Hayley Pace & Daniel Walsh

Hayley Pace – Artistic Director, Playwright, Performer, Designer
Hayley Pace is an award-winning performer from Kitchener, Ontario. She is a graduate of the Devised Theatre & Design programs at York University and since has worked internationally in Antwerp, Prague, Edinburgh Minneapolis and New York. Her storytelling shows include the The Teeny Tiny Music Show and High School Symphony which have played in various venues and festivals throughout Ontario. Other devised work includes A Language for Dogs and Paperweight at the Hamilton Fringe Festival. Other performances include RENT, The Beggar’s Opera and Curtains. Set design credits include set for Peep! (Nuit Blanche/Theatre Panik), and Hamletmachine (Theatre@York). Costume design credits include The Village Green (Applebox Film Company/Rockzeline) and Plato’s Atlantis (Canada’s National Ballet School). Hayley graphic designs all promotional material for her shows, and for various artists such as Socratic Theatre, emerging singer-songwriter T. Thomason, and Broadway and television star, Tovah Feldshuh.

Daniel Walsh – Musical Director, Composer, Arranger, Sousaphone, Bass Guitar
Daniel Walsh is a York University trained multi-instrumentalist based out of Toronto, Canada. He built the beginnings of his career as a street performer and the founder of Turbo Street Funk in 2010 where he served as the manager, arranger, front man and composer for the group for 3 years. Since that time he has moved on to work as a sideman and featured artist for a number of acts around Toronto such as DLO, Busty and the Bass, Saul Torres, The Shuffle Demons, Red Pepper Spectacle Arts, Zakary Miller, Riotron, Ted Peters and Gumbo YaYa and many others and has had his original compositions featured on Jazz FM as well as on Indie FM. Daniel is renowned as a high energy performer who’s completely unafraid of making a crowd dance and, having played on stages such as Roy Thompson Hall and the Air Canada Center to the Smiling Buddha, Rebel Nightclub and The Opera House, Daniel is a seasoned performer, improviser and entertainer.

High School Symphony
An eight-piece, Big Band “Mean Girls”. A remarkable friendship between two grade school girls is tested when they face suspension for sexual harassment toward their teacher. The drama unfolds with a cast that consists of an immersive marching band who double as hot teachers, note-passing BFFs, and of course, the enemy popular group. Ignoring the guy who always plays “Wonderwall”, the soundtrack is decked with video game references, anime theme songs, and slicked-up sounds from the early 00’s that got every millennial through their pimply prepubescence!

Twitter: @teenytinymusic
Instagram: teenytinymusicshow
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teenytinymusicshow
Tickets: https://fringetoronto.com/festivals/fringe/event/high-school-symphony

Transcript

Welcome to episode 133 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. The Toronto Fringe Festival starts this week and I wanted to remind you of two special episodes of Stageworthy that you won’t want to miss.

On July 7th and 14th, I will be sitting down with a group of Toronto Fringe artists and we’ll talk about their shows, their experience of Fringe so far, and what shows they’ve loved. Those episodes are recorded and released on the same day, so the Fringe news is as up-to-the-minute as it can be. If you want to drop me a line, I would love to hear from you.

You can find Stageworthy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at stageworthypod, and you can find the website at stageworthypodcast.com. If you want to drop me a line, you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at philrickaby, and my website is philrickaby.com. This week, my guests are Hayley Pace and Daniel Walsh of the Teeny Tiny Music Show’s High School Symphony, which you will find at the Randolph Theatre as part of the 2018 edition of the Toronto Fringe Festival. The show is High School Symphony. Yes.

And this is sort of, this is a departure for you, Hayley, because previously your shows have been site-specific for Fringe, so that was the Teeny Tiny Music Show both in Hamilton and last year at the Toronto Fringe. This is the first time you got in on the lottery, and that sort of presents a little bit, something a little different in terms of staging this time. Yes, it does.

What have you, aside from there being a designated stage that you’re expected to work on, what has that done for you? Man, I wish Ryan was here to talk about that, because he’s the one who’s going through that right now. Every time I talk to Ryan about the staging, he’s always like, I just want to crack that proscenium open. I just want to crack it open.

I hate proscenium so much. And it’s because the nature of our show is so immersive, and we’re so used to playing with having the musicians hiding behind bars, and having them hiding in the entrances, and the exits, and the fire doors, and everything. And this time it’s quite a challenge, because we’re trying to capture that immersive element of the show without it feeling like it’s just a kind of stale proscenium show, for lack of a better word.

Now, you’re at the Randolph, right? Yeah. Which isn’t, it’s not quite proscenium, it’s proscenium-ish. It’s proscenium.

We’re really hoping for the Annex, because it just, it’s a little bit more thrusty. It’s like, the stage isn’t on a rise, and they have like those beautiful wooden, you know, framing and everything like that. And it kind of made your stage warm, and it made it feel like maybe it was a school or something like that.

But the Randolph is just a big, giant, black void. And I think that they gave it to us, because our group is like, you know, comprised of 10 people. It probably has a lot to do with your numbers, just to fit that many people in the space.

Yeah. So it’s been quite a challenge for Ryan, the director. He’s really working hard to put people up in the balconies, to plant people in the audience, casting the audience as students.

And just kind of working around those dynamics the best way we possibly can. That’s the only way to do it. That’s really all you can do.

Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about what the High School Symphony is about? All right. So like many of my shows, they’re all based on true events from my life, which are fictionalized and become their own life within the world of the show.

So High School Symphony is about a friendship between two Catholic school girls who are faced with suspension for sexually harassing their teacher. Okay. Which is actually something that happened at my high school.

But were you one of the… Did you sexually harass a teacher? Well, it’s a funny story. How do I explain this? You know how you are when you’re young and you just don’t know the implications of your words. Sure.

You’re stupid when you’re young. Yeah. We all do those things.

And then of course, when we’re older, we reflect on our actions and realize that was kind of fucked up. So when I was in grade 10 sociology, I had a teacher who was very attractive. And me and my friend would kind of always make jokes about him to ourselves between each other.

But she would always take it one step too far. Okay. It was kind of like, okay, all right, that’s enough.

We’re all kind of shying away at this point. I never took it that far. But she’s the one who just went over the line with him.

And one day she was caught talking about his ass. And another teacher heard her talking very loudly about his ass. And that’s why she got suspended for sexual harassment.

She can’t have been the only student to talk about a teacher’s ass. But to be caught is a different thing. She wasn’t like a quiet girl.

She’s like a loud girl who is very verbal and vocal and doesn’t care who hears it. So I think it was just a misstep for her. And she ended up being punished for that.

And, you know, it went around the school and it was quite dramatic for all of us. And so you’ve taken that story and transform that into um, because this is not just a play. This is a, like an immersive, marching band sort of experience.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. So we are first show that we ever made with the this marching band theatre company was a show that was styled around like a cabaret bar, like, um, singer, piano, double act experience.

And then throughout the duration of that show, more musician would add to the arrangement of the music by surprise. So, um, so, you know, you’d have them popping up behind the bar and we did that show in the Hamilton fringe. That was where we premiered with the company and it turned out to really work with the audience.

So we just, um, since that worked, that immersive element that excited people, got people interested in storytelling, um, we, we went further with the idea with the company and just said, okay, let’s insert a different story into the formula that we’ve created and see what happens. And some questions we’ve kind of had about the band is like, should we make the band part of the narrative? Should we include them? Like some ideas we tossed around were like, maybe we should have like the band is at the beginning of the show, warming up for an assembly or something like that. And to make them part of the show, but we’re still kind of fiddling around with that idea.

If we want to make them part of the show or just sell our show as this is the kind of storytelling we do this week on that. Yeah. But you’re still trying to figure out, um, whether like how much the band is going to be like part of the show right now.

Yeah. So, so I think like one of the, like, uh, I can at least speak to some of the changes that we’ve made already since the last show. So, uh, last year we had a pretty huge band and, um, you know, and like, uh, that was a really interesting experience because it meant that you had a lot of people to work with now that having been said, it also meant that like it made arranging for it really tricky and it made, it made things more difficult that way.

Plus we had some players that really wanted to take on a lot of the show and some players that just couldn’t because, you know, they had other, other things that they were involved in. So this year we’ve, we’ve kind of gotten more of a focused crew on, uh, like in terms of the musicians. So we’ve, we we’ve down, downsized a little bit on that end.

But, um, but on the other hand, what we’ve done is we’ve given them a lot more speaking lines. Uh, we’ve incorporated some, uh, uh, like sort of, I guess the way you could say it is like inflections, uh, like musical inflections that enhance the, the dialogue a little bit, which is kind of cool. Um, plus just, uh, I think the music, the, at least the way that I’ve always been kind of thinking about this is that it’s, you know, the whole story is kind of taking place from the perspective of Haley reminiscing about this series of events, right? So when you’re a teenager and most of this takes place in like grade nine, um, like grade eight, grade nine, then there’s like a certain magic to it.

And there’s a certain amount of like, you, you don’t remember all the dry bits, right? You remember things a little bit enhanced because everyone glorifies their childhood to a certain degree. So this kind of, the, the music is there in large part to kind of augment that, to give that, that feeling of like when, you know, when you’re reminiscing about the good old days when, when the radio played my music, you know, that kind of thing. Um, but except like we’re in our twenties, so it’s not that long ago.

Well, it’s kind of interesting because not only do you like heighten that in retrospect, because, you know, these were the glory days or whatever, but also because of all of the, you know, the, the flush of hormones going through your body, everything is heightened anyway. So like the music must, must help to, to, to highlight that as well. Yeah, no, it, it definitely like kind of, you know, we, we sexify a number of characters within the show.

So basically go and make a big deal out of them. And, and, uh, you know, and Haley’s got a couple of different crushes in the show and they, they turn into key kind of, uh, key characters within, within how the show works. So that, uh, you know, and the music is there really to, to help drive those moments and, and to make them stand up from that.

And conversely, when there’s certain times where we just lay out the music and then it’s like, Oh, this person is like lame as fuck this. They’re not how I remember them to, or like, they’re not, they’re not as sexy as I perceive, you know? Um, and that’s also a thing that happens when you’re a kid, you know, like you, you put people on pedestals and then, and then there’s like that, that moment where you go, Oh, holy shit, you’re garbage. You know? Yes.

Yes. Yes. You know? So, so there’s a certain amount of that, like where, where like the coolness of, of certain characters gets downplayed by the fact that now, you know, they’re not holding an instrument.

They’re not playing anymore. There’s no, there’s no music. They’re just some guy talking about something.

Right. Right. So very much like a musical, we take the classic musical and we don’t question the fact that the actors start randomly singing.

We don’t question the fact that we see an orchestra in the pit. We accept it because we, we understand musicals as a genre of theatre that tells stories. Um, and we go, okay, well, that I suspend my disbelief into this and I buy into this world.

That’s what I want to start going to into that direction with the Teeny Tiny Music Show that this is the world of our show. Our characters speak with their instruments. The world of the show is augmented with music and that’s how we tell stories.

Um, this is a little bit of a departure because the, because the Teeny Tiny Music Show, um, had songs like you covered songs in that. This, at least in the iteration that I saw, and we’ll talk about some of the, the, the lifespan of this show in a second. I don’t recall anybody singing and I don’t work.

There were, as far as I recall, they gave everything, all the music was original most. Yeah. There’s a, there’s a couple of covers in there, but yeah, they see, like it was completely, uh, at least in my memory, unnoticed that we were covering something and it wasn’t all like awesome original music.

Um, so is there anything in particular that drove you to the, to that difference between from, uh, covering well-known songs to, um, original music? Well, I definitely wanted to go in a different direction with the show because I’m trying to still explore what it is exactly we are and what we do as a company. Um, and part of, part of that is, is making your own sound and, you know, being original within that. So we can make, we can make an impression and an impact on the theatre community.

So, whereas I think making covers was, was great for the, the Teeny Tiny Music Show lounge act experience. This is kind of more of a, a, a different experiment we’re doing to see, okay, does this work better with telling the story? Because so in some of our reviews and of course the notes that I got from my mentors who helped me develop the show, the one thing that they always said was that we don’t know if the music helps tell the story or the story helps tell, helps explain the music. And I thought, yeah, like there was always that disjunct, you know, there was one scene in the Teeny Tiny Music Show two in the Toronto fringe where we had that seamless, it was the after dark sequence that went into the Balkan sequence and all that was, was streamlined.

But there were other times where it was kind of like shifting gears. So we wanted to try to, to, to flatten that and make it more streamlined that the music is kind of interweaved with the story more so than, than being kind of a episodic sort of experience. Now, the first time that you presented this to anyone was as part of a theatre past more as crapshoot.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and with crapshoot, you present like what? Five minutes or in the first time? Yeah.

The first time is five minutes of an original five minutes. And then if you are selected, you come back and do 20 minutes. Yeah.

Um, so how much did you have when you went in for five minutes and like, when you realized that you were going to be doing 20, was it a scramble? Was it like, what did you have going in? Uh, I remember I was like, definitely writing charts, like write, writing some of the original music that we, that’s been adapted to what we have now at the time, like night before, like night before rehearsal, like, Holy crap, I really got to like figure out what the hell this is supposed to sound like, you know, because it was, it was pretty tight, you know? Um, but we, I think that once we got the first one down, uh, the, the feeling I had was that the second one was a little bit smoother. Like we, you know, we, we kind of knew we had an idea of where we wanted it to go. It was just a matter of like solidifying what that would look like.

And I mean, musicians are busy people, like, especially during like the summer and into the fall, even they’re very, very busy. Yeah. So we have to like meticulously plan our rehearsal schedules, like two weeks in advance to accommodate everybody’s availability or else we won’t have a show.

Sure. So I remember like when we did the first crap shoot, the five minute one, I literally messaged the whole crew and the whole band. I’m like, I really want to do this.

I think it’s good exposure for us. And I want to, you know, start getting seen by theatre companies and professional companies in Toronto. And I think we need to do this, you know? And actually I think you told me about a crap shoot.

I probably did. And you’re like, you should put teeny tiny into this. And I remember it.

I couldn’t because I didn’t have enough time, but then it came around for this year. I said, I’m going to go for it. And I remember in rehearsal, we only had like two or three rehearsals for the five minute one.

And we just X like extracted from old, some old stuff that the musicians already knew and kind of use that music. And then I slapped some monologue onto it and that was it. And I remember our trombone player, Nick couldn’t come to any of the rehearsals and literally he was like, no, he came to some of the rehearsals, but he was like busting in the door, like, like five minutes before we were about to go on stage.

Cause he had a gig and it was literally like, okay, Nick, like, you know, it’s in this key, like improv. And that’s what you’re doing. And Nick’s like, yeah, I’m down.

Like that’s what he was coming in from a wedding gig. So he’s like there in his, uh, in his tux and all this stuff. And it’s like, he’s like, I’m ready.

Where do you want me to go? And like teaching him the blocking like five minutes before we go on. And oftentimes that’s what some of our rehearsals look like because it’s just getting these guys availability when you have a crew this big and they’re all like professional musicians is so hard. So that’s why I like, sometimes it’s a little bit like stressful.

Like we’re all going to have heart attacks, but the end result, I mean, everyone has so much fun and the musicians love it. And we keep entering each year with the same company. So, um, so going from that five, when you, you presented that five minute piece, yeah.

What was the reaction like in the room? People were going insane. Yeah. People really loved it.

They loved it because they didn’t see the eight, like five, six piece band come in. Like I came in with like my accordion. I did like a small little bit, did a monologue.

And then I saw this guy and then six people come out all at once. That’s amazing. So then you, then you find out that you, you, you, you’ve won the crap shoot and you have to do 20 minutes.

The next one that you have three months. Yeah. It was, we presented the first one in September and then we presented the second one in December.

Right. So we got some support from theatre pass. Mariah got free rehearsal space.

Oh, that’s so good. And we had like five rehearsals. So we put it together in five rehearsals.

I was writing the script, getting it looked at by a dramaturg. We were just, you know, I had some ideas. I, you know, was taking some formulas from teeny tiny and showing them that Daniel and being like, figure something out, write something.

And that’s how we came up with the famous note passing sequence, which is one of the star pieces in our show. Um, Daniel, what is when you’re writing for, uh, for this, I don’t know if, I mean, I know you’re a musician, but do you have any, do you have a theatre experience or like, so this is like, you’re coming at this as a, as purely music from a musician’s point of view rather than a theatrical point. Yeah.

Like I like no real theatre training. Like I did street performing for a long time, which actually like I feel is not dissimilar from theatre weirdly enough. If only in the sense that like, I think that when you, you know, I went to jazz school and all that stuff and jazz school, there’s no conversation about the audience.

Like there’s not, that’s never like that, that’s never a subject that gets addressed in your whole undergrad held probably masters and PhD too, if you ask. Um, but, uh, you know, but when we went out street performing, then that was something that I learned a lot about. So how to, you know, how to, how to create music that to kind of land with your audience and get them engaged and get them, you know, keep them on, on track.

Um, what I’m, what’s interesting about theatre and, um, and what has been kind of weird is like lining things up with, uh, with lines. Oh, sure. Yeah.

Um, so, you know, for sequences like note passing, um, so right now, for instance, we’re, uh, it’s, it, it’s funny watching, uh, new musicians learn the music for, for sequences like that, because like, uh, because for instance, we got a new keyboard player right now and she is, she’s learning this piece and everything is modular. So it’s like these little snippets that loop, and then you wait for, you wait for a cue and then you have to, you have to move on. Sometimes the cue land lines up with your eight bar phrase.

Sometimes it doesn’t. So, you know, so it’s like, so then you’ve got your classic like wedding band tactics where you’ve got eye contact stuff happening. Um, you know, and of course this is stuff that even in musical theatre, like musical theatre is a lot more rigid than this in their writing, because you’ve got a conductor who can just, who can just be like, okay, you know, we’re onto the next part.

Right. Uh, and you’ve got a click and you’ve got all that stuff. This, um, because we’re all on stage and we’re all completely visible, then you kind of have to be a little bit more discreet about that type of thing so that you’re not stealing the attention from, you know, from, from the, the real performance, especially when you’re not, when you’re just playing as like just the rhythm section or whatever.

Right. So it’s, uh, it’s, it’s very different, but I think that everyone in the band, like, you know, everyone seems to love it. I, I, I’ve found it to be extremely interesting to, uh, to work in, in this kind of, uh, environment, especially being someone who loves performance, like as a player.

But I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s sort of interesting. Uh, when I worked with, uh, Keystone theatre, we had, um, our, our brilliant piano player, David Atkinson, who was basically the only sound we were doing silent film live on stage. So we made these things.

And the only sound was the company accompaniment of the piano, where he was composing stuff that he would play along with us. Right. But we would cue it and right.

We were really terrible about doing things with the music because we’re just actors. So we would do it when it felt right. Right.

So it was really incumbent on him to make it work. So we often, uh, put him through some difficult, uh, contortions, but also I believe the word is hell. Yes.

But interestingly, we did learn like by the time we did our show, the last man on earth, uh, over the course of like four fringe festivals. And so by the time we were at the last one, it was a conversation where like, we’d do something and he’d be queuing up and he like, just like, and he’d do something a little different with the music and that would affect the show. It was like this back and forth.

And so it was sort of this interesting thing, but you know, actors can not, can sometimes not be great to musicians, especially if there’s no conductor, it’s not like meticulously put together like a musical would be. Yeah. Um, is that a real struggle for, like you were talking about the new, the new keyboard player? Yeah.

Is this blowing her mind? I think, I think everyone, uh, the first time that they do it, uh, they go, Oh, wow, this is, uh, this is kind of weird. Um, but you know, I, I think that after a while you start to like, you know, part, part of, part of the beauty of working with musicians, uh, musicians like we have is that most of them are improvisers. So they’re, they’re already kind of used to things like things being a little bit on the fly, um, and being able to catch things.

So, uh, so what that also means is that you’ve got some really cool moments that just kind of appear every once in a while, because, you know, because it felt right to, you know, for the guitar player to lay out, right. It just felt like a good idea, you know? So, so I think that at first it feels like that, but then as people gain more, like get more into their comfort zone, then I think what’s cool about this show is that there’s a lot of musicians being musicians. Um, and it’s got enough space for that.

Uh, it’s not, um, you know, it’s not because it’s not so, so unbelievably tight, like a traditional musical where, you know, like where everything is really lined up down to the second, right? Like you’ve got that click going in your ear and you know exactly where things are going to land. And if you miss it, it’s super noticeable. And if you, you know, and if you hit it, then that’s great.

And that means that everything can move forward, but there’s no room for like, you know, for, oh wait, we’re having a moment with the, with the vocalist, right? Like you can’t do that. And this show allows for, for a bit more of that, you know? Yeah. Like one musical that comes to mind that’s a little bit similar is Rent.

Like Rent has a lot of spoken word lyrics that actually, like when you see the sheet music and the sheet music is like scary where it’s like, you know, you have each of your spoken words underneath like each beat in each bar and everything lines up. So like if, if our actors don’t have that training, it’s a struggle. Yeah.

It’s a struggle for like, you need to be able to listen and hear beats and measure what it is. You know, it’s all that kind of actor training. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, what’s interesting about, about what you’re doing is, is, and you mentioned this to me that you had some of your, your musicians who, who kind of wanted to act in the show, which is like, well, that was like, cause you know, usually sometimes when you say that they, uh, the musicians, so you’re going to be on stage and they go, they, excuse me. Yeah.

Yeah. Let alone like, okay, so we have lines for you to say, which is an entirely different thing. So what was that like putting musicians, uh, into the show while they’re playing music, but also, um, taking on like characters.

Honestly, we found some gems, like people just bloomed to life with skills that they didn’t realize they had, you know, like one that comes to mind is our trombone player, Nick, like he’s just so just grabs the idea and he just goes with it. And he’s just so natural. And I’m like, this guy has never been trained in his life and he’s just being himself on stage.

And that’s like, to me, amazing. That’s the thing that you lose when you go to theatre school for four years, you know, that, that, that just, that sense of just being in the moment, really. Um, you know, and of course, you, you know, they have some issues with projection here and there, but all those things are very easy fixes.

These guys are like brass players, you know, like they know how to use their body to create sounds and it might be in a different way, but it’s not too far of a jump for them. So, you know, it was surprising to me to hear that they wanted to take on more, you know, and I think the painted lady version that you said was, um, you know, we kind of realized after the whole thing was done that we didn’t really integrate those musicians slash actors as one thing, right? Like they were either acting or they were playing. Right.

So I said, Oh yeah. What, what were we doing? Yeah. Let’s just like blend this.

So the new French show is like, we’re making our characters like a blend of being an actor and like having dialogue with their instruments. It’s like kind of like, you know, how, um, say like you’re in Montreal and most, most people speak to each other in French, but if you’re not speaking, they’ll speak to you in English. It’s the same way with musicians.

The characters who speak musicians will speak that to each other. Nice. Daniel, you, you play a role in this show.

Yes. And how was that for you as somebody who’s like more musician than actor? Um, that’s been interesting. Like I think, so the fringe show, um, the fringe show was interesting because I didn’t really know what to do with this character.

And, um, you know, and I think my first thought was like, okay, well, you know, let’s just, let’s just play what, you know, play what you see on the, on the page, which is essentially the way that, you know, you do music. So it’s like the first time you do your run of a thing, right. Then you should probably just play what’s on the page, get it, get it right.

Um, this time, this time, like through that experience though, I really learned some areas where it’s like, man, that, that was like, that was cool and all. I think I can do a more interesting character. So, so I’ve been like talking to Haley a ton about that and like trying to kind of flesh out what are better ways to, to go and do this.

How, what, what are more interesting choices? Cause that, that seems to be what acting is about. You’ve got the, you’ve got these lines, but then the way that you frame them is what makes, um, are the choices that you have available to you that make the show the show, right. And that makes the character a compelling character.

And that’s always something I encourage in with my scripts and in rehearsal is that if you want to go somewhere else with the lines, like I am not precious about my script. Like if they have instincts and they want to say something or they want to say something a different way, I’m like, do that because that feels natural to you. Yeah.

That’s you coming from you. And so then by the end of the day, the script becomes like everyone’s, you know, and their own. And I want, I want them to be comfortable with that.

You know, and Ryan always, when he’s in rehearsal, he’s like, I never want to be the only one speaking in the room. He’s like, I want people to give me suggestions. I want people to like, give me ideas.

I’m very open. So the process is very collaborative and that’s what I like the most about it. Cause the musicians come up with some hilarious stuff, like hilarious stuff I would have never thought of by myself.

Nice. You know, they’re, they’re awesome. Yeah.

Aside from the the lesson about the integration of the musician with the role that you talked about, were there other things that you learned from the painted lady um, presentation that was sort of really just like your first time, like putting this in front of an audience, are there lessons that that taught you? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the biggest one was that we wanted to see those characters who were musicians speak with their instrument.

Like we were missing that. The only character that spoke with his instrument was the, um, the object of affection, right. It was quote unquote, David in the show.

Um, and so when we looked at it, we got some notes from it, from our mentors, we went, wait, why, why aren’t all the musician characters doing that? And I think that that would, you know, the comedy of that whole thing would be just so much better. And that we’re self-aware of the fact that like, we are musicians putting on a theatre show and that’s what we’re doing. So that’s one of the things we learned.

Yeah. I feel like, um, like, cause I’m, this is my first time music directing anything. So that’s, so one of the cool things that, that, uh, I learned in this whole process was working alongside Ryan and, uh, and Joseph, uh, to kind of leverage, like, like to kind of develop this interesting compromise between how the musicians do musician stuff and how to make that make sense from a blocking and staging perspective, uh, that still suits the needs of the show.

Um, and then, you know, and then having on top of that, the, the added complication of a live audience who, um, you know, who’s all over the place, you know, like a bar is a bar is a cool space because people kind of, sometimes they flock to the front, but usually they kind of hang out throughout. So in a show like this, you, uh, you learn that there, that the whole place is your, is your stage. Yeah.

Right. Uh, and there is no bad seat. You know, a friend of mine came to see the show and one of the pieces of feedback that he gave me, he got there late and he got in at the very back and he was like, Oh man, you know, when I got in, I was like, crap, I’m not going to see anything.

This is going to be horrible. And, uh, then who like at the end of the show, he was telling me about this and he’s like, yeah, but you know, I was totally wrong, you know, and actually I’d like to see the show again from another spot in the bar, not necessarily at the front, just for the sake of like witnessing different moments within the show. And that’s part of what’s cool about, about this and about playing it in that kind of setting.

And with this, uh, collaborative environment that meshes theatre and music. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, one of the reasons why, like when I, the first time I saw, uh, the Tina Turner music show lounge act, I, uh, knew as soon as it ended that I needed to see it again. And I needed to see it again because there were so many things I felt like I missed. I was like, wait, so when did the violin player come in? I need to know like when that happened.

So I came back just so that I could figure out the stage craft of it because it was like, I needed to see it more than once. Cause it was so surprising that I was like, I need to know all these things. Like when does these things happen? So, and I think that that’s sort of like, it’s the same sort of thing.

Like what’s the experience like when I sit here? Yeah. What’s the experience like when I’m over here, which is an interesting thing about this kind of theatre. That’s the beauty of immersive theatre.

And I can’t get enough of them. That’s everything that I stand for as an artist. Like I’m super about getting out of the theatre and going to places where we’re get people to see the theatre.

We need to reach out to more audiences than the theatre people. What I’m trying to do is get the music audience into my show because that is important. Yeah.

The whole point of being an artist is to expand your audiences and to bring more people to understand the art that theatre isn’t just one thing, you know, it can be many, many different things. And we talk about that so much in our community. Yeah.

So those are the audiences that I’m going for. I’m going for music audiences, people who are like beer drinking audiences, people who like to go out to bars who like to hang out, have a good time. Like, you know, you can talk and chat and you can take out your phone.

You can just, you can tune in, you can tune out whatever you want to do. You know, I want to create that space. Now, when you’re is well, now that now you’re in a theatre for this, which sort of like changes some of that outlook, which, which is, is challenging.

Like, there’s the instinct for people to put their phones away. Are you, are you going to encourage people to have them out? Or is that even something you can do with fringe? There is no fringe rule that says we have to put cell phones off. All right.

So I’m definitely going to, I mean, we have to do a land acknowledgement speech at the beginning of our, our piece. Are you, can you have them do it? So like, do you have to do it or I think so, but I’m not sure exactly that is the impression I was under, but I think like to accompany that speech, usually people say and turn your cell phones off and I’m going to say and keep them on. Yeah.

Yeah. I don’t really care. Well, I mean, it’s, it’s kind of like one of those things where, you know, when I was working at the Edinburgh theatre, we’re always, you know, we tell them to turn their phones off and we’re always like watching for people to recording them.

And yet there’s that instinct that people have that, and especially, uh, a certain generation of people have that, that I need to record this, or I need to capture this moment. Otherwise, how can I remember it? I want to share this with people, which is a way that, that you can, I mean, you can also leverage that. Well, that’s what I’m saying.

Why would you want to shun away your biggest marketing opportunity, which is your audience? It’s free marketing. Why would I want people to not take pictures of my show while I’m performing? Yeah. You know, it’s the same thing about people who go, Oh, I, I, I’m an artist and I don’t have Facebook.

I’m like, are you nuts? Like that’s your biggest audience is Facebook. People are always on Facebook. This is the thing is, is if you’re making your own stuff, you, at this point you have to leverage Yeah.

Yeah. There’s like, that’s almost more of a, that’s more valuable to you than like taking it out in a print. Oh, a hundred percent.

Yes, it is. Because all of like all of every single person I bump into on the streets, even if I haven’t talked to them in months, all of them know I’m doing a show. Absolutely.

That’s all I care. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

But, uh, there’s one more thing I wanted to say about learning things. One of the things we learned in the painted lady was, um, uh, delay. How do we deal with sound delay? Oh, fuck.

Yes. Because, because if we have a saxophone player all the way on the other end and the space isn’t properly miked, like our rhythm section who keeps together the entire music and we have the rhythm section over here, we have stew on drums. Who’s keeping everything together.

If there’s a delay, they can’t actually play in time. Well, fuck. Yeah.

So, I mean, Daniel’s been talking a lot. I mean, you can comment on this. When we, you know, start making some more money, we want to like have our own gear where we set it up.

We set up speakers. We have the rhythm section miked. We have everyone miked.

So there we delete that issue entirely. Yeah. But that’s our biggest problem on Indy level.

Yeah. Well, and like, there’s that, but also working in spaces that can accommodate that, uh, because there’s, you know, like one at one of the issues we ran into at, uh, at poppers was that, um, they, you know, their, their place was like, they just kind of put speakers wherever was like out of the way. Um, and what that led to was a ton of feedback issues.

Um, you know, so it, so contending with sound on this kind of thing is really tricky and, you know, like I’m, I’m still kind of of two minds about it, whether or not we need to get like, uh, whether or not we need to get a bunch of wireless gear for everyone and just have everything going that way, which is expensive, but, but doable. Or if we should go, go the other way and just kind of, just kind of live with that. And because then you don’t have to deal with like the technical issues of like feedback, of course, the, the issue still comes in where, you know, uh, Haley and, uh, and Kate, the, the co-star, uh, are, um, you know, they’re still using these wireless body pack, uh, mics, which, which can be a little bit tricky to, to work with.

It’s tricky, but it’s also like, you’re trying to project over an orchestra. That’s like, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Right there, which is, which can be challenging. Yeah.

And that’s why we figured like when we got notes from, um, the, the people who are helping us develop the show, they were saying, you don’t care if we see anything, everything we care, if we hear everything, so, you know, we are even thinking like cheaper ways to deal with the audio issue, the people who aren’t miked, what we’re thinking about doing is like passing an SM 58 between them, like, wrestling match style, like figuring out ways to get everyone miked in an inexpensive way. It’s like another thing that we’re trying to overcome for the fringe. Yeah.

There’s the most basic way, which we, which we’ve kind of tackled, uh, especially like, well, this is one of the nice things about having all this, uh, all this custom written music for the show. Uh, we, a lot of the arrangements are written around accommodating speech, right? So like, you know, uh, note passing is the best example because we’ve got the A section B section where, you know, it’s not just to keep it lively. It’s like to keep, you know, keep the song going.

We’ve got the A section, you know, it’s nice and big and bold, but the B section comes way down and we do that on purpose because we need to accommodate speech. Yeah. Um, yeah.

Uh, so I, I think that that’s, you know, that’s kind of the low five, uh, version of that, but it, you know, it’s been pretty effective, I think, and it makes a big difference. Yeah. Now you guys did something interesting after your painted lady, uh, uh, addition.

I saw you did a presentation at a school. We did. How was that? That was incredible to witness how to get a high school audience to, to listen to the show.

I mean, that’s, that’s like, that’s always a trick when you’re going into a school and I’ve done, I’ve done stuff and I did when I was in theatre school, we did a tour of a, of an educational show to high schools. And it was, I mean, this is, was in the, in the, in the early nineties. So of course the topic they were talking about was AIDS.

Yeah. And, um, so we’re going into schools and we are trying to present this educational show, um, that opens with a dance number. And so here we are a bunch of theatre nerds trying to look like dance, like we’re cool and we’re not.

And we’re at one, I remember one school and we get to the Q and a and one guy stands up and the first question that anybody asked is, is this guy, is this so, are you guys homosexuals or what? And that was like the whole, like this was emblematic of our, of our, our experience. So the question is like, and you know, the whole thing with that show, the dance number was supposed to grab the kids instead of kind of, yeah, it shut them down. Yeah.

So how do you, how did you grab them? Well, the one thing that I really, I really aspire to was that if I was going to do a show about being in high school, I had to speak their language. Like we had to write lines that spoke their language, how people spoke, what they said, the language they used and, and, and make sure that that is honest and that is true to that era. You know, I would be opening up little notes that were passed to me in high school and I would read the language and, and that, those are things that ended up in my script.

You know, some of it was like harsh and like awful, you know, some of the things that kids say, like they’re smart, they’re not stupid. They, they know what things are. They know, they know so that I wasn’t going to shy away from that when I wrote this piece, you know, I was nervous about it being controversial.

I was nervous about making statements as an artist, especially with the content, but it was true to the era. So I stuck with that. And to my surprise, we got them by the end of the show, when we had the big final the, the, the fight between the two girls at the very end where we were like dissing each other back and forth, you know, there was one diss I make to Kate, the co-actor, and everyone in the audience went, oh, like that, like they were into it.

Yeah. Was it hard to get them though? Like how were they, were they into it from the beginning or did they have to like fight to get them? One of the things I did was like, I spoke to them, you know, how I start my shows. I usually keep it very casual.

I’m speaking to people. I, and then I go into the show gradually. That’s kind of my thing that didn’t work so well with this crowd because everyone is rowdy.

Everyone’s talking, they’re talking to each other. They’re waving to their friends. They’re being goofy.

So when I went into the show, no one knew. Right, right, right. Right.

Yeah. So it was like, they were all so rowdy and I was starting to hit like plot points and none of them were listening. So that was the one downside that I wasn’t expecting going into the high school show.

Cause in the bar, everyone knew when we were going into the show. I joined the stage and I went, hello everyone. But in this proscenium, I was on the stage already and I was chatting up people in the front row and stuff like that.

So no one knew that I was starting the show. Yeah. Well, and, and the thing about like being in high school, at least I remember this, the, the worst thing that anyone can try to do is relate to you.

Like when you’re in high school, that’s the last thing you want someone to do. You want, you want someone to treat you with respect, to treat you with dignity. You know, like you don’t, you know, the, the only people who walk up to you and try to relate to you are those people that, that, uh, that are trying to sell you the, uh, uh, the monthly donation packages on the street.

Like those are the only people in our, in our adult lives who kind of patronize us at that level, where they’re like, Hey, I really like your backpack. It’s great. You want to talk to me about, uh, giving some money to water or something? Yeah.

You know, like that, that’s the only time that anyone does that, you know? So, and kids, I think, um, they get a lot of that because, well, because they’re perceived as kids, especially in high school and they’re not kids really like they’re miniature adults. Right. And they’ve, they’ve figured out enough of the world.

They have opinions regardless of how maybe disconnected from the real world they may be, but they still have those opinions and they’re formed on their experience and, and you kind of got to respect that. Right. And, and that’s part of, you know, part of what Haley’s saying here, where you’ve got like this show that is, um, that’s written about that era, you know, and that where kids, where kids say things that are not like, you know, not totally politically correct and kids behave in ways that are kind of inappropriate.

Yeah. Right. And, you know, but, but if you’re not true to that, then you’re going to lose them.

Right. So either you need to come to them, like from the perspective, you know, cause I’ve, I’ve done, uh, um, my own like high school stuff where I I’ve been to high schools and done workshops on music stuff. And with them, it’s like either you come in and you, you know, the way I treat them is I walk in as a professional and I’m talking to a bunch of professionals, right.

Just the professionals that don’t have the same experience, but I still talk to them in that way. Yeah. Right.

And that’s one way of doing it. Or you level with them at the level of like, this is literally how you speak. This is, and you reflect themselves back at them.

Those are, in my opinion, the only two ways of getting around that. Otherwise, you know, well, they have, I mean, the thing that people forget is that, is that, uh, teenagers have an incredible bullshit metre. Yes.

Like when you, when you’re like, when you’re like, Oh, sure. When you’re sitting down, you’re being like, Hey, you know, I’m a cool guy and we can have a cool guy conversation. The two of us are like, fuck you.

You fucking fuck is exactly what you’re doing. You can’t relate to me. Don’t you dare relate to me.

Exactly. Yeah. So you can’t do that.

You, you either, you either like go down, like reflect them right back at themselves or you, or you, you go the opposite way. Right. But there’s no in between.

There’s no, there’s no halfway point that that’s going to make anyone feel like they got anything out of the conversation. Right. So, you know, and that’s, that’s tricky.

So, you know, I think that that was a, that was a tough thing. And you know, one of like, um, one of the things that I really would like to do with this show is I’d like to start shopping it around to more, to more of these venues. So either, either bar venues, cause one of the things that I wanted to mention earlier was that we had a bunch of people like at, when we played the painted lady, who were just at the painted lady, like they just, they were just hanging out.

Right. And it’s like, like you remember that night, it was a sleet and disgusting freezing and it was not supposed to be that cold, but it was, yeah. And it was miserable.

And like, we got some, we got a decent amount of our sales off of them and, but they were like really into it and they really enjoyed it. And they, so far as the accounts, I was told they brought their friends. They, they called someone up mid show and we’re like, Hey man, yeah, I’m down to the painted lady.

You should come check this out. Right. And yeah, I heard, yeah.

But you know, like I think, uh, what my, my old roommate, he was telling me something about that. Wow. Yeah.

But you know, but, but like people just did that. That was just a thing that they did because it was like a cool thing that was happening. And you know, same with at these high schools, right? Like we had, uh, we had the, um, uh, district representative for the, for the school who came out and she was kind of, she was kind of interested in us and, and you know, obviously we toned down the language a little bit to make it more.

Yeah. We took out all the swear words. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, but you know, but she really enjoyed it. And, and you know, these are all ways that we can kind of branch out and get into more spaces.

Right. And again, on the bar end, it means being maybe a little bit choosy about which spaces we go into, you know, finding, finding a bar owner that’s willing to work with us. Who’s also got a space that sounds good.

Um, and then on the school end, you know, making sure that we kind of level with the teachers and be like, Hey, you know, this is, this is a very real way of showing these kids how, how they are. Right. And it’s going to be that way.

So if you’re not cool with that, then we, then we can’t work with you. Yeah. Right.

One of the interesting things is that I can see this working in a high school because it isn’t overtly teaching them. So, you know, we’re not coming in and being like, all right, kids, let’s have an educational conversation. Yeah.

And you can just be like, we’re just here to do this thing for you. Yeah. Tell your story, tell your story.

And then afterwards, if we have a conversation and you mentioned that you learned something, then great. But like, yeah, that’s not what we’re here to do. Yeah.

Overtly. Yeah. I think the greatest theatre is theatre that doesn’t try to spoon feed you the playwright’s own bias.

The greatest, the greatest theatre is seeing things from everyone’s perspective and being able to empathize, empathize with your antagonists and truly give them a point of view. And that’s what I try to do all the time when I write a show. And one of the things that’s interesting is, and it takes some bravery to not feel like you have to tell the audience what you mean, because, you know, you want to be understood.

But once you’ve done it, it’s not yours anymore. And that was one of the lessons that we learned with Keystone theatre, because one of the things that you can’t do when you can’t talk is tell the audience your backstory. Right.

They only know what they know right now, what they see. And so what we started out, people would be like, oh, there was a show about this, and this is what happened. This is what happened.

We’d be like, that’s not what happened. But after a while, it became like, okay, that’s what you got out of it. Yeah.

Because we started to be able to let go of what we thought it meant. Yeah. And that’s what you think it meant.

And that’s cool. Awesome. Yeah.

We can all see the same thing and be moved by it. But you saw something different than you saw. Yeah.

That’s real life. Yeah. Absolutely.

Everyone sees other sides of the story. People are blind to other sides of the story. And that’s why we have different perspectives.

And that’s why we have people falling out of friend groups and relationships. That’s why. Because we all see our own realities.

So that’s what theatre should be like. Yeah. You focus group that shit.

All right. So what do you think? Yes. Well, I mean, the thing is that I’m okay with it being messy that way.

Yeah. Me too. But it took me a long time to get there.

The first time that we did The Last Man on Earth, people were like, oh, but it was this. And I was like, no, but that’s not what happened. But like I said, we went Montreal, we went to Calgary, Edmonton.

And by the time we were done in Edmonton, it was like, so what did you get out of it? Like, what do you think happened? Yeah. And I was fascinated by the way that everybody had their own interpretation. And it was so like being able to just let it go and to be like, you, if that’s what it means to you, that’s cool with me.

Did anyone ever like nail it? Like just nail exactly your intention the whole way through? No, no, no. But it was like, not a single person like didn’t like it. And not a single person didn’t relate to who we wanted them to relate to.

There were like nuances that were not quite what we intended, but they understood. Nobody was like, oh, that didn’t make any sense. It was just that they were able to make sense of it in their minds in the end.

Cool. That’s really neat. So you guys are performing at the Randolph Theatre, which is a big space.

It’s a big space. A little different than Popper’s and a little different than the Baldwin House in Hamilton, a little different, the Baltimore House and a little different than the, than, than, than Popper. Painted Lady.

Painted Lady. Yeah. It’s, so this is a, this is a, an exciting, an exciting thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we were, we were told by our, our, our people who help us, our mentors, our, our fans, like go for it.

We need to, this is what we need to do with this. We need to make that proscenium goddamn exciting. Make it more, make it more, you know, like, and I keep saying, like, I guess this is why we’re doing it in this theatre.

It’s interesting because if we’re looking at fringe, there is sort of a, a, like psych specifics can be kind of ghettoized. They don’t get all of the attention. No, they don’t.

They don’t get a whole lot of attention. And so like for you guys to have this show noticed in a way that it, it needs to be, you kind of have to be in one of the venues that maybe is a challenge for you. Yep.

Yep. And that can either hinder the show or help it. I don’t know what that is yet.

I mean, you know, we’ve already sold 11 tickets. Like that’s cool. That’s pretty good for this early.

I mean, it’s like weeks away. I know. I’m like, okay.

I think last year when I was doing the show and Popper is like, there was no fucking way I was selling tickets in June. Like, you’re kidding me, man. Like that just wasn’t a thing.

We started selling them a week before, but that’s one of the advantages to being in, in the main space, the main spaces. Yeah. And also, um, I mean, yeah, it’s like one of the, one of those things.

And then it’s the hustle for once fringe starts. Well, yeah, because people see shows in circuit. Oh, sure.

The venue. And that’s how we’re going to pull in new audiences. And I’m really excited about that because I think a lot of our audiences last year were most of our friends.

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that was getting dry.

Well, yeah. Yeah. But again, that’s like the biggest house we’ve ever had.

Well, that’s the thing because that’s what I like a 215 seater house before. That’s the thing about that space is like, it’s like huge. Now you, now we, now you got a hustle and that’s, you know, that’s a different kind.

It’s a different kind of hustle. It is. Yeah.

I mean, I’m, I’m scared as hell because we don’t open on the fourth, we open on the fifth and we don’t have another show until the following Sunday. Yeah. Like we have, we got a gap.

Yeah. We have a two day gap. We only have one show to make it work before the views come out.

And that scares the crap out of me. Well, you know, there’s something, there’s something about that kind of fear that can really be motivating. Oh yeah.

We went this year, we’re going to schedule busking in with the band. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We went from seven to nine with breaks.

We’re going to be hustling that fringe 10 with our band playing, if not inside, outside and handing out our postcards like nuts. Because that’s one thing we really screwed up last year. Well, we didn’t, we didn’t schedule that.

And, um, like we didn’t flyer the tent aggressively on the first week and we lost. Well, I mean, because it’s so important to do that. I know.

And also, also the venues like flyering lineups and every fringe is different, but in Toronto, because of the way, the nature of the beast, like the lineup is, is so important to flyer. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s gotta be done. I know.

Yeah. Yeah, I know. Well, you know, like, and, and part of what we’re trying to do, like, you know, what, what we’re trying to do with these, uh, even like the little busking spots or whatever, like they’re really like little tiny mini shows, right.

Like that are kind of immersive as well, which is, which is cool. And part of the point of that is to, again, get people enough of a flavour in their mouth of what this, what the vibe of this is and entice them. Because I think that like, you know, the number of, you know, walk down queen street and see if you can, if you can walk out without a sample, uh, you know, a pamphlet, you know, or someone screaming at you, you know, being like, buy this shit.

You know, you can’t, you can’t do it. Right. David’s tea will throw tea at you.

Yes. They, you know, like you just can’t get away from it. Yeah.

Right. So, so having someone having something that’s a little bit more, um, you know, a little bit more like, Hey, jump in if you want, right. It’s a different kind of, it’s a different kind of, if you guys come in with some music that is not like, if your approach is not obtrusive because people in a line, yeah.

If it is a popular show, yeah. They are walking away with a stack of flyers or at a certain point, they’re like, I’m shutting down. Yeah.

But you guys have the opportunity to come in with something a little different. Yeah. Which is, which is interesting.

Yeah. We’re going to do some experiments with that. We played around with it a little bit at Dundas West Fest, where we were trying to do like activities, like the actors would kind of be doing things like skipping rope or something and trying to get people to come in and then the band would be playing music.

But, and again, it felt like kind of two separate entities, but people were coming up, like people were jumping rope with us and they were getting involved, but we haven’t quite figured out how to integrate the two things yet, like make the music part of the activity. And that’s what we want to try and accomplish. Yeah.

Really interesting to see what you guys, what you guys have. Yeah. We’re going to have to stop, but thank you guys so much for having this conversation.

Yeah. This has been a Homebody Productions production.