Philip Akin

Philip Akin has been acting and directing for over 40 years. In 2000, he was a founding member of Obsidian Theatre, Canada’s leading black theatre company, and has served as its Artistic Director since 2006. In this role, he has worked tirelessly to provide opportunities and guidance for emerging artists. In 2002, he was part of the team that launched the Obsidian Mentor/Apprentice Program, a one-of-a-kind program that has so far helped 61 black artists embark on exciting careers as directors, dramaturges, producers, production managers, lighting, set and costume designers with some of the most established performing arts companies nationwide.

The Men in White
by Anosh Irani
Directed by Philip Akin

A heartwarming tale of life, love, and cricket.

When Abdul’s cricket team want to end their losing streak, they decide to recruit his brother, Hasan, who is an expert all-rounder. But bringing Hasan from India to Canada will take more than just a plane ticket, and not all of the team agree with the cost. Alternating between Mumbai and Vancouver, this touching story follows these unforgettable characters as they discover that home can be found in a sport and unite family across nations.

Tickets: https://www.factorytheatre.ca/2018-19-season/the-men-in-white/

Transcript

Welcome to episode 151 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. I have been thinking a lot this week about goals and getting to where I want in life, what I want to be when I grow up.

And I’ve known a long time exactly what I want to be. Quote unquote, when I grow up. You know, I want to be doing more writing and I want to be doing more performing of my own work.

So, and I found myself realizing that I’ve been getting really sidetracked. And that sort of come into focus for me a little more after I got back from doing French festivals and started going back to daily life, how much I allow myself to be distracted by other things, you know, day job and that sort of thing. And I’ve been thinking a lot about that because, well, it doesn’t take me where I want to go.

It doesn’t help me get closer to what I want to do. And, you know, it’s important to me that I, you know, it’s the thing that I’m passionate about. And yet it’s so easy to get sidetracked.

And I was thinking this week about a quote from my favourite author, Neil Gaiman. And when he was giving an address to, he was doing a graduation keynote and he talked about how when he was younger, when opportunities would come his way, he thought about how that was getting him towards what he wanted to do. And the way that he, you know, what he wanted to do is to be a published author, a writer of fiction and that sort of thing.

And so when an offer would come his way, say, for example, to be the editor of a magazine, he would imagine what he wanted being a published author of fiction as a mountain in the distance. And he’d look at that offer and he’d ask himself, does that take me closer to the mountain? And if the answer was no, he would turn down the offer. He would not pursue it because getting to the mountain was really important to him.

And I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my mountain and what I want out of my life and how to motivate myself to not get distracted. So one of the things I did was I, you know, I took that quote and I made a little wallpaper for my phone because, you know, what’s something I look at every day is I look at my phone and I pick up my phone and the wallpaper is a picture of a mountain and it just says, are you closer to the mountain? And it’s a question that I’m finding really motivating. And so every time I pick up my phone, which let’s face it is too much, I pick up my phone and I look at it and ask me the question and I have to answer for myself, is the answer yes or no? And so I’m finding that since making that wallpaper, as I look at it, I’m answering the question more often with yes, because I’m doing things that take me closer to the mountain.

So that’s good. And, you know, it’s really easy to get sidetracked and I’m sure that you’ve had times in your life when you get sidetracked. I mean, we all, it happens to all of us, things become and feel like they’re more important than maybe they actually are or they’re important, but they’re not taking us towards what we want to do.

And so it’s important to look at what you want and do what you can to get there. Otherwise, you know, when you get to that, you know, you start to, you don’t want to have regrets about not pursuing and not moving towards the thing that you really wanted. I’m curious what your mountain is like, are you, are you moving towards it every day? Is there, is there something that you’re doing that helps to motivate you? If you wanted, like I can make the wallpaper that I made available to whoever wants it, or you can make your own, but you know, I’m just curious, like, how are you motivating yourself to move towards your mountain? You can, you can tell me about that.

If you want to drop me a line, you can find Stageworthy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Stageworthy pod. You can find the website at Stageworthy podcast.com if you want to drop me a line to tell me about your mountain or anything at all, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Phil Rickaby. And my website is philrickaby.com. My guest this week is Philip Akin.

And Philip is the artistic director and a founding member of obsidian theatre and is currently directing men in white, which starts October 13th and runs until November the 4th at factory theatre in Toronto. Why don’t we start out by talking about the show that you’re working on men in white. What can you tell me about about men in white, aside from the fact that it’s about cricket? Well, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s about cricket.

That’s all we do is cricket bad cricket. No, it’s nominally about cricket. As it as it relates as a team sport, it doesn’t relates to a kind of the camaraderie or the fracturing of camaraderie that one finds when you’re on a team.

Or for me, it’s probably closer to my days in martial arts, that kind of thing, where you have this kind of like unit and then then it can fracture under odd circumstances. So it’s it’s a story about that. It’s a story about religion.

It’s a story about India. I mean, half the play is set in Dongri, which is a poor Muslim area of Bombay. And the desires of Hassan who wants to, you know, he would rather play cricket than be a chicken butcher.

So, you know, and there’s a love interest. So it’s, it’s about so in many ways, it’s a pretty interesting human story. And it also puts a bunch of people on stage that we don’t normally see.

Right, right. So I find that interesting. It’s tricky.

As a as a play it, I’m trying desperately not to make it a tennis match play. Oh, sure. You know, because they’re alternating scenes, you know, one scene is in Dongri, next is in Vancouver, and they alternate for the entire play.

So I could just have the audience looking, you know, stage right, stage left. And so that leads into a kind of a natural, more naturalistic interpretation. And I’ve been finding lately that I’m a little bored or pushed back from naturalism.

And so this one’s got a got, I’ve taken a more philosophical intent and the world’s blending. And that’s represented in the stage and in some of the staging. And, yeah, I’m kind of just moving away a little bit in interest from naturalism.

So that’s cool. Are there particular inspirations that are, that you’re using in terms of moving away from naturalism? I guess it’s, I just find it very confining. I mean, this play could be done, you know, he’s in a chicken abattoir.

And that’s fine, right? Like, I mean, we could have hanging dead fake chickens. We could have real chickens. We could have mobile chickens.

Or we could just have cutouts. Yeah. Right.

But for me, mostly it has to do with the way the two sides of the stage intersect. And the fact that all of the stuff in Vancouver happens in the clubhouse of the cricket club. Right.

And so we could have a clubhouse on stage left and a chicken abattoir on stage right. Sure. And instead we have these two walls, one of linoleum that crosses a wall of astroturf, which crosses and then gets cut out into like one foot squares in sort of this interstitial space in the middle.

So that people are kind of wandering in each other’s space, even when the other space. So it’s just, I don’t know, it’s just this thing in my head where I’m like, I’m not interested in doing it fully naturalist. Yeah.

You know, I mean, there is something about the tennis match on stage that I think we’ve seen before. Yeah. A million times.

Yeah. And also there’s the audience, I think, gets a little tired of the back and forth as well. Yeah.

And it also makes for a different kind of storytelling, I think. And it closes down a little bit of, I don’t know, a little bit of the idea for theatre magic, right? Like how do these two places really blend? Anyway, of course, the set, as it will be in the theatre, is seven feet larger than the rehearsal hall. So I can’t actually, and there’s all these like cubes that get moved around.

So I can’t actually spread out the fullness of the set in the rehearsal hall. So when we do a run, you do one scene in Dongri and then the stage management crew, the best in the world, run out and move everything to a different configuration so we can do the next scene. And it goes back and forth, back and forth.

Right, right. So it means that we’re not actually doing like a really smooth, clean run. And so all of that is waiting for me when I move on deck in the next weekend.

That’ll be another challenge then. Totally. To put it together.

Because I don’t even know if the design that I’ve created, it all seems to be in my head. It seems like it all will be what I think it is. But I could actually put it up on the stage and go, oh man, that sucks.

Well, there’s something incredibly indie about that, in like working in one space. And then when you show up to the theatre, suddenly having to make all of the adjustments in the world to make whatever you did in the rehearsal hall work in this space. Yeah, and I get that.

It’s part of the way that I work in my process is that the play, when, let me back up. Most times when you move a play on stage, it takes about two to three steps back in the acting. Right.

Right. You just step back. And I believe that what I deliver is I bring onto the stage a play that is so into the bones of the actors and they understand the play in such detail that maybe they take a half step back, if that.

And in fact, I guess I’ve got a little bit of man pride around the fact that when I deliver a show at the Shaw Festival, the tech team looks at me and says, we’re so far behind where you are. Right. Right.

So that’s built into the arc of my process of developing a play. People move on stage, we’ve solved all the problems. And I don’t have that here.

Does that put you off a little? Does that make you feel a little nervous about moving on stage? Well, why I do that is for the solidity of the actors, number one. Number two, it means that I don’t have to utilize all of the rehearsal hours in the preview period. Right.

So usually there’s a five hour slot. Right. And I’m quite proud of saying, listen, unless something has gone terribly wrong, and I’ve done my job poorly, we won’t need those rehearsal hours.

I find too many times, and I found this as an actor, you end up at opening this, the entire cast is an exhausted wreck. And they do their opening night on adrenaline. And it’s like the crappiest show ever.

Right. And I go, that’s what I don’t want. Right.

I want a well rested company who has full control of their work and the play, and they deliver on the opening, a great show. That’s one of the things I think that an audience is not aware of a lot of times is that opening night, they’ve spent a week of doing, and a lot of times like five hours of rehearsal, plus two hours of performance and whoever that takes. And they still have to try to give as good a performance as they can, well, after doing five hours of rehearsal.

And so it’s no wonder that they’re putting a lot out there, and audiences have no idea about everything that’s going in there. That’s right. And when you factor in then that everybody, like we’re here, four, 10 out of 12s, and then go into preview.

I mean, you don’t get that back in energy wise. Right. So that’s why the second night, the night after opening is always that immense collapse.

Yes. Yeah. Now, how do you not do that? You do that by giving over control of the show to the cast and the stage management team earlier.

So that means I build my process in a way to let go of the work in previews. So previews is a way of me backing away. Right.

I’ve been known to just kind of go in previews and just say for my notes, well, I don’t have anything to say. I’ve told you everything you need to do. You need to execute.

Have a good night. See you. Right.

There’s nothing else I can do if I’ve done my work right. Right. And in this particular case, I think I’m doing my work right, but I’m missing a piece.

The piece of the set. Yeah. The piece is a set.

So that’s going to be really interesting for me. Is there something in particular that drew you to this particular piece? It’s a piece that normally I wouldn’t get offered. Okay.

I find it funny. I mean, I’ve been on panels and people talking to young directors and stuff, and they say, you know, always do work that you really love. And I don’t believe that.

I might have at one point, but I don’t believe it. Profoundly don’t believe it anymore. I find that with work that I really love, I sometimes let the love take over.

And when I find a piece that I go, yeah, I like it or whatever, or now I say, can I find a path through it? And if I can find a path through it, and it’s not a play that I’m like passionately in love with, then I have to bring everything, everything that I am and have to make it work. And usually then I find a way to love the play. Okay.

So yes, I mean, I like this play and I’ve always liked it and all of that. I think there’s some, one of the first questions I ask at the beginning of every rehearsal is what are the traps in the play and what are the traps in the character? And I think one of the traps in this play is that it’s going to be done like a sitcom. And so if we’re all in agreement that that’s not what we want, then we’ve spent two and a half weeks going into the really dark places of the play and are now just starting to bring it in terms of the comedy that it is.

I mean, there’s a lot of heartbreak in it too, but the comedy could very easily become shtick. So that’s interesting. Comedy is interesting, I find.

I didn’t know I was a comedic director until a couple of years ago. It’s funny because a lot of people think comedy is just so easy. No.

But it’s not. It is not easy and it is really not easy when you start doing that shtick the first day of rehearsal. And then by time you get to previews, everybody forgets really what made it funny.

Yes. And now it’s all become gags. Yes.

Okay. I mean, there’s a kind of show that that’ll work for. I just kind of go, whoa.

That’s not what interests me. So when I was doing the two Shaw comedies down at Shaw this summer, we never once in the entire rehearsal talked about the humour. And they got on stage, I think some of the actors were like, I don’t know, this guy, there’s nothing funny here.

They were all that. And they get in front of an audience and all of a sudden, it’s there. Because the situations that make humour are there.

And so you build that, and then the humour comes naturally out of the situation, not because you’re doing a gag. Yeah. No, you set your stakes high enough that it meant something and that the comedy came out of that.

Yeah. So I find that interesting. That’s a great challenge for me.

I just love, I’m just taking on some stuff and looking at things in a different way, where kind of philosophy or, yeah, philosophy is really guiding what I’m doing with work now. Can I ask you the pitfalls of doing stuff that you love? What’s the danger of only doing stuff that you love? I did a play this year called Hang, right? Kimberly Rampersad and I directed it. I love that play.

It probably did the worst box office for Obsidian out of any show that we’ve ever done. I love that play, right? I truly, truly, truly, Debbie Tucker Green’s work, I just love. And I just wonder if when you love it like that, if it doesn’t give you some blind spots.

That you can’t see the pitfalls that you ask about? Yeah, and maybe now that I’ve been through that process, the next time I’ll be a little cleverer about how I look at a play and the possible pitfalls for it. I just think that there’s a saying like that, only do what you love, is a generalization. And I think generalization is sort of theatrical formaldehyde.

It embalms the work, it makes museum theatre, it’s just so incredibly non-alive. And so that’s part of the trap, right? And that’s just me. I wrote my last Canada Council multi-year grant, I spent a lot of time writing about why I chose plays to do in relation to my artistic growth.

And I realized that in all the years I’ve been writing grants and reading grants at jury level, I’ve virtually never read another grant that the artistic director said, I’m doing this play because artistically it’ll challenge me. It’ll be great for the theatre, I hear. It’s a big hit on Broadway, it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, it’s from our local community.

But not saying, this is still my art, this is still my process, my growth, and I need to indulge in that, I need to keep growing, right? And that sort of changed the way that I looked at a bunch of stuff. Because, you know, I’ll keep going as long as I’m going, but I’m just interested in what don’t I know and how can I get there. I’m doing a show at National Theatre School in November, it’s Seven Stories by Morris Panitch.

Kind of wacky and standard, standard set is brick wall, little ledge, seven windows, blah, blah, blah, right? And so all of a sudden I’m going, I hate that. I just hate it, I hate that idea. And so we started talking, I’ve got a couple of fabulous young designers, and we started talking about absurdism, and we started talking about surrealism, and Magritte, and blah, blah, blah.

And then the whole thing now, it’s like, okay, there should be a trapeze, and the windows should be these moving things. You know, like just to take a totally, take all of that idea of absurdism and surrealism and like mesh it together, and just, right? So a moment that we’re working on is, I hate the idea in theatre schools of 21-year-old students putting on gray wigs and acting old. I hate it, I hate it.

And then every time you have to pick a play, anyway, it makes me crazy. So there’s a woman in there and the play is 100 years old. Yes.

And I kind of went, okay, how can I take that kind of curse off of it? So what we’re looking at is at the top of the show, there’s going to be 10, there’s 10 actors in the cast. There’ll be 10 Judys, the costume Judys on stage, and they’ll be dressed with various costumes, one of which will be the old lady wig, Lillian’s wig. And the actors are going to come out and kind of like negotiate which Judy they’re going to take, and that’s their costume.

And then all of a sudden you realize, oh, I’ve got this person, they’re going to play this old lady. It’s okay because, and then to keep that metaphor going throughout, so we can see people and it’s, right? And just finding as many ways as to circumvent the idea that this is any kind of a naturalistic play at all. Thank you for doing that, by the way, because I remember when I was in theatre so many, many years ago, there were people in my class and they only played all the old people roles.

And then they got out of theatre school with only old people roles on their resume. And what do you do? Yeah, exactly. And the fact is, is by time most actors get to be able to play the age to play the old people roles, they can’t even play them anymore because of either physical issues or memory issues.

Because that’s what happens to us. I mean, I just turned down a great, great acting role and it’s because it was, you know, I’m heading, I’d be heading into my last year at Obsidian. So I needed, I just felt I needed to spend the time there.

But the other part of it was in back of the, yo, Philip, there’s a lot of words, a lot of words in this great part. Yeah. Can we, I want to start asking you about, I want to start, one of the things I like to talk to people about is like, why theatre? And for you, do you, I mean, I was looking at your Wikipedia page.

Did you know they had a Wikipedia page? Yeah. I, they, they, they, they always get so much stuff wrong. I’m sure that they do it.

They’re always, always, there’s something in there about being the first theatre graduate of Ryerson University. Yeah, that’s true. So what, what was your path before Ryerson? What, what did you like about theatre? What brought you into theatre? Okay.

Theatre for me was, um, salvation. Uh, uh, we were the only black family in Oshawa. My parents came up in 53.

I came up in 54 with one of my brothers. Um, we were the only black family until I was about 16, 17. Um, so you can, you can imagine in the fifties and sixties, how much fun that was.

Um, and I was small, I was like five foot two and, uh, so that, and, and with a big mouth, so it, it didn’t, it didn’t bode well. Um, and I, we were, my brother Layton and I were, uh, great readers and we pretty much read out the children’s section of the Oshawa Public Library pretty fast. And so it became a natural thing for us to grab our parents’ library cards, go down to the library on a Saturday and we’d, uh, go in the adult section.

We’d grab 10, 12 books each, come home, read them. The next week we’d do the same thing. And then I learned about, uh, there was this, uh, library club, which got to read and review all the new books before they put them on the shelves.

So I went, bonus, I’m going to go there. Turns out the library club was really just, uh, a sham because what they really wanted to do was produce plays. Oh, okay.

So, um, I ended up being in a play and, uh, they, we needed more people. So I recruited all my friends and so we did, you know, a play and it was very successful. And then I went to high school and, uh, started, you know, working at the, the theatre club.

But it was a place where, I mean, there, there, there, there’s enough issues with, with at that time of, in history of, uh, being black in a, in an all white community, uh, where a lot of people felt it incumbent to tear you down on every level. And something like theatre was something that I could do that was protective and it afforded me a way to succeed because of myself, but also it, people would like you. And if they liked you, then they wouldn’t kick the shit out of you.

So I kind of credit theatre and the 151 Chadburn squadron, air cadet squadron, um, for really giving me a sense of, um, personal accomplishment that I could do things and that even though you may have to, it became somewhat isolating, but, but it was, it was you and your work that, that was important. And I think a lot of that lingers in me till today where I’m really easy to, to say about critics and whatever, you know, I don’t, I don’t care. I don’t care though.

The work it’s, I find it, I find it really hard to actually even talk about what I, the work I do anymore because I just go, the work’s on the stage, you know, interact with that. And then you have an idea about what I was doing. Like it doesn’t get any clearer, better with me pontificating.

Um, so yeah, but that, that all started back there where, you know, I was just this scrawny little five foot two kid, you know, and, uh, was finding ways to survive. If, if human beings are kind of like metal to be worked in the blacksmith store of life, you know, how you get hammered, how you get heated, how, what, what you get mixed with changes the composition of who you are. And, and so I feel that, uh, we, there’s a lot of, a lot of things happen to people and it kind of, you know, changes them.

We get hammered into, into things good, bad, and different. We just get hammered into, into who we end up. Your, your, your career, um, looking at that has been one of those, I mean, for years I compared the Canadian theatre experience with the U S theatre experience.

And there was a long time where it seemed like you did theatre, maybe a little bit of television if you were in the U S but in Canada, you just did everything. Yeah. And you’re very much like looking at, at the things that you’ve done, you’ve done a lot of everything.

Well, that was, I mean, you know, I graduated what, uh, 75. Um, and that was, I mean, that was the nature of the business in those days. I mean, I was always amazed when I’d work with American actors and they’d be like trying to make a distinction between a film actor or a television actor or a commercial actor.

And I would be like, dude, I I’m working on a film today. Tomorrow I’m at the CBC and then I’m doing radio drama. And so there was a, there was a, a, a grounding that was amazing, which doesn’t happen anymore.

Right. I mean, you know, the radio drama died off, which was a real shame. And, uh, uh, and the business has changed a lot, right? Like, I mean, just, uh, just the, the quality of, of vocal work.

I mean, I was, I was directing out at Royal MTC and they just put in a quarter of a million dollar sound augmentation system for their main theatre because their audience was having problems hearing the actors. And I don’t know, but are we not teaching that in theatre schools? No, I don’t think we are. I don’t, I don’t think a, I don’t think it’s, it’s not as simple as that.

No, I don’t think it’s being taught in most theatre schools as much. I don’t think, I think the first thing that new students do once they graduate is stop doing voice work. Um, I think when you’re working in a lot of small venues, then you don’t do it.

And then all of a sudden you get a job and you’re, you’re, um, I don’t know what the Tom Patterson at Stratford and you’re working with an actor who doesn’t know how to project their voice out their back. Right. And you go, but dude, half the audience is always at your back.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and so I don’t know.

I mean, I, I’m a bit of a, somebody jokingly called me the Stalin of voice once, um, because, because it is, it, it, it, it just frustrates me so much. And I, and I mean, even now I go to the festivals and stuff and, and I’m going, why, why can’t I hear? Why can’t I understand? Like what, what’s happening there? Right. Like, and, and, uh, so it, I mean, the businesses has profoundly changed.

Right. I think we are, a lot of people are working on smaller stages, especially with a lot of the indie work that’s happening is people are primarily working on, on smaller stages and then I guess forgetting if they do it. Well, I guess here’s, here’s my, my theory of voice in a nutshell.

Okay. And this is what I say whenever I’m working with a theatre students or well, every cast, actually, I say, usually actors have two voices. They have their theatre voice and there have the everyday voice and they’re both shit.

They’re both shit. Right. Because my standard of my everyday normal voice is what I’m using right now, which means that I’m sitting on a couch and I’m vibrating the back of the couch while I’m talking to you.

There’s no special effort. There’s nothing. Yeah.

Right. That’s what you have to have. You have to have your everyday voice when you order at Starbucks, that it’s, um, a properly placed resonant voice.

You may ride a bicycle. That doesn’t mean you’re ready for the iron man triathlon tomorrow. Right.

If you’re not working your voice every single day, then you have no chance of doing Shaw or Shakespeare or August Wilson or Stephen Adly Gurgis, all sorts of places, all sorts of plays. You actually don’t have the capability to do y’all think you do because you did your voice work in theatre school five years ago. Yeah.

And now it’s shit. Yeah. So you have, it’s something that has to be utilized every day.

I mean, you sometimes see some people with, with who have all that vocal craft and they can sit and do an intimate scene in, in the Tom Patterson or on a festival stage and you can still hear every word. Yeah. And that doesn’t mean loud and it definitely doesn’t mean pushed, but it means a properly placed resonant voice.

Yeah. And you can still do that in a small theatre. Yeah.

But the emphasis has to be there. Yes. We let ourselves get away with it.

I think. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

It takes work to do it every day. Yes. It’s true.

It’s true. Right. One of the things when I, when I was talking with, with Luke Reese, he mentioned the importance of your mentorship to him.

I wanted to ask you about the importance of being a mentor and did you have a mentor when you were starting out? Well, as an, as an actor, not so much. When I, when I took over our being basically general manager at Obsidian, Naomi Campbell and Nancy Webster were, were very huge mentor wise for me. We talked about Oshawa and stuff earlier.

I mean, in my entire history of education, I never had one black teacher. So I, and I, and then all of a sudden you’re, there’s just a different level of understanding, et cetera. So for me, mentorship is a being able to pass stuff on being somebody who people can just call you up.

It’s about sharing what you’ve learned in the best possible way. And it’s, we, we, we always, everybody likes to quote Maya Angelou, we stand on the shoulders of our, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so I think being a mentor is being the best shoulders you can.

I’m not in, I trained in Aikido for like, I don’t know, 27 years. It’s Japanese martial art. And I listened to my various teachers talk and they always said that they, you know, and say, sensei, you’re so good.

It’s all, Oh, you should see my sensei. Right. And so what you, what I got was this thing of this line of teachers, each one, which was slightly less than the one before.

And I thought that doesn’t seem like a great way to survive long-term. And so wouldn’t it be better to think that I want people that I mentor or have the privilege of working with to be better than me. If, if the people I work with don’t take everything that I’ve done and leave it in the dust, then I’ve actually failed.

So I need to be not just a shoulders, but I need to be a springboard for them to be better than me. Yeah. Right.

That to me is, is it is interesting. It’s exciting. And there are people who I just, I mean, I was looking at Kimberly Rampersad and I said, damn girl, you’re, you’re doing more directing this year than I am.

And this is my busiest year. And I’m so proud of that, right. That she’s doing all of that kind of work.

And there’s, there’s a number of, you know, any number of people who, who I really feel like maybe I just said the right thing at the right time or gave the right opportunity. And what they did was, was able to take a step, right. A great step for them.

Yeah. And why everybody doesn’t do that. I don’t know, but I can’t worry about that.

I just worry about what I do and what Obsidian does. When did you realize that it was important to, for you to be a mentor? When I realized that there were so many people, so many black artists who had nowhere to go, who were continually being stuck in the, the, there can only be one where they were never felt that their concerns were addressed and move forward. And what they do is, I mean, for, for years now, it’s been this whole Brown the stage kind of attitude where you hire black actors to play white people on stage and never have a discussion about what it means to be black in this situation.

Right. So directors who will spend hours agonizing over what cutlery pattern to put on a table will not address the fact that they’ve hired a black actor to play the daughter of a white couple. And that leaves artists feeling truncated and cut off and actually kind of castrated.

Yeah. And that breeds a resentment and an anger. And I look at, and I understand that full out.

Yeah. Right. So if I can then turn around to them and say, yes, I get it.

And, and, and how can we move it forward that you find yourself in an obsidian rehearsal hall where you’re telling a black story and you’re a black actor being a black person. And it’s that, that’s the level of mentorship that I’m talking about. Right.

Sure. The, the phone calls that I get from, I grew up, things were a lot different. It was tough, tougher.

I think every age is tough, but at least I got a callous over some of the stuff. And when I get phone calls from a black, young black actors who are like doing a kids tour throughout the Maritimes. Right.

And it’s their first time. And all of a sudden they run headlong into in your face racism. Yeah.

They call and they call me because they know I’ve been through it and I can help them get through that. That’s mentorship too. Right.

At obsidian, when you walk in the front door of our office, you’re 10 feet from where I’m sitting. So people walk in, you’re in the middle of the office and all of a sudden pull up a chair and we’ll talk. Yeah.

I don’t know of actually any other artistic director where you can, anybody can just walk in off the street and all of a sudden everybody stops and has a conversation with you. Right. I’ve been in, I’ve been in a bunch of theaters and I can’t think of anywhere that happens.

Right. Yeah. But that’s, that’s how you create that kind of relationship and that kind of community where people feel that no matter what the issue is, they can, they can call up and, and have a voice.

Well, I mean, that we talk about the theatre community, um, which doesn’t really exist, but it sounds like obsidian is, is, is, is a big part of, and part of a community. Well, we try to be, I mean, you know, it’s about the community that takes the effort to walk in the door. Right.

So that’s, that’s also part and parcel of it. I mean, we do what we can in the way that we can. Um, I mean, theatre community, I mean, you know, look, it’s just, it’s just a gathering.

It’s a gathering of people and it’s a grab. I mean, the whole time I was, uh, coming up as a, as a, as an actor, I had no point felt part of the quote theatre community. Right.

Right. And I said this the other day to my actor, uh, that, that wasn’t me. Right.

That I, I wasn’t in any of those groups. Um, so that’s why I found it so profoundly amusing that I was asked at Shaw the last year to direct, uh, 1837, The Farmer’s Revolt, because when they were doing, when, you know, when all those guys, when James Rainey and, and, and all of the past Mariah stuff, there were no black people there. No.

Yeah. We didn’t. I mean, it was like we were, we were, we were not even part of that recreation of Canadian history.

And, and that’s pro predominantly how it felt. Um, that’s fine. You know, I got to reimagine it and do it in an interesting way.

Uh, but there wasn’t, I’ve never felt that kind of like, you know, when, when, when Luke was telling me about asking you to be his mentor, he said that you were speaking to a class at York and you said, none of you will do this, but you can ask, do you find that, that, that the ask is the barrier? Like you say that none of them will do it. And do you find both like, I would say 99.9% of the people who I make that offer to, and I make it to a lot of people in here, 99.9% of the people will not, will not take that step. I, I make at the end of every theatre, Ontario, you know, the, the, the, where all the theatre school students, we collect the emails for every single black actor and then auditioned.

I send them a personal email and I say, I really love to meet with you. Give me a call. I’ll take you out for tea.

I’ll take you out for lunch. Give me a call. Let’s talk.

And I would say the majority of them never do it either. Why? I don’t know, but I, I think of it as evolution and progress. If you haven’t got the courage to do that, then I don’t know how you act.

I don’t know how you work. Luke, you know, I, I, I, I told his class that there was like 300 people in the room and I told them all that. And, uh, I talked with Luke a little bit and blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. And then he never came around. And then he was in the slip program at summer works.

And, uh, I walked in the room and said, look, greasy. He said, yeah. I said, why are you treating me like I’m black? Why you didn’t even phone up? Why are you a call? What’s the matter with you? He got all embarrassed.

Then he, then he came in. Yeah. Right.

I don’t know. I don’t know why people don’t do it, but that’s, you know, all I can do is make the offer as sincerely as possible. And the people who are meant to show up, show up.

There have been a couple of people who have, it was Jackie Maxwell said that the secret that nobody tells you, she said, but that she’s saying is that people want to help you. And then all you have to do is ask. And that’s, I’ve seen that just, just for doing this podcast that people, you know, want to do it.

Um, but that, that generally, like I think when we’re young, we’re afraid to ask, even if people say that you can, I think, I think there is a certain amount of, Oh, do I dare ask so-and-so to a question at all? Um, even when they’ve told us that we’re, that we’re not, that they’re welcome to. Yeah. And I think maybe that’s, maybe that’s you fear.

Well, yeah, but fear, fear is, fear is, fear is a thing. I mean, you know, this guy, um, showed up, uh, and, uh, he’s just going to be in town for a year or two. He’s, you know, um, an actor he’s, but he’s, his wife works for a consulate.

So he happened to be here. And so he came and he showed up at the office and he’s dropped in and he’s come to the Obsidian shows. And when, uh, I got a call saying, Hey, we’re looking for a guy and it was in his age group.

And do you know of anybody? So who’s got the job? Yeah. Right. Yeah.

So I find it amazing that people will get dressed up and spend two weeks schmoozing alcoholically at TIFF in the hopes that something will happen as, and wouldn’t actually take the time to say, Hey, I’d just like to come and talk to you about theatre or about art or about, I mean, there are people who do. I mean, I had this young woman from Saskatchewan. She, she claims she’s the only black actor in Saskatchewan and, uh, she, uh, she showed up in Toronto and we had a great talk.

Right. So it’s about people being brave. Yeah.

And as artists, if we’re not brave, then what are we? That is an excellent point. That’s an excellent point. It does take bravery to do this and stick with it.

Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask what your favourite thing about being a mentor is, but I think you’ve, you’ve like really sort of expounded on that.

Um, in terms of, of the work that you’ve done, uh, are you able to say this? I loved doing this. This was my favourite. I, my heart was in this.

Is there any particular thing that stands out for you? Well, they’re different shows for, for, for different reasons. I mean, Intimate Apparel, because it was the first show that, you know, like it’s when I met Lynn Nottage and, and, and doing her work and then doing Ruined, which did so well. But the part I was, one of the parts I was really pleased with was we asked the audience to donate money to the Pansy Hospital where they did, um, genital, uh, reconstruction for, um, you know, Congolese women and, and, you know, we sent $35,000 down to, to do that.

Um, there was, uh, Top Dog, Underdog, which I didn’t like the play much, and then grew to love. Um, you know, I remember walking out of doing the mountain top rehearsal one day and going, oh man, it’s not working. It’s not working.

And me saying to myself, Philip, the process works. Just shut up and do your process. And that’s the first time that I felt like I did have a process.

I knew it worked. I just had to trust it and believe it and it would happen. So 1837, you know, which was a play, oh man, I was like, oh, what am I doing with this chestnut? And, and, and yet we just did such wonderful stuff with it.

It was such a great group of people. So, you know, it’s, it’s not just one, it’s bits and pieces of, of a lot of plays. Um, what are you most looking forward to in the upcoming Obsidian season? Wow.

Obsidian season. I’m not even, I’m not even directing anything this year for Obsidian. Oh my gosh.

I’ve wanted to do that for a while. Not direct? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Because, because it, I mean, we started with the artistic director doing all the directing for monetary reasons and, and then it quickly has become a trap because it’s not giving a chance for other people to direct things. So, you know, if you want to, if you want to mentor and do next gen stuff, you got to have other people to do things right.

Um, there’s a, there’s all the shows I think are, are, are really interesting. Um, I mean, I’m really, I’m really keen on, on the Judas Noir, the, the dark town thing that we’re doing. And because that is, that is mentorship brought full forward.

Um, the Oratorio, which is, you know, happens to be opening tonight. I, I, I think it’s a really interesting season. I mean, we were, we were well rewarded by the Canada council.

Um, and I think we’ve turned around and abused all of that extra money to broaden our reach in a big way. Nice. Well, I wanted to, to, to thank you for sitting down and talking with me.

Oh, my pleasure. Yeah. Thanks a lot.

And I’m looking forward to seeing, uh, Men in White. This has been a Homebody Productions production.