Mark Crawford

Mark Crawford is an actor and playwright. His plays are: The New Canadian Curling Club; Boys, Girls, and Other Mythological Creatures; The Birds and the Bees; Bed and Breakfast; and Stag and Doe.

Mark’s first play, Stag and Doe, premiered at the Blyth Festival in the summer of 2014. The play has received several other professional productions: Neptune Theatre, Port Stanley Festival Theatre, Lighthouse Festival Theatre, Upper Canada Playhouse, Festival Players of Prince Edward County, Theatre Orangeville, and others. Stag and Doe made its international premiere at Teatr Powszechny, Lodz, Poland in 2019 where it continues to run in rep.

As an actor, Mark has performed on stages across the country. Mark grew up on his family’s farm near Glencoe, Ontario. A graduate of the University of Toronto and Sheridan College, he now lives in Stratford.

Twitter: @markjdcrawford

Chase the Ace at Festival Players of Prince Edward County: https://www.festivalplayers.ca/chase-the-ace

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Transcript

Welcome to episode 301 of Stageworthy. I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast about people in Canadian theatre featuring conversations with actors, directors, playwrights, and more.

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You can find Stageworthy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at stageworthypod, and you can find the website with the archive of all 301 episodes at stageworthypodcast.com. And if you want to drop me a line, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at philrickabee, and my website is philrickabee.com. My guest this week is Mark Crawford. Mark is the performer and playwright of Chase the Ace, presented by Festival Players of Prince County from August 24 to 29. I think we’ve all become more expert at navigating the digital than we ever thought we would ever be.

Absolutely. Yeah. And we’re, yeah.

And, you know, I’m sure many actors, most actors have reached the point with like self tapes and stuff and self recordings and everything. Like I’ve had moments where I just go, this isn’t, this is not my expertise. No.

This is not why I got into this business. No. To like be my own camera operator and sound guy and like key grip, you know, just in order to try to get the job.

I mean, it’s great that things have continued, but it’s, it is, it’s, it’s not, it’s not why I’m an actor. No, I think that there’s a, that, that, that in some cases, I think that there’s an expectation that, that we’ll have a production level on the audition that like, you wouldn’t even have that production level if you were in the room with a casting director. Like, Oh yeah.

Like I’ve seen, I’ve seen, you know, audition tapes that I’ve done in a casting, like in a casting room. And I’m like, that is not high quality. It’s like, that is just, that is that sort of gray blue wall and it’s sort of slightly grainy, kind of like really harsh lighting.

The sound is like, you know, and then, yeah. And then there’s expectation of like, we want a short film. Yes.

Oh wait. Oh, I guess I need to have a high def camera and a new microphone and just like, it’s just too much. It’s just too much.

It’s too much. Why don’t we talk about, I really want to jump in and start talking about Chase the Ace. Sure.

Could you give me a, what’s the elevator pitch for Chase the Ace? Oh, the elevator pitch is, there is this very down on his luck, morning show radio personality from the big city who has lost his marriage and his career in one fell swoop and gets an opportunity to leave town and run a small town radio station. He gets that new job in the week that the world shuts down due to COVID. And not only is he trying to save this small town radio station from going under, but he quickly finds himself embroiled in this sort of municipal scandal where he is trying to get to the truth of this local lottery that they have created in order to raise money for the long-term care facility in the town.

So he is, yeah, he’s trying to get to the heart of this story. And it’s a solo show. It’s a one man show.

I play all the characters and it’s a comedy. It is set against the backdrop of COVID. It is not about COVID necessarily, but it takes place in 2020.

And it’s, yeah, it’s sort of a comedy about this wild time that we’ve been through and about this guy who is trying to get himself back on his feet. I think the radio setting provides a particularly interesting setting. I remember seeing some videos from people who were like working at the radio stations in the early days of the pandemic.

And they were essentially the only people in the radio station that was usually bustling with activity. And they were like, we’ve been here for six hours. We haven’t seen another person and we’re starting to lose our minds, which has a certain, it’s sort of like a microcosm of the isolation we were all going through at that time.

Totally. Yeah. I have a line in the play where he says like working in the media, I learned I’m essential.

It’s like all these people who didn’t even know that they were essential workers until they get told, oh, you’re essential. Yeah, absolutely. And so they need to keep the news going and keep something on the air.

But yeah, it’s like, I mean, we were just talking about people becoming their own sound engineers and everything. I’m sure that radio folks were like, yeah, I don’t, I like, I’m in the booth, man. Like I don’t, I don’t do, I don’t press all the buttons.

I know some of the buttons, but yeah, folks who really had to quickly, steep learning curve for sure. Yeah. So what, what drew you to the small town radio station as a setting? Well, I, you know, I was interested in creating a solo show and I thought like, and I was also at the same time, I listened to a lot of podcasts.

I was particularly into some like sort of some sort of true crime podcast that people trying to get like, you know, even, even stuff of like This American Life, podcasts like that, are really sort of uncovering one big story and getting to the truth and all of that stuff. So I thought that that was an interesting form to kind of play with. And also that, yeah, that there’s this idea of like, something that is very local and very small town.

And, and yet being on the radio has the potential to reach a lot of people, especially during COVID and during a time of isolation. So I felt like all of those things could link together. And it could also give me a sort of theatrical reason why this person is telling this story in this way.

Why I play all the characters, I do all the voices, all of that stuff. So it sort of seemed to Yeah, just to sort of all come together. In many ways, the solo play is sort of like the perfect pandemic production to create.

You don’t need to have other people in the rehearsal hall. So you don’t have to worry about transmission, that sort of thing. Yeah, we’re easy to rehearse that, especially when you don’t know what the restrictions in a rehearsal hall are going to be from month to month.

So absolutely that I think like, the right sort of thing for this time. Also, also, thank you for not doing a show that was like, my, my pandemic was terrible. And I was alone, which is I have this nightmare that the next three fringes are going to be all like people’s COVID stories as far as solo shows.

Yeah, I think we’ve probably got a lot of, there’s probably going to be a lot of stories about this time. And I think that like anything, some of them are going to be great. And some of them are going to be shows that maybe haven’t quite found the their their particular in or something that is that is particularly unique, I don’t know, or maybe it will resonate with somebody.

And that’s cool, too. But for me, yeah, it was, I thought, you know, I thought that there’s this massive thing that has happened to all of us. And if we’re going to go back and gather together in a, in a tent or in a field or wherever we are this summer in a park, outdoors and see a show.

And I felt like I could acknowledge that the the thing that has happened and acknowledge the reason why we are in this field, sitting, you know, two metres from the next person and rather than ignore, ignore that fact. And, and there’s lots of things that I think a lot of us have thought about, about isolation and loneliness and, and also, you know, community and in gathering people together and trying to fight for what’s right. And, and, in particular, in this show, I’m really talking about the truth and telling the truth and listening to the truth.

And, and I, you know, the people who aren’t telling the truth in this play, not to give too much away are the elected officials. And I thought that that was maybe something to explore during this time. For any of us who’ve been paying any attention to the news, we feel like, oh, is that guy just lying? You know? So, so that was all those things made me feel like it was, it was something I wanted to write about, while also I think, like you’re saying, while also not writing the depressing, depressing COVID show.

I do think that it’s, you know, somehow we have to address this time in art. I think that, I know last year I was, I kept thinking maybe we should write something about this. And I kept thinking the last thing I want to do right now is think about what’s happening right now.

You know, as far as that goes, but, you know, it goes on for a period of time. And then once it’s over, I think, or once we’re coming out of it, now I think that, that maybe we can face talking about it a little bit more than we could maybe a year ago. I hope so.

Yeah, I hope so. And, you know, it, it will be, it’s essentially like that I will be doing this show in the summer of 2021. And it takes place in the summer of 2020.

So it’s even a year’s distance that we can go, oh, right, that was crazy when we couldn’t find toilet paper. That, that sort of stuff. So, yeah.

And like, you know, I’ve thought about, there’s a play that I did many years ago at Theatre Aquarius called See How They Run. And it was this like massively successful farce during the Second World War. And there’s stories of the first production of that play in London’s West End.

And like, though, London was being bombed, all the lights were turned out and stuff. And this play like ran and ran and ran and sold out every ticket and was this massive hit. And it is, you know, it acknowledges the war that there are like, there’s a character in there who’s a soldier, and there is like a German prisoner of war in the play.

And it’s, it’s all that. So it is in there, but it’s not a show about war, or about, you know, it’s sort of set in the backdrop of that. And it’s a very funny, very silly farce.

So I’ve thought about that show and going, oh, yeah, like people, audiences were, it’s just, it just becomes your reality. And so you’re willing to allow that to exist in the world while also allowing it to be a very raucous comedy, I hope. So I think that both things can, can coexist.

And that the, that the reality of that, I think, makes the comedy more real and resonate more, I hope. We’ll see once it’s in front of an audience. I will learn a lot.

I wonder if if that that play in particular, the one to see how they run, if it was popular at the time, if it had been about the war, if people would have been like, I can’t deal with this, because it was just acknowledging the fact that the war was happening, but it wasn’t about that, that that’s what allowed people to sort of like, ah, this is my life, I can, I can relate to this. Rather than I think sometimes an inexperienced writer might be like, I’m doing a play about this, which is not what we want to see it when we’re in it, we want to see acknowledgement. So we can relate to it, but not like, we don’t need to really write everything about it.

Yeah, and, and exactly. And like you’re saying, like, we’ve been, we’ve all been living in this for almost a year and a half. So I don’t need to, you know, I’ve got plenty of reasons to be depressed.

I don’t need to go and buy a ticket to a play that’s going to make me feel worse about myself and and what we’ve been through. So yeah, I hope that this is I hope that this show also offers like, offers a bit of hope to people and offers a sort of glimpse at sort of how we get through this kind of stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I would like to ask you about your theatre origin story. What drew you to the theatre? Can you remember particular experiences? What was the journey that started you out to get to where you are now? Yeah, I, I grew up on a farm in southwestern Ontario, the closest town to where I grew up is called Glencoe.

And so I did not come from like a theatrical or an artistic family. But as a kid, for whatever reason, I was just really drawn to like, doing plays and being in choir and that stuff. And because I grew up in southern Ontario, there’s a lot of theatre around.

So as a kid, I would ask, my birthday is in the summer, and I would ask for tickets to go and see shows at mostly the Huron Country Playhouse in Grand Bend. But I would go to see shows at the Grand Theatre in London. Once I was a little bit older, I would go see shows at Stratford.

And, yeah, so I, so I just kind of caught the bug and really wanted to see plays and experience plays and read plays and do drama camp and you know, all of that stuff. And then I went to, I went to theatre school and started working. Do you remember at what point you became aware of this as a vocation? Yeah, that’s a good question.

I don’t really, I guess it was going to see, I guess it was going to see things and seeing plays and reading people. I remember being really into programs and like collecting programs and plays and reading people’s bios and reading, you know, looking at people’s headshots and finding out what other plays they’d been in, where they had worked. And the idea that I could see, I could see people in a play in Grand Bend who said, you know, in their bio, it said, most recently, this show in Toronto, or most recently, this show in Vancouver, or, you know, this person is from here, but has worked all over the world, or any of those things felt like really, really appealing and glamorous.

And, you know, it’s funny to think like, oh, that’s so exciting. And when, you know, especially at the time in the 80s and 90s, the Huron Country Playhouse was litreally a barn. Now it’s a very nice theatre inside a barn.

But at the time, you know, I remember seeing matinees and the light, the sunshine shining through the cracks in the barn board. So yeah, so I guess that was how I sort of knew that it was, it was an option. Did you, I mean, growing up in the country, and not coming from a family that performed, was there, what was the reaction of the family and people around you when you told them that this is what you were going to do with your life? Or were they not at all surprised based on your desire to see the plays throughout most of your life? Yeah, like, I’d been doing sort of drama stuff, and like, took singing lessons and was in plays in my school and in my community and all that stuff.

So by the time I got to the end of high school, I don’t think it was a huge surprise that I was interested in auditioning for theatre programs and going and making this my career. You know, of course, you have the conversation with your parents where they say, is this what you really want to do? And is this going to be a career? Is this actually going to work out? Are you like, don’t you know, I was also a really good student. So the idea that, you know, don’t you just want to go to university and get a degree and be a teacher? And there are days where I think, huh, maybe they had a point.

I think most of us have at some point, wondered if maybe our parents had a point when we had that conversation. Yeah. Yeah.

But I don’t, I don’t think it didn’t come out of left field. I wasn’t one of those people who at, you know, 18 said, I’m going to be an actor. And they had never heard of that before in their life.

Yeah. And, you know, it’s so far, it seems to have worked out okay. Yeah.

Yeah. It is a funny thing to be, you know, I’m one of the first people in my family really going back. I don’t know how far to not be a farmer, you know? So I think about that a lot of going like, I don’t know how many generations you have to go back to find somebody who wasn’t a farmer.

Like, I just feel like that probably goes back eons, right? So anyway, I had to, somebody had to do it. Somebody’s got to break the farming cycle. Somebody’s got to break the cycle.

At what point did you start writing? Well, I guess I always, I mean, I wrote in school, like, you know, I was always really interested in writing and in, in plays and playwriting and stuff. And, but I didn’t really, my first professional play didn’t premiere until 2014. So I’d been working as an actor for probably about 10 years before I started writing my first, like, play that actually made it past 10 pages.

I had lots of, lots of false starts, where I would think, oh, here’s an idea for a play. And I’ll sit down and I’ll write it. And I just couldn’t get past the first scene, or I didn’t really know where this idea was going.

But yeah, I, my first play’s called Stag and Doe, and it premiered in 2014. And I started writing it, it premiered at the Blythe Festival. And I started writing it when I was actually in Blythe, working as an actor in 2011.

And just being in that community and being, working at that theatre, and there are always playwrights around, always people working on new plays, cutting scenes and going to the photocopier to run off new pages and stuff. So that was really exciting and inspiring. And it was, it was there that I started writing.

And it was there that I got my, got my first professional production. Now, the new play is a solo play. Is that something that you’ve done before? I performed a solo play.

I actually got my equity card performing Morris Panitch solo play for young audiences called Cost of Living. That was probably written in like the early 90s, but I did it. Thousand Islands Playhouse used to produce a high school tour of a TYA show, and I did that show in 2005, I guess.

Yeah. And so that is the one and only time that I’ve done a solo show. And then I just thought, as you were saying, it’s like, solo shows feels like the perfect kind of COVID theatre vehicle, because you don’t have to worry about bubbling with another actor and getting tested every day and all of that stuff.

So yeah, so I decided to write this show. I, you know, and I’ve seen lots of solo shows over the years. Many great ones and have been inspired by those folks who are real experts at the form.

So yeah, yeah. I thought I’d try my hand at it. What was your, because I mean, I remember when I was in my 20s many, many, many years ago, and I first read Danny McIver’s House and I was like, that’s amazing.

I want to do something like that. It took another 10 to 15 years before I finally felt like I could start on that. And that process still took years from there to get to write it.

And I had to find my way of writing a solo play. So I’m curious, as far as your writing process, what did writing this play look like for you? Yeah, I mean, in many ways, it was really like, it was not hugely different from writing a multi-character play in the way that, you know, I had to like, come up with the idea and kind of know where it was going and do a bit of an outline. And, and then of course, like half of that went out the window as I started to write it.

And yeah, like, there are, there’s lots of direct address that it’s very clear that I’m talking to the audience and I’m telling them a story. And, but there are also lots of scenes in the play that are two handers or three hander scenes that are just really like scene writing. So there were things that I thought about a bit more about like, not to have short interjections, but to allow people to speak, because it would just be one, it would be me, it would be one actor.

So to try to let the entire thought get out before somebody else responded and not to sort of do really broken up dialogueue, because that can be quite hard to follow if it’s only one actor, but really like the scenes could be two hander scenes or, you know, there’s one scene where I’m like, well, there’s, I mean, there’s a couple of scenes. There’s one scene where there’s five people in the scene. And there’s one scene where there’s, I think about, I haven’t actually done the tally, but I think about seven people in that scene.

So, you know, really you try to create characters that are distinct and their voice is distinct, even on the page, knowing that you’re also then going to have to do the work as an actor to delineate who those people are. Yeah. It’s an interesting form too, because it really, you know, this play really has a single protagonist where a lot of my other work, I would say is more ensemble based, you know, if it’s a play with five actors, maybe some of them have a bit more to do than others, but it’s really like pretty, pretty equally distributed in terms of the text and, you know, who we’re rooting for or any of those things.

Yeah. And I do love sort ensemble storytelling, but in this case, it’s really is one guy’s story and everything is seen through his point of view. So that is, I guess, a bit of a difference, but in terms of the actual, you know, sitting down and writing and crafting a story and crafting the scenes and trying to, you know, have interesting developments in the plot and developments in character and have it be about something.

All of that is felt like kind of felt like playwriting, just like regular playwriting. Yeah. Yeah.

I always found that that a solo play had a particularly unique aspect of it in that, in that, as you mentioned, there’s the singular point of view, that’s there, that’s the protagonist. And I think that that keeps it clean, right? Because could muddy it by having like all kinds of different voices who have equally weighted voices and things like that. And that can really be confusing for an audience in a solo play in a way that it’s not in a straight up play with many actors.

Yeah, I think that you do, you know, like I think about the audience a lot when I’m writing and when I’m rehearsing and everything. And I think that you do have to make sure that you’re taking care of your audience and that they can follow this and that there are moments, especially after moments of a scene in which I’m playing five or seven characters, that there are moments that it comes back to the central character and, you know, that we can just focus in on this one guy and his journey. I think that that is important in this particular play anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. I think Claire, I mean, it’s the clarity of it that really helps an audience follow it along, right? If they only have one person they can rely on that, that individual has to be super clear.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And, and yeah, and there are folks, I mean, Daniel McIver is a great example in terms of like, those solo shows, you know, there was a period in Toronto where he was sort of remounting a lot of those solo shows. And I saw, I think I saw all of them and it was, you know, it is incredible.

Like there are a few of them in which I have images, like I have memories of the play that I realized are only in my imagination, that they are like, they’re things that he talks about in the play, but on stage, it’s really just like McIver on a black stage with some cool lights and maybe a chair. But I go, oh yeah, there’s that part, right, where there’s that like, that crazy part where that it doesn’t somebody like hit a kid on a bike or something, you know, like, and you go, oh no, okay, he just tells you about that. But I guess what I’m getting at is it’s interesting how much of it happens in the audience’s imagination.

And I think that’s true of any theatre, but especially solo theatre, where it’s really like storytelling, you’re really getting down to the basics and you’re letting them fill in all the blanks of what these people look like and what the actual, you know, what the scene looks like. And you get to do things that you wouldn’t do in other plays where, you know, there are many, many locations in this play that you wouldn’t do if you were writing a sort of regular like forehand or you would try to probably contain it to a couple locations. Or, you know, there are things you just wouldn’t do in other types of theatres.

There’s a car chase in this play that you probably, if you were trying, if you had to have cars and people and all of that, you might not do it. Sure. Theatre has this ability to do things in people’s minds that they don’t quite realize that you’re doing.

Like you mentioned, like, you know, I was talking with Brad Fraser and he talked about, you know, doing, if you’re doing a play where there’s people that are underwater, you just turn on a blue light and everybody sort of waves their arms like they’re underwater and the audience buys it in a way they would never do it in a movie. They would never buy that on TV or in a movie. But in theatre, you just go, we’re underwater and everybody goes, everybody’s underwater.

And in people’s minds, you’re able to implant ideas like Daniel McIver did with you, with the scene with the bicycle, is just like this ability to sort of give over to the audience and to just sort of trust that the audience will fill in those blanks. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, having had that experience myself as an audience member many times, I can trust that they’re going to go there.

And I think, yeah, I think, like, especially this summer, I’m doing this show, there’s no lighting design, for instance, right? Because it’s outdoors. So it’s really, like, it’s really getting down to, like, you know, old school, gather around the campfire, I’m going to tell you a story, like, real, real, you know, I hope it’s, it’s a sophisticated form of storytelling, and that my character work is good and everything. But it is, yeah, there is that sort of sense of, like, it’s a really old art form that I think started when there were some cavemen who were really good storytellers and good at doing, you know, funny voices of the other guy who killed the woolly mammoth.

So, yeah, so it’s, and I think audiences are game for that, and are really smart and sophisticated and love their imagination, getting a bit of exercise. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Now, speaking of performing this, you’re, after 18 months, 16 months, whatever it’s been, you’re going to be performing this not digitally, but in person at the Festival of Players in Prince Edward County. And how, how do you feel being in front of people once again? I feel pretty excited, and a little bit scared. But I think that that’s, you know, I would, I would feel that way.

If I, I would feel that way. If I had just come off another run of a play two weeks ago, I would still feel excited and scared. I, I’m, I’m very excited to get back in front of an audience and, and just be able to share, you know, well, I mean, quite honestly, to be able to do what I do, to be able to practice my craft and, and to be able to work is, is really exciting.

And yeah, and to be able to get in front of an audience and have that live experience that that is really, I, I love that. And I love, I love doing plays for people and being up in front of audiences. And, and the, you know, the, I do the play at a bunch of summer theatres this summer.

So the chance to actually do a, like a proper run of it and do many weeks of performances, and I’m sure I will learn a lot about the play. I’m sure I will, you know, because I’m also the writer, I’m sure I will, I will do a couple of tweaks along the way. And I’m sure that I, you know, like any play, especially a comedy, you really can hone how you do it, how you, how you pitch things, how much you invest in certain things, certain words, certain moments, if you leave a tiny beat, if you take that beat out, if you, you know, throw something away, does it get a bigger laugh, if you really lean into it, all those things are, that’s, I love that.

I love running a play, you know, every, every once in a while, I’ll work with an actor who loves rehearsal, loves rehearsal so much. And I love rehearsal too, but they love rehearsal so much. And then after opening, you know, you’ve still got three and a half weeks of shows or four weeks of shows or something, and they get, they’re just like, oh God, we have to do another show.

We have to do a matinee. We have to do, you know, we have to do a matinee and then an evening, man. And I, I don’t know, maybe I’m just, maybe I’m a bit of a theatre nerd, but I really like, I really like actually performing.

I think, I think, you know, if you’ve kind of balanced between the two, but I always feel like performing is, is where you really learn the play. Yeah. Right.

You can, you can learn about the play in, in rehearsal, but it’s only in performance that you really learn about the play. You really learn it. You learn, you know, how do audiences react to things? What do, what don’t they react to? What subtle changes change everything? Like you’re saying, like you only learn that stuff by performing it.

And without that, the play can never be fully formed. Yeah. And really like, really truly.

And I feel this way as, as a writer, as a playwright specifically, but, and as an actor that it, it, you know, it doesn’t exist so that I can, it doesn’t exist so that there can be like a PDF of a play on my computer. It doesn’t exist so that I can do it in the rehearsal hall or in this case in my backyard. And, and you know, for no one, it, it, it, it is, it is for people.

So yeah. And that is really, that is really where you, where the information lies, like you’re saying. Yeah.

Like performing my solo play as many times as I have, like each time I’m done, I’ve learned more about that play than I ever knew when I wrote it. Right. And after finishing a run, I’ll go back and I can, I can make slight adjustments.

I could say, oh, this feels like this piece has always been missing, but I never knew that because the audience told me through their reactions that something was needed there. So it’s by doing it so many times that, that you’re reaching the point where the play is actually finished. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. Like I don’t, and I, and I do that with, you know, with plays that I’m not performing that I, that I, that are like, just plays where I’m the playwright and there’s a cast. I like, I love previews.

I love being able to sit in there with an audience and go, oh man, I need to make a couple cuts in this scene where, you know, it is just now that it’s in front of people, I really get the sense that this is going on a bit too long. There’s too many words in here or, oh, they didn’t catch that. I really thought that they would catch that.

Okay. We need to add a little line back in or something like that. So yeah, I love that chance to tweak something in front of an audience.

And then I will like, I will always go back and after the first production of a play, I will always go back and make, try to see it as many times with as many different audiences as I can and go back and make a bunch of changes after that. So that if there is a second production of the play or whenever that second production happens, that they can have an even tighter script that really is kind of like, this is how it works in front of an audience. And then, you know, I’ve, I’ve had, I’ve been blessed to be published, to have my plays published.

And so the opportunity to then go and make even more changes based on like the second run of a play or even, you know, or the third run and go, oh, I noticed this and I’ve never been happy with that line. It never, it never works how I want it to be. And, and especially in the case of plays that I’m not performing that are, you know, and have different casts, I go, oh, it wasn’t just that actor.

You know, I sometimes you can tell yourself, maybe it’s just how they’re saying it. I don’t know. Like they’re doing a great job, but maybe it’s just their delivery of that line.

I’ll see. And then you see it with two other actors and you go, oh no, it’s the line mark. It’s the line.

If none of these great actors can make it work how you want it to work, you should actually just do a little rewrite there. I call it the confidence of the playwright. No, it has to be the actor.

That’s the, that’s the, yeah. I hope I’m getting better at that. I think I’ve always been pretty decent because I am also an actor.

I think I’ve also, I’ve always been like, oh no, it’s the, it’s the line. But I think as time goes along, I’m yeah, I’m even less precious. And I would just maybe go, oh, no, I can, you know what, as the writer, I’ll help you out there.

Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s good.

That’s good. If you get there faster, the actor will probably thank you when the quote unquote funny line actually works, you know? Yeah. I hope so.

I hope so. Yeah. And those are, you know, those are really exciting moments where in previews you’re, you’re able to go, even if you only have two previews or something to be able to go, hey, try this line tonight, you know, especially in a comedy, you know, especially in a comedy to go, oh, that didn’t quite work.

And then if you go, oh, just say this, say this instead. And then it works. That’s a, that’s a joy.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaking of joy, as we, as we draw to a close here, one of the questions that I’ve been asking everybody since the whole pandemic started is a question about joy because we’ve all had our ups and our downs. We’ve all, you know, doom scrolled on our phones or panic bought toilet paper or whatever it is that we had our moments. Yeah.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Phil, but I’ll, I’ll try to. Yeah. Try to imagine.

Yeah. But in terms of, in terms of like the, the, like things, I think sharing the joys that we’ve had are really is a really great thing to do. So can you something that can you tell me something that’s been giving you joy throughout this time? Uh, yeah, I, you know, I’ve, um, really earlier in my life than I expected.

I always knew that there was maybe like an old, old timey nerdy gardener in me. Um, but he’s really like come out swinging during, during this time. And so I know more about plants and gardens and, um, and I still have a whole heck of a lot to learn, but yeah, I’ve really, um, it’s, you know, getting out there, getting your hands in the dirt, watching something grow, um, learning about something.

And especially I would say learning about something that is not related to the theatre or not related to the arts. Um, even though that there, there is, you know, there is an artistic sensibility maybe to gardening, but, um, yeah, watching things grow, watching things fail, um, is like, there’s something maybe not joyful about it, but there’s something kind of, um, great about it. And I don’t know if it’s also my, you know, my farming roots to just be kind of connected to the earth and connected to growing stuff and, um, but yeah, that has been a real source of joy.

Um, uh, I would say my, I would say my, my homemade pizza game has really increased during this time. Um, you know what I mean? Uh, and, uh, yeah, just stuff like that. Just the, just the little stuff.

Uh, I’ve watched a lot of bad TV and, um, that’s, uh, you know, um, yeah, yeah. Holding on to that stuff, but really getting outside, getting, getting my hands in the dirt, trying to keep things watered and alive, uh, is it’s good. I think it’s good for me.

And I, it is a source of joy. That’s great. Mark Crawford, thank you so much for talking with me.

This has been great. Thanks for having me.