430. Liz Buchanan

About This Episode:
This week on Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby is joined by Liz Buchanan, a Hamilton-based actor, writer, and director who is also the artistic director of 9M Theatre. Liz shares her journey as a playwright and performer, focusing on her two Hamilton Fringe shows Gnomes A Traumatic Comedy (2023) and Liz A Traumatic Comedy (2024). She discusses her long-standing fascination with gnomes, how she uses humour and absurdity to explore personal trauma on stage, and more.

This episode explores:

The creative process behind Liz’s two fringe shows, which use comedy to explore themes of trauma and healing.
The personal and surprising history of her fascination with gnomes, stemming from her childhood and the show Fraggle Rock.
The decision to transition from a multi-cast show (Gnomes) to a solo performance (Liz) to tell a more personal story.
The unique pressures and catharsis of performing a solo show, especially when the material is autobiographical.
The founding of her theatre company 9M Theatre, and its focus on a mix of original work and small-scale, intimate productions of Shakespeare

Guest:
🎭 Liz Buchanan
Liz is an actor, writer and director in Hamilton who runs a small independent company: 9M Theatre, which puts on a mix of original and modern work in between small, intimate productions of Shakespeare classics.

She has written 3 plays that she has produced at the Hamilton Fringe Festival: 2018’s “The Director’s Cut”, 2023’s critical hit “Gnomes: a Traumatic Comedy” and her 2025 follow-up “Liz, a Traumatic Comedy”. When she isn’t on stage or behind the scenes Liz works part time as a teacher and part time as a Standardized Patient at McMaster University.

Connect with Liz
📸 Instagram: @9mtheatrecompany | @9mtheatre | @gnomeiswheretheartis

Support Stageworthy:
If you love the show, consider supporting on Patreon: patreon.com/stageworthy
Patrons get early access to episodes, participate in conversations about topics to cover, and more.
With three backer levels: $2, $7, and $20.

Subscribe & Follow:
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Podchaser | Amazon Music | iHeart Radio
📺 Watch on YouTube – Like, subscribe & hit the notification bell!

Transcript

[Phil Rickaby]
Hello, welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. Stageworthy is Canada’s theatre podcast, where I talk to theatre makers from all over Canada, some of whom you will have heard of before, and others I really think you should get to know.

This week, my guest is Liz Buchanan. Liz is an actor, writer, and director, the artistic director of 9M Theatre, which puts on original and classical work in Hamilton, Ontario. She’s written three plays, and mostly what we’re going to talk about in this episode are her two fringe shows, Gnomes, a Traumatic Comedy, and Liz, a Traumatic Comedy.

So we’ll get to that in just one second. First, I want to remind you, if you’re watching on YouTube, make sure that you hit the subscribe button, like this episode, and if you have thoughts about it, make sure that you get in the comments and leave your comments there so I can respond and hear what you think about the episode. And also, if you’ve subscribed, make sure you hit that bell icon, because what that’ll do is every time I drop an episode on YouTube, you’ll get a notification that it’s there.

But if you’re listening to the audio version, make sure that you’re subscribed. Go to your favourite podcast app, search for Stageworthy, and hit the follow button. And also, if you have some thoughts with the episode, if you want to share those in your podcast app, you will find a link to this episode on the Stageworthy website, and just click on that, and then you can leave your comments there.

Here is my conversation with Liz Buchanan. Liz Buchanan, thank you so much for joining me. It is a pleasure to finally be talking to you.

You are an actor, writer, director based in Hamilton, and your theatre company is 9M Theatre. And we were just before we hit the record, but we were talking about in 2023, at the Hamilton Fringe, you had a show called Gnomes, A Traumatic Comedy. And this past year at the Hamilton Fringe, you had a show called Liz, A Traumatic Comedy.

Let’s talk a little bit about each of those shows. Let’s talk about Gnomes, A Traumatic Comedy, and then move on to Liz.

[Liz Buchanan]
Sounds good. Yeah, so in 2023, my play was called Gnomes, A Traumatic Comedy, which was, yeah, it was a play. I always said it.

It was my favourite tagline. It’s about gnomes, obviously. And it certainly, to some extent, was.

But the play was pretty obviously autobiographical in a way. I hadn’t really tried to hide, especially. The main character’s name was Ellie Cannon, which at that point, people kind of could probably catch on that it was.

But I cleverly disguised her as a visual artist. So the whole premise of this play, oh yeah, it was, there was nothing subtle going on. And the premise was that she basically, she normally was an artist, but she’d had something sort of really difficult happen to her.

And rather than actually dealing with the trauma involved in the sort of bad thing that had happened in her life, she was making gnomes to cope with it. So instead of making her usual art, she’s making gnomes. And so a huge amount of the play was kind of both filled with seeing all these various gnomes that she made, which involved a lot of really terrible gnome puns.

There were gnome puppets reenacting various scenes from theatre, and there was an entire section that was gnome Kill Bill in the middle. And then the play sort of led up to this point where her trying to reclaim her visual art style. She eventually repaints a bunch of classical works of art, but with gnomes in them.

So there’s like Vincent Van Gnome, which is the classic, like Van Gogh with his ear chopped off, which was the poster. The birth of Venomous, which was like Venus and the Clamshell, but like it was a gnome coming out of the clamshell. Like really silly, funny, over-the-top stuff in the play.

And that made it an easy sell. But of course, there’s a bit of a dark side to the play as well, which- Sure.

[Phil Rickaby]
As with, as in my opinion, any show with a silly premise should have some kind of like underlying something to justify a twist. So there’s not just silliness all the way through.

[Liz Buchanan]
Well, and so the twist is that this artist is dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, and it was a huge sort of examination. And obvious, you know, again, like I said, it wasn’t exactly thinly veiled. It was some of the stuff I was going through my whole life of trying to figure out how to make art with the sort of barriers that were now in my way because of mental illness, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder myself, and sort of not wanting my art to kind of take over this horrible darkness all the time.

Because yeah, you don’t want something to be entirely silly, but you also don’t want something to be entirely dark and miserable. Nobody wants to look at that, I think is one of the lines had in the play.

[Phil Rickaby]
Absolutely, yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
And then, so what’s kind of interesting about the reason I called it Lin’s a traumatic comedy is that two years later, I think I felt more like it could put a bit more of the darkness out there, and it got a little bit more personal in a way that it hadn’t. And I actually kind of shared my closer to my real story about what had gone on. Obviously, now with a lot of detail, like I said, numbs, nobody really wants to look at that, but sort of talked about some of those darker places that I’d actually gone to.

And I think it was important, what I kind of wanted to share with that was, we want art to be healing, and that can be really meaningful for people, but what that actually looks like, because I think people have like an idea of what that form that might take, and at least what it took for me.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I mean, I was, I agree, I think that art should be healing. I don’t think it should be therapy. And I’m always, it’s always like that danger with like a solo show, right?

Like, I’ve had people pitch shows, you know, you’re in the back when people would flyer in lines, you’d be in a line and somebody would start a pitch, you’d be like, I can’t tell if this is a play or therapy.

[Liz Buchanan]
And I was actually, we were saying that right before the recording started, this was a hard show to pitch, trying to convince people, I promise I did the therapy. If Ron would have done that piece already, I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t trap you in a theatre for a therapy at you.

That said, it was more therapeutic than I expected it to be. I was surprised actually, because I certainly didn’t go in with that, boy, do I ever want to therapize myself with this, but it had some therapeutic elements to it that were kind of cool.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Before we get into that, because I certainly can relate from my own show, The Commandment, I had, I wouldn’t say therapy in it, but there was a lot of catharsis in it, which was really quite satisfying to be part of and to experience. But I do want to talk about Gnomes of Traumatic Comedy first, because it was the first of the duology.

And I’m curious about what drew you to Gnomes.

[Liz Buchanan]
I talk about this a little bit in Liz’s Traumatic Comedy. I actually have had a lifelong, a bit of a weird obsession with Gnomes. I was obsessed when I was very, very little with Fraggle Rock.

If you’re familiar with that TV show, big Muppet fan in general, but I was just like the right age when Fraggle Rock came out to be really, really fixated on Fraggles. And there’s an episode in it where Doc, the guy who lives, the silly creature, the human that lives in the Fraggle world that connects Fraggle Rock to us, he has a job where he has to repaint garden gnomes. So there’s this whole episode where he’s painting them, and Uncle Traveling Mac comes along and sees him doing this blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, more or less Fraggle mythology, more to my point. I thought it was so great, this idea of painting these gnomes, and that would be so much fun. So I begged my mom for a garden gnome.

Please, please, please, I have to have a garden gnome. I’m three, right? And my mom’s always been super supportive and so wonderful, lovely woman.

But for reasons I can’t begin to comprehend, she didn’t want us to get a garden gnome. She thought they were tacky or something, it’s hard to match. Well, actually, she wouldn’t want to.

But she sort of put her foot down and she says, when you have your own house, you can have a garden gnome. And I said, this is my house. And I thought that was so cute.

She bought me a garden gnome in spite of my mother. You won! I know!

You won! So the gnome did make, he made an appearance in Liz, a traumatic comedy. The OG gnome.

[Phil Rickaby]
But like, were you ever, were you ever presented with the Brian Froud book, Gnomes?

[Liz Buchanan]
Um, no, I’ve got the René Pourvelay.

[Phil Rickaby]
Okay, maybe that’s it. I may have been confusing the two.

[Liz Buchanan]
It’s like, it’s like a Danish artwork that’s all like gnomes obsessed. For reference, Archer references it in a, please read a coffee table book. I believe this is lying in the Archer episode.

[Phil Rickaby]
Right. Yes. Yeah.

There’s a, yeah, there’s a book and I can’t remember who wrote it or who illustrated it. It just has like a gnome and a red hat on the cover. There’s a reprint of it with a blue cover, but it was originally on a white.

And again, those kinds of books were very influential to a certain generation of children. If not influential, certainly nightmare inducing in many ways.

[Liz Buchanan]
They’re all eerie in that particular rendition. And you see like a wide variety of gnome styles too. That was actually part of with gnomes, like creating Ellie’s gnomes, what they would look like, trying to create a really distinct style for them that was different than, because gnomes have really blown up the last few years.

Like you find them in souvenir shops and like all over the place. But even at the time there there’s like styles of them that are very commercial and very popular that I was trying to make sure that first looked really distinctive and different from what we’d seen. But that is something I noticed is that there’s a lot of different kinds of variations on, on gnome styles.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it’d be pretty boring if they were all, if it was all the same. I was curious about, about gnomes, about whether it was, it went beyond the, the, the garden gnome and into the mythology.

[Liz Buchanan]
Not as much as it probably should. I’m more into it a little bit now in the play I made references they’d had me wanted to do for a long time, which is play D&D. And I did eventually take up as a D&D, I play as a gnome, then gave the character the name Ellie Wick.

So she goes by Ellie for short.

[Phil Rickaby]
Nice, nice.

[Liz Buchanan]
That is, I, so I’m a little bit more into at least the, the D&D sort of mythology lore around gnomes. Yeah. So I’m, I’m a little bit, I’m actually probably, I’m probably a little dull when it comes to the really like interesting, like mythology pieces around that.

[Phil Rickaby]
The D&D stuff often draws from the mythologies, right? So they, they don’t start from a blank slate. They usually draw from the, the, the mythologies.

I want to move from gnomes to Liz, which is a weird thing to say, Liz. It’s weird to say something like, I want to go from gnomes to Liz.

[Liz Buchanan]
I feel like that’s what I’ve said to myself when this happened with James.

[Phil Rickaby]
Go on. So now you’re, you’ve gone from, from gnomes of traumatic comedy to Liz of traumatic comedy. You said that you felt like ready to sort of address stuff.

How was it putting that stuff on the stage? And you sort of alluded to trying to find the pitch for it. How, how did that go throughout the Hamilton French?

[Liz Buchanan]
I mean, there were a lot of different stages of that process. One thing that really helped from the get-go, my, the same director, so David Falkner-Rundell’s friend of mine, and, and a director around Hamilton and, and, and stuff. And he directed gnomes traumatic comedy.

I asked him sort of right out the gate, would you direct Liz of traumatic comedy? And I think even he sort of was laughing a little bit at the beginning of like, so you want me to direct you on how you’re going to tell your story. But I think some of that was that tone piece of, I think it, it definitely needs a filter to go through and somebody that I can bounce this off of, of like, how is this reading?

How does the sound, is this creating the effect I want it to create as opposed to just, yeah, I said, I think it would be easy. I, I, I, it, it would be too easy to just stand up and be like, well, I’m just going to tell my story. That could backfire in a lot of ways.

And I, and I sure, I really wanted to make sure that I had like somebody that was, I was running this as a director. And then I did it in front of a few friends before I actually put it on stage to make sure like it, I was getting that practice of how is this going to play off of different people.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You certainly do need the outside eye and especially when you’re like crafting, crafting and putting it up on its feet. Cause otherwise like you don’t know if you’re just like looking indulgent or if it’s working the way you hope it does.

You don’t, it’s better to have that outside eye to help you make sure that you’re saying what you want to be saying.

[Liz Buchanan]
It’s one of those times I think the insecurity came in handy for this. And I’m not saying I struck a perfect balance. I’m sure there were elements of that were more self-indulgent than I wanted or, or might’ve been more like difficult for people to sit with than I would’ve liked.

But I, I think that constant critical thinking about like how is this, is this, is this self-indulgent? Is this too dark? Is this too difficult at these points?

Being able to like constantly run that by people and count on them to be fairly honest with you about it was definitely helpful.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. Now I’m curious as somebody who has written and performed two solo shows, I’m curious about what drew you to creating and performing a solo show.

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah, I, I mean, it’s become very popular in French right now for a few reasons. I certainly like it. It does.

Yeah. It’s easier to mount and manage, particularly post-pandemic, well, I shouldn’t say post-pandemic, particularly since the lockdowns. In the pandemic stricken world we see that sort of challenge of making sure you’ve got a small cast group and, and not, you know, sort of a glutted show.

There’s some advantages there. I suppose it was also because you hadn’t seen a lot of solo shows and exposed to that a lot. It does give you inspiration.

I, I always think Fringe is really cool for whether they’re, they’re, you know, I shouldn’t say bad shows, whether they’re great shows or shows in progress. Oh, you learn something from all of them. And then they do kind of inspire you to, to, this is, okay, well, could I do that?

What would that look like if I did a version of that? And, and seeing that many solo shows over the last couple of years, you think, okay, I, I think I could do that. I think I could tell a story here that would go start to finish.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. And hold people. For sure.

So solo shows are always that, like, especially for touring artists, it’s like, the costs are really low on that. We don’t have a big cast and it doesn’t take long for a touring show, like to get to a big cast, like three is kind of big for like touring. You have all kinds of logistics.

And if it’s just a solo show, just a solo show. If it’s a solo show, you get those logistics a little, a little easier. Do you remember like what the first solo show that you were exposed to was and how did that happen at a Fringe or did you read a solo show?

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah. Do you know what? I, this is funny because one of the podcasts I re-listened to that you had done was with my friend, Karlyn Ramey.

And I am actually pretty sure Sare was the first solo show I ever saw.

[Phil Rickaby]
Interesting.

[Liz Buchanan]
I think that might’ve been the first one. I was in another, I think it was tech for another show in Fringe that summer. And it just looked, I, Karlyn’s pitch at the kickoff party really caught my eye because I’d also just come back from a trip.

So Karlyn’s show was about they’re traveling around Europe and particularly Great Britain and Ireland. And that I had just come back from a trip of Scotland and London. And so I think that really resonated with me.

And so I made a point to go out to see it and, and I do it, you know, and this is, there’s an arrogance in me that was like, she could do that with all due respect to Karlyn, who’s so brilliant at it and so talented. And I’m not anywhere near there yet, but that, that, that there’s, there’s an arrogant part of my brain that’s like, try that.

[Phil Rickaby]
And listen, I think for, for a lot of people who are performers, who are creators, who are making theatre, especially if you’re making independent theatre, especially Fringe, there’s like, that is like the great, like, I could do that. Like, it’s, it’s inspiring, but also like, oh, I, I think it comes from a place of not competition, but like, oh, I see what they’re doing with that. I want to do that.

I want to experience that.

[Liz Buchanan]
Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. When I, when I say it’s an arrogance thing, I think it’s that hilarity of like both knowing, wow, this person’s so, so talented at doing this.

If I could push, I was like, and so you’re forcing yourself of like, what, you know, what would it take for me to kind of like get to that stage? And I’m certainly nowhere near that. Carlin was actually somebody I went to, to meet with and talk with when I was developing this, right.

Is that somebody that I know, like, I respect their work a lot and I think they’re really valuable.

[Phil Rickaby]
Well, Carlin has such a relaxed and personable and charismatic presence on this stage. Yeah. That is uniquely hers.

I don’t think there’s many people who do, cause she’s kind of herself in a way on stage. It’s like very representative of who she seems to be. And so like, I remember walking into the theatre and she was already on the stage, greeting people as they came in and me, I’m doing my show.

And I’m like, I don’t want to see people until it’s time to do this show. And she’s just like, look at people, look at people as they come in.

[Liz Buchanan]
Well, and, and correct me if I’m wrong. I sorry, I actually don’t, I don’t think I’ve seen either of your shows, but they’re great characters though. Yes.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yes. And she’s, she’s like telling a story about herself. Yeah.

Essentially. Yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
No. And, and there was, believe me about, I don’t know, it probably would have happened faster. I was in another show right before fringe.

And then as soon as that show finished, I had this sensation hit me of what have you done? Why is this so personal? What’s wrong with you?

That I’m sure I was trying to avoid by being in like a bunch of other shows before fridge came, but I absolutely had that sensation about two weeks before fringe. I thought, why, why did you think it was a good idea to put yourself on stage? Carla?

And it’s no problem for Carla. They’re awesome. So why wouldn’t, yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
No, it’s like, I will admit to you that I was so confident when I was doing my show, the commandment the first time, like I was so confident in the days leading up to the first performance. I had a whole plan that day. I was going to, I was going to see a couple of shows and then I was going to go take myself out for some food before the show that I do the show to be awesome.

And then I woke up the morning of, and it was the first time I’d performed the show. And I was like, I am going to vomit today. So everything went out the window.

So it was like very much like, I, I just have to concentrate on this. I can’t do any of the other things. So it’s like, once you’re faced with the thing and it’s so close, it becomes a real, it can be really daunting, especially as a solo performer.

[Liz Buchanan]
I imagine too, because I, I, whether it had been personal or not, I do sort of think that some of that, like the buck stops at you with it for sure.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, that’s the thing. Like if, if people don’t like, if you’re a solo performer and you wrote that show, if people don’t like that show, they don’t like your performance. They don’t like your writing.

They basically don’t like you. So there’s a lot of pressure.

[Liz Buchanan]
That was exactly what was going through my head. And I said, I don’t know if that was special to the fact that it was personal. See, we should have done this.

I, I, I shouldn’t talk to you in some capacity.

[Phil Rickaby]
I think, I think that it has a lot to do with, especially if it’s your first time doing a solo show.

[Liz Buchanan]
I was so sure. I was having that thought that I’m like, well, that’s it. If they don’t like this, it’s not about your performance, but you, your value.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, I think honestly, especially if the show is untried, right. You’ve shown it to some friends, but it hasn’t been in front of an audience yet. That is like the tension of that, because, you know, I know those people, they’re a friendly audience.

They’ll tell me if it sucks, but you know, you know, this is, this is real. And there is certainly something about, about that. And so until it is a tried and tested performance or show, like an audience, a real audience that paid money sees it.

There’s sort of like a, I don’t know, for me, there was a bit of a doubt, like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? You know?

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah. No. And, and I think too, there’s, the people I did it for by and large, like, yeah, because they’re your friends.

It also meant that they kind of knew a certain amount of those stories and a certain amount of like what, what I was talking about. There were some things that were new to certain people, but I would say everybody I served for ahead of time, to some degree had some knowledge of what I was going to talk about in advance, which also changes that. Right.

And it also changes the reception of it. So there, there was definitely that thought of like, well, I think this is interesting. And my friends who have been putting up with some version of this show for a few years now think this is interesting, but would anybody else, right?

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, that is the thing that you, I see a lot of times, especially with friends and especially with the solo show at Friends, you don’t know until that audience comes in. It makes that, it makes those early performances so, so stressful.

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah. It probably took me, I would say, well, I had smaller audiences for the first two. Again, I think some of that was that like difficulty in marketing it.

There were more than a couple of my friends that I said to them, like, you admit, you wouldn’t see this if it wasn’t me. If somebody had this description, you would be like, oh, I don’t want to go see this. And I knew that.

So there’s this tricky thing. It was, it was almost the reverse of gnomes where like, so gnomes, I’m selling this sort of like cute, like they’re gnomes and it’s going to be fun and they’re silly antics. And on some level, there’s a little bit of a bait and switch there, admittedly, because you get it.

And then there’s some dark stuff. This one, the dark stuff’s up front. It’s trying to convince people.

No, no, no. I swear. When you get in there, I promise a lot of it’s funny.

I promise. A lot of it’s fun and funny. I swear.

I wouldn’t do that. But, but trying to convince people of that was, was tricky for sure.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, absolutely. But one thing I’m curious about, because, you know, you could do one solo show and you could be like, that’s it. I’m done.

I did it. I did it. I did a solo show.

Um, and you did a second and I don’t know about for you. I don’t know about for you, but for me, uh, after performing the, my solo show, the first time I was addicted, I was like, oh, I want to do solo shows. I want to create solo.

So I want to create other kinds of things too. But solo shows are this thing where you were the one, you wrote the words, you’re taking the, you’re taking the audience through this journey. It’s like, you’re holding them in the palm of your hand as you’re taking them through your journey.

But what I’m curious about was, so you had this show, Gnomes of Traumatic Comedy, which was not a solo show. You had a whole cast, somebody who was playing you, you had somebody who was playing your brother and then what made you want to create a solo show?

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah. So I think when it became a little bit more personal for sure. And I think some of it was kind of pulling off that veil, like Gnomes was pretty thinly veiled.

It was going to be pretty obvious to anybody who watched that it was about me, but there were some things I kept at a distance specifically. And that was intentional at the time. It’s where I was at the time too, with my kind of journey with everything.

I needed that space to be distant from it. But I think when it was going to become that personal, I was going to tell people what actually happened that involved sort of like the PTSD and the trauma. There were pieces of that that were way more interesting.

And I don’t mean in like a dark, traumatic way. It’s just like, there were just some really interesting things that happened that I couldn’t write. Like, just bizarre pieces of my own story that were connected to this that like, it’s that Stranger Than Fiction thing.

It would seem not real on stage. And there was this sort of odd thing of being somebody who fancies themselves a writer and sitting on that story level. You’re like, there’s got to be a way I can tell this.

And I think that had to be me then. If it wasn’t going to be sort of this, like, I didn’t want to do a like, this is Liz’s life. It was that.

But I did want to, like, I think if I was going to tell my stories, I wanted to tell my stories.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah. Now, the question that comes from that for me, that is, how do you feel about solo performing now?

Like, do you have it out of your system? Or is it something you want more of? Or was this like, I did it this once with this show.

This is the only one I’m going to do.

[Liz Buchanan]
No, to be honest, I think the thing I was getting out of my system as much as anything was that that story about myself that I think, and there were a lot of stories, and it certainly wasn’t just about the PTSD and recovery around that. There’s sort of like a lot of like different life stories that I was telling, and it was different experiences that I’ve had in my life. And I feel like I’ve told that now.

Like what I would like to share of myself that I think is interesting and funny and helpful and cathartic and whatever, but it wouldn’t put me off of doing a creative solo show, a non-fiction solo show.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, if you look at, if you look at something like, like, like, like Carlin, Carlin’s on, I think, their third show, the third show that took him to, unless there’s a fourth, it’s possible. Carlin is prolific.

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah, Carlin has something or other, I mean, during the lockdown years where we’re doing virtual fringe that I did see called Chaotic Good, but I know, which I think is now, if I’ve understood this correctly, Love and Crake is the updated title for that, which is what came in Vancouver. And then ADHD Project and Scaredy Cat. And then, yeah, I think the fourth one was that nebulous one.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Now I want to ask about, you know, we’ve been talking about the PTSD and things like that and about shows about trauma. I am fascinated.

In fact, I would say that most of the things that I write are stories about, I describe it as it’s not necessarily the right, I don’t know if it’s the right way to do it, but a lot of the characters in the plays that I write are broken people who learn how to put themselves back together. And you mentioned about, there’s shows about trauma, but not a lot about picking up the pieces and putting one’s life back together. And that is a big thing for you in terms of creating this show.

Talk to me about how important that is to you.

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah, well, now I’m really sorry I haven’t seen your solo shows, because I do think that like, there’s, I think people do avoid talking about sort of big, dark issues sometimes, because you feel like it’s going to be burdensome to people. And there’s certainly possible for it to be that. But then I think what we avoid talking about is what that looks like on kind of the healing end of it.

And there’s a lot of shows about broken people. There’s just so much media, TV shows, etc, etc, about broken people. And I don’t think anywhere near enough about what does that actually look like?

And it essentially came out to me partly because I was looking for it. You’re looking to connect with stuff and people. It’s both a very boring and unique experience when something really awful happens.

And PTSD, I liken it to grief a lot, where you you feel very alone and isolated from everybody else, which is so weird, because you know, everybody else is actually going through like, like, who doesn’t have something like that, that grief or that, or that darkness or whatever. And it’s such a strange sensation to feel like you’re you’re isolated from everybody with it. So then you’re kind of like looking for people who’s come out on the other end of this or what are the story about coming out on the other end of this.

And normally what I would find were the stories that kind of stopped at, look how broken this person is now because of this horrible thing that happened. And you don’t want the story to be the therapy necessarily. But I think it’s also just kind of nice sometimes when you can feel like you’re connecting with something that isn’t just stopping at that, like, yeah, I’m broken and crushed and everything is never nothing’s ever going to be OK again.

[Phil Rickaby]
Which is a terrible place to leave your audience.

[Liz Buchanan]
Like, hey, good night. Have a great night, everybody. Well, an enormous amount of media does that or brushes over it, I think, are the other kind of things that I that I noticed a lot in trying to watch and just find things that I could kind of connect with.

It’s a weird sort of thing, as much as you would think you would kind of not want to think about the darkness or whatever it is, whether it’s grief or trauma or whatever. I actually found myself really trying to seek out stuff like that. It just said you’re you’re nothing else made sense to me for a stretch of time in my life where I this was this there was so much it was taking up a big presence in my life.

And on one hand, no, you don’t want to define you, but also it’s there.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, the thing is, the thing is that, like, no, you don’t want it to define you. But for a period of time, it kind of does. It’s the thing that takes over your mind.

So it’s the thing. Right. And so that is a fact.

But I also think that it is important to tell stories about it and also stories about people who are coming through it, because everybody goes through it at some point. Everybody goes through some kind of trauma, some kind of grief, some kind of something terrible. And it’s good to see media and plays and things that show you that there is a way through.

[Liz Buchanan]
No, for sure. And like even there’s there’s I was trying to think about and like there are definitely there’s definitely media and shows that you see that where somebody’s maybe not dealing with it and like healthier or great ways. And it doesn’t mean like it will invalidate those.

One of my favorite all time TV shows is Jessica Jones and like right brokerage you can get. And there’s not a lot of like there’s a lot of good blueprints laid out for what this might look like.

[Phil Rickaby]
Right. Yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
In a healthier version, it stays pretty dark throughout it. So I but and I think there’s room for that kind of media that deals with it very like honestly and frankly. But I think it’s I also think it’s over.

It’s naive to think you can get over it easily, but it’s a little too cynical for my taste to decide that you can’t get over it at all.

[Phil Rickaby]
I fully agree. And I think that, you know, it is a journey and it is something that takes time. You can’t get over it overnight.

But like the journey has like you can you can get it. And you’re right. It’s cynical to be like you’re broken.

Yeah. Good luck.

[Liz Buchanan]
You know, I felt that way for a long time. I’m sure that for for even even as I’m trying to like navigate the more like and draw myself out of it. And even with like I’d have good days and bad days for a long time.

And I’m still I’m sure I’m still going to have bad days from time to time. But I’m certainly I mean, I’d I doesn’t feel like it’s unfixable now in the way that maybe two years ago even it did.

[Phil Rickaby]
Whereas creating these shows, I don’t want to ask if they were your therapy, but were they helpful in dealing with the PTSD?

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah, this one more so than known. So that I think that was the the other thing that was sort of interesting to me when people were like, oh, must be therapeutic or whatever to write this. And I thought, you know, and I wasn’t counting on it.

I don’t I’m so knows we got on a bunch of critics choice lists and it was really well acclaimed. And I have people liked it better than Liz, a dramatic comedy. I’m not surprised that that piece of it doesn’t surprise me.

I actually remember thinking, well, I’m probably the best thing I’m ever going to write. And maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not.

But I was aware of that being a good piece of art that I was really proud of. But I don’t think I came out of the other end of that feeling any better than I had gone going into it. This one.

So then I had very low expectations to feel that way with this one as well. It was just the story that I sort of felt compelled to tell for a lot of different reasons. And you’re also trying out different stuff around like, well, what what could my art look like now going forward and how am I how am I channeling this and what are the different ways I could try to channel these pieces of me?

This had a tangible, positive effect because it ended on such an optimistic note. It. It’s that idea, if you say something enough, you start to believe it.

[Phil Rickaby]
Right. Yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
And I think it’s not that I didn’t believe the art I’m writing. I’ll never do it again. I’ll spoil the end of the play.

There’s a line in it where I basically I’ve talked a lot about sort of the complexities of justice and kind of where I come at that from. And my line is that justice isn’t about him getting what he deserves. It’s about me getting what I deserve.

And I deserve some time on stage in the spot. And people clapping at that was really moving for me when I’m like, oh, I don’t feel like I deserved that. But also there’s a part where you’re like, oh, yeah, OK, it’s true.

Like this, it starts to become true. It starts to become a reality for you. And in that way of like that might sound a little overly optimistic.

And yeah, it’s glossing over some darker pieces of that. But like there’s also some there’s also some real truth to that of healing and moving forward with your life. And I think doing that over and over again and having such a lovely audience response to it made it more real for me than it was when I wrote it.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s kind of amazing the way that theatre can do that, huh? Like like you went through this with the audience and doing it together sort of like brings a moment to you. And and I think that’s why sometimes people fall into the therapizing of their theatre because of that.

And it’s magic when it happens. But I don’t think I think it becomes a little dangerous when you end up trying to manufacture it.

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah. So, you know, you also then hope you’re like, oh, well, I hope that it was I hope that was mutually beneficial.

[Phil Rickaby]
100 percent. Yeah, for sure.

[Liz Buchanan]
Like I don’t. Well, I hope this isn’t just about people feel like they need to lift me up at the end of it, because part of the point of that line was to be like, I am lifted up. But the author, the other side of that was, oh, wow, I this doing that and saying that and in taking a power back for myself really.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
Was was actually quite effective in that way for me. So, yeah, hopefully you felt like a mutual power exchange there with the audience.

[Phil Rickaby]
I think I listen. I think that we can feel it as performers, especially when you’re alone, you have a connection with the audience when you’re doing a solo show. I think you can feel it if it’s not genuine.

Right. I think it’s like watching people like do like a fake standing ovation where people feel like they should, you know, couple people stand up, then other people stand up, then other people stand up. You can feel that it’s like it’s not genuine.

And I think as performers, we do have a sense of it.

[Liz Buchanan]
And I was I was joking with a couple of my friends that I don’t know that they would have stood up if the audience hadn’t been standing up.

[Phil Rickaby]
Right. Yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
Well, your friends at theatre people, we’ve got a very they’ve got a much higher bar for 100 percent.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
I called a few of them. I don’t like you only stood up because everybody else.

[Phil Rickaby]
No, you just just take it. Just take it. Just take it.

I did want to ask you about I know that, you know, you’ve been acting for most of your life. You’ve been directing, being able to call yourself a writer and have that be meaningful. Years ago, someone called me out on the fact that when somebody asked me what I did, I described myself by my day job and not as a writer.

When pretty much all of my free time in when I wasn’t doing my day job was involved with with with writing in some way, and there had been a block for me about being able to say the words I’m a writer. For you, it was like you were writing and then what prevented you from calling yourself a writer?

[Liz Buchanan]
Did I not call myself a writer in the bio either?

[Phil Rickaby]
No, I’m usually bad. Here’s the you. You specifically said that you only recently started to consider yourself a writer.

[Liz Buchanan]
You said, sorry, I couldn’t remember what I’d written to you.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
No, that is correct. Yeah, no, I would say, yeah, I felt more confident in the directing and acting. I did not do well in creative writing in most of school.

Like I would get like I I very rarely got good marks and I always wanted to like I wanted to be good at it and and I’m gone back and written some stuff. I deserve to get good marks. I look at it.

I’m like, that was awful. Like I wrote some truly terrible stuff when I was a teenager, as I’m sure we all do. But I that didn’t help.

So I think I for a long time, I knew I was very sensitive about my writing, that I would very rarely let people read it. And I knew I wasn’t good at taking criticism about it, that I would get very defensive because I did have that insecurity, whereas my acting, not that I’m never like, you know, I’m sure my acting director, I get defensive and insecure from time to time. But like I would say most of the time, I’m getting feedback.

I know it’s to improve my craft. And I’ve got a confidence about both of those things that I don’t think I’m it’s not going to crush my spirit if somebody thinks I did bad in a scene. Whereas I think with writing, I was at a stage for a long time where I didn’t trust myself with it.

Um, you know, another one of my friends you had on your podcast, Ryan Serow, was a huge help with this. I started sending him a lot of stuff over the lockdowns. And I think he knew that about me.

So he, I think was very gentle with his feedback for a really long time with me in a like, just a positive, I’m going to build, I’m going to build this person up kind of way. And then gradually started getting a little bit more like he would send me stuff that was a little bit more like, why don’t you try that? Why don’t you try that?

But but he tends to be he was quite, I think he made a point of sort of helping build me up with it and be very encouraging. I would say though, I didn’t actually I wasn’t willing to call myself a writer until Gnomes because it was so the writing in particular received a lot of good reviews. And I knew when I wrote it, I that was the first time I could have taken negative feedback on it.

Because when I wrote it, I thought, oh, I know, this is people think that sounds really arrogant, but I’m like, I know this is good enough that if somebody wants to give me feedback on it, they’re trying to challenge and make it better. Not because this is a bad piece of writing. But like, the feedback is, well, why don’t you try this?

Why don’t you try this? Not, you need to scrap this whole thing. It’s garbage.

[Phil Rickaby]
I think that there is a measure of confidence that comes from being able to take criticism to know that the work that you created was good. And to be able to just sort of be like, sure, if some people don’t like it, that’s fine. You know, and to be like, but most people do.

[Liz Buchanan]
So do you call yourself a writer now?

[Phil Rickaby]
All the time. Excellent. All the time.

And it was after that person called me out. It was like, you never say that you’re a writer, you always talk about your day job, but you are not your day job. And I was like, they’re right.

And so it’s on everything now. It’s like one of the defining descriptors.

[Liz Buchanan]
The biggest imposter syndrome I still get about it is that I’m not a writer with good habits. So I do know a lot of the time when people talk about like, what would make you a good writer? You’ve got to do it every day.

And I am absolutely one of those people that doesn’t fit some starts. I’d be better at it if I made myself practice. I’d be better at it if I wasn’t as like, if I didn’t curate it as much as I do, like, just let it be bad and then come back to it some other time.

All those things that I think wouldn’t make me better at it, I should do.

[Phil Rickaby]
Sure. But you’re still a writer. And that’s the that’s the thing.

I want to talk a little bit because we’ve barely talked about 9M Theatre.

[Liz Buchanan]
Yes.

[Phil Rickaby]
Which is, I know we have to do, we have to take care of that, which is a theatre company that puts on a mix of original and modern work, as well as small intimate productions of Shakespeare classics. So tell me about 9M Theatre and where it came from.

[Liz Buchanan]
The title 9M, because I love, I cast somebody because they asked me what that was.

[Phil Rickaby]
Tell me, tell me.

[Liz Buchanan]
The Nine Muses. My friend Rebecca, she’s the only person, it was my very first show, and she was the only person that was like, where’s 9M come from? That was how we were getting trends.

Yeah, it’s the nine muses from like the Greek mythology. So the drama and comedy mask are Melanopia, I think I always say her name wrong, and Talia are the drama and comedy. But there’s, of course, the nine muses.

And there I was originally called Nine Muses Theatre, and then found out that there’s a Nine Muses Masonic Temple in the UK. And I thought, yeah, I don’t want to run afoul of the Masons.

[Phil Rickaby]
You probably don’t want to get run afoul of the Masons now.

[Liz Buchanan]
So I so yeah, I 9M was kind of my clever way of getting around that. And that that came out of an equal amount of arrogance of watching people have small independent theatre companies around Hamilton. I mean, let’s probably do that.

[Phil Rickaby]
Was there anything? Was there like a something in particular you wanted to do that that made you want to do it? Or just like you kind of wanted to join the club?

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah, funnily enough, this is funny, because there’s so much of it now, there was a very short period of time where there wasn’t a lot of Shakespeare in Hamilton. And there’s this city love Shakespeare, like, I don’t even know how to tell you, like, you’d part of a Shakespeare show, and you will sell out at least one performance. Like I there.

I don’t know what it is about the city and Shakespeare, but they really, really love it. And I am a fan, too. I just come back from the UK, right around the time I saw Carlin’s show.

I’d just come back from the UK, I did a couple of variations. And so I saw West End, Romeo and Juliet, which is terrific. I saw Macbeth at the Globe, which was incredible.

And then I saw Much Ado About Nothing, done by this tiny little company in a little courtyard that was all like low budget. And it was incredible. I loved it so much.

Not to diminish the Globe, one of the West, the West End one, but in some ways, I was like, I think that might be my favourite of them. And it does kind of get your brain going of like, yeah, you don’t necessarily need a huge crew. And Ryan Searle, who runs Make Art Theatre, also does a lot of like sort of small scale Shakespeare like that as well.

So it’s, you know, there’s no production rights. Yeah, there’s no production rights. It is, you can do it in sort of small scale if you’re creative enough.

And I think it then poses a really interesting challenge to you as a director if you’re creative enough. And it’s a city both full of like people who love Shakespeare, but also it’s full of Shakespearean actors. Like, I don’t know, again, I don’t know what it is about the city.

I think you’d cast three Shakespeare plays at the same time and a lot of people who are pretty confident at it. So I seem like let’s take advantage of that. And so so let’s put on King Lear once again, with just as much arrogance as I could have stumbled into.

[Phil Rickaby]
Sure, the easiest one. Exactly. The easiest one, King Lear.

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah, just just with all the all the the real theme of this podcast seems to be Liz’s arrogance.

[Phil Rickaby]
We’ll subtitle it. We’ll subtitle it.

[Liz Buchanan]
My brother. So my brother has participated in most of the shows, and he’s obviously like being a lot behind the scenes when he’s sort of not there. And Lear was one, actually, I, I, I was mean, I tricked him into doing Lear because he’s not a big Shakespeare kid.

But I he does stage combat. And and he’s quite a talented actor. And I but he he’s a lawyer full time.

He’s very, very busy. But I said to him, you know, I think I’ve got a part for you lately, or don’t worry, it’s a pretty small role. And this is Edgar, the rightful.

Yeah, okay. I’m glad you’re laughing. For anybody listening to this that is not familiar.

It’s a huge role.

[Phil Rickaby]
It is not a small part. No, it’s that is not a small part.

[Liz Buchanan]
So you so you you lied. I did fully tricked him into being in the show. And then he was stuck with me for doing my shows forever.

Oh, yeah, it was he was he was a little deceitful. There’s no two ways about it. But he was how he liked doing it.

[Phil Rickaby]
He I mean, what actor doesn’t want a big part and a good juicy part to know.

[Liz Buchanan]
And he was he was terrific. And then I think he was so, so good in that role. Nepotism side.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
I think I would say he was he was really talented in that. And I have now totally forgotten why I started telling that story about tricking my brother into being in my play.

[Phil Rickaby]
If you were just talking about nine and theatre and doing Shakespeare and things like that, that’s that’s, you know, listen, I think that it’s I think you were talking about how you got started. You did King Lear. And that’s how you how that came.

[Liz Buchanan]
Oh, yeah. You know, I was going to tell the story about my brother saying to me, I was your one of the papers described my decision to start with King Lear as ambitious and strong without missing a beat, quotes Julius Caesar. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

I don’t think he’s wrong. I know. Yeah, I’ve obviously been able to pull off most of it, but it’s I do bite off more than I can chew sometimes with the company.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, as as people who make theatre, especially independent theatre, this is what we do. This is what it’s like. Who hasn’t bitten off more than they could chew, especially for fringe, especially doing independent theatre?

You just make it happen, right? Yeah. I you mentioned something near the beginning of our conversation, and I’ve allowed it to go uncommented on until now.

And we’re sort of coming to the last 10 minutes of the show. And I cannot. I cannot let this go by when you just casually mentioned that you’re a Muppets fan and, you know, Fraggle Rock, I was I was a Muppet show guy because I’m an old man.

The Fraggles started. I was in the 80s somewhere, so I was in my teens, a little too old for the Fraggles. But I was I was aware.

But I love Muppets. If you want to make me cry, you have Kermit sing Rainbow Connection or you show me the video of Kermit the Frog singing It’s Not Easy Being Green at Jim Henson’s funeral, and I’m gone for the day. Right.

So from one Muppets fan to another, do you have a favorite Muppets project and who is your favorite Muppet?

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah, I mean, Fraggle, Rockmere and Dearest Marge, because I grew up with it and I probably is. Yeah, I think I think I just used to watch as we had them all videotaped on VHS is off of the TV. Look it up if you’re young and listening.

I and I used to just watch them over and over on repeat. So it’s hard to I guess it’s if I had to go a second choice, I’ve had to go a second on that. It is the little known Muppet Family Christmas.

It’s not the Muppet Christmas Carol, but the Muppet Family Christmas, which is a whole thing where they all go to Fozzie’s mom’s house for the holidays. And it’s like all of the Muppets and all of the Fraggles and all of the Sesame Street characters just converges on this place.

[Phil Rickaby]
And watch out for that patch of ice.

[Liz Buchanan]
Careful of the icy patch.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
We watch that. I still watch that every year of my family.

[Phil Rickaby]
Now is that’s not the one where they basically do the plot of It’s a Wonderful Life.

[Liz Buchanan]
No, that is the that’s a 2001 one.

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s OK. Yeah, that’s another Muppet Christmas. Yeah.

[Liz Buchanan]
Yeah, I think Muppets and Christmas kind of go together nicely because they kind of do.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, you got the Emmett Otter’s Christmas as well, which is which is is fun, especially some of the bloopers are great.

[Liz Buchanan]
My favorite thing in Fraggle Rock is that they don’t have a Christmas special. They have a pagan holiday solstice special.

[Phil Rickaby]
Right. Yes.

[Liz Buchanan]
Because of course, the Fraggles like they live about their own culture.

[Phil Rickaby]
It doesn’t make sense for them to have a Christmas episode at all.

[Liz Buchanan]
And it’s also meant to be this kind of universal, like they showed it in all different countries and all over the world. And the idea was supposed to be that it would translate. So this idea of like a solstice festival makes sense.

They just sort of cut out anything particularly Christmassy about it. You know, plus or minus the symbolism.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Did did do you have a favorite Muppet and has it changed in recent years?

[Liz Buchanan]
I’d say it’s always been pretty consistent. Miss Piggy’s the drama queen and that like in and the girl Muppet for the most part, like that’s that for sure. I think that’s I have to sort of resonate a bit with Miss Piggy.

I mean, Fraggles was I that I went through all the different Fraggles having different favorite ones and like would be a different one for Halloween every year. But I have a real warm spot in my heart for Red because she’s she’s quite sort of loud and boisterous. And my favorite color is red.

But the one of the coolest things I think I found out, the puppeteer, I believe it’s Karen Prowell, who was the puppeteer for Red, made a switch to video game design in sort of the mid 2000s and did all the designs on Portal 2, the bad guy in Portal 2. She was like the lead designer for that and and worked for Elle for a while, which I thought was really cool, because I would say that is one of my favorite video games of all time.

[Phil Rickaby]
So there you go. There you go. Full circle, Earl Circle.

I was always I was a Kermit guy for so long. I think I’m leaning more towards Gonzo lately, and maybe that’s because of his he’s he’s the lead in the most accurate version of A Christmas Carol. And also he’s a weirdo.

And I really kind of feel like we should all embrace our inner weirdo.

[Liz Buchanan]
Well, and I question, do you think it also is? I would I would guess I probably gravitate towards Gonzo more than Kermit recently. And I wonder how much of that is just the consistency in the puppeteering, because obviously losing Jim Henson, Kermit’s voice changes and like little aspects of them.

They’ve tried to keep it pretty consistent.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, they’ve tried. They’ve tried. But but you’ve had the same guy doing Gonzo for a long time.

I don’t know if he’s still doing Dave Wells.

[Liz Buchanan]
And I do read it. I don’t actually read it with that. He certainly was like a few years ago.

[Phil Rickaby]
I know. And it is that it might be that consistency, because when the voice changes, you sort of you sort of like you sort of sort of switch, you know, even when when Frank Goss stopped doing Miss Piggy, it changes a bit, you know? Yeah.

All right. Just as we are absolutely coming to a close here, is there do you have something coming up? Is there something you’re working on that you could talk about?

[Liz Buchanan]
I haven’t. You know, I’m writing like the odd thing here and there that’s not going anywhere. I guess I’m going to be I’ve got a friend who’s it’s her very first show.

My friend Renata’s written something that I’m going to a we’re doing that. We’ve got a couple of table reads for it because she’s still it’s her very first play. And I think she just wants to kind of like hear it a few times.

So I think we’re looking at putting that on in the near future. And then I was just going to show right after Fringe, Ryan Zero, we do an annual I call her our annual Shakespeare Mad Dash, because it’s always the weekend after Hamilton Fringe. So you can imagine a lot of rehearsing happens in that five days leading up.

[Phil Rickaby]
I can imagine. But how does anybody have any energy left after Fringe?

[Liz Buchanan]
I think it’s a combination of people are you’re trying to beat the post Fringe blues. We did. I really the script this year was I Dream of Hamlet.

And I think we’re hoping to remount that at some point for a wider audience because we do it for the Simcoe. It’s the Norfolk County Friendship Festival. It’s it’s part of that.

We’ve got some sponsors in Norfolk that and then they’re really good. The Simcoe community comes up and is really lovely and supportive of it. But we I think we’re hoping that we can it has some legs to remount as well.

So I think that’s going on right now.

[Phil Rickaby]
Nice. That’s great. Well, Liz, thank you so much for joining me.

I really appreciate it and look forward to seeing what you do next.

[Liz Buchanan]
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on. It was nice chatting with you.

[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I really enjoyed that conversation with Liz. I want to take a second to talk about my Patreon because I can’t make this show without the people who’ve chosen to be patrons of this show.

People like Georgia, who backs this episode because they like the work that I do. If you like the work that I do, if you like this show, go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron and help me make this show. Patrons get to be part of the making of the show, get early access to episodes and membership is super affordable and in Canadian dollars too.

So if you like the show, and you want to help me make it, just go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron.