Lisa Marie DiLiberto is making theatre that doesn’t sit quietly

About This Episode:

Lisa Marie DiLiberto, Artistic Director of Theatre Direct, joins Phil Rickaby for a wide-ranging conversation about one of Canada’s most enduring theatre companies for young audiences. With the company approaching its 50th anniversary in 2026, Lisa Marie shares how she’s been preparing to honour that legacy — from digging through decades of archives to planning a celebration at the Canadian Theatre Museum that will feature five decades of performance.

Lisa Marie traces her own journey from training in classical acting at George Brown Theatre School and clowning with Philippe Gaulier in Paris, through founding her own company Fixpoint Theatre, to taking the helm at Theatre Direct in 2019. She speaks candidly about the realities of sustaining an arts career in Canada, the value of collaboration over competition between theatre companies, and how COVID reshaped, and in some ways reinvigorated, the work she wanted to do.

This episode explores:

• Theatre Direct’s history, mission, and preparations for its 50th anniversary season in 2026
• Lisa Marie’s path from George Brown Theatre School and Paris clown training to founding Fixpoint Theatre and leading Theatre Direct
• Why Theatre for Young Audiences is vital – and how to reach kids who didn’t choose to be there
• Site-specific and participatory theatre as a strategy for engaging young audiences and navigating gatekeepers
• And much more!

Guest: 🎭 Lisa Marie DiLiberto

Lisa Marie is the Artistic Director of Theatre Direct Canada, formerly Artistic Director and founder of FIXT POINT Arts and Media, and co-creator of The Tale of a Town, a site-specific theatre and media project that has toured to every province and territory in Canada. She is a Dora nominated Director and the co-creator of Main Street Ontario an animated series now airing its second season on TVO. Ms. DiLiberto holds a Masters of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies from York University where she is currently pursuing her PhD. Past posts include Playwright-in-Residence at Theatre Passe Muraille, Associate Artistic Director at Jumblies Theatre, and Education & Audience Development Coordinator at Canadian Stage. Lisa Marie is an Artistic Advisor for the National Arts Centre and a graduate of George Brown Theatre School and École Philippe Gaulier in Paris, France. She is an advocate for artist caregivers through Theatre Direct’s initiative Balancing Act and the proud mom of two wild children.

Connect with Lisa Marie & Theatre Direct

🌐 Website: theatredirect.ca

📸 Instagram: @theatredirect

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Transcript

[Phil Rickaby]
Hello, welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. Stageworthy is Canada’s theatre podcast, and on Stageworthy, I talk to people who make theatre in Canada, whether they are actors, directors, playwrights, stage managers, producers.

If they’re making theatre in Canada, I’m talking to them. Some of the people I talk to will be household names, and the rest are people I really think you should get to know. If you’re watching on YouTube, please make sure that you like this episode.

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Did you know that I have a Patreon? I do have a Patreon because I can’t do this show without the help that my patrons are giving me. If you would like to be one of the people that helps me to make the show, I will talk a little bit more specifically about the perks that you’ll get as a subscriber and just a little bit more about that at the end of the show right before I tell you about who my guest is next week.

But for the moment, if you’re interested in helping me to make this show, I just want you to know, go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. My guest this week is Lisa Marie DiLiberto. Lisa Marie is the Artistic Director of Theatre Direct in Toronto.

Theatre Direct is a theatre company that produces theatre for young audiences, for be they toddlers to teenagers, basically. T to T, I guess. Theatre Direct is about to enter its 50th year, which is a massive milestone for any theatre company.

We talk a little bit about what it’s like preparing for that and so much more. Here’s my conversation with Lisa Marie DiLiberto. Lisa Marie DiLiberto, thank you so much for joining me.

I really appreciate your coming on the program. There’s a whole bunch of things I want to talk about today. But I think obviously, since you are the Artistic Director of Theatre Direct, we should start with that.

For those who don’t know, what is Theatre Direct?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Hopefully most people in Canada know about Theatre Direct, but I understand not everybody does. Theatre Direct is almost 50 years old. So next year will be the 50th anniversary season.

So that is upcoming. It’s stressing me out, but I’m very excited. Theatre Direct was founded in 1976 by David S.

Craig, a really amazing artist and creator. Actually, he’s begun collaborating again with the company now for the 50th anniversary. The company creates, produces, and presents theatre for young audiences.

Sometimes that means really little, tiny people from 0 to 3 or 3 to 6. Sometimes that means post-secondary students. So youth all the way up to 30, really.

The company also has work that we do with children, depending on the Artistic Director and what the ethos is. So work that incorporates children in the performance and creation of the work. Although it’s not a theatre school.

A lot of people ask, oh, you run a theatre for young audiences company. Can my kid do acting there? Yes, of course we have programming for that.

But mostly it’s us hiring professional actors to create work, develop work, or produce and present work that we then present at theatres, in community settings, and tour to schools, both in Toronto, provincially and nationally, and sometimes internationally as well.

[Phil Rickaby]
As the theatre company is heading into its 50th year, that’s a big legacy, 50 years. How do you plan for that? How do you celebrate 50 years?

I can understand why that’s daunting as the Artistic Director. How do you plan for a legacy like that?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Well, Phil, I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while. This is my sixth year, so that’ll be my lucky number seven year at the company for the 50th anniversary. Fortunately, I have a lot of experience working with archives and stories from the work that I did previously to this post.

So I’ve been really thinking about how we can capture the memory and legacy of all the people that have contributed to the company. We’ve been working over the last couple years to get all the archives out of the storage. They’re all out of the storage and off the shelves, and we’ve gone through them systematically, cataloging what they’re trying to put those in order.

So that’s been done, and also going through that, looking at all the names and the people that have contributed, and starting to make a list of those people that we want to invite back. It’s really interesting because I had one of our summer students doing that one year, and you really can’t find a lot of those people online that were there 50 years ago because there’s not a lot of record of their work online. That’s not where their work lives.

So that’s really interesting as well to think, oh, there’s maybe an obituary or a couple of things from their family or personal life, but that’s just not the way that we cataloged our work back then. It’s hard to even imagine, but it wasn’t put online on websites, and even if it was in the press, often that’s kind of turned over. But I’ll just say we’ve been making a list of these names of people that we want to invite back, and then we’ll have a big celebration at the Canadian Theatre Museum, actually, in the end of April next year.

And during that celebration, the plan is to perform the archives in some way. So to create an exhibition, but also have different groups of kids performing the archives. Hopefully from very, very young, all the way to David S.

Craig, who was the founder, performing different decades. So we’re looking at five different decades and five different 10-minute performances. That’s the plan right now, though I’ve gone through many plans in my head.

I’m really the kind of person that looks at the next thing in front of me, and I’m planning a little bit, like getting things ready, but when I get in the room with all those archives, or in the room with all of those ideas, and it’s a time to really dig in, that’s when I’ll really dig into that. But the plan also is to interview all of the artistic directors over the past, and all of those kinds of things. And we’ll make an archive, an exhibition for the Canadian Theatre Museum as well.

[Phil Rickaby]
What an exciting place to celebrate 50 years, to be able to do that at the Canadian Theatre Museum, which is something I’m super excited to dig into when it opens, just to be able to go through everything that they’ve got going on. And with a 50-year theatre company, it’s perfect to just bring that out there.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
I think so. And we should get all your podcasts in there too. I mean, they’ve been doing all these things called the Legend Library.

So they’ve been interviewing people as aging, these kind of legends. But the work that you’re doing would be a really great addition to the Canadian Theatre Museum, for sure.

[Phil Rickaby]
My plan is eventually to, I don’t know, gift it to the museum, because it’s at this point like 466 episodes today. And so we’ll see how many it is once it’s finally done. But it’s the kind of place that I would like those to live.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
That’s amazing. Like capturing these stories and this work that people are doing in the moment that they’re doing it, because the work we do is so ephemeral, it’s so valuable and so important. And I think a lot of us don’t take the time to document.

Well, we document what we’re doing, but then to talk about the process. And even if we do document it, like where does it live? Now it’s not lost in a box, but it’s lost somewhere in the back file of your computer.

So collecting all of these stories, it’s really amazing. I’m sort of obsessed with that kind of thing. And looking at the history of theatre and different theatre movements in Canada, especially the ones that are really at risk of being lost.

Because our work isn’t recorded in this way. It happens in a moment, so it’s only the recording of the event, but the event itself.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s one of those things where I think, for me also, so many people in this industry don’t get interviewed. There are people, headliners at Stratford, people who do the big shows at Mirvish and things like that. They often are the ones who get interviewed.

And there’s so many people making theatre in this country that we don’t hear from. I’m curious about your journey to become the Artistic Director of TheatreDirect. We were talking before I hit the record button about going to George Brown Theatre School.

When did artistic directorship become something that you thought of or wanted to do?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Oh, well, I think really it’s a tactic to be able to continue being an artist here in Canada, to become an artistic director. I find that that’s one of the methods or one of the paths that we have as artists to carve out a life or a career in working in theatre. Unfortunately, we don’t have so many companies or ensembles.

We don’t have contract work. And I know you’ve talked about this before on different episodes of the podcast, but if you go to Europe, they have a company of artists in each theatre company, and they hire five, six, seven, ten artists, actors, technicians, stage managers, you know, and they’re on salary for an extended contract, and they do all their work with them. And it’s so well-funded.

And that’s amazing. But we don’t have that here. So I became an artistic director.

Well, I would say I guess I’m really grateful to be an artistic director now because I’m able to continue being an artist and make a living doing that in a consistent way. And I need that because that’s just the kind of, I’m looking for that kind of life. I live here in Toronto.

I have two children and working. I have to work. That’s just, it’s not an option for me to sometimes work and sometimes not work.

You know, having a steady employment is vital for the kind of life that I’m living, which isn’t a fancy life. It’s just a life living in Toronto and supporting a family, along with my partner. But Phil, I would say when I graduated theatre school, George Brown at the time, when we went there, man, like it was a lot about commercial-driven work and success, having a certain haircut, getting a headshot, getting an agent, getting into commercials, getting on TV, selling things.

I didn’t want to do that. I was like into theatre for a social, political, like, reason. I thought like we could use theatre and arts to change something.

And I still believe that to say a message to, and use our gift as theatre artists to speak out, to say something, to advocate, to be activists. So my work has always had a hint of that with a hint of clown. But eventually I worked with a bunch of different companies touring on different stages here.

And I worked at Second City for a couple of years and Tony and Tina’s wedding. That was awesome. I think that kept me being an actor because I had this job for almost two years that I went to every day.

Did a lot of TYA touring at the same time. Anyways, then I wanted to make my own work because I sort of didn’t want to hear what everyone else had to say, or I didn’t really, wasn’t really starting to not take direction in the way that probably I should have. And I thought I better create my own work because I have some things I want to make and do and be in charge of.

And I really like leading. I’ve always liked to lead. So then I started my own theatre company, Fixpoint Theatre.

And I think that was probably in 2005 around. I started to create my own work and then named myself the artistic director of my own company, which, you know, as we do, and I was also the lead performer and I wrote the shows. And I could just do by myself whenever I wanted.

But strangely, the company, not strangely, but ironically, I guess the company just needed so much and grew so large that this one person show that I imagined I would do about my neighborhood, The Tale of a Town, turned into a really epic national production with teams of artists all across the country. And I was artistically directing those. And as I became, when I became pregnant, I began directing.

And then I was directing in different spots when I had my little kids, directing a show, moving to another spot, directing a show. So, and finally, I guess it’s such a long answer, but finally, when Theatre Direct came up, my husband and I were working together with Fixpoint. And it was, we were doing pretty well.

You know, we had salaries and things, we had operating funding and, you know, it was an incorporated not-for-profit company and still continued for many years after that. It’s just on a bit of a hiatus now because we both have other jobs. But when Theatre Direct came up, I just thought this is a great opportunity to get on board a company that was really stable and operating.

I had really small kids. And also to get on board with a company that my kids could be totally involved in. And I, and that was really important to me that my kids could come along.

And I thought, well, this is such a great opportunity. You know, when I knew that Linda was leaving, I thought, I’m going to get in there. And now when people ask me, can you come to this play?

It’s probably going to be a play for kids, or it’s going to be a play I can bring my kids to. And they’ve been part of a lot of projects along the way. And that’s been, that’s been really important to me, the merging of my life and my family.

So that’s probably where, it’s a big answer of how I came to be Artistic Director here and the Artistic Director of Theatre Direct in particular.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. You were mentioning about how, when you, at a certain point you decided you wanted to make your own work. That is something that the theatre school did not prepare us for.

I don’t know about like- The vocal mask, maybe. Maybe the vocal mask, like, maybe. But- Maybe, like you had to make that.

You had to make that, but you can’t be original. Like the vocal mask, you’re like collecting all this stuff and it has, it has to be original, unoriginal.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
It’s not original. It’s not original.

[Phil Rickaby]
You can’t have written it. You’re putting it together. But the career that I felt, and they basically said, like, we are preparing you for, you’re going to go to auditions, you’re going to get a job at Stratford or Shaw, and that’s, you go between Stratford, Shaw, maybe you do a Mervis here and there, but that’s what you’re going to do.

And the idea of, of self-producing or creating your own theatre was not something that was anything that anybody ever talked about. But very shortly after graduating, it was like, oh, the only way that anybody’s going to see what we do here is if we do some stuff ourself.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yes.

[Phil Rickaby]
There’s no way around it. I think theatre schools are, have come to that, but it took a long time to get there.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah, I think they have come to that. You know, now there’s a lot of, you know, Humber became a place for that for a while. And I don’t know if George Brown totally got on board, but definitely wasn’t discouraged.

The fact that you would, maybe they have devised creation projects. I know at York they have that. I’ve taught a few of those, Brock.

But you really, you know, producing, being able to produce your own work and devise your own work. Yeah, you can learn how to like project your voice across the stage at Stratford, but not a lot of people are going to have the opportunity to do that. Not like graduate class after class of graduates.

And it’s unfortunate because I think they’re selling this kind of dream that there’s even an opportunity for people to be a professional actor in Canada. And I know a lot of really successful people, like actors in Canada, and that’s still really hard. I mean, people that you, we would all look at and think, wow, that’s a really well-known actor here in Canada.

And still it’s gig to gig to gig, you know?

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. There are just too few theatres in this country to be able to support what you’re talking about. Like, you know, the idea of being an actor who works constantly.

And like you were saying earlier about how in England, the National Theatre has a repertoire of actors who like, they’re employed for the year and everybody’s employed for the year. They’re the company. And the only places that can do that here are like Shaw and Stratford.

And that’s like basically for an extended summer. But it’s, yeah, for six months. Yeah.

And there, I mean, the funding is different because there, the theatre, I was looking into this recently, like what’s the difference in the theatre? Theatres in the UK are funded from the lottery, not from tax dollars. And so when the lottery is people like, you know, all the money from the lottery essentially goes to the arts.

It’s one of the things that funds, whereas here it comes out of tax dollars.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Well, not totally because it comes out of the lottery here too. I mean, a lot of theatres that are not-for-profit companies work bingos. And those bingo dollars go straight back into the theatre.

Not all of them.

[Phil Rickaby]
Right.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
But there is like that lottery money. We don’t, Theatre Direct used to do that. I know a lot of companies, I volunteer for different boards.

And so there is some, and the Trillium Foundation, that’s a lottery, right? That’s all lottery money that comes, filters through to the organizations, through lotteries. So there’s some, but not the same.

[Phil Rickaby]
Not on the level that it is there.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Not on the level. But I do think like there are, I don’t want to be all like Debbie Downer about, you know, actors in Canada, of course, either. I think there is on the other side of it, a really big opportunities to create your own work and to find spaces and support to do that.

I mean, the granting system does, you know, support a lot of project-based companies and project-based grants. And, you know, we can get that. And with the ensemble thing, I mean, it’s also something theatre companies can try and do.

I actually noted that in rehearsal today, we were rehearsing a new piece at Theatre Direct called A Period Piece. It’s about periods. And it’s a really amazing, like feminist play, these two young, two young creator performers.

And, but the sound designer on that show is one of the actors from our last, from our Raccoon Solstice show. And the video designer is the person who also did the sound on our last show. And like, they’re all, they’ve all, the designer for this show was the creator, the performer for another show.

So I’m seeing the faces of the same artists two, three, sometimes four times for four projects in the year. And I’m doing that on purpose, not because I want to, don’t want to give other opportunities, but you first of all, you’re looking for people that you can work with. And these people are so talented, right?

Because of the way it’s been here in Canada, we have to learn so many things. I mean, we’ll, we can do theatre, podcasting, recording, design, music, all these kinds of things, artistic directing, producing, you know, even though we’re trained as classical actors at George Brown Theatre School. So, you know, and I’m really happy to think, oh, maybe these artists are able to string together something with if I can give them three, four or five contracts for that year.

And same with the producers, because I could hire one producer for every show. But somehow what I try to do is take the money and string it together so that I can have a staff so I can offer some meaningful employment to three, four or five folks that also can have benefits and work part time. The only thing is, and I have to say this all the time, is that that means that we all have to work on all the projects and do all of the work, you know, so we’re all like each other’s crew and we’re all each other’s ticket, front of house, and we’re all each other’s, you know, we’re doing all this work that you might hire people out for.

That’s one option. Or you say, I’ll hire you because you’re a really amazing person, but, and you’re going to lead produce on some of these things and do some really amazing things. But on the other ones, you’re going to have to probably mop the floor, take out the garbage and be the front of house person.

Because that’s how I can string it together.

[Phil Rickaby]
It feels like to me, like the kind of company that you would see in the old movies or something where everybody’s sort of like, everybody works together and you’re in this show and you’re the costumer. Like it seems like a very old style, like company kind of thing, which I think we could probably use more of because that forms community that lasts longer than a single contract.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
No, I feel like totally, it’s really is like that. It’s a bit like a circus in that way. And once in a while the staff or the artist will say, like, are we collaborating on everything?

Like, it’s so, you know, and I’m like, yeah, we really are. We’re just collaborating on everything. That’s how we’re going to make this work.

And I like doing it like that. I really do. But everyone has their own style, you know, it drives some people mad, but I think they also like it.

[Phil Rickaby]
I think it’s important that an artistic director brings their personality, their way of working to a company, right? You have to make it your own when you come in, you have to find like the way that you want to work within the company, right?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yes, you have to within that. That’s what I do say that too, like this is kind of the way that I do things. But the interesting thing is, and probably I’m not alone in this because most of us that became artistic directors or producers or managing directors or came up studying theatre and acting or theatre production, most of us made all the other stuff up.

Like, I definitely, when people say, you know, I think I have a better way of doing this. I think, yeah, you probably do. Like, you probably, you might have learned that somewhere.

You might have went to school for that. Like, I went to school for classical acting at George Brown, and then I studied clown in Paris. And the rest of the stuff I made up, just as I was making my company up, I was inventing, I think I made up my own way to use a spreadsheet in my own way.

And now I think sometimes people say, oh, I learned the way to do this from Lisa Marie. And I think, well, I’m sure there’s a better way. Like, I’m sure there’s a better way to do all of these things.

But this is just, you know, how I do it. I put pieces of brown paper on the wall, and that’s how I make the play. You know, that’s just how I did it.

[Phil Rickaby]
I think it’s interesting about being somebody in the theatre, somebody who’s an actor, is to all of the things that we ingest, all of the knowledge that we learn. And if you’re producing as well, you’re trying to make it work within also being an actor, being a director. And you do kind of become very much a Jack or Jill of all trades.

And the fact that you have the creative brain, which is why people say to companies, you know, you don’t want to hire an actor because they didn’t, you know, they didn’t take good at business school, but they think creatively. You should be looking at that. You know, you should be looking, wanting people who have a creative brain, but we do.

So we come up with our own ways of doing things and they work.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah. And they work, you know, and I do. It takes a lot of creativity to run a company and run a business.

And I do think there’s also, you know, we can let actors, we can acknowledge that those artists that are working with us have other artistic dreams and pursuits. You know, I try to bring that in. So for example, like Madeline Brown, she’s amazing.

Do you know her? You should interview her.

[Phil Rickaby]
I’ve talked to Madeline before. She had very much a background. She was doing some, a couple of fringe shows and I talked to Madeline.

Yeah.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah. She’s pretty rad.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
She worked at Theatre Direct as a producer for a long time and then she, you know, said, okay, I need to, you know, then we produced her show that she was writing and that was cool. So she produced her own show as part of the company. And then she just starred in our production of our world premiere of George F.

Walker’s Syndrome. Right. And, you know, what a talented person, but, you know, it’s really awesome to be able to, when people are spending a lot of time behind the computer, behind the screen, doing admin and producing work, to see them also have the opportunity to do their artistic work.

And not everyone can do that. Not everyone wants to do that. Like there’s creativity in all of that.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Lisa Marie, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about Theatre for Young Audiences because I think it’s, it’s worth talking about why Theatre for Young Audiences is so important.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
That’s a big question. I mean, it’s, it’s why is it so important? Oh goodness.

I know that in my bones. You know, it’s key that we, we make really awesome Theatre for Young Audiences, first of all, because sometimes that’s a person’s first encounter with theatre. So it’s a big responsibility because if they don’t like it, they’re probably not coming back.

You know, and I’m talking, I guess now I’m imagining the high school audiences that we had for Syndrome recently. And some of them came from far and wide, different, you know, neighbourhoods around Toronto. And I had a few of them, I would ask, like, is this your first time seeing a play?

And a lot of them, you know, they were in grade nine, they were like, yes. And you kind of almost have to remind some kids, you know, not a ton of kids and teens are flocking theatre. And, and I think that they’re seeing sometimes like Mirvish or general audiences shows or little kids shows, but for teens, I think it’s really important for them to see that theatre can be really exciting.

So that we’re, you know, cultivating the next generation of theatre makers. And I think right now, as always, and for kids and for everyone, being together in a room, not on our phones, not on our screens, looking up, being participating in event, we are like, it’s a small, like, it’s a small activist activation, you know, it’s a, I can’t really, I can’t really find the word, but that moment that we’re together in the room, experiencing something live. That’s something that doesn’t, that we don’t experience as much anymore.

We hardly experience those things in our public life, you know, when we’re standing at the bus stop, when we’re, you know, waiting at an office, when we’re going on a walk, we’re stuck to something else. We’re not like live in the moment. I think theatre asks all of us and kids, especially that, you know, trains them at the beginning of life to look up and to use all their senses, to notice where they are and who they’re with, and that we can share experiences together.

Remember that we’re all, that we all are connected in this way.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, theatre has that thing where, you know, it’s not a movie. Everybody’s in the room, including the performers, which for people, for kids who haven’t been to the theatre, it must be a new experience.

And I think you started to say that sometimes you have to remind people that this is not a movie.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Oh, I do. I say that. I said at the beginning of Syndrome, like, this is not a movie.

There’s no screen. So, you know, you can, and you can react that the teachers are like, and I say to the teachers, just like, it’s okay. They can react.

You know, they can, if they’re going to react negatively, that’s not their fault. That means the play’s bad. You know, that means the play’s boring or, you know, something like they’re, it’s our job to engage them and to solicit their reaction, the reaction that we want.

And they come in there, like one time in Syndrome, the, there was, you know, we were in Parkdale, the assembly theatre, great spot, really cool, amazing spot. You know it?

[Phil Rickaby]
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
It’s just like, and I think a garbage truck came by or a siren or an ambulance at the same moment they were talking about the police. And someone said, whoa, that was so cool, like, that you had, like, the siren out the window and, you know, while you were talking about the police. And I said, well, that was just a coincidence.

You know, that just happened right now. And that will maybe never happen again. That only happened right now in this one time that you were here to see this experience.

And we, this experience that we shared will never happen again. So what’s so important about that? Gosh, like, it’s hard to put a finger on it.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s something that is, it, like, it’s getting used to impermanence, right? Like the idea, because theatre, the experience of watching a play, this performance will only exist right now at this time. And it’ll never be exactly this way again.

Actors are, you know, the actors have to let it go. The audience has to hold it. And like, this is, this is, this, this one’s mine.

It’s a thing that we don’t get anywhere else, because TV, you can rewatch and movies you can rewatch and pretty much everything you can rewatch.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
That we are together, we are alive, you know, like, remembering that we are together, we are alive, like what we say in the moment affects someone else’s emotions. Like it’s, it’s, it’s something about that.

[Phil Rickaby]
I was thinking, as you were talking about some of the, some of the audiences, like, especially some of the, the high school audiences, I do know there are a lot of kids of a high school age who are interested in theatre and their experience of theatre because they can’t afford like Broadway tickets is watching what they’re calling slime tutorials or the bootlegged video of plays on their computers. And that’s how they’re experiencing theatre, which is not the, it’s not the full experience because to get that you have to be in the room.

I understand why they do it because, you know, you, they can’t afford to go see the show, but it’s almost like, like, like you want people at, you were talking about cultivating the, the, the new generation of theatre makers, but we also need to create, cultivate the new generation of theatre goers, people to make that a habit in their lives and to understand like, why this is different from watching, watching it on your computer screen or watching a movie or watching TV because it is so different.

Have you noticed the kids comment on the difference? Have you, have they experienced that?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s, it’s about this thrill that they get from being together. I mean, they come out, they’re like, Whoa, what’s that?

Like, how did you, how did you put that all together? You know, that’s their obsession with like, how did you learn all those lines? Like, how did you, how long did this take?

How did you put that all together? You know, the kinds of feelings like in many of those, because we just came off syndromes, which is why I’m referring to a lot, but in many of them, like they, there was no force. I mean, they were reacting, they were, you know, someone said in the play as part of the play, does anyone want the last honey dip of the timbits?

And all the front row was like, I do, I do. Like, like we, like as if they were like kind of in there with us, but you know, to comment on what you were saying too about like, they can’t go to merge and they’re watching the slam TV or whatever.

[Phil Rickaby]
The slime tutorial, yeah.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yes, sorry. Cause I don’t know much about what’s going on there. I should, you know, as a person who creates theatre for that age group, but I’m just, I’m real diehard, like theatre is, well, that’s just keep, keep it, keep it on track.

Like keep it, keep it theatre. I never really got into the, all the media mediations of theatre during COVID, you know, I really didn’t. I wrote a lot of papers about how I thought it was not actually theatre, but anyways, I think it’s on us to bring the theatre to those kids, you know, it doesn’t have to be at Mirvish.

That was the cool thing about doing that play at assembly. Tons of kids from Parkdale high school came, you know, and they were seeing a play like in a crowded little room where they’re sitting on the floor and you know, we can bring it to their schools. We can bring it to the alley.

We can bring it to the park. We can bring it to the community center. Like theatre doesn’t have to be there.

We can, we all, we know that now, especially like it’s exploding almost in Toronto, that site-specific work that’s happening in every corner. There’s so many great ideas. I remember, and you probably do like when there was a time and I’m sure it goes in ways where site-specific theatre was really, you know, it was jaw-dropping.

People thought, wow, they’re doing plays in warehouses and other buildings. And people have been always doing that, of course, but now like we’re seeing that everywhere and we can keep doing that and we can do that for kids too. Like we can bring theatre.

They don’t have to, kids don’t want to sit down. You know, that’s also why I changed a lot of this style of work. And I’ll be honest, I’m basically, I’ve been curating work that follows the trajectory of my own kids’ ages because I’m interested in what they’re interested in.

And I can understand that age group better as I parent them. But you know, even coming into theatre directed, the kids don’t want to be told another time that they have to sit down and be quiet and listen. They want to like move and walk around and get up and react.

And you know, they want to be immersed in a piece in a different way. Immersive site-specific participatory theatre, that catches them because that’s where their attention is. It’s really hard to get a kid to sit down and watch a play sitting in a seat for an hour, 90 minutes, two hours.

I judge how good a play is by how many times my youngest son tells me, when is the end? Is this over? He asks me five times.

It’s like really bad. Four times. It’s three times.

It’s pretty good. Two is like, not like, okay. And once is almost spectacular because he doesn’t want to sit and watch the play in that same way.

[Phil Rickaby]
When kid does. I mean, I think that’s the thing about kids, you know, once they’re, you know, when they’re, when they’re quite young is we can’t expect them to sit and be quiet. And, and that’s why a lot of the shows like the Panto is so active and the kids are so great, loud to call back.

It’s almost Shakespearean in the way that they get the, the, the kids, the kids to, to be active because, you know, if you were to tell the kids to sit down and be quiet, that’s going to last five minutes. Cause they’re going to be not, not paying attention anymore.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah. They get a little bit bored. You know, there’s this company we’ve been working with in, in Sweden called Unga Klara.

They’re the national theatre for young audiences company in Sweden. They’re really amazing. I met this, the artist, one of the co-artistic directors there and just struck me.

We were both wearing like a hat and we looked and we both wanted to make this kind of like participatory, site-specific work in small spaces. Anyways, we started to connect more and more. And he came over to do a workshop here with our artists about how to meet, how to really create work from a child’s perspective.

And that was really interesting. One of the big things he said that I always listened to is that the kids didn’t, mostly didn’t choose to come. It’s different.

It’s a different contract. They’re sent there or brought there or put there. They didn’t pay the money.

They didn’t seek it out. So when we meet them, we have to acknowledge that like, okay, you’re here. And I know maybe you didn’t want to come here, but you know, all right, we’re here together.

I’m going to, I’m going to ease you into that. I’m not going to pretend like you’re here. I’m so glad you’re so glad.

Cause maybe sometimes they’re not so glad that that’s the thing that they had to do.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, no, that’s true. That’s very true. It is a very different audience and they’re going to react the way that they react.

When I was in, when we were doing, when I was at George Brown, we were doing our, our, our, our children’s show, which I think we did in second year.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Oh, did you munch?

[Phil Rickaby]
No, we did. We were doing different ones at that point. We did Aladdin.

We did a little thing.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Okay, nice.

[Phil Rickaby]
But as somebody said, kids are honest. They’re the most audience, the most honest audience you’ll ever see because they’re going to tell you what they think. Absolutely.

And their actions are through their words.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Well, cause they don’t know how they haven’t learned. I don’t guess that there’s the value in like them learning to sit and listen. Cause there’s, you have to learn that at some point, you know, I am trying to teach my kids that and they can somewhat do that now, but it is a, it is a learned thing here to clap here and sit like this.

And, but you, you hope that people are doing it because they’re engaged.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Yeah. Now, is there, is there a quintessential theatre direct show in your mind?

Is there something that is the kind of theatre for young audiences that theatre direct will present?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Oh goodness. You know, I think it’s changed over, over different eras with different artistic directors, which I can speak to more as I, as I continue to dig through the archives, I can tell you that my predecessor, Linda Hill, she did a lot of work with really young audiences, zero to six. She ended up creating the WE Festival, which is a theatre for babies, zero to six.

And so that was really interesting. And I loved, and she brought a lot of international work and she still has this festival. It’s really successful and amazing.

So that, that became its own thing. So we haven’t touched that age group actually, because, you know, she’s doing that work. I’d say though, there’s a show that we’re doing right now, one that we worked on with that company, Unga Klara from Sweden, called The Guardians of the Gods.

It’s a pretty cool show. It involves 11 countries. So there are, this show that was written by Eric Udenberg at Unga Klara called Guardians of the Gods, was developed with interviews from kids and grownups about their childhood from all those 11 different countries about what it’s like to live in a world ruled by adults.

And so he did all of those interviews and then he put this beautiful poetic script together. That’s a lot, some verbatim texts and some poetic, like, renderings. I think it’s, it’s, it’s translated into seven languages, I believe.

There’s 11 countries. It’s translated into quite a few languages. And we went to work on that in Turkey last year with all the actors from these 11 different countries, and they’re now presenting it.

What makes it something quintessential theatre direct, even though we didn’t create that play, is that I think what I’m really interested in is how this work is for a younger, a smaller group, a smaller audience, and it’s really participatory. There’s no fourth wall. There’s never, there’s never someone like carrying a backpack and pretending they’re like a tiny kid, like going to school.

Like they do put on different characters, but we’re really trying to like connect with the kids and not fool them. So not really talking down to the kids. And yeah, a lot of the work that we’re doing is, is presentational as well.

So connecting with the kids and really talking to them, like that they’re, that they’re there. So we’re not pretending we’re in a bedroom and they’re looking in, you know, and it’s nighttime and we’re about to go to sleep and they’re looking in, but they’re there with us. So that’s the suspense.

We kind of take away that part of the suspension of disbelief. They’re with us in the space that we’re in and we’re doing this show that usually talks about their, their experiences and, and, and kind of digs into that. And, and it’s pretty edgy.

Some of the stuff like that one, you know, one of the lines is, I don’t believe in God, you know, when people are like, well, I believe in God, you know, someone else, or, you know, there’s some stories of, you know, people being like hit by their parents and, you know, those are all real stories. There were, there were hard things to get into schools. We had to sometimes just go into the school and then beg for forgiveness after they really liked those shows because, you know, kids want to, these are issues that kids are dealing with and it’s really hard to get those issues into the schools and even into the public because people are censoring so much what kids are allowed to listen to and hear, which then makes the work really surface level and boring and trite. So, you know, we really want to deal with these challenging themes that they’re actually thinking about, but it, it’s tricky.

It’s tricky to get them past the gatekeepers.

[Phil Rickaby]
Do you, in terms of getting past the gatekeepers, do you tend to do it and ask forgiveness later? Or do you, do you judge it based on the, on the school board? How do you, how do you get it past those gatekeepers?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah. Well, I’m, I’ve always been a, like a risk taker in this kind of way. Like I’d rather just like, you know, put the show up on that site and then, oh, we didn’t have a permit, but okay, well, we’ll get one, you know?

And, and then I, then as, as I become, as I start to work more and more above board with theatre direct and unions and, you know, producers or, or like, do we have a permit for this or are we allowed, or should we vet the script with, you know, I start to try to do it a little bit, but I’m most, the more, the more guerrilla style I can, I can go, the more I can kind of get in there, the better for me, because the more risks that we can take.

And, and as long as the show’s good, you know, like we don’t want to do anything that’s going to harm anyone or make anyone feel like, like they shouldn’t have seen those things. There’s definitely guardrails that we put up, like that show, Guardians of the Gods, you got, you have to be, you have to be 10 to see that show. Some people said like, oh, bring my eight year old.

And I said, no, like it’s, it’s not for eight year olds, but it’s for 10 year olds. But, you know, most grownups wouldn’t talk about these things with a 10 year old, but 10 year olds are the ones that told these stories. So it’s kind of our responsibility to kind of get these stories to the kids.

That’s what I remember. And that’s the thing with theatre direct, you know, you can do all this producing work, all this admin work, all this stuff, but it’s actually getting the stories and the work to the kids. That’s the point, you know, that’s the point of all of it.

And when we are in those moments, when we’re presenting those shows to the kids, that’s when we’re doing our job.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I think sometimes kids or parents of kids, they make assumptions about their, what their kid can, can handle. Like, they’re like, oh no, no, no.

My kid’s a very mature age. They’re, they’re particularly ready for this show. Yeah.

And the people who make the show are usually no, like you can tell, no, they’re, they’re not.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s not. And that happens with, with like non, um, non young theatre for young audiences. I remember being at the Halifax fringe a couple of years ago, Gillian, Gillian English was doing one of her shows and somebody came and they brought their six-year-old and, and, you know, she started the show and was like, you are six and you were probably too young for this show.

And their parent was like, they’re fine. And Julian said, you are probably not going to think that once the show starts, he’s like, we’re, they’re fine. And after the first F bomb, they were like taking the kid out.

And it was like, you know what you, we put a, we put the age on the show for a reason. You know, the kids were, we were trusted. We know what, what we think the kids can take.

And, and we do that for a reason, not just because we’re party poopers.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Not because we don’t want kids around, you know, it’s really an interesting one because you want to be, there’s a lot of shows, you know, we can make that are for everybody, you know, that, that play on so many levels. And sometimes it’s okay for a younger kid to come. They just won’t get it.

They just won’t get it. They just want to just go over their head. So there’s just really no point, you know, of that or an older kid coming to a show for like younger, younger kids.

You’re always playing on two levels when you’re doing theatre for young audiences, because you’re playing for the kids and you’re playing for the person who brings them as well. You know, unless you’re, but even, even if it’s a school audience, you’re playing for the teachers, like the show we’re working on right now, a period piece for grade sevens and eight. So probably for grade 12, 13, 14 year olds, they’re probably not coming on their own.

I mean, they could, I have a 12 year old, but they’re coming with their parents. So there’s, there’s jokes for, for the 12 year olds, but we know we’re working with like different kinds of media, like live feed video and YouTube and punk rock and kinds of music. And, you know, sometimes in the room, someone will say, well, this, I don’t know if this is exactly what the kids are into.

And I, and I, and I say, well, their parents are really into that. So this one, this one’s for them, like the kids, like we’ll get it enough. And then we’ll go back to like exactly what media channels they’re all using.

But, you know, if, if we get in there, we can see something a little bit retro or so that also helps because it, we’re, they’re also the audience. You’re, you’re not just making it for the kids. You’re making it for the grownups who are bringing the kids who are paying for their tickets or coming back.

So it, it’s tough, you know, it’s, it’s a tough balance.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Well, you do need to do it for, for the person who’s bringing in the kid, because if you bore them, they’re not going to bring the kid back. They’re gonna be like, I mean, the kid enjoyed it, but I was kind of bored.

We’ll find something else to do. Like you can’t, you, you have to be able to entertain both on some level.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah. Can you have ones where you drop off the kids, you know, different stuff I’ve, I’ve toyed with the, that idea, like the kids go here, the parents go there, there’s two programs. There’s that kind of thing, you know, that kind of leads us into a little bit of the work that we do to sometimes create access for artists who have kids, you know, that’s, that’s a strategy to have a show on a main stage and have a show on a smaller stage for kids so that parents can see a show that they love and kids can go see a show that they love and they can come on back together.

You know, they both, that, that’s, that would, that’s amazing. That’s, that, that really works, I think, in some way. And then they can sort of talk about the themes of that show.

It’s a bigger endeavor. We haven’t quite done that yet. They do that in the States in Britain and some, with some companies.

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s really interesting and we should probably explore that.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah. I’ll try to do that. I’ll do that next year.

I’ve thought about it.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Just, you need to do like, you need to build two shows, one really big, one for grownups, one for kids. It’s not impossible.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s not impossible. It’s just like, again, it’s like the, the, the finances of doing two shows.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah. Yeah. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll invite you, Phil.

Okay.

[Phil Rickaby]
Awesome. It’s going to be great. You come to both.

Awesome. Sure. Absolutely.

I’ll do both. As we mentioned, Theatre Direct is heading into its 50th year next year. And you have been, you’re heading, you will be in your seventh year as Artistic Director?

That’s right. Next year. It is, it then falls on you to set up Theatre Direct for its next 50 years.

To be like that person who’s, I’ve taken it into its 50th and at the end of my tenure, we have to be ready for it to continue on to the next 50th. How do you see the future of Theatre Direct and what is the mark that you would like to leave on it?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Well, I think it’s going to keep going for sure. I mean, that’s the, my, what I, the job I want to do is make sure it’s, it’s in a good position to keep going and keep growing. So that’s, you know, just in the immediate future that when I leave it, I leave it, you know, resourced and with a new work that it can do, continue to run and do.

But I also think that the next Artistic Director will decide sort of where they want to take, take the company from there. You know, it’s hard for me to know what, what’s next and what’s going to, going to excite the next person. I know I definitely took things in a bit of a different direction based on my artistic, you know, that’s the, the beauty of getting a role like this, that you can come in and think, okay, I’m going to do like site-specific participatory work in different weird places.

And that’s going to be my mark, you know, or, you know, we’re going to, so, so the next Artistic Director might think, oh, I’m going to, you know, take this and do a lot of like media new work and digital work. I really have no idea where it’s going to go. I hope it, I don’t think theatre is going to go anywhere.

You know, we know when people think like, oh, AI or, oh, media, or, you know, we thought that when TV came, we thought that when, we thought that when movies came, we thought that, you know, it’s, it’s, there’s, there’s nothing that can replace live theatre. It’s just, it’s just nothing. It’s been, been going on since forever and it, it will continue to go.

So as long as the funding, funding people, you know, our big recession in our economy and all those things, like what’s going to happen, you know, we need to make sure it’s like well-resourced and that could be, you know, maybe the next step of figuring out other kinds of revenue sources. I’m pretty good at finding different pockets of money because I had an independent, my own independent company for, you know, 15 years. So I had to, I, I got lots of little bits of money from a lot of different bits of places for a long time, you know, so, but if 50 years, geez, when will that be?

2026. Who’s the first? It’s going to be, you know, the hundredth anniversary.

Yeah. 2076. Will I be alive?

Will I come to that? That’d be kind of cool. Will, will the live and still be, exist on the internet?

Maybe they’ll, maybe they’ll look at this podcast.

[Phil Rickaby]
Maybe they will.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Hey, that artistic director came up. They, she did this podcast with Phyllis Stageworthy. She talked about the next 50 years and she didn’t say anything, anything of substance.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, how can you know? I mean, it’s not a fair question because how can you know? You have no idea.

You did say something that I want to explore. You talked about, you know, when you came in as an artistic director, you had ideas of what you wanted to do. When you came in, like, what was the reaction to the direction that you wanted to go?

Was there pushback from, from anyone? Was there, was there any kind of resistance to the direction you wanted to go in?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
You’re just looking for gossip now, just like, did anyone? No, it’s not gossip.

[Phil Rickaby]
I’m actually, I’m curious because, you know, when a new artistic director comes in, I think that among the people who were there and the people who like boards and other people, they might worry, like, what is this person? What direction are they going to go?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah, sure. I think so. I mean, the artistic director before me was there for 17 years, right?

So it was her, you know, it became her company. So of course, like, you care about that so much. It’s such a labor of love.

So I think that she really wanted to make sure that I was going to care for the company in the same way that she did and keep it going. So, but, you know, there wasn’t a resistance, just a hope that, that, that that would continue. As soon as I came in to theatre direct, they had no theatre anymore.

They were at Witchwood Barnes and they have that, you know, it was artscape thing where the rent kept going up and up and up. And so it just became unsustainable. So they didn’t have that space anymore.

And they just had a like a shared office space near Theatre Passemarais on Queen and Bathurst. And then, so I found this a new home here in like near Davos, Symington and DuPont in Toronto, just in the West End. It happens to be also, again, it’s all connected to how I can make that work.

You know, my kid’s school and my house, you know, I can see my kid’s school from the parking lot and my house is walking distance, but it was also where, you know, it was where Fixed Point was, so another place to go. So that was amazing. And then we got a studio here and then we got a, like this spot, which is sort of like a bit of a storage and where we’re kind of organizing the archives.

Anyways, the question was the resistance. Then COVID came. So I launched my very first season 20.

I started in 2019 in January. I built the season, launched it in September 2020. And then we began doing that work and then we stopped and then we changed a lot of stuff.

And then my expertise in creating site-specific, outdoor, like provenance style work really came in handy. I was already proposing that kind of work, but it didn’t matter to me actually before COVID came, just in September there in 2019 when I, you know, we did our first season launch party. I said, you know, I came into Theatre Direct and there’s no venue.

And that’s awesome. That’s exciting to me. That was so exciting to me because I love partnering with people.

I have a, you know, I did, that’s, I had to partner with people all across the country for projects that I did before my work at Theatre Direct. And I liked doing things in storefronts and parks and community centers and alleys. We did a big piece on the rail path.

So this was exciting to me. And then when COVID came, it was a little bit less exciting. It’s like a little bit more boring, couldn’t do really anything.

But then it built up again. Like we did the first show, definitely in Toronto for young audiences post-COVID, the first live performance, because we did it outside at the Humber River and we bussed like kids. Well, we couldn’t even bus kids in then.

The kids that could walked there and came and watched that show at the Humber River was Finding Home A Salmon Journey Upstream by Animacy Theatre Collective. And that was really exciting. And we had kids come there, you know, even because, you know, like 2021, 2022, still kids, school groups of school kids weren’t going in theatres to see shows for a while.

Yeah. So, so I think people were pretty happy with the direction that I, that I, that I took the company and everyone was pretty, knew that we were all doing our best because we were going through that, that really intense time.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. COVID, the, the COVID happening may have derailed some plans, but also presented opportunities to you in terms of like how you’re going to present. In fact, it derailed things so much that like coming back, almost a fresh slate.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
That’s right. That’s right. It did.

It did give me the opportunity to do some of that exciting, like site-specific work and then, and, and do some, some online stuff, do one of our plays Eraser during COVID. It was slated to, it was the first partnership between Theatre Direct, Young People’s Theatre and Rosny Theatre. You know, we got in the room to do the workshop production of that.

And someone from YPT who had been there for a long time. So this is the first time the three companies have partnered because there’s been such a competition between companies, you know, for so long. And TYA companies.

And I just didn’t live in that world because I didn’t live in that kind of institutional world. I was in a, we’re running an independent company where like, we just all were hoping that some of us got something that we could share with each other, you know, was it different? So I said, well, why don’t we partner?

Because also if we partner, then more kids get to see this show. That’s the point. That’s why we’re doing it.

We’re not doing to see like the kids that come to mine or come to yours. Like we all, the show goes to all these kids. Then that’s, that’s great.

And then that show ended up being a show called Eraser. Oh, what was it called? Anyway, Eraser, the COVID version.

Unplugged, I’m not sure. But these artists, these emerging artists did, I’ll think of that title and I’ll send it to you. But these kids did, not kids, emerging artists did this amazing work right off the, right off the hawk in the pandemic on zoom, in their rooms, sending things around through designers, created this work.

I mean, yes, we eventually figured out how to do it, but they did it then. Like they started in March, 2020 and the next year, I think maybe even by that year, but definitely the next year, every grade four or five and six student in Toronto saw that piece because we connected with the school board and it was about like how to navigate through this isolating time when you’re a young person, it was a really excellent piece. So we were able to like pivot in that, pivot in that way.

You can say that word again.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I think the idea of, of competition, I think is a, is kind of damaging in theatre. Like the idea that the theatres are competing with each other.

I think we, I, it needs to be forgotten, like Rosny Theatre. Yeah.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
No, we’re all buddies now. We’re all buddies. I was like, let’s go, let’s collaborate.

And they were like, yeah, I want to too. There was no resistance. Like, I just don’t think that was something that was like the norm.

[Phil Rickaby]
No. And it isn’t generally, but I think it’s, it’s so harmful to have that outlook in the theatre because our audiences, like people who go to your show, they’re going to come and see my show. Like that’s, that’s how we expand audiences.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Absolutely. Every time I see a good play, I think, okay, this is good. This is good for all of us.

If you see a bad play, you think, come on, like these people aren’t going back. I can’t invite them to see my play. Cause this, they didn’t like your play, but a good play.

And then in particular, a good play for young audiences. Well, that’s, that’s a win for all of us. That means those kids and those families are going to say, I’m going again to see theatre, you know?

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah. No, there’s been a lot. And now like really, I was talking to the Canada council recently and they said like in the core grant applications, there are so many partnerships.

I mean, almost everybody’s partnering and collaborating, like the huge institutional organizations down all the way to the indie companies because, because resources are becoming more and more scarce or the, the feeling that they’re becoming more scarce. People are safeguarding by, by doing all of these partnerships. And, and I think that’s great.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
I think that’s great. I think that’s bringing people together in a way. It’s great.

However, it might be a way to, you know, maybe less artists are being hired because more shows are being put together. I’m not sure.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s a, it’s a, it, it, it, I think we will see. And it, it is like that’s that dangerous, like slippery slope of like, yes, we’re able to do this and get more resources, but are a lot fewer people being hired. I think we’re, we’re, I think the next few years are going to be very, they’re going to be changes in the next few years, because I think that we’re going to have to learn how to bring in new audiences more than we ever have before.

And one of the things that we have, that we will have at our disposal, like I was talking with Rebecca Northern just a few weeks ago, is the fact that theatre can never be AI.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah, no.

[Phil Rickaby]
It will, you will always know that what you’re seeing is real people on that stage made by real people in that room. And so, and I think people are actually hungry for that. That’s why I don’t think there will ever actually be effective AI actors, because people want to know that there’s a real person.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Absolutely.

[Phil Rickaby]
I think the work that we do will be, it will set, set us apart and people will be hungry for it, I think.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Always, always has been, you know, it’s always been there. It always will be there, just to be alive. And it exists in all the rituals that we do.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Anyways, you know, you’re not going to have like an AI funeral or an AI wedding or an AI birth, you know, so those are, and just the same way, you’re not going to have an AI theatre performance. They’re just, yeah, for sure.

[Phil Rickaby]
I think somebody will try, and I don’t think it will work because theatre needs to be in the room. I think somebody’s going to try. Everybody’s going to try something.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
And that could be kind of interesting. Then there’ll be a play about that.

[Phil Rickaby]
There will be a play about that.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
There’ll be a play. There’ll be a lot of plays about AI.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yes.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
You know, but I, no, I think theatre’s like, I think it’s on, I think it’s on and up, even though we don’t think so. We don’t think a lot of audiences aren’t coming back, you know, they haven’t come back in the way that they were before, you know, talking to a lot of bigger institutional organizations. They say like they haven’t, they keep saying like they haven’t come back yet.

It’s not quite there. And then finally people realize it’s just not going to be the same as it was before. Those audiences, the way the audiences participated and subscribed and, you know, in terms of subscribers and the way, it’s just, that’s not the way it is anymore.

It’s different. It’s just a different time, but there’s so, it feels like there’s more interesting proposals in site-specific work and work that’s happening across the city, a little bit of more risk-taking, you know.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
It feels a little bit more exciting.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I think that, that, you know, when the audiences aren’t coming back, it’s because they got used to staying home and watching their television.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Yeah. Well, you can’t compete with Netflix. I mean, there’s some really good shows.

[Phil Rickaby]
But we also know that people are willing to pay for experiences. Yeah. Right.

So it’s, I think eventually we’ll figure out how to communicate the theatre experience and why people will go. We just haven’t figured it out yet because theatre moves at a certain pace and our promotional, you know, we need, we, we haven’t figured out how to, how to, how to express that yet. But when we do, I think it’ll be really great and people will come.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Starting like those kinds of experiences, like Dance Nation, I think that’s on right now. I think that’s an experience that’s happening at Coal Mine. It’s all through the theatre.

And there was just that piece at ARC, you know, that was also like a super site-specific piece that, you know, they’re offering more of an experience.

[Phil Rickaby]
I have one last question for Elisa Marie, and that is, you have mentioned your, your education at Clown in addition to the classical training at George Brown Theatre School. You went to the Philippe Goyer School in Paris, but how has Clown influenced your work at Theatre Direct?

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Amazing. Thanks for that question. Well, it influences all of it, you know, all of the work that I’m doing.

Even when I was working on the George F. Walker play, I thought I was, the joke was like, the director is a clown, so it’s going to be a clown show. But you know, that kind of work, the, the kind of work that you, we, I learned with Goyer is how to really read the audience, to hear the audience, to play for the audience, to pretend so well, to, to have a fixed point, you know, that’s the name of my company came from the work at Goyer, you know, to take one moment after another, to connect with your scene partner, with complicité, to make sure that someone was in major and then someone was in minor, to remember that it’s all a game, you know, that le jeu, like that we’re playing a game together.

And, and the audience is part of that game, you know, it’s all, it’s all for fun. And we have to be in the moment, we have to be playing the game of theatre in order to make it exciting, to be, to be connected. So our complicité together, every show that I do, every rehearsal that I start, we play a game at the beginning of the day, the beginning of the show, every show call starts with a game.

Usually they’re ones that I learned there. Every day of rehearsal starts with a game, you know, because it reminds us that we’re playing together. And if you’re playing a game and you are thinking about something else, or thinking about yourself, or thinking, or inside yourself, or then you’re forgetting that then you, the ball drops in that game and you forget that you’re there to be present with the people in that room.

And that’s what brings us back, like circles us back to that live experience. We’re there in that room with those people present and we have to be there playing that game with them. And so when we’re not like, that’s, that’s what it doesn’t, doesn’t really work.

And that’s a special thing that we could do is, is be in, in the game playing in. That’s why Philippe Scollier’s first stage is Les Jeux. He influenced my life a lot.

He passed away recently. I brought him here twice to Toronto. I, I, I went, I studied with him in Paris for Les Jeux and then I came back because when I was doing Second City, helped me a lot with improv comedy, timing, comedy, most beautiful characters.

It’s not just clown that Philippe taught. It was clown, bouffant, ultra neutral mask, tragedy, melodrama, vaudeville, beautiful, beautiful work. And then I brought him here for, to Canadian stage when I was working at Canadian stage, fixed point, brought him here and we did a stage.

I think there was over 30 people came from across the country to study bouffant and that started to spread around. And then I brought him back here again. And we did, he did a clown workshop with another 30 artists at the Russian Hall, just in, on Queen West near Passe-Muraille.

And then I took him to Chicago and Los Angeles, like produce workshops there in both those places. And that was extraordinary to spend time with him, like as a, as a mentor and a friend and a teacher. And he was really a brilliant person.

He was one of those people that you could look and to see what you were doing and just say, like, just move your head like this way a little bit and like, look up a little bit and then speak in just a little bit of a lower voice, go stop. And it was brilliant. And it didn’t even matter if he spoke that language or not.

He had a real beautiful, masterful, genius way of understanding theatre that I try to bring into all of the, the work that I’m doing. I guess that’s, that is something that connects all of the work that I’m doing at Theatre Direct. It all has, it’s all connected to those points that I learned through my work with, with Philippe Collier.

Composite, major, minor, fixed point, and like, and, and, and play.

[Phil Rickaby]
Lisa Marie, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate this.

[Lisa Marie DiLiberto]
Well, thank you, Phil. It’s so nice to talk to and listen to and ask all these questions.

[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. In a minute, I’m going to tell you about who my guest is next week. But first, please let me tell you about my Patreon.

I can’t do this show without the people who’ve chosen to back me on Patreon. Even though a podcast is downloaded for free, there are still costs involved in making the show. I don’t have advertising.

So the only way that I can pay for the things that are needed in order to make this show, I need you to become a patron. It costs money to make this show. It costs money to have a website to have editing software to have a hosting application for where I can post the audio files and make them available for all of the podcast downloads it there’s so many little things and I have transcripts and although there are some free transcription services there are generally bad and so I have to pay for good transcripts and so I’m doing that now and I want to make the transcripts available to make these conversations available to not only people who can hear to people who are hard of hearing or deaf and also to people who might just want to follow along with the conversations.

I think transcripts are really important to have and so to do that I need the backing of people on Patreon. I am super grateful to the people who are backing me and if you’re watching on YouTube you will see their names now but if you want to help me to make this show please go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. Patrons get early access to episodes who have some conversations about important issues in Canadian theatre and just generally a talk theatre and the more people who join the Patreon the more I will be able to offer my patrons.

So please if you’re interested in helping me to make this show go to patreon.com/stageworthy and become a patron. My guest next week is Susanna Fournier. Susanna is an award-winning Canadian playwright and she joined me to talk about her new show take rimbaud which is opening at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in association with the Howland Company and you will hear that conversation next week on Stageworthy.