a spiral trying to figure out, do I go and look at this and will it add to the performance? Will it, will it, will it insulate me in the performance or will it take me out? I have a question for you, Phil, when you watch Netflix, do you look for trigger warnings? Because for myself, I’ll just click on, I’ll click on a show and I don’t think I ever look for it, but I I’m honestly asking if you do. I don’t, but when I’m watching something on Netflix, I can stop it.

Right. If I’m watching something on Netflix and I’m, and I’m affected by something and it is affecting me adversely, I can stop it as soon as I feel it coming. Oh, this is so positive.

And I can walk away and I can take a breath and I can’t do that in the theatre. You can’t, you can’t get up and get out of a theatre. You feel stuck.

I can, I can. But then also like I am, I, I, in many cases I would not because I, I’m also thinking I am affecting all of these people around me. As soon as I get up and I walk out now, the, the actors are aware of me, the audience is aware of me.

So I am going to sit in my, my trauma here in this seat and, and I’m not paying attention to what’s happening anymore. Whereas in Netflix, I can pause it or I can stop it and I can take my breath and then I can hit play again if I’m ready to go on with it. Whereas in the theatre, if I get up and I leave, I’ve, I’ve ended my, my, my experience with that play.

Right. Oh, interesting. Cause people get up to go to the washroom all the time, right? Sure they do.

And you know what, the thing is people do that in, you know, and we have the advantage that when with, because of all of our streaming services, we can pause it. If we’re in the movie theatre, many times we just suffer through or we try. There are helpful websites that if you need to go to the washroom, they’ll say, here’s a good point in the movie.

When you see the dog stop to take a pee on the, on, on the fire hydrant, you have seven minutes, nothing really of important happens. You can go to the washroom. Like there are websites where you can look that up.

Me, I suffer through until I’m sweating and then I will go. But I have, I think there’s something a little, a little different than getting up in the movie theatre and running to the washroom than getting up in a theatre and, and, and, and leaving in the middle of, of a tense moment. Fascinating that.

No, thank you for that. Yeah. I would just get up and go, but I don’t think I’m trying to think of a piece of theatre.

Well, you know what? I’ve left theatre when I really didn’t like it. I just didn’t care. Like I really should this, I have better things to do, but I haven’t done that in many, many, many years.

I think when I was a bit, a bit less patient when I was younger, a young whippersnapper I probably would have left the theatre. But I, yeah, yeah. It’s a, it’s a sense of personal boundary and a placement and a knowing of what’s happening and who, where’s it coming from? If I’m feeling this word triggered is also really interesting to me because I do feel like it’s also, it can be weaponized.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And so I don’t know.

I, I don’t, I, I really respect your point of view. I don’t know if I fully agree, but I really appreciate the discourse. I think there’s some, the whole topic is something that we, there are people who will tell you that you have to do it.

As soon as people say you have to do it, I’m like, it’s kind of my choice as the producer, as the, as, as the, the creator of this thing. And if I choose to do it and I, the times that I haven’t done it, I look back and I think I should have, but I, I also stand by not doing it at that time. I grew from there and decided that I needed to do it in the future.

I think whenever we say the form has to contain this, if it, if it, we have to have a trigger warning or, or we have to have a, we have to have a land acknowledgement. Like now we are into like, as soon as we say we have to do it, now we are putting constraints on the form and we are trying to, we’re sort of taking away the idea of, of, of theatre growing and flourishing. We’re putting it in a box.

Yeah. And we’re, we’re surrounding many aspects with fear and to the point where we can’t even offer any opposition or, or conversation around why we are doing what we’re doing. Land acknowledgements is a great topic for that.

And I think we need to talk about it and we need to be allowed to talk it out. Yeah. When people hear me talk about my views on, on trigger warnings, I’m, I’m, I’m guessing that some people will be outraged by what I’m saying.

And some people will go, don’t, she kind of has a point here and there. And there’ll be people go, I completely agree with her. And, and that’s all okay.

It’s all okay. But I’m just, I will always fight for the discourse around this. And as someone who’s slowly and slowly inching into leadership, I would really like to foster a space where we can have these conversations.

And as a team, as a creative team, we can arrive at our choices mindfully instead of arriving at them through peer pressure or a sense of, well, we just have to do it. It doesn’t matter what we think. I think that’s incredibly empty, performative, and it’s not doing anything for the art form.

Yeah. And it goes back to, you know, us forgetting and not being able to have difficult conversations. The idea of, of whether to have a trigger warning or not, or a content warning is, is some people have very strong opinions about.

And so it’s important that we learn to have the conversation without hysterics. I hate that word, but without shouting, without, without being over the top, without ultimatums and like, come to like an understanding about whether we are or not. Of course.

And we need to hear each other, right? Like as I’m hearing you push back on me, I I’m, I’m sitting here going, thank you. Thank you for the discourse. Thank you for pushing back.

Thank you for not swallowing your disagreement and voicing it because I’m now intrigued and I’m fascinated. And I trust Phil that you’re a person who would do this again. And thank goodness that you would.

Absolutely. I think, I think it’s like, like I said, when I said that we, there was some very lively conversation back and forth about this. When I was talking about it, I’m not kidding.

And there were people who had some very good points on both sides. And I think that it is something to be discussed. Like almost everything in this industry, we should be discussing it.

And, and even if it makes us uncomfortable, we should be having the conversation, especially if it makes us uncomfortable, we should be having the conversation. Of course. And I think we will get there when we model and we teach each other through example after example, that we can do that without canceling each other, without exiling each other.

We need to have the space to talk. And you know, I’ll also add this. I think a lot of my current views are from the position of being a creator myself.

And so I, I had to travel through this when I was writing Michener Park and contemplating maybe rewrites that need to happen, potential rewrites, and, you know, creating a company and going, well, what do I think? Where would I like to start? Because as the playwright, I think I have a big voice in that. I think I have a huge voice in determining whether my play will have trigger warnings. Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. This has been a great conversation. I want to thank you for, for, for having it.

And, and, and, and thank you for, for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me.